Home > The Magazine > The Week

Saturday 22 November 2008

Dare to dream and make your ultimate trip a reality

The latest culture as recommended by our staff

Michael Henderson

Michael Henderson suggests

Email registration

Free weekly email update

Great products and special offers for Spectator readers

Click here for great value events

Click here for exclusive articles, offers, tasting notes and discussion

Diary

Simon Sebag Montefiore

Wednesday, 28th November 2007

Simon Sebag Montefiore's week

Even democracies are considering restoration. In Georgia, where I spend much time, the democratically elected pro-western President Mikhail Saakashvili has been beleaguered by a riotous opposition which proposes creating a constitutional monarchy under the Bagrationi dynasty, with a Spanish racing driver, Prince ‘Jorge’ Bagrationi, as king. The family ruled Georgia for a thousand years, under titans such as Queen Tamara, Kings David the Builder, George the Brilliant and Hercules II — but lost their last throne in 1810. Since everything in Georgia is exuberantly flamboyant, restoration would be disastrously zany. The well-intentioned if impetuous Saakashvili should be allowed to complete his newly called elections and reforms — particularly since his opening of Georgian archives revealed an Aladdin’s Cave of exciting new material on young Stalin. I can never resist Ruritanian intrigue: I was once charged with the task of offering the Estonian throne to Prince Edward. Feeling like a Dumas Musketeer on a mission, I did so, but he turned it down...

The BBC is now screening its triumphant series The Monarchy: the Royal Family at Work. The Annie Leibovitz crisis showed that ordinary Brits respect the monarch as Head of State in our admirable if idiosyncratic constitution rather more than our media apparatchiks do. There’s been much publicity — but the unheralded force behind it is the writer and deviser of the series and its accompanying book, Robert Hardman. He also wrote the Queen’s Castle series about Windsor Castle. Hardman has simply worked on producing a superb series and fascinating book. He’s a good friend and a journalist of the old school. Perhaps that’s why he’s been allowed to interview everyone, from the Mikado of Japan to the King of Norway.

I admired the old generals and admirals attacking the government in the Lords. It’s beyond irony that a Prime Minister who produces a book of his heroes has presided over the shabbiest treatment of true heroes — wounded servicemen and Iraqi interpreters in peril. Society can learn much about decency and responsibility from heroes in these times of dire education, but history doesn’t have to be dry — it can be fun too. That’s the idea of my book 101 World Heroes: Great Men and Women for an Unheroic Age — a treasure trove of tales for young and old that we should all know.

Previous page 1 | 2 | 3 Next page

More articles from: Simon Sebag Montefiore | this section

Print this article | Email to a friend | Permalink | Comment

Post this entry to: del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

A child of our time

From the economic and psychological bedlam of the global downturn has emerged a particularly dangerous false dichotomy: namely, that there is somehow a choice for ministers over the next few years between economic reconstruction and the repair of Britain’s broken society, and that the government (whether Labour or Conservative) must prioritise the former at the expense of the latter.

Diary

Anne Robinson

The daughter and I spent the last few days before the American election in Arizona.

Politics

Fraser Nelson

Fraser Nelson reviews the week in politics

The Spectator's Notes

Charles Moore

‘A money-financed tax cut is essentially equivalent to Milton Friedman’s famous “helicopter drop” of money.’ So said Ben Bernanke, now the chairman of the Fed, in a speech about how to ward off the ‘extremely small’ chance of deflation, which he delivered in 2002.