Society

Saturday

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 28 December 2002

January. Twelve countries of the European Union adopted the euro as their common currency. Lord Birt was asked by Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, to draw up a report on transport. Rail fares went up and drivers went on strike. Connex South-East found it could get more passengers on trains by abolishing lavatories. Peggy Lee, the singer, died, aged 81. America flew al-Qa’eda and Taleban prisoners to a camp at Guantanamo Bay on the island of Cuba. India and Pakistan stood on the brink of war. A Home Office report found that in London (where 8 per cent are black) 70 per cent of mobile-telephone thefts were carried out

Michael Heath

Diary – 28 December 2002

This is the first Christmas in recent years that I haven’t spent in traction or immobilised by glandular fever. You may imagine that I spend my days drawing and whistling in a carefree manner, but there are tears behind the laughter. Two Christmases ago I was invited to the Erotic Review party in a club in London’s Soho. I had worked for the magazine doing dodgy drawings at fifty quid a pop, so they owed me a drink. Besides, I was eager to meet the Erotic staff who, I felt sure, writhed around all day on their laptops sans knickers and headaches. I found the club, walked in and was

Dot Wordsworth

Mind Your Language | 28 December 2002

People seem to lose the use of their native wit when they consider the origins of words. That idiot’s sorting office, the Internet, has a well-intentioned site (at io.com/gibbonsb/words.words.words.html) edited by Gibbons Burke that discusses nautical terms used by Patrick O’Brian, who, Mr Burke remarks, uses expressions ‘in a way that allows the reader to make the connection between a familiar phrase in everyday language with its marine heritage’. But when I read Patrick O’Brian’s books three or four years ago, I was struck by how often his etymologies are wrong. A contributor to Mr Burke’s site quotes a sentence in supposed explanation of the phrase ‘the cat is out

Petronella Wyatt

Give them a break

This has been the season of goodwill. Which, of course, it hasn’t. I am sorry for stating the obvious but there is always less goodwill around at Christmas than any other time of the year. The newspapers seem more vicious, more scandal-ridden and more aggressive than in spring, summer or autumn. This is principally because there aren’t many real stories around as the politicians push off for their holidays. Nevertheless, one is often repelled by the hypocrisy of heartwarming yuletide tales juxtaposed with no-holds-barred attacks on those who cannot answer back. I have been particularly disgusted by the persecution of Prince and Princess Michael of Kent and their children. First,

Peter Jones

Ancient and Modern – 28 December 2002

As the argument over firemen’s pay and conditions rumbles on, Mr John Scorer reminds me of the correspondence on the subject of a fire service between Pliny the younger, governor of Bithynia-Pontus in north-western Turkey, and the emperor Trajan. Pliny asks if it would be a good idea to establish one in the province, but Trajan advises that such collegia can cause political trouble; people should be provided with their own equipment and, if a fire starts, call on help from the watching crowd. The fire service in Rome offers more helpful parallels with the current situation. Prevention was originally in the hands of a committee of three, in charge

The Spectator

MILK AND SYMPATHY

A Cambridge geography graduate in search of solitude was recently found starving to death in a hikers’ bothy in the Scottish Highlands surrounded by KitKat wrappers. No one from the anti-globalisation lobby has yet blamed the manufacturer of KitKat bars, NestlZ, for causing her death, but perhaps that is just an oversight. NestlZ has been blamed for just about every world nutritional problem. Last week, the company was threatened with an international boycott of its products for daring to demand £3.7 million from the Ethiopian government, in compensation for assets seized by a Marxist government in 1975. ‘This is absurd,’ complained an Oxfam spokesman. ‘This is not about legal rights,

Andrew Lambirth

Treats round the country

For any art lover, the prospect of a new year of exhibitions – of new wonders revealed and old friends revisited – is, of course, immensely exciting. But only the very organised institutions have their exhibition programmes confirmed well in advance, and in these increasingly uncertain times, even the top museums sometimes have to change their plans at the last moment. Since 9/11 collectors abroad have been less inclined to lend valuable works, while the downturn in the economy has made sponsorship more elusive than ever. Some institutions report falling attendance figures – although by the generally packed nature of the pavements you wouldn’t have thought tourism was suffering particularly

Saturday

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 14 December 2002

The purchase by Miss Cherie Booth, Mrs Tony Blair, for a total of just over half a million pounds of two flats in Bristol, one for her son Euan to use when attending university, set off a lively game of hunt the issue. Someone called Mr Peter Foster was found to have acted on her behalf in the deal, and he turned out to be a convicted conman, specialising in unreliable slimming remedies and awaiting deportation to Australia; he exchanged many emails with Mrs Blair, one of his saying: ‘Your pleasure is my purpose’. The Prime Minister’s spokesman had earlier denied Mr Foster’s part in buying the flats. He is

Max Hastings

Diary – 14 December 2002

Two or three times a week, some radio or television programme telephones, usually in search of a soundbite. That I should be so lucky, you may say. How flattering. Yes, but nobody ever mentions money. The ability to turn a phrase is the only marketable skill a journalist possesses. No newspaper would ask a professional writer to produce even a couple of hundred words without mentioning a fee, however modest. Yet broadcast producers do this to hundreds of us every day. The assumption is that we will perform for the mere thrill of gaining access to the airwaves. Politicians, of course, are always up for it. Why should the rest

Dot Wordsworth

Mind Your Language | 14 December 2002

‘Is having personal demons like having a personal trainer?’ asked my husband, casting aside a newspaper magazine to the peril of his glass of whisky. (It survived, briefly.) He might well ask, for these ‘personal demons’ have been having quite an outing in the newspapers recently. Anne Diamond, according to a so-called friend quoted in the Daily Mirror, ‘like most people has her demons – if she has issues with work or family, she eats and drinks’. Indeed, she ‘balloons’. I like, or rather don’t like, ‘has issues with’. According to the same newspaper, Robin Williams ‘has been tortured by personal demons’ including cocaine, which he wittily remarked was God’s

Taki

What happened to honesty?

New York My friend Tom Fleming, editor-in-chief of Chronicles, and a polymath who doesn’t tolerate fools or knaves, recently wrote that when he’s described as a journalist, he takes it as an insult. ‘Journalists are to writers what kept women are to wives …’ The American version of Paul Johnson went on to say that even the old standards of mercenary journalism have collapsed. ‘Most journalists no longer even pretend to follow the news. All that matters to them is their celebrity status on TV.’ Egotism, rudeness, ignorance and total dishonesty make for a depressing spectacle, and nothing depresses more than today’s television, on both sides of the ocean. Then

Petronella Wyatt

Not amused

‘Tis the season to be self-deprecating. Or even more self-deprecating than during the rest of the year. The traditional British custom of laughing while others tell insulting stories about you, running yourself down, making yourself look a perfect ass, and being the butt of practical jokes, while keeping a fixed grin on your face, really comes into its own in late December and early January. My father was very good at using this peculiar device against others during Christmas. Family members were teased about their supposedly inadequate sex lives or careers and then expected to be the first to giggle – which, of course, they always did. If we had

Peter Jones

Ancient and Modern – 14 December 2002

Christmas is the time for stimulating educational games round a roaring open telly. This year’s is a real festive winner: construct your own Greek tragedy, on any subject of your choice. The rules, observable in Sophocles (496-405 bc) and Euripides (485-406 bc), are strict: 1. The tragedy lasts about two hours and is played in real time: i.e., it represents an unbroken two-hour period in the characters’ lives. 2. It takes place in a single location, out of doors. Since Greek tragedies were frequently about kings, that meant outside his palace: i.e., in the palace front garden, or on the roof – a stimulating location indeed. 3. Only three actors

Jake Auerbach

Danger: man at work

My heart is always lifted when a book begins with a map; it is like getting on a plane, we are about to go on an adventure. The first image in this generously illustrated work is a map of Italy 400 years ago; it shows a loose collection of independent nation states which, at that time, stood in the middle of the world. Having, in his book Brunelleschi’s Dome, successfully conjured up Florence in the 15th century, Ross King now moves to 16th-century Rome and Michelangelo’s astonishing Sistine chapel ceiling; an artistic achievement so stunning that, according to Goethe, we cannot understand what one man is capable of without visiting

Candia Mcwilliam

The tree without

Since last Christmas, John and Edie have been watching their tree, which they keep outside, with the mixture of helplessness and pride familiar to mothers of sons. They first decided to have a tree that was to enjoy a full life, roots and all, in its pot, five years before. ‘I thought it might have happened, and it has,’ said John, from behind the tree, more accurately from within it, which he was attempting to fit through their front door. ‘It won’t come without a fight, this year. It’s even prickly on its smooth bits. Did we like it once?’ Edie saw where this might end, with a lot of

John Weston

How to win hearts and minds

Saddam Hussein’s mountain of documents now awaiting analysis by UN experts has temporarily flummoxed those in hot pursuit. It has thus bought a little more time before a final reckoning is visited upon him. He is playing a weak hand with customary tactical adroitness. But the underlying realities have not changed. Despite seasonal injunctions to moderation by respected generals, ambassadors and bishops here, we should not allow ourselves to fall prey to the liberal illusion that, so long as no clear or present danger from Iraq is seen to threaten directly the national security of the UK or the US, international inaction is a cost-free option. The evidence of Iraq’s

Peter Oborne

How Alastair Campbell betrayed Cherie

THERE is something eerie, and a little sinister, about the rise of the Campbell-Millars, as Alastair Campbell and his longstanding partner, Fiona Millar, are known in north London. Their rise started in the 1980s when they were young, unknown and ambitious. They ingratiated themselves with Neil and Glenys Kinnock: helping with the shopping and being on hand at a moment’s notice. In due course, the Kinnocks and the Campbell-Millars went on holiday together, and were in and out of each other’s houses. The friendship was helpful to Alastair Campbell’s budding career as a journalist. His hotline to the leader of the opposition helped him become political editor of the Daily

Saturday

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 7 December 2002

The government announced that 700 health workers and servicemen would be vaccinated against smallpox, and that it was buying more vaccine so that the whole population could be vaccinated if necessary; the action was said by the Prime Minister’s spokesman not to be in response to any specific threat. Mr David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, agreed with his French counterpart that Britain should take 1,000 Iraqis and 200 Afghans from the Sangatte Red Cross camp near Calais, which is to close on 30 December; the migrants began arriving immediately. The Fire Brigades Union cancelled an eight-day strike that was to have started last Wednesday, and their dispute was taken to

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Diary – 7 December 2002

The 13th Earl of Haddington (cr. 1619) was minded to revise his theory about crop circles to incorporate pixies, he told me the other day while we were enjoying a pre-dinner cigarette at the chimney piece of a grand dining-room in Chillingham Castle, Northumberland. Lord H. – a whiskery, engaging gent in tartan trousers – has done a good deal of research into the subject, and has come to some interesting conclusions. He has now established to his satisfaction that crop circles are not made by aliens but – if I understand him rightly – by dead people. His working theory is that the patterns are an effort to communicate

Dot Wordsworth

Mind Your Language | 7 December 2002

I was last in Zaragoza when my husband was bribed by a drugs company to make the sacrifice of attending a conference in a luxury hotel. I was on my own. It was hot and dusty, the dustier for the demolition of a neighbourhood of a seedy but engaging character around ‘El Tubo’ (east of Calle Alfonso I, if you know it). So I stopped to ease a blister on my foot and take a glass of horchata, a drink I’ve mentioned before. It wasn’t quite as relaxing as it might have been because in the heladeria was a lunatic at a table shouting threateningly at anyone near, or even