Spectator articles from July 2005

Spectator archives from July 2005

Portrait of the week.
July 2, 2005... Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, gave a 30-minute speech to the European Parliament in Brussels, in advance of Britain's assumption of the six-monthly presidency of the European Union, which began on 1 July. He described himself as a...

Plastic poll tax.(identification cards)
July 2, 2005... It seems increasingly plausible that among the many Britons to have had their identities stolen is one T. Blair of London SW1. Perhaps it was an application for a platinum card, carelessly discarded in the Downing Street dustbin, which allowed...

Max Hastings.(DIARY)
July 2, 2005... At the weekend, one of my favourite soldiers remarked sombrely that the armed forces have been sandpapered into so small a critical mass that little needs to go wrong for things to unravel disastrously. Amazingly few people notice, however....

Have the English lost their historic love of liberty?(POLITICS)(ID cards)
July 2, 2005... Imagine, for a moment, you are an international terrorist. Not el leading one, mind you, who might have his picture on cigarette cards if such things still existed, but your ordinary, bog-standard warped fanatic who can't get a girlfriend and...

The spectators notes.
July 2, 2005... The renewed interest in Our Island Story on its centenary takes me back to the first history book I read. It is called A Nursery History of England, by one Elizabeth O'Neill who was, I now see but did not notice at the time, covertly...

A nation wobbles: Americans are growing tired of the Iraq war, says Michael Wolff. In his speech this week the President was making a desperate appeal to his people.
July 2, 2005... The New York Times publishes a daily box score with the latest list of the soldiers killed in Iraq under the rubric 'Names of the Dead'. For instance: KAUFMAN, Charles A., 20, Specialist, Army National Guard; Fairchild, Wis.; First...

The Blairs.(Cartoon)
July 2, 2005... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] You could be in luck! apparently women have gone off men who fuss about their appearance too much

Ancient & modern.
July 2, 2005... In our youth-besotted blame culture, the newly recovered poem by Sappho (600 BC: only our fourth complete one) has a point to make. I translate in plodding prose (square brackets = restored words): 'You, children, [rejoice in] the beautiful...

Thankless children: Rod Liddle says that the real problem with our aging population is that we are too selfish and greedy to look after them.
July 2, 2005... My father checked himself into a nursing home at the age of 73. He'd had heart trouble many years previously and subsequent related problems getting about: even walking to the bathroom had become an interminable effort. He would sink back into...

My vision for a Tory Britain: Malcolm Rifkind on why he expects to be a candidate in the leadership election.
July 2, 2005... The Britain of our dreams is one of personal liberty, equality of opportunity and a caring community. It is best summed up by the philosophy of One Nation Conservatism. It is what made me and many others a convinced Tory. Given that the...

Crash course: the government is obsessed with creating databases, says Ross Clark but its failure to use IT effectively will cost us billions.
July 2, 2005... I have some native sympathy with the lackeys struggling to handle the Inland Revenue's computers which, like a berserk one-arm bandit, have just spewed out an excess 1.9 billion [pounds sterling] in tax credits. I am not sure I am the...

Guilt trip: Theodore Dalrymple had some nasty surprises when he moved house recently and went through his papers.(Column)
July 2, 2005... Psychiatric research, which should never be taken too seriously or be uncritically believed, suggests that moving house is one of the most stressful events in a person's life, not far behind the death of a spouse. Of course, there are spouses...

Second-hand smoke.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
July 2, 2005... From: Mike Unger Sir: Rod Liddle makes a living out of being controversial, but to do so with effect he should also be accurate with his facts ('My right to cough up blood', 25 June). His article suggests that people who complain about...

George was no threat.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
July 2, 2005... From James F. Douglas Sir: Leo McKinstry was dishonourable ('Harmless old buggers', 18 June) to name the late George Andrews as a schoolmaster who was the 'reverse' of anti-homosexual and 'clung to the Wildean spirit'. If George were...

The facts about Sachs.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
July 2, 2005... From Tim Congdon Sir: Jeffrey Sachs (Letters, 11 June) says, in reply to my claim that his book The End of Poverty misdated the British Raj, 'The sentence is correct and the book is correct.' In my letter I asked your readers to check the...

Biting back.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
July 2, 2005... From Andrew Kenny Sir: Mr Denis Mollison, attacking my article of 28 May, is quite wrong when he says that DDT no longer works against malaria-bearing mosquitoes (Letters, 4 June). In 1996, South Africa was persuaded to stop using DDT. In...

Cortege controversy.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
July 2, 2005... From Robert Davies Sir: Roger Scruton suggests that the British would never emulate the 30,000 who followed Sartre's coffin or Beethoven's ('The power of negative thinking', 25 June). In fact 30,000 followed Newton's, headed by the king...

First with the rain.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
July 2, 2005... From Anthony Thwaite Sir: In his indulgent review of Richard Bradford's new biography of Philip Larkin (Books, 25 June), P.J. Kavanagh attributes 'Into each life some rain must fall' to the Ink Spots. Actually, Longfellow used the line...

Ministers propose but markets dispose--the wraps come off Project Rubicon.(CITY AND SUBURBAN)
July 2, 2005... Apologies for absence. I was, indeed, away last week--in airports, in limousines, in meeting rooms booked under false names in secluded hotels, and in the engine-rooms of my financial advisers, urging the number-crunchers on. Secrecy was of the...

Your guide to fundamentalist moderation in the Tory party.(SHARED OPINION)
July 2, 2005... That fundamentalist who has just won the Iranian election showed the way. Since then, Mr Michael Howard has given a lecture arguing that the Conservatives should not attach decisive importance to tax cuts. Mr David Willetts had already said...

Jaw-jaw is better than war-war--if it's well-mannered.(AND ANOTHER THING)
July 2, 2005... International affairs would go more smoothly if leading politicians had better manners. It must be said that Tony Blair sets a good example in this respect. He is one of the most courteous men I have come across in public life and shows up his...

A truly Russian icon.(Anna of All Russias: The Life of Anna Akhmatova)(Book Review)
July 2, 2005... Anna of All Russias: The Life of Anna Akhmatova by Elaine Feinstein Weidenfeld, 20 [pounds sterling], pp. 322, ISBN 0297043096 Tel 18 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.25 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 800 4848 For far too long, the history of...

A cruel twist of fate.(The Broken Boy)(Book Review)
July 2, 2005... The Broken Boy by Patrick Cockburn Cape, 15.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 286, ISBN 0224071084 Tel 13.99 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.25 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 800 4848 This, as its title suggests, is a poignant book. In his account of the...

Sharing the pinnacle.(The Rivals: Chris Evert versus Martina Navratilova)(Book Review)
July 2, 2005... The Rivals: Chris Evert versus Martina Navratilova by Johnette Howard Yellow Jersey Press, 17. 99, [pounds sterling] pp. 400, ISBN 0224075055 Tel 15.99 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.25 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 800 4848 One-to-one conflict...

An experiment in old acquaintance.(The Proust Project )(Book Review)
July 2, 2005... The Proust Project edited by Andre Aciman Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 25 [pounds sterling], pp. 221, ISBN 0374238324 The older I get the more convinced I become that A la Recherche du Temps Perdu is not only the only novel worth reading, but...

That colossal wreck.(Afghanistan)(Book Review)
July 2, 2005... Afgjanistan by Bijan Omrani and Matthew Leeming Odyssey Books & Guides, 19.95 [pounds sterling], pp. 768, ISBN 9622177468, distributed by Cordee Books, 3(a) De Montfort Street, Leicester, LE 17 HD, Tel: 01162543579 There is a delightful...

Deep in the mind of Texas.
July 2, 2005... YET MORE ADVENTURES WITH BRITANNIA edited by William Roger Louis I. B. Tauris, 14.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 419, ISBN 184511082X 12.99 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.25 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 800 4848 Roger Louis, Kerr Professor of English...

An Old Subaltern's Lament.(Poem)
July 2, 2005... An Old Subaltern's Lament Miss Groengrunthen-Schriek, Miss Groengrunthen-Schriek, Vocal chords burnished for Wimbledon week, What deafening discord disfigured the court As a place in the third round you noisily sought. ...

Favourite themes: Andrew Lambirth on a long-awaited exhibition of the work of Graham Sutherland.(ARTS)(Critical Essay)
July 2, 2005... As a landscape painter, Graham Sutherland (1903-80) enjoyed a meteoric rise to fame through the 1930s and 40s, culminating in the Venice Biennale in 1952, a prestigious Tate retrospective in 1953 and the Order of Merit, Britain's highest award,...

Fresh touch.(Opera)(La Boheme at the Royal Opera House)(Fidelio by Scottish Opera)(Opera Review)
July 2, 2005... La Boheme Royal Opera House Fidelio Scottish Opera It's a good thing that the Royal Opera keeps its revivals of standard Italian repertoire in good shape, considering the many acute disappointments we have had this season from new...

Beware the dewdrop.(Music)(Column)
July 2, 2005... The summer concert season arrived for us this year with the heatwave. It is in weather like this that the effectiveness of the air-conditioning on stage becomes a matter of prime importance. Sweating while performing is as distracting as having...

Cuban cliche.(Theatre)
July 2, 2005... The President of an Empty Room Cottesloe Telstar New Ambassadors As You Like It Wyndham's I had quite high expectations when the curtain went up on The President of an Empty Room. The writer, Steven Knight, produced the Oscar-nominated...

A driven man.(Radio)(Frederick Forsyth on John Buchan )(Radio Program Review)
July 2, 2005... It's strange how myths about people accumulate and persist. John Buchan, for example, is perceived as an anti-Semitic, imperialistic and bigoted writer, whereas it became clear in Frederick Forsyth on John Buchan on Radio Four last week...

Glasto vibes.(Television)(Glastonbury)(The Girl in the Cafe)(Mary Seacole: The Real Angel of the Crimea)(Television Program Review)
July 2, 2005... For the first time since 1990 I decided not to go to Glastonbury this year. It was a purely practical decision: the drug intake needed to get you through those three days is so vast that it wipes you out for the rest of summer and, for a...

Slob's paradise.(High life)
July 2, 2005... Ah! Agh! Aaah! Ah! Aaaaa! Ugh! Ugha! Aha! Aaaah! Aaaha! Aaa! No, it's not an orgy I'm listening to, just Wimbledon 2005. What has happened to the once-gentle game? You'd think phonesex operators had taken over. Incidentally, the guttural noise...

Three men in a boat.(Low life)
July 2, 2005... Responding to Bob Geldof's call for a Dunkirk-style armada of small boats to pop across the Channel to pick up those French people wishing to protest at Gleneagles, the Sunday Telegraph last week commissioned me to pop across to Boulogne in a...

Single-minded.(Bridge)(Brief Article)
July 2, 2005... I'm getting married this week, and I still haven't found the right dress, or booked the florist, or worked out the placement at lunch. Frankly, I've never been this unprepared for a bridge tournament. My husband-to-be doesn't play bridge...

Spectator mini-bar offer.
July 2, 2005... A few weeks ago I went to Le Gavroche restaurant in London, to a dinner hosted by Penfold's, Australia's largest and most important winemaker. The firm wanted to show that its wines could stand up to some of the finest French cooking in the...

Lernean debacle.(CHESS)
July 2, 2005... At last it has happened. After several years of approximate stand-off between the world's top grandmasters and computer rivals, a leading player, Michael Adams, has been pole-axed in London by the appropriately named Hydra computer. The score...

XI plus extra man.(COMPETITION)
July 2, 2005... In Competition No. 2398 you were invited to write an entertaining piece of prose incorporating a dozen given cricketing terms, but using them in a non-cricketing sense. One competitor added a postscript: 'I have not used the term...

1721: Spring.(CROSSWORD)
July 2, 2005... Unclued lights suggest eight Different anagrams of a clued light that solvers must shade. Elsewhere, ignore two apostrophes and an accent. ACROSS 8 Punch makes party (4) 11 More badlands marred traveller's joy (12, three words)...

Jumping through hoops.(SPECTATOR SPORT)(Olympic Games)
July 2, 2005... In their bright-eyed, bushy-tailed beginnings, neither imagined it would come down to this. Next week two bruised (and soon to be buried) political figures look to a sporting event to seal for themselves and posterity some sort of remembered...

Dear Mary.(YOUR PROBLEMS SOLVED)(Interview)
July 2, 2005... Q. My student stepson from my recent re-marriage and I are very different people. His mother worries that our relationship will suffer if I am too unkind to the boy, but he drives her crackers too! We have an excellent Italian restaurant...

Portrait of the week.
July 9, 2005... The G8 leaders (of the United States, Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Canada and Russia) assembled in Gleneagles to discuss Africa, climate change and that sort of thing. The Live 8 concert for 200,000 in Hyde Park, intended to attract...

Chirac is right, and wrong.
July 9, 2005... For those who are fed up with the guff-filled platitudes of European diplomacy, there was something magnificent in the remarks of M. Chirac about British cuisine. Not since Edith Cresson said that most British men were poofters, or since a...

Diary.
July 9, 2005... I've been invited to address the annual meeting of the Canadian Investment Dealers Association on the subject of 'why China isn't going to be a global superpower'--a theme I explored here in January, in contradiction of eminent pundits whose...

A pointless, grotesque and quite repulsive act of grandstanding.(POLITICS)
July 9, 2005... The agenda for the G8 is now clear: economic revival through better trading conditions; the elimination of corruption; the humbling of dictators; possibly even regime change. Yes, most of the G8's member nations are in an almighty mess, and...

The Spectator's notes.
July 9, 2005... What a scramble for Africa. A full-page advertisement in Monday's Guardian, rather cautiously worded, said that its signatories 'supported the overall aims' of those lobbying the G8 leaders and recognised 'the complexities of the challenge in...

Why not an Etonian for Prime Minister? Vicki Woods says Eton is probably the best school in the world, and does her best to forgive OEs their grating charm and intimidating good manners.(Cover Story)
July 9, 2005... The craze for internet spread-betting that has swept through City trading floors and the suburban housing market has finally gripped me; for three weeks I've been a slave to gambling websites. Up nights, tapping away.... Actually, it's one...

The Blairs.(Cartoon)
July 9, 2005... The MARX BROTHERS AT G8 IT'S A RIOT! Stars of 'THE COCOANUTS' and 'ANIMAL CRACKERS' That was no lady, that was some mad cow from the U.K. That remark's cuisine a lot of problems! Who was that lady I saw you with last...

The flat-tax revolution: George Osborne on the lessons we can learn from Eastern Europe.
July 9, 2005... Ducking into the mediaeval Church of the Holy Ghost in Tallinn last week to escape the Baltic rain, I stumbled across a remarkable memorial. It is to the British servicemen, mainly sailors and submariners, who died fighting in the Estonian war...

The voice of Africa: Aidan Hartley went on a pub crawl to find out what ordinary Africans think about such weighty matters as debt forgiveness and Bob Geldof.
July 9, 2005... Nairobi Hardly anybody bothers to ask ordinary poor Africans what they think about the G8 summit, so I did. On Sunday I went on an extended pub crawl around the Ngong Hills. First stop was the filling station outside Nairobi's game park....

I love my bad neighbours: Danny Kruger lives next door to the so-called 'Asbo family', and reports that in many ways they are an example to us all.(Column)
July 9, 2005... 'Eleven kids hell family!' yodelled the Sunday People. 'Nightmare family running riot in streets of the stars,' slavered the Daily Mail. 'Beware the new terror on your doorstep,' said the Sunday Telegraph, more reflectively. I wasn't aware I...

Let's be elitist: Alan Ryan tells Sholto Byrnes why he thinks state schools should be abolished.
July 9, 2005... If the Prime Minister really wants some of that 'blue sky thinking' of which he is so fond, and for which he bizarrely relies on the utterly discredited figure of John Birt, he would do well to take the 'up train' to Oxford and pop into the...

The war will be won.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
July 9, 2005... From William Shawcross Sir: It is nonsense to suggest, as Michael Wolff tried last week ('The nation wobbles', 2 July), that the war in Iraq is almost lost. Terrorists are certainly doing their best to destroy the hopes of Iraq. But...

Trust the celebs.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
July 9, 2005... From Giles Watson Sir: The Spectator has recently contained a fair amount of criticism of the Live 8 concert in aid of Africa ('How African leaders spend our money', 25 June). I always welcome a bit of cynicism about the value of pop stars...

Latin lover.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
July 9, 2005... From John Jenkins I enjoyed James Buchan's review of Guy Deutscher's The Unfolding of Language (Books, 25 June), particularly his jeu d'esprit at the expense of staider readers. I don't know about Sanskrit, but it is certainly very witty...

Bembo and Borgia.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
July 9, 2005... From Sarah Bradford Sir: Ian Thomson, in his review of Gaia Servadio's Renaissance Women (Books, 25 June), makes two factual errors. He asserts that 'when Lucrezia Borgia's affair with Bembo drew to a close in 1519, the lovers'...

Public parts.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
July 9, 2005... From Anthony Weale Sir: Max Hastings tells a story about two well-known MFHs who argued at dinner about the relative size of their private parts (Diary, 2 July). In the 1930s Sir Thomas Beecham and Richard Strauss were about to board the...

Boswell's tipple.(LETTERS)(Letter to the Editor)
July 9, 2005... From James Hogg Sir: The drinking of gin and treacle, or whistlejacket, was not confined to Yorkshire (The Spectator's Notes, 2 July). On 8 September 1792 Boswell recorded in his journal that he was introduced to it at Sir Joshua...

The histrionic Jane slipping in and out of the limelight.(AND ANOTHER THING)(Critical Essay)
July 9, 2005... It is remarkable that the English, so reserved in their emotional displays in ordinary existence, should have always shown such capacity, even genius, for enacting them on the stage. Or perhaps it is only logical, theatre being for us an escape...

Why won't anyone listen to my views on the distillation of seawater?(ANOTHER VOICE)
July 9, 2005... My last column on this page was about pasta. The column testified to a lack of enthusiasm for boiled flour-and-water paste, accused pasta followers of pandering to fashion, and praised the undervalued potato. A little levity in a rather...

HSBC should lend a clerk to the summit to help count the cost of biscuits.(CITY AND SUBURBAN)
July 9, 2005... Meetings can be a substitute for work, and an expensive one, at that, which is why the thrifty bankers at HSBC had a rule about them. A note had to be kept of every meeting, and the last line of the note would read, 'This meeting lasted for one...

Are we wasting money on defence? Backing the Americans in Iraq has not served the national interest, says Paul Robinson; we'd be more secure if we adopted a less interventionist foreign policy and reduced our military capacity.(INVESTIGATION)
July 9, 2005... Soldiers are not social workers. They fight and they kill--that is what they are trained to do. They are not trained to 'do good'. Yet turn to the Ministry of Defence website and you will see that the very first words on the 'Army Jobs: Army...

Mad, good and dangerous to know.(The Letters of Robert Lowell)(Book Review)
July 9, 2005... THE LETTERS OF ROBERT LOWELL edited by Saskia Hamilton Faber, 30 [pounds sterling], pp. 852, ISBN 0571202047 26 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.25 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 800 4848 'Tomorrow morning some poet may, like Byron, wake up to find...

Friends, rivals and countrymen.(David and Winston)(Book Review)
July 9, 2005... DAVID AND WINSTON by Robert Lloyd George John Murray, 20 [pounds sterling], pp. 303, ISBN 0719565847 18 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.25 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 800 4848 This is an ideal John Murray book, dealing with historic...

The curious case of the slashed horse.(Arthur and George)(Book Review)
July 9, 2005... ARTHUR & GEORGE by Julian Barnes Cape, 17.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 352, ISBN 0224077031 15.99 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.25 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 800 4848 He's damn good, Julian Barnes; no doubt about that. But what exactly is it...

From faintly weird to fiercely eccentric.(Ten Sorry Tales)(Book Review)
July 9, 2005... TEN SORRY TALES by Mick Jackson Faber, 9.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 160, ISBN 05 71225489 HERMIT WANTED Free meals and accommodation. Situated on grand estate. Would suit the quiet type. When Giles and Ginny married 'it was like a great...

Hanged on a legal quibble.(Haw-Haw)(Book Review)
July 9, 2005... HAW-HAW by Nigel Farndale Macmillan, 20 [pounds sterling], pp. 374, ISBN 0333989929 18 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.25 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 800 4848 Who killed Lord Haw-Haw? It was I, said Hartley Shawcross. I was the attorney general...

Of fulmars and fleams.(Findings)(Book Review)
July 9, 2005... FINDINGS by Kathleen Jamie Sort of Books, 6.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 190, ISBN 0954221745 Kathleen Jamie is a poet. This might be described as her occasional book, in the sense of being a record of what she saw, smelt, heard or felt...

A war of attrition.(The SOMME)(The Somme)(Book Review)
July 9, 2005... THE SOMME by Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson Yale, 19.95 [pounds sterling], pp. 358, ISBN 0300106947 THE SOMME by Peter Hart Weidenfeld, 20 [pounds sterling], pp. 589, ISBN 0297847058 18 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.25 [pounds sterling] p&p)...

Back to the beginning: Andrew Lambirth on the Courtauld's superb exhibition of work by Gabriele Munter.(ARTS)(Critical Essay)
July 9, 2005... In this country we're not familiar with Gabriele Munter (1877-1962). Some may know her as the lover of Kandinsky, but few know her art at all well--for the simple reason that it has been little shown here. In her native Germany, she is justly...

Master of deception.(Otello at the Royal Opera)(Cosi fan tutte at the Royal College of Music)(The Birds at St Andrew's, Holborn)(Opera Review)
July 9, 2005... Otello Royal Opera Cosi fan tutte Royal College of Music The Birds St Andrew's, Holborn Supposing many of the Royal Opera's recent productions of Verdi remain in the repertoire, it will be interesting to see how well they weather....

Celebrating Bournonville.(Royal Danish Ballet at Sadler's Wells Theatre)(Dance Review)
July 9, 2005... Royal Danish Ballet Sadler's Wells Theatre The preservation of specific choreographic styles from the past is the main obsession in today's world of ballet. Frequently perpetrated by academics with little or no practical knowledge of...

The missing sixth.(Pink Floyd)
July 9, 2005... I'm confused. Did five-sixths of the world's population really watch Live8? If so, what did the other sixth think they were doing? Did they ask permission? I and my friends were playing cricket on the day, and during the tea interval, while...

Sabotage in the third row.(Three Women and a Piano-Tuner at the Hampstead)(The Canterbury Tales at the Southwark Playhouse)(Theater Review)
July 9, 2005... Three Women and a Piano-Tuner Hampstead The Canterbury Tales Southwark Playhouse Here's a phrase you don't hear very often. High drama at the Hampstead Theatre. Helen Cooper's play Three Women and a Piano Tuner (irritating title) opens...

Celebrity culture.(Live 8 concert)
July 9, 2005... I'm glad I avoided listening to or watching any of the Live8 concert in Hyde Park last Saturday because the report about it on Radio Five Live's Weekend Breakfast programme the following morning made it sound like a creepily schmaltzy affair,...

Compelling viewing.(Television)
July 9, 2005... Last Saturday. BBC1 was showing the most exciting women's Wimbledon tennis final for many years and Sky Sports had what turned out to be a thrilling tied one-day cricket final between England and Australia. On BBC2 you could catch the Live8...

Fashion stakes.(Resplendent Glory, racing horse)
July 9, 2005... An American Treasury official was commenting recently on Tony Blair's efforts to get one item on the G8 agenda. 'We said no over dinner,' he declared. 'We said no on the ride home. We said no on the front porch, and still he said, "Come to...

First-rate educator.(Porfirio Rubirosa)(Biography)(Column)
July 9, 2005... A note from Jeremy Sykes enclosing an article about a friend of mine who died 40 years ago last Tuesday, on 5 July 1965. In his kind letter, Jeremy Sykes assumes that I knew the man who died in his Ferrari returning from a Parisian night-club...

Mutilated and miserable.(Live 8 on television)
July 9, 2005... When I flicked on the telly at one o'clock on Saturday and there was Bono, our first living secular humanist saint, in pink goggles, I'd seen all I wanted to see of Live8. I jabbed the off button and went for a long walk with Sharon and her new...

Cosa nostra.(CHESS)
July 9, 2005... Garry Kasparov is arguably the greatest practitioner of the Sicilian Defence the world has ever seen. Bobby Fischer, Mikhail Tal and Lev Polugaievsky also spring to mind as loyal adherents of this supreme counterattacking weapon, but they did...

De haut en bas.(COMPETITION)
July 9, 2005... In Competition No. 2399 you were asked for a reply in blank verse by the maid addressed in Tennyson's poem, '"Come down, O maid from yonder mountain height:/What pleasure lives in height?" the shepherd sang...' You can only catch a...

These are the days!(rugby)
July 9, 2005... I fancy that quite a few of the apparent zillions who turned up at, or tuned into, what someone on Radio 5 described as 'Bob Gandalfs pop festival' spent much of their time asking above the din, 'I wonder what the score is?' Because sport also...