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Sunday 20 July 2008

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The latest culture as recommended by our staff

Clemency Burton-Hill

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Features

The Threadneedle/Spectator Parliamentarian of the Year Awards

Imagine the terror of the Chinese officials

David Tang reflects on his visits to Beijing in the run-up to the Games, where Western expertise has been harnessed to the ruthless efficiency of China’s government machine

Nudge, nudge: meet the Cameroons’ new guru

The economist Richard Thaler — a favourite of the Cameron and Obama camps — talks to James Forsyth about the power of ‘nudging’: small transformative acts of persuasion

The cross-party consensus on welfare reform echoes the Gingrich–Clinton revolution

Fraser Nelson on the coming political week

The Falun Gong show that meek can be provocative

Lloyd Evans joins the dissident movement in a ritual exercise near the Chinese Embassy. He is unsettled to find himself understanding why China’s rulers get so paranoid about them

Arts

Wasted journey

Free Outgoing (Royal Court), Fanshen (295 Regent St), Frozen (Riverside)

Books

The house that Jock built

James Fergusson reviews a history of the publishers John Murray

Style & Travel

Club class

Julia Hollander leaves her hair shirt at the departure gate

A honeymoon on horseback

Olivia Glazebrook and her husband brave the Jordanian wilderness

If the liberal press is to be believed, nobody has ever been stabbed — ever

Rod Liddle imagines the hoodie at home, allegedly innocent of any wicked intent, arming himself with a Stanley knife only because of the supposed alarmism of the right-wing media

Rod Liddle

Big Brother versus YouTube: let the Beijing Games commence

Mark Leonard, Britain’s pre-eminent analyst of modern China, says the Olympic genie is out of the bottle. The prospect of global scrutiny has actually increased repression as the authorities try to stamp out dissent. But digital technology is impossible to police

Mark Leonard

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