Society

Saturday

Christopher Booker

Private Eye’s private life

The first editor of the magazine turns a quizzical eye on 50 years of a ‘national institution’ Not long after the 50th birthday of what was once the most successful humorous magazine in Britain, one of the best-known writers of the day delivered a damning judgment. Whereas in its early days, Max Beerbohm wrote in 1899, Punch had made a reputation by its youthful irreverence, wittily lashing out in all directions, it had now become staid and respectable, ‘a national institution’. How strangely has this been echoed in the coverage being given to the 50th anniversary of Punch’s successor, similarly hailing Private Eye as a ‘national institution’. Little could its

James Forsyth James Forsyth

To catch a minister

Old hands in Westminster are confident that they know what lies behind the Liam Fox-Adam Werritty relationship. With a knowing glint in their eye, they lean forward and whisper: ‘He’s a lobbyist.’ They’ve seen it all before, they say. It explains why Werritty thought it was worth spending tens of thousands of pounds just to be in the same city as the Defence Secretary. ‘We all know the drill with these people,’ one senior Tory explains. ‘Their job is to get as close to you as possible and if it is easier to bump into you in Dubai or Washington than London, that’s where they’ll do it.’ Lobbyists for special

Roger Alton Roger Alton

Sport: Three cheers for the Welsh boy band with the XY factor

Well, we’re all Welsh now. Love the country, been there loads of times, adore the Millennium Stadium, in fact I’m about as Welsh as it’s possible to be without actually being Welsh. And I will be up at 9.00 a.m. on Saturday, cheering the wonderful Wales team on. On the other hand, my mum was half French so God knows what will happen. This World Cup has been about as dazzling as you can get. To those harrumphing about the poor quality of the games against the tier two nations, just see what Tonga, conquerors of France, have to say about that. As for England, well let’s move swiftly on,

Lucy Vickery

Competition: Against the grain

In Competition No. 2717 you were invited to supply a poem expressing distaste for something or someone widely considered to be beautiful. You poured scorn on Paris, daffodils, Michelangelo and Alan Bennett’s plays. Newborns were also a popular target. Here is Melissa Balmain giving it both barrels: ‘You can dress it in taffeta, ribbon and lace;/ you can scrub it each hour of the day;/ you can name it Belinda Veronica Grace;/ it’ll still look like rump roast manqué’. Martin Parker took an entertaining swipe at ‘Les Grandes Baigneuses’ — ‘They may in youth have all been ravers; Cézanne, though, did their looks no favours’ — but the most heartfelt

Barnaby Jones

The devil’s in the detail | 15 October 2011

This is a book for our times, a pair of linked essays, the first, by Rory Stewart, on the troubled decade of Western intervention in Afghanistan, followed by the success story of the ten years of Western intervention in Bosnia by Gerald Knaus. The authors write not for glory, or to secure a professorial chair, but out of desperation. Year on year over the last decade, the leaders of the West have immersed us ever deeper in ‘sorting out’ Afghanistan. They do this from the best possible motives — a sense of obligation and moral decency — but also out of fear, hubris and historical ignorance. As a result, our

Melissa Kite

A question of faith

Perhaps beginnings are meant to be disorientating sometimes. For many pages of Mohammed Hanif’s second novel I cannot get my bearings and start to worry that, far from finding my way into the dense narrative, I am becoming more and more lost. I fret about what the problem might be. Is it overwritten? The earthiness of the description of downtown Karachi is glorious, but I begin to panic that if there are many more phrases such as ‘breasts like abandoned puppies’ I will get squeamish and miss the point. There are pages and pages where nearly everything is throbbing or sweating or getting punched, eaten, licked, raped or shot to

John Julius-Norwich

Why didn’t I appreciate it more?

I should hesitate in any circumstances to compare myself with Marcel Proust; but on opening this marvellous book I knew exactly how he felt with that madeleine. My father was appointed Ambassador to France in 1944, moving in a few weeks after the Liberation of Paris; thus it was that from Christmas of that year — when I was 15 — and for the next three years I spent all my holidays at the Embassy. At that time, oddly enough, we had no other home; so it was there more than anywhere else that I felt I belonged. As I read this book and feasted my eyes on the superb

Richard Shone

A lightning tour

In her foreword to this short study of Virginia Woolf,  Alexandra Harris writes that ‘it is meant as a first port of call for those new to Woolf and as an enticement to read more’. There is some justification for such a book — a synthesis giving the outline of Woolf’s life with pertinent interpretative commentary on the novels and other writings. While such an aim is not new, the book will inevitably reflect the concerns of the moment, the stamp of each generation’s particular interest. If this is so, the longer appeal of such a study is not necessarily guaranteed. Harris presents a Woolf for the early 21st century.

James Booth

Fathers and sons

The ghost stalking this selection is Martin Amis’s father, Kingsley, who, Martin tells us in his introduction, ‘loved Philip with a near-physical passion’, and mused: ‘I sometimes wonder if I ever really knew him.’ Ruth Bowman, to whom Philip Larkin was engaged in the late 1940s, remembers that Kingsley was ‘possessive of Philip and tried to keep me separate from him’. Kingsley always remained slightly offended by Larkin’s soft, feminine side, never understanding what the latter called ‘the dear passionately sentimental spinster that lurks within me’, and insisted that his friend be consistently masculine, abrasive, philistine. Martin Amis’s selection reflects his father’s version. It includes ‘This Be The Verse’ (‘They

Alex Brummer

Investment special: Flying through storms

The financial crisis has unleashed a great debate about rebalancing Britain’s economy. The conventional wisdom is that our prosperity during the Nice decade (non-inflationary continuous expansion, that is) was over-dependent on finance and that we need to refocus our attention on high-quality manufacturing. Under New Labour, and the Tories before them, manufacturing was allowed to wither, declining from 18 per cent of GDP in 1996 to just 12 per cent now. The better news, however, is that what’s left behind is much better than what was lost. In certain sectors, including high-end engineering and aerospace, Britain has managed to retain a strong competitive edge. And unlike in previous decades, this

Friday

The Spectator

The week that was | 14 October 2011

A selection of posts from the past seven days at spectator.co.uk: Fraser Nelson says it might be time to scrap the minimum wage for young workers and calls Andrew Lansley’s handling of the NHS reforms historically bad. James Forsyth explains how Lansley got his health bill through the Lords and says Adam Werritty’s no Walter Mitty. Pete Hoskin reports on the threat from Iran and the Miliband and Balls double act. Daniel Korski calls Sarkozy’s likely opponent dull and says ministers need their Werrittys. Jonathan Jones says the middle ground’s there for the taking and reports on the latest Republican debate. David Blackburn reports on Cameron’s immigration speech and his

Peter Robins

Local interest | 14 October 2011

A tourist from Crystal Palace, south London, rescued an 11-month-old boy from the River Yare, in Norfolk, after his pushchair was swept into the water by a freak gust of wind. (Eastern Daily Press) Four men have admitted possession and use of criminal property after finding £750,000 buried beneath a pigsty in Worcestershire. (Worcester News) A 12-week-old German Shepherd cross puppy has been found in a recycling bin in Lincoln Road, Basildon. (Echo, Southend) Police have told a bar in Stockton-on-Tees that, if it goes ahead with a plan to offer shots of spirits for 1p on Halloween, they will attempt to have its licence withdrawn. (Gazette, Middlesbrough) A teenager

Clarke Hayes

Switching off the spotlight

Having tea with Gillian Anderson is a thoroughly pleasant business — a splash of muted glamour in a fairly drab London autumn. I thoroughly recommend it, as a more engaging companion it would be a challenge to find. We meet in the studiously bijou surroundings of the Zetter Townhouse in St John’s Square, chosen, I suspect, because no one there has the slightest clue who she is. She is wearing the no-make-up disguise, and glides serenely under London’s radar, something she clearly enjoys. She is a tad jetlagged, she says, having just arrived home from a three-week stint ‘doing press’ in LA. We are talking in the Games Room downstairs

Thursday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Lansley’s historic debacle

I’ve just come back from a Health Service Journal conference of medics, where all manner of subjects came up. One audience member asked what historical event stood comparison to Lansley’s mishandling of the Health Bill. What else has caused so much controversy, to such little purpose? No one knew. Many of those present — senior doctors, NHS executives, etc — knew Lansley, and everyone seemed to agree that he is a policy wonk fatally miscast as Health Secretary. Politics is about making and winning arguments; whereas Lansley wanted to work on details so complex that, even now, almost no one in government can explain what is being done. The Bill

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The Fox story rumbles on

It has been a relatively quiet day on the Liam Fox front today. It now seems that the report into this whole affair will not be ready until next week; Adam Werritty has not yet had a second interview with Cabinet Office. For his part, Fox has looked more confident today and by all accounts was impressively calm as he sat on the front bench today. Interestingly, one ministerial ally of Doctor Fox feels that last night’s report by Nick Robinson was more damaging for the defence secretary than most people have realised. His fear is that having people pay Werritty to push a specific agenda, even if it was

James Forsyth James Forsyth

How Lansley won over the Lords

As Ben Brogan wrote this week, the House of Lords is threatening to become one of the biggest obstacles to the coalition’s reform agenda. But the way in which the Health and Social Care Bill was steered through its second reading in the upper house does provide a model for how even the trickiest votes can be won. Andrew Lansley’s much derided operation got this one right. It realised months ago that the crucial thing was to stop the crossbenchers voting against the bill en masse. So, the health minister in the Lords, Earl Howe, and Lansley’s long-serving aide Jenny Jackson have been on a cup of tea offensive for

Peter Hoskin

Happy Birthday, Mrs T

It is, you may have heard, Margaret Thatcher’s 86th Birthday today. By way of a congratulatory toast to the Iron Lady, here’s a thought-filled article that T.E. Utley wrote about her politics, for The Spectator, some 25 years ago: Don’t call it Thatcherism, T.E. Utley, The Spectator, 19 August 1986 There is no such thing as Thatcherism. The illusion that there is is in part a deliberate creation of Mrs Thatcher’s enemies. They have proceeded on the age-old maxim that there is nothing (certainly not private scandal) more likely to injure the reputation of a British politician than the suggest that he has an inflexible devotion to principle. This maxim

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

Should most orphanages be shut down?

The Spectator’s deputy editor, Mary Wakefield, recently visited Rwanda to investigate the work a charity called Hope and Homes for Children. Her article on the subject appeared in last week’s issue of the magazine, but we thought we’d publish it here on Coffee House too, along with the short film that she recorded during her visit. It contains one or two lessons for DfID and our government: Kigali, Rwanda Madame B has dressed up for our visit. She’s sitting on a bench with her back to the orphanage wall, talking about just how much she loves each child, but it’s her get-up that’s most impressive: black silk dress, hair done,

Ian Birrell

The ongoing NHS scandal

Shock! Horror! Another report reveals the shameful care given to the elderly in British hospitals. People in the twilight of their life reduced to begging for food and rattling the bars of their beds in a desperate attempt to get the attention of medical staff paid to care for them. The findings came in reports of random inspections by the Care Quality Commission watchdog that found concerns in 55 of the 100 hospitals visited, with 20 of them — one in five — breaking the law in its levels of neglect. They found patients starved of food, denied water, spoken to rudely or simply ignored. It is sickening stuff. But

Martin Bright

In it together | 13 October 2011

Governments worth their salt know that a single young person out of work is a tragedy, but a million young people being on the dole is a political catastrophe.   This week’s unemployment figures fall just short of that symbolically important figure. But they also put the coalition’s solutions in sharp focus. Ed Miliband did well in PMQs this week because he could see the panic in David Cameron’s eyes.   It isn’t that the government doesn’t have a solution. It has a solution for all the country’s ills: the riots, social dislocation, worklessness. It is called the Work Programme. According to its champions it will deliver on every front.