Society

Saturday

Fergal Keane

Old Ireland lives on in a frozen Christmas swim

On Christmas morning the entire village will gather on the beach at the end of the main street. I think the ‘main’ is probably superfluous here. There is really only one street with a series of small roads and paths stacked above it on the hill of Ardmore. If you were to stand at the Storm Wall, just above the beach, you would see a hundred or so hardy folk dressed for a sweltering summer’s day and waiting for the order to charge. The more obviously hungover, the elderly and sick, and the plain cowardly gather around the table of soup, tea and whiskey organised by the local members of

The Spectator

Do you believe in the Virgin Birth?

The Spectator asked a select group including the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, Charles Moore, AC Grayling, Jonathan Aitken and Christopher Hitchens if they believed in the Virgin Birth. Christmas is not just about shopping and flirting, eating and drinking, anger and remorse. It is also about the Incarnation. But how many people believe in the Christian story of Christmas, and how strong is their belief? To find out, The Spectator approached leading public figures in the Churches, in the arts and the media and in politics, and asked them: ‘Do you believe in the Virgin Birth of Jesus Christ?’ Here are their challenging â” and sometimes surprising â”

Joan Collins

A star at Christmas

In Los Angeles last month we were wined and dined and mulligan-souped up to our eyeballs. Los Angelenos love entertaining their visitors and even though I’ve lived on and off in the hills of Beverly since I was 21, I’m still welcomed happily by the natives. I started Christmas shopping early in LA and New York, but it doesn’t seem that early as the decorations go up immediately after Hallowe’en. I’ve never quite understood why our American cousins like Hallowe’en so much. Certainly it is an exciting event for children, but why several of my acquaintances (who should know better) delight in attending parties dressed up as hookers beats me.

Beryl Bainbridge

The Liverpool that I loved has gone for ever

In June of 2003 Tessa Jowell, the then culture secretary, announced that in 2008 Liverpool would become the European Capital of Culture. The city beat five other hopefuls — Bristol, Birmingham, Cardiff, Newcastle and Oxford. In welcoming the result, the head of the judges, Sir Jeremy Isaacs, declared that it was Liverpool’s stunning dockside development, its city centre and ‘strong visual arts’ that had boosted its chances. Council chief executive David Henshaw described the win as staggering, although not surprising, as the whole city had been behind the bid. Liverpool, he said, is growing up. We’ve got history and we should be proud of our history, but in the past

Steven Berkoff

I’m like a nervous schoolgirl with my stuntman

The stunt double does all the hard stuff that you the actor either cannot do or should not do lest you injure yourself, and are out of the movie. I have a very pleasant stunt double, a ‘Berliner’, he confides to me proudly, a real one, he adds. I am running from my tormentor and leap from the balcony on to some scaffolding but there is a gap of about four feet and a drop of about 20 feet, so real injury should he slip, and I sweat just at the thought of it. I ask him how he will leap off the narrow ledge since he has to leap

Geoffrey Willans

How To Be Topp: Ding-dong Farely Merily For Xmas

Xmas all grown ups sa is the season for the kiddies but this do not prevent them from taking a tot or 2 from the bot and having, it may seme, a beter time than us. For children in fact Xmas is often a bit of a strane wot with pretending that everything is a surprise. Above all father xmas is a strane. You canot so much as mention that there is no father xmas when some grown-up sa Hush not in front of wee tim. So far as i am concerned if father xmas use langwage like that when he tripped over the bolster last time we had beter

William Boyd

Humiliation

London is the first city of humiliation: London does it better than anywhere else. I should know, its latest victim. First my divorce — you would think, what with war in Korea and the death of King George — that the Times would have more newsworthy events to report than my decree absolute from my wife of 18 months. ‘Novelist Yves Hill divorces, confesses to adultery’. Of course I confessed — only to spare myself the further wounds, the death by a thousand cuts, of admitting to Felicity’s adultery with that zero, that nul, that parvenu nonentity Gerald Laing-Turner. Yet after the humiliation of the divorce came the further humiliation

Lucy Vickery

Condensing Jane

In Competition No. 2524 you were invited to condense a Jane Austen novel into a limerick. You rose admirably to the challenge, and, as befits a competition based on the Austen oeuvre, your entries displayed sparkling wit, pithy observation and, in the main, metrical accuracy. (Although some of you are clearly not members of the J.A. appreciation society.) There was an absence of the ribaldry and innuendo traditionally associated with the limerick form, but the smutty possibilities of ‘Knightley’ proved irresistible to some. Gerard Benson’s final line, ‘And Emma gets her Mister, nightly’, was typical. There were entertaining contributions from Penelope Mackie, V. Perrin and Gordon Macintyre, while one of

The Spectator

Unto us a Child is Born

The awesome mystery of Christmas is contained in the dual nature of the infant Jesus: the knowledge of His almighty power, juxtaposed with the spectacle of His absolute vulnerability in the crib. At this season, we celebrate the birth of the Saviour. But we also ponder the helplessness of the newborn, and the gravity of responsibility that is placed on the shoulders of every parent. Whisked away by Mary and Joseph, Jesus escaped the horrific wrath of Herod: but many other children fell victim to the King’s insane jealousy. In spirit, theology and secular tradition, this is the season of childhood and family. Dickens captured this in A Christmas Carol

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Now Gordon Brown has been found out, the Tories should think twice about copying him

Gordon Brown’s detractors have long argued that he deserves to be ranked not among Scotland’s economic geniuses but alongside its most notorious confidence tricksters. His great achievement as Chancellor was not to build a great economy, but to create the unshakeable impression that he had done so. He has succeeded, brilliantly, in claiming credit for the economic growth and lower interest rates which — in fact — were common to most developed economies over the same period. Yet he is no more directly responsible for these economic blessings than the conman Arthur Ferguson was for Big Ben (which he ‘sold’ for £1,000 in 1924). This is not necessarily a bad

Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

Watching Lost and Heroes has compelled me to confront great philosophical issues

It’s best to be upfront about this. Pretty soon, I’m going to use words like ‘downloading’ and ‘uploading’. I’m going to use the word ‘peer’ and I’m not going to mean people like Lord Levy. I mention this, just so you know. Just so you don’t get halfway through and think, ‘the sneaky bastard. This is geek stuff. I thought it was going to be something interesting.’ It is something interesting, I think. And it isn’t really geek stuff. It’s about Lost and Heroes and The Wire, and all those sexy American dramas that have suddenly made owning a television worthwhile again. Have you seen The Wire? It’s a gritty

Paul Johnson

Rejoice but remember: the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom

To open a newspaper today is to enter a world of such horror, cruelty, vulgarity and corruption that one cannot imagine why almighty God does not decide, here and now, to put an end to it. But God knows better. There are many fine people around, and beautiful objects, and worthwhile activities, and as the year comes to an end we ought to remember them and give thanks. Just as there are 12 days of Christmas, so there are 12 blessings and here is my list for 2007. By a curious chance they all begin with the letter ‘F’. First of all I give thanks for Family and Friends. Modern

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Monopoly: the dangers of playing Gordon Brown’s special edition

There is one thing I have never understood about the property developers of 1930s Atlantic City. How come — at least to judge from the game they inspired, Monopoly — they never borrowed so much as a dime? Few provincial towns these days are considered so inconsequential that they have not spawned a special edition of the Monopoly board, featuring their own street names. But there is one version of the game you won’t find in the shops: the ‘Gordon Brown’s Britain’ edition. This is a game in which, unlike the original, you can borrow money — lots and lots of it. Until, that is, property prices collapse and you’re

Eric Ellis

City Life: Kabul

In Kabul Perhaps the best way to view Corporate Afghanistan — there’s a term you don’t often hear — is to regard it as a never-ending spigot draining sovereign wealth funds into the world’s biggest tax haven. That’s the good part. The bad bit is that you might get killed enjoying it. The West tips about $5 billion of aid a year into Kabul — while Roshan, the Aga Khan-owned mobile phone operator, collects more revenue than the Afghan taxman. Very fast money is being made here, particularly by those working for multilateral agencies or a myriad of NGOs. They’re the ones who pay $10,000-a-month rents for half-built houses in

Tim Heald

In Budapest

Budapest is the only city I know where Gresham’s Law takes pride of place. On the Pest side of the Danube opposite the Iron Bridge, in a niche on the front of what is now the Four Seasons Hotel, stands a statue of the propounder of ‘Bad Money Drives Out Good’. His presence is a reminder that this old Eastern European city was a hub of capitalism before it became the drab communist capital that it was throughout most of my life. The hotel used to be the European headquarters of the London-based Gresham Life Assurance Company. Apart from Gresham, my sense of Budapest as a place to do business

Stephanie Grace

In New Orleans

As New Orleans continues its slow slog towards recovery from Hurricane Katrina, the first signs of new life in still-devastated neighbourhoods have often been the markets. It’s fitting that the city that boasts America’s oldest urban bazaar — the newly refurbished French Market in the unflooded French Quarter — should see community markets as a vehicle for economic rebirth, as well as an answer to the absence of national retailers. In addition to several weekly markets that date back pre-Katrina, there are now regular farmers’ markets in the Upper Ninth Ward, Lakeview and Broadmoor, with more planned. The mayor’s office has jumped on this citizen-driven bandwagon by supporting yet another

Stephen Bayley

Carnival of crassness

Stephen Bayley on why he despises December’s tawdry and sentimental retail landscape Christmas balls. This is a season to be forced into jollity. And one of mixed messages, dark ambiguities. Ghosts of Christmas past make me shudder. There is an old story about a Tokyo department store which, anxious to demonstrate its easy familiarity with sophisticated Western tastes, arranged for a vitrine to have an illuminated tableau of Santa Claus busy being crucified. Perhaps some similar installations on high streets and malls would have an admonitory effect on the sewers of avarice, cupidity and unreflective sentimental tosh that comprise Britain’s retail landscape in December. Then again, maybe not. There is

Robin Holloway

Embracing Grainger

What can it be, this squat semicircular structure nestled inconspicuous yet peculiar amid the faculties and offices along the leafy university stretch of Royal Parade, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia? Looks like a bus station without passengers, a public lavatory without users; perhaps still more (being windowless save for a high band of opaque glass bricks) a wartime bunker or bomb shelter. There’s a front door, tightly sealed; the bell yields no answer; the inscription gives nothing away — except to those who already know what they seek. For this singular building houses the inheritance of the most plural composer who ever lived: Percy Grainger, Melbourne’s greatest son and the 20th century’s

Kate Chisholm

World winner

Seventy-five years ago this coming Thursday the ‘Empire Service’ was born, just in time for George V to announce its arrival in his very first Christmas broadcast to the nation. He sounds remarkably un-pukka on the archive recording. (You can hear a snippet from it on the BBC World Service website: just log on and look for the Free to Speak 75th anniversary logo. There are 75 one-minute selections, one for each year; a great party game for the family once Dr Who is over.) The King promises salvation by shortwave to the men and women ‘so cut orff by the snows, the deserts, or the seas that only voices

Aidan Hartley

Down Mexico way

Nogales, Mexico After the purgatory of Arizona, I was so happy to cross the Mexico frontier I could have French-kissed the filthy streets. It was just like home in Africa. Meat tasted like meat and meals were eaten to a joyous soundtrack of buzzing bluebottles. Stray dogs basked in sunshine among wrecked cars as music cascaded down streets. Maidens had nice, healthy bottoms and men were encouraged to whistle their appreciation. We drank beers in Sonora’s desert air and Our Lady of Guadalupe stared down kindly on all her Catholic sinners. Oh happy, happy Mexico! Arizona, by contrast, was beyond dreadful. ‘We’re the skin-cancer capital of the world,’ they said