Society

Friday

Peter Jones

Ancient & modern – 7 October 2005

A new exhibition of ancient Persian material at the British Museum has brought out the usual affirmations about how wonderfully humane and civilised Persians were, and how vicious the Greeks were in painting a picture of them as slavish, effeminate subjects of an oriental despotism that has helped pervert Western views of the East ever since. It is true that, since the Persians left no accounts of themselves except the usual boastful lists of royal achievements (Darius talks merrily about the number of enemies he impaled), we largely rely on Greeks for information about them, especially Herodotus (died c. 430 bc), who investigated why Greeks and Persians fought the Persian

Michael Heseltine

Diary – 7 October 2005

A decade ago, as president of the Board of Trade, I was responsible for competition policy. I could refer or not refer. I could accept advice or reject it. In the background — but not far away — were Parliament and public scrutiny. How times change. The Office of Fair Trading is now its own creature. Ministers have washed their proverbial hands; quangocrats rule. So what is going on in this citadel of devolved power? For months we in the press and publishing world have been worried about a forthcoming OFT opinion about our traditional method of distribution, whereby wholesalers are granted a monopoly of defined areas, provided they distribute

Saturday

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 1 October 2005

Mr Tony Blair, in a speech at the Labour party conference, said, ‘The challenge we face is not in our values. It is how we put them into practice in a world fast-forwarding to the future at unprecedented speed.’ To combat antisocial behaviour he proposed ‘a radical extension of summary powers to police and local authorities to take on the wrongdoers’ and ‘more competitive sports in schools’. Mr Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who wants soon to be prime minister, said in his speech, ‘I learnt from my parents not just to do my best and to work hard but to treat everyone equally, to respect others, to

The Spectator

Letters to the Editor | 1 October 2005

Prepare to leave Iraq As one who was against the invasion of Iraq from the start, I feel I must now urge a complete reappraisal of what our forces can realistically be expected to achieve there. Whatever views people may have had on the legitimacy of the various reasons presented to them for going to war, the operation — from the moment the military objectives were achieved — has degenerated into a disaster. Last week there were reports from usually reliable sources in the press that the militias have infiltrated at least half the police and internal security forces in the Shia and Sunni regions, and barely 10 per cent

Frank Keating

Sport

English soccer is in a tizz of self-recrimination. Not before time. This new autumn season has seen attendances drop alarmingly in the Premiership. Goals have dried up and so, correspondingly, has the excitement. Two–nil is now a goal glut. The mercenary players are overpaid, over-praised and over here, and the fans, we are told, are fed up with them for, you might say, taking the money and not running. Those die-hard supporters themselves are now generally considered by much of the country as way out of the loop, not just touching weekend hobby-obsessives in striped scarves any more, but simply mad, sad nutters being taken for a ride while ashen-faced

Mary Killen

Your Problems Solved | 1 October 2005

Dear Mary… Q. Pyjama gape or not, aprons should not be worn by a gentleman. The pyjama gape correspondence originated in Aldeburgh and the solution lies no further away than nearby Leiston, where the renowned Volga Linen Company (www.volgalinen.co.uk, 01728 635020) has among its sublime products linen pyjamas whose tops reach the knees, which I imagine should be sufficient for most wearers.P.J., by email A. Thank you for alerting readers to this possibility. Clicking on to the website, one can see these smart/cosy 100 per cent linen pyjamas. They are Indian in style, the colours on offer are white, natural, woad and indigo and they cost £112. The top does

The Spectator

Feedback | 1 October 2005

Comments on There is no cure for the UN by Mark Steyn Thank you for bringing us Mark Steyn and his comments. We need him dearly here in Canada but are now confined to the excellent Western Standard to read him. The information in this column should be shouted from the rooftops – but – nobody wants to listen. Bravo to The SpectatorJames Murawsky Brilliant analysis!. I must admit that, as an American, I think we should just leave the UN, kick them out to Brussels, and then accidentally bomb Brussels flat. That way, we’d destroy two transnational organizations with one shot.Dennis Sheehan How did they get away with it

Dot Wordsworth

Mind Your Language | 1 October 2005

I have been surprised by a doctor, an event I had thought impossible after all these years not being surprised by my husband. But then, the doctor admirabilis, Dr P.C.H Schofield of Croydon, goes so far as to admit being ‘astounded’. This episode of being astounded was accomplished during a viewing of The Merchant of Venice, the film with Al Pacino as Shylock. At the end of Act Three, Scene Two, Bassanio reads out a letter, part of which says, ‘All debts are cleared between you and I, if I might but see you at my death.’ At first Dr Schofield put it down to some American mangling, but then,

Taki

Beneath contempt

Gstaad I can’t remember exactly how long ago it was, sometime during the late Nineties, but I do remember that at the time I was sort of running a section of the New York Press called ‘Taki’s Top Drawer’. I say sort of because I’m not exactly a hands-on editor. In fact, I’m no hands at all, a writer’s dream, even if I say so myself. Then one day I read about how a Murdoch rag had entrapped Freddie Windsor in a cocaine scandal, and blew my stack. Windsor I don’t know, and his mother comes across as an egregious braggart and phony, but entrapping an 18-year-old just because he’s

Jeremy Clarke

The last slipper

In the 167 years that the blue riband of hare coursing, the Waterloo Cup, has been run, there have been just 21 slippers. For those unfamiliar with coursing, perhaps I should explain that I don’t mean over the years people at the event have been spotted wearing carpet slippers, and a record of these sightings meticulously kept. No, the slipper is the red-coated official who holds back the competing pair of greyhounds until he judges that the hare has about 100 yards’ start and both dogs have it in their sights. Then he runs forward with the animals frantically bounding under their leashes and releases them with a balletic flourish.

Andrew Lambirth

Twilight of despair

The Norwegian Edvard Munch (1863–1944) is best known for ‘The Scream’, that unforgettable image of the tortured self in the grip of alienation, loss and fear. Munch is the great Symbolist and precursor of Expressionism, the artist as poetic visionary who valued imagination over knowledge, and the urge to self-expression beyond the need to enlighten or inform. He takes us into a twilight existence of gloom and psychosis. In a God-less universe, man was left to his own devices, and it’s not a pretty sight. Munch was manically overproductive, and on his death left more than 20,000 works to the city of Oslo, which took 20 years to establish the

Robin Oakley

The Turf

One back for Australia, even if it took an Italian trainer and a French jockey to do it for them. Loping round Newmarket’s pre-parade ring on Saturday in the shadow of Brigadier Gerard’s statue, the sun glinting on his massive shoulders, the deep-chested Starcraft looked immense. He stands 17 hands, and the white bandages on his two back legs only emphasised that his feet are the size of soup plates. But then in the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes he showed us that he has a stride and an engine to match. Considering that it was the mile championship of Europe, the race itself was a curious event. Philip Robinson took

Theodore Dalrymple

Second opinion | 1 October 2005

Why do people insist on leading such terrible lives? Why do they choose misery when contentment is so easily within their grasp? Why is complete disaster so attractive, and modest success so repellent? This, surely, is the question that any unprejudiced observer of British life must ask himself. Personally, I think that soap operas have a lot to answer for. As is well known, each episode ends with a crisis, and since an episode lasts only 30 minutes, the impression is given that an interesting life, that is to say one worthy of portrayal on the little screen, must be nothing but a succession of sordid crises. I don’t propose

Paul Johnson

It is right for a religion to echo its primitive origins

Taking Holy Communion the other day, I reflected how grossly physical religious observance is, even though the progress of humanity tends to turn its more primitive aspects into symbolism. Occasionally I participate in a Jewish Sabbath meal, and find it a calm and decorous occasion, religious ritual at its most civilised. But it is important to remember that such a practice had its distant origin in services at the great Temple in Jerusalem. They ended with a ritual drinking of wine, scripture readings, and the singing of hymns and psalms. But the physical and earthy aspects were tremendous. The Temple, built by Solomon on a princely scale but enormously enlarged

Jaspistos

Competition

In Competition No. 2411 you were invited to supply a poem or piece of prose entitled ‘The Last Smoker on Earth’. William Danes-Volkov wrote to me, ‘Anyone attempting this competition should read Garrison Keillor’s brilliant and terrifying story “The Last Cigarette Smoker in America”.’ Terrifying too is Thomas Hood’s poem ‘The Last Man’, in which a man who thinks he is the sole survivor of a global pestilence meets another lonely scavenger, quarrels with him, hangs him, and then realises with horror that there is no one left on earth who can perform the same office for him. Back to smoking (which I gave up a fortnight ago). This was

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

Blair talks of ‘breakthrough’ and ‘reform’ — but what if this is as good as Britain gets?

Voltaire was a superb polemicist but a cheat in debate. He never laid a finger on the Christian argument which in Candide he mocked as claiming that ‘all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds’. He showed that the world was a dreadful place. In a sparkling and brutal parody he demonstrated that life was cruel and unjust, and that millions of people were wretched. He scorned the idea that there was anything remotely pleasant about the world which Christians claimed God had made as pleasant as possible for us. But the argument Voltaire parodies never did include the claim he mocked. He tilted brilliantly at

Andy Mcsmith

Blair is on death row, but he could be there for years

Here is an old paradox. A prisoner has been sentenced to death, his execution is to be carried out in not less than one week, but the authorities think it would be inhumane to make him go to bed knowing that in the morning he will be shot. Until the firing squad is ready, he must always be allowed to hope that he has at least one more day on this earth. But as the authorities meet to make the final arrangements, they realise they can’t delay the execution until Saturday, when the week will be up, because if they do then, on Friday, the prisoner will know that there’s

Andrew Gilmour

Stop bashing the UN

Question: what do the Taleban, Serb war criminals, al-Qa’eda, Rwandan genocidaires, the Ku Klux Klan, the Kach movement, the Japanese Red Army and the Janjaweed of Darfur have in common? Answer: two things actually. The obvious one, plus the fact that — like the Spectator columnist Mark Steyn — they all passionately abhor the United Nations, see it as an obstacle to their particular agenda and call for its abolition. The UN has always evoked violent passions, especially among its detractors. Its defenders tend to be rather calmer. For those like me, working for the UN in places such as Afghanistan, Kosovo, Gaza, Lebanon and West Africa, the usual line

Petronella Wyatt

A bastard? Me?

David Davis is the first prospective Tory leader to have been born in a council house to an unmarried mother. The bookies’ favourite to take over from Michael Howard, Davis, 56, is said by his supporters to have garnered the necessary qualities on his way to the top: determination, spirit, tenacity, a sense of social justice and an understanding of ‘the man and woman on the street’. His detractors claim the shadow home secretary is arrogant, treacherous, lazy and unable to get on with those from more privileged backgrounds, such as the members of the ‘Notting Hill Set’, to which his leadership rival David Cameron belongs. I have arranged to

Friday

Peter Jones

Ancient & modern – 30 September 2005

In his Investigation a few weeks ago, the editor turned his thoughts to the poet Horace and his ‘special relationship’ with the emperor Augustus. He pointed out that, while the emperor’s largesse obliged Horace to turn out a good deal of praise poetry, Horace himself, while genuinely grateful, nevertheless exercised a good deal of ingenuity in not laying it on too thick. The editor may not have had the space to point out the intense pressure Horace was under ‘from the emperor himself’. In his Life of Horace, the historian Suetonius records the various attempts that Augustus made to grapple Horace to him tighter than a brother. Augustus invited Horace