Society

Saturday

Dot Wordsworth

Mind Your Language | 5 March 2005

What a terrible injustice Angela Cannings went through, being wrongly accused of killing her baby son, after having lost two previously, and then imprisoned. I heard her on Woman’s Hour and felt great sympathy for her and not a little anger at her persecutors. I do not mean to trivialise her sufferings by latching on to two words she used on the wireless, inmate and soulmate. She spoke of ‘fellow inmates’ in prison, and this is the way the word is used today, as a synonym for ‘detainee’, in a prison, asylum or institution. Originally it meant a fellow lodger, so ‘fellow inmate’ would be a pleonasm. The Oxford English

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 5 March 2005

The government did a good deal of nodding and winking to the opposition over its rushed legislation to provide for house arrest without trial and other controls on anyone suspected of connections with terrorism. Mr Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, conceded that judges should decide if suspects were to be put under house arrest, but police should have powers to hold them in the meantime. The government majority was reduced to 14 in a Commons vote. Sajid Badat, 25, from Gloucester, was convicted, after pleading guilty, of conspiring with Richard Reid, the attempted ‘shoe-bomber’ jailed in America, to destroy aircraft in December 2001; Badat dismantled his own shoe-bomb and was

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 5 March 2005

If you are a monarchist, this does not automatically make you an admirer of the royal family. But it does lead you to give members of that family the benefit of the doubt, particularly when so many others so viciously do the opposite. In general, too, our monarch has shown shrewdness in preserving the institution and so one trusts her judgment more than that of her more emotional, wilful heir. But, try as I might, I cannot see that her refusal to attend the marriage ceremony of Prince Charles and Mrs Parker Bowles does anything but harm. It is easy to understand why, over the years, the Queen has opposed

The Spectator

Feedback | 5 March 2005

Lay off the Tory tabloids Douglas Hurd advises us to ignore the campaigns of the popular press — and, by implication, the people whose concerns they ably articulate (‘Time to fight back’, 26 February). Hurd has spent his professional patrician lifetime disdaining the opinions of ordinary people. That is why the party he and his fellow grandees — Heseltine, Howe and Patten — drove into the ground by 1997 is in such a parlous condition today. It is the press that has provided the only opposition to Hurd’s neo-Blairite agenda, and has vigorously rejected the policies so dear to him: coddling criminals, bending the knee to Brussels and grovelling to

Taki

Ideology of violence

In the American Conservative, Leon Hadar asks, ‘Is it possible that a homeless and failed artist from Vienna, a paranoid gangster from Georgia, and a paedophile and drug addict from Beijing led to the ruin of millions and millions of lives?’ Hadar is reviewing a book by William Pfaff which he compares to drinking a good French wine. ‘You have to be in the right mood and sip it unhurriedly so as to appreciate the aroma and flavour.’ All I can add is that there’s nothing like a good French wine. William Pfaff I have never met and know nothing about. I always read his column in the International Herald

Frank Keating

Cech, mate!

On the face of it, Liverpool have the best chance of the four English clubs seeking progress in the European Champions’ Cup next week. They take a 3-1 lead back to Germany, but the away goal holds crucial significance and, wisely, no Scouser is counting chickens. Even more pessimistic should be supporters of Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester United, each rudely defeated in the first leg. Of the quartet, however, I reckon Chelsea is the best bet to get through. For one elementary reason: they have a calm (and calming) fellow between the sticks, in gloves and pullover, who combines defiance, daring, dagger-sharp reflexes, and a safe pair of hands. Lanky

Mary Killen

Your Problems Solved | 5 March 2005

Dear Mary… Q. My teenage daughter’s lifelong friend has over the years developed the most unfortunate strain of body odour, obviously unbeknown to her. It has become increasingly unbearable recently and presumably in her earlier years was either masked in infant fumes or more tolerable. Apparently the problem is widely discussed at school but no one has a solution, mainly because of the ponger’s genial nature and because of the inherent risk to the messenger. This friendship is important to my daughter, even at great risk to our olfactory nerves, but then so is our need to reduce the widespread use of pungent aerosol spray. Can you propose a resolution?Name

Angela Huth

Diary – 5 March 2005

We are so used to reading of malpractice in high places that I dare say our sense of outrage has become blunted. But when some devious act affects us personally, the sense is re-ignited. This is the story that shocked me — my grandmother, who died in the Sixties, had a great love of buying elaborate, expensive furniture. Her other hobby was fiddling with her will. She was thrilled to find that if she left us things deemed to be ‘of national interest’, we would be spared some inheritance tax. My sister and I are now owners of furniture we’d like to sell but punishing tax would make that pointless.

Peter Jones

Ancient & modern – 5 March 2005

The problems relating to asylum-seekers have hit the headlines again. The concept of asylum is ancient, and the problems not new. Asylum derives from the ancient Greek asulos, ‘inviolable’ (noun asulia). Its basic meaning was ‘protection against the right of reprisal, especially seizure of goods’, and it could be granted to a wide range of individuals, e.g., to ambassadors visiting foreign states and traders visiting foreign ports as well as to refugees seeking protection in foreign lands. Asulia could also be applied for by communities holding religious festivals. These were major sources of revenue and would attract pilgrims only if pilgrims knew that, in leaving the safety of their own

Byron Rogers

Once upon a funny old time . . .

The drama of this book is not its contents but its frame, the sense of what might have been that surrounds it, had the players only known their parts. Everything was there, programmed as in a space shot, for this to have been a real-life fairytale. Once upon a time, in a far-off land, there was a princess …. The letters unroll as they did in the Hollywood films of the 1950s. She was so young and so beautiful, her marriage to the prince had been the occasion for rejoicing among the people of that land. But the prince had wearied of her and turned to an older woman, which

Jaspistos

Bouts rimés

In Competition No. 2381 you were invited to supply a poem using a given rhyme-scheme and rhyme-words. The rhymes were taken from Vikram Seth’s The Golden Gate, that splendid narrative poem which uses Pushkin’s tricky Onegin metre with seemingly effortless skill. This was a testing challenge, the regulars and irregulars were out in force, but the seasoned veterans carried the day. Noel Petty, G. McIlraith and Godfrey Bullard can count themselves unlucky not to be among the honoured band. Keith Norman gets £30 for his editor’s lament and the other winners, printed below, have £35 each. He claims he laboured through the long night watches,And yet it falls to me

Robin Oakley

Girl power

Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did, a show-biz historian once pointed out. Only she did it backwards. The feminists do have a point, and while women riders still don’t get a fair deal in British racing, Kempton on Saturday provided yet another reminder of how well women trainers take their opportunities. My hope that Best Mate can prove a Cheltenham hero again this year was restored when I bumped into the ever-amiable Henrietta Knight, who was sat chatting with a friend in the betting hall. Perhaps because she already has three consecutive Gold Cup victories under her belt, she seems more relaxed this year and she assured me

Paul Johnson

Br

Like many journalists, I can write anywhere and under any conditions. I honestly believe I could do an article in the middle of the street provided there was somebody to fend off the traffic. Certainly I could manage on the rim of Alfred Gilbert’s delightful Eros fountain in Piccadilly Circus. More impressive, to my mind, is Mozart’s ability to write bits of a violin concerto while playing a game of billiards. He wrote all five of his admirable exercises in this genre during a single summer, aged 19. While his opponent clicked off a long cannon he had time to jot down an entire cadenza. Rossini was, if anything, even

Peter Oborne

Piers Morgan’s ghastly diaries will be the epitaph of this government

By far the most interesting event of this week was the serialisation of the diaries of Piers Morgan, former editor of the Daily Mirror. Ebury Press paid more than £1 million for this work, while the Daily Mail unloaded £250,000 on the serialisation alone. Piers Morgan is one of a circle of louche, not always savoury characters who have hung around Downing Street since the inception of the Blair regime in 1997, betraying the Blairs and being betrayed in return, in conditions of irredeemable moral squalor. This group includes party donors, lawyers, tabloid newspaper editors, PR men and a New Age therapist. It has come to define the Blair era

The Spectator

A despotic act

It is unfortunate, though perhaps inevitable, that people who have lived only in conditions of liberty and democracy should have limited interest in the legal provisions that keep societies free. That much is clear from the public’s response to the Prevention of Terrorism Bill. The past week saw one of the gravest parliamentary debates of modern times, on a measure which would undermine an 800-year-old principle of English law: that no man should face imprisonment without trial. And yet to judge by the opinion polls, most citizens seem to care little about the issues involved. Inasmuch as they have followed the debate at all, it is simply to absorb the

Piers Paul-Read

The man who should be Pope

Pope John Paul II’s recovery from his tracheotomy in the Gemelli Hospital in Rome will have delighted his well-wishers, but it may have come as a disappointment to the Pope himself. He would like to die in harness and, realising that he can no longer pull the barque of the Church with the same vigour as before, hopes that God will call him sooner rather than later to enjoy an eternal repose. Journalists, too, are impatient to start the circus that they have prepared for so long, and some Curial cardinals seem to think that it is time for a change: no Cardinal Secretary of State since the 13th century

Saturday

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 26 February 2005

Mr Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, attempted to rush through Parliament legislation to put people suspected of terrorism under house arrest without trial. Mr Michael McDowell, the Irish justice minister, said that leaders of Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland were also members of the Irish Republican Army’s seven-man Army Council: ‘We’re talking about Martin McGuinness, Gerry Adams, Martin Ferris and others,’ he said. All three men denied the accusation. Mr Adams had earlier nuanced his opinion that the IRA was not involved in December’s £26.5 million raid on the Northern Bank in Belfast, saying, ‘The IRA has said it was not and I believe them, but maybe I’m wrong.’ The

Dot Wordsworth

Mind Your Language | 26 February 2005

‘Chalk’n’cheese, hole in one, salt’n’pepper, three-in-one oil, sheep’n’goats, eyeless in Gaza, Swan’n’Edgar,’ said my husband, not pausing for breath, so that nature took over, and a sharp inhalation whisked some whisky into his trachea, bringing on a fit of coughing that turned him a plum colour. I hadn’t heard anyone say ‘Swan and Edgar’ for some time. It is the only familiar coupling from those lines in Princess Ida: ‘Let Swan secede from Edgar — Gask from Gask;/ Sewell from Cross — Lewis from Allenby!’ Gask and Gask, I learn from more reliable inquiry than asking my husband, were in Oxford Street; Lewis and Allenby in Pall Mall; and Sewell

The Spectator

Feedback | 26 February 2005

Miller’s genius Attention must be paid’ to Arthur Miller (Mark Steyn, ‘Death of a salesman’, 19 February) quite simply because he was the greatest dramatist of our lifetime. Briefly to answer Steyn, it was hardly Miller’s fault that his biographer failed to locate Norwich accurately; and having survived the McCarthy witch-hunt, it seems a little unfair to condemn Miller simply because he declined to join the far Right, where sadly Steyn now seems to belong. The fact that Castro and Gorbachev recognised Miller’s genius doesn’t necessarily mean that he recognised theirs. Nor was he even remotely unpatriotic — he just didn’t always care for the way his beloved country was

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 26 February 2005

Like thousands who met in the hunting field last Saturday, I was half-delighted, half-bewildered. Delighted because it was a gigantic show of defiance and the large number of foxes killed proved the absurdity of the ban. Bewildered because we seem to have moved into an era in which legislators happily pass laws which they know won’t work. Among our mounted field of 150 and the much larger crowd of foot supporters, two policemen wandered with a camera. Although one of them had the identification code ‘KGB’ on his back, both were thoroughly amiable but completely pointless. We presented them with the drag — a fox shot earlier — for them