Society

Saturday

Carl Hiaasen

Florida notebook

Miami It’s a mild and tranquil December here in Florida, the headlines flickering with routine weirdness and depravity. Four years ago at this time, we were roiling in the acid-bath aftermath of a presidential contest that required 36 ridiculous days to resolve, and only then by a brazenly partisan vote of the United States Supreme Court. Our state was the infamous ground zero of that fiasco, and ever since then we Floridians looked forward to 2004 much as one would to an amateur colonoscopy. On election day I fled far into Everglades National Park to contemplate my options. Like many, I anticipated a sordid replay of the 2000 stalemate. However

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

We are all pagans now

The sky was already murky at 4 p.m. when I locked my bike outside Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese on Fleet Street. Inside, it was even murkier: wood-panelled corridors stretched off into the gloom, men in grey suits were wedged together, smoking Bensons and drinking bitter. No one looked even slightly like an Arch Priest of the Council of British Druid Orders. At 4:10 I found a separate little bar near the back of the pub. As I walked in, a big man with round shoulders and grey hair stared at me and I saw the corner of a magazine poking out from inside his coat. As I watched, the whole

Saturday

Dot Wordsworth

Mind Your Language | 11 December 2004

John Humphrys writes well, in this respect: his style captures exactly his broadcasting voice. That is a mixed blessing. Anyway, in his new book Lost for Words (Hodder and Stoughton, £14.99) he is worried about the mangling and the manipulation of English. On page 106 he states a principle: ‘Verbs can refresh a sentence any time they are needed — but not if they earned their crust as nouns in an earlier life.’ ‘When and why did “progress” become a verb, as in “Let’s progress this development”?’ he wonders. ‘Probably about the same time as “impact”.’ But it is not difficult to discover that this speculation is wrong. Progress, having

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 11 December 2004

The Army Board approved a scheme to amalgamate all 19 single-battalion regiments into ‘super regiments’. The BBC is to get rid of 3,000 staff in three years to save £320 million. The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution called for a ban on fishing in a third of British waters. The Department of Health told Britain’s 1,184 hospitals how to clean floors and lavatories in an attempt to reduce infection by Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, which kills thousands a year. Lord Falconer, the Lord Chancellor, demanded in a five-year plan that the Crown Prosecution Service and the courts should convict, fine or caution 1.25 million people a year by 2008, an increase

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 11 December 2004

Muriel Cullen, who died last week, aged 83, was the elder and only sister of Margaret Thatcher. Living happily with her husband on his well-run farm in Essex, she showed not the slightest desire to be famous. I found her fascinating, though. In the course of my work on the life of Lady Thatcher, I visited Mrs Cullen and interviewed her. Although by then in poor health, she was every inch the daughter of Alderman Roberts, grocer and Mayor of Grantham. Like her sister, she would listen half-intently, half-impatiently to any question with her head held high and slightly on one side, in the fashion of a bird. She had

The Spectator

Feedback | 11 December 2004

Clarke v. Clark Ross Clark is wrong to assert that the government exerts any influence over the value ascribed to exams in school performance tables (‘Lies, damned lies and education’, 20 November). He does a gross disservice to the pupils and teachers whose attainment he seeks to belittle. The regulatory authority for public examinations — the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) — is responsible for the maintenance of examination standards. Its extensive programme to monitor standards over time does not support the contention that there has been a lowering of GCSE standards. It is the QCA, not the government, which established and consistently maintained its judgment that six-unit GNVQs are

Taki

Drained and ravished

I suppose winning the Nobel Prize for curing cancer would get me more brownie points, but being the man who took Jemima Khan to High Table at Trinity College, Oxford, feels almost as good. She’s something, that Jemima. Thin but voluptuous, with legs that remind me of Marlene Dietrich’s gams in Morocco, that black-and-white oldie in which she follows Foreign Legionnaire Gary Cooper walking barefoot in the desert sands. Here’s a tip for you Jemima wannabes. I waited outside her house, and saw her return dishevelled at 5.45 from some classes she was taking. We were late and I was pressing her. She changed and dressed, and managed to emerge

Petronella Wyatt

Irresponisble behaviour

The other day I arrived back from a trip abroad to find the house in its usual state of working order. The boiler had burst and there was no hot water. Katalin, the Hungarian housekeeper, claimed she had contracted frostbite in her big toe and was hopping around like a one-legged woman, complaining about the uncivilised London weather. But, I protested, in Budapest the temperature was at least ten degrees lower than that in southern England. Yes, she replied, but in Hungary even the cleaning ladies wore fur to keep them warm. This conjured up ideas of mink toe-warmers and goodness knows what else. In lieu of my possessing any

Frank Keating

Peckham expects

‘Del Boy’ Trotter, television’s engagingly endurable (and perpetually replayed) comic Cockney character created by actor David Jason, forever dreams of putting Peckham on the top-notch international map. Didn’t the wide boy of Mandela Mansions once bid to stage the Miss World competition? ‘I can see it now, Rodney …first Rome, then New York, and after Paris …Peckham!’ Well, Del has been beaten to it by a real-life neighbour. Step forward Danny Williams, late of Peabody Buildings, Peckham, and since upgraded round the corner to a dolled-up, three-bed, end-of-terrace des res, who this Saturday night in Las Vegas challenges for the world heavyweight boxing championship. C’mon, my son, says the upstaged,

Mary Killen

Your Problems Solved | 11 December 2004

Dear Mary… Q. In Scotland the Celtic tradition favours the female line (hence hereditary titles passing to daughters in the absence of an immediate male heir). In my opinion it would therefore be entirely appropriate for G.C. (4 December) to wear his wife’s tartan at a reeling party, provided (as stated) it is worn with respect. Highland dress and Scottish country dancing make a colourful combination, but if your correspondent has further reservations I suggest he might consider acquiring a pair of tartan trews. Roddy Martine, Edinburgh A. There is logic in your argument. However, my straw poll of Scottish noblewomen with English husbands revealed that the majority would be

Beryl Bainbridge

Diary – 11 December 2004

I was in Woolworths last Friday when a woman hit her little child across the head. Quite a few of us saw what she did, but none of us did anything. To be fair, it wasn’t a hard blow and the victim didn’t burst into tears, but it was shocking. When young, I was often belted round the ear, once for saying ‘bugger’, but then, in those days, the word was unspeakable and the punishment unremarkable. Returning home I did a little research on the history of spanking, and am amazed — as both Richard II and Frankie Howerd were apt to exclaim — at my findings. For instance, did

Ian Thomson

The original Essex man

The boil and hiss of mediaeval Hell, as conceived by Dante, is hard for us to imagine. Yet the 1935 Hollywood melodrama, The Div- ine Comedy, contains a ten-minute reconstruction of Dante’s inferno inspired by Gustav Doré’s God-fearing illustrations. Spencer Tracey starred reluctantly in the film; the damned are wedged against each other in a stinking hell-pit. Mediaeval Florence, Dante’s birthplace, was riven by pestilience and famine, and indeed Dante had no equal as a singer of otherworldly horror. According to Frances Stonor Saunders, 14th-century Italy was a ‘bloody muck-heap of superstition and brutality’. Sir John Hawkwood, the mediaeval mercenary, died in Florence in 1394. A taciturn Englishman, he made

Jaspistos

Benison or bane?

In Competition No. 2370 you were asked for a poem expressing either approval or disapproval of the habit of smoking. About smoking, as about many things, I am in two minds. On the one hand I smoke three small cigars a day after meals and would never go to dinner with hosts who didn’t offer a smoking room; on the other, I dislike the smell of Virginia tobacco and would never allow anyone to smoke at my table. So I was a pretty impartial judge this week. Given the fact that the Victorian temperance hymns are pale ghosts compared to their red-blooded rivals, traditional drinking songs, I was expecting the

Paul Johnson

Learning with delight the art of having your portrait painted

I have had my portrait painted. It was not my idea. One fault I do not possess is vanity. Indeed I am extremely vain about not being vain. The artist is a young lady called Katrina Bovill. She has been properly trained in Florence where they still have the highest possible standards of fine-art teaching, and she knows exactly what she wants to do and how to do it. She is the best young painter I have come across for many years, and it does my old heart good to relish such a rare combination of talent, skill, professionalism and disciplined enthusiasm. I met her at that magical caravanserai of

Stephen Glover

Did he kiss and tell? Blunkett’s NoW transcript seems to absolve him

Last week I suggested that in August David Blunkett leaked news of his affair with Kimberly Quinn to the News of the World. My reason for doing so was not that I wished to champion Kimberly Quinn, who happens to be publisher of this magazine. I simply could see no other explanation. Mrs Quinn’s supporters passionately believed that Mr Blunkett did ‘kiss and tell’, and the strength of their belief was such that it was impossible to think (and remains so) that Mrs Quinn herself was the secret conduit. If she was not, who could it be other than Mr Blunkett, who had been dumped by Mrs Quinn, and had

Bruce Anderson

New laws are not going to make us safer

There is a contrast between John Monckton and almost everyone who has written about his murder. He was better prepared for his death than they were. He believed in divine grace and in eternal life. He was certain that the victories of evil are transient and that good will ultimately prevail; that death shall have no dominion. He knew that his Redeemer liveth. John Monckton had lived in charity. He died in hope and in faith. Those of us in the valley of the shadow of the death of faith have no such comfort. This is part of the reason for the intensity of the response to Mr Monckton’s death.

Saturday

Dot Wordsworth

Mind Your Language | 4 December 2004

A reader tells me that he had always thought ‘one-horse town’ must have derived from a 1940s film script in which John Wayne pushes open the swing doors of a saloon, gets his whisky, then inquires, ‘Whadda they call this one-horse town?’ But my correspondent finds Trollopean connections for the phrase. He does not say which biography he is drawing on, but he sets the scene in 1855, when Trollope had to appear before a parliamentary committee at the instigation of some Irish MPs. It is certainly the case that in 1854 Trollope had returned to Ireland, where he had made a new life in the 1840s. In the hot

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 4 December 2004

Mr Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, juggled his black hole and his Golden Rule in a pre-Budget statement. Mr Oliver Letwin, the shadow Chancellor, said he would ‘expect’ the Tories to make at least ‘one specific tax pledge that we will fulfil in the first Budget’. Mr Gerry Adams, the leader of Sinn Fein, the political face of the Irish Republican Army, held talks with Mr Hugh Orde, the chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland at No. 10 Downing Street. The Revd Ian Paisley, the leader of the Democratic Unionist party, met General John de Chastelain, head of the international decommissioning body, and the next

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 4 December 2004

On the whole, one sympathises with those sections of the media that do not rush to reveal the sex lives of public figures, rather than the tabloids which bellow about the public’s ‘right to know’. But there does come a point when those of us who say things like, ‘A politician’s private life is just that — private’, and jut our jaws righteously, do look a bit silly. It happened, for example, when it turned out that Diana had passed her secrets to Andrew Morton. A similar point has surely been reached in the case of David Blunkett. Even if it is proved that Mr Blunkett did no wrong in

Petronella Wyatt

Speed eating

New York Thanksgiving is a bigger marathon than Christmas. Maybe because the holiday lasts only four days instead of 12. Thus Americans feel obliged to cram as many lunches and dinners as possible into that shorter period. It’s a form of speed eating. Meals are staggered — at least they seem to be in New York State and on Long Island. Thus, on Thanksgiving day itself (Thursday), I attended one lunch at 1 o’clock. Thinking this was it — you know, é finita — I did ample justice to the turkey. Just as I was getting into the swing of a third slice of pecan pie at 4 o’clock, I