Spectator articles from January 2004

Spectator archives from January 2004

Portrait of the week.
January 3, 2004... Police in plain clothes armed with guns are being put on international flights thought to be at risk from hijacking, according to Mr David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, and Mr Alistair Darling, the Secretary of State for Transport. Pilots'...

No guns on planes.
January 3, 2004... When, at the insistence of the US Department of Homeland Security, the first armed 'sky marshals' take to British transatlantic flights, it is to be hoped that the in-flight movie won't be Goldfinger. For anyone who has managed to avoid seeing...

Diary.
January 3, 2004... The recent story in the Sunday Times about the hundreds of people who have declined honours in the past 50 or 60 years was fascinating. Contrary to the usual interpretation, it showed that the system is actually fairer than I thought. The list...

Whatever Hutton reports, there is no case for getting rid of Andrew Gilligan.(Media Studies)
January 3, 2004... Within the next few weeks Lord Hutton will publish his inquiry. None of us can know where, if anywhere, his axe will fall. Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, may be feeling his neck a little anxiously. So too will Andrew Gilligan, the BBC...

Escape from barbarity: Theodore Dalrymple says he is turning his back on the ugliness and emptiness of Britain and moving to France, which for all its faults he considers a more civilised country than his own.(Cover Story)
January 3, 2004... This year is the centenary year of the Entente Cordiale, and I intend to celebrate it by buying a house in France (the acte authentique, the final signing, takes place later this month) and, in the not very distant future, by living there....

Ancient & modern.
January 3, 2004... Donald von Rumsfeld, the sinisterly bespectacled US defence secretary, has won a gobbledygook award from the Plain English campaign for the following (paraphrased) apercu: 'There are known knowns, i.e. things we know we know; there are known...

Air defence: Norman Tebbit does not like the idea of armed marshals on British flights, but believes that they are necessary.
January 3, 2004... There is in this unpredictable world some comfort to be found when everybody behaves in character. Certainly that is the case in the row over the government's proposal to put 'sky marshals' on at least some flights to the United States. First...

Job of the week.
January 3, 2004... Capacity Officer Oldham Metropolitan Borough Council Salary: 25,911 [pounds sterling]-28,320 [pounds sterling] Oldham Social Services Department are [sic] investing resources into a newly-formed Capacity Building and Research Team to...

Marshall arts: Peter Oborne had a bet with Lord Marshall that there would be no euro referendum in 2003. He won, and was treated to a slightly edgy dinner at Brown's.
January 3, 2004... This interview came about in unusual circumstances. At the start of 2003 in his capacity as chairman of the Britain in Europe campaign, Lord Marshall sent out a New Year message. He predicted two things: there would a euro referendum in 2003...

Face invader: Sam Leith has a facial--and is troubled to find that he has to remove all his clothes.
January 3, 2004... I haven't felt like this since I last went to visit the dental hygienist with my mum. I'm standing in a coolly antiseptic reception room, mooching and scuffing my feet and sighing theatrically, while my travelling companion discusses...

History must not repeat itself: David Pryce-Jones on the danger to Iraq of the Arabist tradition at the Foreign Office.
January 3, 2004... The capture of Saddam Hussein clears the way to self-government in Iraq, due to be launched six months from now. This will work only if the country's constituent elements are fairly represented in the political process, and none is placed in a...

Mind your language.
January 3, 2004... So many much-loved books have been badly done on television--The Irish RM, and just now The Young Visiters, which anyone could have seen would be difficult to do well on telly--that I wonder how much longer they can resist dear old Parson...

In defence of Wacko Jacko: Leo McKinstry explains why he has the gravest doubts about the charges brought against the weird and plastic Michael Jackson.
January 3, 2004... In Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie described the bed that the 'rampageous' boys made for themselves in their magical primitive home in Neverland: 'It filled nearly half the room and all the boys slept in it, lying like sardines in a tin.' Today, the...

Second opinion.
January 3, 2004... Sad to relate, none of our utterances will be remembered after our deaths, for all the passion with which we uttered them: unless, that is, we happen to belong to one of the very few, the elite of the elite, who have said something worth...

Stabbing.
January 3, 2004... I was on a semi-working holiday. My idea was to investigate the South African phenomenon of 'family suicide', in which the depressed Afrikaner father would shoot or poison Iris wife and children--and then himself. The main purpose of my trip,...

A defeatist historian.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
January 3, 2004... From Patrick Beeley Sir: Correlli Barnett's article on the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq ('Why al-Qa'eda is winning', 13/20 December) continues the theme of defeatist gloom that pervades so much of his writing. It's easy to describe...

Deciding who gets what.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
January 3, 2004... From Christopher Heneghan Sir: Robert Gore-Langton ('Organ minders', 27 December) seems not to appreciate how offensive it is to suggest that a surgeon might make less effort for a patient with a donor card. Such an action would be very...

How bad is Africa's Aids?(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
January 3, 2004... From Hugh Russell Sir: In 'Africa isn't dying of Aids' (13/20 December), Rian Malan pours scorn on my piece 'Aids: It's worse than you imagined' (1 March), and I hope to God he's right and that the situation has been over stated. In particular...

Don't blame the HSE.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
January 3, 2004... From Kevin Myers Sir: Gus Alexander wonders whether too much Health and Safely is bad for you (Arts, 13/20 December 2003) and cites the paper-trail response by the construction industry to the Construction (Design and Management)...

Blacks and the new deal.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
January 3, 2004... From Nick Georgano Sir: I was interested in Geoffrey Wheatcroft's comment in his review of Conrad Black's biography of FDR (Books, 13/20 December) that 'during Roosevelt's administration the condition of black Americans barely improved'....

Wrong Knox.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
January 3, 2004... From Digby Anderson Sir: When I wrote about the Epiphany ('Go to work on Christmas Day', 13/20 December) I quoted a certain 'Knox'. I meant Ronald Knox. Somewhere in the haste of the debased modern Christmas, he became John. I would never...

The last word?(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
January 3, 2004... From John Laughland Sir: Having initially pretended that my review of his book contained '22 errors and misrepresentations', Christopher Booker is now reduced to defending a single boring quibble about whether I should have written...

Detente is back in fashion, thank heaven, and the horrors of Bam could change history.(Another Voice)
January 3, 2004... Should liberal internationalists feel irritated when neoconservative hawks piggyback on to the successes of our own approach, and take the credit for themselves? No, we should feel satisfied that they want to, for ii is a kind of...

All, all are going, the old familiar faces.(And Another Thing)(Obituary)
January 3, 2004... The sudden death of Glynn Boyd Harte, aged only 55 and at the height of his considerable powers, is a tragedy for British art, already in a desperately anaemic condition under the Serota-Saatchi-Rosenthal oligopolistic dictatorship. For Glyun...

We're lucky not to be caught in the toils of a manic-depressive currency.(City And Suburban)
January 3, 2004... Let us greet the new year with an olive. 2004 may yet be the year of the two-dollar martini, with our chances brighter and the dollar cheaper than at any time for a decade and more. (1 [pounds sterling] = $1.77: less than a quarter to go!) For...

A disturbing absence of disturbance.(Book Review)
January 3, 2004... THE AMATEUR MARRIAGE by Anne Tyler Chatto, 16.99 [pound sterling], pp. 300, ISBN 0701177349 Anne Tyler has written 15 excellent novels--this is her 16th--which proceed according to a formula she has made her own: romantic comedy of a...

The best band in the land.(Book Review)
January 3, 2004... ORCHESTRA: THE LSO A CENTURY OF TRIUMPH AND TURBULENCE by Richard Morrison Faber, 20 [pounds sterling], pp. 320, ISBN 0571215831 Being of the same age and provenance as Richard Morrison, I was intrigued to note that he honours the London...

Nourishing alphabet soup.(Book Review)
January 3, 2004... THE ALPHABET by David Sacks Hutchinson, 12.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 39,5, ISBN 0091795060 Alphabets have always fascinated: Ben Jonson, Samuel Johnson (who didn't approve of his own initial), Descartes, Edward Lear, Kipling; Victor Hugo...

Rivals at the court of King Adolf.(Book Review)
January 3, 2004... THE DEVIL'S DISCIPLES: THE LIVES AND TIMES OF HITLER'S INNER CIRCLE by Anthony Read Cape, 25 [pounds sterling], pp. 984, ISBN 0224060082 One of the Great War's consequences may have been the dethronement of the Romanovs, Habsburgs and...

Brutal but beautiful Brooklyn.(Book Review)
January 3, 2004... THE FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE by Jonathan Lethem Faber, 12.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 470, ISBN 0571219330 There is currently a vogue for the all-encompassing, minutiae-crunching, self-regarding, state-of-the-changed-nation American novel. All...

The gentle art of murder.(Book Review)
January 3, 2004... KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS by Michael Newton BFI Film Classics, 8.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 96, ISBN 0851709648 It often seems that more rubbish is written about the cinema than about almost any other art form. Since too many films are of...

Fakirs and fakers.(Book Review)
January 3, 2004... THE RISE OF THE INDIAN ROPE TRICK by Peter Lamont Little, Brown, 14.99 [pounds steling], pp. 288, ISBN 0316724300 Everybody knows what unicorns are, and everybody knows there is no such thing. It is much the same with the Indian rope trick....

Two very different islands.(Book Review)
January 3, 2004... MISS RANSKILL COMES HOME by Barbara Euphan Todd Persephone Books, 10 [pounds sterling], pp. 330, ISBN 1903155363 Reviewing this novel in 1946, when it was first published, Rosamond Lehmann described it as "a work of great originality... a...

Old-style Irish enterprise.(Book Review)
January 3, 2004... LEAVES FROM THE FIG TREE by Diana Duff Summersdale Travel 7.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 318, ISBN 1840243635 Irishness is perceptible almost everywhere, if you look with eyes half closed, especially in China, Israel and the Latin Countries of...

A man who asked the right questions.(Book Review)
January 3, 2004... LONDON RECORDINGS by David Sylvester Chatto, 22 [pounds sterling], pp. 202, ISBN 0701162678 David Sylvester's first ambition was to be a professional I cricketer, and he possessed to the end that almost miraculous masculine capacity for...

A glutton for work.(Book Review)
January 3, 2004... ORWELL: THE 'OBSERVER' YEARS Observer Books/Atlantic, 12 [pounds sterling], pp. 272, ISBN 1843542609 George Orwell started writing for the Observer in 1942, brought there by the proprietor's son, David Astor, on the advice of the then...

Paving the way for Miss Marple.(Book Review)
January 3, 2004... THAT AFFAIR NEXT DOOR AND LOST MAN'S LANE by Anna Katharine Green, with an introduction by Catherine Ross Nickerson Durham, New York and London, Duke University Press, 21.95 [pounds sterling], pp. 446, ISBN 082233190X THE DEAD LETTER AND...

Friends in high places.(Book Review)
January 3, 2004... SIKKIM HIMALAYA by David Lang Pomegranate Press, 29.95 [pounds sterling], pp.200 ISBN 0953349373 David Lang first heard about the Himalayas when he was a little boy. As his father read aloud from the works of the great botanical...

Unmissable visual treats: Andrew Lambirth looks forward to this year's exhibitions--from El Greco to Ken Kiff.(Arts)
January 3, 2004... The chief thrill of this year's gallery-going has to be the El Greco exhibition at the National Gallary (11 February to 23 May). It will be the first major showing of his work in this country, and for many the first chance to study his...

Proud to be uncool.(Pop music)
January 3, 2004... Is it dignified to remain obsessed by pop music well into your forties? I used to worry about this when I was about 28, but now I'm 43 I find I don't give a monkey's genitals about being dignified, and I'm waiting rather anxiously for all the...

Knowing when it's time to go.(Television)
January 3, 2004... Watching an old and much-loved television programme die is like seeing the same thing happen to a favourite pet--the inevitability makes it no less sad. Take The Story of Absolutely Fabulous (BBCI), a well-assembled history of what was once a...

Digital dilemma.(Radio)
January 3, 2004... No doubt many people have received a digital radio as a Christmas present and are enjoying the very clear sound quality that it offers. I wrote in November that I couldn't really see the point of the BBC's five digital stations and that if I...

A kingdom for a horse.(Hunting)
January 3, 2004... One of my recurring dreams is that I am driving through central London when suddenly I turn a corner and find myself among fields. The gardens of Buckingham Palace magically elongate and grow wild, and soon I am on horseback and cantering...

Tear-jerker victory.(The turf)
January 3, 2004... 'Riding a horse is like dealing with a woman--you simply have to know which buttons to press,' said French trainer Guillaume Macaire not long ago when defending his much-criticised stable jockey Jacques Ricou. I am not sure what view the...

Bursting at the seams.(High life)
January 3, 2004... Gstaad Back up in the mountains once again, with a bit of snow for a change. It's getting close to my 50th winter up here (1956) and the place is not improving, that's for sure. It all has to do with--you guessed it--the sort of people...

My Uncle Scrooge.(Low life)
January 3, 2004... It was blowing a hooligan outside. There was a knock at the door, which was open, and there was this doctor--the biggest doctor we'd ever seen--stamping his big brown brogues on the doormat. He'd come to examine Uncle Jack, who we sincerely...

Behind bars.(Singular life)
January 3, 2004... Johannesburg The South African sun is beating down on my brother's garden. We have just returned from a shopping mall in Johannesburg. Jo'burg is full of shopping malls, massive American-style walkways. My brother and I have been sitting...

Ducking tactics.(Bridge)
January 3, 2004... YOU can always spot a novice bridge player (or one that's simply not much good) by the way they immediately grab tricks and cash winners. Anyone with any Knowledge of the game knows the importance sometimes of ducking tricks in order to cut the...

Fantasy chess.(Chess)
January 3, 2004... My musings on the outcome of a possible Alckhine-Keres match have led to much speculation as to the result of other matches for the world title which should have taken place but did not. I am therefore going to develop an entire occasional...

Ubi sunt ...?(Competition)
January 3, 2004... In Competition No. 2321 you were invited to write a poem lamenting the absence of some features of yesteryear. Besides Villon with his neiges d'antan and Francis Thompson with his 'O my Hornby and my Barlow long ago!' T.S. Eliot's nostalgic cry...

1645: in order.(Crossword)
January 3, 2004... Each of eleven clues contains a misprinted letter in the definition part. Corrections of misprints spell a two-word item whose definition in Chambers includes one unclued light. This light can be divided into three words. The first defines each...

I've got a little list ...(Spectator Sport)
January 3, 2004... One of the world's most original b paintings hangs in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (about 300 do, actually, but one in particular commends itself). It is the 'Feast of the Bean King' by Jacob Jordaens, a pupil of Rubens, and it tells...

Dear Mary.(Your Problems Solved)
January 3, 2004... Q. Last year my husband and I bought a house on Exmoor which came with two cottages superfluous to our needs. We have been renting these out as holiday lets. Out of six recent lettings three of the punters, all of whom appeared happy while they...

Portrait of the week.
January 10, 2004... Mr Michael Burgess, the Coroner of the Queen's Household, opened the inquest on Diana, Princess of Wales, the conclusion of which, he said, would not come for more than a year; he had asked Sir John Stevens, the Metropolitan Police...

The uses of adversity.
January 10, 2004... On Sunday, Tony Blair told the troops in Basra that they were 'new pioneers of 21st-century soldiering'. The praise was fully deserved and sincerely delivered. Over his years in office, the Prime Minister has become a great admirer of the armed...

Diary.
January 10, 2004... Six months can be an awfully long time in politics. When I wrote here only last July that the Tories knew in their hearts they could never win an election under Iain Duncan Smith, few of them cared to admit that publicly. Even now, when the...

We have never been closer to state control of the press.(Media Studies)
January 10, 2004... I must confess that I have not watched the development of Ofcom with the care I should have. In the distance I heard the voices of colleagues muttering that the new media regulator would interfere in the freedom of the press, but I chose not to...

The truth is he lied: Peter Oborne says Lord Hutton must conclude that Tony Blair played the primary executive role in the events that led to the naming of Dr David Kelly and to his suicide.(Cover Story)
January 10, 2004... Last Monday it emerged that the Saville inquiry into the Bloody Sunday killings would carry on for at least another year. By the time it ends, supposing it ever does, Saville's shambles will have taken nearly a decade, cost more than 200...

Mind your language.
January 10, 2004... Veronica always leaves a copy of Viz around in the kitchen, like a cat leaving a dismembered frog on the lino. A regular feature of this comic for 'adults' is Roger(Mellie)'s Profanisaurus, a dictionary of slang updated through readers'...

Speed cameras are good for you: driving fast is dangerous, says Ross Clark, and the middle classes should stop whining about attempts to slow them down.
January 10, 2004... I am beginning to feel a bit lonely among fellow columnists. I do not have a speeding conviction upon which to vent spleen. Maybe one of these days I will notice a flash in my rear-view mirror, followed by a brown envelope in the post, and I...

Cut taxes to show you really care: you can lower taxes and improve public services, says James Frayne. The Tories must therefore copy George W. Bush and give us back our money.
January 10, 2004... If you are lucky enough to be in Iowa next week, don't miss a new TV ad campaign against the Democrat presidential candidate front-runner, Howard Dean, ahead of election primaries in the state. The ads, run by a right-wing pressure group,...

Job of the week.
January 10, 2004... Group Human Resources & Change Director, Home Office Salary: 'very attractive six-figure package' The Home Office Group is currently undergoing a far-reaching change programme touching every aspect of its activities, driving increased...

Globophobia: a weekly survey of world restrictions on freedom and free trade.
January 10, 2004... Every year, according to a new report by the World Health Organisation, 150,000 people succumb to the effects of global warming, which, it asserts, is responsible for 2.4 per cent of cases of diarrhoea and 6 per cent of cases of malaria. And if...

Putin's might is White: the Russian President is a nationalist, not a communist, says Paul Robinson, and has much in common with the men who fought the Bolsheviks in the civil war.
January 10, 2004... The victory of Vladimir Putin's supporters in last month's Russian elections was greeted with horror in some liberal quarters. There were fears that President Putin had been confirmed as the leader of a corrupt, repressive corporate state that...

The Blairs.
January 10, 2004... ARE YOU IN OUR CARTOON OR ARE WE IN YOURS?

Monkey business: don't laugh, says Hugh Russell, but a white journalist may be deported from Zambia for having written a column in which he depicted leading politicians as wild animals.
January 10, 2004... Lusaka If you think that the only writer called Roy Clarke worthy of notice is the one responsible for that eternity of whimsy called Last of the Summer Wine, think again. We have our own Roy Clarke here in Zambia, and our Roy...

Pluck Truss and grieve: if Lynne Truss wants to set herself up as an authority on language, says Benedict le Vay, she should improve her English.
January 10, 2004... Were you given the book Eats, Shoots and Leaves this Christmas? If so, you were one of hundreds of thousands of people who received this chunky little crusader against poor punctuation. But although author Lynne Truss is engaging and...

Will anything really new happen in the New Year? Probably not.(Shared Opinion)
January 10, 2004... Centuries, historians now say, are not so simple as just to start with their first year and end with their last. For example, the 19th century was at home the century of the bourgeoisie's rise to broad omnipotence, and abroad of general peace...

An experience of Apocalypse and a tribute to the man who painted it.(And Another Thing)
January 10, 2004... We do not think of England as a place for spectacular weather. Shuddering at the dreadful earthquake in Bam, a friend said, 'Thank God we only have normal weather here.' But do we? Driving down to the West Country on the afternoon of Boxing...

Risks of in-flight safety.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
January 10, 2004... From Ian Frow Sir: In proposing locked flight-deck doors, the author of your generally sensible leading article (Leader, 3 January) overlooks the fact that within months of 11 September the US authorities were insisting that all aircraft...

I'm no defeatist.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
January 10, 2004... From Correlli Barnett Sir: May I briefly reply to Patrick Beeley's attack on me (Letters, 3 January)? Point one: even Beeley has to acknowledge that al-Qa'eda's rate of striking has greatly increased since the Americans invaded...

How tainted?(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
January 10, 2004... From Dr Richard North Sir: John Laughland (Letters, 3 January) might wish the 'last word' to be his claim that he has 'never attributed the intellectual ancestry of the EU to the Nazis', but on page 69 of his book The Tainted Source he...

Hamer films remembered.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
January 10, 2004... From Jonathan Balcon Sir: I was entranced by Simon Heffer's review (Books, 3 January) of Michael Newton's book Kind Hearts and Coronets. The film's producer, Robert Hamer, used to come and spend weekends at my parents' home in East Sussex....

Death of an atheist.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
January 10, 2004... From Professor Antony Flew Sir: For Paul Johnson (And another thing, 27 December), 'Atheists's funerals always pose a problem.... It's all very well calling them a "celebration". But death, whatever else it is, is not an event to be...

Gold pushes Gordon's nose sideways, but it's hard for us to buy some.(City And Suburban)
January 10, 2004... Do not tell Gordon Brown that the economy's prospects are golden, or not unless you want your nose pushed sideways. Gold is a touchy subject with him. It was his decision to sell half the nation's gold reserves--some thought that he was trying...

By no means roses, roses all the way.(Book Review)
January 10, 2004... BROWNING: A PRIVATE LIFE by Ian Finlayson HarperCollins, 30 [pounds sterling], pp 758, ISBN 0002555077 Robert Browning, in life, was always immensely popular in a worldly way; he knew everyone not just in London but in...

Somehow Comforting.(Brief Article)(Poem)
January 10, 2004... Somehow Comforting Quiet November day, tugging wind sporting with lost leaves of lost seasons, was to him like a return to true England. Quiet purposeful sound of it: a day of rivers somewhere, a bird or two, ...

Philosophy loses another limb.(Book Review)
January 10, 2004... THE SPACE BETWEEN OUR EARS: HOW THE BRAIN REPRESENTS VISUAL SPACE by Michael Horgan Weidenfeld, 20 [pounds sterling], pp. 199, ISBN 029782970X We think of our eyes as windows onto the world, but they are more like television cameras. For...

The posthumous patriot.(Book Review)
January 10, 2004... OPERATION HEARTBREAK AND THE MAN WHO NEVER WAS by Duff Cooper and Ewen Montagu Spellmount, 18.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 200, ISBN 1862271879 In the spring of 1943, Allied armies in North Africa prepared to attack the Axis powers on the...

Images with built-in obsolescence.(Book Review)
January 10, 2004... MOVIE POSTER by Emily King Mitchell Beazley, 25 [pounds sterling], pp. 224, ISBN 1840006536 Film posters are not made to last. They appear on billboards, then they are torn down or pasted over. Sometimes they do not have even that brief...

A child of the ashram.(Book Review)
January 10, 2004... MY LIFE IN ORANGE by Tim Guest Granta, 12 [pounds sterling], pp. 300, ISBN 1862076324 Tim Guest spent his boyhood in the Rajneesh spiritual communes during their heyday in the 1980s when they caused countless eyebrows to rise, boomed...

When Greek met Greek.(Book Review)
January 10, 2004... THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR: ATHENS AND SPARTA IN SAVAGE CONFLICT 431-404 BC by Donald Kagan HarperCollins, 25 [pounds sterling], pp. 511, ISBN 0007115059 This book is an abridged version of one of the great works of modern classical...

The pleasure dome in Wiltshire.(Book Review)
January 10, 2004... BECKFORD'S FONTHILL by Robert J. Gemmett Michael Russell, 35 [pounds sterling], pp. 473, ISBN 0859552845 William Beckford's Fonthill Abbey is thought of as a supreme example of romantic hubris and defiance of nature. The tower, 276 feet...

Appointment in Sarajevo.(Book Review)
January 10, 2004... MADNESS VISIBLE by Janine di Giovanni Bloomsbury, 16.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 273, ISBN 0747560560 In July 2001, a few days after Slobodan Milosevic was flown to the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, Janine di Giovanni went to Sarajevo to...