Spectator articles from January 2002

Spectator archives from January 2002

Portrait of the week.(Brief Article)
January 12, 2002... Rail strikes continued and fares rose as Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, asked Lord Birt, the former director-general of the BBC, to draw up a report on transport. Mr Robin Cook, the Leader of the House, and Mr Peter Hain, the minister for...

No one left to blame.(railroad strike)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2002... India, as far as train buffs are concerned, is the country where you can still see mainline steam trains and where services commonly carry passengers on the roof. It was presumably not for tips on how to run a railway service that the Prime...

Diary.
January 12, 2002... The Language Card issued to our troops here gives a flavour. `Head', `chest', `stomach', `back', `blood', `gunshot wound', `Red Cross', `Dead', `wounded', it reads, offering the equivalent in Dari for Afghans and in Arabic for al-Qa'eda. `Good...

Churchill v. Halifax and Butler: the great unsolved mystery of 1940 deepens. (Shared Opinion).
January 12, 2002... My last contribution to this space was about something that struck me as extraordinary in History Magazine, a monthly which the BBC publishes; namely, the claim that just after the fall of France in 1940 Churchill considered ordering the...

The politics of bloody murder: Peter Oborne says that the Saville inquiry shows that Tony Blair is prepared to extend clemency to terrorists but not to the British soldiers who were asked to protect us from them. (Cover Story).
January 12, 2002... Most people find this repellent and disquieting. Yet they are resigned to it because they accept that in Northern Ireland the only way forward is by casting a veil of obscurity over the past. There is one exception to this rule: the British...

Ancient & modern.(Brief Article)
January 12, 2002... MANY newspapers have recorded the sad demise of Europe's oldest coinage, the drachma, `handful' (ancient Greek drattomai, `I grasp'). Papers did not grasp, however, that coinage itself is effectively a Greek phenomenon. If `money' is a...

No hain, no gain: Anne McElvoy talks to Peter Hain and finds a rebel -- `We have the worst railways in Europe' -- who is essential to the Labour cause.(Interview)
January 12, 2002... HE doesn't half fancy himself, that Peter Hain. The Minister for Europe is spruce and lustrous, with a well-tended thatch that might belong to a society hairdresser, and he looks fit on his wheat-free, non-lactose, organic diet. There's a...

Making a virtue of vice: in a world whose motto has become `You mustn't blame yourself', sin has been replaced by sickness.
January 12, 2002... ONCE upon a time there were seven deadly sins. They were called deadly because they led to spiritual death and therefore to damnation. The seven sins were (and are): lust, gluttony, avarice, sloth, anger, envy and pride. Now all of them, with...

Our Lady of Surbiton: Andrew Gimson meets a group of Catholics who are convinced that the Virgin Mary is appearing in south London.
January 12, 2002... THE Virgin Mary is appearing every day in Surbiton beneath a pine tree. So I was told by an elderly couple I met in a pub, who said that she appears from Monday to Friday at 12 noon, and at 9 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays, but warned that `only...

Banned wagon: a weekly survey of the things our rulers want to prohibit.(Brief Article)(Editorial)
January 12, 2002... THIS column does not usually stray overseas, but the behaviour of the Peruvian President, Alejando Toledo, deserves comment for what it tells us about the international spread of Blairism. Last June, Toledo was elected as the country's first...

They also serve: Bruce Anderson says that the fame of our special forces should not be allowed to undermine the morale of other units.
January 12, 2002... A BRACE of citations for gallantry are now under consideration by the committee of senior officers which decides on bravery awards. Though all such documents receive close attention, this pair will be subjected to an especial scrutiny. Two...

Second opinion.(Brief Article)(Editorial)
January 12, 2002... IT must be a dull dog who has never wondered what it's all about -- life, I mean. It is all so very difficult and complicated, and always ends in osteoarthritis. In the circumstances, it is almost impossible to descry any meaning. Does one keep...

Mind your language.(Brief Article)
January 12, 2002... A READER keeps trying to convince me that billiard-room is wrong and billiards-room is right. He was as pleased as punch to find a hotel plan showing a `billiards-room'. It proves nothing. The fact is that such constructions put the first...

Fangs, but no thanks: Jessica Douglas-Home on a proposal to vandalise an ancient Romanian town by building a Dracula theme park.
January 12, 2002... THE beautiful mediaeval Transylvanian town of Sighisoara is under threat -- not from war or natural disaster, but from an unseemly rush to build a Dracula theme park half a mile from the town. The Romanian tourism minister, Agathon Dan,...

Why the king screamed in terror, `lights, lights!' (And Another Thing).
January 12, 2002... Our paddock in the Quantocks is at present occupied by a score of sable sheep -- gentle, delightful creatures, the reverse of diabolical. Yet when Charles Powell made his famous joke at a dinner in honour of General Colin Powell, introducing...

Opt-out was cop-out. (Letters).
January 12, 2002... From Mr Frederick Forsyth Sir: In the rewriting of Tory (sorry, Conservative) party history, your editorialist's claim that John Major's trophy on the euro decision ten years ago was a triumph takes some beating (Leading article, 29...

Simon the supine. (Letters).
January 12, 2002... From Mr Mark Fox Sir: Simon Heffer's self-appointed role as Gold Nib-In-Waiting to the Jubilee Court (`In the line of duty', 5 January) does neither him (as a hitherto robust and fearless commentator) nor it (not short of grovellers) any...

Unfair to Islam. (Letters).
January 12, 2002... From Mr James McDougall Sir: There is nothing unfamiliar in Mark Steyn's article (`The war between America and Europe', 29 December), but a great deal that is unfortunate. The easy `neoliberal' (in nothing either new or liberal, in fact)...

Barry's bad taste. (Letters).
January 12, 2002... From Mr John Whelan Sir: I find the description of parking wardens as `vindictive black bastards' offensive (Diary, 15/22 December). Barry Humphries may be a national figure of fun, but there are limits to bad taste even where he is...

Rae's way with dons. (Letters).
January 12, 2002... From Mr Ian Hamilton Sir: In his article about Oxford University (`Decline and fall', 29 December), Felipe Fernandez-Armesto regrets that `the old methods, which used to supply little devils you knew, recommended by schools with historic...

Canniest of candidates. (Letters).
January 12, 2002... From Amy Stroud Sir: Bill Penn (`The semi illiterates', 5 January) reveals his own ignorance of the media marketplace if he does not realise that graduates from `breeze-block universities with their degrees in marketing, communications'...

100 years of solitude. (Letters).
January 12, 2002... From Benedict King Sir: We are not all impoverished by the government's library policy (`An axe to the roots of our culture', 15/22 December). A couple of months ago, as I was passing one of the few bookshops in Oxford that has not yet...

Mr Mugabe is fixing the election by gagging the press -- and London is doing nothing about it. (Media Studies).(Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe)
January 12, 2002... Robert Mugabe is nearly there. While the world sleeps, he is putting the final pieces in place to fix the Zimbabwean presidential elections, which must take place before 17 March. By the time you read this, the Access to Information and...

Diplomacy And Murder In Tehran: Alexander Griboyedov And Imperial Russia's Mission To The Shah Of Persia. (Books: the playing fields of Persia).
January 12, 2002... DIPLOMACY AND MURDER IN TEHRAN: ALEXANDER GRIBOYEDOV AND IMPERIAL RUSSIA'S MISSION TO THE SHAH OF PERSIA by Laurence Kelly I. B. Tauris, 25 [pounds sterling], pp. 314, ISBN 1869646662 Pushkin once said, with characteristic irony, that the...

Works On Paper: The Craft Of Biography And Autobiography. (Books: his own best subject).
January 12, 2002... WORKS ON PAPER: THE CRAFT OF BIOGRAPHY AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY by Michael Holroyd Little, Brown, 20 [pounds sterling], pp. 319, ISBN 03168567898 Michael Holroyd's life of Lytton Strachey, published in 1967-8, is often said to mark the...

Life Below Stairs In The 20th Century. (Books: the servant problem).(Brief Article)
January 12, 2002... LIFE BELOW STAIRS IN THE 20TH CENTURY by Pamela Horn Sutton, 20 [pounds sterling], pp. 286, ISBN 0750923172 When did servants become staff? Readers with longer, more accurate memories than mine might help in establishing the precise point...

What The Butler Saw. (Books: the servant problem).
January 12, 2002... WHAT THE BUTLER SAW by E. S. Turner Penguin, 4.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 312, ISBN 0141390832 When did servants become staff? Readers with longer, more accurate memories than mine might help in establishing the precise point at which this...

One-Hit Wonder. (Books: mania, phobias and more).
January 12, 2002... ONE-HIT WONDER by Lisa Jewell Penguin, 6.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 450, ISBN 0140295968 Let's not beat about the bush. Lisa Jewell is Enid Blyton for those who have progressed through Kirrin Island and Malory Towers and now go to Greenday...

Resurrection Men. (Books: the flaws of Edinburgh).
January 12, 2002... RESURRECTION MEN by Ian Rankin Orion, 17.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 440, ISBN 0752821318 There's now, I'm told, a company that offers you tours of Ian Rankin's Edinburgh: a trawl round the dank, stinking closes, the saunas where you are...

The Collected Stories Of Richard Yates. (Books: Grace still under pressure).
January 12, 2002... THE COLLECTED STORIES OF RICHARD YATES by Richard Yates Methuen, 17.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 472, ISBN 0413771253 If Richard Yates is known at all in this country, it is as the author of The Revolutionary Road. But he published several...

Vigor Mortis.
January 12, 2002... VIGOR MORTIS by Kate Berridge Profile Books, 17.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 283, ISBN 186197177X Vigor Mortis is a triumph, an exhilaratingly original, scholarly and strange -- as well as extraordinarily enjoyable -- orchestration of the...

A Voyage by Dhow And Other Pieces. (Books: memories of a survivor).
January 12, 2002... A VOYAGE DHOW AND OTHER PIECES by Norman Lewis Cape, 15.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 215, ISBN 0224061712 If Norman Lewis's new collection of travel pieces has a theme, it is his lifelong preoccupation with survival, the endurance of the...

Painting still counts: Martin Gayford on the controversy surrounding Lucian Freud's portrait of the Queen. (Arts).(Brief Article)(Critical Essay)
January 12, 2002... Well, who says painting is dead? Just before Christmas -- you can, I hope, still cast your mind back over the festive watershed -- there was a great deal of fuss over the portrait Lucian Freud has recently completed of Her Majesty the Queen....

Who benefits? (Music).(charity concerts for New York)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2002... Charity events are strange things. I took part in one last month in New York in aid of the victims of the September disasters, and came away wondering who had really benefited from our efforts. For example, we had to take it on trust that the...

The Lieutenant of Inishmore.
January 12, 2002... The Lieutenant of Inishmore (The Pit, Barbican) First draft Martin McDonagh, the 30-year-old author of The Lieutenant of Inishmore, is an outspoken defender of his own work. He called London's theatre producers `gutless and...

Twelfth Night.
January 12, 2002... Twelfth Night (Barbican) First draft Martin McDonagh, the 30-year-old author of The Lieutenant of Inishmore, is an outspoken defender of his own work. He called London's theatre producers `gutless and lily-livered' for failing to...

Organic revolution. (Gardens).(Brief Article)
January 12, 2002... An old man in a cloth cap, collarless shirt, waistcoat and trousers tied up with baler twine, who tends ruler-straight rows of savoy cabbages, leafy parsnips and flag leeks amongst flapping glitterbangs, and leaves his allotment shed only once...

Irritating distractions.('Civil War' on BBC2)
January 12, 2002... My brother Dick has just enlisted as a Roundhead pikeman in the Sealed Knot and I'm worried that it's partly my fault. What happened was that this time last year I was at a books party and got talking to an historian called John Adamson, whose...

Funny money. (Radio).(radio coverage of Europe's conversion to the Euro)(Brief Article)
January 12, 2002... Having ordered my newly printed euros for a trip to Italy this week I find they are peculiar little things; they don't really feel like proper money at all. As someone said on the radio after they were launched on New Year's Day, they're rather...

The virtue of patience. (The turf).(Brief Article)
January 12, 2002... It isn't always the pulsating finish or the dramatic leap which provide racing's magical moments. Many in the crowd had already left Newbury before the 25-strong field came back home in the Weatherby's Stars of Tomorrow Standard Open National...

Stylish pugnacity. (Motoring).(Bentley Azure Mulliner)(Evaluation)
January 12, 2002... The Sun reported recently that someone called Jennifer (J-Lo) Lopez and her husband, Cris (sic) Judd -- quite ordinary people sometimes adopt famous names -- recently bought themselves a Bentley Azure each while window-shopping in Mayfair. If...

Simple truths. (High life).(Brief Article)
January 12, 2002... Rougemont Although he's hardly my favourite character, I'm seriously worried about Tony Blair. I feel he's in the middle of a nervous breakdown. As a peacemaker in India, covered by a rug, looking campy and resembling a dipsophobe who has...

Street safety. (Singular life).(Brief Article)
January 12, 2002... I want to begin this column by thanking all those readers who have written to me supporting my anti-McCartney stance on fur. I had promised to put my money where my mouth is and on my trip to Hungary purchased as many dead animal pelts as...

Muddy water. (Bridge).(Brief Article)
January 12, 2002... AH, that blissful period between Christmas and the New Year, when every day can be spent cooped up in the Royal National Hotel in Euston playing high-tension bridge. This year, I entered almost every event of the Year End Congress; by the end,...

All square. (Chess).(Brief Article)
January 12, 2002... THIS week I give the answers to the Christmas puzzle. All positions were White to play and mate in two, and you also had to state the reason why the puzzle was a record breaker of some kind. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] White mates in two...

Dali dozen. (Competition).(Brief Article)
January 12, 2002... IN COMPETITION NO. 2220 you were given 12 words and invited to incorporate them into a plausible piece of prose. I may as well declare it now: in this type of comp I don't accept ordinary lower-case words being turned into proper names for...

New Balfour declaration. (Spectator Sport).(Brief Article)
January 12, 2002... PERHAPS one day some historian of academic bent will write a history of South Africa without mentioning sport. If so, the work will be trivial, futile and altogether lacking in seriousness, for it is in sport that the problems of that...

Your problems solved.
January 12, 2002... Q. More and more women are taking up shooting. I always use a shooting stick, and have done so for years. When I am at my peg and a fellow male gun comes along for a gossip, I stay perched on my stick. If a female gun comes along, should I...

Portrait of the week.(world events)(Brief Article)
January 19, 2002... Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, admitted a scheme for Britain to share with Spain sovereignty over Gibraltar; but he promised the people of the colony would be able to vote on the change in a referendum. After Mr Peter Hain, the Minister for...

Drugs at Eton.(Brief Article)
January 19, 2002... If there is one man who has reason to be grateful that Prince Harry was caught smoking cannabis in a Gloucestershire pub last summer, it is John Lewis, Head Master of Eton. Had the offence taken place a few weeks later in a bar in downtown...

The unions say the Health Secretary has sold out -- so it's time to buy shares in Alan Milburn. (Politics).(British politics)
January 19, 2002... Tony Blair has noisily proclaimed New Labour's independence from the unions ever since his election as Labour leader in 1994. Like many New Labour claims, this assertion is partly false. Just as it was impossible to understand the Macmillan...

Diary.(a visit to Naples and Italian politics)(Brief Article)
January 19, 2002... Early January, when the Christmas decorations have frayed into being a dirty nuisance, is in general a very good time to get out of England. But I never understand why people want to go to the lowering climate of the West Indies. Unseasonable...

Did Prince Harry take cocaine? And did the Palace cut a deal to cover it up? (Media Studies).
January 19, 2002... The News of the World, as we all know, is a highly disreputable newspaper. On hearing that it had run a story about Prince Harry's drinking and cannabis habits, many decent people will have felt that it had gone too far in prying into the...

The bleeding heart of Britain: just who does the smiling, doe-eyed Tony Blair think he is? The Princess of Wales, that's who. Simon Heffer says that the Prime Minister is too busy playing to the international gallery to run the country.
January 19, 2002... A PRIME MINISTER will always have his or her critics. Usually, though, a good spin doctor can marginalise them and persuade the rest of us to concentrate on the `achievements'. That, for more than four years, was how things played with Tony...

Over there and overstretched: `virtuous intervention' worked for the Tories in Bosnia, says Douglas Hurd, but New Labour is in danger of carrying the principle too far.(British forces in Afghanistan and the policy of interventionism)
January 19, 2002... EVERY rime the Prime Minister mentions Afghanistan, he intones the promise, `This time we shall not walk away.' It is a small example of a huge philosophical change. Fifteen years ago, walking away was exactly what the Afghans wanted us to do....

Mind your language.(proper English usage)(Brief Article)
January 19, 2002... THE dear old editor forwards a tearstained email from Mr Hugo Eddis of Chelsea, who is worried about Veronica. After reading a sentence in a previous column (`It's Veronica that's borrowed thousands to go to university'), he comments...

The German Norman Tebbit: John Hooper on Edmund Stoiber, the man chosen to stand against Schroeder, in what promises to be the roughest election in years.(German politics)
January 19, 2002... Berlin ANYONE looking for a trend on the European Right should compare recent events in Britain and Germany. In both countries, conservatives face the challenge of finding a way to evict a socialist who has successfully occupied much of...

The wages of sex: is there a link between frequent sex and prostate cancer? Robert Baker examines the evidence.
January 19, 2002... WHAT keeps you awake at night? Global terrorism? Money? Your children? Or do you lie there fretting that thousands of British men are being cut down in their prime by a surfeit of masturbation? There are those who do, and the editor of this...

Ancient & modern.(definition of 'hero')(Brief Article)
January 19, 2002... THE term `hero' these days is commonly used of large numbers of people: those engaged in dangerous work (soldiers, firemen), those engaged in demanding work (nurses, teachers) and those simply doing a conscientious job, whatever that job is....

Are the French `a sh*tty lot'? Suzanne Lowry examines the English view of France as an arrogant, cowardly and, above all, anti-Semitic nation.
January 19, 2002... Paris SWASTIKAS daubed on walls, and windows broken at a synagogue in a Paris suburb; a Jewish primary school set ablaze in a Molotov-cocktail attack. In London, the French ambassador is denounced for deprecating the importance of Israel....

Banned wagon: a weekly survey of the things our rulers want to prohibit.(Brief Article)
January 19, 2002... THERE isn't believed to be a large Eskimo community in Britain, but any who reside here may find that they have an excellent case for racial discrimination. It is not usual these days for a government minister to go out of his way to...

What is a sad and angry Raphael stopping his friend doing? (And Another Thing).(musing at a painting by Raphael that may include a self-portrait)
January 19, 2002... In Paris last weekend I visited a small exhibition, at the Luxembourg Palace, devoted to what it called the `grace and beauty of Raphael'. It was very dark and crowded, but my eye was caught by a famous double portrait of two youngish men. I...

I was in the back of a pick-up, in shorts, T-shirt and goggles, when the fear hit me. (Another Voice).(experiencing free fall parachuting)(Brief Article)
January 19, 2002... You, like me, may have seen those video pictures of people free-fall jumping with parachutes. It looks like heaven. The idea is that you jump from the plane from so high that you can fall for ages before opening your parachute. I've always...

An unjust war. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
January 19, 2002... Sir: Peter Hain (`No Hain, no gain', 12 January) reproaches the `pacifist opt-out Left' for `not eating humble pie for how wrong they have been proved' over Afghanistan. As a non-pacifist opposed to this particular war, I am glad that it turned...

Resilient rainbow nation. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
January 19, 2002... Sir: Andrew Kenny's recent article about South Africa (`Black people aren't animals', 29 December) made depressing reading. But it was ever thus. Since coming to the country in 1991 I have found it interesting to observe the tide of gloom from...

Naffness at the Abbey. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
January 19, 2002... Sir: Jessica Douglas-Home (`Fangs, but no thanks', 12 January) doesn't need to go to Romania to see an example of `Dracula vandalisation'. Very soon she will be able to come to Whitby in North Yorkshire and visit the abbey ruins, with...

Repackaging the past.(Letter to the Editor)
January 19, 2002... Sir: Frank Johnson is right (`Shared opinion', 12 January): my book, Hess, the Fuhrer's Disciple, makes no mention of Churchill's threat to arrest Lord Halifax and R.A. Butler in 1940. I was more concerned with his final decision, which was...

Dot Wordworth. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
January 19, 2002... Sir: Dot Wordsworth (Mind your language, 12 January) correctly prefers `billiard ball' to `billiards ball', and is supported by the Mikado (who prescribed `elliptical billiard balls' for hustlers). But the choice is surely a matter of euphony...

Blair's bad taste. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
January 19, 2002... Sir: Charles Moore (Diary, 12 January) thinks that Tony Blair's words of sympathy to the Browns for the loss of their baby, while sounding `surreal' in Afghanistan, would `sound right' on television back home. They did not. The confusion of...

The battle for books.(Letter to the Editor)
January 19, 2002... Sir: I bear no grudge that for 60 [pounds sterling] Mr Benedict King was able to acquire six volumes of Lord Byron's collected letters and journals at the expense of the citizens of Lambeth (Letters, 12 January). Lambethans have other libraries...

Cruella Petronella. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
January 19, 2002... Sir: I hope Petronella Wyatt is ignorant of the crueller aspects of the fur trade (Singular life, 12 January), for to be the author of the article in full knowledge of the truly horrible aspects of the trade would show one to be both heartless...

Americans first.(Letter to the Editor)
January 19, 2002... Sir: Anthony G. Phillips (Letters, 1 December) writes, `Surely our morality does not deem the life of an Afghan peasant to be any less precious than that of a Westerner?' This remark, which passed without notice in your magazine,...

There's something in the air in Downing Street -- the PM has got Chancellor's Itch. (City and Suburban).(includes other items)
January 19, 2002... I am afraid that Tony Blair has contracted Chancellor's Itch. He and his family have overflowed into 11 Downing Street, where it must be lurking in the air-conditioning, like Legionnaire's Disease. I have diagnosed it in so many chancellors...

Communism. (Books: the future that didn't work.).
January 19, 2002... COMMUNISM by Richard Pipes Weidenfeld, 14.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 180, ISBN 0297646885 Communism, Marxist-Leninist style, is a dead parrot. Any attempt to resuscitate it would, according to Professor Pipes, `border on madness'. It has...

The Road to Verdun. (Books: the battle that has never ended).
January 19, 2002... THE ROAD TO VERDUN by Ian Ousby Cape, 17.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 269, ISBN 0224059904 Given the many excellent books already written about the battle of Verdun, and also the very different manner in which wars are fought today, one...

Boo Hoo. (Book: the Gods of the market).
January 19, 2002... BOO HOO by Ernst Malmsten and others Random House, 17.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 396, ISBN 0712672397 This book is about a dream which turned to dust, Cinderella's coach reverting to a pumpkin. It would make a good opera, and Ernst...

That They May Face The Rising Sun. (Books: the curse of the gab).
January 19, 2002... THAT THEY MAY FACE THE RISING SUN by John McGahern Faber, 16.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 298, ISBN 0571212166 The garrulousness of the Irish can be a wonderful thing. Or it can drive you mad. John McGahern's latest novel, set in a rural...

Blood and Kin: An Empire Saga. (Books: dreams of empire).
January 19, 2002... BLOOD AND KIN: AN EMPIRE SAGA by Andrew Sinclair Sinclair-Stevenson, 17.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 822, ISBN 095404763X This book is nothing if not ambitious. Its 822 pages take us through a century and a half of one family's seeding into...

Treasures On Earth: Museums, Collections and Paradoxes. (Books: the case for not burning dodos).
January 19, 2002... TREASURES ON EARTH: MUSEUMS, COLLECTIONS AND PARADOXES by Keith Thomson Faber, 12.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 114, ISBN 0571212956 Professor Keith Thomson, the Director of the Oxford Museum of Natural History, begins his brief tract about the...

SOE In The Low Countries. (Books: mission not accomplished).
January 19, 2002... SOE IN THE LOW COUNTRIES by M. R. D. Foot St Ermin's Press, 25 [pounds sterling], pp. 553, ISBN 190360804X In the second world war the Special Operations Executive (SOE) was established by Churchill with the task of wreaking sabotage and...

The Kindness of Sisters. (Books: Can you forgive her?).
January 19, 2002... THE KINDNESS OF SISTERS by David Crane HarperCollins, 19.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 286, ISBN 0002570521 This book, like steak-and-kidney pudding, must be consumed with circumspection. Its substance, the long deteriorating relationship...

i. m. Lorna Sage, 1943-2001.(Poem)
January 19, 2002... Out of that mess of relatives you came, A breathless blonde, a giggling saboteur, Silly, subversive, resolute and clever. You mocked, and flirted, and you had no shame. I felt uneasy with you, always did: You puffed...

The end of a way of life: Starlight Express has closed after 18 years. Peter Phillips on its sung and unsung heroes. (Arts).
January 19, 2002... The demise of Starlight Express is indeed the end of an era, or at least part of an era, since it is said to be the second-longest-running musical ever. The longest-running, equally with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber, is Cats, which, it has just...

Sandra Blow. (Exhibitions 1 back to basics).(Tate St. Ives, Cornwall, United Kingdom)
January 19, 2002... Exhibitions 1 Sandra Blow (Tate St. Ives, till 10 March) Back to Basics In modern life progress is only made by slamming doors on the immediate past, so it's natural, though still rather surprising, that Modernism and...