It is fashionable to dismiss the ancient historians’ descriptions of tyrannical Roman emperors as so much literary stereotyping. But the evidence offered by, e.g., Saddam and his dreadful sons might give one pause; and now the palace of Caligula (Roman emperor ad 37
I was looking for an obscure work by Richarde Weste (fl. 1609
Gstaad After the heat of the French Riviera and of the birthplace of selective democracy, the Alps are a welcome relief – up to a point. I am here on a family holiday, family being the operative word. Which means that neither my daughter nor son tolerates any hanky-panky, if you know what I mean. Not that I’m complaining. Throughout my life I’ve looked for action and thrills, and now all of a sudden I’m content to sit in my garden, look at the incredible, straight out of The Sound of Music mountain views, and … dine with the family. And be very happy to boot. It is, of course,
First thing Monday morning I was in court. No car tax. When I eventually found the magistrate’s court, it was like the Marie Celeste. No defendants hanging round the entrance smoking, no receptionist behind the glass in the foyer, no ushers, no solicitors briefing anxious clients in the corridor at the last moment, no cleaners, nobody. Hearing muffled voices, I pushed open a heavy door and found myself in Court One. Inside, facing me, were three magistrates, two men and a woman, seated in a row. Below them, sitting at a large table, were a gowned lady prosecutor and a representative from the police in a dark suit. And that
Lord Hutton began his inquiry into the death of Dr David Kelly, the Ministry of Defence expert on Iraqi weapons, by disclosing part of a letter by the scientist to his superior, in which he said that, judging from the report by the BBC’s Andrew Gilligan about the government’s September dossier on Iraq, ‘I can only conclude one of three things: Gilligan has considerably embellished my meeting with him; he has met with other individuals who were intimately associated with the dossier; or he assembled comments from both multiple direct and indirect sources for his articles.’ Lord Hutton said he meant to call both the Prime Minister and the Secretary
It’s no good complaining. The rail network inhabits the wrong kind of universe. If the sun shines for more than two days, the network goes down. You can’t argue with science. In the last heatwave I travelled back to London from Brighton in a train whose air-conditioning had given up under the strain. I rang the customer-services office to complain that passengers couldn’t even open the windows. Less than a fortnight later I got a letter from South Central. It was not an apology. It was a patronising explanation of the principles of air-conditioning. It doesn’t work, see, if you open the windows. The point is, however, that if it
Comment on Pre-emptive force (02/08/2003) Perhaps it is the accent and perfect diction, but the British often appear to Americans to be of superior intelligence. That is, until we learn of some curious incident which quells such thought instantly. Take the Tony Martin case, for example. We always thought the phrase “a man’s home is his castle” came over from Britain. And, as an American trained lawyer, I always thought the so-called “castle doctrine” of self-defence law was part of the great English common law that we inherited. It appears that while the castle doctrine is still a well-established part of the law in most American jurisdictions, it has been
Dear Mary… Q. Is it now de rigueur to offer one’s dinner-party guests expensive chocolates along with their coffee or tisane? If the answer is yes, then I am afraid that I personally cannot afford to shell out a further tenner on top of what I will already be spending on food and wine. Plus I think it slightly disgusting and self-indulgent when a treat becomes the norm. What do you think, Mary?S.W., London W11 A. I agree with your last point. The trouble is that, although it is not de rigueur to offer expensive chocolates, many people’s palates do now seem primed to receive them following dinner. Guests will
Various explanations have been offered for the decision by the Defence Secretary, Geoff Hoon, to leave for his summer holiday before the funeral this week of Dr David Kelly. Mr Hoon himself has let it be known via ‘friends’ that he would be in trouble with his wife Elaine if he delayed a holiday that was already planned. Others have speculated that he would not have been welcome at Dr Kelly’s funeral. It is possible that the speculation is accurate, but I wonder. One does not, so far as I know, need permission, still less an invitation, to attend a funeral, but if Mr Hoon felt that his presence might
By the time The Spectator goes to press, the record for the highest-ever authenticated measurement of air temperature in the British Isles may or may not have been broken. The only certainties are that the railway industry will have dreamed up yet more reasons why trains may only run at 20mph, that there will scarcely be a young, bikini-clad woman in Britain who remains unphotographed for the tabloids, and that spokesmen for the global warming lobby will have trousered a few more grand in television appearance fees. Not even the nation’s ice-cream-sellers can be whooping with joy so loudly as our climatologists. For every degree the mercury tips over 90?F,
We spent part of the last two weeks – as has become a family custom – mooching round Siena. And although, like Venice, the place can absorb a huge number of visitors before becoming unpleasantly crowded, we were by no means the only ones. That’s because, of course, Siena is just about perfect – an intact mediaeval town, with hardly a building later than the 16th century, but a living community, not a mummified museum. It is also a prime example of what most of us love to look at when we go travelling. Namely, economic failure. Siena looks the way it does because of a series of disasters. At
Whenever I have a patient who belongs to the first generation of Jamaican immigrants, I cannot help but ask myself what England has done to the Jamaicans. How has such a charming and humorous community been turned into the sullen, resentful people that so many of their children (or grandchildren) seem to be today – particularly the males, possessed as they are of an arrogant sense of radical entitlement that renders them almost extraterritorial both to the laws of the land and the laws of good manners? What has England done to them that they should turn out thus? Of course, there is still a strong strand of church-going respectability
In more tranquil times, before the Gilligan storm broke over his head, the BBC’s admirable and honourable director of news, Richard Sambrook, contributed a foreword to one of the corporation’s periodic attempts to remind its journalists of their responsibilities towards the English language. ‘Clear storytelling and language,’ Sambrook wrote, ‘is at the heart of good journalism.’ These are words which, given subsequent events, have acquired an ironic resonance. What is at issue here is not Sambrook’s unexceptionable sentiment, but his grammar. Richard, Richard, I can hear myself saying in the pedant’s weary tones (for many years ago, when he was an eager and fresh-faced newsroom subeditor, I used to check
Nairobi One evening in the Kenyan capital late last year, my friend Sean Culligan endured an experience that, in several instructive ways, can be compared and contrasted with that of the Norfolk farmer Tony Martin. Sean is a mild-mannered man who, after retiring from the British military, settled in East Africa. He works for a medical charity that is held in high esteem. For a pastime he likes target shooting. He has a licensed pistol. ‘My military training tells me that if you have a gun, you should carry it,’ Sean tells me. ‘If you carry it, you should be prepared to use it.’ The incident occurred on a Friday
Since it is always helpful to blame the government for most things, it might be some consolation to those of us who sat shellshocked at Lord’s last weekend, and watched South Africa obliterate England, to reflect on how politics has brought about the decline of English cricket. Such an analysis will bring no short-term comfort to those who must prevent further thrashings of the national side; but only by understanding the causes can we hope, in due course, to eliminate the symptoms. Class is at the heart of the problem. For various reasons, few state schools engage in serious competitive sport any more, and cricket has suffered especially. It requires
Miss Busby’s room – room five – had a westerly facing seaview. Latterly, if it was shaping up to be a particularly beautiful one, and there was nothing on telly, I’d go and sit with her and watch the sunset. We’d sit side by side in a pair of her comfortable high-backed antique chairs and watch the sun going down in flames over the sea. We didn’t say a lot. We’d just sit there in appreciative, companionable silence. It was very therapeutic. Sometimes I’d turn my head and see the redness of the sun reflected on her face. She had rather a long, hooked nose and her eyes were small
The council estates of King’s Lynn, Harriet Sergeant recently revealed, are groaning with Chinese migrant workers, 50 to a house. The Daily Mail, naturally enough, is outraged by this threat to society and house prices, playing on rumours that workers are controlled by Triad gangs. Equally upset is the Guardian, which complains that many workers are illegal, they are being paid less than the national minimum wage and their gang masters won’t even let them join the Transport and General Workers’ Union. Why is it that migrant workers have to be received so negatively? The Daily Mail has made an art of attacking ‘welfare scroungers’ over the years; now it
The MP John Redwood has hired a London PR firm to raise his profile. The firm is keen for him to feature in lifestyle articles, when he will talk about his great love of windsurfing, films and theatre. ‘John is happy to talk about a wide range of subjects,’ we are told, including ‘his favourite restaurant/food and his passion for motoring.’ It sounds an exciting prospect – how one longs to hear about why he loves going vroom – and all too horribly typical of Plato’s democratic man. In his Republic, Plato analyses the way in which societies degenerate over time and mutate from one type of political system to
Those trained train staff have come up with a new one. Until now it has been ‘Peterborough is the next station stop with this train.’ That is a Babylonish dialect, to be sure. But today it was: ‘We shall shortly be arriving into Peterborough.’ Arriving into? As it happens, Bishop Cuthbert Tunstall in a sermon for Palm Sunday 1539 used the phrase ‘into what howse or place so ever ye shall arrive’, but I can scarcely suppose that this homiletic obiter dictum influenced the choice of preposition adopted by the conductor or train captain of the 16.32 (delayed). If it comes to that, arrive used to be a transitive verb
Mr Alastair Campbell was expected to resign as the director of communications and strategy at the Prime Minister’s office before the Labour party conference at the end of September. Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, let it be known through friends including Lord Falconer of Thoroton that he intends to complete a third term. The British Pregnancy Advisory Service proposed that women up to nine weeks pregnant should be allowed to induce abortions with drugs at home; the foetus would be thrown down the lavatory. As part of investigations into the murder of a young boy whose torso was found floating in the Thames, 200 police arrested 21 people in