Society

Wednesday

Giannandrea Poesio

Russians on speed

There is more to 19th-century ballet than fluttering sylphs, spectral broken-hearted peasant girls and doomed feathery princesses. There is comedy and fun, too. Take the 1869 classic Don Quixote, a Spanish romp loosely based on Miguel de Cervantes’ literary masterpiece. The ballet was Marius Petipa’s second major work — the first being The Pharaoh’s Daughter (which I reviewed a fortnight ago) — and it gave its first Russian audiences definitive proof of Petipa’s choreographic talent and theatrical genius. Not many comic or comedy ballets have stood the test of time, thus prompting the erroneous but widespread belief that 19th-century ballet is mostly about tear-jerking stuff. Luckily, Don Q (as it

Allan Massie

The wisdom of Sandy Arbuthnott

‘There’s a dry wind blowing through the East and the parched grasses wait and spark.’ This is not the sort of language we associate with a high-ranking official in the Foreign Office, but things were different in 1916. Not altogether different, however. ‘Islam is a fighting creed, and the mullah still stands in the pulpit with the Koran in one hand and a drawn sword in the other. Supposing there is some Ark of the Covenant which will madden the remotest Moslem peasant with dreams of Paradise? What then?’ ‘Then there will be hell let loose in these parts pretty soon.’ Happily, for this is fiction, that hell will be

Jaspistos

Al fresco

In competition No. 2457 you were invited to offer a poem entitled ‘The Picnic’. The picnics of my youth in Surrey were enjoyable but slightly suburban — Newlands Corner, Chobham Common and so on — but never as suburban as Tony Goldman’s Betjeman-inspired picnic, which ended up with him ‘silent upon a peak in Godalming’. Later I discovered the joys of Pyrenean dingles with secret meadows dotted with natural tables of smooth rock. Nowadays I prefer my tables less natural. Your picnics veered between the halcyon déjeuner sur l’herbe and the sodden disaster. Ray Kelley, Godfrey Bullard and Alanna Blake earn commendations, but the £25 prizes go to the winners

Matthew Lynn

How to put Jaguar back on the road

A traditional British brand. A great history. Businessmen love it. Strong in the home counties. Younger people don’t have much idea what it stands for, and probably wouldn’t want it if they did. If these were the political pages, you’d assume we were discussing the Conservative party. But this is the Business section, and we’re actually talking about Jaguar. Just like the Tories, Jaguar is an illustrious name with a great history. If you look closely, it also has some pretty good products. Yet it has seen its share of the market shrink. The world appears to have moved on around it. Jaguar needs to re-invent itself for a new

Paul Johnson

One touch of nature makes the whole world a lender

It is a long time since I have experienced a ‘touch’. When I was a young man, people were always borrowing from me. I was brought up very strictly. My father said, ‘Never have an overdraft. Never have a mortgage except on your first house, and pay that off as quickly as possible. Never borrow. Always pay bills by return of post.’ I have stuck to these rules, even at Oxford, when I had very little and the temptation to get into debt was great. One of Charles Lamb’s most striking essays is called ‘The Two Great Races of Men’. They are ‘those who borrow and those who lend’. I

Leo McKinstry

Not ‘cricket’s darkest hour’

In the post-war history of English cricket, there have been few more universally respected figures than John Lever, the Essex left-arm bowler. Modest, friendly and hard-working, he was regarded by both colleagues and cricket followers as the ideal professional. But when he made his debut for England during a tour of India in 1976, he found himself embroiled in the kind of ball-tampering row which brought the last Test to a farcical conclusion and plunged the sport of cricket into a major crisis. Unaccustomed to the sweltering heat of Delhi, Lever came up with the unorthodox idea of attaching a number of gauze strips to his forehead to stop the

Toby Harnden

‘World Trade Center’ is insulting

Toby Harnden says that ‘World Trade Center’ ditches Oliver Stone’s left-wing conspiracy theories, but dishonours one of the heroes of 11 September by caricaturing his faith New York Staff Sergeant David Karnes was working as an accountant at DeLoitte & Touche in Wilton, Connecticut, on 11 September 2001 when the first plane flew into the World Trade Center. He and his colleagues watched it on television. Karnes announced that America was ‘at war’ and drove home in his Porsche 911 (he saw this as an omen from above) to don his old marine uniform. He got a buzz cut at the barbers, picked up equipment at a storage facility that

Saturday

Mary Killen

Dear Mary… | 19 August 2006

Q. I was recently invited to stay with some well-heeled friends who were renting a house in Tuscany. Having cleared up any possible confusion about payment (I wouldn’t have to contribute to the rent), I accepted their invitation. Early one evening I was strolling on to the balcony of my bedroom, reading Juliet Nicolson’s A Perfect Summer, when I walked straight through a large metal mosquito net fitted across the doorframe. Sunglasses, iPod, panama and book were flung across the balcony as the entire structure collapsed around me. After several failed attempts to reassemble it and hearing my hosts calling me down for poolside drinks, I panicked and shoved the

Dot Wordsworth

Mind your language | 19 August 2006

There will be no deigning, I’m glad to discover, in the new translation of the Mass into English. A contrary rumour was, I think, put about by enemies of the conservative approach taken, after Vatican intervention, by the International Committee on English in the Liturgy. Its chairman is an Englishman, the Bishop of Leeds, Arthur Roche. My husband tells me he is not a baddy but wears a white hat. The text of the Latin Mass is one long crux for translators. The temptation to use deign comes in the Canon: ‘Nobis quoque peccatoribus famulis tuis … partem aliquam et societatem donare digneris cum tuis sanctis Apostolis et Martyribus.’ How

Taki

Grinding the DC rumour mill

I have received some very complimentary letters about my 22 July column, the one dealing with the plight of a Palestinian female doctor in Gaza. I will not mention the names because they were, after all, private messages. You know who you are and I thank you. And now for the bad news: my Washington spies report that the Israeli invasion of Lebanon was planned on 17 and 18 June of this year, between the former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Likud Knesset member Natan Sharansky, and US Veep Dick Cheney. Basically, the assault on Lebanon was stage-managed between the government of Israel and the neocons in the Bush administration,

The Spectator

Letters to the Editor | 19 August 2006

Too many or too few?From K.R. HoustonSir: Rod Liddle’s assertion (‘Our overpopulation is a catastrophe’, 12 August) that an ever-growing population fuelled by mass immigration is seriously debilitating our quality of life was spot on. But it also highlights the question of why we ever reached this state of affairs in the first place. When my three children were born between 1977 and 1982 — a period which took in both Labour and Conservative governments — new parents were sent a missive from the local health authority stating that while family size was a matter of personal choice, Britain needed to have a population level that it could ‘sustain’. The

The Spectator

At least the British people get it

In his book The Wisdom of Crowds, James Surowiecki writes that ‘under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them’. Our poll today shows that the response of the British people to the terror emergency has been robust and clear-sighted. While many in the political and media elite have offered only hand-wringing, point-scoring and a feeble enthusiasm to blame the West for everything, the voters themselves grasp the scale of the threat and the need for a firm response. As low as their opinion of politicians may be, most of them have not been seduced by the preposterous suggestion that this

Frank Keating

Devonshire cream

Why does this cricket team select itself? In batting order: George Emmett (capt.), Peter Bowler, Ian Ward, Roger Twose, David Shepherd, Roger Tolchard, Jeff Tolchard, Chris Read (w.k.), John Childs, Jack Davey, Len Coldwell. Seven of them played Test cricket. A serious clue to the county they represent is that guest 12th man is recent tearaway English fast bowler whom the then chairman of selectors Ted Dexter once addressed as Malcolm Devon. In celebration of young Monty Panesar’s resplendent bowling for England this summer, I had thought of ruminating on an all-time team of Sikh cricketers, but I found I didn’t have too many research engines after I’d come up

Friday

Rachel Johnson

Diary – 18 August 2006

Mexico City/Punta Ixtapa This summer my family have done a life-swap. Every day we eat a large breakfast prepared by the cook, Isabel, in our residence in Mexico City, while Gaby, the maid, tidies our bedrooms. A brace of gardeners in cowboy hats, José and José-Luis, arrive shortly thereafter to fish out bougainvillea blooms from the fishpond. Another José, the driver, awaits our instructions. A beach house in Ixtapa (which means white sand in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs) is also at our disposal, with a cook and a maid. Not speaking the language, I talk to the staff in pidgin Latin and they reply in fast Spanish. It

Tamzin Lightwater

Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody – 18 August 2006

MONDAYI thought Hague was Dave’s official deputy. But today DD phones Nigel to say not to panic, he’s in charge and he’s a got a battle plan to rival Austerlitz. Hour later he turns up and gives us all a pep talk (or was it a ticking off?). ‘Listen up: it’s going to be a bit different around here while I’m calling the shots. You’re all going to do some work for a change. No more of this girly ‘wellbeing’ drivel! There’ll be blood, sweat and tears — but by God you’ll thank me at the end of it.’ Poppy so happy she looks close to fainting. She actually fell

Wednesday

Cosmo Lush

Chirac’s internet search — for a French answer to Google

France’s crusade against Anglo-Saxon incursions into its culture has entered cyberspace. To the list of alien influences the French establishment is determined to resist — ranging from words such as ‘weekend’ and ‘cheeseburger’ to radio broadcasts of British pop songs and hostile cross-border takeover bids — have been added two American giants of the internet: Google and Apple. This year President Chirac has announced two publicly funded initiatives to create French replicas of successful Google enterprises, while across the Seine in the Assemblée Nationale, French parliamentarians have passed a Bill potentially driving a stake through the heart of Apple’s iTunes music business. Regardless of whether Chirac and the French parliament

Richard Northedge

Dear Chancellor, inflation is more your fault than mine. Yours, Governor

More interesting than the Governor of the Bank of England’s letter to the Chancellor explaining why inflation has exceeded the official target will be Gordon Brown’s reply. Mervyn King has admitted there is an even chance he will have to write the letter, and a prudent Governor would already be drafting it. King might want to point out that although inflation is his responsibility — under the pact imposed on the Bank when Labour took office — it is nevertheless Brown who is responsible for some of the steepest price rises. While the private sector valiantly slashes the cost of electrical goods, clothing and food, the government allows council taxes

Paul Johnson

Chronological conjunctions, God’s favourite parlour game

Dates are important to me. I have always been good at learning them, helped by mnemonics taught me by my mother. When I was seven, attending the convent school and in the class of Sister Angela whom I adored, I had a meretricious triumph, my first of a quasi-public nature. An official visit was paid to the school by the Rt. Hon. Oliver Stanley, president of the board of education. He was the first politician I had seen, let alone met. Big, tall, fat, red-faced, genial and courteous, he shook hands during his classroom tour. Sister Angela introduced me as ‘a bright young man’. ‘Bright, is he?’ said the minister.

Stephen Schwartz

A threat to the world

With the foiling of the alleged conspiracy by radical Islamists to devastate transatlantic air travel — at the height of the US–UK tourist season — Britain has emerged, a little more than a year after the London Tube bombings, as the apparent main target for jihadist terror in Europe. This has little to do with British policies, poverty, discrimination or Islamophobia. Simply put, a million or more Sunnis of Pakistani background, who comprise the main element among British Asian Muslims, also include the largest contingent of radical Muslims in Europe. Their jihadist sympathies embody an imported ideology, organised through mosques and other religious institutions, rather than a ‘homegrown’ phenomenon, as

Allister Heath

Spectator/YouGov poll

When it came to fighting terrorists, Count Alexandre de Marenches, the legendary former head of France’s intelligence services, knew what he was talking about. In a prescient book published just after the end of the Cold War, he was the first to warn that a fourth world war had already begun — a war waged by ‘small, highly deadly units of terrorists’ with ‘the very real prospect of ending civilisation, at least Western civilisation, as we know it’. A lone voice, Marenches was ignored in Britain and America; it was far easier to believe in reassuring theories about the ‘end of history’ and the supposedly inevitable victory of liberal democracy