Society

Saturday

Frank Keating

Words of Wooldridge

Sportswriting lost a glistening luminary when Ian Wooldridge died at 75 last spring. In four decades he produced more than seven million words for the Daily Mail which, aware of his unmatchable worth, rewarded him and his expenses chits with grateful generosity. It was never necessary for Ian, as it was for his impoverished peers, to bolster the weekly pittance by recycling the tired old stuff in book form. For their part, his employers, no mugs, guarded the Wooldridge byline with severity. In the1970s a publisher annually produced a few ‘best of the backpages’ anthologies, This Sporting Life, the ‘buy me’ potency each year ruinously diluted by a routine preface

Spectator Reviewers

Books of the Year | 24 November 2007

William Trevor Thomas Hardy: The Time-Torn Man by Claire Tomalin (Penguin, £8.99). This is a classic biography, gracefully written, driven by a perception that never falters. The contradictions and lingering mysteries in Hardy’s life, both as a man and a novelist, are investigated fruitfully but gently, without gratuitous or prurient curiosity. Speculation is offered with well-mannered diffidence when there is doubt; with the certainty of exemplary research when there isn’t. A worthy addition to the best of Hardy’s novels, A Time-Torn Man often reads like a particularly good novel itself. Equally a treat is Eleven Houses by Christopher Fitz-Simon (Penguin Ireland, £18.99), a memoir of a confused childhood in ‘Ireland,

Andrew Taylor

A choice of crime novels | 24 November 2007

Name to a Face (Bantam, £14.99) is Robert Goddard’s 19th novel. With characteristic brio, he combines the Black Death, the wreck of Sir Clowdisley Shovell’s flagship off Scilly in 1707 and the theft of an 18th-century ring with adulterous shenanigans in modern Monaco, a drowned journalist, near-identical twins and major-league EU fraud. Tim Harding, a world-weary landscape gardener, is drawn into a lethal quest to connect these disparate elements. It takes him from the Riviera to Penzance, from London to Munich, and in the process forces him to confront not only a ghost from his own past but also what he really wants from the present. The plotting in this

Helena Drysdale

Urge to be first

It’s an alien species. Its habitat is scorching deserts or polar wastes, its diet Smash potato reconstituted with snow melt, and a concoction called ‘pre-stress’ drunk from a bottle that is also used to collect its own urine. Its pastimes include running marathons, writing books and climbing mountains. This is the Sir Ranulph Twistleton Wykeham Fiennes. Just reading about his exploits is exhausting. The first circumnavigation of the world via both Poles was succeeded by frequent attempts at other ‘firsts’ in both Arctic and Antarctic, mostly by dragging laden sledges over ice using nothing but man power. He discovered the lost city of Ubar in Oman’s Empty Quarter, and fulfilled

Friday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

There’ll Always Be an England…

Not to intrude into private grief or anything, but how can you children not be amused by this? Croatia rose to the occasion in their crucial Euro 2008 defeat of England – after an apparent X-rated gaffe by an English opera singer at Wembley. Tony Henry belted out a version of the Croat anthem before the 80,000 crowd, but made a blunder at the end. He should have sung ‘Mila kuda si planina’ (which roughly means ‘You know my dear how we love your mountains’). But he instead sang ‘Mila kura si planina’ which can be interpreted as ‘My dear, my penis is a mountain.’ UPDATE: Commenter Damir suggests a

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The shape of the race

As America tucks into turkey sandwiches now seems as good a time as any to assess the state of the presidential race. The first contests are now only a little over a month away with the Iowa caucuses on January 3rd and then the New Hampshire primary five days later. Iowa will determine the shape of the nominating contest for both parties. On the Democratic side, if Hillary wins Iowa then she’ll cruise to the nomination: the combination of momentum and a national poll lead will make her unstoppable. If she fails to win, she’ll be in a real contest—albeit one in which she’s still the favourite—as the sense of

James Forsyth James Forsyth

One offer of support that Clinton will find easy to refuse

Hillary Clinton received another endorsement for the presidency today and it came with an offer to stump for her, “And if I can be of any use to her somewhere in the campaign, I’m available. I’d like to go with her and I’m going to suggest it to her.” Somehow I can’t see Hillary inviting Bernadette Chirac, wife of Jacques Chirac, out on the trail with her. France might be less toxic politically than it once was in the States thanks to Nicolas Sarkozy, but a Chirac on the campaign trail wouldn’t go down too well. (Although, in the lead off primary state of New Hampshire one in four of

Thursday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Turkey Day Blogging Forecast: Light

Happy Thanksgiving, people. It’s a testament to the enduring optimism – and essential good-nature – of the American people that they should schedule (or have scheduled for them) two family holidays within a month of one another. Thanksgiving wounds barely have time to scab before the Christmas blood-letting is upon us…

Luke Honey

Cooking up a storm

Not so long ago, in a futile attempt to foster the Special Relationship, I once offered to cook a Thanksgiving Dinner for my then girlfriend’s family in Los Angeles. The Americans tend not to eat turkey on Christmas Day itself, as they’ve already had the whole shooting match at Thanksgiving.  As well as roasted turkey, the dinner can include cranberry sauce, candied yams, corn-on-the cob, peas, carrots, and pumpkin pie. It didn’t go as planned: jetlagged (my luggage whisked away by Security at Ontario airport), suffering from the delayed shock of a car crash on the San Diego Freeway (some sort of a moustachioed creature in black leathers and wrap

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Set the people free

Amidst this Black Tuesday excitement, we’ve missed the real intellectual headway the Tories are making in education – as Iain Martin says in the Telegraph today. The Gove v Balls debate yesterday was brilliant: in these days of faux theatricality it’s a pleasure to see two guys who genuinely hate each other go at it. What strikes me is how Cameron and Gove are using the language of the left to sell this – in my view, the only way to get this flying. And not just by calling these “co-operative schools”. At the end of Cameron’s video on schools (here on PlayPolitical) he has this to say: “Why should

James Forsyth James Forsyth

This failure won’t obscure the government’s failure for long

The failure of Steve McClaren’s England team last night has knocked the HMRC debacle off some off the front pages but it is certain that this story will be back. First, blaming some idiot junior member of staff—as Brown and Darling have been doing—just won’t cut it as a senior manager appears to have known that the full set of data was to be sent to the National Audit Office. Second, there has been a pattern of carelessness with people’s personal information at HMRC that the press are now turning their attention to. The Times reports this morning, The HMRC has a history of losing sensitive information on unencrypted CDs.

Wednesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Huckabees Chuck Norris Ad (Video)

Via Garance, here is by far and away the best advertisement of this interminable presidential election campaign: UPDATE: Daniel Larison makes the good point that Huckabee’s two word plan for securing the border (“Chuck Norris”) is an admission that Huckabee doesn’t really have a border policy at all (or at least not one likely to appeal to discontented Iowa Republicans). Best – or at least most amusing – reaction to Huckabee’s ad comes, of course, from our old friend Witless Fred Dalton Thompson whose campaign spokesman complains that “Mike Huckabee has confused celebrity endorsement with serious policy.”

Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Experience Primary | 21 November 2007

Probably the strongest experience I have in foreign relations is the fact that I spent four years living overseas when I was a child in southeast Asia. ~Barack Obama I forgot this is supposed to be reassuring and make us want Obama to be President.  I’ve been reading The Economist since I was 10–do I get to be Secretary of State? – Daniel Larison Obama, remember, left Indonesia when he was ten years old. If that constitutes invaluable experience I’m a Dutchman. On the other hand, of course, as I’ve suggested before Hillary’s experience isn’t quite as extensive as she likes to have you believe.

James Campbell

At least we know about it

Britons today may not be inclined accentuate the positive about the way their government goes about its business but there is one consolation to be had from the lost data debacle:  the government ‘fessed up to it. Think about that for a minute and then consider how this might have been handled in other countries. Can you imagine George Bush or Jacques Chirac coming out with a foursquare admission of failure this size? There are many things wrong with the extraordinary centralisation of Britain’s government but it has one merit: when things go wrong the minister finds out sharpish.

Tuesday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The government’s identity crisis

There were genuine gasps of amazement in the chamber when Darling unveiled the scale of this disaster. If you have a child, and receive child benefit, your bank details are right now on the loose. Sort code and account number, together with your address and age of your child – details of 25m people in 7m families: every parent in the land. This data goldmine was downloaded onto two CDs on 18 Oct by a “junior official” (the fact that it’s so easy to do this is, is in itself, an outrage) and sent from HM Revenue Customs & Excise in Newcastle to the National Audit Office in London (who

The Spectator

Does Britain need Trident? Listen live tonight

From 6:45 PM Spectator.co.uk will be broadcasting the latest Spectator / Intelligence Squared debate on whether or not Britain needs its Trident nuclear weapons system. Speakers include Baroness Helena Kennedy, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, the SNP spokesman Angus Robertson and Times columnist Oliver Kamm. The event will be chaired by Jonathan Freedland of the Guardian. Listen live from 6:45pm.  

Monday

Matthew Dancona

The case for 56 days

Following my Sunday Telegraph column yesterday, I debated the Government’s plans to extend the pre-charge detention period from 28 days with Henry Porter at the end of the Today programme this morning. I was for, Henry was against.  I don’t like any restriction upon liberty, but I do not think this extension is being sought recklessly or for political effect. If anything, it is a terrible political gamble for Gordon Brown, whose Government is proceeding shambolically and is nowhere near achieving a consensus in the Commons. So I disagree fundamentally with Henry’s contention that this is all just a “virility test” for the PM, who is appealing to the “unlettered”

Saturday

The Spectator

Letters | 17 November 2007

Lord of works Sir: Your profile of Lord Malloch-Brown was grossly unfair (‘Labour’s lord of the perks’, 10 November). I have known him since 1979 when, at the age of 26, he built and ran the Khao I Dang refugee camp in Thailand. Over 100,000 Cambodian refugees had reason to be very grateful for his superb work. Since then he has had a large number of significant international assignments, at the World Bank, the United Nations and elsewhere. He has enormous experience, particularly of the problems of poverty and international development. In recent years he has been very critical of US policies, including towards Iraq. I disagree with these views

Melissa Kite

Women’s ways

Silly really. Although it seemed like a good idea at the time. A girls’ poker evening. I forgot that trying to persuade a group of women to do anything involving a certain absence of men is like trying to get them to turn up to their own funeral. I’ve tried to organise these sorts of escapade before and it has inevitably been like pulling teeth without gas. Everyone spends the night looking at their watches and fiddling furiously with their mobile phones under the table. You can hardly hear the sighs of despair above the frantic tapping of text messages to real people, i.e., men. At 10.30 p.m. sharp the

Jeremy Clarke

Paying through the teeth

I’m in agony. I’m in agony. Toothache. Upper left molar. The pain is shooting up the side of my face and stabbing through my left eye socket. On the plus side, the world is suddenly less complex. My idea of future happiness has been reduced to nothing more ambitious than a pain-free existence. No longer has it anything to do with ameliorating the suffering of others. If a genie made me choose right now between his making the pain go away and making poverty history, I’d probably have to think about it. Two years ago I went to the dentist for the first time in years. She was appalled; I