Spectator articles from September 2004

Spectator archives from September 2004

Portrait of the week.
September 4, 2004... The Royal Mail paid 50 [pounds sterling] million in compensation after meeting none of its 15 targets in the fast quarter of the financial year, delivering only 88.3 per cent of first-class letters on time between April and June, against a...

Jobs for life.
September 4, 2004... To the parents of Victoria Climbie, the eight-year-old girl who died in 2000 after being battered by her great-aunt and great-aunt s boyfriend in a seedy Haringey council flat, the disciplinary procedures employed by British local government...

Diary.
September 4, 2004... Whenever I feel psychotically depressed about this country--which, as I contemplate another nine years of Labour rule, is more and more often--I find myself being thankful that I do not have as my head of state President Chirac. I have come to...

A Labour landslide will be terrible for the trusting Mr Brown.(Politics)
September 4, 2004... It was beyond a shadow of doubt an outstanding silly season, the best by far in recent years, with an excellent crop of stories. Leaving aside the daily tragedies in Iraq and Sudan, too heartbreaking to ponder for long without giving way to...

The spectator's notes.
September 4, 2004... It is terribly disheartening for those of US who want the Conservatives to be ready to govern again to see them stuck in a cul-de-sac of their own choosing about the Iraq war. The revelation that, because of this, George Bush refused to see...

Way to go, Dubya: Boris Johnson, at the Republican convention, says that Bush's conservative credentials are not always convincing but his optimism is unfailingly inspiring.
September 4, 2004... New York Come off it, I am thinking to myself. The last time I saw Tuesday night's Republican keynote speaker was only a week ago. I was lying comatose on a motel bed in North Carolina, flipping from channel to channel, and he arrived,...

Help me, wonga: Rod Liddle says that Mark Thatcher's latest difficulties reveal an extraordinary, even hilarious, degree of corruption and humbug in the West.
September 4, 2004... This is a great story. It manages to encompass, somewhere along the line, all of the worst people in the world--or nearly all. There's a venal, vicious and incompetent African dictator, for a start. And then there's Mark Thatcher, Jeffrey...

Mind your language.
September 4, 2004... New Zealanders were amused to read that Mr David Blunkett required them to show fluency in English if they apply for British citizenship. New Zealand has produced some fine philologists, such as the late Norman Davis and Robert Burchfield, to...

Why Europe must have the Bomb: Stephen Haseler on what the EU must do if it is to remain secure when the American troops have gone home.
September 4, 2004... America's decision to pull troops out of Europe and the Far East should not be seen as a retreat into isolationism. On the contrary: it is classic 'Rumsfeld-lite'--the downsizing of old-fashioned Cold War units (principally in Germany) and a...

Bad and bored: Britain is sick and tired, says Theodore Dalrymple: there is no religion, no culture and no patriotism--and not even leisure can lighten our burden.
September 4, 2004... In 1850, the famous French alienist Brierre de Boismont began his disquisition on the medical consequences of boredom, 'The man who thinks, a famous philosopher once said, is an animal depraved; it had been better to say, an animal that is...

Regional forecast: Martin Vander Weyer says that Labour is introducing regional government by stealth.
September 4, 2004... If John Prescott needed an easy-to-read precis of the Electoral Commission's findings on all-postal ballots, published last week, a brave civil servant could have given it to him in four words on a Post-it note: 'Whoops, not enough fraud.' ...

Mummy can't buy you love: a new law will make it easier for 'birth mothers' to trace their adopted children. But Mary Kenny wonders whether that is fair either to the children or to their 'adoptive mothers'.
September 4, 2004... The Adoption and Children Bill, to be implemented this month, will make it easier for mothers whose children were adopted to trace their sons and daughters. All blood relatives will have the same right. Until now, the initiative in tracing has...

New life in a land of death: Radek Sikorski sees the transformation one warlord has brought to a part of Afghanistan devastated by the Soviets in 1987.
September 4, 2004... I had long wanted to return to Kushk-e-Serwan, a small Afghan village at the narrower end of the Hari Rud river oasis, between the Hindu Kush and Iran. The first time I went there, I was travelling with Ismael Khan, the leader of the Afghan...

Globophobia: a weekly survey of world restrictions on freedom and free trade.
September 4, 2004... With the Athens games out of way, the Boycott Beijing campaign is now in full swing, arguing that China's lousy human rights record should disqualify it from holding the 2008 Olympics and imploring the West to repeat the snub which marred the...

It is now up to Lord Black to prove his innocence to the rest of the world.(Media Studies)
September 4, 2004... The excesses of Lord Black, former proprietor of the Telegraph Group, which owns this magazine, are mind-boggling. Of course they have not yet been proven in a court of law, and Lord Black continues to deny the allegations in his...

Dare to impeach.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
September 4, 2004... From Bruce Shaxson Sir: It is intolerable that a country so proud of its commitment to open democratic government has had to wait some 30 years after entering the bosom of the EU before a Welsh Nationalist found courage enough, with the...

Greek supremacy.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
September 4, 2004... From Michael Minas Sir: I agree entirely (for a change) with everything Taki says about the Athens Olympics (High life, 28 August). Unlike him I had to watch the Games on television. The opening was an event I shall never forget--original,...

Pipe dreams.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
September 4, 2004... From Lady Powell Sir: A very brief response to Mrs Taliani's letter (28 August) about my water supply problem in Italy. Mrs Taliani gives her address as Vienna, so it's hard to believe she has very much detailed knowledge of the affairs of...

Character assassination.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
September 4, 2004... From Annie Machon Sir: As the partner of David Shayler, the former MI5 officer and whistle-blower, I read with interest Peter Oborne's article (Politics, 21 August). I wholeheartedly agree with his analysis that the government deals with...

The Viceroy's verdict.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
September 4, 2004... From John Osman Sir: I read with great interest the well-measured review by my former BBC colleague, Michael Vestey, of the Radio Four programme The Last Viceroy (Arts, 28 August). Perhaps both he and the historian Professor David...

Perils of illegibility.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
September 4, 2004... From Harry Mount Sir: Due to my incomprehensible scrawlings oil a proof, it wrongly emerged in my review of Alan Watkin's Brief Lives (Books, 28 August) that William Rees-Mogg had said of himself, 'It is a well-known fact that all West...

Pre-waugh.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
September 4, 2004... From Tony Percy Sir: Hugh Massingberd may think that 'Bright Young Things' is a 'journalistic solecism' (Letters, 21 August), but the phrase antedates Vile Bodies. In The Age of Illusion, Ronald Blythe quotes from James Laver's The Woman...

Fossil fuel shortfall.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
September 4, 2004... From Austin Spreadbury Sir: Nick Reeves is right to be pleased that renewables could meet 21 per cent of Europe's energy needs (Letters, 28 August). But if we can't burn fossil fuels because of global warming, and we can't use nuclear...

A peep into the heaving compost heap of the PC countryside.(And Another Thing)
September 4, 2004... 'How are things down on your farm, Giles?' 'Not too bad, Arthur. Of course, we don't do cattle, sheep or arable since we were declared an Environmentally Sensitive Area. We've gone Innovative.' 'Putting up expensive new buildings?' ...

Republicans know how dangerous it is to say what you mean.(Shared Opinion)
September 4, 2004... One of the amusements which any Republican convention offers is the spectacle of a party, in the coveted prime time of the television evening, pretending to be what it is not. That is, in the Republicans' case, a party comprising normal people...

A most superior street.(The Bookshop at 10 Curzon Street: Letters between Nancy Mitford and Heywood Hill, 1952-1973)(Book Review)
September 4, 2004... THE BOOKSHOP AT 10 CURZON STREET: LETTERS BETWEEN NANCY MITFORD AND HEYWOOD HILL, 1952-1973 edited by John Saumarez Smith Frances Lincoln, 12.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 192, ISBN 0711224528 11.99 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.25 [pounds sterling]...

Three murders and a funeral.(Case Histories)(Book Review)
September 4, 2004... CASE HISTORIES by Kate Atkinson Doubleday, 17.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 304, ISBN 0385607997 15.99 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.25 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 800 4848 Families and what time does to them are Kate Atkinson's obsessions. She...

Shock tactics in love and life.(The Rare and the Beautiful: A Protrait of the Seven Garman Sisters)(Book Review)
September 4, 2004... THE RARE AND THE BEAUTIFUL by Cressida Connolly Fourth Estate, 16.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 281, ISBN 1841156337 14.99 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.25 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 800 4848 In this enthusiastic study of the bohemian Garman...

Among the pretenders.(Magic Seeds)(Book Review)
September 4, 2004... MAGIC SEEDS by V.S. Naipaul Picador, 16.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 304, ISBN 0330485202 14.99 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.25 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 800 4848 Mr Herbert Spencer was an angry man. When he was feeling irritable (which was...

The gringo's progress.(The Zigzag Way)(Book Review)
September 4, 2004... THE ZIGZAG WAY by Anita Desai Chatto, 12.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 192, ISBN 0701177438 11.99 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.25 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 800 4848 In his History of the Conquest of Mexico, Prescott described the bafflement of...

Village pig club photograph 1900.(Brief Article)(Poem)
September 4, 2004... Village Pig Club Photograph 1900 The row of sepia women glare, Faces shut blank and tight as chapel doors. Men's caps are jammed on pinned-up hair, Above the row of accusing eyes. Over long skirts, Coarse aprons...

The legacy of where and when.(Scribbling the Cat: Travels With an African Soldier)(Book Review)
September 4, 2004... SCRIBBLING THE CAT;. TRAVELS WITH AN AFRICAN SOLDIER by Alexandra Fuller Picadol, 16.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 269, ISBN 033043327X 14.99 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.25 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 800 4848 A little over 20 years ago a brutal...

A fusillade from the last ditch.(God Has Not Changed)(Book Review)
September 4, 2004... GOD HAS NOT CHANGED by Alice Thomas Ellis Burns & Oates, 9.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 180, ISBN 0860123596 Here are 90 furious little spats about our extraordinary and inadequate attitudes to God. Alice Thomas Ellis has subtitled them her...

Service with a smile.(The People's Chef: Alexis Soyer, A Life in Seven Courses)(Book Review)
September 4, 2004... THE PEOPLE'S CHEF: ALEXIS SOYER, A LIFE IN SEVEN COURSES by Ruth Brandon Wiley, 16.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 320, ISBN 0470869917 14.99 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.25 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 800 4848 Alexis Soyer was Britain's first...

In flight from the green forest.(Brief Article)(Poem)
September 4, 2004... In Flight from the Green Forest In the green forest of Petropolis The Great Lady of the Madrugada Walked with me the boundaries of her fazenda. Toucans watched the paths that joined the valleys. Her great-grandfather...

Glory in East Grinstead.(The Reconstruction of Warriors: Archibald McIndoe, The Royal Air Force and the Guinea Pig Club)(Book Review)
September 4, 2004... THE RECONSTRUCTION OF WARRIORS: ARCHIBALD MCINDOE, THE ROYAL AIR FORCE AND THE GUINEA PIG CLUB by E.R. Mayhew Greenhill Books, 18.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 256, ISBN 1853676101 16.99 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.25 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 800...

The return of the rotters.(The Closed Circle)(Book Review)
September 4, 2004... THE CLOSED CIRCLE by Jonathan Coe Viking, 17.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 448, ISBN 0670892548 15.99 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.25 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 800 4848 Finishing The Rotters' Club and finding 'there will be a sequel' posted at...

Murder on tape.(The Murder Room)(Carter Beats the Devil)(Audiobook Review)
September 4, 2004... Attempting to solve a P.D. James mystery is rather like trying to find the winner of a fiendishly problematical horse race. In The Murder Room (Chivers Audio Books. 13 hours 46 mins. Cassette 18.99 [pounds sterling]. CD 23.99 [pounds sterling]....

Life and letters.
September 4, 2004... The publication this autumn of Fathers and Sons--Alexander Waugh's hugely entertaining book about his family--revives in fresh detail the story of one of the great literary revenges of all time: the case of Waugh vs Cruttwell. As an Oxford...

The price is right--or is it? Martin Gayford asks why people get so worked up about auction prices.(Arts)
September 4, 2004... Why do auction prices upset people? Or, to put it another way, how much is too much to pay for a picture? What I mean is this. When a Rose Period Picasso entitled 'Boy with a Pipe' was sold at auction a few months ago for $104 million, John...

Brilliant and unpredictable.(Exhibitions 1)(Critical Essay)
September 4, 2004... Walter Richard Sickert: The Human Canvas Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal, Cumbria, until 30 October Walter Richard Sickert (1860-1942), known as Walter up to 1924 and Richard thereafter, was an artist of genius--a superb draughtsman and...

Floreat Etona.(Exhibitions 2)(Critical Essay)
September 4, 2004... Musica Etonensis, Music and Musicians from Eton 1440-2004 Brewhouse Gallery, Eton College, until 3 October You do not have to be an Etonian to gain pride and much entertainment from this exhibition in the shadow of College Chapel. The...

Unforgettably uplifting.(Opera)(Opera Review)
September 4, 2004... By the end of the first week, the Edinburgh Festival needed an operatic triumph fairly badly. The Weber trilogy was nobly conceived and worthily performed, but the works themselves failed to give a sense of impressive growth, so that it was...

Weather woes.(Gardens)
September 4, 2004... It has been rotten weather for gardening here, so far. Rain in late April, too hot weather in early June, then cold nights, drizzle and cloud, followed by furious winds in early July, and torrential rain and flooding in early August; more than...

Backstage warfare.(Music)
September 4, 2004... One of the subtler pleasures of summer festivalling is to experience the undertow of dislike, amounting to hatred sometimes, of presenters towards their artists. I do not necessarily mean from the artistic director of a festival himself, since...

Preserving our heritage.(Theatre)(Twelfth Night at the Albery)(Faliraki--The Greek Tragedy at the Lyric Studio)(The Woman in Black at the Fortune)(Theater Review)
September 4, 2004... Twelfth Night Albery Faliraki--The Greek Tragedy Lyric Studio The Woman in Black Fortune What will happen to British culture when the United Kingdom disintegrates into half a dozen warring republics? Who will protect our museums...

An innocent abroad.(Radio)(Radio Program Review)
September 4, 2004... You might think that there was little more to say about the life of P.G. Wodehouse; he has, after all, been extensively written about over the years, his revealing and delightful diaries have been broadcast, and there was even a play about his...

World of hypocrisy.(Television)(The Hamburg Cell)(Television Program Review)
September 4, 2004... When I first read that Ronan Bennett had co-written a screenplay depicting the run-up to 9/11 from the terrorist perspective, my reaction was just what you'd expect. I thought, 'Bloody hell. What a tosser. First he joins the IRA. Then says he'd...

Time to downsize.(High life)
September 4, 2004... Gstaad Athens is a city that thrives on rumours, and the latest is that the tae kwon do medals had been assigned to the various winners before the competition began. It is obviously just that, a rumour, and a false one at that, but among...

Sea weed.(Low life)
September 4, 2004... I had been on a health kick for three weeks, eating pumpkin seeds and other healthful foods, doing yoga, and going to bed early every night with an improving book. I hadn't smoked or drunk alcohol either for three weeks. I had even cut out tea...

Waist disposal.(Singular life)
September 4, 2004... Where have all the waists gone? According to the National Sizing Survey (sounds titillating, doesn't it?), the first study of female body measurements since 1951, women are bigger and fatter in every department than they were 50 years ago. ...

Feeling sore.(Bridge)(Brief Article)
September 4, 2004... IF you're a true addict, bridge never really loses its grip. It can continue to obsess you in the most distracting situations. The other day, for instance, I called up my friend and fellow TGR regular Maurice Esterson, who was in hospital...

Annus Mirabilis.(Chess)
September 4, 2004... The Scottish grandmaster Jonathan Rowson has so far enjoyed an extraordinary year of success. He commenced his triumphal tour by winning the Hastings Premier. This involved a nerve-wracking cliffhanger against Epishin in the final round, where...

Ninety not out.(Spectator Sport)(Biography)
September 4, 2004... A notable week for brand-new nonagenarians. The last firework had scarcely fizzled to earth at the Olympics' closing ceremony on Sunday when, nicely, it was Monday morning and Sydney Wooderson's 90th birthday. For Brits of a certain generation,...

Dear Mary.(Your Problems Solved)
September 4, 2004... Q. Last week I arrived to stay with some English friends near St Remy and was shown to a most delightful and certainly 'best' spare bedroom--with glorious views over the Camargue and beyond. You can imagine my astonishment when, on climbing...

Portrait of the week.
September 11, 2004... Mr Andrew Smith resigned as Secretary of Stale for Work and Pensions. This added interest to a Cabinet reshuffle by Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, and provoked reheated speculation about his rivalry with Mr Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of...

Help the aged.
September 11, 2004... Andrew Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, resigned this week, so he says, in order to spend more time with his family. Or maybe he was peeved at some of the comments made about him by his colleagues. What is certain is that he didn't...

Diary.
September 11, 2004... As somebody who loved model trains as a kid, and who took a year off school when he was 20 to work as a lineman for the Canadian National Railway, I got on the GNER train at King's Cross for a trip to the Scottish Borders with a warm sense of...

Blair's disdain for his colleagues could bring about his downfall.(Politics)
September 11, 2004... It is easy to botch reshuffles, although it is unusual to do so twice in succession, as Tony Blair has now managed. But when they change their governments, all PMs have a problem with their colleagues' sensitivities. Once a shuffle is...

The Spectator's notes.
September 11, 2004... Three years this week after the twin towers fell, one senses people's longing to believe that it is all nothing to do with us--the dreadful, late-1930s illusion that everything will be all right if only some of our leaders were not so...

Why we must not appease the Kremlin: Russia's continuing brutality in Chechnya is the root cause of the Beslan massacre. So why does Blair grovel to Putin? The answer, says Simon Heffer, is oil.(Cover Story)
September 11, 2004... Were any of us unlucky enough to be Vladimir Putin, we too would be keen to make the rest of the world think that what happened in Beslan last week was yet another chapter in al-Qa'eda's campaign of international terrorism. Luckily, you would...

The Blairs.(Cartoon)
September 11, 2004... POST HOLIDAY BLUES, DARLING? WHAT AM I GOING TO DO ABOUT FOXHUNTING? It's top at the top [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] FOXHUNTING CAN WAIT .. MMMMM! FOXY LADY! You work hard, you play hard [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] ...

Mind your language.
September 11, 2004... 'In my opinion,' said Doris Eades, 74, 'the council has so much money it doesn't know what to do with it and comes up with hair-brained schemes like this.' So said a newspaper report on a scheme by Wolverhampton to get people to use bicycles....

Lilla's war with China: Frances Osborne on how her great-grandmother fought Beijing for 30 years and finally won, aged 100.
September 11, 2004... Little old ladies with bottles of ink, mounds of writing-paper and firm hands have long been the bane of government officials. There's even a name for them: 'Angry of Tunbridge Wells'. My great-grandmother, Lilla, whom I remember living in that...

No way to write an article: General Sir Mike Jackson turns his guns on Bruce Anderson, whose hostile analysis of Britain's defence arrangements appeared in this magazine last month.
September 11, 2004... Needless to say, I was intrigued by Bruce Anderson's assessment ('No way to run an army', 21 August) of my performance in former roles and now as Chief of the General Staff, and the--to him--apparent connection between that performance and my...

A free market in religion: if Christianity is not the one true religion, why be a Christian? Why not be a Buddhist? Mary Wakefield puts the question to Keith Ward, the liberal theologian.(Interview)
September 11, 2004... At nine in the morning, Cumnor in Oxfordshire looks like the setting for a Miss Marple mystery. Cotswold cottages run around the outside bend of a narrow high street and on the other side a grassy bank rises up to a graveyard. Nothing moves...

How the Right has won in the US: John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge say that the Republicans, unlike the Tories, believe in the future, not in the past.
September 11, 2004... 'You from England?' asked the Arizona delegate in the Uncle Sam waistcoat covered in 'W-04' badges. 'Well, that's a good conservative country.' One of us pointed out William Hague applauding Arnold Schwarzenegger with transatlantic gusto....

Ancient & modern.
September 11, 2004... Today's rich are not, apparently, giving enough of their wealth to good causes. The ancients would have known why. Euergesia--'benefaction, philanthropy'--had always been seen as a virtue of the well-born Greek (for Aristotle it was an act...

How Putin silences the journalists who criticise his brutality in Chechnya.(Media Studies)
September 11, 2004... The Prime Minister has enjoined us to be 'in complete solidarity with Russia and the Russian people, and invites us to draw a parallel between the terrorist threat from al-Qa'eda and the threat posed by Chechen lunatics. I am not so sure about...

Count me in.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
September 11, 2004... From Edward Garnier QC MP Sir: As one of the (so far few) Conservative MPs to have publicly supported the proposal to debate the Prime Minister's impeachment, I was not surprised by Cedric Talbot's reaction to it from Tokyo (Letters, 4...

Desperately seeking war.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
September 11, 2004... From Ian Taylor Sir: You write (Leading article, 28 August) that in the run-up to the war Chirac and Schroder were looking for 'excuses to do nothing' (as though this was somehow perverse in spite of your admission that Iraq 'posed no...

A-levels are ace.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
September 11, 2004... From David Miliband Sir: Peter Oborne raises a number of issues to contend with my assertion that the rise in A-level grades is the product of higher standards of teaching and learning (Politics, 21 August). I think it is important that I...

Regional spin.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
September 11, 2004... From Dr Jeremy Stocker Sir: Martin Vander Weyer ('Regional forecast', 4 September) is right to draw attention to the stealthy advance of regional government. Here in the north-east John Prescott's campaign to persuade us that we do want it is...

Dishonoured heroes.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
September 11, 2004... From Dennis Outwin Sir: Anthony Daniels's review of Dr Mayhew's book The Reconstruction of Warriors (Books, 4 September) omits to mention Sir Archibald McIndoe's most famous patient, Richard Hillary, author of The Last Enemy, a Battle of...

Housewife historians.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
September 11, 2004... From Diana Gould Sir: I am the 'Gloucestershire housewife' James Delingpole describes in his review of the Channel 4 documentary Secret History: Sink the Belgrano as outraged that the Argentine cruiser had been sunk outside the total...

Simian sobriquets.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
September 11, 2004... From John Reynolds Sir: Corrupt, vicious and incompetent--the President of Equatorial Guinea may well deserve all of these epithets ('Help me, wonga', 4 September). But 'a monkey' and 'the ape'? Such language tells us more about Rod Liddle...

You can sell an awful lot of worm medicine on a bus in the Andes.(Another Voice)
September 11, 2004... At Cerro de Pasco, we found a bus for Huanuco. Cerro is a mining town in the high Andean plain, and feels like it: stark, cold and treeless, thin air, thin dogs, thin people. But busy: it was dusk and half the town seemed to be milling around...

Don't mention it, but the nation's finances depend on the kindness of strangers.(City And Suburban)
September 11, 2004... New York Back from the hills and the Hamptons comes the workaday population of Manhattan, returning to something like business as usual. Last week the Republicans were in town, and the protesters, and (of course) the police. No fewer than...

A Triptych by Van der Goes or a feast for Dr Kissinger?(And Another Thing)
September 11, 2004... Successful businessmen who try to rise socially too far and too fast are sure to come a cropper. This has been true of all ages but never more so than at present. The case of Conrad Black is typical. The other day I came across a letter he...

Upstairs and downstairs.(Peninsula of Lies: A True Story of Mysterious Birth and Taboo Love)(The Harold Nicolson Diaries 1907-1963)(Book Review)
September 11, 2004... PENINSULA OF LIES: A TRUE STORY OF MYSTERIOUS BIRTH AND TABOO LOVE by Edward Ball Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 20 [pounds sterling], pp. 277, ISBN 0743235606 18 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.25 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 800 4848 THE HAROLD...

The family revisited.(Fathers and Sons: The Autobiography of a Family)(Book Review)
September 11, 2004... FATHERS AND SONS: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A FAMILY by Alexander Waugh Headline, 20 [pounds sterling], pp. 472, ISBN 0755312546 18 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.25 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 800 4848 This is a very sweet and fearful book--sweet...

A great-grandmother glimpsed.(Lilla's Feast: A Story of Love, War and a Passion for Food)(Book Review)
September 11, 2004... LILLA'S FEAST:. A STORY OF LOVE, WAR AND A PASSION FOR FOOD by Frances Osborne Doubleday, 18.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 325, ISBN 0385606664 16.99 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.25 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 800 4848 I have a faded photograph...

A sure but light hand on the tiller.(Arguments With England)(Book Review)
September 11, 2004... ARGUMENTS WITH ENGLAND by Michael Blakemore Faber, 20 [pounds sterling], pp. 404, ISBN 0.5712244.58 18 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.25 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 800 4848 The least satisfactory feature of Michael Blakemore's masterly memoir...

Music in a landscape.(Elgar: Child of Dreams)(Book Review)
September 11, 2004... ELGAR: CHILD OF DREAMS by Jerrold Northrop Moore Faber, 14.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 224, ISBN 0571223370 12.99 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.25 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 800 4848 Twenty years ago Jerrold Northrop Moore published a capacious...