Society

Saturday

Taki

Numero uno Numero uno

Gstaad Sir Roger and Lady Moore braved a snowstorm but made it on time driving from Crans-Montana. Sir Peter Tapsell flew in from Britain, snow or no snow on the runways. The poor little Greek boy had to travel less than a mile, but was the last to get there. While Gstaad was being covered by the thickest snow we’ve had in years, some 50 lucky souls dined with the finest product of this region, the one and only Ruedy Mullener, the uncrowned King of Gstaad and its environs. The occasion was Ruedy’s 80th birthday, and some enterprising young man should try to bottle him and sell him to Hollywood.

Petronella Wyatt

The race card

My 17-year-old niece recently won a place at Trinity College, Oxford. Although she is one of the brightest girls at her private school, and often works through the night, she was almost convinced that her application would not be accepted. This was because clever, white children from middle-class backgrounds are frequently told that they will be overlooked in favour of foreign, less privileged offspring. This fear turned out to be unfounded. My niece considered the selection process fair and scrupulous. I was thus surprised when Michael Howard decided to play the race card the other day, or rather to play the whole deck. Why this sudden zero-tolerance attitude towards immigration?

Miriam Gross

Diary – 29 January 2005

The Telegraph Group, for which I work, happens to use the same taxi firm as the BBC, and in the days when I was lucky enough to be driven to my office at Canary Wharf, I made friends with several of the firm’s regular drivers. In the course of our chats I couldn’t help learning something about the habits of some BBC executives — though these discreet drivers never, unfortunately, named names. Shopping trips, taking children to school, theatre outings and drives to the country were among the services provided. The drivers also spent many hours waiting for their passengers. So I wasn’t all that surprised by the recent revelations

Philippa Scott

Turkish delights

‘The Terrible Turk’ was a threat made by mothers to recalcitrant children in the time of the Mongols, while for centuries in the Caucasus women sang a very different refrain to their daughters: ‘Live among diamonds and splendour as the wife of the Sultan.’ No longer the enemy at the gates, the Turks are here, and have set up camp at the Royal Academy in a blockbuster show. Joining the EU is their latest campaign, and they have pulled out all the stops to show us who they are. This exhibition introduces the Turks from their own perspective, and offers more than simply an array of glittering objects and gleaming

Jaspistos

My first

In Competition No. 2376 you were invited to describe autobiographically or quasi-autobiographically a memorable ‘first’ in your life.My first operation, fox-hunt, lie, wedding, arrest, peach, oyster or, in several cases, car…. I was offered a wide range of initiatory experiences, and of course had no idea whether they were true or invented. One with the ring of authenticity came from Usam Ghaidan in the Netherlands, who recalled that the first time he listened to the BBC World Service was in the Pit of Salman, Iraq’s desert prison for political detainees, on the day after President Kennedy was assassinated. Fact or fiction, I didn’t care as long as it was a

Stephen Glover

Our modest war heroes may be forgotten by the state — but not by the Telegraph

Every morning, when I am faced by my pile of newspapers, almost the first thing I do is to turn to the obituary page of the Daily Telegraph. Obits in all the serious papers are good — generally much better than they were 20 years ago — but the Telegraph has a particular specialisation which its rivals hardly try to emulate. Three or four times a week it carries pieces about former servicemen who fought in the second world war. To be included it seems that you need to have won a military medal, or else gone on to achieve high rank after the war. These obituaries record the acts

Bruce Anderson

The silent majority is on Mr Howard’s side, but will that help him?

Michael Howard is a Powellite, at least in one respect. Talking about immigration, Enoch Powell said that numbers were of the essence. Mr Howard would agree, although his numerical restrictions would be far less severe. The Tory leader is really more of a Blairite. ‘Every country must have firm control over immigration and Britain is no exception.’ That is from Labour’s 1997 manifesto; it summarises Mr Howard’s views. ‘We and only we decide border policy and … immigration, asylum and visas … [these policies will be] made in Britain, not in Brussels.’ That was Tony Blair in late 1993, and Michael Howard could not have put it better. His disagreements

The Spectator

Immigration myths

Last week the Conservative party unveiled an extremely good policy: to cut government waste to the tune of £35 billion and to pass £4 billion worth of it to the public in tax cuts. This week it unveiled two much less good ones: to set an arbitrary limit on the number of immigrants allowed to come to Britain and to withdraw from the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees. ‘Britain has reached a turning point,’ wrote the Conservative leader Michael Howard in a full-page advertisement in the Sunday Telegraph. ‘Our communities cannot absorb newcomers at today’s pace.’ Taken literally, Mr Howard’s statement is true. According to the Office for National Statistics,

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

The man who rescued Caravaggio

Sir Denis Mahon arrived at The Spectator 40 minutes before he was due to be interviewed. While I scuffed around in search of tape recorders and sensible questions, Britain’s most distinguished collector and historian of Italian art sat in the editor’s office, waiting. Every now and then I looked at him through the door jamb. He stared peacefully into the middle distance with his hands folded in his lap: nearly 100 years and £20 million worth of old man, upholstered in impeccable three-piece pinstripe. Eventually I introduced myself. I want to ask you lots of things, I said, about this government, about how badly they treat art collectors. I gather

Mark Steyn

Bush means business

New Hampshire ‘It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.’ Idealism is the new realism. Or as one of my disaffected conservative neighbours summed up the Bush speech: ‘Great. We’re gonna invade every country and shove freedom down their throats, whether they want it or not.’ Or in the words of a newly popular bumper sticker on the back of Vermont granolamobiles: ‘FOUR MORE WARS!’ As for what passes for the grandees in what’s left of the British Conservative party — the Hurds and

Interconnect

You can keep identity politics

Multiculturalism is in crisis. By that I don’t just mean that political correctness has ‘gone mad’, as the Daily Mail likes to put it: the British public worked that out long ago, and merely shrugs when it learns (for example) that the Lake District National Park is to abolish its guided walks because they attract insufficient numbers of black people. ‘Political correctness’ is shorthand for the etiquette and working practices of the most influential ideology of our age: multiculturalism, or ‘identity politics’. And that ideology is falling apart. This collapse is not evidence of multiculturalism’s weakening hold on public life. On the contrary, it has been produced by the willingness

Saturday

Dot Wordsworth

Mind Your Language | 22 January 2005

I’ve just come back from the Army and Navy Stores, only it is not the Army and Navy Stores any more. They have changed the name, which was about the only thing that wasn’t wrong with it. It joins the Public Record Office, the Royal Ulster Constabulary and Railtrack, although in the last case neither the thing nor the name was good. Now that Christmas is distant and reduced, let me prepare you for next year. An intelligent publisher told me last week that the origin of the term Boxing Day was unknown. I told him I would look it up in the dictionary, which he thought was cheating. But

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 22 January 2005

The Conservatives published plans for spending if they were to win the next election. Presuming savings proposed by Sir Peter Gershon’s report for the Treasury, and incorporating new savings devised for them by Mr David James, they said they could reduce government spending by £35 billion, partly by cutting 235,000 Civil Service posts. Of this, £23 billion would be spent on extra services, principally health and education, £8 billion would fill the ‘black hole’ (borrowing) incurred by Mr Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and £4 billion would pay for tax cuts; tax revenues for the current year are expected by the government to be about £450 billion. Just

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 22 January 2005

Having been brought up in a family of active Liberals, I am well acquainted with the category of ‘civilised Tory’. He was easily recognised. He was anti-hanging, pro-Europe, anti-Enoch, anti-Rhodesia. At his zenith (roughly 1972), he tended to wear his hair quite long and swept back, curling over the collar of a shirt which had very wide blue stripes. He was usually fond of good food and wine and preferred the company of non-Tories, attracting friendly profiles in the Observer. He liked it to be known that he read books. He was very public-schooly, though quite often he had not been to a public school. He had charm, but his

The Spectator

Feedback | 22 January 2005

Slobs and snobs Simon Heffer’s article (‘The slob culture’, 15 January) identifies a long-standing decline. I live in Bangkok, Thailand, and on Christmas Eve I was in the lobby of a five-star hotel where milling around were representatives from the Caucasian world dressed in subfuscous clothing, ancient jeans and T-shirts — the uniform of the Western world. Presumably most of these people were preparing to dine in five-star restaurants in the city or in the hotel, but they had not bothered or had not wished to change out of their poolside garb for the evening.David ReadeBangkok, Thailand Simon Heffer caused me to reflect that, during 35 years attending the Royal

Robin Oakley

Forgotten man

Genes, it seems, can survive a period of hell-raising. ‘I know that name. What else has he got?’ I heard a racegoer inquire of his companion at Kempton on Saturday, after Mark Rimell had trained Crossbow Creek to win the big race of the day, the Totesport Lanzarote Hurdle. The answer is: ‘For the moment, not very much.’ Mark Rimell has only one other older horse in his yard of 13 mostly untried youngsters. But that other horse is Oneway, with whom he had the previous Saturday captured the biggest race on the Sandown card, the Ladbrokescasino.com Handicap Chase, the chaser completing a four-timer in the process. The 34-year-old trainer

Mary Killen

Your Problems Solved | 22 January 2005

Dear Mary… Q. I design clothes and have rented a small shop in west London from which to purvey my wares while maintaining my primary residence on the Welsh borders. I am in London for only three days a week but am trying to keep costs down. I therefore have installed a day bed in the back room of the shop which I find perfectly comfortable. There is a lavatory downstairs and if I want to have a shower I can do so at the Lansdowne Club. The trouble is that my subscription is coming up for renewal and I am wondering whether I can cut costs even further by

Frank Keating

Valley boys

A friend organised a blithely bonny evening of boxing nostalgia last week in Herefordshire’s little Welsh border town of Leominster to honour one-time British and Empire welterweight champion Cliff Curvis, who has close connections with the area. It is 60 years since the Swansea stripling of 17 first answered the bell for his opening round as a paid fighter. The officers and gentry of the British Boxing Board were all there, and a general throng flocked down from the hills to pay tribute. Compatriot Colin Jones, of the beaky kestrel’s nose and a similarly hurtful left-hook, who won the very same titles (except ‘Commonwealth’ for ‘Empire’) a quarter of a

Diary – 22 January 2005

It is an odd feeling to be the target of the Mayor’s hostility. Could it possibly be that Ken Livingstone, former London Evening Standard magazine restaurant critic, is still riled by my refusing, three years ago and a few hours after my appointment as editor of the Standard, to go and have lunch with him? One of the things you learn as an editor is that people can take umbrage at the most peculiar things. Alas, my weekday lunches consist overwhelmingly of Associated Newspapers’ finest salads taken at my desk among a sea of changing page proofs and executives demanding instant decisions in mid-bite. It’s a far cry from the