Society

Monday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Ahmadinejad and Irving

Reasons why jailing David Irving for “Holocaust Denial” was a bad idea, cont.: It allows Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to say that clearly there must be something to this point of view if “researchers” can be imprisoned for pursuing research from a “different perspective”. And, of course, implicitly he’s arguing that despite all your fancy, high-falutin’ talk, you in the west are no better than the rest of us. You censor too.  Tend to the beam in your own eye before looking to the mote in mine etc etc.

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Save our hyphens!

The OED is giving in to the Americans and the internet, abandoning the hyphen. Some 16,000 words in the new edition of the shorter OED have lost their hyphens. Examples of words that now look wrong: Formerly hyphenated words split in two: fig leaf, hobby horse, ice cream, pin money, pot belly, test tube, water bed     Formerly hyphenated words unified in one: bumblebee, chickpea, crybaby, leapfrog, logjam, lowlife, pigeonhole, touchline, waterborne Kevin Drum asks: “Ice cream” used to be hyphenated?  Really?  Was this a British thing?  Even the New Yorker isn’t pretentious enough to hyphenate “ice-cream,” is it? Well, maybe it is a British thing. But what’s pretentious

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Brown fails to inspire

Was that it? Gordon Brown’s speech was no launch-pad for an election or anything else. It was competent and workmanlike but its shopping list of initiatives recalled his duller budgets. The NHS saved his sight, he says. Maybe so, but biographies of Brown tell how frustrated he was with years of duff advice from the NHS while he feared he would go blind – before an (Asian immigrant) consultant managed to help him. The rather muted ovation reminded us that the audience had grown used to Blair style oratory, which they won’t hear for a while now. Anyway, I can now understand why cabinet members were told to keep their

Sunday

The Spectator

Jon Cruddas’s conference diary

All week, Jon Cruddas will be writing a conference diary for us from Bournemouth. We’ve just posted his first entry in which Jon explains why the Labour party is parting like it is 1996 all over again and why he suspects that his wife might not have voted for him for deputy leader.

Saturday

Dot Wordsworth

Mind your language | 22 September 2007

Walking to the station the other day I was thinking how annoying it is that, when people are invited to name their favourite words, so many answer serendipity. Then, blow me if the next news report I read didn’t detail an invitation from Education Action, a charity, to send in favourite words to celebrate Literacy Day. (There is such a thing.) ‘The most popular so far,’ said someone involved, ‘are those associated with positive aspirations, like peace, love, and serendipity.’ Yet serendipity is in a different category from peace or love. People might like peace and love, but it’s the sound of serendipity they like. It is like Boris Johnson’s

Clover Stroud

Inside Russia

Churchill described Russia as a ‘riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma’. Churchill described Russia as a ‘riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma’. He was referring to the Soviet Union, all eight million square miles of it. Slightly reduced, the Russian Federation now stretches to just over six and a half million square miles, but her enigmatic allure remains strong, and if anything has been intensified by the Litvinenko poisoning and a refreezing of post-Cold War relations. Churchill was right, because Russia is exciting, but sometimes very confusing for the visitor: walking past the psychedelic peaks of St Basil’s in Moscow or the glittering imperial splendour of

Rosemary Behan

Elias calling

‘Do you mind if I take off my shirt?’ Elias took another long draw on the water pipe and looked at me. As we reclined in the shadow of his crumbling palace in the medina, the midnight air was still warm and the sound of a nearby celebration scarcely intruded into the sanctuary of the courtyard. The muezzin had laid on a feast of spicy seafood, a selection of breads and piles of perfectly ripe fruit — dates, figs, melons and grapes. Now we sat under a canopy of orange and banana trees and jasmine flowers. Slowly and without warning, Elias intoned: Allahu akbar, Allau akbar Ashadu an la Ilah

James Leith

Going walkabout

Court, non-residents were only allowed access to the four ‘public’ beaches as the guest of a resident. Ask any non-African what ‘safari’ means and they will almost certainly say that it has something to do with looking at wildlife, probably through the windows of a Land Rover. It doesn’t. Safari is a Swahili word meaning ‘a journey’, which in turn derives from the Farsi safara, meaning ‘travel’. If you’re ‘on safari’, you’re ‘incommunicado’ or, probably closest of all, ‘gone walkabout’. And if this is what you long for in a holiday — to disappear into the wilderness — few places on earth will meet your requirements better than a tiny

Christian House

A mean time in Greenwich

At 17, Truman Capote ‘just wanted to get out of Greenwich and get to New York’. At 17, Truman Capote ‘just wanted to get out of Greenwich and get to New York’. The local high school paper may have provided his first byline, but the dazzle of the bright lights, big city proved too much. Over half a century on I found myself only too pleased to be reversing Truman’s adolescent trajectory. Central Station was feverishly hot as I bought my ticket for a break away from the humidity of summer in the city. Leaving Manhattan to simmer in its juices, I joyfully barrelled upstate on the Metro-North Railroad. After

Stanley Johnson

Winter wonderland

At the beginning of 1984 — more than 23 years ago — I was lucky enough to be invited by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) to join its research and supply vessel, the John Biscoe, on a six-week trip to Antarctica. At the beginning of 1984 — more than 23 years ago — I was lucky enough to be invited by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) to join its research and supply vessel, the John Biscoe, on a six-week trip to Antarctica. On that occasion, we left Punta Arenas in Tierra del Fuego, Chile’s most southerly port, and crossed the dreaded Drake Passage below Cape Horn, to visit BAS bases

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

Heaven and hell | 22 September 2007

6.57 a.m. I wake up three minutes before the alarm is due to go off, aware that I have slept badly: dipping in and out of consciousness. All night I’ve been fretting, imagining the various ways in which I might kill myself on the mountain today. I am not a good skier. I often fall over and sometimes, in deep snow, become cast like a sheep, wedged, unable to rise. If frightened I freeze, like a rabbit. Cousin Peter, my septuagenarian ski-guru, says that I’m finally ready to come ski-touring off-piste with him and his guide, Fred. I feel sick. I want to stay in the chalet and sketch, or

Mary Killen

Your problems solved | 22 September 2007

I work in an office where the loo is shared by three separate professions — all rather civilised ones, at that. Q. I work in an office where the loo is shared by three separate professions — all rather civilised ones, at that. However, we are not money-makers, and therefore cannot afford a cleaner. And yet, despite my efforts to make people aware of the mess they create, I have found that again and again it is my office which buys the cleaning fluids, cleans the loo, empties the over-flowing bins and so on. How, Mary, can I make the others share the burden? Name and address withheld A. Start

Deborah Devonshire

Diary – 22 September 2007

In the wake of my niece by marriage, Charlotte Mosley, queen of editors, I have done a few book signings lately in aid of The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters. The reason for joining her is because I am a contributor to the book and am still alive, but alas my sisters are not. Charlotte is the only person who could have made this book. She has been part of the family since 1975, when she married Diana’s son Alexander, and has an enviable record as an editor with the best, shortest, sharpest, most accurate footnotes in the business. Who else would have waded through 12,000 letters to choose 600

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s notes | 22 September 2007

For ten years, it has been said that Gordon Brown gave independence to the Bank of England. He never did, and this week dramatically reminds us of that fact. What he did was to give the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank the freedom to set interest rates. What he also did, however — and this nearly caused the then Governor, Eddie George, to resign — was to take away from the Bank its regulatory function. Since 1997, matters have been run by the ‘tripartite’ arrangement in which the Financial Services Authority makes the rules, the Bank handles the money and the government sticks its oar in. Some of the

The Spectator

Letters to the Editor | 22 September 2007

No call for a referendum Sir: Your leading article overstates the case for a referendum in the UK (15 September). It would be interesting to know how many newspapers thought there should be a referendum on the decision to go to war with Iraq, or other far-reaching decisions that Parliament takes, such as on counter-terrorism or euthanasia. We live in a parliamentary democracy where our legislature is entrusted to take decisions on behalf of the people. Eurosceptics routinely bemoan the loss of parliamentary sovereignty, but the calls for a referendum would ironically neuter Parliament at the time when it should be centre stage. Furthermore, hysterical complaints about the submergence of

Jeremy Clarke

Fighting talk | 22 September 2007

The gym attendant is giving me private boxing lessons for ten quid an hour. He used to box for the army. He candidly admits to having perfected one combination only during his short career: a left to the ribs followed by a right cross to the head. It was his secret weapon. It either worked or it didn’t, he says. His squashed hooter testifies to the occasions when it didn’t. If he sees me in his gym, he comes out of his office and straps weights to my ankles. I feel like a fool trudging around the place like a deep-sea diver on the ocean floor. But he’s obdurate. If

Taki

In praise of Mussolini

One tends to do a lot of reading on board a boat while sailing far from the madding yobs. Mostly books, thank God, as newspapers are hard to find until they’re ready to wrap fish. The Spectator, of course, is sent to wherever I am by my nice personal assistant, who buys it first thing Thursday morning and has it delivered by special messenger to the nearest marina. When times are good it comes even faster, with sweet young London things doing the delivering. Last week I read David Gilmour’s review of The Force of Destiny, by Christopher Duggan, and a very interesting review it was of a book I

Toby Young Toby Young

Television and me: whatever it is, the answer’s yes

Being a journalist, sooner or later, you’ll get a call asking if you want to be in a reality show. One of the occupational hazards of being a journalist these days is that, sooner or later, you’ll get a call asking if you want to be in a reality show. The reason is simple: we’re just about the only people left in the country who are likely to say yes. It is not just that we’re complete publicity whores — we’re hardly alone in that respect — it is also that we have the perfect excuse: we can pretend we’re just doing it for ‘journalistic reasons’. I don’t think I’ve

Alex Massie Alex Massie

A September Surprise?

A snap election in Britain? Iain Dale sees the latest good poll for Gordon Brown and reports that the Tories think it might happen: I understand that CCHQ [Conservative Central office HQ] is on full election alert, with preparations for an announcement by Gordon Brown on Monday. Yes, you read that right. Monday.

The Spectator

Ian Gilmour RIP

Less than a year since the death of Frank Johnson, the Spectator has lost another of its family. Last night, the death of Ian Gilmour, who was our proprietor and editor from 1954 to 1959, was announced, and all at the magazine grieve for his passing and send our condolences to his family. In later life, Ian was best known as a staunch and eloquent critic of Thatcherism, whose book, Dancing with Dogma, impressed even those, such as myself, who disagreed with its central thesis. But he was also a crucial protagonist in the history of the Spectator and his carpet – worn down by the pacing of Alexander Chancellor