Society

Saturday

Max Hastings

Diary – 25 October 2003

An evening of virulent anti-American propaganda at Covent Garden, or rather a terrific Madame Butterfly, brilliantly lit as well as sung. The evening was marred only by the distraction of a madwoman waving her arms at the edge of the stage. This was bootlicking by the Opera House to the Department for Culture. In order to get money from New Labour, every arts institution must prove itself ‘accessible’, apparently to all 60 million people in this island. ‘Sign-language-interpreted performances are part of the ROH’s commitment to enabling as many sections of the community as possible to appreciate and enjoy its productions,’ said the Butterfly programme. I am full of admiration

Dot Wordsworth

Mind your language | 25 October 2003

I am looking forward to reading The Floating Prison, the memoirs of a French prisoner, Louis Garneray, who became an artist while captive in the hulks in Portsmouth harbour between 1806 and 1814. It is edited by the learned Richard Rose, who has just written to me about rafalés — insane and insatiable gamblers in the scuppers, as it were, of hulk society. But before I forget, did you see that play in London, See You Next Tuesday? It is a version of Le D

Jeremy Clarke

Bath time

These days Uncle Jack only comes out of his room once a week, for a bath. The rest of the time he sits in his chair in front of the television, wailing. You can hear him all over the house. It sounds very peculiar, as if we are keeping a tethered discontented beast somewhere in the house. Muffled by intervening doors, the regularity and strangulated tone of his wails sometimes reminds us of the strident bleating of a sheep. Sometimes it does my head in. I go in and say, ‘What’s the matter? What are you making all this noise for?’ And he’ll look up at me with a belligerent

Mary Killen

Your problems solved | 25 October 2003

Dear Mary Q. My wife and I have between us received invitations to no fewer than 17 parties being held in London on Wednesday, 12 November, all of them drinks parties between 6.30 and 9 p.m. How should we tackle this embarras de richesse? Although five of the parties are in SW1, it is my experience that even if two parties are virtually in the same street, it still takes 20 minutes at the very least to leave one party, enter another, hand in one’s coat, wait for a drink, then push through the throng to the host. There also seems to be no way of knowing what time a

Sholto Byrnes

Matathir knows best

An outburst from Datuk Seri Dr Mahathir Mohamad is, like the appearance of rainclouds over Kuala Lumpur, an unpredictable but regular event. Soon the sun comes out again and life goes on as normal. The Malaysian Prime Minister has a long history of disengaging the diplomatic filter before opening his mouth to pronounce on matters concerning relations with other countries. Some may remember his exchange with Bob Hawke in 1986, when the Australian leader condemned the hanging in Malaysia of two drug traffickers as ‘barbaric’ and ‘uncivilised’. ‘The Australians,’ replied Dr M, ‘are descendants of convicts’. More recently, needled over Western attacks on the jailing of his former deputy, Anwar

Ross Clark Ross Clark

GM may be good for you

Ross Clark says we should ignore the eco-brigade’s hysteria over genetically modified food After years of trampling crops, the anti-GM food lobby believes that it has finally drawn sap. Its b

Stephen Glover

It is no longer possible to scoff at the idea that Diana was murdered

If the Daily Mirror reported the Second Coming, would anyone believe it? Probably not. There is a general view in polite society that the newspaper and its editor, Piers Morgan, are not entirely to be trusted. This may be an opinion based on prejudice, or it may have its roots in solid fact. This week the Mirror has been serialising the new book by Paul Burrell, former butler to Diana, Princess of Wales. My impression is that many people are not taking its revelations completely seriously, particularly Mr Burrell’s claim that ten months before she died Diana predicted the circumstances of her demise. An allegation which might have rocked the

The Spectator

Rough trade from the US

Almost forgotten among the hubbub over the Iraqi war is the last bout of diplomatic fisticuffs between Europe and America. On 5 March 2002, George W. Bush issued Presidential Proclamation 7529, placing tariffs of 30 per cent on imported steel in an attempt to protect the fading American steel industry. At the time, this magazine warned that no good would come of the measure, and so it has proved. The US International Trade Commission, a federal agency which advises the US government on trade issues, has just published a report on the effects of the tariffs. Far from being boosted, the US steel industry’s share of worldwide steel production fell

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

The mystery of the missing links

A few weeks ago I was talking to a friend, a man who has more postgraduate degrees than I have GCSEs. The subject of Darwinism came up. ‘Actually,’ he said, raising his eyebrows, ‘I don’t believe in evolution.’ I reacted with incredulity: ‘Don’t be so bloody daft.’ ‘I’m not,’ he said. ‘Many scientists admit that the theory of evolution is in trouble these days. There are too many things it can’t explain.’ ‘Like what?’ ‘The gap in the fossil record.’ ‘Oh, that old chestnut!’ My desire to scorn was impeded only by a gap in my knowledge more glaring than that in the fossil record itself. Last Saturday at breakfast

Saturday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 18 October 2003

At a specially reconvened hearing of the Hutton inquiry into circumstances surrounding the death of Dr David Kelly, the expert on Iraqi weapons, Sir Kevin Tebbit, the permanent secretary at the Ministry of Defence, said that Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, had chaired the meeting that agreed a ‘change of stance’, under which officials would confirm the scientist’s identity as the man who illicitly briefed Mr Andrew Gilligan, a BBC radio correspondent, if his name was put to them by reporters. Lord Hutton said that his report ‘might not be delivered and published before the New Year’. Mr Blair held talks at Downing Street with Mr Bertie Ahern, the

Beryl Bainbridge

Diary – 18 October 2003

The Man Booker Prize dinner was held on Tuesday in the Egyptian room of the British Museum. It’s something of an ordeal for the six on the shortlist who have to wait until the pudding to hear who’s won. I’d only read one of the books, but they send you a disc of readings from them all, so that when I was asked — several times — who I thought might win I was able confidently to announce that it would be a toss-up between Monica Ali and Margaret Atwood. There was one particular extract, read beautifully by Martin Jarvis, which contained a lot of F-words, which I thought was

Taki

Late-night antics

Washington, DC By all accounts the American Conservative’s first anniversary party went off without a hitch. My friend Prince Radziwill came over for it, as did Charlie Glass, a very nice thing for both men to do, not to mention Major Chris Meyers, a tough Marine officer who flew from Los Angeles. Well, not to nit-pick, but perhaps there was a slight hitch, something to do with my speech. I don’t know why it is, but whenever a situation demands gravitas, a little voice inside me always tells me to do the opposite. For example, after welcoming everyone to a rooftop restaurant overlooking the Washington Monument and the Mall, for

Mary Killen

Your problems solved | 18 October 2003

Dear Mary… Q. Every day I find myself reading Today’s Birthdays in the Daily Telegraph. Do you know how I go about being included? Is a title helpful? (If so I will have to try harder.) The other day, there was a list of such types, toffs every one of them — to name but one, Sir David Montgomery. I am confident you can help me fulfil a lifetime’s social ambition, as I am sure you must appear on the list yourself.W.G., Stoke Rochford, Lincolnshire A. As with everything today, presenteeism has its part to play in being noticed. The two ladies who would decree your appearance can often be

Peregrine Worsthorne

Family values under the hammer

In the course of John Campbell’s superb second volume of his Margaret Thatcher biography, he poses the question of what Alderman Roberts would have thought of the new Thatcherite Britain which his daughter did so much to create. It is a question which, to the best of my knowledge, has never been asked before. But it should have been since any attempt to answer it reveals the paradox at the heart of both her life and her life’s work. For, as Mr Campbell shows, Mrs Thatcher presided over and celebrated a culture of rampant materialism which was repugnant to everything her father stood for. While claiming to stand for thrift,

William H-Janeway

SPECTATOR CITY AND FINANCE

Since it has become clear that the Great Bubble of 1999–2000 is dead and not subject to resurrection, information technology has become boring. The limitless promise of a New Internet-Enabled Web-Architected Economy where Everything Is Different appears to have failed. In the United States, the voices that now command media attention range from that of Larry Ellison, founder and chairman of Oracle — who is acting out his stated belief that innovation in IT is over by threatening and launching hostile takeover bids to consolidate markets by liquidating competitors — to Nick Carr, senior editor of the Harvard Business Review, whose May 2003 article summarised its message in its title:

Stephen Glover

Does the demise of the Dempster column signal the end of the aristocracy?

Nigel Dempster was the most famous print journalist of modern times, even though he seldom appeared on television. I remember his coming down to Oxford in the early Seventies. A group of admirers lured him to the Saraceno restaurant in Magdalen Street. Foremost among them was Tina Brown, already setting her compass in the direction of Fleet Street. Everyone was entranced by Nigel. There was scarcely anyone in the world whom a group of undergraduates would rather have met. Last week Nigel left the Daily Mail after 30 years. He was a raffish and glamorous poacher who gradually turned into a grand gamekeeper. To start with, he saw much to

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

The barnacle goose is very clever, and was once, technically, a fish

The view, I thought, appeared much as it would to a young barnacle goose. I was diving out of a blustery, dove-grey sky, my wing tips tipping cloud. Far below I could see the browns and greens, the heather and grass, of a big, low-lying Hebridean island. To the east lay the Scottish mainland. From the west the ocean, whipped by a stiff breeze, drove tiny white horses on to long sandy shores. The Atlantic rollers were just visible beneath my wings. But my wings were manufactured by Saab. Nose pressed to the window, I was aboard a 30-seater twin-prop passenger plane heading from Glasgow airport to the landing strip

Friday

Peter Jones

Ancient & modern – 17 October 2003

Cheque-books have been sharpened in America to lure top professors to top universities, and the ones attracting the most attention are those ‘great communicators’ with a reputation based only loosely on specialised knowledge: e.g. those who have released ‘rap’ records, or undergone sex-change operations, or achieved something of comparable intellectual value. The ancient Greek sophists, too, knew all about what would sell. The sophists were freelance professional educators, with a commitment to teaching pupils to make a successful public career for themselves by becoming great ‘communicators’. They charged hefty fees both for this and for giving seminars and displays of public eloquence, while developing their own specialist interests in the

Saturday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 11 October 2003

The Conservatives, holding their annual conference in Blackpool, offered to reinstate the link between pensions and average earnings, but at the same time to reduce taxation if elected. They also floated ideas for the equivalent of vouchers for education and health, the localisation of policing and the need for a referendum on the European Union constitution. Extracts from the diary of Mr Robin Cook published in the Sunday Times represent Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, accepting his remark in February that ‘Saddam has no weapons of mass destruction in a sense of weapons that strike at strategic cities’; but the government’s dossier of September 2002 had referred implicitly only

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Diary – 11 October 2003

Blackpool People sometimes compare the Daily Telegraph and the Conservative party. Watching the heaving sea from the Imperial Hotel in my last week as editor of the above, I do the same. In 1993, two years before I took the job, Rupert Murdoch began a price war. He cut the price of the Times from 45p to 30p. His principal aim was to knock the Daily Telegraph off its perch as market leader. In September this year, exactly ten years after it began, the war effectively ended. Mr Murdoch put up the price of the Times on Saturday to that of the Telegraph. Although the cost of war to the