The Spectator articles from June 2009

The Spectator archives from June 2009

The right inquiry.
June 27, 2009... Taking the country to war is one of the most serious decisions a government can make. So it is right and proper that once the troops return home, there is a full investigation. To the greatest extent possible--given intelligence relationships...

Release Athanasiadis.(Iason Athanasiadis)(Brief article)
June 27, 2009... Last week's Spectator carried a fine atmospheric despatch from Tehran by the Greek journalist Iason Athanasiadis, who has also been covering the disputed presidential election for the Washington Times. At some point in the past week--the...

Diary.(politics, economics, and modern life)(Column)
June 27, 2009... It used to really bother me. Sitting in what I thought was the presence of greatness, I'd leave hugely underwhelmed. Top people in top jobs who seemed to be rubbish. I even used to tell myself off. Intellectual snobbery, I self-scolded, is a...

Cameron will have to get rid of a lot more than the irksome Speaker Bercow.(POLITICS)(David Cameron, John Bercow)
June 27, 2009... There was no mistaking the sadistic zeal with which Labour MPs bounded into the lobbies to vote for John Bercow on Monday. The whole election had been an unexpected gift to them: a chance to foist on David Cameron a Speaker who is loathed by the...

The Spectator's notes.
June 27, 2009... Since the Speakership of the House of Commons depends on general acceptance for the holder to be able to do his job, it would seem to be right to say nothing further against the new one, and wish him well. The trouble is that John Bercow does...

[Cartoon].
June 27, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "I found Michael Martin much more accessible."

Diary of a Notting Hill nobody.(Column)
June 27, 2009... MONDAY I don't get it. One minute Labour MPs are trying to get Little Johnnie Bercow elected and then all today's papers say what a scandal it is that they are trying to fix it for Margaret Beckett. But why would Brown want Old Ma Beckett? He...

The secret Iraq deal that bought Mandelson's loyalty to Brown; John Kampfner unveils the ignominious truth about Sir John Chilcot's Iraq inquiry and reveals Peter Mandelson's demand, when Brown's future hung in the balance in early June, that the hearings be held in private. Even now Mandelson's priority is to protect Brand Blair.(Gordon Brown)(Cover story)
June 27, 2009... The charge sheet is long and yet the dock is empty. One of the most extraordinary aspects of Britain's involvement in the Iraq war has been the ability of those responsible to evade any form of reckoning. For that they have many people to thank,...

Flash Gordon.
June 27, 2009... As I was going up the stair I saw a man who wasn't there he wasn't there again today oh, how I wish he'd go away... HUGHES MEARNS [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Where is the Arthur Seldon for our own era? Colin Robinson, biographer of the sage who so influenced Thatcherism, says that Seldon has no counterpart now--the Tory party is no longer receptive to such challenging ideas.(excerpt from Arthur Seldon: A Life for Liberty)(Excerpt)
June 27, 2009... Arthur Seldon deserves greater recognition as a central figure in a small group of economic policymakers which started the transformation of the British economy in the last two decades of the 20th century. Seldon, who was born in 1916 in...

Sarkozy's burqa ban panders to racism, not feminism: Rod Liddle says that the French President may be right about Islam's ideological content but that his proposal is shockingly illiberal and wrong-headed.(LIDDLE BRITAIN)(Nicolas Sarkozy)(Column)
June 27, 2009... I've been in the Middle East for the last three or four days--just trying to help out, you know, anything one can do--and staying in a hotel which is renowned for its profusion and diversity of whores. Stick a pin in one of those United Nations...

Standing room.(Column)
June 27, 2009... Logging on to a university homepage I noticed that the first thing it flags up--breaking news--is that they're installing a 56,000 [pounds sterling] digital satellite TV system which will 'transform' the way students access multilingual news and...

No more consensus: this time there is a choice; the next election will present voters with two distinct futures, says Irwin Stelzer: Labour's rising taxes and love of the EU, or the Tories' spending cuts and plans for the 'Broken Society'.(European Union)
June 27, 2009... Where is the clear blue water? MPs in both the Labour and the Tory parties have engaged in behaviour that is illegal, or tawdry, or both. Both parties are responsible for the dire financial condition in which the country finds itself, Labour by...

A Yorkshire genius in love with his iPhone: Martin Gayford talks to David Hockney about drawing on his mobile phone, life on the Yorkshire coast, and planning lunch around the blossoming of hawthorn.(Interview)
June 27, 2009... 'Who would ever have thought,' asked David Hockney, 'that drawing would return via the telephone?' It is a typical Hockney point, wry, unexpected, connecting high-tech with low--and in this case undeniably true. Lately he has taken to drawing on...

Conservative blacks are fed up with being patronised by liberals and bureaucrats.(YOU KNOW IT MAKES SENSE)
June 27, 2009... A friend who teaches at an old-fashioned Sussex boarding school has a zero-tolerance approach to racism. The moment he hears one of the foreign boys claiming to be a victim of it, that's them chucked out of the class for the rest of the lesson....

I want to live in the country in which the Ayatollah Khamenei thinks I already do.(SHARED OPINION)
June 27, 2009... I remember a colleague's leaving party a couple of years ago. He slagged off virtually the whole newspaper in his speech, but he didn't mention me. 'I'm really sorry,' he said, afterwards, taking me fondly by the arm. 'You were in the first...

Does the Bank of England deserve more power? Critics of Gordon Brown's 'tripartite' regulatory structure want authority restored to Threadneedle Street, says Richard Northedge. But is the Bank's track record tarnished?(CITY AND FINANCE)
June 27, 2009... The simplistic initial analysis of the financial crisis--that the tripartite oversight structure of the Treasury, the Financial Services Authority and the Bank of England had failed--has developed over two years into a more complex argument. Now...

Trying to pick winners is a losers' game; Charlotte Moore says wise investors ride the market via tracker funds, rather than trying to outsmart it.(INVESTMENT 1)
June 27, 2009... One dark evening in October 1994, I was standing in a small meeting room that faced on to Fleet Street, waiting for my last interview before I could escape into the rainy streets. Then a young trader strode in and asked me an unforgettably...

Like rabbits caught in the headlights: humility, honesty and simplicity are what traumatised investors want from wealth managers, says Scott Payton.(INVESTMENT 2)
June 27, 2009... 'It's a difficult world out there,' admits Chris Kenny, investment director at Smith & Williamson, the wealth management and accountancy group. 'There's the recession, the economy teetering between inflation and deflation, higher tax rates,...

The Spectator's 50 Essential Films: Peter Hoskin and Matthew d'Ancona count down the final 25 of The Spectator's 50 Essential Films.(Awards list)
June 27, 2009... 25. Barry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick, 1975) Cinema sure does work in mysterious ways. Take Barry Lyndon, Stanley Kubrick's account of an Irish lad (played by Ryan O'Neal) who rises--and then falls--in 18th-century society. It's a satire which...

Men of War: Courage Under Fire in the 19th-Century Navy.(Book review)
June 27, 2009... MEN OF WAR: COURAGE UNDER FIRE IN THE 19TH-CENTURY NAVY by David Crane Harper Press, 30 [pounds sterling], pp 480 ISBN: 9780007254057 Tel. 24 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 [ILLUSTRATION...

It's not all good manners.(An Education)(Book review)
June 27, 2009... AN EDUCATION by Lynn Barber Penguin, 8.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 182, ISBN 9780141039558 Tel. 7.19 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Lynn Barber's interviews are one of...

Dangerous liaisons.(Surviving)(The Death of a Pope)(Coward at the Bridge)(Book review)
June 27, 2009... SURVIVING by Allan Massie Vagabond Voices, 10 [pounds sterling], pp. 224, ISBN 9780956056023 THE DEATH OF A POPE by Piers Paul Read Ignatius Press, 19.95 [pounds sterling], pp. 215 ISBN 9781586172954 COWARD AT THE BRIDGE ...

Modesty in words and work.(Attlee's Great Contemporaries: The Politics of Character)(Book review)
June 27, 2009... ATTLEE'S GREAT CONTEMPORARIES: THE POLITICS OF CHARACTER edited by Frank Field Continuum, 16.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 224, ISBN 9780826432247 Tel. 13.59 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 ...

Everyman's voice.(BOOKS)(excerpt from The Best of Frank O'Connor)(Excerpt)
June 27, 2009... Frank O'Connor was once stopped on the road west of Kinsale by a man who said to him: 'I hear you're a famous writer. I'd like to be a famous writer too, but 'tis bloody hard. The comma and the apostrophe are easy enough, but the semicolon is...

Keats.(BOOKS)(Poem)
June 27, 2009... Keats A building site apparently, though we all resist, prefer the pastoral of nightingale and musk rose as he lay upstairs, listening to Brown banging the servant-girl by the door, her little repeated cries. And...

Dangerous territory: Henrietta Bredin talks to Janis Kelly about her role in Rufus Wainwright's first opera, Prima Donna.(ARTS)(Interview)
June 27, 2009... Anyone less like the cliched idea of a prima donna than Janis Kelly would be hard to find. She is known and loved as a singer and consummate actress with a conspicuous lack of airs and graces who will throw herself into anything, the more...

Summer round-up.(Exhibitions)
June 27, 2009... It's a rewarding moment for a stroll round the London galleries. Good art is still being made and exhibited (some of it even selling), while more historical figures such as Winifred Nicholson (1893-1981) and Robert Motherwell (1915-91) are being...

Unmoved by Violetta.(La Traviata)(Roberto Devereux)(Opera review)
June 27, 2009... La traviata Royal Opera House Roberto Devereux Opera Holland Park The Royal Opera's press and marketing departments, normally no slouches when it comes to alliterative vulgarities, have missed a golden opportunity. With Berg's Lulu...

Desperate journey.(Year One)(Movie review)
June 27, 2009... Year One 12A, Nationwide Year One is the latest Jack Black comedy and while I would not wish to put you off--my job is to gently guide, not instruct--it is fantastically bad and you'd be mad to go see it. Anything would be better, and more...

Vow of poverty.(The Cherry Orchard)(A Skull in Connemara)(Theater review)
June 27, 2009... The Cherry Orchard Old Vic A Skull in Connemara Riverside Here's a peculiarity of Chekhov productions that tour the world. There's never any furniture. OK, there's some. A card table maybe, a few spindly chairs, a samovar, a...

Diaghilev still dazzles.(Ballets Russes)(Dance review)
June 27, 2009... Ballets Russes English National Ballet, Sadler's Wells I think Diaghilev would have been thrilled to attend the opening night of English National Ballet's centenary celebrations of his Ballets Russes. Not unlike his famously orchestrated...

Alternative view.(Music)(Lulu)(Opera review)
June 27, 2009... With diffidence, I differ from my esteemed opera colleague. But I think Michael Tanner has got the new Covent Garden Lulu (Arts, 13 June) upside down. Catching it by chance a few nights ago, I'll take the opportunity for an alternative opinion....

Celebs take to the streets.(Television)(Famous, Rich and Homeless)(Television program review)
June 27, 2009... Famous, Rich and Homeless, made by Love Productions for BBC1, and shown over Wednesday and Thursday nights, was a mess. It almost worked, but in the end it failed. For one thing, the five participants in the experiment were not particularly...

Caring for Naples.(Radio)(Blood and Lava)(Radio program review)
June 27, 2009... A curious programme on the World Service on Friday reminded us that although we're now embarking on a new kind of technological revolution, dominated by twittering, downloading, waking up to John Humphrys not in BH but Karachi, we've not quite...

Weekend to remember.(High life)(Column)
June 27, 2009... Rolling though picture-perfect hills and fields of maize and barley towards Wembury House, Devon, for the annual Hanbury cricket match. At times it's a scene from a Fifties film of a long-ago England, beautiful, tranquil and law-abiding, with...

Stag-night confessions.(Low life)(Column)
June 27, 2009... I was in the Groucho Club swapping self-satisfied greetings with leading hacks when the urge for nicotine became insistent and I stepped outside for a fag. The door hadn't stopped swinging behind me when I was pounced on by a range of even more...

Political parrot.(Wild life)(Column)
June 27, 2009... Kenya -- While staying recently on a lonely farm in the Highveld east of Johannesburg, I met a grey parrot that could sing 'Die Stem', South Africa's apartheid-era national anthem. That bird was certainly out of step with the times. We all know...

Doing what I'm told.(Slow life)(Column)
June 27, 2009... 'Do you still do music at all?' she asked. I think I've told you before. That is a musician's least favourite question. Normally my heart sinks when I get prodded with that one. All musicians still make music, of course they do, and it's...

No prisoners.(Bridge)
June 27, 2009... Writing this column from the Press Room in San Remo during the 4th European Open Bridge Championships, makes me feel a bit like a war correspondent--those fearless souls, microphone clutched in one hand and earpiece secured with the other,...

Hoc opus hic liber est.(CHESS)
June 27, 2009... One of the most frequently posed questions which I receive is what are the best chess books? Naturally, this depends on one's perspective. If one's intention is to improve tournament results, then an intensive course of high-octane opening...

Misinformation.(COMPETITION)
June 27, 2009... In Competition No. 2601 you were invited to submit snippets of misleading advice for tourists visiting Britain. You were at your cruel and mischievous best this week; the entry was a magnificent compendium of misinformation. There were a lot of...

1920: gosh!(CROSSWORD)
June 27, 2009... The unclued lights, two of which are paired, are of a kind, as suggested by one of the normal solutions which lacks any further definition. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] A first prize of 30 [pounds sterling] for the first correct solution opened...

Solution to 1917: state occasion.(CROSSWORD)
June 27, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] 6th June is QUEENSLAND DAY (10), commemorating the establishment of Queensland in 1859. Components of BRISBANE (1), the state capital, are the name of a ceremony at which a 21 officiates, and a word defined by 33; and...

By my epic standards, this was an extremely polite best man's speech.(STATUS ANXIETY)
June 27, 2009... It never ceases to amaze me that I am still asked to speak in public. If I am not the worst orator of my generation, I must be a close second. The last time I performed an after-dinner speaking gig was in Bath and the organisation concerned was...

Mind your language.(Column)
June 27, 2009... The Queen has had a vegetable garden laid out behind Buckingham Palace. 'No chemicals are used and the plot is irrigated from the palace borehole,' reported the Sunday Times. This use of chemicals annoys some people, mostly chemists. By...

Tour de force.(SPECTATOR SPORT)
June 27, 2009... In just over a week, on the day of the Wimbledon ladies final, or if you prefer, which I do, the third test between the Lions and the Springboks in Johannesburg, 180-odd riders in the heart of Monaco will set off at intervals for the opening...

Dear Mary.(YOUR PROBLEMS SOLVED)(Column)
June 27, 2009... Q. Recently I was asked by friends to take a visitor from Germany on a game drive in the Chobe National Park. Unfortunately the visitor had unwisely lunched on some elephant meat from a recent cull and vomited in my new Range Rover, thus...

Honestly, Gordon.(Gordon Brown)
June 20, 2009... Since his brush with political death, Gordon Brown has made 'candour' his word for the month. So it was extraordinary to hear how brazenly the Prime Minister distorted the truth in his address on Tuesday to the GMB's conference in Blackpool: a...

Peerless.(Lord Rogers of Riverside)(Brief article)
June 20, 2009... There was something magnificently comic about Lord Rogers of Riverside accusing the Prince of Wales of 'unconstitutional' behaviour. The modernist architect is predictably outraged that his hideous design for a development on the site of the old...

Diary.(Column)
June 20, 2009... Los Angeles I have just spent a hippocentric few days on a horse ranch in Santa Barbara County, California. I was the guest of my friend Monty Roberts, the inventor of horse whispering. Monty first developed 'Join-Up' to stop the cycle of...

Ten per cent? Chancellor Osborne will have to cut a lot more than that.(POLITICS)(George Osborne)
June 20, 2009... George Osborne was in bed when he heard Andrew Lansley on breakfast radio last week discussing health spending. It was an unremarkable story about Labour's budgets, with no hint of the political bombshell about to drop. The shadow health...

The Spectator's notes.(Column)
June 20, 2009... Should the next Speaker speak? It is a surprisingly difficult question to answer. It seems obvious that, in the age of the 24-hour news cycle, the 'first Commoner in the land' should add his voice to the public conversation. Until now, he has...

[Cartoon].(Cartoon)
June 20, 2009... THIS IS THE ROOM THAT PETER MANDELSON DIRECTS GORDON FROM DON'T WORRY ABOUT THE IRAQ INQUIRY, JUST PLOD ON.. SMILE... MELTDOWN! PETER DOESN'T ANSWER MY E MAILS! HE HATES GORDON SO DO! PETER'S MY FRIEND NOT YOUR FRIEND! DON'T...

Diary of a Notting Hill nobody.(Column)
June 20, 2009... MONDAY Amazing scenes in Iran. An inspiration to us all at this difficult time for the political process that democracy is worth fighting for, and a reminder to all authoritarian regimes of what can happen if you suppress the will of the...

The race to stop Iran getting the bomb is what counts: the scenes from Tehran have been inspiring and show that democracy is changing the shape of the Middle East, says James Forsyth. But the immediate decision facing President Obama is what to do about Iran's fast-moving nuclear programme.(Barack Obama)(Cover story)
June 20, 2009... It was what the West had long dreamed of seeing in Iran. The largest rally in Tehran since the Islamic Revolution of 1979 was not demanding death to America but respect for the democratic process. Those who have long claimed that the Iranian...

Black-clad crowds and burning bridges.(riot in Tehran, Iran)
June 20, 2009... Tehran The past week of rioting in Tehran has left many strong images in my mind, but chief among them is the raw passion of thousands of angry Iranians the morning after the disputed presidential elections. Standing in public squares, or on the...

My air rage is driven by righteous anger: Chrissy Iley on her many outbreaks of in-flight fury--one of which led to a passenger mutiny. Why do we have to pay 8,000 [pounds sterling] for airline staff not to be rude to us?
June 20, 2009... I don't like planes and I'm on them all the time. It's not really about the fear that I'm going to die, or maybe it is and I've just transferred it; it's the absolute certainty that I will lose control of my life. I will be asked to remove my...

Fathers have become second-class citizens: Toby Young says that Father's Day is nothing to celebrate: today's neutered dads have become overworked assistants to their children rather than paternal role models.
June 20, 2009... I cannot say I am looking forward to Father's Day--not if it is anything like last Sunday. I was woken at 5.45 a.m. when my wife Caroline delivered a sharp jab to my ribs. Charlie, our one-year-old, was crying and it was my turn to get up. I...

Standing room.(parenting)(Column)
June 20, 2009... I have the fear. The fear wakes me up at 3 a.m. and for a split second I forget what it is exactly that I'm frightened of. And then I remember. I am a mother and one of my children is off travelling and is on the other side of the world. In...

I have come up with a way of disrupting all these mad employment tribunals: Rod Liddle says the case of Fata Lemes--a Muslim woman who claimed her dignity had been 'violated' by the dress she had to wear in a cocktail bar--is sadly typical of a crazy institutional structure that kowtows to every conceivable outraged sensibility.(LIDDLE BRITAIN)
June 20, 2009... A Bosnian Muslim woman, Fata Lemes, has just won 3,000 [pounds sterling] from an employment tribunal because the Mayfair cocktail bar in which she worked required her to wear a red dress in the summer months. She said this was humiliating and...

The gym where they teach you how to beat up chavs: Brendan O'Neill is not impressed by a class of paranoid white-collar workers learning how to head-butt imaginary assailants and defend themselves with their laptops.(chav fighting)
June 20, 2009... Have you ever wanted to learn how to beat up a chav, those baseball-cap-wearing, blingsporting youngsters who inhabit inner cities, drink copious amounts of cider, and say unintelligible things in 'Blackney' (a mixture of 'blackspeak' and...

Lieutenant Paul Mervis (1981-2009).(LETTERS)(Obituary)(Brief article)
June 20, 2009... Paul Mervis arrived at The Spectator for a fortnight of work experience in the spring of 2005 and we missed him when he left. He was passionate about foreign affairs and spent hours discussing Iraq and Iran. He was also great fun and perhaps the...

Believe it or not, Mandelson has grown impatient with spin and presentation.(ANOTHER VOICE)
June 20, 2009... By this weekend most people won't remember the details of, and some won't remember at all, the exchange of emails between Lord Mandelson and the former Labour blogger Derek Draper, which took place in 2008 and before Mandelson joined Gordon...

Setanta: the Gordon Brown of sports broadcasting: David Crow says the Irish-based football channel--like the Prime Minister--looked a winner during the boom years but failed to attract fans and will struggle to survive.(BUSINESS)
June 20, 2009... You have to hand it to Michael O'Rourke and Leonard Ryan, founders of sports broadcaster Setanta. Three weeks ago it was hard to find anyone who thought their firm would still be afloat today. Analysts pointed to annual losses of 100 million...

Morning calm in financial markets despite mad Kim's nuclear endgame.(CITY LIFE)(Kim Jong-il)(Column)
June 20, 2009... I feel like Forrest Gump, a barometer of Asian Armageddon. I've come to South Korea via Sri Lanka, where the triumphant Rajapakse brothers were parading the bullet-ridden body of Tamil Tiger leader Prabhakaran on state television to the tune of...

The Spectator's 50 essential films.
June 20, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The studio logo fades. The opening credits roll. And so we come to the main feature: The Spectator's 50 Essential Films--a selection of the very best that cinema has to offer, and all in glorious Technicolor. This...

Cardinal values.('Fires of Faith: Catholic England Under Mary Tudor')(Book review)
June 20, 2009... FIRES OF FAITH: CATHOLIC ENGLAND UNDER MARY TUDOR by Eamon Duffy Yale, 19.99 [pounds sterling], pp.230, ISBN 9780300152166 [telephone] 15.99 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 As Machiavelli knew...

Unseeing is believing.(The City and the City)(Book review)
June 20, 2009... THE CITY & THE CITY by China Mieville Macmillan, 17.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 312, ISBN 9781405000178 [telephone] 14.39 (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] China Mieville's second book,...

No room at the top.('Pistols at Dawn')(Book review)
June 20, 2009... PISTOLS AT DAWN by John Campbell Cape, 20 [pounds sterling], pp. 453, ISBN 9780224080668 [telephone] 16 [pounds sterling] (plus 2.45 [pounds sterling] p&p) 0870 429 6655 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Political feuds have always been...

A choice of crime novels.('All The Dead Voices', 'Midnight Fugue', 'What To Do When Someone Dies', and 'My Soul To Take')(Book review)
June 20, 2009... Dublin has a special relationship with fiction, which in recent years has inspired some excellent crime novels. Among them is Declan Hughes's Ed Loy series, which gives a distinctively Irish twist to the flawed private investigator of American...

Of Late June.(Poem)
June 20, 2009... Of Late June Summer comes and is chasing now through evening, Flashing over our heads and gone so quickly. Nothing winds me the way these heightened moments Dip back down and then dart, they leave us wanting Grace that climbs up...

Pointless but necessary.(The Resistance: The French Fight Against the Nazis)(Book review)
June 20, 2009... The Resistance: The French Fight Against the Nazis by Matthew Cobb Simon & Schuster, 17.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 403, ISBN 9781847371232 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] For 20 years after the war, the Resistance was the presiding myth of...

The serious business of theatre: Sir Peter Hall tells Mary Wakefield about the secret of good acting and his pact with Pinter.(ARTS)(Interview)
June 20, 2009... Even at 78 and from a distance, Sir Peter Hall has the look of an alpha male. There he is about 100 or so feet away, advancing towards me across the polished boards of his rehearsal room; head forward, bear-like, with the lonely charisma of a...

Frenetic attack.('Futurism' at Tate Modern)
June 20, 2009... Futurism Tate Modern, until 20 September The centenary of Marinetti's 'First Manifesto of Futurism' is a wonderful excuse, if excuse be needed, for a celebration and perhaps re-assessment of a movement that attacked the past in the name of...

Power to inspire.('Parthenogenesis' and 'Fidelio')(Opera review)
June 20, 2009... Fidelio Garsington Parthenogenesis Linbury Beethoven's Fidelio is one of the most moving operas in the repertoire, but I've usually been more moved by it in concert than on stage. The gaucheries of its plot, which include, really,...

Domestic conflict.('The Winter's Tale' and 'Phedre')(Theater review)
June 20, 2009... The Winter's Tale Old Vic Phedre Lyttelton I seem to be alone in feeling great waves of pity for anyone involved in an assault on The Winter's Tale. This strange dud of a text remains mystifyingly popular with theatre folk. It's two...

Erratic behaviour.('Telstar')(Movie review)
June 20, 2009... Telstar 15, Key Cities Telstar is a biopic about the 'ground breaking' 1960s song writer and independent record producer Joe Meek, but unless you know a lot about Joe already--and, I confess, I didn't--you're never that clear about what...

Glittering finale.('Jewels')(Dance review)
June 20, 2009... Jewels Royal Opera House Created in 1967 for a stellar cast of dance artists, Jewels is one of the most written about of Balanchine's ballets. Intrigued by its uncommon structure, namely three choreographically diverse, plotless sections...

Moving on.(modern music)
June 20, 2009... In the current anniversary-fest the musical world has awarded itself there is an omission which dwarfs the lot of them. This is the invention of what many people still call 'modern music'. For it was in 1909 that Schoenberg wrote his Five...

Thoughts on morality.(Radio)('Reith Lectures' and 'England')(Radio program review)
June 20, 2009... It's not often that by chance you tune in to one of the annual Reith Lectures (Radio Four) and find what you're hearing so gripping that you actually stay with it. The brain is willing, but not always obedient to the demands of listening to...

Utterly gripped.(Television)('Occupation', 'Krod Mandoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire', and 'That Mitchell and Webb Look')(Television program review)
June 20, 2009... Occupation, the BBC's latest Iraq war drama, opened with a scene in which a British army sergeant (James Nesbitt) carries a badly wounded little girl, under fire, through the streets of Basra towards a hospital. Seasoned BBC-watchers could all...

Joy of a flutter.(The turf)('Enemy Number One', 'Black Horse Red Dog', and 'Freud on Course')(Book review)
June 20, 2009... Newmarket trainer William Haggas should be one of racing's ambassadors to the world. Win or lose he communicates pleasure. Take Triple Aspect's victory at Sandown on Saturday in the Agfa Listed sprint. 'He's a really scrubby little thing and he...

Back in Britain.(High life)(Column)
June 20, 2009... Does absence make the heart grow fonder? I'm not so sure. I've been away from London for one year, and was dreading the return. The grey sky, the Dickensian streets, the fat-bellied lager louts, the knife culture, Gordon Brown and Peter...