Spectator articles from June 2009

Spectator archives from June 2009

Enough, already.
June 6, 2009... The next few days will serve up plenty of reminders that this country does not have a written constitution. As the plotters decide how best to move against the Prime Minister, they will not be operating within any defined framework of rules to...

Diary.
June 6, 2009... To Les Invalides in Paris for a twohour high Mass to commemorate the Emperor Napoleon (I'm writing his biography). Despite being a republic, the French really know how to lay on splendour in their public spectacles. Epaulettes, swords,...

The time has come for Spectator readers to save the constitution from politicians.(POLITICS)
June 6, 2009... Little wonder that Gordon Brown is gravely concerned about the state of British democracy. Labour's poll rating has this week hit a (new) postwar low--and that was before Thursday's elections. As the Prime Minister waits in misery for the final...

The Spectator's notes.
June 6, 2009... When you are invited on to programmes like the BBC's Question Time, the idea is that you express your opinions. So that is what I did when I last appeared on Question Time, on 12 March. In the wake of the Luton Islamists who insulted the...

Diary of a Notting Hill nobody.
June 6, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] MONDAY So exciting! Lots of lovely poor people on our new A-list!! We were a bit worried at first about making the only requirement that applicants should have, at the time of writing and to the best of their...

Apologise for torture? 'That's not appropriate': in an exclusive interview, Dick Cheney tells Daniel Collings that Obama is wrong to say sorry for waterboarding and enhanced interrogation techniques. The former Vice-President turned critic-in-chief has no regrets: if he upset Blair, he was 'just doing his job'.(Interview)(Cover story)
June 6, 2009... Richard B. Cheney, the 46th Vice-President of the United States, is back. Though he left the White House wheelchair-bound in January, looking for all the world like he just wanted to see out his days fishing in Wyoming, his retirement didn't...

Flash Gordon.(Gordon Brown )(Cartoon)
June 6, 2009... Gordon Brown outside the collapsed House of Commons with his new honest Cabinet [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

If you want to see corruption, look at the party leaders' response to the scandal: Rod Liddle says that, for all the claims made by Brown and Cameron to be taking deeply moral action, the pattern of retribution shows that they are saving their mates and throwing their enemies to the wolves.(LIDDLE BRITAIN)(Gordon Brown, David Cameron)
June 6, 2009... Which of the many MPs accused of defrauding the taxpayer by fiddling their expenses is the worst offender, do you think? We need some clarity on this issue. In the public mind I have a feeling that they are all beginning to merge as one...

We came close to losing our democracy in 1979: Douglas Eden reveals the extraordinary penetration of the 1970s Labour movement by pro-Soviet trade unionists and the extent of Callaghan's toleration of the hard Left.(James Callaghan)
June 6, 2009... Thirtieth anniversaries have been in vogue this year. So far, there have been seminars and conferences to commemorate the notorious 1979 Winter of Discontent and the subsequent election of Margaret Thatcher's government. Still missing is...

A bracing walk through Vienna with Mr Opec: Tom Bower talks to Ali al-Naimi, the Saudi oil minister, at Opec's meeting and is struck by how this master manipulator escapes censure in the great oil blame game.
June 6, 2009... Speculators are back in favour, especially the fund managers bidding up the price of oil. Cursed last year for tipping the world into recession, the same traders are now praised by some for once again betting on rising prices. Last year's...

Standing room.
June 6, 2009... It's always the smallest thing that tips one over the edge. This week I cracked. I sat on the pavement outside King Edward VII's hospital and shamelessly sobbed. My husband was ill with septicaemia, and I was desperate to get to him. I was...

Moscow notebook.(Viewpoint essay)
June 6, 2009... Before boarding the flight to Moscow, it dawned on me that I might have somehow contracted swine flu from Michael Nyman. What was I to do? This is not what I had in mind when I decided to bring a taste of Britain to Russia. I felt embarrassed....

Racism isn't right.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
June 6, 2009... Sir: Reference is made in the headlines of Fraser Nelson's article on the BNP ('The rise of British racism may be horribly close', 30 May) to 'far Right politicians'. Surely Mr Nelson does not imagine that there is anything right-wing about the...

Give us a brake.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
June 6, 2009... Sir: Unpalatable as it may seem, Moritz Frost (Letters, 30 May) must at least share the blame for the accident he caused when he made an emergency stop because a dog ran out in front of him and a 'speeding cyclist who was "tailgating" me'...

Reader error.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
June 6, 2009... Sir: Peter Florence, founder of the Hay Festival, gives a glowing plug for the Sony Reader--'the gadget of choice this week' (Diary, 30 May). Might it not have been honest of him to mention that Sony Reader sponsored Hay? Jill Green ...

Miliband mistaken.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
June 6, 2009... Sir: The Foreign Secretary's attack on the Conservatives' European policy ('Hague's EU policy would be suicidal', May 9) richly deserved the rebuttal it received from William Hague ('Britain is on the fringes of Europe', 30 May). Mr Miliband...

Unorthodox behaviour.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
June 6, 2009... Sir: Surely, the Daily Mail and Hugo Rifkind (Shared Opinion, 30 May) notwithstanding, it will have been the Greek Orthodox Church, not the Catholic Church, which was offended by lame-brained, ill-habited, bare-buttocked British caperers...

One day, the kharbouza will be mightier than the Kalashnikov: Afghan farmers can prosper by producing the world's finest melons, pomegranates and grapes, says Elliot Wilson, but first they must be weaned off growing the opium poppy.(BUSINESS)
June 6, 2009... Modern-day Afghanistan conjures up many fearsome images, from rocketlaunchers and retreating Soviet tanks to mujahedin warriors and Taleban zealots. Yet this war-ravaged central Asian state, which has to date repelled every barbarian invader...

Beware peddlers of dodgy debt relief.(THE PERSONAL CREDIT CRUNCH)
June 6, 2009... It's a law of the financial jungle that where there is debt there is desperation and where there is desperation you can sell all manner of dodgy 'solutions'. Last year, commercial radio stations were full of ads telling us that--thanks to...

Intimations of mortality.(The Revolt of the Pendulum: Essays 2005-2008)(Book review)
June 6, 2009... THE REVOLT OF THE PENDULUM: ESSAYS 2005-2008 by Clive James Picador, 15.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 324, ISBN 9780330457385 [phone] 12.79 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]...

Father Felipe.(Poem)
June 6, 2009... FATHER FELIPE Father Felipe came to talk to John, who loved Spain. After an hour I brought in tea, silver pot on silver tray, fresh scones, butter, jam, and put to him a damnfool question: What was it like...

Free for all.(What Price Liberty?: How Freedom Was Won and Is Being Lost)(Book review)
June 6, 2009... WHAT PRICE LIBERTY? HOW FREEDOM WAS WON AND IS BEING LOST by Ben Wilson Faber, 14.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 461, ISBN 9780571235940 [phone] 11.99 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 [ILLUSTRATION...

Vale of tears.(The Winter Vault)(Book review)
June 6, 2009... THE WINTER VAULT by Anne Michaels Bloomsbury, 16.99 [ponds sterling], pp. 341, ISBN 9780747598091 [phone] 13.59 [ponds sterling] (plus 2.45 [ponds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] 'Some places are...

Poule de luxe.(Venus of Empire)(Book review)
June 6, 2009... VENUS OF EMPIRE by Flora Fraser John Murray, 20 [pounds sterling], pp. 287, ISBN 9780719561108 [phone] 16 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 'Pauline was as beautiful as it was possible to be',...

Strength in numbers.(The Housekeeper and the Professor)(Book review)
June 6, 2009... THE HOUSEKEEPER + THE PROFESSOR by Yoko Ogawa Harvill Secker, 11.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 180, ISBN 9781846552502 [phone] 9.59 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] ...

The champagne Marxist.(The Frock-Coated Communist)(Book review)
June 6, 2009... THE FROCK-COATED COMMUNIST by Tristram Hunt Allen Lane, 25 [pounds sterling], pp. 443, ISBN 978 0713998528 [phone] 20 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 Marx is back in fashion. For decades...

Quite contrary.(The Blue Hour: A Portrait of Jean Rhys)(Book review)
June 6, 2009... THE BLUE HOUR: A PORTRAIT OF JEAN RHYS by Lilian Pizzichini Bloomsbury, 18.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 322, ISBN 9780747597407 [phone] 15.19 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 [ILLUSTRATION...

Getting into character.(LIFE & LETTERS)
June 6, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Kindly publishers sometimes seek to soften the blow of rejection by offering reasons for saying 'no thanks'. One, for example, turned down a novel of mine because she 'felt the lack of any character with whom the...

The dark side of Tinseltown: Peter Hoskin marks the 50th anniversary of the death of George Reeves, TV's original Superman.(ARTS)(In memoriam)
June 6, 2009... Uncork the champagne, put on your best frock, and grin like the good times are never going to end. After all, it's 1959, and Hollywood is the place to be. Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot has just left movie theaters; that great John Wayne film,...

Bon appetit.(Amongst Friends)(Taking Sides/Collaboration)(Theater review)
June 6, 2009... Amongst Friends Hampstead Taking Sides/Collaboration Duchess Who wrote the first 'dinner party from hell' drama? Shakespeare had a couple of stabs with Titus Andronicus and the banquet scene in Macbeth where Banquo's ghost...

Musical treat.(Cosi fan tutte)(Opera review)
June 6, 2009... Cosi fan tutte English National Opera After many productions of Mozart's bleak comedy Cosi fan tutte, there has been a hiatus, welcomely brought to an end by ENO, which brought the first operatic production of the great Iranian film...

Loving and dying.(Pop)(Viewpoint essay)
June 6, 2009... Even music isn't immortal. For each of us, a little bit dies every day. I was in the pub with my friend Bob when on the jukebox came 'Please Please Me'. You couldn't ignore it: this pub operates its jukebox at full Spinal Tap volume to deter...

Fluid fusion.(H3: Bruno Beltrao and Grupo de Rua)(Dance review)
June 6, 2009... H3: Bruno Beltrao and Grupo de Rua Sadler's Wells Theatre Regardless of the unbearable media hype surrounding the few highs and many lows of Britain's Got Talent, I am pleased that Diversity, an exciting street dance group, won the...

Scare tactics.(Drag Me to Hell)(Movie review)
June 6, 2009... Drag Me to Hell 15, Nationwide Although there is much I don't understand about people generally--why do some take so long at the cashpoint, for example? What are they doing?--one of the main things I don't understand is why anyone...

Between the lines.(Radio)(R.E.S.P.E.C.T.)(Radio program review)
June 6, 2009... I caught it by chance while stuck in traffic on the Bank Holiday weekend, but it turned out to be one of those programmes that really alters the way you think about something you've never questioned before in such detail--in this case, the...

Not bowled over.(Television)(Empire of Cricket)(Gawain and The Green Knight)(Television program review)
June 6, 2009... 'Shh! Cricket!' my grandfather Ken Delingpole used to say whenever the cricket came on the wireless. It was a family joke, indicative of just how boring Delingpoles all found the world's most boring game. But then my father bred with a...

Gleaming Goodwood.(The turf)(horseracing)
June 6, 2009... The poet says you are nearer God's heart in a garden than anywhere on earth. Goodwood on a summer day with sun gleaming off chestnut flanks, Jamie Spencer and George Baker swooping sweetly and just enough breeze to ruffle the mini skirts does...

Out of control.(Motoring)(Viewpoint essay)
June 6, 2009... The elderly lady in the little Skoda reversed cautiously in the supermarket car park, then sharply accelerated into the car behind. Next she accelerated sharply forwards into the car adjacent to the space she had left. She repeated her reverse...

Rumble in the concrete jungle.(High life)(Sindelfingen)(Travel narrative)
June 6, 2009... Sindelfingen Sindelfingen is a suburb of Stuttgart, and is known as the German Detroit, except that Sindelfingen is a vibrantly green and leafy town of 60,000 people, half of whom are employed by Mercedes, whereas Detroit is a dying,...

Stroppy mare.(Real life)(Viewpoint essay)
June 6, 2009... My chestnut mare has almost as many emotional problems as me. There was a time when this suited us both, being two badly behaved women together. I bought her when I was feeling rebellious and free spirited. I liked the flash of defiance in her...

Pitch perfect.(Bridge)(Brief article)
June 6, 2009... As a rubber bridge player used to playing nothing much more than 'strong and four', I find complex conventions as much of a hindrance as a help: the struggle to remember what a sequence of artificial bids means can play havoc with my...

Spectator wine club.(Buyers guide)
June 6, 2009... David Campbell, the co-owner of FromVineyardsDirect.com, is also a publisher, the chap who revived Everyman Library, so a visit to his offices in Clerkenwell, London, is a delight, combining two of life's greatest pleasures--a good read and a...

Sheer brilliance.(CHESS)(MTel Masters, Sofia 2009)
June 6, 2009... The Latvian grandmaster Alexei Shirov, who currently represents Spain, scored the triumph of his life in the elite MTel tournament in Sofia, Bulgaria, which finished towards the end of May. Shirov is normally seen as a swashbuckling pirate of a...

L'enfer c'est.(COMPETITION)
June 6, 2009... In Competition No. 2598 you were invited to provide pithy definitions of Hell. Thanks to Michael Cregan, who proposed this competition and reminded me of Kim Howells MP's unpopular pronouncement that his idea of Hell was three Somerset folk...

1917: State occasion.(CROSSWORD)(Brief article)
June 6, 2009... 6th June is 10 (two words), celebrated by 9 (hyphened). One unclued light, a major location for the celebration, comprises the name of a ceremony at which an unclued light officiates, and a word defined by an unclued light. The remaining...

Solution to 1914: Bailout.(CROSSWORD)(Brief article)
June 6, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Extra letters in clues give confused mixture, a definition of SALAD (32). One confused mixture of the puzzle's title is TABOULI, a salad whose ingredients are the other unclued lights. First prize: Cathy...

Mind your language.(hopefully)(Column)
June 6, 2009... Simon Heffer, the Telegraph columnist, has offered to stand for parliament against Sir Alan Haselhurst, the MP for Saffron Walden, who claimed 12,000 [pounds sterling] expenses for gardening. Mr Heffer commented on Sir Alan's grammar, declaring...

Diary.(political correspondence)(Viewpoint essay)
June 13, 2009... It now feels as remote as one of those doomed summers before the first world war, but there was a time when Team Brown seemed like it was destined to rule the universe. As editor of Today--my job in the mid-1990s--you occupy one of the best...

The Spectator's notes.(United Kingdom Labour Party)(Viewpoint essay)
June 13, 2009... Labour got 15 per cent of the vote in the European elections, in which only 34 per cent of the electorate voted. That is roughly five per cent of those entitled to vote. When you add those too young to vote, this means that, on average, only...

Diary of a Notting Hill nobody.(Diary entry)(Column)
June 13, 2009... MONDAY What a triumph! Not that we're complacent. While this is undeniably a resounding victory which paves the way to our impending general election landslide, we are not taking anything for granted. In fact we are mindful that we may...

Flash Gordon.(Cartoon)
June 13, 2009... GOING, GOING... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The real sickness is Labour's, not Brown's: Fraser Nelson says that the governing party has lost its hunger for office--and is now unhealthily dominated by the mega-union Unite and its political chieftain, Charlie Whelan.(United Kindom Labour Party and Gordon Brown)
June 13, 2009... Lord Mandelson seemed to glide, rather than walk, into the terrace bar of the House of Commons on Monday evening, where he was greeted as a conquering hero by Labour MPs. His Lordship had certainly done the seemingly impossible: helped Gordon...

If anything, this result understates the support for the BNP: Rod Liddle says that the far right party won two seats against the odds. Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons are simply colonising terrain vacated by the Westminster elite.(LIDDLE BRITAIN)(British National Party)
June 13, 2009... So, why the great shock? Why the hand-wringing? It's not as if they weren't warned. Why all those metropolitan journos disembarking at Barnsley station on the 11.47 from King's Cross and gingerly approaching the local Untermensch with a sort of...

'There must be a reckoning if Gordon is to survive': Jon Cruddas, tribune of the left and foe of the BNP, tells James Forsyth his support for the PM is not unconditional, and praises James Purnell for being 'true to himself'.(British National Party)(Prime Minister Gordon Brown)(Interview)
June 13, 2009... Jon Cruddas, the Labour MP for Dagenham, isn't your typical 21stcentury politician. He's relaxed, unconcerned about his appearance: the amount of spare cloth in his suits would appal a Cameron or a Clegg, and his hair is more barber-shop than...

Gordon pleads for one last chance from the girls: Melissa Kite says that the PM is ill at ease with female colleagues. No surprise that it was the women--Blears, Flint, Kennedy--who rebelled while the men hid under the table.(Prime Minister Gordon Brown)
June 13, 2009... Remember the Brown Bounce? Yes, there really was one. It was back in September 2007 and Gordon was riding high on a wave of popularity. Honestly, I'm not making this up. A YouGov poll gave the Prime Minister a commanding 11-point lead over...

Dave has some special new Labour friends: Anne McElvoy spots a new political type: the 'Labrators' who have more in common with Cameron than Brown, and may co-operate with a Tory government.(Dave Cameron and Gordon Brown)
June 13, 2009... The Labrators are coming: crossbred symbols of shifting political times. Labour by background and allegiance, they empathise with many of the New Conservatives' aims and obsessions. As for the political divide, they don't so much straddle it,...

Insanity has always been integral to New Labour: Martin Bright says that the party labels its enemies as 'mad' for Freudian reasons: 'projecting' its own collective and individual mental disorders upon foes and rebels alike.
June 13, 2009... What is it with New Labour and accusations of psychological weakness? No sooner had Hazel Blears announced her resignation from the Cabinet but dark murmurings bubbled up from Downing Street that the Salford MP 'couldn't handle it'. She had...

Back to black.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
June 13, 2009... Sir: Taki (High Life, 16 May) exaggerated the ineptitude of my counsel in Chicago, and in this I am happy to agree with Tom Bower (Letters, 23 May), but they were not my counsel of choice, whom I was prevented from retaining by an asset seizure...

Three PMs.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
June 13, 2009... Sir: Your leading article of 6 June states: 'If there is to be a third Prime Minister during a parliamentary term--something that has not happened in the modern era...'. But the 1935-45 parliamentary term had three prime ministers: Baldwin,...

Cheney's disdain.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
June 13, 2009... Sir: Daniel Collings's interview with Dick Cheney ('Apologise for torture? "That's not appropriate"', 6 June) is an inglorious reminder of exactly why the Bush-Cheney era was such a scar on the history of the United States. He is both...

Lea's careless error.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
June 13, 2009... Sir: You published last week (Letters, 6 June) a letter from Lord Lea attacking me for what he describes as blatant falsehoods in my article ('Why I'm voting Ukip', 23 May). I shall pay his Lordship the compliment of assuming he was being...

Council of imperfection.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
June 13, 2009... Sir: I wholeheartedly agree with Martin Vander Weyer's anger about council tax rates (Any Other Business, 30 May). However, I find it less easy to support his praise for my local council, Hammersmith and Fulham. For my very modest three-bedroom...

Greater majority.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
June 13, 2009... Sir: As our MPs puzzle as to how they find themselves in such a mess in regard to their expenses, they might do well to remember the words of George Bernard Shaw: 'The only sanction known to ethics is the assent of the majority.' If the...

Bursts of creativity.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
June 13, 2009... Sir: In your last Christmas survey (20-27 December, 2008), Hazel Blears gave some 'reasons to be cheerful': 'in tough times people come together and discover things about themselves and each other. We will see some really ingenious ways to beat...

Let's not get too worked up if Guy Gibson's dog ends up with a PC name.(YOU KNOW IT MAKES SENSE)
June 13, 2009... This week's vexed columnar question: should Guy Gibson's dog still be called Nigger in The Dam Busters remake? Some of you no doubt think you know already what my line will be. And it's true that as a second world war enthusiast of the...

Each time the BNP has to tone down its rhetoric, it's a victory for everyone else.(SHARED OPINION)(British National Party)
June 13, 2009... It's oddly unsettling, watching the media establishment trying to deal with the BNP. On Channel 4 News the other night, Krishnan Guru-Murthy was interviewing Andrew Brons, the thinner of their two toadish, loathsome MEPs, and I'm not sure that...

The bruiser who fought his way back: Nick Kochan meets veteran property tycoon Gerald Ronson, who rebuilt his fortune and reputation after a stretch in Ford Open Prison for his role in the Guinness scandal.(BUSINESS)
June 13, 2009... History will regard Gerald Ronson as the man who withstood the humiliation of a high-profile trial and conviction, took his punishment without flinching, and returned quietly to his metier of making millions. Speaking from the comfort of his...

Outmoded elegance.(Harold Macmillan)(Book review)
June 13, 2009... HAROLD MACMILLAN by Charles Williams Weidenfeld, 25 [pounds sterling], pp. 548, ISBN 9780297851943 [telephone] 20 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Harold Macmillan...

Rebels with a cause.(Summer of Blood)(Book review)
June 13, 2009... SUMMER OF BLOOD by Dan Jones HarperCollins, 20 [pounds sterling], pp. 238, ISBN9780007213917 [telephone] 16 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 The Peasants' Revolt of 1381 was a singular event in...

The devil's in the detail.(The Angel's Game)(Book review)
June 13, 2009... THE ANGEL'S GAME by Carlos Ruiz Zafon Weidenfeld, 18.99 [pounds sterling], pp.443, ISBN 97802978555545 [telephone] 15.19 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Standing...

Taking Breakfast Alone.(Poem)
June 13, 2009... TAKING BREAKFAST ALONE Every day I might come close to death and not know it. Halfway through a soft-boiled egg, half-full of tea, the morning needs something sweet. If you were here you could pass me a Digestive, darling,...

Light thoughts in a dark time.(Ruth Maier's Diary)(Book review)
June 13, 2009... RUTH MAIER'S DIARY edited by Jan Erik Vold, translated by Jamie Bulloch Harvill Secker, 18.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 412, ISBN 9781846552144 [telephone] 15.19 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 ...

A kind tyrant.(The World and Its Double)(Book review)
June 13, 2009... THE WORLD AND ITS DOUBLE by Chris Fujiwara Faber, 25 [pounds sterling], pp. 496, ISBN 9780571211173 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] 'A juxtaposition of incompatible elements.' So Chris Fujiwara describes one of Otto Preminger's more...

Boat for Tim' by Lottie Cheverton.(Leith: Scotland's Independent Art School)(Brief article)(Book review)
June 13, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Founded in 1988 in a former church for Norwegian seamen by the inspirational teachers Mark and Lottie Cheverton, Leith Art School comes of age this year. This book tells the story of its founders and recounts how the...

Dispatch from Venice: Roderick Conway Morris on how the city is trying new ways to overcome its economic crisis.(ARTS)(Venice Biennale)
June 13, 2009... When the Venice Biennale was founded in 1895 it was in many ways a response to the crisis facing the city. No longer an independent republic and marginalised in the newly reunified Kingdom of Italy, Venice was seeking ways to re-invent itself,...

Celebrating diversity.(Exhibitions)(Summer Exhibition)
June 13, 2009... Summer Exhibition Royal Academy, until 16 August Every year the Summer Exhibition arrives with promises of innovation and difference, every year it's much the same. People gamely ask 'what's it like this year?', and the imaginative...

Brooding Prince.(Theatre 1)(Hamlet)(Arcadia)(Theater review)
June 13, 2009... Hamlet Wyndhams Arcadia Duke of York's 'No one can do the definitive Hamlet. It's too big for that. But you can do an enormous amount.' Wise words. Jude Law's as it happens. All Hamlets fail and it's a great tribute that...

Blood will have blood.(Theatre 2)(Julius Caesar)(Theater review)
June 13, 2009... Julius Caesar Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon Romulus and Remus, at least in the flesh, aren't usually numbered among the dramatis personae of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. The famous sculpture of the she-wolf suckling Rome's...

In praise of Diaghilev.(Dance)(Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev)(In memoriam)
June 13, 2009... I wish I had been at the Chatelet Theatre in Paris on the evening of 18 May 1909 for the dress rehearsal of the new Saison Russe, organised by Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev, or 'de' Diaghilev as he liked to be called. That evening, the notable...

Blank canvas.(Opera)(Lulu)(Opera review)
June 13, 2009... Lulu Royal Opera House It's not often that I have felt so disinclined to write a piece about the past week's opera-going, especially when it was an occasion I had looked forward to so much: Berg's second opera Lulu, one of the...

Poster hero.(Cinema)(Looking for Eric)(Movie review)
June 13, 2009... Looking for Eric 15, Nationwide Looking for Eric is Ken Loach's latest film, and while one worships Ken Loach generally and his early work in particular--Cathy Come Home; Family Life; Kes; all of which will still blow your socks off...

Electric guitar heaven.(Olden but golden)(Sonny Landreth)
June 13, 2009... Like most addicts I have become accustomed to smuggling stuff into my own house. In the old days it was bottles of Scotch or wine. More recently it has been a couple of hundred quid's worth of CDs after a binge in HMV. The trouble with CDs...

Access all areas.(Radio)
June 13, 2009... 'Visualisation' is the latest buzzword at BBC Radio. 'Audiences,' announces the press release, 'will be able to watch some of their favourite radio shows being broadcast.' (Note the use of the word 'audiences'; we're no longer thought of as...

Fantastical joke.(Television)(Krod Mandoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire)(Television program review)
June 13, 2009... 'Hi, my name is Krod Mandoon, and I'll be your liberator this evening!' says the hero of Krod Mandoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire (BBC2, Thursday) as he bursts into a dungeon. It's a funny line, imposing the formulaic talk of an American...