Society

Saturday

Boris Volodarsky With Oleg Gordievsky

Untangling the web of deception

This is perhaps the most amazing non-fiction spy book that has ever appeared during or after the Cold War. There is little doubt that all intelligence historians interested in the past 50 years of espionage games played by the CIA and the KGB will read it as we did — in one take: A day in the 1990s must count as one of the extreme low points of CIA counter- intelligence. When this KGB provocateur and deceiver concluded a lecture to CIA staff personnel in their Langley auditorium, the audience — all professional American intelligence officers — rose as one, eager-faced and thrilled, to give Yuri Nosenko a standing ovation.

Neil Rennie

That’s All

The dead are back at Sulphur Bay, dancingunder umbrellas, wearing three kinds of shorts:English, French and Seventh Day Adventist.Hair wavy, faces posthumously whiteas foam, they strum and croon the gospel of St Paul:‘You-me no die. You-me no buggerup. That’s all.’

Donald Michie

Not so dumb

Students of ants, wasps, hornets, termites and bees have for more than a century realised that the intricately interlocking teamwork of these insect builders deserves some more respectful characterisation than ‘blind instinct’. Moreover, in certain mammals, as seen in the dams and dens of beavers, the leaps of engineering insight would do credit to human designers. To explain their feats requires us to credit animals with the ability mentally to map sense-data to objects and processes in the outside world. In some cases the animal first has to recognise the potential of materials and tools, and then to envisage and maintain a sequence of goals so as to determine how

The Spectator

Cameron fails the test

The most perceptive indictment of the Blair era was delivered, in an admirably candid speech last September, by Alan Milburn (interviewed by Fraser Nelson on page 14). Describing his own rise from a council estate to the ranks of the Cabinet, Mr Milburn asked, ‘Do we think that for a child growing up today in one of Britain’s poorest estates such mobility is possible or likely? Sadly, I think not.’ That observation should inspire the core mission statement of the next Conservative government. Asked about his gilded schooling at Eton and youthful indiscretions, David Cameron has stuck to the mantra that a person’s origins should be irrelevant: ‘What matters most

Richard Orange

London’s diamond trade may not be forever

Richard Orange says London’s traditional dominance of global dealing in uncut stones is under threat from new players based in India, China and Dubai ‘How does it feel to hold $9 million in the palm of your hand?’ One of the world’s leading diamond buyers, Rajiv Mehta, watches intently for my reaction to this question: the sachet of dull glassy pebbles I am gently weighing, if I could somehow get them out of this building and into the hands of some Antwerp middleman, would buy me one of London’s most prestigious addresses, my own island in the Bahamas, or a country-sized swath of the Argentinean pampas. Slim chance: the building

Matthew Vincent

How cyber-vetting catches job liars

‘Interests: travel, cinema, country walks, volleyball, volunteering at the pet-rescue centre…’ Why do CVs make job applicants sound like contestants in the Miss Cleethorpes beauty pageant, or desperate divorcees on dating websites? It’s possibly because job hunters now believe ‘personality’ is what wins over potential employers, and many applicants are prepared to lie about themselves to make the right impression. A survey by Reed Recruitment a few years back claimed that what you say about your interests when applying for a job can determine whether or not you get an interview: it also found that mundane hobbies such as ‘reading’, ‘drinking’ and ‘socialising’ put off employers almost as much as

Robert Cottrell

You’d be a brave man to bet against Rupert Murdoch or Michael Bloomberg

Call me a sentimentalist, but when Rupert Murdoch gave a speech here last week telling News Corporation to go carbon-neutral, and to inspire its many millions of viewers and readers to do likewise, I couldn’t help thinking that he must have been affected by the spectacle of human frailty revealed to him in his current efforts to take over Dow Jones, owner of the Wall Street Journal. To bring the Journal into his portfolio, Mr Murdoch needs to win over the extended Bancroft family, descendants of a swash-buckling newspaperman called Clarence Barron who bought control of Dow Jones in 1902. Three generations later, Barron’s stake has been scattered among so

Paul Johnson

Cultural revolutions come from below, not above

Active young men, going to work, now sport a new kind of uniform, part oik, part kiddy: trainers with upturned toes, baggy pseudo-patch trousers of the kind worn by dustmen, short zip-jackets, a child’s rucksack and a baseball cap. In the Sainsbury’s queue the other morning, a man thus attired addressed me in a marked Wykehamist accent. He was on his way to the City. This is the latest example of what I called prolerise, the way in which culture springs from the depths. If those at the top hit upon a really useful gadget, like the French table fork, brought to England by Richard II, then it will gradually

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Milburn: how I can help Brown

Alan Milburn was nine years old when he arrived home to find the front door of his council house had been painted bright yellow. His mother, who looked after him on her own, was perplexed. In the morning it had been red, but men with brushes had come and gone. This was to have a radicalising effect on the young Tynesider. Some 40 years later, reclining in the chair of his rooftop office opposite the House of Commons, his outrage still seems fresh. ‘I can remember the emotion of being slightly freaked by the whole affair,’ he said. ‘The colour wasn’t chosen by my mum. Nor by my granddad. It

Mark Leonard

Yuschenko: historical times

I had almost given up. The time of our appointment had changed six times in 24 hours. The presidential palace was — as it still is — in full crisis, and my interview seemed to be receding out of reach. When he finally showed up, the man at the centre of the political storm seemed perfectly calm. Victor Yuschenko was wearing a well-cut suit and a bright red tie, but it was his face that captivated my attention. This was the famous face that had shocked the world and launched a revolution. Disfigured by pocks and carbuncles, it tells the story of Yuschenko’s near-death and of his country’s bitter struggle

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Sweeney’s rant at the Scientologists

Ah, now, this is what we pay our licence fee for. A maniac screaming at a maniac. I hope you caught the latest edition of the BBC’s Panorama, during which the presenter, John Sweeney, went berserk at a spokesman for the Church of Scientology — bellowing in his face at full volume in the manner of an inmate at Rampton being told that his pornography allowance has been stopped. If you didn’t see the show itself, then check out the incident on YouTube on the internet — it’s been posted there by the Scientologists as if to say look, everybody, this is what we have to put up with, abuse

Frank Keating

Football’s coming home

With no international competition this summer, football’s curtain comes down with a clamorous abruptness in Athens on Wednesday, when Liverpool meet AC Milan in the final of the European Cup. By way of domestic overture, Chelsea play Manchester United this Saturday in the FA Cup final, and it would be fitting if a compelling show marked the return of the ancient fixture to its traditional home. Certainly each team has it in them to produce a memorable Wembley premiere. The vicissitudes of Wembley’s construction and appalling overspend have provided a sorry saga; today’s relief at business resumed merges with a keen curiosity about the aura and ambience of English football’s

Simon Hoggart

May Wine Club

Order your wines by email. Now, pay attention. We have a lot of wines to get through and not much time, so if you don’t mind, I’ll crack on. All the wines come from the famous City firm of Corney & Barrow, and almost all are generously discounted. And there is the Brett-Smith Indulgence, which knocks off £6 per case if you buy two for delivery inside the M25, three cases outside. You will find many bargains here. I have selected (and marked) two mixed cases, one for summer drinking, the other a luxury case for any time. But first, C&B’s marvellous house wines, perfect for parties and everyday quaffing.

Lucy Vickery

Malade imaginaire

In competition no. 2494 you were invited to submit a poem written by a hypochondriac about a minor ailment.Many of you alluded to the fact that the internet is fertile hunting-ground for the hypochondriac, providing limitless scope for self-diagnosis. Cyberchondria sends hordes of the worried well to their GPs brandishing wads of incontrovertible downloaded ‘evidence’. What hypochon-driacs crave above all else, of course, is vindication. To doubting doctors, spouses, friends and family, the message rang out loud and clear: ‘You’ll be sorry…’ — or, as the epitaph on Spike Milligan’s gravestone reads, ‘I told you I was ill’.The winners, printed below, get £30 each. The bonus fiver goes to a

Friday

The Spectator

Those with a past need not apply

“George Bush could never get elected President if he went to Yale now,” according to Google CEO Eric Schmidt. His argument is that he’d be caught on mobile phone cameras every time he got out of control; making a political career impossible. Schmidt might be right about Bush, he was after all the scion of a famous political—and Yale—dynasty. But I’m not sure that this applies to that many other people. For instance, are people now snapping the Bullingdon when they go out? I actually don’t think Bush would have been elected president without his hell raising past as it alleviated any concerns that Americans might had about the regal

The Spectator

Things got worse

A fact I dropped into my political column has been picked up by Iain Dale and (rightly) questioned. Could unemployment for under-25s really be worse than under the Tories? I accept, it sounds made up. Didn’t Brown piously rail against this youth unemployment and call them “Major’s children”? Hasn’t he delivered millions of new jobs in this economic boom? It’s worth responding to in full, because as this cuts to the heart of the myth of Brown’s economic “miracle”. There’s new jobs created all right – as our immigration figures testify. But for young Britons unemployment is actually worse now (14.5%) than the day Blair stepped into office (14.3%). I’d

The Spectator

Where left meets right

Throughout the French presidential campaign Nicolas Sarkozy was lambasted by his critics as an American neo-con with a French passport. This description was excessive, but there’s little doubt that Sarkozy is more pro-American than the average French politician and his acceptance speech on election night sounded some distinctly neo-con notes about the universality of human freedom. So at first glance it is surprising that he has handed over the foreign ministry to a Socialist. But on closer inspection, it is not. Bernard Kouchner, the founder of MSF, is one of the very few French politicians who was publicly prepared to say that they saw merit in overthrowing Saddam because of the

The Spectator

Bad timing

Good to see Paul Wolfowitz taking my advice. In a way the whole story’s about bad timing. For him, in the sense that a relatively insignificant and disputable allegation of misconduct caught him out at a time when an unstoppable tide was running against the ideological clique of which he’s a leading light. And bad timing for us, in the sense that if he’d gone a year ago, a despairing Gordon Brown might have applied for the World Bank presidency and been hailed as the perfect man for the job. How much better it would have suited him than the one he’s just got.   

Thursday

The Spectator

Museum piece

What are museums for? I wish I’d never asked the question but I did once unfortunately in a Douglas-Home-Memorial-Prize-winning essay which caused a bit of a stink in the increasingly PC museums and galleries sector, and which I’m now going to have to justify in a debate starting at 6pm tonight at Merseyside Maritime Museum in Liverpool. I’ve been invited, I fear, to be the evil elitist posho in the suit who everybody hates. I’ll be cast by people like Liverpool Museums’ infamous director David Fleming (who’s very good at that kind of thing) as a member of the forces of reactionary darkness who would seek to deny our cultural

The Spectator

Cricket lovely cricket

It is hard to utter the phrase “glorious summer of sport” with a straight face today thanks to the grim drizzle that is our lot but the sporting summer is now officially under way with England taking on the West Indies at Lords. Spare a thought for the Windies, though. Not only have they fallen from being the undisputed masters of the game to one of the worst teams in the world but they also had to start this Test Match without having bowled a single competitive ball; testimony to the absurdity of the current international cricketing treadmill.