Spectator articles from September 2008

Spectator archives from September 2008

Make your excuses and go.
September 6, 2008... Politicians, like novelists, are obsessed by posterity. Practitioners of the here and now--tomorrow's headline, the latest poll, the next electoral hurdle--they nurse secret and often vainglorious hopes that their greatest plaudits will come in...

Diary.(Tokyo, Japan)(Column)
September 6, 2008... Tokyo The earthquake wakes me up. One moment I am sleeping and the next it feels as though I am on a waterbed with Hugh Hefner and four Playboy Bunnies. All I can do is hold on. There is an earthquake every day in Japan and most of them...

Number 10 and the Treasury are fundamentally at odds over the economy.(POLITICS)
September 6, 2008... There is something wonderfully Scottish about the way in which Alistair Darling made his move against Gordon Brown. Rather than stage a dramatic ambush in the Commons, as Geoffrey Howe did to Margaret Thatcher, the Chancellor invited a...

Diary of a Notting Hill nobody.(Column)
September 6, 2008... [ILLUSTRATIONS OMITTED] MONDAY Everyone's gone Palin crazy! Poppy, Jenny, Lucy and Ellie all came in with their hair teased into frightening up-dos this morning. I might have to go through Mummy's wardrobe and see if she's got any...

Labour's punishment freaks are hounding honest citizens: Ross Clark says that far from keeping our streets safer or cleaner, the government's new force of amateur policemen are ignoring the worst offenders and pursuing law-abiding innocents instead.(Cover story)
September 6, 2008... Political brands are constantly changing. For years Liberal Democrats were the party of the environment; now the Conservatives appear to have taken that title. For decades, until Black Wednesday, the Tories were the party of sound money, a role...

Flash Gordon.(Cartoon)
September 6, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] THE BRITISH ARE LEAST LIKELY TO INTERVENE IN AN ATTACK ON AN INDIVIDUAL [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] WHAT ABOUT MY PENSION?

'Whoever killed Benazir wants to kill me': Christina Lamb interviews the husband of the late Benazir Bhutto, Asif Ali Zardari, who hopes to be named President of Pakistan this Saturday.(Interview)
September 6, 2008... Islamabad On the wall above Asif Ali Zardari's dining table in Islamabad is a framed copy of a letter. The handwriting is small and neat and it looks nothing special but he frequently grabs it from the wall to show to visitors. For on this...

Mind your language.(Column)
September 6, 2008... The Earl of Cottenham's surname is Pepys. He doesn't pronounce it peeps, like the diarist, but peppiss, stressed on the first syllable. It's almost impossible to know how to pronounce English family names. The former deputy editor of this...

Never mind the Olympics--get set for the Jubilee: free and open to everyone, the Queen's Diamond Jubilee in 2012 will eclipse the London Games, says Robert Hardman--an unforgettable tribute to the monarch.
September 6, 2008... Millions gathered on the streets; people of every generation from every background joining in the fun; all the corners of the kingdom united in one thoroughly British occasion... 2012 really is going to see one hell of a party. In fact, buy...

A pilgrim's progress for the 21st century: Mary Wakefield talks to the author William P. Young, whose self-published religious novel has astounded the publishing world and sold nearly two million copies.(The Shack)(Interview)
September 6, 2008... Because I spoke to him on the phone, not in person, you'll have to share my mental picture of William P. Young. There he is in a hotel room in Texas: 53, balding, with bright eyes and a greying goatee. He's ironing as he talks (he says so), his...

In defence of David Southall: Theodore Dalrymple examines the evidence against two much-vilified British paediatricians, Professors Southall and Meadow, and finds it sadly lacking.(Roy Meadow)
September 6, 2008... One of life's difficulties, I have found, is that it keeps throwing up questions to which there is no indubitably correct answer. This means that the exercise of judgment is perennially necessary: and there is hardly a moment's respite from...

What possessed McCain to take a punt on Palin? Rod Liddle says that the appointment of an inexperienced, gun-toting former beauty queen as his running mate may well be John McCain's undoing.(LIDDLE BRITAIN)(Sarah Palin)(Column)
September 6, 2008... Ah, just when you pro-Republican monkeys were beginning to think that John McCain was looking a pretty good bet, he goes and chooses a backwoods polar-bear-strangling Britney Spears manque as a running mate--a woman who appears to believe that...

Heartbeats of delight.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
September 6, 2008... Sir: Few would disagree with Paul Johnson's view that prolonging the human lifespan is of little value if it merely gives us extra years of Alzheimer's and debility (And another thing, 30 August). But we do not all live for the average span,...

Russia unhinged.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
September 6, 2008... Sir: Vladimir Putin recently implied that John McCain was to blame for the war in Georgia. Russian intelligence claims that American military instructors have been in the war zone in Georgia. Why? Because they found an American passport...

Famous last words.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
September 6, 2008... Sir: I don't think that Martin Vander Weyer ('Forget economic recovery, Gordon', 23 August) is correct in intimating that Blackadder was the source of the famous line 'What we need at this stage of the war is a futile gesture'. To the best of...

Cocktails in purgatory.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
September 6, 2008... Sir: My old friend Taki says (High life, 30 August) that the French ambassador who was sacked because he described Israel as a '[s.sup.****]y little country' is now 'giving cocktail parties in Algiers or somewhere as depressing'. Well,...

In search of honour.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
September 6, 2008... Sir: Taki's admiration for the samurai's honour code (High life, 23 August) and his repeated words of praise for the Wehrmacht in past columns deserve the following comments: the Japanese treatment of prisoners, both civilian and military,...

Riefenstahl's record.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
September 6, 2008... Sir: Jonathan Mirsky correctly identifies (Letters, 23 August) the 'ceremonial Potemkin' of the Beijing Olympics but he is wrong to state that Leni Riefenstahl's film Triumph of the Will was about the 1936 Nazi event. It was instead a record of...

A new cold war means spies. But what can Russia offer Oxbridge graduates these days?(SHARED OPINION)(Column)
September 6, 2008... If that nice Mr Medvedev is right, and Russia is indeed braced for a new cold war, then the spooks must be on a recruitment drive. Ours, obviously, but theirs too. So spare a thought for the Russian intelligence human resources office, because...

High-pitched buzzing from the booksy girls and boys.(AND ANOTHER THING AND ANOTHER THING)(Grub Street Irregular: Scenes from Literary Life)(Book review)
September 6, 2008... When I first experienced literary life in London it was 1955 and poor Anthony Eden was prime minister. His delightful wife Clarissa was to be seen at literary parties and, amazingly enough, still is. The great panjandrums were Cyril Connolly...

King coal prepares for a comeback: Neil Barnett says the miners' union that took on Margaret Thatcher and lost is now talking surprisingly good sense about Britain's future energy security.(BUSINESS)(National Union of Mineworkers)
September 6, 2008... The National Union of Mineworkers' headquarters in Barnsley has a splendid retro feel. In the assembly hall hang banners celebrating the struggles of the working class: from one of them, Arthur Scargill, Shredded Wheat comb-over to the fore,...

Nice pork, pity about the pizza: Judi Bevan finds her local Lidl discount store full of bargains--but not Boden-clad middle-class shoppers.(RETAILING FOR RECESSION)
September 6, 2008... Intrigued by reports that the middle classes are shopping at the German discount stores Aldi and Lidl--and even stuffing their purchases in Waitrose bags--I set off to track them down. My nearest Lidl is a couple of miles from my house at the...

A chilly professional.(The Forgotten Prime Minister: The 14th Earl of Derby)(Book review)
September 6, 2008... THE FORGOTTEN PRIME MINISTER: THE 14TH EARL OF DERBY by Angus Hawkins Oxford University Press, 30 [pounds sterling], pp. 521 ISBN 9780199204410 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Who was the 14th Earl of Derby? He was three times...

Bright sparks of the Dark Ages.(Travelling Heroes: Greeks and Their Myths in the Epic Age of Homer)(Book review)
September 6, 2008... TRAVELLING HEROES: GREEKS AND THEIR MYTHS IN THE EPIC AGE OF HOMER by Robin Lane Fox Allen Lane, 25 [pounds sterling], pp. 514, ISBN 9780713999808. [telephone] 20 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655...

The iceman cometh.(True North: Travels in Arctic Europe)(Book review)
September 6, 2008... TRUE NORTH: TRAVELS IN ARCTIC EUROPE by Gavin Francis Polygon, 9.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 266, ISBN 9781846970788 [telephone] 7.99 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 This is an old-fashioned...

A far cry from Paradise.(The Gate of Air: A Ghost Story)(Book review)
September 6, 2008... THE GATE OF AIR: A GHOST STORY by James Buchan Quarcus, 14.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 224 ISBN 9781847244673 [telephone] 10.39 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 This strange novel is described as...

Rekindling life in a dead frame.(The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein)(Book review)
September 6, 2008... THE CASEBOOK OF VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN by Peter Ackroyd Chatoo and Windus, 16.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 296 ISBN 9780701182953 [telephone] 13.59 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 Why re-write...

The chatelaine and the wanderer.(In Tearing Haste: Letters between Deborah Devonshire and Patrick Leigh Fermor)(Book review)
September 6, 2008... IN TEARING HASTE: LETTERS BETWEEN DEBORAH DEVONSHIRE AND PATRICK LEIGH FERMOR edited by Charlotte Mosley John Murray, 25 [pounds sterling], pp. 416 ISBN 9780719568589 [telephone] 20 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling]...

Brave new writing: fifty years ago, Alan Sillitoe's first novel, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, changed the history of English fiction. Richard Bradford explains how.(Critical essay)
September 6, 2008... Alan Sillitoe is 80 this year and his debut novel Saturday Night and Sunday Morning was published in October 1958, almost exactly half a century ago. The novel evolved from a set of stories written between 1952 and 1958 when he lived in France,...

Breaking the rules.(LIFE & LETTERS)(Column)
September 6, 2008... 'The result is a minor masterpiece, so good that one can even forgive the author's affected forays into demotic English ('don't' and 'wouldn't' for 'did not' and 'would not', etc.).' Setting aside the writer's mistake--'don't' being the...

Top drama at bargain prices: Lloyd Evans talks to the Donmar's artistic director Michael Grandage about his Wyndham's venture.(ARTS)(Donmar Warehouse)(Interview)
September 6, 2008... It might so easily have gone wrong for Michael Grandage. In 2002 he was appointed to succeed Sam Mendes as boss of the Donmar Warehouse. Mendes would be a hard act for anyone to follow, let alone a director with just seven years' experience...

Family business.(Exhibitions)
September 6, 2008... Painting Family: The De Brays, Master Painters of 17th Century Holland Dulwich Picture Gallery, until 5 October Cecil Collins--A Centenary Exhibition Monnow Valley Arts Centre, Middle Hunt House, Walterstone, Nr Abergavenny,...

Colour and energy.(Opera)(Love and Other Demons)(Opera review)
September 6, 2008... Love and Other Demons Glyndebourne I only caught up with Glyndebourne's newly commissioned opera at its penultimate performance. It was a courageous thing to put on a work by a composer as little known in this country as Peter Eotvos,...

All she needs is love.(Cinema 1)(The Duchess)(Movie review)
September 6, 2008... The Duchess 12A, Nationwide The Duchess is probably no more than a most handsomely mounted costume drama which is no bad thing if you happen to like handsomely mounted costume dramas, and I do, I do, I do! Lavishly directed by Saul...

Missing the mark.(Cinema 2)(RocknRolla)(Movie review)
September 6, 2008... RocknRolla 15, Nationwide Guy Ritchie's career has been in the doldrums recently. Having tried to remake Swept Away, then following it up with a Kabbalah-inspired remake of The Prisoner, he's finally seen the error of his ways. He has...

Conservative mores.(Theatre)('Tory Boyz', 'Sick Room', 'The Pretender Agenda')(Theater review)
September 6, 2008... Tory Boyz Soho Sick Room Soho The Pretender Agenda New Players The Conservatives were once a party of proud Etonians and closet homosexuals; now they're a party of closet Etonians and proud homosexuals. This is the...

Creative differences.(Pop)(Circus Money)(Sound recording review)
September 6, 2008... Fandom can be a lonely place. If you love a band, truly love a band with that slightly teenage desperation you hope never to grow out of (until they make a substandard record and you abandon them forever), it's a love affair like no other....

Marriage lines.(Radio)('Sunday Worship, 'The Reunion', 'The Archers')(Radio program review)
September 6, 2008... Weddings! You couldn't avoid them on Radio Four this week. As if Usha plighting her troth with Alan not just once, but twice, on The Archers Omnibus was not enough, those who were up early on Sunday might have been surprised to find themselves...

Escapist froth.(Television)(Lost in Austen)(Television program review)
September 6, 2008... Before I get on to TV, can I tell you about my horrible health-scare thing, oh, can I, can I? Right, well I've been having this horrible health-scare thing and I've been out of my mind with worry--to the point where I've been saying, 'Oh,...

Character call.(The turf)(Column)
September 6, 2008... The one advantage of missing last Saturday's race day at Sandown, thanks to being encased at the time in a throbbing MRI scanner at St Thomas's Hospital, was the chance of going Sunday racing instead at Folkestone. Posh it may not be....

Driving out dragons.(High life)(Column)
September 6, 2008... Gstaad 'Goblins and devils have long vanished from the Alps, and so many years have passed without any well-authenticated account of a discovery of a dragon that dragons too may be considered to have migrated.' So the Alpine Club was...

Toeing the line.(Low life)(Column)
September 6, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] I'm down in the bar underneath the stand at half time and everyone's exceedingly jolly. The team isn't playing badly for a change. At least we're trying. Plus, we've got a new bloke who can actually pitch over an...

Baton twirling.(Slow life)(Column)
September 6, 2008... Brad, who has been my constant companion for the last couple of months, was just starting to appreciate the strange power of television. The terrible authority, the ridiculous effects of time on the small screen had taken a while to become...

Pure gold.(Bridge)(Brief article)(Column)
September 6, 2008... It's good to be back--and to be alternating weekly with Janet, whose columns I've been enjoying hugely. Naturally, I'm as bridge-fixated as ever. My highlight of the last few months (aside from giving birth) was partnering the brilliant David...

The skinny on sportswear: James Sherwood seeks suitable jogging attire.(STYLE AND TRAVEL)(Buyers guide)
September 6, 2008... There are few things more sanctimonious or self-deluding than a lifelong devotee of Marlboro reds and gin martinis like me extolling the virtues of a newfound exercise routine such as running. All those delicious addictions may be redirected...

Meet the real Donna: Charlotte Metcalf finds a friend on the Mamma Mia! island.(ARMCHAIR TRAVELLER)(Skopelos, Greece)(Travel narrative)
September 6, 2008... To the north of the island of Skopelos is a huge rock topped by a tiny monastery. Below it lies a bay of sparkling, turquoise sea. It used to be a beautiful, quiet place to swim. Then Mamma Mia! hit the screens. The monastery was the site of...

Tal in memoriam.(CHESS)(Mikhail Tal)
September 6, 2008... To mark the continuing Tal Memorial tournament in Moscow this week I give a further brilliant game and puzzle position by the great tactical genius who was world champion from 1960 to 1961. Tal-Sokolov: World Cup Brussels 1988; Catalan...

Glynders & Glasto.(COMPETITION)(Poem)
September 6, 2008... In Competition No 2560 you were invited to describe a visit to Glyndebourne or Glastonbury in the style of an author of your choice. But first a memo from Doctor Johnson re. his recent Competition 2558 (Harmless drudgery) in which he let...

1880: Baker.(CROSSWORD)(Brief article)
September 6, 2008... The unclued lights, including one of two words, are connected by a theme. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] * Email is optional. The Spectator (1828) Ltd would like to use your information for administration, customer services and targeted...

Solution to 1877: wish.(Brief article)
September 6, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The quotation was 'MAY WORDS MATTER TO YOU AND BE FULL OF MAGIC' (1A/43/13) (Godfrey Smith). Unclued lights 'full of magic' (ART or OBI) were 16, 25, 26 and 38. G SMITH (in the fifth row) was to be shaded. First...

Why Kirsten Dunst banned me from the set of the film about my life.(STATUS ANXIETY)(How to Lose Friends and Alienate People)(Column)
September 6, 2008... In the current issue of Empire there is a piece by Bob Weide, the director of How to Lose Friends & Alienate People, in which he says that the reason I was banned from the set of the film is because Kirsten Dunst insisted on it. I was not aware...

Ancient & modern.(Column)
September 6, 2008... Apparently some scientists believe that the patterns in which bumblebees search for food--'geographic profiling' is the technical term--could help detectives hunt down serial killers. The ancients would not have been surprised. It is...

The Wiki man.(A fortnightly column on technology and the web)(Column)
September 6, 2008... A friend of mine, a professor at an Ivy League university, specialises in research into transgenic mice, learning how DNA modifications affect intelligence and memory. A few years ago, after some genetic tinkering, he created a batch of mice of...

Dear Mary.(YOUR PROBLEMS SOLVED)(Column)
September 6, 2008... Q. I have lived in Indochina for more than six years but I am still invited to various society weddings, exhibition openings, concerts and parties in London. Here in Cochinchina plenipotentiaries are kind enough to include me to garden parties...

Fannie, Freddie and Gordon.(Federal National Mortgage Association, Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp., Gordon Brown)
September 13, 2008... Last week, at a cost of a billion pounds or so, the Chancellor announced a package of measures to boost the housing market, including a temporary raising of the stamp duty threshold and some tinkering with shared equity schemes and social...

Diary.(Column)
September 13, 2008... There are many things I'll miss about my year with David Cameron, not least my regular visits to Portcullis House, the ugly upside-down cow's udder opposite the Commons (it was designed by Michael Hopkins, although it looks as though he did...

When the Tories get complacent, they should think of what Palin has done to Obama.(POLITICS)(Conservative Party, Sarah Palin, Barack Obama)
September 13, 2008... If Labour does dump Gordon Brown before the next election, then each of the three major parties will, this decade, have replaced a leader before he has had a chance to fight a general election. What used to be exceptional has become almost...

The spectator's notes.(Column)
September 13, 2008... This column and its readers have just won our first battle in our long war. The BBC Trust has announced that it will investigate the way in which the television licence fee is collected. It wants to know, for example, whether the public think...

Diary of a Notting Hill nobody.(Column)
September 13, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Monday Look! There is no question of us doing a U-turn on our pledge to match Labour's spending plans. You can't do a U-turn if you were never going to go a particular way in the first place. Or if you went for...

Brown has exploited immigration to hide from deep problems: The PM's claim to have created three million British jobs is a grave deceit, says Fraser Nelson. Strip out immigrants from the picture, and Labour has barely dented the problem of British worklessness. Over to you, Mr Cameron.(Gordon Brown, prime minister, David Cameron)(Cover story)
September 13, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] If there were to be a British Statue of Liberty, it should be erected at Victoria coach station in London. For it is here that most of the tired, poor, huddled masses of Eastern Europeans have arrived seeking what...

Flash Gordon.(Cartoon)
September 13, 2008... THIS SPEECH YOU'VE WRITTEN FOR ME TO GIVE TO THE LABOUR PARTY CONFERENCE--DO I REALLY HAVE TO SAY-- 'THIS IS A FAR FAR BETTER THING THAT I DO....' [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

How I became a world record holder: at a Google conference in Rhodes, Matthew d'Ancona finds himself part of a bid to break the world record for Zorba dancing--and to relive one of the greatest scenes in cinema.(Rhodes, Greece)
September 13, 2008... 'Teach me to dance. Will you?' Few scenes in cinema have the emotional poignancy and magic of the last moments of Zorba the Greek (1964), as Basil, the young English writer played by Alan Bates, seeks his final lesson in life from Anthony...

Moscow's secret war in Ingushetia: Russia's President, Dmitry Medvedev, pretends that this republic is a haven of stability. Not so, says Tom Parfitt: the Ingush are subject to a campaign of murder and repression.
September 13, 2008... Ingushetia Among the first-class passengers who flew into Ingushetia's Magas airport from Moscow on the afternoon of 31 August were two grey-haired men in suits. The pair avoided each other's gaze. One was Murat Zyazikov, 50, a former KGB...

Mind your language.(Column)
September 13, 2008... My husband's club was closed in August, which meant, paradoxically, that I saw less of him, because he enjoyed the chance to exercise reciprocal rights at other clubs, which I suspect might not have welcomed him as a member in the first place....

The laureate of intractable conflicts: Clemency Burton-Hill talks to the American playwright Christopher Shinn about his new play about a US presidential election night in the era of MySpace and YouTube.(Now or Later)(Interview)
September 13, 2008... Looking every inch the Brit that he isn't, American playwright Christopher Shinn takes a bite of a sandwich in a Shepherd's Bush rehearsal room on a rainy summer afternoon and confesses that, although grateful, he still finds it 'a mystery'...

Have we ever faced an enemy more stupid than Muslim terrorists?: These narcissistic adolescent halfwits should not fill us with fear, says Rod Liddle. The aircraft plot trial showed yet again that those who wish to murder us with fizzy pop and peroxide are a bunch of cowards.(Column)
September 13, 2008... Isn't it about time Muslim terrorists rethought their strategy of recording glorious martyrdom videos, in advance of failing to blow anything up? Wouldn't it be a bit less embarrassing for all concerned? Time after time we see these imbeciles...

State education has outlawed difficulty: but private schools, private tutors and bestselling books are filling the vacuum, says Harry Mount. Larkin was right: there is a hunger in us all 'to be more serious'.
September 13, 2008... The decline of the British education system has been my gain, I'm only partly ashamed to confess. As somebody who has published a jokey book about a highbrow subject, I have profited from the proceeds of writing for a market that simply didn't...

Taking care of Toby.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
September 13, 2008... Sir: Kirsten Dunst never insisted that I ban Toby Young (Status anxiety, 6 September) from the set of How To Lose Friends & Alienate People. Toby's piece stemmed from a recent article of mine in Empire magazine. In his opening paragraph, he...

Many a diamond jubilee.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
September 13, 2008... Sir: Robert Hardman believes that 'Up to now, only one monarch in history has celebrated a diamond jubilee' ('Never mind the Olympics--get set for the Jubilee', 6 September). What tosh. To take the most obvious example, Emperor Francis-Joseph...

One-sided history.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
September 13, 2008... Sir: M.A. de A Brandao is right (Letters, 6 September) to draw attention to the brutality of the Germans and Japanese in the second world war, and he is probably right to assert the comparatively honourable conduct of British troops in Greece...

Lidl luxuries.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
September 13, 2008... Sir: Judi Bevan is mistaken ('Nice pork, pity about the pizza', 6 September) in thinking the middle class don't shop at Lidl; I modelled green corduroys in the first Boden catalogue and now do all my shopping at Lidl. The real savings are...

Alpine monsters.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
September 13, 2008... Sir: According to Taki (High life, 6 September), quoting the Victorian secretary of the Alpine Club, 'goblins and devils' had long vanished from the Swiss Alps by the middle of the 1850s. Yet when Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins crossed the...

Lines of duty.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
September 13, 2008... Sir: Peter Cooch (Letters, 6 September) is correct: the line 'What we need at this stage of the war is a futile gesture' first appeared in Beyond the Fringe, not Blackadder. But he is wrong that the sketch ends with the commanding officer's...

First the housing market collapsed. Now I fear the trade in llamas will be next.(ANOTHER VOICE)(Column)
September 13, 2008... In these straitened days, when the international money markets teeter nervily between relief and panic, and stock exchanges hang upon the slightest twitch of one of Alistair Darling's implausible eyebrows, I must be mindful of my position in...

Should a widowed mother aged thirteen be a saint?(AND ANOTHER THING)(Margaret Beaufort)(Brief biography)(Column)
September 13, 2008... When is too old? When too young? Almost every day I hear a story of someone, at the height of his power and energy, being compulsorily retired at 60. Or there is a fuss because a girl wants to get married at 15. I recall that Lydia, youngest of...

Greener than thou: the carbon tax contest: labour's climate change levy has led to lower emissions, says Elisabeth Jeffries, but can the Conservative alternative yield better results--or command business support?(BUSINESS)
September 13, 2008... There are many ways to eat a potato: chopped into chips and deep-fried, baked in the oven or slivered as crisps. Not many consumers care about the dozens of ways to cut down on the energy used to cook, store or produce it, such as buying a...

Who are housebuilders trying to fool?(THE HOUSING MARKET)
September 13, 2008... If Britain's housebuilders really want to sell more homes, they ought to slash their prices rather than lobby the government for packages like last week's ill-conceived attempt to boost the property market. That's what the rest of us have done,...

When we lost our mojo.(Our Times)(Book review)
September 13, 2008... OUR TIMES by A. N. Wilson Hutchinson, 25 [pounds sterling], pp. 720, ISBN 9780091796716 20 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 Eden, the only male British prime minister known to have varnished...

More nattering please.(The Other Garden and Other Stories)(Book review)
September 13, 2008... THE OTHER GARDEN AND COLLECTED STORIES by Francis Wyndham Picador, 7.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 403, ISBN 9780330457200 [telephone] 6.39 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 There are writers so...

Perhaps the greatest?(Alasdair Gray: A Secretary's Biography)(Book review)
September 13, 2008... ALASDAIR GRAY: A SECRETARY'S BIOGRAPHY by Rodge Glass Bloomsbury, 25 [pounds sterling], pp. 341, ISBN 9780747590156 [telephone] 20 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 It would be easier to write a...

A fascinating woman, ill-served.(Star of the Morning: The Extraordinary Life of Lady Hester Stanhope)(Book review)
September 13, 2008... STAR OF THE MORNING: THE EXTRAORDINARY LIFE OF LADY HESTER STANHOPE by Kirsten Ellis Harper Press, 25 [pounds sterling], pp. 464, ISBN 9780007170302 [telephone] 20 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655...

Stepping-stones of his past self.(Ghost Train to the Eastern Star)(Book review)
September 13, 2008... GHOST TRAIN TO THE EASTERN STAR by Paul Theroux Hamish Hamilton, 20 [pounds sterling], pp. 485, ISBN 9780241142530 [telephone] 16.79 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 When Paul Theroux set off...

All things to all men.(Michael X: A Life in Black and White)(Book review)
September 13, 2008... MICHAEL X: A LIFE IN BLACK AND WHITE by John Williams Century, 11.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 281, ISBN 9781846050954 [telephone] 9.59 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 Poor Michael. His life...

Adventures of a lost soul.(Ettie: The Intimate Life and Dauntless Spirit of Lady Desborough)(Book review)
September 13, 2008... ETTIE: THE INTIMATE LIFE AND DAUNTLESS SPIRIT OF LADY DESBOROUGH by Richard Davenport-Hines Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 25 [pounds sterling], pp. 450, ISBN 9780297851745 [telephone] 20 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling]...