Spectator articles from June 2004

Spectator archives from June 2004

Portrait of the week.
June 5, 2004... Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, said on television: 'I hope and anticipate that in a year's time we will see a very substantial reduction in troops' in Iraq. In the meantime a few hundred more troops were sent, including engineers skilled in...

Vote Tory.
June 5, 2004... If you vote for the United Kingdom Independence Party you will cheer up Tony Blair. So said Michael Howard on Tuesday, and he is clearly right. The Conservatives are the only party (apart from Labour) that can remove Mr Blair from government;...

Diary.
June 5, 2004... I was once naive enough to ask the late Duke of Devonshire why he liked Eastbourne, and he replied with a self-deprecating shrug that one of the things he liked was that he owned it. The same was true of Heywood Hill, the Bookshop for the...

Blair's chief of staff on the Shakespearean tragedy of Gordon Brown.(Politics)
June 5, 2004... Just four weeks ago there was a powerful view at Westminster that it would be all up for Tony Blair after next week's elections. This opinion was most widely expressed within the Labour party itself, where the Prime Minister was candidly seen...

The Spectator's notes.
June 5, 2004... One of the best pieces of journalism ever written about D-Day was by the late Colin Welch. It appeared in these pages for the 40th anniversary in 1984. Colin, aged 20, had served with the Lincolns in Normandy. He brought out how the 'fantastic...

The heroes who won the war--and lost the peace: Simon Heffer says that the military heroics of the D-Day generation were followed by moral cowardice and political appeasement.(Cover Story)
June 5, 2004... Over the next few days we shall see countless images, in photographs and on film, of the men who won the second world war. The D-Day generation can claim to have been the last that had a genuine measure of greatness. These were not, for the...

The Blairs.(Cartoon)
June 5, 2004... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Captions: RUN RABBIT, RUN RABBIT RUN RUN RUN... THE BALLOON GOES UP! THERE'LL BE BLUE SKIES OVER THE WHITE CLIFFS OF DOVER IF ONLY YOU WILL VOTE FOR ME

Life in the bus lane: Inigo Thomas takes the bus from Broadway to Fifth Avenue, and talks to a Methodist about the Promised Land and to a Baptist about menstruating apes.
June 5, 2004... New York I forgot: you need coins or a pre-paid Metrocard for the New York buses, and one morning several weeks ago, as I stood at the eastbound stop on the corner of Broadway and 125th Street, I realised I had neither. Only notes. Two...

Smack in your face: in Afghanistan more provinces than ever are producing opium. Justin Marozzi watches Britain lose it farcical war on drugs.
June 5, 2004... Kabul The minister had been stood up. Here we were in Bamiyan, in the heart of Afghanistan with Her Majesty's drugs-busting minister Bill Rammell, and there was no sign of the Afghan farmer who had reportedly given up growing poppies in...

Globophobia: a weekly survey of world restrictions on freedom and free trade.
June 5, 2004... According to the Hollywood film The Day After Tomorrow, the failure of the world to confront global warming is going to result in the royal family being freeze-dried at the breakfast table at Balmoral and our cities drowned in raging tornadoes....

Bush and Howard are winners: George Osborne says that on the basis of the 'keys' forecasting system George W. Bush will be President next year and Michael Howard will be in No. 10.
June 5, 2004... In the next few months George Bush and John Kerry are going to spend more than $1 billion trying to win the presidential election, while everyone else is going to spend millions of dollars trying to guess the result. They needn't bother. The...

Boeing Boeing gone: the mighty 747 is on its way to the great hangar in the sky, says Martin Vander Weyer, and Boeing's inept management is to blame.
June 5, 2004... Concorde's last flight provoked tears and eulogies from many thousands of people who had never even flown in her, including me. The slow demise of the Boeing 747, by contrast, is passing unnoticed and unmourned, despite its far greater...

Mind your language.
June 5, 2004... On The South Bank Show in January 2000 a contributor said excitedly, 'Shakespeare invented a quarter of our language.' Rubbish. I found that reference, and its refutation, in a new book by the indefatigable Professor David Crystal, The Stories...

Parrot sketch.
June 5, 2004... 16-am Monday May 31st World Parrot Day The World Parrot Trust has its home in Paradise Park in Cornwall, but its reach is international, and members have came--some with their parrots-from all over. What am I doing here boarding am open-top...

Blairophobes may indeed be crazy, Mr Aaronovitch, but they aren't stupid.(Another Voice)
June 5, 2004... David Aaronovitch writes for the Guardian. He has suggested ('Why do they hate Blair so much?', 18 May) that opposition to Tony Blair has driven some of us crazy. I fear Mr Aaronovitch is right, and will try to explain why. His argument is...

We still have great political cartoonists, but where is the younger talent?(Media Studies)
June 5, 2004... The leader writers' conference at the Daily Telegraph 25 years ago was an eccentric occasion. It took place at quarter to four in the afternoon, and participants were not required to turn up at the newspaper until that time. Even so, one or two...

Sorry to disturb your meeting, Mr Holmes, it's a call from Sir Rex Tyrannosaur.(City And Suburban)
June 5, 2004... Sir Rocco Forte got the call on his way to go shooting. Derek Wanless got his on the way to the airport. He was heading for the International Monetary Fund's meeting in Washington, but, of course, he never made it. This is the call that takes...

Names written in the great book of remembrance under Magdalen Tower.(And Another Thing)
June 5, 2004... When I went up to Oxford aged 17 in the autumn of 1946, there were few people of my age at Magdalen. Ken Tynan, who had come up the year before, was 19 but he was unusual. Many were in their mid-twenties, had had their studies interupted or...

Smacks are uncivilised.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
June 5, 2004... Sir: Rachel Johnson's article ('Bum rap pinned on parents', 29 May) has exactly the same ring to it as the kind written not so many years ago arguing that husbands should have the right to hit their wives. Hitting people is wrong, whether it's...

No takeover at the IoD.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
June 5, 2004... Sir: Peter Oborne's article on the Institute of Directors ('A nasty plot in Pall Mall', 29 May) either completely misunderstands or wilfully distorts the situation at the IoD. Our moves to assert the political independence of the Institute...

Bush and the Jewish vote.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
June 5, 2004... Sir: While I share Sir Crispin Tickell's distaste for George Bush's foreign policy ('The West is like the Great Satan', 22 May), he is wrong to blame Bush's unconditional support for Israel on the Jewish vote or lobby. British Jews are as well...

Inventing Islamofascism.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
June 5, 2004... Sir: In his review of Robert O. Paxton's Anatomy of Fascism (Books, 22 May) Ian Garrick Mason quite incorrectly ascribes invention of the 'colourful' phrase 'Islamofascism' to Christopher Hitchens. As my friend Hitch has himself admitted on...

Shell life.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
June 5, 2004... Sir: I am writing the history of Timothy the Powderham Castle tortoise, who died recently at the age of 160. Would any of your readers who knew him, or have memories of their own long-lived tortoises, be kind. enough to share their...

Blair is my best recruiting sergeant: expect the unexpected in the mayoral elections.(London)
June 5, 2004... This second campaign for Mayor of London is very different from the first. Four yearn ago, after the Greater London Authority Act had created the office and the Assembly that goes with it, it was perfectly clear that the vast majority of people...

Park strife.(Hyde Park)
June 5, 2004... It's ten o'clock on a Saturday night and I am listening to a rock concert. This is making me Victor-Meldrew grumpy, as I am actually in my nightgown in bed. Bon Jovi are playing in Hyde Park over a mile away, yet they sound no further than my...

Gold diggers.(Olympics)
June 5, 2004... Sebastian Coe, the new leader of the campaign to bring the 2012 Olympic Games to London, wants some ideas on how to win over the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which a fortnight ago placed the city a poor third on its shortlist of five....

Glad to be gloomy.(Kafka)(Book Review)
June 5, 2004... KAFKA by Nicholas Murray Little, Brown, 22.50 [pounds sterling], pp. 440, ISBN 0316724793 Do you suppose it is true that one can attach girls to oneself by writing?' Franz Kafka once asked his estimable friend Max Brod. What did he...

When the Eighties had to stop.(The Art Of The Steal)(Book Review)
June 5, 2004... THE ART OF THE STEAL by Christopher Mason Putnam, $26.95, pp. 416, ISBN 0399150935 The Eighties, you might say, didn't end on time. The speculative financial boom in the United States and elsewhere, which became synonymous with the price...

Waking up rather late in the day.(The Making Of Henry)(Book Review)
June 5, 2004... THE MAKING OF HENRY by Howard Jacobson Cape, 12.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 340, 1SBN 0224073524 Henry is a mixed-up old cove before love looks like being the making of him. You can just see ,him, unmarried, set in his ways. He has his...

An ersatz Boston Brahmin.(John F. Kerry: The Complete Biography)(Book Review)
June 5, 2004... JOHN F. KERRY: THE COMPLETE BIOGRAPHY by Michael Kranish, Brian C. Mooney and Nina J. Easton Public Affairs, $14.95, pp. 448, ISBN 1586482734 The 'campaign biography' has become a familiar enough phenomenon in any American presidential...

Leaving fingerprints behind.(Mansfield: A Novel)(Book Review)
June 5, 2004... MANSFIELD: A NOVEL by C. K. Stead Harvill Press, 14.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 246, ISBN 1843431769 The poet Philippe Soupault used to write in a cafe next to his house. One morning he noticed a little man across from him, studiously...

One rung below greatness.(Secret Dreams: A Biography Of Michael Redgrave)(Book Review)
June 5, 2004... SECRET DREAMS: A BIOGRAPHY OF MICHAEL REDGRAVE by Alan Strachan Weidenfeld, 2.5 [pounds sterling], pp. 484, ISBN 0297607642 Actors' biographies, once a comparative rarity and usually ghosted and bowdlerised, spring forth every season. They...

Seduced by the scent of a mystery.(Visits From The Drowned Girl)(Book Review)
June 5, 2004... VISITS FROM THE DROWNED GIRL by Steven Sherrill Canongate, 10.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 329, ISBN 1841955094 visits from the Drowned Girl starts out with a gripping idea as old as crime fiction: the bystander. Benny Poteat climbs...

What happens when things go wrong.(Mutants: On The Form, Varieties And Errors Of The Human Body)(Book Review)
June 5, 2004... MUTANTS: ON THE FORM, VARIETIES AND ERRORS OF THE HUMAN BODY by Armand Marie Leroi HarperCollins, 20 [pounds sterling], pp. 431, ISBN 0002571137 Only someone with the strongest self-control can resist looking, however furtively, at people...

The Fran and Jay show.(Landesmania)(Book Review)
June 5, 2004... LANDESMANIA by Philip Trevena Tiger of the Stripe, 50 Albert Road, Richmond, Surrey TW 10 6 DP, Tel: 0208 940 8087, email: peter@tigerofthestripe.co.uk, www.tigerofihestripe.co.uk, 18.99 [pounds sterling]+2.50 [pounds sterling] p&p, pp.168,...

Clues and booze on the Humber.(Siren Song)(Book Review)
June 5, 2004... SIREN SONG by Robert Edric Doubleday, 16.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 396, ISBN 0385605765 The detective thriller offers the satisfactions of what was once called the venatic art, that is to say the world of the hunt. Identifying spoors,...

Spectator mini-bar offer.
June 5, 2004... Goodness, Rhone wines are popular these days, and it's easy to see why. Rich, full, spicy and velvety, they have a warmth and generosity that some allegedly greater wine regions lack. I'm sure you'll want to snap up this tremendous selection of...

Gardener's tale.(Poem)
June 5, 2004... Dog rose, waif-and-stray cluster of torn leaves with pinky grey soft-tissue faces; escapee from wildwood, vacant lot or motorway embankment; wet petals at break of day; dropped handkerchiefs from the Roseacae's proto-tree ...

Traveller in time: Peter Phillips goes to Turkish Kurdistan and finds a land full of early Christian history.(Arts)
June 5, 2004... It's hard to suppress a feeling of schadenfreude when reading accounts of the crusaders going to the Holy Land in support of Christianity and finding that the indigenous Christians were often the lowest of the low, whereas the infidel leaders,...

Wit and wisdom.
June 5, 2004... Alice Neel: A Chronicle of New York 1950-76 Victoria Miro Gallery, 16 Wharf Road, N1, until 31 July Jonathan Wateridge Fordham, 11 Princelet Street, El, until 21 June XXIV Journeys: Sol LeWitt-Mimmo Paladino Estorick Collection, 39a Canonbury...

Quirky homage.
June 5, 2004... Rambert Dance Company Sadler's Wells Theatre Rambert School Linbury Theatre, Royal Opera House I am glad that the first dance event to mark the centenary of Frederick Ashton's birth was not one of those theatrically sterile 'philological...

What a confusion.(Arabella at the Royal Opera House)(Opera Review)
June 5, 2004... Arabella Royal Opera House Arabella has always seemed to me to be Richard Strauss's most uneven opera, in that it contains a handful of scenes that are among the most beautiful, and the most humanly truthful, that he ever wrote; while...

Identity crisis.(Fuddy Meers at the Arts)(Yellowman at Hampstead)(Theater Review)
June 5, 2004... Fuddy Meers Arts Yellowman Hampstead Fuddy Meers is the kind of play I love. A fast-moving, tightly plotted, cruelminded and spectacularly unselfconscious farce. But I didn't like it one bit. I've been trying to work out why. The main...

Losing the plot.(Television)
June 5, 2004... At the Hay-on-Wye literary festival, still on now, I looked in on a masterclass given by Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran, the sitcom writers who came up with The New Statesman, Love Hurts, Goodnight Sweetheart and Birds" of a Feather, plus many...

Misplaced confidence.(Radio)
June 5, 2004... The BI3C has been marking the 60th anniversary of D-Day with a plethora of programmes, from documentaries to drama, particularly this weekend. Extracts from the diaries, memoirs and letters of the senior figures in the invasion of Normandy have...

Confusion reigns.(The turf)
June 5, 2004... According to a Lithuanian lady friend of mine--well, actually, she's the only Lithuanian female I know--they have a saying in that part of the Baltics which goes 'Don't drive God into a tree.' I guess that's what I was doing when backing in all...

We are not amused.(High life)
June 5, 2004... To Oxford for a debate on whether England is America's poodle or not, or something like that. Of course she is, and Charlie Glass and I are proposing the motion against Lord Parkinson, Sir Malcohn Rifkind and Nicholas Soames. I will tell you...

Northern hospitality.(Low life)
June 5, 2004... I found the address in Newcastle--a redbrick Victorian terrace house--and pressed the doorbell. A furious dog came to the door first, then I heard someone tell it softly to be quiet and the door opened. Mr Hillyard was younger than I'd...

Mugged again.(Singular life)
June 5, 2004... It's just not safe for a girl to walk the London streets any more. Please don't get me wrong. My circumstances are not yet so reduced that I have been forced to take up the oldest profession. 1 simply refer to walking. You know, putting one leg...

Pros and cons.(Bridge)
June 5, 2004... MARTIN HOFFMAN may be well into his seventies now, but he's still in constant demand as a professional bridge player. Playing with clients can be very frustrating, however--especially if they don't fully appreciate your skill. 'Yon won't...

True succession.(Chess)
June 5, 2004... Last week I discussed Kasparov's view, expressed in his ground-breaking series My Great Predecessors, that the early history of the world championship might be extended to include players who predate the widely accepted date of 1886 for the...

His last test.(Spectator Sport)
June 5, 2004... As Nasser Hussain signalled his retirement from professional cricket by bombastically clocking three successive boundaries aa a sunlit evening at Lord's, simultaneously to post both his own adrenalin-charged century and a theatrical victory for...

Dear Mary.(Your Problems Solved)
June 5, 2004... Q. As I am getting on a bit I find the process of uncorking bottles extremely arduous and fear doing irreparable damage to my aortic muscles. Can you give me some guidance about any of the wines that come in screwtop bottles? Is it all...

Portrait of the week.
June 12, 2004... Britain went to the polls to elect members for the European Parliament, an exercise which the Liberal Democrats had portrayed as a 'referendum on Iraq'. Thousands of postal ballot papers went undelivered in Bolton, and two men were arrested in...

Victory for optimism.
June 12, 2004... On the day that Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as the 40th President of the United States in 1981, superstitious observers believed his fate was determined. Since 1840, they pointed out, every president who had been first elected in a year...

Diary.
June 12, 2004... I spent Sunday in the BBC TV studio in Arromanches through six hours of live coverage of the D-Day commemoration. It would never do to tell them this, but I would have done it for nothing. It is 30 years since I took part in a big outside...

Political cynicism may eventually throw up something even nastier than Kilroy-Silk.(Politics)
June 12, 2004... Basically, these June elections are only about one thing: a massive vote of no confidence in the political class. It looks likely that the European election results, not to be announced until Sunday night, will throw up an astonishing...

The Spectator's notes.(Editorial)
June 12, 2004... Ronald Reagan has been kindly treated in death by those who so constantly opposed him in life. But the kindness itself acts as a sort of smothering of his achievement. Thus Gavin Hewitt (BBC) told us that his popularity had 'nothing to do with...

England's thugs and losers: Daniel Wolf says that the English are bad at football and brilliant at hooliganism because of an attitude of mind, a national cringe, which has its roots in the industrial revolution.
June 12, 2004... The Portuguese police are donning their riot gear, the cafe owners are boarding up their premises and the locals are telling each other, 'Don't go down to the square, the English are coming....' It's Euro 2004, and the English have already...

The Blairs.(Cartoon)
June 12, 2004... BLAIR IS TO BAN SMOKING IN PUBLIC [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Saddam still spreads terror: Andrew Gilligan on the fear and confusion surrounding the trial of the former Iraqi dictator.
June 12, 2004... He lives in miserable confinement, his location a closely guarded secret, constantly shifted from place to place. He is deliberately kept isolated from the outside world. He knows that when all is said and done, he will probably be killed. Such...

Mind your language.
June 12, 2004... I heard the other day that the late Lord Hartwell, the proprietor of the Daily Telegraph, had once exclaimed that when he was at Eton he had been taught never to begin a sentence with the word but. He then found to his slight mortification that...

Brooding 'bout my generation: James Delingpole joined the veterans in Normandy and wondered whether he would have been as brave as they were on D-Day.
June 12, 2004... Sixty years on, the crossing to Normandy was flat as a millpond the sun shone, the helicopter from the Portsmouth to Ouistreham ferry's British destroyer escort (there were three other destroyers, one French, one American, one Canadian)...

The right war for the wrong reasons: Bruce Anderson says that the neocons were mistaken about WMD, and are now mistaken about spreading democracy, but Saddam had to be overthrown.
June 12, 2004... Recantation is in vogue, on both sides of the Atlantic. All the arguments in favour of the Iraq war have run into difficulty. Those who opposed the whole venture from the outset are in 'I told you so' mode; who can blame them? Those of us who...

Ronald Reagan: my part in his rise: Colin Bostock-Smith says that he will always love the Great Communicator because he once wrote a gag for him which he delivered perfectly.
June 12, 2004... Is it possible to feel a personal warmth and affection, even love, towards someone one has never met? It must be, because that's how I feel about the late President Ronald Reagan. The reason I felt so fond of the old Cold War warrior, and...

Second opinion.
June 12, 2004... Faith, hope and charity these days are redundant; what we need are health and safety. We safeguard them more carefully than good girls ever safeguarded their chastity. We are enjoined to do so everywhere, even on trains from Bristol to Bath. I...

Ancient & modern.
June 12, 2004... How would Pericles have dealt with the problems facing America after 9/11? As rationally as ever, no doubt. The great Athenian statesman (e. 495-429 BC) controlled the Athenian Assembly so effectively from the 440s till his death that the...

Tiananmen was a victory for capitalism: Richard Spencer on the true meaning of the massacre that horrified the world 15 years ago.
June 12, 2004... Beijing 'Tell me,' a Chinese friend asked me the other day 'Why are you so interested in poor people?' Urban sophisticate that she is, she couldn't quite figure out the point of the story I was writing, about a poverty-stricken village in the...

The case for killing swans: the snuffling and chirruping of Bill Oddie on Britain Goes Wild makes Tom Fort want to reach for his gun.
June 12, 2004... Television viewers with a soft spot for our feathered and furry friends are being treated nightly to the BBC's authorised version of what goes on in our woods and meadows, up and down our rivers and around our coasts. In Britain Goes W/M--a...

How Tesco makes its millions: Dominic Prince puts Tesco to the test and finds that it sells poorer food at much higher prices than the shops and stalls of his local market town.
June 12, 2004... Shaftesbury, a small market town in north Dorset, has very upbeat, prosperous feel about it. A new bakery has just opened, and across the road from the bakery there is a specialist selling good cheeses and cured meats. The town is home to a...

Globophobia.
June 12, 2004... A weekly survey of world restrictions on freedom and free trade At last: France is making a commitment to free trade. Unfortunately, it involves selling arms to China. President Chirac has ordered a review of the ban on arm sales to China...

Murdoch may be the new Northcliffe, but he has backed a loser with the tabloid Times.(Media Studies)
June 12, 2004... There is a tendency in media circles to think that Rupert Murdoch is a genius who rarely makes mistakes. It was Murdoch who in 1986 masterminded the removal of his printing operations to Wapping, smashing the unions and slashing his cost base...

Don't blame it on D-Day.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
June 12, 2004... From Ian Flintoff Sir: Simon Heffer ('The heroes won the war and lost the peace', 5 June) should understand that any country which becomes obsessed with monetary policies and economics as the sole criteria of national success lets more...

Family affairs.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
June 12, 2004... From Geoffrey Lee Sir: Virginia Ironside's letter (5 June) in response to Rachel Johnson's article about corporal punishment asserts that 'polite, considerate parents breed polite, considerate children'. If she, as I did regularly as...

Anecdotal intelligence.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
June 12, 2004... From Oleg Gordievsky Sir: Obviously Andrew Gilligan does not know a lot about the intelligence services ('Licence to goof', 29 May). His article is based mostly on anecdotal evidence. Take, for example, his statement that Gorbachev was...

Norris's own goal.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
June 12, 2004... From John Stansby Sir: How can my old friend Steve Norris make such an appalling gaffe ('Blair is my best recruiting sergeant', 5 June)? He not only mistakenly attributes, like so many Londoners, the old age pensioners' free London...

Boeing strong.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
June 12, 2004... From Anthony G. Brown Sir: How strange that Martin Vander Weyer's lament for the 747 jumbo ('Boeing Boeing gone', 5 June), and indeed the whole Boeing company, makes no mention whatever of the great success the company has had with the...

Any government's dream.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
June 12, 2004... From The Rt Hon. Lord Young of Graffham and others Sir: We refer to the letter from the chairman of the Institute of Directors (Letters, 5 June). He raised two specific points worth answering. First, he denies losing any senior figures from...

Peer pressure.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
June 12, 2004... From Charles Mosley Sir: John Martin Robinson (Books, 22 May) is kind about the well-written architectural descriptions of country seats in the latest Burke's Peerage. So I hope I won't seem ungrateful in putting him right about other...

Beef in time.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
June 12, 2004... From Digby Anderson Sir: In his review of my recent All Oiks Now: The Unnoticed Surrender of Middle England (Books, 29 May), James Delingpole welcomes the fact that Middle England shops impulsively, throws away what it has bought and has...

English patience.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
June 12, 2004... From John Bierman Sir: It's perhaps asking too much of human nature to expect Saul Kelly, the author of The Hunt for Zerzura, to write a fair and balanced review of The Secret Life of Laszlo Almasy (Books, 29 May). Nor did he. The...

Young talent.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
June 12, 2004... From Tom Thatcher Sir: Odd that Stephen Glover's article (Media studies, 5 June) re. the dearth of young political cartoonists should occur in the same issue of the Speccie in which there is a review of an exhibition by Jonathan Wateridge...

Sects in Turkey.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
June 12, 2004... From Peter Phillips Sir: In my piece about the Christians of the Turabdin (Arts, 5 June) I made an error in saying that Syrian Orthodoxy is 'the majority sect in Turkey and Syria'. While this is arguably true in Turkey (though the...

Marble memories.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
June 12, 2004... From Trish Trahar Sir: Lucius Cary's article on marbles (Finding your marbles', 22 May) brought back memories. My brothers were at The Ridge in Johannesburg, a public prep school in the English tradition perched on the Witwatersrand, where...