Spectator articles from May 2007

Spectator archives from May 2007

A legacy for us all.(Tony Blair)
May 5, 2007... It is bleakly symmetrical that Tony Blair's tenth anniversary as Prime Minister should have fallen in the same week as the Scottish, Welsh and local elections. But it was no less apt that the PM should have passed this milestone the day after...

DIARY.(Gordon Brown; coming out; scandals)
May 5, 2007... The telephone rang at 7.45 a. m. It was a journalist I know. She sounded tense. 'Gyles, ' she said, 'do you want to come out?' 'It's a bit early, isn't it, darling?' I replied. 'I mean, "come out", ' she said with emphasis, adding, with a...

MI5 is much enhanced since Crevice: but it still can't make guarantees.
May 5, 2007... For almost two years, Westminster has been abuzz with what many MPs believed to be an explosive secret. The ringleader of the 7 July London bombings, Mohammed Sidique Khan, was not a socalled 'clean skin' who came out of the blue. Instead,...

DIARY OF A NOTTING HILL NOBODY.
May 5, 2007... MONDAY Jed in terrible mood. He's been like it since last Wednesday when his bicycle broke down on the way to Stamford Bridge. I must say, I can't quite work out how a bicycle can break down. I mean, what happens exactly? He had to keep texting...

Opportunity has stopped knocking: who will be its new champion?(meritocracy)
May 5, 2007... Here's a conundrum as we leave the Blair years behind us. Never has so much faith been placed in the idea of a society open to social mobility; never have so many politicians' speeches been delivered in praise of a more classless society and...

'Now the terrorists have felt the extent of our reach'.(Crevice Trial)
May 5, 2007... John Grieve, the long-time head of the Metropolitan Police's AntiTerrorist Squad, observed shortly after the conviction of the IRA men who bombed South Quay in 1996: 'It's great -- but every time we have one of these long trials, we give the...

Cameron is taking on Brown - in Rwanda.(David Cameron's Project Umubano; Gordon Brown)
May 5, 2007... Nothing much is certain in British politics these days, but assuming that the next general election will pit Gordon Brown against David Cameron, we can be sure of one thing: its result will be a referendum on rebranding. Can the slick young...

America's problem is the way it treats its friends.(Guernsey)
May 5, 2007... I keep meaning to find out whether 'Land of the Free' is a registered trademark. I wouldn't be at all surprised if a Caribbean holiday island started to use some combination of the words 'land' and 'free' in its promotional literature -- only...

Scottish nationalism may be ludicrous, but it is still compelling.
May 5, 2007... Gardenstown, Aberdeenshire There is a man living somewhere in this agreeable seaside village who has changed his name by deed poll to Jesus Christ. Furthermore, he has children, and they have been named 'I Am Christ' and -- the...

Guess who invented the EU? It was Quisling.(European Union; Vidkun Quisling)
May 5, 2007... Ten years ago I wrote a book the first chapter of which examined Nazi and fascist arguments in favour of a united Europe. I used this Nazi pro-Europeanism scurrilously to discredit the claim made by today's pro-Europeans that the European idea...

Strange kind of love.(Letter to the editor)
May 5, 2007... Sir: Liam Byrne's breathless panegyric ('Rise up, Englishmen', 28 April) on the glories of being British must have left some of us pretty punch drunk. This is a man who eagerly serves a government that has spent a decade transferring the...

Islam's advancing strength.(Letter to the editor)
May 5, 2007... Sir: I thank Matthew Parris (Another voice, 28 April) for his courteous response to my article ('Why there will be no future Pax Americana', 14 April). However, Mr Parris reinforces one of its main points: that to underestimate the significance...

No history of holocausts?(Letter to the editor)
May 5, 2007... Sir: I'm sure the indigenous peoples of North America would have something to say about your correspondent Katherine Barlow's assertion that Americans 'don't do holocausts' (Letters, 28 April). Edward Collier Cheltenham, Gloucestershire

Harry must not fight.(Prince Harry)(Letter to the editor)
May 5, 2007... Sir: Allow me, a Frenchman, to express my astonishment and my concern at the thought that the British army could send a royal prince to the front in Iraq. He will immediately be considered as a privileged target by your adversaries -- and not...

The EU elephant.(Letter to the editor)
May 5, 2007... Sir: Rod Liddle ('A normal trip with Worst Late Western', 28 April) wondered why John Major's government, in the shape of Michael Heseltine, privatised the railways. It was the EU, of course, under the separation of rail ownership -- EC...

Parental professions.(Letter to the editor)
May 5, 2007... Sir: Charles Moore is right about the jokes made regarding the jobs that other people's parents do (The Spectator's Notes, 28 April). My father was a professional musician who played viola in the Royal Philharmonic and, later, the BBC Symphony...

Rich and paw.(Letter to the editor)
May 5, 2007... Sir: In last week's Style & Travel section, Victoria Mather gets socially airborne about dog names and breeds. She says dukes have labradors called Purdey, while dustmen have pitbulls called Tyson. I am a youthful 63-year-old colonial...

As an expat Scot, I know how Scottish ministers lost touch with Scotland.
May 5, 2007... There is a thing that many Scots do when they meet with other Scots. They start to sound more Scottish. Their consonants either grow jagged or fade away all together, their vowels twist, collude and extend. They start to say 'aye' in place of...

The elder statesman of open skies.(Sir Michael Bishop)
May 5, 2007... In his measured, softly spoken way, Sir Michael Bishop is furious with the Conservative party for its plans to ration air travel. 'There are few things less edifying than watching politicians jumping on a passing bandwagon, ' says the...

Let us choose our own dustmen.
May 5, 2007... Never mind how often the dustbins are emptied, this week's elections should have been about who empties them. Now that we can choose our phone company and our power supplier, it's time for town halls to allow us to choose what services we want...

Make a date at the destination station.(Eurostar)
May 5, 2007... If you have a long-lost Continental lover, you have a little under six months to arrange the perfect reunion under the clock at St Pancras on 14 November. That is the date when Eurostar will commence its new service along the full length of...

It's dotcom boom-time again - but can Soho really be the new Silicon Valley?
May 5, 2007... The heady days of 1999 are back. Once again it's fashionable to work for an internet start-up, even more so if you're a part of the so-called 'Web 2.0' bonanza. (For those who may worry that they've missed some kind of software...

A different class.(air travel)
May 5, 2007... Inhis novel The Information, Martin Amis gives the best account I have ever read of plane envy. Richard Tull, the unsuccessful writer, sits on a transatlantic flight in economy class: 'His seat was non-aisle, non-window and above all...

Plastic fantastic.(cosmetic surgeon Nelly Gauthier)
May 5, 2007... Botox is so commonplace now that you would think a six-year-old child could administer it. According to the Parisian cosmetic surgeon, Doctor Nelly GauthierHazan, who is known in France as the botox queen of Europe, this is the problem. ...

Posh tots.
May 5, 2007... 'When Brooklyn Beckham wears a new outfit we get telephone calls asking who designed it, ' says Dina Kingsman, the head buyer at the Harrods Baby Department. 'And we sell out.' She waves calmly at the photographs of designer babywear splattered...

Rich pickings.
May 5, 2007... Years ago, when I got my first allotment, friends and acquaintances used to vie and jostle for invitations to dinner, or a barbeque, especially during the summer or autumn. I am a good cook, it's true -- keen and solid rather than flamboyant --...

The world's best concierge.(Steven Ceschia of the San Domencio Palace)
May 5, 2007... We've just returned from a short break in Taormina, Sicily, and the person who made our trip so memorable was a tall, wiry man called Steven Ceschia. He's not a tour operator or a personal friend or even a friend of a friend, but during the...

A cut above.(women and shooting)
May 5, 2007... It's a curious fact about 21st-century England that as we get more and more uppity about animal rights, so blood sports (especially pheasant shooting) become more and more fashionable. Shooting is no longer just for posh folk, or for farmers --...

The visit.(personal narrative; on returning home)(The Shiva Naipaul memorial prize)(Personal account)
May 5, 2007... I wish to write about a place of which I know everything yet nothing, where everything is familiar yet strange, a place where I feel I go too often, but never quite enough. This place is the same for everyone, only different. It is called,...

A change of weather.(Book review)
May 5, 2007... AUSTERITY BRITAIN , 1945-51 by David Kynaston Bloomsbury, [pounds sterling]25, pp. 692, ISBN 9780747579854 . [pounds sterling]20 (plus [pounds sterling]2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 One day in July 1945, a public schoolboy with a straw hat on...

Challenging the Kremlin.(Book review)
May 5, 2007... THE LITVINENKO FILE by Martin Sixsmith Macmillan, [pounds sterling]16.99, pp. 311, ISBN 9780230531543 . [pounds sterling]13.59 (plus [pounds sterling]2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 BLOWING UPRUSSIA by Alexander Litvinenko and Yuri Felshtinsky...

The plot thickens.(book 'The Noble Revolt: The Overthrow of Charles I')(Book review)
May 5, 2007... THE NOBLE REVOLT : THE OVERTHROW OF CHARLES Iby John Adamson Orion, [pounds sterling]25, pp. 742, ISBN 9780297842621 . [pounds sterling]20 (plus [pounds sterling]2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 John Adamson's The Noble Revolt asserts the crucial...

At the feast.(book 'Tearing Down The Wall of Sound')(Book review)
May 5, 2007... TEARING DOWN THE WALL OF SOUND by Mick Brown Bloomsbury, [pounds sterling]18.99, pp. 502, ISBN 9780747572435 . [pounds sterling]15.19 (plus [pounds sterling]2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 In 2003, two days after his now infamous interview with...

Hitler's natural accomplice.(Book review)
May 5, 2007... LENI : THE LIFE AND WORK OF LENI RIEFENSTAHL by Steven Bach Little, Brown, [pounds sterling]25, pp. 386, ISBN 9780316861113 . [pounds sterling]20 (plus [pounds sterling]2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 Steven Bach justifies his new biography of Leni...

How the catastrophe happened.(Book review)
May 5, 2007... THE OCCUPATION OF IRAQ : WINNING THE WAR, LOSING THE PEACE by Ali A. Allawi Yale, [pounds sterling]18.99, pp. 518, ISBN 9780300110159 . [pounds sterling]15.19 (plus [pounds sterling]2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 Ali A. Allawi has spent much of...

Fantasy with a moral base.(Book review)
May 5, 2007... A TRANQUIL STAR by Primo Levi, translated by Ann Goldstein and Alessandra Bastagli Penguin, [pounds sterling]20, pp. 164, ISBN 9780713999556 . [pounds sterling]16 (plus [pounds sterling]2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 A Tranquil Star is a...

The unkindest cut.(Book review)
May 5, 2007... PANAMA FEVER : THE BATTLE TO BUILD THE CANAL by Matthew Parker Hutchinson, [pounds sterling]20, pp. 444, ISBN 9780091797041 . [pounds sterling]16 (plus [pounds sterling]2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 From the day in 1513 that Balboa stared at the...

Only obeying orders.(Book review)
May 5, 2007... THE LUCIFER EFFECT by Philip Zimbardo Ebury, [pounds sterling]18.99, pp. 551, ISBN 9781844535776 . [pounds sterling]15.19 (plus [pounds sterling]2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 Would you ever torture somebody? 'Of course not', you say. The...

The end of merriment.(Book review)
May 5, 2007... DECENCY AND DISORDER : THE AGE OF CANT , 1789-1837 by Ben Wilson Faber, [pounds sterling]25, pp. 400, ISBN 9780571224685 . [pounds sterling]20 (plus [pounds sterling]2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 'Political correctness', which divides and galls...

Not wearing well.(The Women's Room)(Critical essay)
May 5, 2007... Mary Kenny, a founding member of the Irish Women's Liberation Movement, revisits The Women's Room after 30 years The Women's Room (being a correction to the concept of 'the Ladies' Room'), written by Marilyn French and first published in...

Notes from the Underground.(Book review)
May 5, 2007... MALVINAS REQUIEM by Rodolfo Fogwill, translated by Nick Caistor and Amanda Hopkinson Serpent's Tail, [pounds sterling]14.95, pp. 154, ISBN 9781852429652 Armadillos dig, that's what they do best, but the three-banded variety from South...

Facing the music.
May 5, 2007... It suddenly occurs to me, with a jolt, that I have been writing about pop music for The Spectator for 20 years. This makes me the fifth (or possibly sixth, since I am bound to have forgotten someone) longest continuously serving columnist on...

Timeless verities.(exhibitions)(Buckinghamshire County Museum; Jonathan Clark)
May 5, 2007... Clear Skies and Storm Clouds: Visions of Buckinghamshire between the Wars Buckinghamshire County Museum, Aylesbury, until 2 June The Flower Paintings: Ivon Hitchens Jonathan Clark, 18 Park Walk, SW10, until 18 May Marylebone is the...

At one with nature.(Yorkshire Sculpture Park)
May 5, 2007... Yorkshire Sculpture Park is the first and best of the breed in the British Isles. Since 1977 it has activated 500 acres of undulating land between Barnsley and Wakefield in a unique way. A man-made upper and lower lake, with a weir and cascade...

Dead end.(movie 'The Upside of Anger')(Movie review)
May 5, 2007... The Upside of Anger 15, Nationwide The Upside of Anger stars Joan Allen (the wonderful, wonderful Joan Allen, that is) as Terry Wolfmeyer, a Michigan housewife whose husband of 20 years appears to have left her and their four daughters for...

Simple and sumptuous.(Theater review)
May 5, 2007... Triple Bill Royal Opera House I wish the term 'ballet-theatre' had not already been snatched and (mis)used by dance historians, for there is no better way to define Will Tuckett's art: his creations are to ballet what dance-theatre is to...

Download dilemma.(BBC; classical music)
May 5, 2007... The issue of downloading classical music from the BBC for free represents a typically modern dilemma. On the face of it, why shouldn't the BBC offer back to the public recordings in which the BBC owns the copyright and which the public...

Preachy prig.(Owen Wingrave)(Opera review)
May 5, 2007... Owen Wingrave Linbury Studio Britten's penultimate opera, Owen Wingrave, has always been the Cinderella in that area of his work, and the production of it at the Linbury Studio in the Royal Opera House is unlikely to change that. Britten...

Poetic justice.
May 5, 2007... A teasing approach to the topical problem of immigration was aired on Radio Three late on Sunday night. 'Denis Thatcher, my father, brings early tea. / Margaret then gets up and makes breakfast for all Britain -- even for foreigners'. The...

Our island story.(Television program review)
May 5, 2007... Victoria's Empire (BBC1, Sunday) is the BBC's new Palinesque travelogue series in which comedienne Victoria Wood goes from exotic location to exotic location chatting to the locals, making wry observations and being mildly funny. But there's at...

Trouble at club.(Pug's Club)
May 5, 2007... New York It's been a hellish week for Pug's Club. A week in which I was unable to lend my good offices against the violent outbreak of disapprobation and impropriety. What has been until today a relatively smooth path to the great and most...

Devon occupation.(Short story)
May 5, 2007... Of the 35 wedding guests, one other person, I noticed, was wearing a suit. On the strength of our being the only men in suits, I went over as the cake was being cut and introduced myself. He was an elderly man with ascetic features under a...

The great escape.(Mongolia)
May 5, 2007... Gobi Desert When tourists from the world's crowded cities first encounter Mongolia's steppe, an ocean of grass empty of humans, they frequently turn hysterical. They weep, strip naked and run about like idiots. My own urge to do this was...

SPECTATOR MINI-BAROFFER.(Buyers guide)
May 5, 2007... Stone, Vine and Sun, a modestly sized operation near Winchester, keeps winning awards as the best independent wine merchant, and I'm not surprised. There's a nimbleness to these smaller companies; chaps (or chapesses) whizz off to investigate...

A close shave.(Buyers guide)
May 5, 2007... I've never been one to look on the morning shave as a chore. We males have few rituals to enjoy, and those few minutes spent with badger brush and blade, rare and precious scents wafting in the steam about our heads, are a magnificent start to...

Guilty pleasures.(Square Pie)
May 5, 2007... When is it hip to be square? When you are a pie of course. On a wintry Friday lunchtime, Square Pie's concession is easily the most popular in Selfridges' foodhalls. The queue is in serious danger of snaking its way on to the street...

Virginia's Historic Triangle.
May 5, 2007... They call it Virginia's Historic Triangle, this tiny corner of the United States bounded by Jamestown, Yorktown and Colonial Williamsburg, and the region has been en fete for months, commemorating the 400th anniversary of the first permanent...

HOTEL OF THE WEEK.
May 5, 2007... THE WILLIAMSBURG INN 136 East Francis Street Williamsburg, VA 23185 Tel. +1 757 229 1000 www. lhw. com/WilliamsburgInn For further information visit www. jamestown1607. org or www. colonialwilliamsburg. com

Good Arthur Milton.(In memoriam)
May 5, 2007... In those fresh, expectant springtimes of long ago, the last week of April was the very quintessence of the changeover -- the week he would have bid adieu to the raucous wintery fever-pitch of Highbury and its stately marble halls, sling his...

Goodbye to all that.(Prime Minister Tony Blair)
May 12, 2007... I tends, as it began, with a political conjuring trick. The splicing together of Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness must, by any standards, rank as one of the most extraordinary achievements in recent politics, and reflects, among other things,...

DIARY.(Personal account)
May 12, 2007... I'm full of hurrahs, huzzahs, yippee-kiyays and general end-of-term jubilation now that this gruelling 30-week US tour of Legends has finally ended. To say it's been tough is an understatement: 25 cities in 30 weeks, eight shows in six...

DIARY OF A NOTTING HILL NOBODY.(Diary entry)
May 12, 2007... MONDAY Everyone trying their best to look 'sociocentric' (Mr Letwin's orders), but we are all secretly dreading this week. Most of us have never known any other Leader. I will be glad when it's over. Feels a bit like the time we all went down...

THE SPECTATOR'S NOTES.
May 12, 2007... Tony Blair gives a date for his departure. Many say that he would have been able to stay if he had not supported the war in Iraq. But what would have happened in British politics if he had opposed the war? He would for the first time have been...

Alastair Campbell told the crowd: 'Unite behind Gordon to win'. But can they?(Gordon Brown)
May 12, 2007... When John Reid was asked if he'd stand for Labour party leader, he would always give the same sort of reply. 'I have a life outside politics, ' he told me at the last Labour conference. 'I play the guitar, I play piano. I have a house in...

Can Brown break with the Blairite past? Yes, he can.
May 12, 2007... Barbra Streisand concludes her wonderful rendition of Ebb and Kanter's 'My Coloring Book' with a line that might well be added to this issue's goodbye to Tony Blair: 'This is the man, the one I depended on, colour him gone'. Looking ahead,...

Ancient & modern.
May 12, 2007... Now that the Oxford, Cambridge and Royal Society of Arts Examination Board (OCR) proposes to scrap the last remaining A-level in ancient history, it is time to consider what the purpose of history is. The ancient Greeks invented the...

The etiquette of a black sheep's wink.(white-tie occassions)
May 12, 2007... Before last Monday's state banquet for the Queen in Washington, it was being put about that President Bush didn't want it to be a white-tie affair. 'We sort of had to convince him a little bit, ' the First Lady, Laura Bush, said on ABC...

'We're in a state of denial in Africa'.(wildlife conservation)(Interview)
May 12, 2007... Richard Leakey never looked like he was going to mellow much with age. For the past 40 years he has been one of the most vital, energetic, tenacious and inflammatory figures on the African scene. When barely out of his teens, he made his name...

A Saga holiday free from 'yoof ' is a basic human right.
May 12, 2007... The first story I ever sold to a Fleet Street newspaper was about a friend of mine, Mark, who worked as a tour guide for Club 18-30 holidays. We shared a sort of semi-legal squat in east London with a coterie of similarly malnourished,...

GLOBAL WARNING.(environmental protection)
May 12, 2007... Theodore Dalrymple begins a new column -- on globalisation, moronic technology and modernity in general. The environment is what we all live in, of course, but to judge by their behaviour the British don't think much of it. They can't see...

Nothing ventured, nothing gained - although it's better to be safe than sorry.
May 12, 2007... To impart wisdom in the shape of a proverb, adults tend to adopt a trite, sing-song voice. In such a voice I was told as a child that 'pennies add up to pounds' -- and found the wit to reply in sing-song treble: 'penny-wise, pound-foolish'. ...

Britain should come first.(Letter to the editor)
May 12, 2007... Sir: Reading Clemency Burton-Hill's 'Cameron is taking on Brown -- in Rwanda' (5 May) I felt my blood boil. I have every sympathy with the people of Rwanda but surely Conservative MPs' time would be much better spent grappling with the issues...

Power to the EU.(European Union)(Brief article)
May 12, 2007... Sir: John Laughland's pro-Europeans justify the European Union's existence because it has created peace in Europe. But proEuropeans cannot, any longer, use the 'peace argument' to support their case, for peace has now -- we hope -- been...

Wait in line.(in-patient waiting)(Brief article)
May 12, 2007... Sir: Average waiting times for an operation are not two weeks longer now than they were under Mrs Thatcher as Fraser Nelson stated ('These elections will mark the final collapse of New Labour', 28 April). They are, in fact, around 16 weeks...

Capital offense.(Letter to the editor)
May 12, 2007... Sir: Rod Liddle ('Scottish Nationalism is compelling', 5 May) suffers from a Londoners' depressing delusion that West Country dwellers should demonstrate servility towards those joining the weekend and summer-long invasion of the west by swarms...

In the know.(Letter to the editor)
May 12, 2007... Sir: Andrew Taylor (Books, 5 May) writes in his review that Martin Sixsmith was right to suggest that Litvinenko's murder was not something that Putin directly ordered. Can you imagine that when the American troops were entering Iraq, President...

Right time, right place.(Letter to the editor)
May 12, 2007... Sir: Paul Johnson's reflections on space, time and God (And Another Thing, 28 April) are nicely summed up in the saying 'Time and space are God's way of stopping everything from happening all at once and all in the same place'. I don't know who...

The real driving force in the battle for ABN.
May 12, 2007... Most of the young men working on 'hedge fund alley', the narrow streets leading away from Berkeley Square in Mayfair, have expensive but unsinister ambitions. They'd like a new Aston Martin DB7, preferably convertible. They'd like a swanky new...

Sell Madrid, buy Berlin.
May 12, 2007... For some years now it has been fashionable for fund managers investing in Europe to consider the entire Eurozone as one great big market divided up not by national boundaries but by industry. They see the choice not as between investing in...

'It's a feeding frenzy. There's so much money'.(real estate)
May 12, 2007... Peter Rollings is one of those glowingly fit and forceful people who emit an unrelenting positive energy into the air around them. 'Yes, energy is my big thing, ' he says, enthusiastically. 'I don't see the point of being down. Energy is...

The party's almost over - but not in the land of the weeping camel.(investments in Mongolia)
May 12, 2007... The Dow Jones Industrial Average of leading US stocks passed 13200 for the first time last week, after its strongest run (23 rises in 26 sessions) since 1955. The S&P 500, a broader indicator, stood at just over 1500, a fraction below the...

The lion or the donkey?(Gairbaldi: Invention of a Hero)(Book review)
May 12, 2007... GARIBALDI : INVENTION OF A HERO by Lucy Riall Yale, [pounds sterling]25, pp. 482, ISBN 9780300112122 . [pounds sterling]20 (plus [pounds sterling]2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 Giuseppe Garibaldi must be among the most commemorated secular...

A rector wrecked.(Sunday at the Cross Bones)(Book review)
May 12, 2007... SUNDAY AT THE CROSS BONES by John Walsh Fourth Estate, [pounds sterling]12.99, pp. 470, ISBN 9780007139322 . [pounds sterling]10.39 (plus [pounds sterling]2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 John Walsh's new novel is a paradoxically enjoyable account...

Kicking a man when he's down.(Rumsfeld: An American Disaster)(Book review)
May 12, 2007... RUMSFELD : AN AMERICAN DISASTER by Andrew Cockburn Verso, [pounds sterling]17.99, pp. 247, ISBN 9781844671281 The desire to wage war as if it were keyhole surgery is, after a certain fashion, a laudable one. It indicates that a government...