Spectator articles from March 2002

Spectator archives from March 2002

Portrait of the week.(Brief Article)
March 2, 2002... The row about the resignation of Miss Jo Moore and the disputed resignation of Mr Martin Sixsmith from their posts at the Department of Transport reached new heights of incredible complication. According to Mr Sixsmith, Sir Richard Mottram, the...

Make them sit exams.(civil service)(Brief Article)
March 2, 2002... It takes a great deal to provoke a former Cabinet secretary to attack the civil service. These are his troops. This was his flock. For many years Lord Armstrong was a distinguished head of the home civil service, and much of his life has been...

Diary.
March 2, 2002... Washington, DC Although the United States will spend $346.5 billion on defence this year, on Saturdays in the Pentagon they turn off the internal escalators to save money. As the Telegraph team plods up the stairs, the dreary greyness...

I am now compiling the official domesday book of Labour lies. (Politics).(Brief Article)
March 2, 2002... For the most part New Labour has treated Parliament with disdain. Announcements are made elsewhere. Tony Blair does not bother to conceal his impatience with the Commons. He votes in a lower proportion of divisions than any previous Prime...

You can tell an honest politician: he gets into a tangled web when he practises to deceive. (Another Voice).
March 2, 2002... During the trial of Clive Ponting 17 years ago, the accused whistle-blower's counsel put it to Michael Heseltine's private secretary, in the witness box, that it should be the rule that answers to parliamentary questions were not deliberately...

Daylight jobbery: Robert Armstrong, a former head of the home civil service, says that the time has come to cut back on special advisers and return to a non-political ethos in Whitehall. (Cover Story).
March 2, 2002... THERE must have been many like me who have been rubbing their eyes in disbelief over recent goings-on in Whitehall. Did he resign or didn't he? I cannot remember any previous instance of a personal statement by a permanent secretary. It...

Mind your language.(Brief Article)
March 2, 2002... `BOSOM and bottom, Osama's got 'em,' shouted my husband. Perhaps it shows how far we have gone in our folie a deux that I should not have immediately summoned all three emergency services. His reason or excuse for this childish chant was a line...

Serving suggestions: Mary Wakefield volunteered to feed the poor and was surprised to find what fussy eaters they are.(Brief Article)
March 2, 2002... THE third time Eileen rejected a cup of tea that I had made carefully, to her exact specifications, I began to panic. Other customers were waiting in line behind her, watching the steam rise from my failed attempts on the sideboard. Eileen...

The great Labour tax con: Frank Field says the government is talking of increasing tax but refuses to use its surplus to pay for long-term care.
March 2, 2002... AS Labour spells out its intention to recross the tax, and-spend Rubicon, the Prime Minister appears nothing if not relaxed. Labour won in 1997 because of Tony Blair and the pledge not to put up income tax. Now the Prime Minister openly talks...

Banned wagon: a weekly survey of the things our rulers want to prohibit.(Brief Article)
March 2, 2002... ON these pages last week, David Fishlock berated those who stand in the way of the nuclear industry by bleating on about radioactive waste. Since much of the waste from nuclear power stations remains hazardous for several thousand years, and,...

Lost inheritance: Philip Hensher wonders why English Heritage won't honour V.S. Pritchett with a blue plaque, but honours Lokamanya Tilak (who?).
March 2, 2002... GET out your pencils for a quick quiz. Question one: What do the following people have in common: Susan Lawrence, John Passmore Edwards, Lokamanya Tilak, Dr Charles Vickery Drysdale, Hugh Pryce Hughes, Sir Nigel Gresley and Lady Jane Francesca...

Joan Collins's honeymoon postcard.(Brief Article)
March 2, 2002... I ALWAYS knew that the British press fudged the truth, but my recent engagement and marriage revealed to me just how they fib with fantastic fanfare, and how frenetically fanciful they can be. The truth seems not to enter into their...

Republican whingers: Simon Heffer says the royal family is much better value for money than New Labour.
March 2, 2002... SCARCELY had Princess Margaret died than an old refrain struck up among the obsessives who believe that, if we really must have a royal family, it should live on air. Since the late Princess was the senior occupant of Kensington Palace, there...

East Anglia. (Best of British).
March 2, 2002... IT WAS Candlemas Day, 2 February, but the wind wasn't whistling `Nunc Dimittis'. It was howling incoherently across the not quite flatness of north Norfolk, lifting rust-coloured pantiles, whipping round churches, pubs and cottages, and finding...

Silence is not necessarily a virtue but it is certainly no vice. (And Another Thing).
March 2, 2002... The love of silence is something that grows with age. When I was a child I feared the silence of the night. Staying with my grandparents. I saw their immense and elderly grandfather clock, twice as tall as myself, as a friendly creature, for it...

Farewell, then, Peter Stothard, editor of the Times, whose circulation triumph came at a price. (Media Studies).
March 2, 2002... How will history judge the nine-and-a-half-years editorship of my old friend Peter Stothard? There is much on the plus side. He roughly doubled the circulation of the Times. In September 1993 he and his proprietor Rupert Murdoch embraced the...

Persecution? Piffle! (Letters).
March 2, 2002... From Mr Ian Willmore Sir: I read with great amusement Matt Ridley's article (`The profits of doom', 23 February) on green `persecution' of the Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg. It is certainly true that Lomborg is a more sophisticated...

Book-burning. (Letters).
March 2, 2002... From Jacqui Peleg Sir: Israel Shamir from Jaffa states that the New Testament is burnt in Israel (Letters, 23 February). This reads as though it is a regular occurrence in Israel. If I understand Mr Shamir correctly, he is referring to a...

`Useful' death statistics. (Letters).
March 2, 2002... From Mr John Collins Sir: Mark Steyn (`On the right side of history', 23 February) dissembles on the figures presented by Professor Chomsky. In his New Delhi lecture (and elsewhere) Chomsky quotes from UN sources the figure of 6.5-7...

We're no ageists. (Letters).
March 2, 2002... From Baroness Blackstone Sir: I can reassure Miriam Gross (Diary, 23 February) that the report in Art Newspaper suggesting that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport has told museum directors not to recommend anyone over 50 for...

What Hess was offering. (Letters).
March 2, 2002... From Mr Peter Padfield Sir: David Stafford (Letters, 26 January) asks how I know that Hess's peace proposals included German evacuation of the whole of western Europe. Here are three sources: 1) The late Kenneth de Courcy in his...

Royal revenge on Rudyard. (Letters).
March 2, 2002... From Mr Frank A. Kelly, Jr Sir: In Philip Hensher's review of the latest book on Rudyard Kipling (Books, 16 February) he says that Kipling declined the laureateship. However, there was a report that his appointment had been blocked by King...

Hellraisers of yesteryear. (Letters).
March 2, 2002... From Mr Graham Gilbert Sir: Colin Bostock-Smith may be right about the pathetically clean image of popular music today (`Pap idols', 16 February), but he is totally wrong to suggest that the Brits weren't up to US standards of...

Irish eyes are smiling. (Letters).
March 2, 2002... From Mr Ian Fraser Sir: For the last 30 years I too have enjoyed the treasures of Scotland -- both obvious and not so obvious -- that Magnus Linklater refers to (Best of British, 23 February). In his analysis of the `depressing drop in...

Powellite protest.
March 2, 2002... From Mr Jonathan Powell Sir: Peter Oborne (Politics, 16 February) mistakenly suggests that I allowed the Prime Minister to meet Bernie Ecclestone without civil servants present. If you check the facts, you will find that there was a civil...

Memo to ministers, tsars, envoys, spinners, advisers: you can't do it without the machine. (City and Suburban).(Brief Article)
March 2, 2002... The new dawn of New Labour, almost five years ago now, seemed a good moment to lunch with an old Whitehall hand. What did he make of this New Model Army of ministers? `They have no idea,' he groaned. `They've been out of office for ages. It's...

The Complete Works of Isaac Babel. (Books: a new favourite writer).
March 2, 2002... THE COMPLETE WORKS OF ISAAC BABEL edited by Nathalie Babel Picador, 30 [pounds sterling], pp. 1072, ISBN 0330490311 After Tolstoy's death, in 1910, Russian literature noticeably changes its complexion. From Griboyedov and Pushkin to the eve...

Bloodfeud: Murder and Revenge in Anglo-Saxon England. (Books: seen at ground level).
March 2, 2002... BLOODFEUD: MURDER AND REVENGE IN ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND by Richard Fletcher Allen Lane/Penguin, 14.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 211, ISBN 071399391X Historians of Anglo-Saxon England do not have much to joke about. In the early 1940s Professor...

The Hunters. (Books: small, but perfectly formed).
March 2, 2002... THE HUNTERS by Claire Messud Picador, 12.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 181, ISBN 0330488147 Coming to the end of A Simple Tale, the first of two novellas in this volume, I found myself so full of admiration that I couldn't think of anything...

A Woman's Life. (Books: three women in the same boat).
March 2, 2002... A WOMAN'S LIFE by Rachel Billington Orion, 16.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 368, ISBN 0752846612 You should always write about what you know. This piece of advice is one Rachel Billington sticks to rigorously. She may not be quite as prolific...

God. (Books: what is he like).
March 2, 2002... GOD by Alexander Waugh Review, 18.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 340, ISBN 0747270163 Most of the inhabitants of our secular and materialist societies do not display much concern for the God of Adam and Abraham, the one God of the Jews,...

Know Your Enemy: How the Joint Intelligence Committee Saw the World. (Books: reading behind the lines).
March 2, 2002... KNOW YOUR ENEMY: HOW THE JOINT INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE SAW THE WORLD by Percy Cradock John Murray, 25 [pounds sterling], pp. 351, ISBN 0719560489 If you want false beards, invisible ink and busty KGB chambermaids, this is not your book. It...

Italy and Its Discontents: Family, Civil Society, State. (Books: the eternal country).
March 2, 2002... ITALY AND ITS DISCONTENTS: FAMILY, CIVIL SOCIETY, STATE, 1980-2001 by Paul Ginsborg Allen Lane, 25 [pounds sterling], pp. 520, ISBN 0713995378 Once Silvio Berlusconi became prime minister of Italy in the summer of 2001, he began pushing...

Mugabe. (Books: who does he think he is?).
March 2, 2002... MUGABE by Martin Meredith Perseus Press, 15.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 243, ISBN 19039985285 The editor of the Standard, Mark Chavunduka, was held by military intelligence officers... in an army barracks in Harare for ten days. His...

Living Dolls: a Magical History of the Quest for Mechanical Life. (Books: philosophical toys and defecating ducks).
March 2, 2002... LIVING DOLLS: A MAGICAL HISTORY OF THE QUEST FOR MECHANICAL LIFE by Gaby Wood Faber, 12.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 278, ISBN 0571178790 Five years ago, Garry Kasparov, arguably the greatest chess genius the world has ever seen, lost a match...

The Birds of Heaven. (Books: the higher the fewer).
March 2, 2002... THE BIRDS OF HEAVEN by Peter Matthiessen Harvill, 20 [pounds sterling], pp. 300, ISBN 1860469477 On his return home to Long Island some years ago after a summer away, Peter Matthiessen was confronted by a woman at dinner. Where the hell...

Wanted: painting, dead or alive: Laura Gascoigne urges galleries not to give disproportionate space to a minority of new media. (Arts).
March 2, 2002... For lovers of painting, the big disappointment of the Royal Academy's blockbuster Paris: Capital of the Arts 1900-68 is the sorry sight, two thirds of the way through the show, of that once proud dominatrix of the painting world losing the...

American Sublime: Landscape Painting in the United States 1820-1880. (Exhibitions: impressive brashness).
March 2, 2002... American Sublime: Landscape Painting in the United States 1820-1880 (Tate Britain, till 19 May) For the second show running Tate Britain is offering us 19th-century images of stirring, much fantasised-over subjects, executed in a fashion...

Will he make it? (Pop music).(Brief Article)
March 2, 2002... `The Wait Is Over,' scream the posters for Will Young's first single, even though it's only about 11 minutes since he won Pop Idol. Presumably the pre-teens who are currently in Woolworths queuing to buy it wouldn't have been able to hang on...

Lady Windermere's Fan. (Theatre 1: with an eye to publicity).
March 2, 2002... Lady Windermere's Fan (Theatre Royal Haymarket) One of the most noticeable aspects of contemporary British theatre is that producers and directors have become horribly media savvy. In deciding what plays to put on, and how to interpret...

Life After George. (Theatre 1: with an eye to publicity).
March 2, 2002... Life After George (Duchess) One of the most noticeable aspects of contemporary British theatre is that producers and directors have become horribly media savvy. In deciding what plays to put on, and how to interpret those that they do,...

A Midsummer Night's Dream. (Theatre 2: playful touch).
March 2, 2002... A Midsummer Night's Dream (Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford) Less than three years ago the RSC launched an athletic and sexually forthright production of the Dream by Michael Boyd who has rightly just won an Olivier Award for his...

Don Giovanni. (Opera: compelling Don).
March 2, 2002... Don Giovanni (Royal Opera House) The second run of Covent Garden's new Don Giovanni has a wholly different cast, and is conducted by Charles Mackerras. In the month since it opened the director Francesca Zambello has taken notice of...

Don Giovanni; La Traviata. (Opera: compelling Don).
March 2, 2002... Don Giovanni; La Traviata (English Touring Opera) The second run of Covent Garden's new Don Giovanni has a wholly different cast, and is conducted by Charles Mackerras. In the month since it opened the director Francesca Zambello has taken...

Outside In. (Dance: five firsts).
March 2, 2002... Outside In (Clore Studio Upstairs, Royal Opera House) When members of the audience were asked to bear in mind that, due to certain circumstances, some of the dances they were about to see were still `works-in-progress', I frowned. A few...

Remembering Ralph Sutton. (Jazz).(Brief Article)
March 2, 2002... The first time I heard Ralph Sutton perform he said nothing by the way of announcements, because, he said, he had absolutely nothing to say. But despite this total absence of show-business razzmatazz, he played the piano to such effect that he...

Improving force. (Radio).(Brief Article)
March 2, 2002... The car radio is such a blessing that I suppose one can describe it as indispensable. With many of us having to make long journeys by car on dull motorways we can't when behind the wheel admire any interesting landscape that comes into view. So...

Armchair gardening. (Television).(Brief Article)
March 2, 2002... Just as Delia's How To Cook demonstrates to even an absolute beginner how cooking is less fun than watching cookery programmes, so Alan Titchmarsh's How To Be A Gardener (BBC 2) is designed to turn us all into couch potatoes instead of potato...

Rear action. (The turf).(horse racing)(Brief Article)
March 2, 2002... You gallop three miles in a fast-run race, jump 19 fences without a blemish, come home 17 lengths clear of the second horse and all anybody seems to want to discuss is your tail. If he could have understood the fuss going on around him, poor...

Do it my way. (High life).(Brief Article)
March 2, 2002... Rougemont Adolf Hitler would have loved the Salt Lake City 2002 Olympics. Germany topped the standings with 35 medals, a record, and `Deutschland, Deutschland fiber Alles' reverberated across the mountain range 12 times. Yes, Adolf would...

Pure speculation. (Low life).(Short Story)
March 2, 2002... Walking through the town yesterday morning, a young lady I've not seen before leaned out of an upstairs window and yelled at me, `What have you done with the rabbits?' `What rabbits?' I said. (I haven't got rabbits.) `You know what rabbits!'...

Brush with death. (Singular life).(mango juice)(Brief Article)
March 2, 2002... Lately I have formed a habit of drinking far too much before I go to bed. Drinking excessively. Glasses and glasses of the stuff. I refer to mango juice. I had become addicted while sojourning in Florida recently. They told me how healthy it...

Spot the clue. (Bridge).(Brief Article)
March 2, 2002... A GOOD bridge player has much in common with a detective: if he watches carefully there are endless clues to be gathered during the course of a game. There are, of course, also clues to be gathered from the bidding -- but people sometimes...

B5 or not B5. (Chess).(Brief Article)
March 2, 2002... A COMMON dilemma facing White players when lined up against the Sicilian Defence is whether to sacrifice a bishop or a knight for a black pawn on b5. White always obtains at least two pawns and an advantage in development as compensation, but,...

A can of terms. (Competition).
March 2, 2002... IN COMPETITION NO. 2227 you were invited to incorporate, in any order, the following literary or grammatical terms into a piece of prose: pun, oxymoron, proverb, mixed metaphor, simile, quotation, pleonasm, litotes, epizeuxis, zeugma. ...

Restaurants.
March 2, 2002... YOU may have been wondering why my column did not appear a fortnight ago. On the other hand, you may not. It's all the same to me. Still, was I rightly sacked, at long last? Or did I take up that offer of a professorship at the LSC, an open...

Hoddle twaddle. (Spectator Sport).(football (British))
March 2, 2002... MOST people can deal with their primary talent. You can be good at something and still conduct yourself in a reasonable sort of way. It is the secondary talent that is lethal, leading to arrogance, ludicrous errors of judgment, and utterly...

Dear Mary ... (Your Problems Solved).
March 2, 2002... Q. I'm never quite sure what to do when the National Anthem is played shortly before 1 a.m. on Radio Four. Jumping out of bed to stand to attention seems over the top; remaining in a recumbent position appears disrespectful. Can you suggest the...

Dressed to kill. (Portrait Of The Week).(Brief Article)
March 9, 2002... The black newspaper the Voice called for increased use of police powers to stop and search in order to combat street crime in London, particularly the use of firearms. A judge told Ashley Walters, known as Asher-D in the group So Solid Crew, to...

Boycott McDonald's.(Brief Article)
March 9, 2002... Among the sesame-seed-chomping brigands of the anti-globalisation movement poised with half-bricks outside their local McDonald's, there must be a sense of confusion. In America, they believed they had an arch-enemy. The sight of American brand...

Diary.
March 9, 2002... In the Independent last week, I compared Stephen Byers's performance in the Commons to Marshal Foch, a man whose centre was giving way and whose right was in retreat, and duly concluded, `Situation excellent. I shall attack.' Or rather, I had...

Dead children are not reliable counsellors: it is time to legalise heroin. (Another Voice).
March 9, 2002... They were heart-rending photographs. A young girl, whose sweet face sang of the hope and joy of youth; a couple of years later, she is a broken, beggarly creature, who perishes in squalor and despair. What is this hideous strength which can...

Guess who's coming to dinner: the editors of the Sun and the Mirror have only been to tea at Chequers, but there are some so grand that they are more lavishly received.
March 9, 2002... TONY BLAIR devotes a large percentage of his time to courting the press. Mostly, the wooing goes on in Downing Street. It is an unusual week when one Fleet Street editor, attended by a gaggle of columnists, political reporters and so forth,...

Mind your language.(Brief Article)
March 9, 2002... WITH all the enthusiasm of a neophyte I passed on the exciting discoveries I had made about the origins of Latin (26 January). I said that a sixth-century BC fibula, or brooch, had been found (at Praeneste) with the inscription in Greek...

Public disgrace: George Monbiot on how Tony Blair's partnership of convenience with the private sector is fleecing the taxpayer.
March 9, 2002... THE government can't pretend that it lacked advice. In 1997, before construction had begun, doctors who had seen the plans for the proposed Cumberland Infirmary warned that it looked `more like a dosshouse' than a hospital. Carlisle's...

As mad as it gets: Rod Liddle on why the innocent peanut is being hunted to extinction by the allergy police.(Brief Article)
March 9, 2002... IT'S always a life-affirming moment -- for me, at least. The aeroplane has groaned and wheezed its way up, up, above the city and -- improbably, to my mind -- established a sort of equilibrium with the ethereal new world around it. The engines...

Ancient & modern.(Abstract)
March 9, 2002... AN ancient Athenian witnessing the lying of government and its hangers-on over the Stephen Byers affair would have been no more or less surprised than any of us at the sight of someone trying to save his skin. What would have appalled them is...

The 2,500 years' war: Julian Manyon says that the intercommunal violence in India is likely to get a lot worse.(Abstract)
March 9, 2002... Ahmedabad THERE are times in this business when you feel you have made a mistake, perhaps a fatal mistake. Such a moment came as our car turned a blind corner in the back streets of this town and we found ourselves in the middle of a...

A night on the town: Andrew Gimson accompanies David Willetts to Birmingham, and finds misery, comedy, resentment and hope.
March 9, 2002... LAST week I went to Birmingham with David Willetts, the Conservative MP who told an astonished world that to find out about poverty he was going to spend a night in a council house there. We set off from Euston on a jerky Virgin train, and...

Second opinion.(Editorial)
March 9, 2002... A VISITOR to our grey and ghastly land might easily conclude that it had just emerged from a prolonged period of severe drought and famine, for the English seem incapable these days of progressing further than a few yards, or of waiting for...

France is for folk: Clive Aslet says the Paris agricultural show proves that the French, unlike the British, rejoice in country living.(Abstract)
March 9, 2002... THERE is no doubt about it, the French know how to put on a show. In this instance, I don't mean the Folies Bergere but the agricultural show that took place at Paris's equivalent of Earls Court last week (though, come to think of it, there may...

A threnody for the declining art of rudeness. (And Another Thing).
March 9, 2002... The man who has been labelled `the rudest man in Britain' is to be paid 75,000 [pounds sterling] an hour to entertain television viewers with the story of the monarchy. I came across Dr David Starkey on Radio Four's Moral Maze programme. He was...

In continuing to cut the crap, Greg Dyke is placing trash TV above public service broadcasting. (Media Studies).
March 9, 2002... The odds are that Greg `cut the crap' Dyke may be the last director-general of the BBC in its guise as a public service broadcaster. It becomes clearer all the time that he is driven simply by ratings, and wishes to hive off more `elitist'...

Royal value for money. (Letters).
March 9, 2002... From Mrs Jennifer Miller Sir: Perhaps the greatest weakness of our monarchy is the constant malicious misrepresentation of royal finances; so Simon Heffer's brilliant and well-informed analysis (`Republican whingers', 2 March) is...

The US and us. (Letters).
March 9, 2002... From Mr John Dickenson Sir: Mark Steyn's further analysis of the soft elements in Europe (`On the right side of history', 23 February) reminds me of the perfect embodiment of this phenomenon, at least in the English form. Rik Mayall's...

Fruit for the loins. (Letters).
March 9, 2002... From Mr Duncan Blake Sir: I read with interest the correspondence regarding the article on possible links between sexual activity and prostate cancer (`The wages of sex,' 19 January) and would like to recommend to all (male) readers that,...

Immoderate Arabs. (Letters).
March 9, 2002... From Mr Percy Gourgey Sir: In referring to the right of self-determination for the inhabitants of Palestine (Letters, 23 February) Piers Paul Read overlooks the fact that this was offered by the UN General Assembly on 29 November 1947 in...

Afghan deaths. (Letters).(Brief Article)
March 9, 2002... From Mr Oliver Kamm Sir: John Collins (Letters, 2 March) dissembles in his defence of Noam Chomsky's claims of several million casualties of US action in Afghanistan. Chomsky was indeed referring to those allegedly facing starvation rather...

Calgary flame. (Letters).(Brief Article)
March 9, 2002... From Mr William R. Morosse Sir: Please pass on to Taki that there were at least two gold medallists of African descent in the recent winter Olympic Games (High Life, 2 March). There was an African-American woman named Vonetta Flowers who...

Ussher nonsense. (Letters).
March 9, 2002... From Mr Chris Wheal Sir: Paul Johnson (And another thing, 16 February) wants another `religious reawakening' in America. Bad idea. There are more than enough religious wackos running around this country as it is. It is a never-ending...

Exams for MPs. (Letters).(Brief Article)
March 9, 2002... From Mr Harry Woolf Sir: Your leading article of 2 March says that all spin doctors and special advisers to government should sit civil service exams. Many years ago I suggested to the late Sir Keith Joseph the merits of exams for...

In praise of big bums. (Letters).(Brief Article)
March 9, 2002... From Mr Paul Coletti Sir: Jo Johnson (`Down with Oncle Sam!', 23 February) quotes Jean-Pierre Chevenement as saying that America is responsible for the `cretinisation of the French people'. This is nothing new. The French have thought...

Heavenly hostile. (Letters).(Brief Article)
March 9, 2002... From Mr James Young Sir: Dot Wordsworth (Mind your language, 2 March) is right about the pronunciation of Osama bin Laden's first name. It's Osama, with the stress on the first a, as in what Christians have been singing for centuries:...

Napoleon and Hitler would have been hopeless at business; so why is business obsessed with war? (Shared Opinion).(Brief Article)
March 9, 2002... The new Times editor, Robert Thomson, is reported to be a student of Sun Tzu's Art of War (c. 500 BC). His having been long in the United States suggests that he might have been influenced by a widespread American belief that books about the...