Society

Saturday

Taki

What people want

New York This is a very good time to be in the Bagel. The sun’s out, the girls are walking around in their briefest, Central Park’s blooming all over, and Miss Monica Lewinsky is on national television performing oral acrobatics as a presenter of a show called Mr Personality. No, I have not seen the freak show, and do not plan to. I assume it is pop culture at its ghastliest, Lewinsky being a typical product of our times, a woman who became a celebrity for performing oral sex on the artful draft dodger in the Oval Office. Some celebrity. Some dodger. Needless to say, the show is on the

Jeremy Clarke

Standing profits

If my boy asks me for advice about his future employment, I’ve always recommended that he might think about a career in sport, war or capitalism. Forget Art, I say. Art is best left to neurotics. And though it can be a tempting career move in early adulthood, forget manual labour, too, I tell him. In manual work the harder you work the less you get paid. Fortunately he hasn’t mentioned university yet, thank goodness. We don’t want any talk in our house about going to university, thank you very much. We’d rather he took heroin than go to university. Anyway, he’s 13 now and it looks like he’s shaping

Frank Johnson

If you want to get ahead in the Tory party, do not become an assassin

We shall probably never know what drove someone like Crispin Blunt to carry out a suicide attack on Iain Duncan Smith. The young man was from a respectable, middle-class, and pro-European background. That is, he came from the Tory breeding ground of moderation. But not all respectable, middle-class pro-Europeans try to assassinate their leader. His neighbours on the backbenches said that they were amazed and shocked when they heard the news. To them, he was a rather ordinary man, polite and nice. None of them suspected that he would get mixed up in terrorism. One theory is that he was manipulated by the godfathers of

The Spectator

Weak foundations

Tony Blair turned 50 this week. The milestone has been celebrated with a special exhibition by the staff of No. 10. In an impressive display of their talents, the spin doctors of Downing Street have boggled or bullied the media into presenting the Prime Minister as a sort of composite prime minister of 1945: Churchill transmogrified into Attlee. The war leader, having settled his foreign enemy, will now deal with the axis of domestic evil in similarly short order. We are given to understand that the famous five giants of social distress – all stubbornly unslain nearly 60 years after the foundation of the welfare state – will now receive

Andrew Lambirth

When all the rules go

Although best known as political cartoonist of the Daily Telegraph, and for his eye-catching covers for The Spectator, Nicholas Garland trained as a fine artist, and never stopped drawing even during his active though short-lived career in the theatre. Recently, he has focused his energies on print-making and is about to open his first exhibition of woodcuts at the Fine Art Society. Exploiting different densities of black ink and the varying texture of the woodblock into which he carves his design, he makes bold simplified images of considerable impact and sophistication. These couldn’t be farther from the concerns of the political satirist, for they record Garland’s enthusiasms – music, performance,

Andrew Gimson

Germany falling

You are leaving the civilised sector. These words were pinned, in German and English, to the outside of the fence which protects the American embassy in Berlin. In order to get through that fence, you would have to persuade the gallant, bone-headed men of the Bundesgrenzschutz – Germany’s frontier police, who also guard government buildings – that you are not intent on blowing up the Americans. Meanwhile you can take the chance to study the messages left by German peace protesters, of which the general drift is that George Bush is a mass murderer. It would be easy, on the basis not only of these messages but also of Chancellor

Nell Butler

What a shower!

I’m in a Swiss mountain village. I’ve spent the day glacier skiing, and now I’m showering in my steamy hotel bathroom. The water is crashing off my ample curves, my muscles are aching pleasantly and I’m looking forward to a convivial evening. But, damn, it’s difficult to get out of this shower – it’s just too good. Every jet of water has zest and purpose, the shower head is big and shiny, and the water has a creamy quality. There’s no crusty limescale, the temperature is precisely 42 degrees, and it’s thrillingly powerful. It’s perfect. And, as I stand, gasping, under this cascade of hot, bubbly, foreign water it sets

Rachel Johnson

The toffs fight back

If you read only the Daily Mail, you would think the Labour government was taking the middle classes, like the mountain gorillas of Uganda, to the brink of extinction. ‘Middle Britain could be forgiven for feeling under siege from a government that remorselessly stakes new and higher claims on its income – while treating its children as some sort of privileged elite which must be put in its place,’ boohoos a Mail leading article. Steady on. It is true that taxes have gone up, but the value of the housing stock has risen by much more. Interest rates – at 3.75 per cent – are at a historic low. Inheritance

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

‘I focus on winning’

Right! You’ve got 40 minutes,’ says Nick Wood, Iain Duncan Smith’s spin doctor, in the manner of a game-show host. We are sitting round a table in IDS’s office. Nick has a large glass of red wine in his hand and I have water. Iain can’t have a drink, I soon realise, because it would end up all over the wall after one of his emphatic hand gestures. It has been a good week for IDS, perhaps his best since becoming leader of the opposition. Crispin Blunt may have plunged his dagger, but it turned out to have a rubber blade. The Tories gained more than 600 seats in the

Friday

Peter Jones

Ancient and Modern – 9 May 2003

Two British commandos from the Special Boat Service (motto ‘Not by force, but by guile’) escaped capture in Iraq by trekking some 100 miles across mountainous terrain, by night, to the Syrian border. Who were they? Nobody knows, or will know – a unique form of heroism. In the ancient world it was public performance, and so public acknowledgment, that counted. In Homer’s Iliad, Sarpedon, a Trojan ally from Lycia, gives the classic statement of the heroic ‘contract’ to his second-in-command Glaucus that in return for the best of material rewards ‘we are obliged to take our places in the front ranks and fling ourselves into the flames of battle.

Saturday

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 3 May 2003

Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, said before local elections that ‘the issue of reform of public services in health, in education, in criminal justice – this is the big challenge that this government and the Labour party faces’. His words were seen partly as a warning to the Left of his party and partly as a demonstration that his mind was on domestic affairs. He then flew off to Russia to meet President Vladimir Putin for talks about the future of Iraq; Mr Putin rejected Mr Blair’s call for the lifting of sanctions against Iraq and emphasised that the existence of weapons of mass destruction must be resolved. Mr

Alan Rusbridger

Diary – 3 May 2003

This is not a statement that will wring many heart-strings, but if there’s one group of professionals which has been a bit down-at-heel in recent months it’s libel lawyers. For a variety of reasons – Jeffrey Archer languishing in jail among them – there has not been a queue of claimants outside the Inns of Court waiting to consult eminent practitioners in the black arts of defamation. So the impending case of Galloway v. Moore has put a spring in the step of m’learned friends. For a while it had looked as though we would never again see a titanic High Court slugging match between two veteran pugilists. And now

Dot Wordsworth

Mind Your Language | 3 May 2003

Mr Peter Bonnett from Downham Market, Norfolk, appeals to me as ‘The Spectator’s custodian of language’. God forbid! I have troubles enough! Mr Bonnett is worried about the prevalent confusion between deprecate and depreciate, and I had just written down my deprecatory exclamations when what should I come across in the fat OED but a quotation from 1631, from proceedings in the Court of Star Chamber: ‘My Lord Keeper answered with a deprecation: God forbid that Norfolke should be divided in custome from all England.’ Well! Koestler, thou shouldst be living at this hour! I have now used up my allowance of exclamation marks for the year. Deprecate, barring obsolete

Taki

Emotionally charged

New York My doctor tells me that the reason I grew a tumour in my head was because of my obsession with Ashley Judd. For any of you living in outer space, Ashley is an actress whom I’ve never met but have rather ambitious plans for if I ever do. Needless to say, it was love at first sight. Then came the obsession, followed by the tumour. Don’t laugh. My doctor is convinced of the cause, and, if Spinoza were around, he would agree. Mind you, Descartes would not. Let me explain. As all of you know, Descartes theorised that human beings were composed of physical bodies and immaterial minds.

Jeremy Clarke

Serene, spent and sober

Sunday afternoon and I was going home with that ‘making love and walking home alone’ kind of feeling. A blowy Sunday afternoon and the high street strewn with litter. What I really fancied next was a nice cold pint of lager. Lately, I’ve switched to Fosters, and Fosters and I are still in our honeymoon period. Ideally I would liked to have drunk Fosters in a pub that was showing the pay-per-view match, Man City v. the Hammers, on the large screen. It was a must-see game. West Ham had to win to stay in the Premiership. And as the manager, Glen Roeder, had collapsed after the Bolton game last

Petronella Wyatt

Bazaar goings-on

I have just returned from Morocco, or Marrakech, to be precise; the rose-pink city with its hidden gardens and ancient, tiled palaces. This was against the advice of an American friend who protested vigorously when I announced my visit. ‘You can’t go there,’ she howled, ‘it’s an Islamic country. They’ll all be pro-Saddam and anti-Bush. They’ll probably tear you to pieces.’ I thought this highly unlikely as in my experience the Moroccans are a gentle people who are only likely to tear you to pieces if you refuse to buy one of their hideous carpets made by a tribe called the Berbers. Nevertheless, I expected the joint to be hotter

Mary Killen

Your Problems Solved | 3 May 2003

Dear Mary… Q. My husband has developed an annoying habit of beginning to unzip himself as he approaches our downstairs gents. He also delays the buttoning-up process until long after he has vacated the facility. I am afraid that I find this obscene. How can I put a stop to this habit?Name withheld, Binham, Norfolk A. You are not the only reader to have written in to complain about this problem, but a solution is readily to hand. One out of every three dogs is of the crutch-sniffing variety, however charming the animal may be in other respects. Discreetly ask around, without revealing the purpose, and see if you could

The Spectator

Feedback | 3 May 2003

Comment on Why I nearly resigned by Mark Steyn (26/04/2003) I have only recently come across Mark Steyn and have been impressed by both his insight and wit – I’m delighted that he has decided to stay on at the Spectator. Reading the archives, his predictions post 9-11 have proven almost prophetic on the UN topic. On the latest article I agree with the argument that the UN lacks any sort of coherent vision and is incapable of decisive action, either in war or post-war. However I do understand, if not agree with, the psychological steps taken by people who say that now is the time to attend to the

Richard Bebb

‘I shall go on collecting until I die’

The charitable giving of Sir Paul Getty always had a deliciously quirky element to it – one thinks of the elegant replacement of the hideous old Mound Stand at Lord’s, the funding of the National Film Archive’s work in housing and restoring their immense collection of historic films, the saving of the Mappa Mundi and Canova’s ‘Three Graces’ for the nation, and so on. These apparently random choices, in fact, reflected some of the most passionate interests of the man himself – he was a cricket fanatic (he owned Wisden), a dedicated collector of old films, and, as his father before him, a connoisseur of the fine arts. These are

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

Abandon your plans if you want to get a life

Imagine that opposite this page there were to appear an advertisement under the headline ‘Free Return Tickets to Cape Town’, worded something like this: ‘Hundreds of free flights to any destination served by South African Airways! Write to us with your preferred itinerary and a brief explanation of why you would like to visit the place you have chosen.’ Suppose you chose Cape Town. You would dispatch your entry more in hope than anticipation, suspicious that there must be a catch. But suppose there was no catch, and you won. Would you not be delighted? Of course you would. Yet I have just come from Johannesburg airport along with another