Society

Saturday

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Gore Vidal at Intelligence Squared

Lloyd Evans reports on the latest Spectator / Intelligence Squared event No debate this month at Intelligence Squared. Instead Gore Vidal is interviewed by Melvyn Bragg. The 800-strong crowd start to applaud even before Vidal reaches the rostrum. White-haired, frail and wheelchair-bound, he is modestly dressed in a dark suit but he exudes a dangerous alertness and grins hungrily as the questions begin. Bragg moves, scalpel-like, to the meatiest issue of the day. ‘Are you surprised by Obama’s success? Because you thought Hillary would win.’ ‘I wanted her to win,’ Vidal says, subtly re-aligning the question like a chess grand-master. He tells an anecdote about Hillary’s early campaign. She identified

Lucy Vickery

Apple and orange

In Competition No. 2544 you were invited to submit a shopping list in verse form, making the last word of every line a brand name. Although I try to vary the competitions as much as possible, this is the second list-poem assignment in a row. As this was, at least in part, an attempt to respond to the market — consumer demand is high for verse-based comps, which seem to attract a larger entry than prose ones — I thought shopping and brands an appropriate theme. Randall Jarrell uses detergent brand names to great ironic effect in the first line of his poem ‘Next Day’, in which a woman wanders

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

The Wiki Man | 17 May 2008

Those of you who saw his article a few weeks back will be pleased to hear Kelvin MacKenzie took a remarkable second place in his local council elections. Already the climbdown over parking charges has begun: the cost of a day’s parking at Weybridge Station is suddenly not £5 but £4. It’s the same story in my birthplace of Usk, where rebellious townsfolk recently rejected the idea of paying for parking at all — with the result that the car park is invariably full and hence totally useless. One thing the denizens of Usk and Weybridge clearly share is an unfamiliarity with the work of UCLA Professor Donald Shoup and

Taki

The lives of others

New York From my kitchen window I have watched a little boy grow up to be a man. I live in what Americans, with great economy of expression, refer to as a brownstone, actually a townhouse. It is on 71st Street off Park Avenue. My father bought it for us 30 or so years ago, and both my children refer to it as home. Although both have left, my daughter for Los Angeles and my son for Brooklyn, their rooms still feel lived in, with shoes lying around, old books, bric-à-brac and pictures of their parents looking less worn, to say the least. The house, I am told by neighbourhood

Simon Hoggart

May Wine Club | 17 May 2008

I’ve been reading an intriguing article by Miles Thomas in the Psychologist magazine. It’s called ‘On Vines and Minds’, and it discusses many of the ways in which our brains determine the experience of drinking wine. I’ve been reading an intriguing article by Miles Thomas in the Psychologist magazine. It’s called ‘On Vines and Minds’, and it discusses many of the ways in which our brains determine the experience of drinking wine. For instance, appearances are important — uncomfortably important. Even experts, offered a white wine tinted with a neutral red dye, will often describe it in the way they might talk about a real red wine. We know that

Tim Walker

I never want to be as insecure as Olivier

Tim Walker talks to Greta Scacchi about her new role in The Deep Blue Sea, the gaucheness of Bill Murray — and being offered the lead in Basic Instinct Greta Scacchi is lying in bed beside Laurence Olivier. His head is resting against her shoulder. Suddenly it feels damp. She looks at the old man and sees that he is crying. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asks. He looks back at her imploringly. ‘Oh, Greta, I haven’t got any more work after this for six months. Nobody wants me any more…’. The bedroom scene in the television drama The Ebony Tower took a whole day to shoot and so there was plenty

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Any Other Business | 17 May 2008

These days, Vesco the fugitive fraudster would have had a top job on Wall Street So farewell, Robert Vesco, the fraudster, drug trafficker and fugitive from US justice whose death last year has been ‘confirmed by Cuban burial records’, according to the Daily Telegraph. Vesco absconded with $200 million of other people’s money — $60 million of it in banknotes in his excess baggage on a commercial flight — after looting Investor Overseas Services, the mutual-funds empire created but recklessly mismanaged by Bernie Cornfeld. Welcomed as a white knight when he gained control of IOS in 1970, Vesco proceeded to steal most of its remaining assets by selling them to

Michael Tanner

Moving and magical

Roberto Alagna Barbican Simon Boccanegra Royal Opera House The Merry Widow Coliseum Roberto Alagna gave a recital of Verdi arias in the Barbican last week, his first appearance in the UK since his wounding experience at the hands of the hooligans who call themselves connoisseurs at La Scala Milan. It was a most enjoyable occasion, and after the first number the singer said quietly, ‘It’s very nice to be here,’ a touching tribute to the greater taste and better manners of London audiences. He was for the most part in excellent voice, though the encore of Otello’s first entrance showed that that is a role he would do well to

Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

Shared Opinion | 17 May 2008

If Scotland is to be independent, then why not London? And good luck to what’s left Here is a fun game for you. In only four words, try to sum up why anybody north of the border might fancy independence. Have a think. Something to rival the neat ‘No Taxation Without Representation’ quip of the American colonialists of the 18th century. Tricky, eh? And yet, with other famous independence movements, it’s a doddle. After the Boer war, ‘We Are Basically Dutch’ could have done it in South Africa. Gandhi was a bit too loquacious to have managed four words in British India, but ‘You’re Stealing From Us’ would have worked.

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

C’mon Cherie: even Goering stuck up a bit for Hitler

I had hoped to bring you a little more fine detail about Cherie Blair’s menstrual cycle this week — I had provisional charts mapped out and so on. But at the last moment I came over a little queasy. Obviously all of us need to know precisely when she is ovulating, in case we should wish to impregnate her while her husband is away lecturing at Yale or bringing peace to the Middle East. But my nerve failed me. This is a personal failure and should not reflect badly on the lovely Cherie. She is believed to be the first inhabitant of 10 Downing Street to have shared with the

Barry Isaacson

The secret letters of the Jonestown death cult

In 1993, my wife Jenny and I bought a small, beautiful, mid-century modern architectural house in the hills of Silver Lake, an enclave of East Los Angeles. We became aware that the previous owners, Dr Herbert and Mrs Freda Alexander, had lived for the previous 15 years with an awful family secret: their daughter Phyllis, son-in-law Gene Chaikin and two teenage grandchildren had died with 914 other members of Jim Jones’s Peoples Temple movement in the infamous Jonestown mass-murder/suicides of 18 November 1978. In an orderly manner, the Jonestown community, which included 250 children, had ingested a cocktail consisting of fruit punch, cyanide and sedatives. Infants, children and others unwilling

Theodore Dalrymple

Global Warning | 17 May 2008

I realised that the town was a true community as soon as I heard a rumour that an old lady, a herbalist, had poisoned one of her neighbours. That is what community means: caring enough to poison people. In cities, contact with neighbours is so fleeting and impersonal that antagonism can be expressed only with baseball bats, a crude method requiring little cunning. If Marx were alive today, he would speak of the idiocy of urban life. In a small town, the rest of the world hardly exists. One soon finds what happens there to be more interesting than what happens in the wide world beyond. For example, banks were

Friday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Adam Smith’s Hoose

So, Panmure House, Adam Smith’s former Edinburgh home, has been sold. The ASI reports: Councillors in Edinburgh have approved the sale… to Heriot-Watt University. They chose the £800,000 bid over a higher offer, on the grounds that the University would make the building more accessible to the public. The University plans to restore the house to promote the study of economics. Hmmm. Wouldn’t it have been more appropriate to sell to the highest bidder?

Peter Hoskin

The right result

The Michael Martin-led effort to block the disclosure of MPs’ expenses has been turned down in the High Court.  The right result.  Hopefully, Martin will accept it with grace and dignity – although he has until 20th May to appeal against the decision (at a further cost to the public).

Thursday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Exam meltdown?

Could the first major league disaster of the summer be about to break? There are rumblings about problems with the computer system marking exams. It’s to do with ETS, an American company that won the contract to run English SAT exams. The BBC has the first sniff of this – a fairly innocent problem of not being able to log on to the registration system to see which papers they should have. But postings on the Times Educational Supplement website complain of far worse – “major organisational problems”. There are rumours of a collapse in the “standardisation system”, which ensures markers use the same criteria in the Key Stage 3

Wednesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Picture of the Day

Skipper Neil Darling and his Selkirk team-mates celebrate after Monday night’s Border League final victory over Jed-Forest, bringing the title back to Philiphaugh for the first time in 55 years. This caps the most successful season for the rugby club since 1952-53 when Selkirk were both Border League and Scottish champions (for the only time ever). Add this bauble to retaining the Kings of the Sevens title and winning promotion to Division 1 next season and it’s been a cracking year. Hurrah! Watch it and weep, Gala… Photo © club photographer Grant Kinghorn.

The Spectator

Only on Americano

Over on Americano, some thoughts on Hillary Clinton’s primary win in West Virginia, why John McCain should style himself as a Reform Republican and Obama’s tendency to blame his staff for his mistakes.

Peter Phillips

Spiritual heaven

The English choral tradition comes in various shapes and sizes. The largest manifestation of it is on display at St Paul’s Cathedral in London, with its 18 men and ranks of boys. The smallest, a kind of pocket-battleship affair, is the choir of the Chapel Royal at St James’s Palace, with its six men and precisely ten boys. These greatly differing sizes are reflected in the dimensions of the buildings which the two choirs serve: St Paul’s is one of the largest religious spaces in the world, with acoustics to match; the Chapel Royal is smaller than many Oxbridge chapels, with choirstalls so compact that it is physically impossible to

Tuesday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Darling gets Snowed under

If you missed Jon Snow monstering Alistair Darling, watch here—absolutely brilliant: and totemic. When even Mr Snow isn’t buying, then Darling has been truly rumbled. Darling’s answers were all nonsense, but here are the top Snow questions. 1) Just eight weeks since your last budget, what has changed in the economy to warrant this extraordinary tax shift? Deteriorating economic conditions, says Darling 2) “Suggests a cascade of events that is almost out of control” says Snow. Waffle in response. 3) “This is a political decision: it is about politics not economics. When I spoke to he PM three weeks ago, he couldn’t engage with the idea that there was a