Society

Saturday

Paul Johnson

Why Agatha Christie never made camel soufflé

Funny creatures have begun to appear in Somerset. Little herds of vicuna, llamas and guanaco, and other similar animals. They are farmed for various purposes, chiefly hair. We already have riding camels, but I am expecting camels to appear any moment as a dairy herd. What, can you drink camel’s milk? Certainly. The view of Dr Ulrich Wernery, a vet and microbiologist, is that it is ‘the nearly perfect animal product for humans’. This ingenious German has for 20 years been looking after the hawks, horses and camels of the Emir of Dubai, and I learn from the Financial Times that he has now assembled a herd of 500 milking

Michael Tanner

Czech tragedy

Almost everything about Katya Kabanova, Janacek’s first almost perfect opera, is extraordinary, except its heroine, who is a kind of distilled version of what many opera composers most love: a woman who has such appalling things inflicted on her that she is provoked into doing everything with her voice which it’s possible to do, to express her sufferings. The reason why Callas is, and will remain, the prima donna assoluta del mondo is that her voice and the way she used it combined to give pain an expression which ranks with creative, and not only interpretative, artistic achievement. But Katya does none of the things with her voice that other

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Fast bucks all round as Saga and the AA form the Victor Meldrew conglomerate

The £6 billion merger of Saga and the AA is a gift for cartoonists: a company whose ideal customer is Victor Meldrew with a broken fan-belt on the hard shoulder of the A22. To complete a brand conglomerate for grandads — and since all three are owned by private equity funds — why not bring in Boots the Chemist as well? But most of all, the deal is another gift for the GMB union, whose leaders Paul Kenny and Paul Maloney have led such a creative campaign to blacken the name of private equity that they ought to be preparing their acceptance speeches for next year’s Baftas. They have already

Richard Northedge

Pollster with an eye for business

The company Gordon Brown will be watching most closely as Prime Minister is the polling company most closely watching him. YouGov named Harriet Harman as the deputy best able to help him win the next general election, for example; until that day comes, it will constantly measure Brown’s popular support. YouGov’s polls did not trouble Tony Blair when he moved into No. 10 because the company did not exist. It is a product of internet technology, founded just as the dotcom bubble burst in 2000. But it is still here, and for all the headlines generated by its political polls, they now provide less than 5 per cent of its

The Spectator

Clunk!

Rarely has there been such a triumph of expectation management as the arrival in No. 10 of the new Prime Minister. Only eight weeks ago, Labour was agonising over the loss of 900 council seats in England, the victory of the SNP in Scotland and the gloomy prospect of Gordon Brown’s succession. The then Chancellor’s depressed share price was always hugely to his advantage and, displaying the awesome patience which is one of his most formidable qualities, he bided his time before pouncing. Since the launch of his campaign — really a victory lap — he has been confounding expectations, visibly more relaxed, but also more nimble, unleashing a series

Clemency Burtonhill

‘All because of The Spectator’

Chinua Achebe is chuckling as he attempts to describe how much it means to him to have won the Man Booker International Prize. ‘How do I answer that?’ he wonders, in his soft, sing-song voice. ‘It means I am appreciated in certain quarters, that my work means something to people. When I started writing all those years ago, I wasn’t even aware there were such rewards. All I had in mind was to write a true story, in the way that fiction can be true. I had to be honest. I was not going to be pushed around. And so, to have appreciation of any kind is wonderful.’ Many would

Tim Congdon

Two giants and wizards

‘Investigation favourable except conceited, egotistical and snobbish.’ The outcome of the Federal Bureau of Investig- ation’s 1955 enquiry into John Kenneth Galbraith was eventually revealed to him under the USA’s Freedom of Inform- ation Act. It added to his already immense store of anecdotes about the richness and variety of American public life. The FBI was not quite right. Other economists resented Galbraith as if he were conceited, egotistical and snobbish, but his actual or alleged vanity was not the reason. Instead Galbraith’s problem was that he was incapable of writing a dull paragraph. His active literary career spanned a period of over 70 years, starting with specialist papers on

Theodore Dalrymple

Global warning | 30 June 2007

At my time of life, and in my circumstances, I ought to be calm and unruffled. I should be like a saddhu in a Himalayan cave, whose pulse rate no merely external event in the world of appearance can raise. Instead, whenever I read the Guardian (which is often), a wave of irritation comes over me like a Jacksonian fit, the epileptic seizure that starts with a twitch in the toe and ends in a generalised convulsion. The other day, for example, I was reading an article about an Indian film just released called Water. It is about the doleful fate of poor widows in India, and apparently the film

Martyn Gregory

Stranded on Planet Fayed

‘Bastard’! hissed Mohamed Fayed when he saw me in the Royal Courts of Justice during the pre-hearings for the inquests into Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed’s deaths. This was my welcome to Planet Fayed — the parallel universe currently dominating the inquest pre-hearings. I had never seen my quest for evidence into how Diana died in personal terms, but Mohamed clearly begs to differ. I have often asked Fayed for an interview in the past ten years to quiz him about the Paris crash, but I have only heard two words in response; his salutation when he saw me in court the following week was identical. After his second greeting

Simon Hoggart

Spectator Mini-Bar Offer | 30 June 2007

The weather may be bizarre at the moment, but when the sun comes it seems particularly warm, which is when you will crave these excellent wines. They have been selected for summer drinking by Amanda Skinner of Lay & Wheeler, one of our most popular merchants. They are perfect for parties, barbecues, picnics or as aperitifs, even for drinking indoors while the rain lashes against the windows. All are discounted on L&W’s list price. The full title of our first is (draw breath here) Prosecco dei Colli Trevigiani Frizzante Nera Spago, De Faveri, Veneto, n.v. (1). I would translate but we don’t have the space. All you need to know

James Young

Not cricket

In Competition No. 2500 you were invited to describe a modern-day Test match in the style of Sir Henry Newbolt’s ‘breathless hush’ poem ‘Vitaï Lampada’.Summoned by the holidaying Dr Lucy to provide columnar cover, your locum tenens was initially worried that his prescription would not tick the right boxes, float enough boats. It was a big ask, but you played a blinder, whacking Sleazey, Sledgey, Streaky and that prat Silly Fancy-Dressy all round the park. Best entries were the 24-liners, which adapted the poet’s conceit of cricket as metaphor for the Great Game of war and indeed life itself (one can’t imagine such stuff being written after 1914). The winners

Frank Keating

The Last Smoke

How went our ‘Last Smoke’ dinner on Thursday, hosted by the Spec’s Andrew Neil at London’s swish Four Seasons Hotel? If not so grand, there were doubtless other such tobacco requiems all around the country. Nicely apt, somehow, that Nanny Blair’s smoking ban coincides with her own cursing, unlamented departure from the nursery. All ‘final gasp’ mourners should have raised a timely toast for happily, poignantly, sport itself handsomely helped celebrate last rites only a week ago when the convivial chain-smoking Argentine, Angel Cabrera, won the US Open championship, leaving Tiger Woods and all the cold-eyed, humourless gym-junkies of professional golf in fretful conclave with their tight-lipped fitness trainers and

Friday

The Spectator

Dinner with Supermac

To the Cafe Royal to an excellent dinner hosted by the National Sporting Club with John McEnroe as the star turn. Before he took to the stage, Supermac chatted to me and my father (a nifty tennis player in his day and many times Malta champion) about how the game has changed. I asked him whether he would – as he hinted at the end of autobiography – enter politics, and McEnroe gave what gave what can only be described as a non-denial denial. Fascinating, too, that he admits that it still gives him goose-bumps when he talks to Bjorn Borg on the phone. All great endeavours are based on

Thursday

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Evening wear in the age of global warming

At wet, chilly Garsington last night I saw a spectacular production of Ariadne auf Naxos. Strauss’s wonderful finale was all the more uplifting for the triumph it represented on the part of cast and crew, all partially exposed to the elements, over prolonged downpours in the second half. Before, after and during the so-called picnic interval, I watched the elegant audience stagger through the muddy parking fields and across lethally slippery grass slopes, some discreetly wearing galoshes or wellies under evening dress, others resigned to ruining decent shoes and risking humiliating falls. If it’s going to rain on our summer festivities like this on a regular basis, we need a

The Spectator

Unspun Brown

At least for the first couple of days Gordon Brown got both the style and substance absolutely right – no repudiation of the past but an absolute commitment to moving on.  And it is clear what the new direction of travel will be.  A more personally responsive health service, free from the straightjacket if targets.  Affordable houses to buy and rent.  A more sustained attack on child poverty. More important – at least in terms of winning the next election – there will be no more celebrity politics.  Glitz and glamour are out.  The hard truth and hard decisions are in.  No favours for friends.  No free luxury holidays.  No

Wednesday

The Spectator

A healthy reshuffle

Patricia Hewitt to stand down as Health Secretary. No surprises there. Gordon has been saying throughout his grand tour that, while education is his “passion”, health is his “priority”. And no wonder: the Tories have stolen Labour’s lead on health policy, perhaps Cameron’s most remarkable and certainly his cheekiest achievement. Brown is an implacable believer in the NHS and its funding system and, in private, becomes positively irate when the virtues of continental financing structures are mentioned. For the Tories to have stormed on to this terrain is sacrilege for Brown – almost literally. So who will be the new Health Secretary? Ed Balls? I’d give it to John Hutton.

Monday

The Spectator

Why Charles Clarke might make a comeback

Iain Dale has an interesting post up on the gossip amongst Westminster lobby correspondents that Charles Clarke might return to government this week. He writes that, “None of us could come up with a reason why Gordon Brown would reward a man who has spent the last few months dissing him.” But it is precisely because Clarke has been such a critic of Brown that he might return. What better way would there be for Gordon to show that he really is serious about this whole new ‘inclusive’ thing than by appointing a man who has been so critical of him to the cabinet? If anyone is wondering whether Clarke