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

Letters

Wednesday, 2nd January 2008

Hoggartian paradox

The result has been the Hoggartian paradox of programmes that managed to be both, in Simon’s words, ‘scaringly revealing’ and largely covering ‘old and well-travelled ground’.

So up I up went with his pliers and testing kit and, under his instructions, cut, tested and refixed the wires. This showed that the problem was up the adjoining pole, which regulations allowed him to climb and fix. I am 65 and suffer from tunnel vision, so may I have a George Medal for ‘Bravery in the face of Health and Safety’?

As the engineer then rewarded me with a free load of wire and other goodies for improving the internal lines, please keep my name and address a secret.

Anonymous
Wales

Welsh Stalin

Sir: I enjoyed Paul Johnson’s essay on the Ozymandian transience of dictators (And another thing, 1 December), but I must take issue with him on his description of Henry VIII as the ‘English Stalin’. The Tudor dynasty was Welsh, and owed its existence to Welsh support for Henry VII at Bosworth. I would be the first to agree with you that the epithet ‘Georgian Henry VIII’ does not sit too comfortably, but facts, Mr Johnson, are facts.

John Christopher Williams
King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia

Top-shelf Spectator

Sir: I recently bought my copy of The Spectator in my local supermarket. After the checkout girl had scanned it in, she asked me if I was over 18. ‘Eh?’ I replied. It transpired that yours is classified as an adults-only magazine in my local supermarket. Do you produce (ahem) ‘gentlemen’s supplements’ that are always, inexplicably missing from my copy?

Steven Richmond
Harpenden, Herts

Korngold uncut

Sir: Michael Tanner wrote that Decca’s recording of Das Wunder der Heliane, released in 1993, was ‘heavily and mercifully cut’. As the producer of the CDs, I can assure you that we recorded the opera uncut. Tanner should know better than to pass off opinion as fact. But then, by his own admission, he didn’t stay for the final act.

Michael Haas
London SW8

Millions of Mohammeds

Sir: I agree with Charles Moore’s curiosity (The Spectator’s Notes, 15–29 December) over the varying attitudes to the use of Jesus as a name in Christian countries (particularly Britain), in reference to Mohammed the teddy bear. What puzzles me, however, given the acute sensitivity of Muslims around all the issues regarding the Prophet, is the absolute abandon with which they take his name for their children. Is not this the ultimate presumption on the sanctity of the Prophet, to give millions of children his name without a second thought?

Clarke Hayes
Hastings

Previous page 1 | 2

Herbert Thornton

January 10th, 2008 3:34am

John Christopher Williams takes issue with Paul Johnson's description of Henry VIII as the English Stalin, but how many of us think of Stalin as the Georgian Dictator? I think that the fact that Stalin was not Russian makes it entirely apposite to refer to the Henry VIII as the English Stalin.

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.