During the 2008 US presidential election cycle, the respected journal Foreign Affairs invited the leading presidential candidates from both parties to outline their views of world politics. All of them responded with essays that, one presumes, they at least read if did not write. This year, ahead of next year’s elections, Foreign Affairs has proffered
‘It must be so awfully boring being a fish,’ says Brian Sewell, as he looks out the window at his pond. ‘You can only have sex once a year on a prescribed day. The frogs are just the same.’ We are in his study. It is a large room full of books, mostly big art
When I arrive to interview Stella Creasy in one of the cafés in parliament, she’s sitting in a meeting with two earnest, wonkish types, the coffee mugs having been cleared from the table. As time ticks by, her body language becomes urgent, but she’s too polite to wrap it up. I begin to see why
What makes you happy? If you did not think anybody cared, you could not be more wrong. Your happiness has become a major issue. It is being investigated by professors with regression analyses. It is being fussed over by politicians who want to show their human side. The British government has decided to measure your
Arthur Laffer Chairman, Laffer Associates Cut the 50p tax Reducing the burden which government places on the economy, through tax cuts, is the surest way to promote growth. I have never heard of a country that taxed itself into prosperity. Yet Britain last year raised the top rate of income tax from 40 per cent to
We need an orderly end to the EU’s disastrous economic experiment The eurozone crisis threatens the world’s economic stability, but not for the reasons people think. The crisis was predictable and predicted, but schadenfreude is neither appropriate nor affordable. The task now is to extricate ourselves from this mess, and to learn its lessons. This
When, two decades ago, the cricket historian David Frith published his study of cricketing suicides, By His Own Hand, the book carried a foreword by Peter Roebuck. As an opening batsman, Roebuck had represented Millfield School, Cambridge University and Somerset, where he was the club captain. In his second life he proved to be a
A Canadian doctor may have found a natural way to extend women’s fertility Dr Robert Casper, gynaecologist, reproductive endocrinologist and Toronto-based fertility guru, is telling me a bunch of stuff I really don’t want to hear. ‘The ageing female reproductive system is like a forgotten flashlight on the top shelf of a closet,’ he says
When Keith Richards stepped up onto the stage at the Norman Mailer Gala at the Mandarin Oriental in New York last Tuesday, to collect the Autobiography Award from a bumptious Bill Clinton, he appeared to be almost speechless. Words eventually came, though, if a little tentatively: ‘I’m not usually fazed by stuff,’ said Keith, almost
I flew into Cochin one December morning, glad of the humidity, like a welcoming hot flannel after Britain’s bitter cold. I was staying a short walk from the shore in the heart of the old fort at Malabar House, one of a group of boutique hotels set up by Joerg Drechsel and his Catalan partner,
The best view of the Goan coast can be seen from the topmost turret of the ruined Portuguese fort above Chapora. From the dark upper slopes of the Pernem hills down to the level ground of the coastline stretches mile upon mile of banana and coconut groves, the deep green of the palms offset by
An everlasting chant wafts from the ancient walls of the temple of Kapaleeshwarar: ‘Om Namasivaya.’ The effect is hypnotic. I wander inside and the chant merges with Vedic folk music as a joyous crowd of worshippers sing in praise of Shiva. An elderly couple are having a birthday blessing and the Dravidian precincts are a
If you thought the EU couldn’t get any less democratic, meet the Frankfurt Group The Old Opera House in Frankfurt — once Germany’s most beautiful postwar ruin and now its most stunning recreation — has become a symbol of European rebirth. And it was here, last month, that Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy met the
Berlusconi is the only person who could have sorted out Italy’s problems Where the monstrous regiment of judges, journalists and the other toxic derivatives of Italian communism failed, the Germans and the French, armed this time only with the euro, have triumphed. Silvio Berlusconi, or ‘Silvio il Magnifico’ as I am still not ashamed to
Liz Jones, the roving fashion editor of the Daily Mail, is a hate figure on Twitter and beyond. Recently, in one of her periodic confessional pieces, she wrote that she had stolen her boyfriend’s used condom and tried to impregnate herself with it. It was owed to her, she wrote, because she had bought him
Can Florence’s youthful mayor save Italy from herself? If ever a country’s politics needed a shot in the arm, it is Italy’s. As the economy wobbles on the brink of catastrophe, we Italians are desperate for a new face from outside the discredited political caste: an Italian Obama, if you like. But who could possibly
Extraordinary how potent cheap drama is. The latest season of Downton Abbey, which ended on Sunday, pulled off a rare double in its interpretation of the first world war — making you laugh one second at the wooden acting and the clunky script; the next second, making you cry at the suffering and tragedy. But
The late unlamented premier of Queensland Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen had an easy way with journalists, most of whom he perceived to be rabid pinkos. ‘Don’t you worry about that, my friend,’ he would say, when confronted with a hostile question. ‘You just leave it to me.’ In fact, he bequeathed Queenslanders quite a lot to
Ah, Tony Blair — you can’t keep a good hustler down. One minute he’s singing the praises of formaldehyde at the opening of a methanol power plant in Azerbaijan (£90,000 for a 20-minute talk), the next he’s accepting a gig ‘consulting’ in Kazakhstan. For his advice on ‘issues connected with policy and the economy’, he
In his last months as prime minister, Gordon Brown sat down and wrote a fan letter to a young British singer-songwriter. ‘With the troubles that the country’s in financially,’ he told her, ‘you are a light at the end of the tunnel.’ Last weekend that light officially went out: Adele has suffered a career-threatening vocal