Society

Megan offers her annual Christmas cooking recommendations. Kit here; manuals here. As usual, there’s lots of good stuff. But permit me to offer some supplementary ideas on the matter of cookbooks. If, as Megan suggests you should, you own several of Julia Child’s books you may not think you need another set of classic volumes on French, Italian and Mediterranean food. You’d be wrong. No serious Anglophone cook should be without at least two (if not all three) of Elizabeth David’s masterpieces: Mediterranean Food, Italian Food and French Provincial Cooking. These three books alone provide enough inspiration to last a lifetime. More than just recipe books, however, these old friends

Yates of the Yard is back. So runs the delicious rumour now the Old Bill has been dragged into the donations scandal: Yates won’t run the investigation but he has been appointed the overseeing officer. And Yates has a dossier of all the donors ready. He knows this situation backwards. To help his team on their way, Coffee House would like to do its duty for Queen and country and report the gossip around Westminster this evening. 1) The theory that Abrahams was not the “real” donor  is popular amongst those who suspect this was Israeli money being funnelled through him by fans of Blair’s position on Iraq (remember, the first

An interesting but worthless column from Jackie Ashley. “It won’t be easy for Gordon Brown to dig himself out of the hole he has fallen into in recent weeks. But a broad back, an ability to say sorry, a coolness under fire and an unwillingness to dump on colleagues would certainly help.” Worthless, I say, because Brown enjoys precisely none of these qualities. Ashley’s remedy for Gordon Brown’s problems would, um, seem to be that he cease to be Gordon Brown. [Hat tip: James Forsyth]

Cricket Housekeeping: 1. Since this post making the case that Shane Warne is, indisputably, a greater cricketer than Muttiah Muralitharan it’s only fair to note that Murali had the chance to show that he can win matches in Australia as well as Sri Lanka. Granted, the tests were played at Brisbane and Hobart rather than Sydney but still: four wickets at 100 apiece is not an impressive return. 2. England are now preparing – in their usual slapdash* style – for a series in Sri Lanka. Having wisely decided to leave the best English batsman at home (that would be Mark Ramprakash, who, though 38, has enjoyed a Bradmanesque flowering

Mercy me. Mark Halperin makes a lateish run for Most Incriminating Column of the Year with this entry, published in today’s New York Times in which he laments how terrible it is that the media have confused campaign froth with the stuff that might actually indicate whether or not a politician is capable of performing the duties custom and the constitution assigns to the President of the United States of America. Halperin, formerly Political Director at ABC News, argues that: Our political and media culture reflects and drives an obsession with who is going to win, rather than who should win. For most of my time covering presidential elections, I