The Spectator articles from January 2007

The Spectator archives from January 2007

Wise quacks.(George W. Bush)
January 27, 2007... The best passage in President Bush's penultimate State of the Union address on Tuesday was an admission of the transience of his own administration and of the newly composed Congress he was addressing. 'The war on terror we fight today, ' he...

DIARY.(Condoleezza Rice)
January 27, 2007... It is one of the great mysteries of modern geopolitics. How the hell has Condoleezza Rice got away with it for so long? There she is, Secretary of State of the United States and one of the most powerful people on the planet. It is Condi Rice...

Across Whitehall, you can hear the bleating of Blairites, defeated by the system.(Viewpoint essay)
January 27, 2007... Just after the 2001 election, the triumphant Tony Blair had a plan: he would split the Home Office in two. The PM had been appalled by its performance in New Labour's first term and had already decided to move Jack Straw to the Foreign...

THE SPECTATOR'S NOTES.(Column)
January 27, 2007... How can a single state school defend itself in court? The question arises because of the 14-year-old Muslim pupil at Wycombe High School who has been forbidden by the headmistress from wearing the niqab, a veil which leaves only her eyes...

DIARY OF A NOTTING HILL NOBODY.(Column)
January 27, 2007... MONDAY The scariest thing was waiting for us in the meeting room this morning. It was a huge projected figure on the wall with the head of Shilpa Shetty and the body of Jade Goody. Jed marched in, stood in front of it and said, 'Ideas?'...

Hillary v. Obama is the real race in the battle for the White House.(Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama)
January 27, 2007... Clinton's in, Obama's in, everybody's in. Last week the 2008 presidential contest got serious, as the Democratic heavyweights Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama entered the race. Obama announced on Tuesday, Hillary followed on Saturday. Already...

All hail the new anti-Islamist intelligentsia.
January 27, 2007... The durability of Conservatism has depended, to a great extent, on it being a disposition rather than a philosophy. What marks Conservatives out, across the generations, and whatever the environment they operate in, is an attitude of mind...

'We Blairites should have been bolder'.(Viewpoint essay)
January 27, 2007... It is 7.30 a. m. and I am the first to arrive at Harris City Technology College in south London, where Andrew Adonis, the schools minister, wants to meet for breakfast. The building is shut, the weather is freezing and a kindly cleaner asks...

'What is the quickest way down to the beach to steal a motorbike?'.(Personal account)
January 27, 2007... Sidmouth, Devon The plaque at the entrance to the sharply sloping banks of shingle reads 'Bountiful Branscombe' and, you have to say, they're not kidding. The giant containers, their metal sides crushed or ripped open by the waves, lie...

Somalia is horribly close to a holy war.(Jihad)
January 27, 2007... Kiunga, on the KenyauSomali border Hewas a quiet American, and an oddity in Kiunga. For 20 hours I had rammed the Range Rover through tsetse fly-infested jungles teeming with buffalo. When earlier this month I limped into this Indian Ocean...

'Blood Diamond' should help the Sierra Leone I love.(government advertising)
January 27, 2007... Diamonds are a guerrilla's best friend. You may have heard that it's 'girls' who share a special relationship with the little sparklers, but don't be fooled; females have simply had a rather more sophisticated advertising campaign working for...

The lesson of the Big Brother row is that we really should be burning more effigies.(demonstrations against racism in television program in Patna, India)
January 27, 2007... There is Guy Fawkes, of course, and those annual photogenic exuberances they have somewhere in Sussex, but in the UK political protest rarely employs the device of the flaming effigy. Our grievances tend to be written about, shouted about or,...

Secrets of survival in the Noble House.(Jardine Matheson and Company (Japan) Ltd.)
January 27, 2007... The novelist James Clavell must have purchased a job lot of cliches when he wrote his two fictional blockbusters based on the history of the Hong Kongbased Jardine Matheson business empire. Taipan, set in the 19th century, that is the...

Mugged by inflation - again.
January 27, 2007... It was Ronald Reagan who warned that 'inflation is as violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber and as deadly as a hit man'. Having just worked out that my personal rate of inflation is running at a scary 6.6 per cent, I know...

Invasion of nerds leaves India's high-tech capital yearning for its old identity.(Bangalore)
January 27, 2007... 'This is a celebration of the nerd in each of us, ' declared Partha, the pony-tailed cofounder of Mindtree, an information technology consulting firm, flashing a nervous grin at thousands of young software engineers ranged in a marquee in...

Intolerable, unstoppable, indispensable.(Edth Wharton)(Book review)
January 27, 2007... EDITH WHARTON by Hermione Lee Chatto, [pounds sterling]25, pp. 854, ISBN 9780701166656 . [pounds sterling]20 (plus [pounds sterling]2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 There is no getting away from it, Edith Wharton was grand. It never occurred...

Intoxication of the various.(Collected Poems: Louis Mac Neice)(Book review)
January 27, 2007... COLLECTED POEMS : LOUIS MAC NEICE edited by Peter McDonald Faber, [pounds sterling]30, pp. 836, ISBN 9780571215744 This careful new Collected arrives just in time; my own 1963 edition is falling to pieces, from overuse. (MacNeice,...

The noise, the smells - and the people.(The Senses in Late Medieval England)(Book review)
January 27, 2007... THE SENSES IN LATE MEDIEVAL ENGLAND by C. M. Woolgar Yale, [pounds sterling]25, pp. 372, ISBN 0300118716 . [pounds sterling]20 (plus [pounds sterling]2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 On the opening page of The Waning of the Middle Ages, Johan...

Chuckles in the middle of nowhere.(The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters)(Book review)
January 27, 2007... THE GLASS BOOKS OF THE DREAM EATERS by G. W. Dalquist Viking, [pounds sterling]16.99, pp. 753, ISBN 9780670916474 . [pounds sterling]13.59 (plus [pounds sterling]2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 I really wanted to like this book. After the dire...

In Her Majesty's service.(The Last Princess: The Devoted Life of Queen Victoria's Youngest Daughter)(Book review)
January 27, 2007... THE LAST PRINCESS : THE DEVOTED LIFE OF QUEEN VICTORIA'S YOUNGEST DAUGHTER by Matthew Dennison Weidenfeld, [pounds sterling]20, pp. 302, ISBN 9780297847946 . [pounds sterling]16 (plus [pounds sterling]2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 The night...

Something rich and strange.(Hellfire and Herring: A Childhood Remembered)(Book review)
January 27, 2007... HELLFIRE AND HERRING : A CHILDHOOD REMEMBERED by Christopher Rush Profile, [pounds sterling]15.99, pp. 308, ISBN 101861979177 . [pounds sterling]12.79 (plus [pounds sterling]2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 It would be hard to exaggerate just how...

The supreme double-crosser.(Agent Zigzag: The True Wartime Story of Eddie Chapman, Lover, Betrayer, Hero, Spy)(Book review)
January 27, 2007... AGENT ZIGZAG : THE TRUE WARTIME STORY OF EDDIE CHAPMAN , L OVER , BETRAYER , H ERO , S PY by Ben Macintyre Bloomsbury, [pounds sterling]14.99, pp. 374, ISBN 9780747587541 . [pounds sterling]11.99 (plus [pounds sterling]2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655...

'Call me Larry'.(Laurence Olivier)(Biography)
January 27, 2007... Fifty years ago, the Royal Court theatre detonated its second Hbomb. The first had been Look Back in Anger, in 1956. The next was The Entertainer, John Osborne's follow-up play, which opened 50 years ago in April. Out were blown the West End...

Gaudier's genius.(Henri Gaudier-Brzeska )
January 27, 2007... WE the moderns Kettle's Yard, Cambridge, until 18 March When Henri Gaudier-Brzeska was killed in 1915 while fighting for the French, he was only 24. It's hard to believe that so young a sculptor could have done as much or left as large an...

Timed out.(The Fountain)(Movie review)
January 27, 2007... The Fountain 12a, Nationwide (but don't bother) This week I meant to see Peter O'Toole in Venus, which is said to be really good, but I messed up the screening times and so didn't. I know, I know, I'm just so dumb. Should you wish to...

ARTS.(Petherbridge Alone with Soane, Deanna Petherbridge's drawings exhibition)(Brief article)
January 27, 2007... Petherbridge Alone with Soane is an experience not to be missed: a miniretrospective of Deanna Petherbridge's drawings in Sir John Soane's country villa, Pitzhanger ManorHouse (Mattock Lane, Ealing, until 3 March). There is surely no...

Danish delight.(La Sylphide )(Dance review)
January 27, 2007... Napoli Divertissements/La Sylphide Royal Ballet Swan Lake BBC1 Johan Kobborg's staging of La Sylphide is one of the Royal Ballet's super hits. It is thus a good and glorious thing that it is back on stage. This time, too, the brief...

Swivel-eyed eco-loons.(television programs on global warming)
January 27, 2007... In the last ten years there has been (a) an alarming rise (b) a slight but significant rise or (c) no statistically significant change in global mean temperature. Actually, the answer is (c) but if the one you gave was (a) or (b) I'm hardly...

Digital ding-dong.(British Broadcasting Corp., digital television)
January 27, 2007... The strains of 'Danny Boy' echoed round the living room on Sunday night and suddenly I was back in the north London vicarage where I grew up, crouched over the gas fire doing my homework as we listened to Alan Keith signing off his weekly...

Height discrimination.(cars for height people)
January 27, 2007... Chugging up the drive to a friend's shoot in the ancient Land Rover, the first two guns I saw were men of about six feet seven. My immediate thought was that all the guns, bar me, had been chosen for their height. If so, the line would look...

Dictatorial style.
January 27, 2007... Style is the most abused word in the English language. It is usually attributed to fashionable people by those not in the know. Style, however, is an elusive quality, and few fashionable people and almost no celebrities possess it outright....

Spanish epiphany.( Day of Epiphany)
January 27, 2007... Las Alpujarras When I was in Spain at Christmas, I bumped into the guide who had led the walking tour of the Sierra Nevada that I'd been on nearly a decade ago. I met him and his wife by chance in the narrow street. He recognised me and...

House work.(curing constipation in a traditional way )
January 27, 2007... Laikipia Our farmhouse is at the finishing stage and Wachira, the electrician from Large Power and Control, is advising me on aesthetics. 'A spotlight in the garden is a beauteous thing to behold, ' he urges. I reply, 'Fine, but can we...

Slipping the ve lvet.(Viewpoint essay)
January 27, 2007... I knew something was up when an impeccably tailored Italian of my acquaintance told me the most remarkable piece of news: Flavio Briatore had been seen out and about wearing slippers. He imparted this news to me with the full gravity that...

Sleepless in Buenos Aires.
January 27, 2007... We arrived in Buenos Aires, my son and I, on the day of a smallish demonstration in the Plaza de Mayo. Our beautiful blonde guide, Valeria, said that where we were, in front of the Pink Palace, was a pretty popular spot for such events. They...

HOTELS OF THE WEEK.(Park Hyatt)(Estancia Rincon Del Socorro)(Brief article)
January 27, 2007... PARK HYATT Avenida Alvear 1661, Buenos Aires, Argentina Tel: 54 11 5171 1234 www. buenosaires. park. hyatt. com ESTANCIA RINCON DEL SOCORRO Casilla 45, 3470 Mercedes Province of Corrientes, Argentina Tel: 54 3782 497073/172 www....

The big freeze.(Britain)
January 27, 2007... Predicting last week's raging gales would subside in time for the Saturday football programme, a BBC weatherman forecast, nicely I thought, 'a weatherfree sports weekend'. Sixty years ago this week it was by no means that as an unrelenting...

United we stand.(British-Scottish relations)
January 20, 2007... The 300th anniversary this week of the Act of Union between England and Scotland has been a depressingly defensive event rather than a festival of celebration. In the Daily Telegraph, Gordon Brown - that indefatigable champion of...

DIARY.(Internet, David Beckham, Kate Middleton )(Column)
January 20, 2007... If you have started to fear that Tesco, that rampaging retail beast, is running the country, then you may be right. Let me explain. When Time magazine made everyone who uses the internet their 'Person of the Year' last month, it got us all...

'Social responsibility' is a bad name for a good idea: Cameron is truly on to something.(David Cameron)
January 20, 2007... How much does a hamburger really cost? Within this question, as one of David Cameron's senior advisers explained to me, lies the Conservatives' new driving philosophy. A Big Mac costs [pounds sterling]1.99. But if children guzzle too many...

THE SPECTATOR'S NOTES.(Lord Willoughby de Broke, Lord Browne, BP Mervyn King, Bank of England )
January 20, 2007... Are you a hedger or a ditcher? The distinction was invented to describe the opposition to Asquith's threat to the House of Lords in 1911, and it applies today to Euroscepticism. It is not a coincidence that Lord Willoughby de Broke, one...

DIARY OF A NOTTING HILL NOBODY.(British politics)(Column)
January 20, 2007... MONDAY Don't ask me why, but suddenly the buzzword is 'Thatcher'. Memo marked 'Urgent' says the T-word count for an average speech is now ten times minimum 'until further notice'. Jed rushed into the office this morning all breathless and...

Last hours of a monster let off the hook by his American foes.(Fidel Castro)
January 20, 2007... Sola mors tyrannicida est, wrote Thomas More: death is the only way to get rid of tyrants. And so it has proved for Fidel Castro. Sixteen years ago, he looked finished. The USSR had collapsed, and the Soviet subsidies that had propped up the...

Memory of that terrible day will long survive Castro.(Fidel Castro)
January 20, 2007... Like the assassination of JFK, everybody alive then can remember where they were that Doomsday Week of the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. That Saturday, 27 October, was, and remains, the closest the world has come to nuclear holocaust...

'No one has the last word on climate change'.(Sir Nicholas Stern)(Interview)
January 20, 2007... In a lecture a year ago, Sir Nicholas Stern confessed that until recently he 'had an idea of what the greenhouse effect was, but wasn't really sure'. What a difference a year makes. The man I meet in the Treasury office has been...

'To be with John Betjeman was to enter another world'.(Biography)
January 20, 2007... Mymother first met John Betjeman in the summer of 1929. She was 20 and he was a master at Heddon Court prep school in Potters Bar where her brothers Dick and John Addis were pupils. Together with her parents, she had driven over from Primrose...

Ancient & modern.(classical Greek period, 480-404 BC)
January 20, 2007... The joyful street parties, dazzling fireworks displays and sense of universal celebration that have greeted the 50th anniversary of the EU across the land make one wonder how much longer it can go on. Not long, unless it learns the lessons....

Make or break for President Bush.(George W. Bush)
January 20, 2007... President George W. Bush has always delivered the State of the Union with a triumph in the war on terror or an election to brag about, a majority of Republicans in Congress and a united party behind him. Not this Tuesday, though. In the...

Get rich and have fun with my new Unethical Investment Fund.
January 20, 2007... Are you worried about the size of the footprint you are leaving on this earth? More specifically, are you worried that it might not be big enough? I may have the solution. The Spectator Unethical Investment Fund (SUIF) is a chance for all...

How sad that Margaret Beckett will not end her Cabinet career with a burst of angry candour.
January 20, 2007... I should start with a correction and an apology. The apology is owed to Margaret Beckett. I asserted in this column two weeks ago that the Foreign Secretary had made no protest at Saddam Hussein's execution. In fact Mrs Beckett did (sort...

The struggle to make Sainsbury's great again.(J Sainsbury PLC)(Interview)
January 20, 2007... Justin King feels underappreciated. Dubbed 'Tigger' by his staff shortly after arriving as chief executive of a crisis-ridden J Sainsbury Plc in March 2004, the 45-year-old's normal bounce is notably absent when we meet at the grocery...

The parable of Battersea power station.(real estate)
January 20, 2007... While London homeowners crow about the profits they have made on their houses, it has largely escaped notice that all of them could have made even larger profits last year by flogging the family home and staking the lot on property shares....

A slow dawn but not a false one.(Japan)
January 20, 2007... For fund managers who specialised in Japan, 2005 was a fantastic year. After more than a decade of dealing with a market in the doldrums they suddenly found themselves in the middle of a boom: stocks were rising fast, gurus around the world...

Who's new in 2007 - and how are things in Sakhalin, Comrade Lobachov?(Column)
January 20, 2007... An entry in the new edition of Who's Who isn't quite like a knighthood - you can't buy one, for a start - but it is nevertheless a distinction. It's also a useful indicator of trends. Business leaders appearing in the big red book for the...

Fish fries in Half Moon Fort.(Barbados)
January 20, 2007... When you think of Barbados, you think of celebrities. Tony Blair's annual holidays in Sir Cliff Richard's villa; high-profile Hello! weddings on the beach or the golf course, like that of Tiger Woods or Jemma Kidd and the future Duke...

Holy orders.(churches of Rome)
January 20, 2007... 'No flash! No flash! Mama mia, four times I tell-a you, ma you do it again!' The anger of the sacristan of the church of S. Agostino rolled past Caravaggio's 'Madonna dei Pellegrini' and struck a Japanese with a beatific smile fixed under a...

Barcelona Diary.
January 20, 2007... Have you ever had steak tartare with ice cream on it? Well, I have! I had it in Barcelona just a few weeks ago, and very nice it was too, so eat your heart out, A.A. Gill. I flew to Barcelona racked with guilt about the flight, knowing...

Black Sea bubble.(Odessa)
January 20, 2007... Odessa was once as fashionable as Lausanne or Biarritz. The glitterati would take the waters in the summer and mingle on the pristine beaches of the Black Sea. Even Bolshevik rule barely dented its popularity, but as Stalin's iron curtain...

Death, be not proud.(How to Live Forever or Die Trying)(Book review)
January 20, 2007... HOW TO LIVE FOREVER OR DIE TRYING by Bryan Appleyard Simon & Schuster, [pounds sterling]12.99, pp. 307, ISBN 9780743268684 . [pounds sterling]10.39 (plus [pounds sterling]2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 The title of this book, and the cover,...

A martyr without a cause.(Love Songs and Lies)(Book review)
January 20, 2007... LOVE SONGS AND LIES by Libby Purves Hodder, [pounds sterling]14.99, pp. 394, ISBN 034083739X . [pounds sterling]11.99 (plus [pounds sterling]2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 'Yes, you may well sigh and beat your head on the table, ' the...

Singing in the mud.(Voices of Silence: The Alternative Book of First World War Poetry)(Book review)
January 20, 2007... VOICES OF SILENCE : THE ALTERNATIVE BOOK OF FIRST WORLD WAR POETRY by Vivien Noakes Sutton, [pounds sterling]18.99, pp. 454, ISBN 0750945214, . [pounds sterling]15.19 (plus [pounds sterling]2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 This is a courageous...

An innocent abroad.(Safe Houses)(Book review)
January 20, 2007... SAFE HOUSES by David Pryce-Jones Sinclair-Stevenson, [pounds sterling]12.99, pp. 186, ISBN 9780955383304 . [pounds sterling]10.39 (plus [pounds sterling]2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 Even as a boy Charles knew there was something false about...

Pre-Raphaelite of the world.(William Holman Hunt: A Catalogue Raisonne)(Book review)
January 20, 2007... WILLIAM HOLMAN HUNT : A CATALOGUE RAISONN[ETH] by Judith Bronkhurst Paul Mellon Center for Studies in British Art/ Yale University Press, 2 volumes, [pounds sterling]175, ISBN 0300102356 Had there been a poll of the nation's favourite...

Nags versus cads.(The Cleft)(Book review)
January 20, 2007... THE CLEFT by Doris Lessing 4th Estate, [pounds sterling]16.99, pp. 260, ISBN 0007233434 . [pounds sterling]13.59 (plus [pounds sterling]2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 The Cleft (as Lessing writes in a brief foreword) was inspired by a...

All too minor to matter.(Edward VI: The Lost King of England)(Book review)
January 20, 2007... EDWARD VI: THE LOST KING OF ENGLAND by Chris Skidmore Weidenfeld, [pounds sterling]20, pp. 346, ISBN 9780297846499 . [pounds sterling]16 (plus [pounds sterling]2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 Monarchy, monarchy, monarchy. Are we so addicted to it...

Formal feeling comes good.(Careless)(Book review)
January 20, 2007... CARELESS by Deborah Robertson Sceptre, [pounds sterling]12.99, pp. 293, ISBN 0340938234 . [pounds sterling]10.39 (plus [pounds sterling]2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 Contemporary Australian fiction, like Australian film, is known more for its...

More than a hint of cordite.(A Tankie's Travels)(Book review)
January 20, 2007... A TANKIE'S TRAVELS by Jock Watt Woodfield Publishing, [pounds sterling]9.95, pp. 200, ISBN 1846830214 www. woodfieldpublishing. com The best personal account of tank warfare in the Western Desert is generally reckoned to be Alamein to Zem...

The rewards of crime.(crime novels)
January 20, 2007... Raymond Chandler once praised Dashiell Hammett for having given murder back to the sort of people who committed it. One knows what he meant; away with murders at the vicarage or on the Orient Express (where, however, a good few have doubtless...

A two-way deal.(Mark Stone, Stephen Barlow)(Interview)
January 20, 2007... The phrase 'English song' is often met with suspicion, bringing with it a whiff of the morris dance, the come, follow follow and the hey nonny no - and the work of Roger Quilter, composing in the first half of the 20th century, is no...

Poetic spirit.(exhibitions)
January 20, 2007... Picasso: La Californie Helly Nahmad Gallery, 2 Cork Street, London W1, until 28 February Aubrey Williams: Major Works October Gallery, 24 Old Gloucester Street, London WC1, until 10 February Here are two exhibitions which remind us of the...

ARTS.(Kurt Jackson's exhibition)(Brief article)
January 20, 2007... Kurt Jackson has recently linked up with Friends of the Earth, and his latest exhibition at Messum's Fine Art Gallery, 8 Cork Street, London W1 (until 3 February), focuses on the environment. As he explains, 'I've always had an environmental...

Dessay delights.(La Fille du Regiment)(Opera review)
January 20, 2007... La fille du regiment Royal Opera House Donizetti's La fille du regiment is one of his three comedies that retain a place in the repertoire. It is mainly celebrated for its hero Tonio's aria 'Pour mon me', which has a succession of nine...

Suffering together.(Babel)(Movie review)
January 20, 2007... Babel 15, Nationwide In the remote sands of the Moroccan desert, a rifle shot - bang! - rings out, detonating a chain of events that will, after two-and-half bladder-tormenting hours, link an American tourist couple's bloodsoaked fight...

Noises off.(Regime Change)(The Belgian Nurse)(Radio program review)
January 20, 2007... 'Words are all we have, ' said one of the characters, a writer, on the Saturday-afternoon play on Radio Four. Not on radio, they're not. That's the great thing about radio drama. The voices, the spot effects, the way it sounds, are just...

Nightmare on Downing Street.(The Trial of Tony Blair)(The Roadkill Chef )(Television program review)
January 20, 2007... It's a commonplace that the Berlin satire boom of the 1930s did nothing to stop the rise of Hitler. But these days, in Britain, satire is not confined to a few small botes or bierkellers, entertaining tiny numbers of misfits, lefties and...

Second best.(horse racing)
January 20, 2007... A punting friend at Kempton Park told me about the school class last week who were asked to stand up and talk about what their fathers did for a living. The sons of bakers and binmen, stockbrokers and scaffolders all happily recounted their...

Fond farewell.(Spectator office relocation)(Column)
January 20, 2007... To 56 Doughty Street for the last supper, or the embalmers' lunch, as Gore Vidal once described a class reunion. Actually, it was very moving, at least for the poor little Greek boy. Had The Spectator been a Mexican magazine, we would...

Grace and favour.(Exeter International Airport )(Column)
January 20, 2007... The check-in queue was constrained by portable barriers into one of those snaking, pointless and unexpectedly intimate queues that are all the rage at British airports. Every time I made the 180-degree turn, I found myself once again face to...

Cries of outrage.(public expenditure)
January 20, 2007... It is not only Gordon Brown who has to make difficult choices between prudence and public expenditure. Our parish council has just announced a cut in services which - as cuts in services always do - has produced cries of outrage from the...

Is it time for tea?(Tea Palace, Orange Pekoem, Twinings, tea shops)
January 20, 2007... As so often with a tale of fads and fashions, we must begin our journey in pursuit of the rebirth of the tea shop in the west London enclave of Notting Hill. An interesting-looking place called the Tea Palace (www. teapalace. com) opened up...

My big fat Indian wedding.
January 20, 2007... Few letters - well, packages - can rival a pukka Indian wedding invitation. For a start, there were the 17 stamps on the envelope, which was lined with gold-embossed paper rather like a fabulous jacket. Inside was not just one invitation, but...

HOTEL OF THE WEEK.(directory)(Directory)(Brief article)
January 20, 2007... TIKLI BOTTOM Gairatpur Bas, Tikli, Gurgaon 122001 Tel: 0091 124 276 6556 www. tiklibottom. com THE IMPERIAL Janpath, New Delhi 110001 Tel: 0091 112 334 1234 www. theimperialindia. com THE TAJ MAHAL HOTEL 3 Mansingh Road, New Delhi...

The way we live now.(hoem architecture)
January 20, 2007... In her recent book on the new American country house Mary Miers notes that increasing numbers of clients require architects to build rooms for 'specific use'. These are often idiosyncratic. A 'gift-wrapping' room is currently the...

Mud and money.(soccer)
January 20, 2007... Day and night, night and day . . . relentlessly the football season slurps on through the January mud - mud and money, slurp, slurp - transfer 'windows', raucous headlines, phoney passions torn to tatters, 'hot' news stories cold and...