Spectator articles from October 2003

Spectator archives from October 2003

Portrait of the week.
October 4, 2003... Mr Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, made a speech at the Labour part conference that pointedly made reference to 'Labour' 20 times and never to 'New Labour'; the party needed 'not just a programme but a soul'. His performance was...

Debt bomb.
October 4, 2003... Sir Ian McKellen's visits to Downing Street were supposedly to discuss gay rights. To study the Prime Minister's conference speech at Bournemouth, though, suggests another possibility: that our foremost Shakespearian actor has been giving Tony...

Diary.
October 4, 2003... Did you have a nice holiday? I know I did. Did you find yourself in a hotel bedroom in Naples looking after four children between the ages of two and six? Two girls and two boys, while everyone else went sightseeing. ('Look! There's a boy...

'More battered without but stronger within'? Pass the sick bag.(Politics)
October 4, 2003... There are times when there is no alternative but to throw up one's hands in despair and just confess that one is not up to the job. A plumber, sent to investigate a problem with the drains, is doing his client a favour if he admits that he...

The Spectator's notes.
October 4, 2003... The National Portrait Gallery's highly superior toilet book Heroes and Villains (accompanying a new exhibition, it offers 'pro' and 'anti' essays alongside illustrations of some 35 historical figures) contains something of a scoop: the last...

A party split from top to toe: Peter Hitchens says that there will be no credible opposition while the Tory party remains an impossible coalition of irreconcilables with no feeling for old Britain.
October 4, 2003... No power on earth can sustain an idea whose time has gone. Can we all please stop pretending that the Conservative party is worth saving or keeping, or that it can ever win another election? This delusion is an obstacle to the creation of...

Banned wagon: global: a weekly survey of world restrictions on freedom and free trade.(Brief Article)
October 4, 2003... The other day my email inbox included details of two special deals. One said, 'Increase your penis size', the other, 'Enlarge your breasts'. I would look a little silly, presumably, if I took up both offers. But then senders of unsolicited...

Britain under Brown: Simon Heffer says only the Tories can defend us against the revival of socialism planned by the Chancellor.
October 4, 2003... It was, as we now all know, Gordon Brown's definitive statement of his intention to be the next prime minister. His speech at Bournemouth gave an impression of positive leadership to a party that feels it has not had such a thing for some...

Move directly to jail: Ross Clark says the government punishes innocent companies and defends its own monopolies.
October 4, 2003... One of the Official Monster Raving Loony party's most coherent policies was to break up the Monopolies and Mergers Commission, on the grounds that it was insupportable that such a body should be allowed to operate without competition. It has...

The DIY test that proves BBC bias: Nicholas Boles demonstrates that although Auntie always gives the Tories equal airtime, she still leans heavily to the Left.
October 4, 2003... When any aspiring Tory orator sits down to compose a speech for the Conservative party conference, there is one rule that he never forgets. One device that he knows can instantly transform him into the next Heseltine. One trick that never...

How bad was Mussolini? Forza Italia senator Paolo Guzzanti condemns Fascism--and defends Silvio Berlusconi's assessment of Mussolini.
October 4, 2003... For much of the past month Italy has been lashed by a political, journalistic and emotional late summer storm of such intensity that it has verged on the paranormal. The storm was caused by the now notorious interview that Silvio Berlusconi...

Mind your language.
October 4, 2003... When I hear the word Internet, I reach for... words fail me. Veronica has been showing me round that dunces' playground. Pity the children who have to copy out bits for their homework! Lots of people on the Internet think Goebbels said,...

The Blairs.(Illustration)
October 4, 2003... THEY'RE WING MIRRORS. SO THAT I CAN SEE BEHIND ME!

Dead kitsch: the government has new ideas about burying the dead, but won't publish them because of the Iraq war. John Gibb says new thinking is badly needed.
October 4, 2003... My mother came from a family that refused to acknowledge its own mortality. Her only reference to death that I can remember was that 'cremation seemed to be a grubby way of disposing of one's leftovers'. To her, cemeteries were dignified...

Ancient & modern.(Brief Article)
October 4, 2003... Can one justify American intervention in the Middle East, both the wars themselves and the apparent establishment of a shadowy sort of American empire? If one accepts the force of the arguments the Romans used to justify their empire, the...

The treason of the beaks: Anthony Lipmann on the decision of Charterhouse, his former school, to sell the contents of its museum.
October 4, 2003... What's cooking at Charterhouse? Last month the school signed a franchise agreement with Starbucks for the operation of its tuck shop. There was harrumphing and puffing from old boys. Charterhouse seems to have been unfazed; but Starbucks pulled...

Purging the privileged: it hardly seems fair, says Rachel Johnson, but the new higher education watchdog, Steven Schwartz, is about to recommend discrimination against elite schools.
October 4, 2003... This government has tremendous confidence in the gunslingin' American way of doing things, and so we cannot pretend to be unduly surprised when it entrusts our crumblier institutions to Yankees, even if they do have beards. The Tube got Bob...

Watch out: the office management people are going to bully us into being nice.(Thought For The Day)
October 4, 2003... It was one year ago this week that I left the BBC. At the time, people thought it was because I'd written something unflattering--and therefore redolent of bias--about the Countryside Alliance. And that was, indeed, the official reason. But at...

A sad day for Tory England.(Media Studies)
October 4, 2003... Charles Moore is an old friend of mine, and I cannot claim to write about his eight-year editorship of the Daily, Telegraph with a great degree of objectivity. The task, however, must be attempted, since his departure is significant not only...

Radical drivers who did not know their left from their right.(And Another Thing)
October 4, 2003... Things may be more difficult nowadays, but in my time it was quite possible to go through life without driving. I dislike operating complex mechanical object and being dependent on them. In the army they tried to make me drive, or ride,...

A trip to the Moon accompanied by Debussy, Liszt and Wallace and Gromit.(Another Voice)
October 4, 2003... It was was pure coincidence that The Spectator should have landed itself with our own space correspondent--me--as chance witness to the launch of Europe's first trip to the Moon last Sunday morning. I was visiting an old friend who now...

Deluding themselves.(Letters)
October 4, 2003... From George Bathurst Sir: Melanie Phillips is right to assert that Blair is not a liar ('Honest Tony', 27 September). She's wrong to think that that's OK then. Blair is a dissimulator, tic and his henchmen choose their words very carefully...

In denial.(Letters)
October 4, 2003... From C. Francis Warren Sir: In the last two editions of The Spectator, we have had detailed examination of the BBC's EU bias, even if, as Peter Hitchens says, it is not only 'immensely subtle' but also perhaps 'almost never intentional'...

A lot to ask.(Letters)
October 4, 2003... From Michael Bright Sir: I would like the Conservative party conference to bring back Mr Nasty. I would like to hear that the burden of tax is to be reduced to 35 per cent of the national cake; immigration and asylum to be frozen pending a...

Sainthood on schedule.(Letters)
October 4, 2003... From Dimitri Cavalli Sir: In her otherwise interesting article, ('Go straight to Heaven', 21) September) Anne Sebba reports that the Vatican's plans to canonise Pope Pius XII are on hold because of the recurring allegations that he didn't...

Taki, FDR and the facts.(Letters)
October 4, 2003... From Lord Black of Crossharbour Sir: There were several inaccuracies in my friend Taki's version of the origins of the Pacific war in 1941 ('High life', 20 September). Japan imported 75 per cent of her oil from the United States and...

Biter bit.(Letters)
October 4, 2003... Front Simon Sinclair Sir: In trying to persuade his nanny to refer to his children's evening meal as 'dinner,' Damien McCrystal's snobbery overreaches itself ('First, weigh your nanny', 27 September). I've always understood that dinner is...

The vernacular Word.(Letters)
October 4, 2003... From B.D. Kelly Sir: Your correspondent Dr David Dendy (Letters, 13 September) suggests that Christians in the pre-Reformation Church were not free to read the Bible in their own tongue, One often hears this, but 18 editions of the whole...

The commissars of noise.(Letters)
October 4, 2003... From Nigel Rodgers Sir: Theodore Dalrymple ('Nasty, brutish and on credit', 20 September) is absolutely right to compare the 'constant thump of very loud pop music' in Birmingham's new supermall with the propaganda of totalitarian regimes....

Seeing off Steyn.(Letters)
October 4, 2003... From Stephen Masty Sir: After reading Mark Steyn's latest column ('If Clark wins--I'll quit', 27 September), am I alone among Spectator readers in sending a small donation to General Clark's campaign? S.J. Masty London SW1

Slogging to Byzantium.(W. B. Yeats: A Life: The Arch-Poet, 1915-1939)(Book Review)
October 4, 2003... W. B. YEATS: A LIFE: THE ARCH-POET, 1915-1939 by R. F. Foster Oxford University Press, 30 [pounds sterling], pp. 832, ISBN 0198184654 Yeats was a great poet who was also the industrious adept of a batso mystical philosophy. Do we have to...

He's the top.(Words Of Mercury)(Book Review)
October 4, 2003... WORDS OF MERCURY by Patrick Leigh Fermor John Murray, 20 [pounds sterling], pp. 274, ISBN 0719561051 The perfect anthology, like the perfect hors d'oeuvre, should turn us into gluttons. The many small dishes add up to a balanced an...

Happy band of brothers.(The Two Pund Tram)(Book Review)
October 4, 2003... THE TWO POUND TRAM by William Newton Bloomsbury, 12.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 192, ISBN 0747566976 Very occasionally one comes across a book which, in its unexpected delights, inspires one to leap about wild with praise, and rush out to...

The run-up to a giant leap.(Ten Days To D-Day)(Book Review)
October 4, 2003... TEN DAYS TO D-DAY by David Stafford LittleBrown, 20 [pounds sterling], pp. 366, ISBN 0376724777 World history is pitted with world wars. Last century was conceited enough to call its pair the First and Second. One of the turning-points of...

Battle versus work.(Arctic Summer)(Book Review)
October 4, 2003... ARCTIC SUMMER by E. M. Forster Hesperus, 6.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 87, ISBN 1843910616 The great popular success of Forster's Howards End, published in 1910, meant that he was under pressure to set to work on a new novel, and in the...

Vendetta to the very end.(The Mystery Of The Duchess Of Malfi)(Book Review)
October 4, 2003... THE MYSTERY OF THE DUCHESS OF MALFI by Barbara Banks Amendola Sutton Publishing, 20 [pound sterling], pp. 250, ISBN 0750928409 In the film Shakespeare in Love, the young John Webster is portrayed as a malevolent boy who delights in the...

Zimmerman bound or unbound?(Dylan's Vision Of Sin)(Book Review)
October 4, 2003... DYLAN'S VISION OF SIN by Christopher Ricks Viking, 25 [pound sterling], pp. 512, ISBN 067080133X What is going on here? What on earth is going on here? Christopher Ricks, the world's leading critic of poetry in English, Frank Kermode and...

Absolutely honest and utterly joyless.(The Lesser Evil: The Diaries of Victor Klemperer)(Book Review)
October 4, 2003... THE LESSER EVIL: THE DIARIES OF VICTOR KLEMPERER, 1945-59 edited by Martin Chalmers Weidenfeld, 25 [pound sterling], pp. 637, ISBN 1842127438 In 1940, before the ultimate horror of Nazism had kicked in, Victor Klemperer reflected on his...

The love that dared to speak its name.(The Friend)(Book Review)
October 4, 2003... THE FRIEND by Alan Bray Chicago University Press, distributed by John Wiley 28 [pound sterling], pp. 380, ISBN 0226071804 As you went into the tower door of the church at Marsh Baldon (Oxon), there used to be two wall-tablets. One was to...

An exceptional talent for failure.(The Curious Life Of Robert Hooke: The Man Who Measured London)(Book Review)
October 4, 2003... THE CURIOUS LIFE OF ROBERT HOOKE: THE MAN WHO MEASURED LONDON by Lisa Jardine HarperCollins, 25 [pound sterling], pp. 422, ISBN 0007149441 The charm of this unexceptionable book, subtitled gloomily but finely produced, is that it concerns...

The making of a professional.(Waugh Abroad)(Book Review)
October 4, 2003... WAUGH ABROAD by Evelyn Waugh Everyman's Library, 19.99 [pound sterling], pp. 1064 ISBN 1857152662 All the cliches are true: travel refreshes the taste for living; it brightens the jaded mind, it stimulates and deludes. The border that is...

Five of the best.(The Last Great Quest: Captain Scott's Antarctic Sacrifice)(Book Review)
October 4, 2003... THE LAST GREAT QUEST: CAPTAIN SCOTT'S ANTARCTIC SACRIFICE by Max Jones OUP, 20 [pound sterling], pp. 325, ISBN 0192804839 The blurb on the front of this mesmerising and superbly researched book reads, 'The first serious historical account...

Not such a low and dishonest decade.(The Roaring Nineties)(Book Review)
October 4, 2003... THE ROARING NINETIES by Joseph Stiglitz Allen Lane, 18.99 [pound sterling], pp. 389, ISBN 1854109308 If it is to be interesting, contemporary history has to be a battle between good guys and bad guys. In his The Roaring Nineties Professor...

Fire from heaven.(Pompeii)(Book Review)
October 4, 2003... POMPEII by Robert Harris Hutchinson, 17.99 [pound sterling], pp. 341, ISBN 0091779251 Of all the places that have from time to time been devastated by the powers of nature, few can hope to compete, for historical interest, with the cities...

For ever taking leave.(Martha Gellhorn: A Life)(Book Review)
October 4, 2003... MARTHA GELLHORN: A LIFE by Caroline Moorehead Chatto, 20 [pound sterling], pp. 550, ISBN 0701169516 Martha Gellhorn, an American who lost faith in America, was one of the most important war-reporters of the 20th century. She was not...

And now for my next trick ...(The Rottweiler)(Book Review)
October 4, 2003... THE ROTTWEILER by Ruth Rendell Hutchinson, 16.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 384, ISBN 0091799465 It may sound an odd comparison but a visit to Alan Ayckbourn's latest black comedy Sugar Daddies at Scarborough, coupled with reading Ruth...

Spillikins of wisdom.(Where There's A Will)(Book Review)
October 4, 2003... WHERE THERE'S A WILL by John Mortimer Penguin/Viking, 17.99 [pounds sterling]. 99, pp. 182, ISBN 0670913650 This is not exactly an autobiography--John Mortimer has written three already, one about old age--but more like a collection of...

Dark satanic mill.(The Clearing)(Book Review)
October 4, 2003... THE CLEARING by Tim Gautreaux Sceptre, 14.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 374, ISBN 0340828897 It is the early 1920s. Randolph Aldridge has come from Pennsylvania to inspect a sawmill in the swamps of Louisiana. When he finds that his older...

The Georgian way of death: an exhibition reveals how Dr Johnson faced the prospect of dying.(Arts)
October 4, 2003... The last days of the great essayist and dictionary-maker Dr Johnson were recorded in vivid detail by his biographer, James Boswell. Breathless and in pain, Johnson, aged 75, prepared himself for death with admirable courage. He had been plagued...

Beguiled by Rubens.
October 4, 2003... Peter Paul Rubens: A Touch of Brilliance Courtauld Institute, Somerset House, London WC2, until 8 February 2004 The subtitle of this splendid show in the Hermitage Rooms of Somerset House is plainly descriptive: 'Oil Sketches and...

In two minds about Boris.(Boris Godunov at the Royal Opera House)(Opera Review)
October 4, 2003... Boris Godunov Royal Opera House Thais ENO, Barbican Musorgsky's Boris Godunov is a master-piece; it would be absurd to deny that. Yet it is one about which I always find myself in two minds, except when I'm actually witnessing a great...

Not staying alive.(Pop music)(Robert Palmer, Warren Zevon)(Obituary)
October 4, 2003... Rock stars of a certain age seem to be keeling over all around us. Cause of death seems to change over the years. Thirty years ago it was drugs; 15 years ago it was Aids; now it's looking worryingly like old age. And amazingly, as in the real...

Wrecks, hulks and dilapidated buildings are the inspiration for Leonard Bennetts's new exhibition. at New Zealand House, 80 Haymarket, London SW1 (until 18 October).(Brief Article)
October 4, 2003... Wrecks, hulks and dilapidated buildings are the inspiration for Leonard Bennetts's new exhibition at New Zealand House, 80 Haymarket, London SW1 (until 18 October). An abstract painter who returned to nature in the 1960s, the New Zealand-born...

I was wrong.(The Hotel In Amsterdam at the Donmar)(Theater Review)
October 4, 2003... The Hotel In Amsterdam Donmar John Bull's Other Island Tricycle Some devotees of the theatre may know John Osborne backwards but for us lay-folk he seems barely worth bothering about. His genius gave us--what? That rancid...

Seriously bloody.(Titus Andronicus at Royal Shakespeare Theatre)(Theater Review)
October 4, 2003... Titus Andronicus Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, in repertoire until 7 November It might perhaps have been no more than coincidence that the RSC's riverside restaurant was serving beef-and-mush-room pie before the...

People used to call Prunella Clough (1919-99) a painter's painter, as if deliberately exclusing her from popular recognition.(Arts)(Brief Article)
October 4, 2003... People used to call Prunella Clough (1919-99) a painter's painter, as if deliberately exclusing her from popular recognition. But anyone with an open eye for beauty--for shape, colour, line and texture, or in other words the abstract qualities...

Testing times: Felicity Owen looks at how London's major museums are faring.(Arts)
October 4, 2003... Art has recently been wing with football for the headlines, the saving of another Raphael for the National Gallery causing as much controversy as a Beckham sold to Real Madrid for much the same consideration. In both worlds large capital sums...

Dramatic delights.(Television)
October 4, 2003... Sunday evening, and usually there's a choice between a gloomy, hard-hitting drama about social problems, probably on BBC2 or Channel 4, or else something light, frothy and as warming as a cup of cocoa on a chilly night. You'll find that on BBC1...

Not to be trusted.(radio program about land rights)
October 4, 2003... A classic tale of how governments can renege on agreements with people was broadcast this week in Document Lucilla and the Lost Lands (Radio Four, Monday). In 1942, under emergency powers legislation, the residents of six villages in the...

Presence and personality.(The turf)
October 4, 2003... Ascot is not just about silly hats, champagne and flushed faces in corporate boxes. The Ascot crowd know their racing too. So when Russian Rhythm finished second in the Queen Elizabeth II Stake they applauded her into the winners enclosure...

Memories of things past.(High life)
October 4, 2003... What was it that Papa said about Paris? That it was a fine place to be quite young in and that it's a necessary part of a man's education, I believe. Also the bit about being like a mistress who does not grow old but has other lovers now. Well,...

Absolute beginner.(learning to dance)
October 4, 2003... I had contact lenses fitted last week. I was so blind before, I came out of the opticians feeling like Paul on the Road to Damascus. That evening I went along with my new eyes to my first evening class of the new autumn term. I was going to do...

Twilight casting.(Fly life)
October 4, 2003... I'm standing plumb in the middle of the river; to be more precise, in one of the 'carriers', the result of decades of chalk stream management, channels which run alongside the main river before rejoining it. It's just before seven o'clock on a...

Learning curve.(Bridge)
October 4, 2003... I'M feeling a little embarrassed. My boyfriend, who's an actor, was interviewed on the BBC2 show The Kumars recently, and mentioned in passing that his girlfriend is a good bridge player. Then, no doubt feeling he hadn't made the point...

Special K.(chessmaster Gary Kasparov)
October 4, 2003... Even though he has no claim to any of the competing World Championship titles at this time, Garry Kasparov remains the dominant figure in world chess. Not only has it just been revealed that he is a confidant of Arnold Schwarzenegger, he has...

Quite another story.(Competition)
October 4, 2003... In Competition No. 2309 you were invited to pluck a newspaper heading and attach to it your own surprising story very different from the original one. Hasten to your newsagent and buy the 175th anniversary issue of The Spectator. It...

1634: Plain.(Crossword)
October 4, 2003... 1634: Plain by Columba One of the unclued lights contained the others, as Brewer confirms. ACROSS 1 Bewilderment and sorrow about routine with bad end (14) 9 Weak boxer without expertise gets hit (4) 11 Ewer, as carried by...

Spectator wine club.
October 4, 2003... I was chatting to a colleague the other day about wine writers, and how their tastes can differ quite consider ably from that of the drinking public I don't think that is because, like some critics, they are only writing for each other. (Rock...

Gunners in the gutter.(Spectator Sport)
October 4, 2003... The footballers are fighting again. The tribes of Manchester United and Arsenal are unruly and resentful, and defying the world. Oblivious to the scorn of others and the besmirching of their own reputations, they have sought that most...

Dear Mary.(Your Problems Solved)
October 4, 2003... Q. For my husband and me the racing world has always been a source of Elysian happiness and this weekend we are taking our children to Newmarket races. There a problem looms. Our trainer enjoys heroic status in our house-hold and our children...

Portrait of the week.
October 11, 2003... The Conservatives, holding their annual conference in Blackpool, offered to reinstate the link between pensions and average earnings, but at the same time to reduce taxation if elected. They also floated ideas for the equivalent of vouchers for...

Israel's right to retaliate.
October 11, 2003... No country can be expected to sit idly by while its citizens are slaughtered by suicidal fanatics, as those of Israel are. Moreover, virtually by definition, the fanatics themselves cannot be deterred, since they court death rather than fear...

Diary.
October 11, 2003... Blackpool People sometimes compare the Daily Telegraph and the Conservative party. Watching the heaving sea from the Imperial Hotel in my last week as editor of the above, I do the same. In 1993, two years before I took the job, Rupert...

I do not see how the Attorney-General can stay in the government.(Politics)
October 11, 2003... I do not see how the Attorney-General can stay in the government When the House of Commons returns next week, Iain Duncan Smith will face a personal and political decision that must rank as among the most challenging of his career. He has...

The Spectator's notes.
October 11, 2003... What more convincing a vindication of the case for war could the Prime Minister have offered in his conference speech than his own tearfulness over his postbag? 'During the past months on Iraq,' he said, 'I have received letters from parents...

The road to revival: in spite of the bickering, the Tories have been in bullish mood in Blackpool this week, says Peter Oborne. A leadership contest now would be boring, and would bring the party into contempt.
October 11, 2003... Iain Duncan Smith is fatter and pinker in the face these days, perhaps the result of too many dinners. He is more assertive. Media training over the summer has given him a certain bravado and made him more tactile. He looks people in the eye...

The Blairs.
October 11, 2003... [ILLUSTRATION OMMITTED]

Job of the week.
October 11, 2003... Enrichment Co-ordinator Lewisham College (motto: 'Pushing Prosperity') Salary: 719[pounds sterling]-28,395[pounds sterling] Helping to give our students more than just a qualification, you'll manage and develop projects which add an extra...

Carnal knowledge: Rome's Yellow Pages carries 49 pages of listings for detective agencies. Francis X. Rocca finds that in Italy infidelity is big business--for some.
October 11, 2003... Rome Italy, says the political scientist Francis Fukuyama, is an archetypal 'low trust' society, where kinship bonds dominate and strangers are presumed enemies until proven friends. This may be the legacy of centuries of invasion and role...

Mind your language.
October 11, 2003... 'What's he mean "After Theory"? Doesn't make sense,' said my husband looking up from the paper with no further clues. Luckily, I'd already noticed that the funny old Marxist Terry Eagleton was bringing out a book called After Theory. Not a...

Town and out: in a single generation, says David Lovibond, drugs and drink have turned Devizes into a place of incoherent rage.
October 11, 2003... In better days the world left Wiltshire alone. Blighted by neither coastline nor famous hills, the county was merely on the way to somewhere else. In the heart of this fortunate backwater, Devizes was the very archetype of an English market...

Banned wagon: global: a weekly survey of world restrictions on freedom and free trade.
October 11, 2003... Ninety-eight per cent of the British population, according to the results of the government's 'national debate', say that they do not wish to eat genetically modified food. Eighty-four per cent say that GM food is 'an unacceptable interference...

Jacques de Gaulle: Jonathan Fenby says the French President is a single-minded nationalist who is not at all popular in Brussels.
October 11, 2003... There is a new bull in the European china shop. Gone are the days when Thatcherite handbag-wielding and Majorist opt-out equivocation drove the Continentals crazy. This autumn the most strident sound in the European Union is coming from Paris,...

Second opinion.
October 11, 2003... The search for the good has been replaced by the desire for the nice. Appearance is more real to us than any reality, and deeper judgments have become not only unfashionable but also unmentionable, as being inherently unjust and prejudiced. But...