The Week

Diary

Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody | 8 November 2008

Sunday Just had an absolute nightmare setting up one of those conference calls. Jed thought it would be nice if Dave rang Mrs Palin to wish her luck. Simple enough you might think. Oh no. First of all he had to explain who he was. Literally. As in ‘Hello this is David Cameron.’ ‘Who, honey?’

Ancient and modern

Ancient & modern | 08 November 2008

‘Are they talking to the trees?’ asked my husband as he banged his stick against a sign attached to a plane tree near the Tate Gallery. He does not need a stick to lean on. He uses it on pedestrians in the way, or, in this case, annoying signs. The sign said: ‘Low tree.’ The

More from The Week

Unyielding hope

One of Robert F. Kennedy’s favourite passages of poetry was drawn from Tennyson’s ‘Ulysses’: ‘Come, my friends,/ ’Tis not too late to seek a newer world./ Push off, and sitting well in order smite/ The sounding furrows… strong in will/ To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.’ On 4 November, the American

Letters

Letters | 8 November 2008

The MoD’s failure of duty Sir: Charles Moore berates Oxford deputy coroner Andrew Walker for upbraiding officialdom in the matter of the death of Para Corporal Mark Wright, deeming such criticism of the military establishment to be ‘outrageous’ (The Spectator’s Notes, 25 October). The fact is that Tony Blair launched our armed forces into five