The relationship between a great artist and his sitters is a poignant one. But what they say to each other during the long periods of concentrated stillness, on the one hand, and frenzied search for a likeness, on the other, is seldom recorded. We do not know what Leonardo said to the Mona Lisa to
Martin Broughton looks so lean and fit for someone of 60 that I worry he is playing too much golf. But no, his handicap is still only 17, a long way from the single digits that signal too much time teeing off and not enough pressing the flesh on behalf of British Airways and the
Next weekend is the 40th anniversary of Harold Wilson slashing sterling’s official value from $2.80 to $2.40 and telling us the pound in our pocket had not been devalued. It was a disaster, Wilson later confessed in his memoirs: a national shame that interrupted the Swinging Sixties. And now the pound has risen above $2
This year’s must-have Christmas present is a small rectangle of plastic, the size of a credit card. It costs E129,000, or a little short of £100,000 at current rates of exchange. Well, actually, it was last year’s must-have for those who consider themselves really up with the zeitgeist, but a NetJets card is still a
This should have been Boris’s gig, of course. Our former editor’s perilous journey into the heart of the Scouse soul was a penance of sorts for that notorious Spectator editorial. But amid the media scrum, he didn’t have much chance to do anything but murmur a few defensive sorrys, hair flapping in the angry breeze.
I don’t want to know too much about writers. The endless revelations about Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes have put me off their poetry. Nothing can shake my love of Keats’s Odes but I don’t have any desire to see his full medical records. Nor do I care to learn anything more about Byron’s club
Vladimir Putin’s efforts to divide the West may be on the back foot now that Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel have decided to stop being beastly to the Americans, but his most effective attack dog — Gazprom — is gleefully setting EU countries against each other. For governments fixated on more immediate threats such as
Everyone’s an expert on agriculture these days. Talk to anyone in the City: when they’re not boring you with how much copper wire it takes to build a satellite city outside Shanghai and what that means for mining shares, they’re telling you about soy bean yields in Brazil and the rising price of powdered milk.
Hu Bin is your archetypal Chinese real-estate entrepreneur. Built like a bull, with a huge, moon-shaped head, a permanent grin and tiny, nicotine-blackened teeth, he is also the embodiment of Beijing’s sudden determination to use its huge capital reserves to buy the world. Despite an estimated £5 billion fortune, Hu Bin would normally have remained
Rail delays are a daily fact of life, but Grand Central’s ghost train has set new records. Due to depart from Sunderland last December, it has yet to pass York en route to King’s Cross. I’ve read the timetable — three services a day north and south. I’ve read the BBC travel website, which reports
‘A triumph for the European Commission’ (as USA Today chose to describe it) is not something usually to be celebrated here. But yesterday’s finding by the European Court of Justice against Germany’s ‘VW law’ – protecting Volkswagen against takeover via a blocking minority vote held by the state – really does look like a blow
My favourite spot in London is the Round Pond in Kensington Gardens. I like to sit there, preferably early in the morning, and watch the waterfowl. They are of three kinds. The swans are rulers of the pond, as they must be. I once counted no fewer than 90 of them on the water, but
Matthew Lynn says shareholder activist Eric Knight is right to castigate HSBC’s strategy, and that the bank’s deeply religious chairman Stephen Green now faces a battle to hang on to his job When he isn’t running the world’s second biggest bank, Stephen Green, the chairman of HSBC, is an ordained priest and amateur theologian. In
I have a new hero. He is called Lemuel Boulware, of America’s General Electric Company. According to a fascinating new book by Thomas W. Evans*, Boulware should be credited not only with a role in defeating the intellectual apparatus of communism, but with the creation of one of the most successful US presidents of all
Even being soaked by driving rain isn’t enough to dampen Jonathan Kestenbaum’s passion for innovation. Even being soaked by driving rain isn’t enough to dampen Jonathan Kestenbaum’s passion for innovation. The chief executive of Britain’s largest source of endowment funds (£350 million and counting) arrives in the Notting Hill coffee shop where we are meeting,
South Africa is buzzing — and not just in the afterglow of victory in the Rugby World Cup. Johannesburg, built in the 1880s on the back of mineral excavation, is experiencing a contemporary form of gold rush. At the gleaming international airport, yuppies of every hue shape deals on their laptops. A ride into town
Recently I managed to get hold of a copy of Alone by Norman Douglas. This series of essays about Italian towns at the time of the first world war was the author’s favourite book. But it is not easily found. Indeed several of Douglas’s works are rarities. Most people know his novel South Wind, about
It was not an iceberg that caused the crash of Northern Rock and fortunately there was no loss of life; but it will be remembered, like the sinking of the Titanic, for years to come. None of us had seen queues of worried depositors outside bank branches before. We can remember it happening in It’s
A tiny door marked ‘Pret a Manger Academy’ in the back wall of Victoria station leads up two narrow flights of metal stairs to a warm, colourful room where rock music is playing softly. Strangely shaped leather chairs scattered with fluffy cushions give the faint air of a bordello. This is the headquarters of Pret
Gordon Brown can’t stop himself from meddling, even with his own good ideas. Soon after he moved into No 11 Downing Street, he introduced one of the best pro-growth capital gains tax regimes in the world. Last week his Chancellor Alistair Darling, with Brown grinning approval beside him, undid much of that good work in