Spectator articles from November 2006

Spectator archives from November 2006

Brown's green dilemma.(Gordon Brown)
November 4, 2006... The publication of the Stern report on the economics of climate change was a deeply significant political punctuation mark. On Monday Tony Blair declared that the document was 'the most important report on the future which I have received...

DIARY.(Personal account)
November 4, 2006... I've been doing a stupid amount of travelling recently. First to Dublin to appear on The Late Late Show, the world's longest running chat show. It's a televisual extravaganza; Ireland's answer to Parkinson, Question Time and Trisha all...

The Queen's Speech will be just a holding statement, as Whitehall waits for Gordon.(Gordon Brown )
November 4, 2006... There is something comically surreal about the ten-year plans Tony Blair has commissioned across his Cabinet. A Prime Minister who will not last another ten months is asking his Cabinet to agree a strategy in four areas of policy. No one...

THE SPECTATOR'S NOTES.(yesteryear population growth doom predictions and today's global warming catastrophe predictions)(Editorial)
November 4, 2006... 'It's a milestone round his neck', I heard a football manager saying on the Today programme. It was not what he meant to say, but it seems apposite to my own case, since I am writing this on my 50th birthday. This bittersweet event gives...

DIARY OF A NOTTING HILL NOBODY.(Diary entry)
November 4, 2006... MONDAY We have to stop Gordon from stealing the environment! It was Dave's idea to save the planet. It's theft, pure and simple, what Labour is doing. Jed has written 'Ownership' in big green letters on the whiteboard. We've all got to...

How to build the peace: the King of the Nation Builders reveals all.(Paddy Ashdown)
November 4, 2006... You send an ex-Lib Dem leader to the Balkans for three and a half years, and he comes back the King of Nation Builders. Not that 'nation-building' is a term much liked by Paddy Ashdown, former High Representative of the International...

Is Oxford about to get rid of its Vice-Chancellor?(John Hood)
November 4, 2006... Forget Tony Blair's problems for a moment - Sir Paul McCartney's too - and concentrate instead on those of a rather more cerebral national figure: the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford, Dr John Hood. Word from the university is that his days in office...

If you think the mid-terms don't matter, think again.(Column)
November 4, 2006... Love Tony Blair or hate him, you have to concede that he's got one thing right. The Prime Minister has always said that there is more to fear from an American retreat from engagement with the world than from American over-reach. In the...

We should learn from Islam's advance.
November 4, 2006... With the US heading towards a painful defeat in Iraq, the Taleban reconstituted, Iran proceeding on its nuclear path, the 'democratisation' of Islamic states a nohoper, and the liberties taken by Muslims of the diaspora on the increase, Islam...

Jonathan Ross's gag about Heather's leg was funny because it was forbidden.(Heather Mills McCartney)(Column)
November 4, 2006... Amputees have been getting a terribly bad press of late. Until recently, people missing a limb here or there were rather admired for the fortitude with which they struggled on through life; one was reminded quite automatically - upon...

Ancient & modern.(political power)
November 4, 2006... When an emotional Tony Blair bade farewell to the Labour party conference, he said how hard it was to give up, but needs must. The ancients too knew all about the love of power: but at least there was a serious price to pay for failure. Today's...

A trial that will decide the future of Kenya.(Thomas Cholmondeley, black, white rift)
November 4, 2006... The sun is rising lazily over Soysambu, a private estate which yawns across 100,000 acres of Kenya's Rift Valley. Out of the corner of my eye I watch a gazelle lollop towards the horizon, where Lake Elementaita shimmers against the dramatic...

The word 'faith' has been hijacked by those unsettled by 'religion'.
November 4, 2006... Leafing through a newspaper last week, I noticed two headlines above two news reports. The first was about Christian and Muslim schools and the government's proposed new measures. It was headlined 'Johnson U-turn on faith schools'. The...

Iraq: why the media turned.(Letter to the editor)
November 4, 2006... From Jonathan Mirsky Sir: William Shawcross ('Leaving Iraq would court disaster', 28 October) rolls out the stabin-the-back accusation that the media 'helps only those violent extremists' trying to destroy Iraq. But the media initially...

Why not Prince Yusuf?(Letter to the editor)
November 4, 2006... From Joseph Askew Sir: Tim Walker ('Charles, the first multicultural monarch?', 28 October) asks whether Prince Charles will be the first British monarch to have a multi-faith coronation. It is worth pointing out that Charles has failed to take...

Universities are for scholars.(Letter to the editor)
November 4, 2006... From Martin Hogg Sir: James Shaw's critique ('I am a new kind of university drop-out', 28 October) makes for depressing reading. If his 'premier league' university did indeed give him little or no work to do in the first term, if prizes were...

Paterfamilial progress.(Letter to the editor)
November 4, 2006... From Osman Streater Sir: Rachel Johnson ('To be expelled is the mark of genius', 28 October) informs us that 'I have asked almost everyone I know but, apart from my brother and my editor Matthew d'Ancona, I can find very few head boys or house...

The wrong rings.(Letter to the editor)
November 4, 2006... From Wynne Weston-Davies Sir: The BBC4 docudrama Longford was one of the best things on television for a long time but it perpetuated a current television solecism, in that Lord Longford was shown wearing a wedding ring. He did not, as many...

Men with guns are the new dotcoms.(Aegis Defence Services, online gun dealing)
November 4, 2006... Sitting behind his smartly fashioned desk in one of the new, antiseptic office blocks that line London's Victoria Street, Tim Spicer looks the very model of the modern entrepreneur. He talks smoothly about service delivery, market share and...

A loony litigant's dream come true.(Companies Bill, corporate governance)
November 4, 2006... Excuse me if I pour some cold water on the rather triumphalist anniversary celebrations of Big Bang over the last couple of weeks. There was a general assumption that the deregulated City is in rude health and, furthermore, that America's...

Fear of flying: why green alarmists are wrong.(airline travel and environment)
November 4, 2006... Vapour trails across the autumn sky have become the equivalent of the fortune-teller's tea leaves, spelling ecological doom. It's the one thing that David Cameron and David Miliband seem to agree upon: cheap air travel will inundate the Earth's...

A post-industrial revolution on the banks of the river that has seen everything.(NewcastleGateshead, River Tyne)
November 4, 2006... The relationship between Newcastle and Gateshead, proud communities separated by a majestic stretch of the River Tyne, has never been harmonious. J.B. Priestley may have come from Bradford, but he spoke for most of Newcastle when he remarked...

Why fur is back in fashion.
November 4, 2006... For the first few years of my teenage life I kept my fingers crossed that my Russian second cousin-in-law once removed would turn up her toes and leave me her collection of fur coats. She did both things in time for my 16th birthday. A box...

Suits me.(men's clothing)
November 4, 2006... For a brief spell in my youth I used 'suit' as a term of abuse. I used to conspire with my friends to arrive at a bar 'before the suits arrived' by which I meant the identikit office workers who I felt drained any bar of its ambience. Since...

Blissed out.(higher end spas)
November 4, 2006... Economists have a term for the spending habits of the clientele at the Sloane Avenue outpost of Bliss, the Manhattan-based spa chain that is bringing American (aka Olympic) standards of personal grooming to women in London. And perhaps if I...

A close shave.(Trumper's salon)
November 4, 2006... I had forgotten I had a phobia about razor blades when I agreed to be shaved at George F. Trumper in Mayfair. It was only after waiting for half an hour in one of three ex-headmaster chairs which lined a wall heaving with hunting prints that...

High society.(Oxonian Society, New York)
November 4, 2006... Americans love clubs the way some Englishmen love clubs, but they love them without the constipated, halfproud, half-shameful secretiveness of the English clubman. That's why the Oxonian Society, a new club founded to bring a slice of Oxford...

Club class.(Marbella Club, Marbella )
November 4, 2006... Sometime in the early 1990s - while employed by the Sunday Telegraph - I was sent to report on how Marbella's fortunes were being rebuilt by a medallionman once jailed for his part in the construction of a building which collapsed killing 86...

The end of iPod?
November 4, 2006... I remember the moment when I knew that the iPod had truly taken over the world. Way back in February I was walking home from a university club night. As I made my way down the Strand, I noticed a couple 'making out' in the doorway of a...

Beautiful sounds from the boondocks.(Janacek, vol. 1)(Book review)
November 4, 2006... JANACEK, VOLUME I by John Tyrrell Faber, [pounds sterling]60, pp. 971, ISBN0571175384 . [pounds sterling]48 (plus [pounds sterling]2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 Leos Janacek was a familiar and even commonplace type. We all know a provincial...

On an unstoppable bandwagon.(First Lady)(Book review)
November 4, 2006... FIRST LADY by Michael Dobbs Headline, [pounds sterling]17.99, pp. 372, ISBN 0755326830 . [pounds sterling]14.39(plus [pounds sterling]2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 Why, oh why, Michael Dobbs, didn't you write this book two years ago? A crash...

The penitential pen.(Unlocking the Prison Muse: The Inspirations and Effects of Prisoners' Writing in Britain)(Book review)
November 4, 2006... UNLOCKING THE PRISON MUSE : THE INSPIRATIONS AND EFFECTS OF PRISONERS' WRITING IN BRITAIN by Julian Broadhead Cambridge Academic, [pounds sterling]19.95, pp. 245, ISBN 1903499267 Throughout the summer I railed continually against a coterie...

Versailles by the Potomac.(State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III)(Book review)
November 4, 2006... STATE OF DENIAL by Bob Woodward Simon & Schuster, [pounds sterling]18.99, pp. 560, ISBN 0743295668 Bob Woodward is famous for persuading people to be indiscreet. This book comprises the collected indiscretions of a large number of...

Looking on the dark side.(The Water's Lovely)(Book review)
November 4, 2006... THE WATER'S LOVELY by Ruth Rendell Hutchinson, [pounds sterling]17.99, pp. 295, ISBN 0091797284 . [pounds sterling]14.39 (plus [pounds sterling]2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 Ruth Rendell has been writing crime fiction for more than 40 years,...

Men worth remembering.(The Daily Telegraph Military Obituaries, vol. 2)(Book review)
November 4, 2006... THE DAILY TELEGRAPH MILITARY OBITUARIES, BOOK II edited by David Twiston Davies Grub Street, [pounds sterling]17.99, pp. 416, ISBN 1904943608 . [pounds sterling]14.39 (plus [pounds sterling]2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 On 8 November 1917...

Doctor, diplomat, spy, philosopher.(Europe's Physician: The Various Life of Sir Theodre De Mayerne)(Book review)
November 4, 2006... EUROPE'S PHYSICIAN : THE VARIOUS LIFE OF SIR THEODORE DE MAYERNE by Hugh Trevor-Roper Yale, [pounds sterling]25, pp. 438, ISBN 0300112637 . [pounds sterling]20 (plus [pounds sterling]2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 One of the best lectures I ever...

Keeping cool over Wagner.(On Opera)(Book review)
November 4, 2006... ON OPERA by Bernard Williams Yale, [pounds sterling]19.99, pp. 224, ISBN 0300089767 . [pounds sterling]15.99 (plus [pounds sterling]2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 Opera has fallen out of fashion as a recreation of our humanist intellectuals. Even...

Jizz, blood and power.(Arabs: A New Perspective)(Book review)
November 4, 2006... ARABS : A NEW PERSPECTIVE by Mark Allen Continuum, [pounds sterling]14.99, pp.142, ISBN 0826490557 . [pounds sterling]11.99 (plus [pounds sterling]2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 Had this excellent little book been available to American policy...

Heroines and horrors.(The Complete Book of Aunts)(Book review)
November 4, 2006... THE COMPLETE BOOK OF AUNTS by Rupert Christiansen Faber, [pounds sterling]12.99, pp. 266, ISBN 0571226558 . [pounds sterling]10.39 (plus [pounds sterling]2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 It is possible that my interest in this book was heightened by...

A tasteless ham from Parma.(Parmigianino)(Book review)
November 4, 2006... PARMIGIANINO by David Ekserdjian Yale, [pounds sterling]50, pp. 303, ISBN 0300108273 . [pounds sterling]40 (plus [pounds sterling]2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 Girolamo Francesco Mazzola was born in Parma (hence the tag 'Il Parmigianino'), and...

Oddball.
November 4, 2006... The stripy blazer doesn't match the pants belonging to his suit, the Hush Puppies worn for comfort, the rain mac - once his aunt's - tied by a length of string. Chelsea yuppies mistake him for a shuffling derelict on the Embankment, where he...

The case for the defence.(A History of English-Speaking Peoples since 1990)(Book review)
November 4, 2006... A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH -SPEAKING PEOPLES SINCE 1900 by Andrew Roberts Weidenfeld, [pounds sterling]25, pp. 736, ISBN 02970850768 . [pounds sterling]20 (plus [pounds sterling]2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 Hubris is followed by nemesis, and the...

The master of mistakes.(Tommy Cooper: Always Leave Them Laughing)(Book review)
November 4, 2006... TOMMY COOPER : ALWAYS LEAVE THEM LAUGHING by John Fisher HarperCollins, [pounds sterling]18.99, pp. 470, ISBN 139780007215102 . [pounds sterling]15.19 (plus [pounds sterling]2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 In more than half a century of television...

This side of the truth.(The View From Castle Rock)(Book review)
November 4, 2006... THE VIEW FROM CASTLE ROCK by Alice Munro Chatto, [pounds sterling]15.99, pp. 349, ISBN 0701179899 . [pounds sterling]12.79 (plus [pounds sterling]2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 In the Foreword she writes to her new book Alice Munro, Canada's best...

A lesson still worth learning.(Suez 1956)(Ends of Imperialism)(After Suez)(Book review)
November 4, 2006... SUEZ 1956 by Barry Turner Hodder, [pounds sterling]20, pp. 531, ISBN 0340837685 ENDS OF IMPERIALISM by Wm. Roger Louis Jr Tauris, [pounds sterling]24.50, pp. 1,065, ISBN 1845113098 AFTER SUEZ by Martin Woollacott Tauris, [pounds...

Going back to the books.(A Study in Greene)(Book review)
November 4, 2006... A STUDY IN GREENE by Bernard Bergonzi OUP, [pounds sterling]16.99, pp. 208, ISBN 0199291020 With almost 30 novels to his name, Graham Greene was a prolific chronicler of human faith and wretchedness. A writer of his stature requires a very...

What price George Meredith?
November 4, 2006... Another biography of Thomas Hardy, and, it seems a good one, by Claire Tomalin. But what is it about Hardy that so attracts biographers? There have been a good few of them, even in the last quarter century. Indeed Hardy ('little Tommy Hardy',...

Czech mate.(Leos Janacek's music, Charles Mackerras' performance)(Interview)
November 4, 2006... For a man who was told by Neville Cardus not to bother leaving Australia to find his true voice in Europe, Charles Mackerras has prospered to a degree that must have been unimaginable when he was growing up playing the oboe in Sydney. A knight...

The painter as king.(Diego Rodrguez de Silvay Vel[sz]zquez )
November 4, 2006... Vel[sz]zquez National Gallery, until 21 January 2007 (sponsored by Abbey) The first thing to be said is how good this exhibition looks upstairs in the main body of the National Gallery, hung in large, well-proportioned rooms, in natural...

Wonderfully mad.(James Ensor )
November 4, 2006... Ensor et les avant-gardes la mer PMMK (Musee de l'Art Moderne-sur-Mer), Ostend, until 25 February 2007 Everyone knows about the magnetism of Paris and New York in the annals of modern art, but Belgian painters such as Van de Velde, Toorop,...

Redalert.(Coppelia)(Dance review)
November 4, 2006... Coppelia Royal Ballet Despite its immense popularity, the ballet Coppelia is not a favourite with some dance practitioners. 'Beware of ballets with lots of red boots, ' the late Rudolf Nureyev often used to say, scoffing at the...

Fresh ears.(Love, Beatles' remix album)
November 4, 2006... We were on holiday last week for halfterm and, as so often when I have time off, I started to fret. What on earth was I going to write about in 'Olden but golden'? Mrs Spencer gets very cross about this sort of thing. 'If that's all you've got...

Thrilled to the core.(Peter Grimes)(Opera review)
November 4, 2006... Peter Grimes Opera North Germania Deutsche Oper, Berlin Bird of Night Linbury Studio No opera which is unquestionably major has so equivocal an effect on me as Peter Grimes, but for once seeing it in Leeds, in the astounding new production...

Cup-final collision.(Sixty Six)(Movie review)
November 4, 2006... Sixty Six (12a, nationwide) Yes, I know now that I should have seen Borat instead and, yes, I am kicking myself - although not too hard, as that would be silly - but Sixty Six seemed so up my Jewish, north London street that in the end I...

Faith talks.(Humphrys in Search of God)(Radio program review)
November 4, 2006... 'The special function of the intelligence requires total liberty, implying the right to deny everything, and allowing of no domination, ' wrote the French Jewish thinker Simone Weil in 1942, in the midst of the second world war. She went on,...

Royle class.(Quest)(The Royle Family)(In Search of Perfection)(The River Cottage Treatment)(Television program review)
November 4, 2006... I was in Zagreb last weekend. The city closes early on Saturday, so I ended up watching television in my hotel. Once you've flicked past German stock-market reports and volleyball from Belgrade, there's not a lot of choice, except one or two...

Good hare day.(hare delicacies)
November 4, 2006... In my early days as editor of the Field, I read an article submitted by one of the magazine's venerable hunting correspondents - the subject was harehunting and a day out with, I think, the Cambridgeshire Harriers - which mentioned that, in the...

Twelve to follow.(horse betting)
November 4, 2006... Investment decisions don't come easily and are all about value for money. Take the unfortunate fellow who lost his reproductive organ in an industrial accident. Having received some compensation he went to a surgeon. Could anything be done?...

Sign of the times.(Paris Hilton and family's story in a book)
November 4, 2006... New York This is so luminously beautiful, so hauntingly glamorous, that nail technicians, personal tattooists, wardrobe consultants and personal publicists the world over are waiting for it with their tongues hanging out. I am talking, of...

Puffed out.(clinical trial volunteer)(Column)
November 4, 2006... 'We're getting closer to a new vaccine. Can you help finish it off?' Below this, a red, white and blue archery target with the word 'Flu' superimposed across the bull's-eye. Guy's Drug Research Unit, said the advertisement, is looking for...

Big, bold and everywhere.(garbage bins)
November 4, 2006... It is now nearly a year since we were invaded by aliens. Although they did not have the same air of childish innocence, they turned out to be more insidious than the Midwich Cuckoos. They came not singly, or even in battalions, but in pairs....

Growth industry.(Petersham Nurseries, Sansui Design, Martin Summers )
November 4, 2006... There's a splendid old Indian Rain tree in the garden at Petersham House, near Richmond-uponThames. The head gardener tells me it might have a couple of hundred years under its belt, and I like to think it was a Mr Warde, recorded as the owner...

Barefoot paradise.(Providenciales)
November 4, 2006... A travel editor who doesn't get out much may be an oxymoron but seeing the world vicariously through the lightbox is one of the perks of editing Conde Nast Traveller. A much-needed break from other people's holiday highs and lows became a near...

HOTELS OF THE WEEK.(Directory)(Brief article)
November 4, 2006... PARROT CAY RESORT Providenciales, Turks and Caicos Islands, British West Indies Tel: 001 649 946 7788 www. parrotcay. como. bz GRACE BAY CLUB Providenciales, Turks and Caicos Islands, British West Indies Tel: 001 649 946 5757 www....

Home, small home.(prices and rates of residential property )
November 4, 2006... The average price per square foot of residential property in London's Kensington and Chelsea now stands at [pounds sterling]1,010, which is barking. (Incidentally, it's a mere [pounds sterling]220 per square foot in Barking and Dagenham,...

HOT PROPERTIES.
November 4, 2006... THE STUDIO 16A GUNTER GROVE On the market for [pounds sterling]545,000 with John D. Wood in Chelsea (020 7352 1484). SLOANE AVENUE MANSIONS On the market for [pounds sterling]235,000 with Cluttons (020 7584 1771).

RESTAURANTS.(Bacchus)(Restaurant review)
November 4, 2006... Look, first off I'd just like to say that what follows has nothing to do with not being either hip or edgy. I am hip and edgy. Some days I'm so hip and edgy that's all there is to me: hip and edge. 'Wow, look at the hip and edge on that, '...

Close combat.(rugby)
November 4, 2006... Beginning this weekend, we are lumbered with the close combat of international rugby union just about all the way to next October and the World Cup final in Paris. Today Wales play Australia in Cardiff; tomorrow at Twickenham the lately pallid...

Let justice be done.(Saddam Hussain, Dhiren Barot trials and verdict)
November 11, 2006... The US mid-term election results have many lessons, but one of them, as Christopher Caldwell argues on page 14, is that most Americans believe that the war in Iraq is over, and that it has been lost. This reflects a broader, bone-deep...

DIARY.(fan mails, English language, Iraq visit)(Column)
November 11, 2006... Ring ring . . .'John Humphrys speaking.' 'Oh that's wonderful because I just know I can help you!' This has been happening a lot in the past week or two. Heaven knows how total strangers get my number, but they do. Maybe it's divine...

Reid 'wants some Etonian blood on his hands'. But so does Brown.(John Reid, Gordon Brown)
November 11, 2006... The most famous political quotations come not from politicians but the wickedness of headline writers. Although Jim Callaghan never said 'Crisis? What crisis?', the phrase stuck because it seemed to sum up perfectly his psychological denial...

DIARY OF A NOTTING HILL NOBODY.(United Kingdom politics)(Diary entry)(Column)
November 11, 2006... SUNDAY Am sleeping on the bunk bed at Dave and Sam's. The atmosphere is v tense. We don't know when they will come for us, but we know they will come and when they do we have to be ready. Miliband wasn't ready, and look what happened to him....

The message of this wipeout is that Americans believe they've lost the war.
November 11, 2006... Washington On Monday afternoon, President Bush addressed a crowd of several thousand Republican supporters in Pensacola, Florida. The appearance was meant to shore up the sputtering campaign of Charlie Crist, the Republican candidate to succeed...

The trial of a man like Saddam shouldn't be fair.(Saddam Hussein)
November 11, 2006... When Mohammed alUreybi, the presiding judge at the trial of Saddam Hussein, started reading out that the court sentenced Saddam to death for killing 148 inhabitants of the Shiite village of Dujail in 1982, Saddam interrupted him. Just as the...

'I've been arrested for peeling potatoes?'.(police station cell)(Column)
November 11, 2006... It's ten o'clock on a Saturday night. The custody centre at Charles Cross police station, Plymouth - normally the second busiest in Britain (after Glasgow) - is unusually quiet. The night shift - three custody sergeants, four detention...

'The neocons are just utopians on steroids'.(neoconservatives)
November 11, 2006... Hillary Clinton does not usually take a break from campaigning to praise the work of conservative intellectuals, but she broke the habit of a lifetime last week. When I caught up with John Hulsman, a rising star among the new generation of...

I'll never eat lunch in this town again.(lunch meetings)
November 11, 2006... As far as I'm concerned, the most chilling words in the English language, apart of course from the bloodcurdling cry of 'Mummeeee! Can we do fingerpainting?', are 'Let's have lunch!' Especially if the often phony exclamation is followed up...

Ancient & modern.(Roman occupation of Greece, Western occupation of Iraq)
November 11, 2006... Whatever the eventual result of the West's incursion into Iraq, the Iraqi people will have to rewrite their history to make sense of the occupation. Doubtless the West will try to influence the outcome - but surely not as cleverly as the Roman...

Ms Bland's joke wasn't funny, but it struck home.(Britons moving out of the nation in large numbers)
November 11, 2006... Apparently almost a million British citizens have left the country since 2000, to live somewhere else. Last year, according to the Office for National Statistics, 380,000 people left Britain, of whom about 200,000 were British citizens. At the...

Wrong about Oxford.(Letter to the editor)
November 11, 2006... From Bill Troop Sir: Oxford's new prize-winning graduate 'Charlie' Boss evidently did not learn enough during his time there ('Is Oxford about to get rid of its Vice-Chancellor?', 4 November). If he had, he would know that it is folly to...

Hot air on climate change.(Letter to the editor)
November 11, 2006... From Tristan Gooley Sir: I find myself among the weary majority who share a genuine concern for the environment and a mild revulsion at sensationalism on the subject. David Cameron in his article on Green Conservatism (4 November) is guilty of...

Heads they win.(Letter to the editor)
November 11, 2006... From Mitchell Symons Sir: Further to Rachel Johnson's claim that there is a paucity of ex-head boys and girls in public life ('To be expelled is the mark of genius', 28 October), please consider the following names: Sir Nicholas Serota...

For the love of life.(Letter to the editor)
November 11, 2006... From William Shawcross Sir: In his letter critical of my support for the US and British commitment to Iraq, Jonathan Mirsky asserts that the 'brutal truth', in Iraq as in Vietnam, 'is that the insurgents are far more willing to die than the...

Blair's war crimes.(Letter to the editor)
November 11, 2006... From J.G. Cluff Sir: I expect that I am not the only Spectator reader to have become exasperated by your consistent support for the Bush/Blair axis of incompetence in Iraq and Afghanistan. Is it not time for you to detach yourself from it? ...