Society

Saturday

Mary Killen

Dear Mary… | 6 January 2007

Q. A friend decided to celebrate her anticipated Christmas bonus by taking a day’s shooting and kindly invited me to be one of the guns. She emailed that most of her other guests were booked into the hotel near the estate for bed and dinner the night before. Would I like to book a room and a place at the table? My dilemma was that the shoot happens to belong to one of my greatest friends and the Scottish side of me recoiled at the thought of a hotel bill when I would be welcome in the house. I asked myself, would it be seen as pulling rank for me

Taki

Lethal combination | 6 January 2007

Gstaad Penned in by the surrounding Alps, huddled around the Saanen valley and scrambling up the mountains for extra space, Gstaad bursts at the seams during the New Year celebrations. For the first time in its 100-year history, the Palace hotel sold tickets to its premises, and they sold out three days before the night of the 31st. I tried to enter the Palace at 8.30 a.m. on New Year’s Day, accompanied by my son and a couple of floozies but was refused admission because of my drunken state and also because elderly clients were coming down for breakfast. It was just as well. I can’t remember anything past 3 a.m. and there

Frank Keating

Anniversary year

If you thought you’d got away with one ruddy World Cup in 2006, then brace yourself: there are two of them in 2007, so obviously a double helping of the baloney which accompanies them. Cricket’s World Cup is staged in the Caribbean through March and April; rugby’s in France in September and October. Anniversaries to celebrate, too, and with a nice aptness. I fancy you can easily make a centenary case for 1907 being the year in which genuine international sport became a reality: for the first time an overseas competitor (Aussie leftie Norman Brookes) won the men’s title at Wimbledon, and another, French golfer Arnaud Massy, was first to

Jaspistos

No place to hide

In Competition No. 2475 you were invited to provide entries from the diary of someone trying to escape from the Christmas season — and failing. Maybe you were all suffering from pre-Christmas exhaustion, maybe it was an unsuitable comp, or maybe I was in an atrabilious mood, but the entries were so substandard that, to cries of ‘Have a heart, ref!’, I rule that there are only three prizewinners this week. They are printed below, earning £30 each, D.A. Prince taking the bonus fiver. To fill in the extra space in a seasonable manner I append an entry from Mr Pooter’s ‘Diary’, followed by the last paragraph of Max Beerbohm’s

Paul Johnson

Don’t laugh too loud — this theatre of the world is unsafe

We smile, naturally, sometimes on our first day of life. But we have to learn to laugh — that is, we imitate the mouth motions, facial contortions and, above all, the laugh noises of our elders. This is why the way we laugh is part of our breeding. I notice every year at the Christmas season a lot of loud, infuriating and ill-bred laughter in restaurants, from people who have had a few, chiefly from shaven-headed men but also from a growing number of women. Jane Austen deplored loud laughter, believing that a fine-tuned control of the vocal cords was a sure sign of a gentleman. Her Emma was convinced

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Snouts still in the trough — and now bosses want 20 per cent of every profit

I like to think I helped start the national debate about fairness and executive pay with an article here in May 1993 headlined ‘Snouts in the Trough’, illustrated by Garland with pin-striped porkers helping themselves to huge portions of gravy. Since then, bosses’ pay packets have ballooned — the heat in 1993 was caused by £140,000 salaries for water company chairmen, whereas this year more than 4,000 City bankers are set to receive million-plus bonuses, and one, Driss Ben-Brahim of Goldman Sachs, is said to be collecting (presumably in an armoured truck) £50 million. But the arguments against fat-cattery remain stuck in early 1980s leftist rhetoric: the TUC’s Brendan Barber

Saturday

Dot Wordsworth

Mind your language | 30 December 2006

Conversation is an art in which we all prefer to think we excel, and Stephen Miller has written a whole book on the subject (Conversation, Yale, £15), which turns out to be mostly about Samuel Johnson and David Hume, who never did meet and talk. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu comes into it too, and Mr Miller has this to say of her in relation to Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury: ‘Lady Mary did not think highly of Bishop Burnet. “I knew him in my very early Youth and his condescension in directing a Girl in her studies is an Obligation I can never forget.”’ I am puzzled by this judgment.

Laura Trevelyan

Diary – 30 December 2006

New York The highlight of my year was undoubtedly interviewing George Clooney. I don’t mean to be star-struck, but in the presence of the square-jawed one my professional façade went Awol. The United Nations is usually a bit short on glamour, but on the day George came to talk about Darfur, a little bit of Hollywood rubbed off on my world. He swept in with an entourage of 50, including the compulsory bossy PR, who kept trying to interrupt and spoil my brief few minutes with George. He was, I can report, devastatingly well briefed on the Darfur peace agreement. ‘What was he like?’ asked Husband, casually, via email. I

Tamzin Lightwater

Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody | 30 December 2006

Well, here they are! My exciting New Year’s Resolutions for 2007!1) Make more policy Controversial, I know. But after long chat with Jed am convinced that this is where I can make my mark. He says, and I agree, that policy is far too important to be left to politicians, ‘especially clueless Tories. This is a job for people who understand people, Tammy. Their hopes, their fears — goddamit, their dreams. It’s about knowing what they want — and giving it to them.’ Then he clicked his fingers in v sexy way. It’s becoming clear to me why he is in charge. Have already had some success with my 35-hour

The Spectator

Letters to the Editor | 30 December 2006

Contrary to the culture From Edward Nugee QC Sir: I have in the past felt a little guilty in my belief that an Islamic faith school falls into a different category altogether from an Anglican or Roman Catholic, or even Jewish, faith school. Rod Liddle (‘We are what the English Bible has made us’, 16/23 December) has expressed the reasons supporting my belief well. It is not discriminatory to support schools in which the faith that is taught is the faith that has contributed so much to what it means to be English, and at the same time to oppose schools in which the faith that is taught is contrary

Taki

History lesson

OK, 2007 is upon us, and the end of history, as in Francis Fukuyama’s fearless forecast of 1990, has turned out to be full of you-know-what. In fact, never in seven centuries, give or take a few, has this planet of ours been in more turmoil. Fukuyama is a great scholar, and he meant well, but what he got wrong was religious fervour and human nature. Basically, the urge to control one another’s behaviour. Better yet, the incompatibility of Islamic beliefs and liberal democracy. Let’s begin with Iraq. Uncle Sam’s wrongheaded attempt to placate Sunni Arabs has failed utterly. For all the rhetoric against Shiite shenanigans, it’s the Sunnis who

Mary Killen

Dear Mary… | 30 December 2006

Q. Six months ago an acquaintance asked me to lunch in the country, apparently to discuss some business she might be able to put my way. I don’t drive and the journey there and back was gruelling, involving taking a tube, then a train and then a mix-up over where we had agreed to rendezvous. The business proposition never materialised and lunch itself was a little trying. I accepted an offer from the highly energetic woman next to me (rather courageously clad in leather trousers) to go to a concert the following week. The event was pleasant enough and the lady appeared to know several people gathered in the foyer

Frank Keating

Heaven’s XI

Requiems for heavyweights: sporting history’s seven super-dupers who died in 2006 were, at 79, football’s Ferenc Puskas, cricket’s Fred Trueman (75) and Sir Clyde Walcott (80), US boxer Willie Pep (84) and his compatriot, double Olympian Bob Mathias (75), rugby’s sprinter Ken Jones (84), and Dr Kevin O’Flanagan (86), who played international tennis and golf for Ireland and also, uniquely, both rugby and soccer (for Arsenal, no less), as well as holding the national record at the 100 yards and long jump. An old year bites the dust-to-dust and as ever, with it, so does the roll-call of those whose final Christmas was last year’s. Only the spectral fields of

Jaspistos

Nursery rhyme time

In Competition No. 2474 you were invited to expand a nursery rhyme mockingly in the style of a well-known poet. G.K. Chesterton did ‘Old King Cole’ as written by Tennyson, Browning, Yeats, Whitman and Swinburne, and Anthony Deane expanded ‘Jack and Jill’ to the tune of more than 50 hilariously Kiplingesque lines. These can be found in Apes and Parrots, an anthology by that keen cricketer, drinker and parodist, Sir John Squire. I am fairly well-read in poetry, but I am not a mind-reader, so I was puzzled by one or two competitors who omitted to mention whom they were parodying, for instance Martin Parker’s ‘Humpty Dumpty’, which was witty,

Charlotte Moore

When Peter Rabbit stamps . . .

‘The bride is a successful exhibitor at local agricultural shows of short-horn cattle and her name is known now all over the country for those charming books for children …’ Thus the Westmorland Gazette announced the marriage of Beatrix Potter and William Heelis in 1913. Beatrix would have concurred with the Gazette’s sense of priorities. Though she took pride and pleasure in her ‘little books’ and defended their merit — ‘There is more in the books than mere funniness’ — one feels that she would have relished being the first woman president of the Herdwick Sheep Breeders’ Association more than her acclaim as a best-selling author. Linda Lear’s solid biography

Paul Johnson

Vel

The Velázquez show at the National Gallery has reminded me that art history is not only about what was, and what is, but what might have been. This Andalusian from Seville (his father was Portuguese) was a lifelong snob and social climber and later maintained his family were of gentry, if not noble, stock. We do not know and it seems unlikely. What matters about this single-minded and pushy southerner is that he was perhaps the most naturally gifted painter who has ever lived. His training is obscure and was unimportant. Who can teach a genius of the top rank? The way in which he put on the paint, with

The Spectator

The Year of the Voter

One thing is certain about the political year ahead: No. 10 will have a new occupant well before the end of 2007. Not since Eden’s long struggle to replace Churchill has an heir-apparent had to wait as long as Gordon Brown, and the sheer duration of his battle to dislodge Tony Blair has taken a terrible toll on both of them. Assuming there is no late upset — no last-minute dash for the tape by John Reid — the Chancellor will get his wish at last in the next few months. Much is made of Mr Brown’s alleged plans for his ‘first 100 days’. In truth, his most pressing task

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The smart boy thrilled by the story

Charles Moore pays tribute to his friend Frank Johnson, editor of The Spectator 1995–99, who died on 15 December: a man of awesome learning — and light touch ‘In the Fifties, job advertisements used to read “smart boy wanted”. That’s me,’ Frank Johnson would say. The joke tells you a good deal about Frank. First, it places him in his social milieu. He was an upper-working-class East End boy born during the war. He remembered the present Queen’s Coronation, with everyone crowding into his parents’ front-room to join in the first mass televisual occasion in British history. This was the last age of working-class respectability: Frank had such a fear

Saturday

Mary Killen

Dear Mary… | 16 December 2006

Once again Mary has invited some of her favourite achievers to submit personal queries for her attention. From Lord Marland Q. There are two restaurants in London which I go to very regularly. I have known the staff in both of these for a long time and they always greet me by name. ‘Yes, Mr Marland. No, Mr Marland. Three bags full, Mr Marland.’ They haven’t cottoned on to the fact that I am no longer Mister. I am not seeking to be snooty or to appear to be correcting them but how can I gracefully convey — purely for the purposes of accuracy and to put a stop to

Roy Hattersley

Infectious joy

The bad news was broken to us by the parish magazine.  Christmas Eve  is a Sunday this year. So the vicar, who presides over three parishes and must spread himself over as many evensongs, will not be available for the carol service which is traditionally held on the village green. It seemed outrageous that Christianity should be allowed to get in the way of our Christmas festivities. But, on the first Sunday in Advent, Saint Giles more than made up for the seasonal errors and omissions. The children of the church, augmented by a couple of adults, presented a pageant of village history. Two tinselled angels — one silver and one gold