Cappuccino Culture

American dream

David Blackburn — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 18:10:14 +0100

Occasionally, the New York Times’ podcasts are unmissable. Their recent exchange with Christopher Hitchens falls into the category. Hitchens is revered in America, but he is not an adoptive American. His identification with that country exceeds the administrative banalities of changing a passport. Slightly absurdly, the adolescent Hitchens ‘dreamt’ of being a writer and of visiting America. He realised that those two desires were one need as he grew older.

The Amis, Hitchens, McEwan and Fenton literary clique of the Seventies has entered popular mythology. Angela Gorgas exhibited her photographic record]]>

So, how was it for you?

David Blackburn — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 10:35:25 +0100

Not since Isandlwana have English redcoats received such a drubbing in South Africa. In fact the 24th Foot, massacred by Zulus armed with spears, came off better than the England football team. Despair, anger, disbelief, the usual reactions to an England World Cup exit, have been overridden by a guttural belly-laugh. It is a wide gap between tragedy and farce but England forded it. Incompetent officials are by the way when a team fails to defend a goal kick, or finds its two centre-halves holidaying near the touchline, or surrenders possession in the opposition]]>

Swedish lessons

Fraser Nelson — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 16:53:50 +0100

I’m in Stockholm today to celebrate the summer solstice. It’s a magical part of the year, best illustrated by the newspaper column (below) giving times for sunrise and sunset in various parts of Sweden. In Kiruna there’s just a dash – the sun doesn’t rise or set in this part of the year. (The same is true in winter, the poor things).

Normally, the Swedes disguise their pagan festivals with a Christian veneer (like Santa Lucia) but today’s all-out dance-round-the-fertility-pole without apology. It’s like a cross between the Waltons, Woodstock and the]]>

Claiming the Holocaust for art

David Blackburn — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 17:01:37 +0100

Yann Martel is ambitious. After the phenomenal success of Life of Pi, he has laboured for 8 years over Beatrice and Virgil, his fictionalised account of writing about the Holocaust from non-Jewish perspectives.

The book has received what is politely termed ‘mixed’ reviews internationally; and the British press has lacerated it. To varying degrees, the critical reaction has turned on Martel’s Jewish analogy (a monkey and a donkey as the characters in a mystery play), arguing that it stereotypes Jews. The most vociferous reviewers doubt that it is appropriate for a]]>

Once more unto the breach

David Blackburn — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 13:47:36 +0100

Brian Blessed and friends try to rouse the English football team. Classic. The only thing that’s missing is a Spitfire.

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Must I go to Glastonbury?

David Blackburn — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 12:21:18 +0100

Confession time: I’ve never been to Glastonbury and I don’t want to go. That’s typically cantankerous and misanthropic of me, but there we are. Just the word ‘Glastonbury’ recalls my sole previous experience at a music festival. Reading is an awful squat at the best of times; with the addition of mud, sweat and ‘other people’ it’s a hell-hole – even Slough is preferable.

Besides the squalor, some of the festival fraternity were exasperating, mixing piety and nefariousness into a hypocritical gloop. Some hemp wearing flunky chastised me for bringing Andrex and]]>

The party’s over

David Blackburn — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 18:45:17 +0100

Without need of an occupation, a small band of the well-born lit up the 1920s with mischief and indolence. Last week, the last of their number, Teresa Jungman, died aged 102. Many of the Bright Young Things went on to ‘Great Things’ – William Walton composed, Cecil Beaton photographed and Rex Whistler painted. Teresa Jungman, or ‘Baby’ as she was known, retired to obscurity in Gloucestershire with her sister, where they delivered meals to the needy and occasionally (very occasionally) received visitors from their past – James Lees-Milne and Evelyn Waugh. The latter is]]>

Telling Bleakley where to get off: political move or dawn of reason?

David Blackburn — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 13:05:03 +0100

First it was Ross, then Chiles and now Christine Bleakley. The BBC has called time on the era of top-dollar talent. Instead, it will nurture talent and let commercial broadcasters foot the hefty bill for established reputations. Welcome news – the whole point of the BBC is that it isn’t commercially competitive. Part of the state broadcaster’s remit should be to create careers rather than entrench them. Jonathan Ross is an exceptional provocateur, but no public servant is worth £6million a year.

The Age of Austerity has inaugurated this culture change. The]]>

Good God, I’m a racist

David Blackburn — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 17:05:08 +0100

According to James Macintyre at any rate. With verve, Alex Massie and Sunder Katwala have already set about Macintyre’s facile, trite and anodyne point that the there should be British Football Team. Alex and Sunder are right, it’s not about football; it is about politics.

Strangely, Macintyre’s position is that of a Victorian Unionist. ‘For the sake of the Union!’ he bawls, like Joseph Chamberlain to the Birmingham Free Trade Hall. Dear God man, grow a pair. Concern for Ledley King’s dodgy knee doesn’t threaten the]]>