The taste of freedom
Michael Wigan says that British farmers and consumers would be better off – and better fed
Features
Saturday
Land of the free
Paul Robinson says we can learn a lot about decency and independence from plucky Canada You’ve probably heard that story about the Inuit having 50 words for snow? Well, the sign of a genuine Canadian is that he has 50 words for doughnut. When a glacial wind is howling through Moose Jaw and Medicine Hat
A question of loyalty
Brussels When push comes to shove, I think I know which side Neil Kinnock is on. Eight years in Brussels – as propriétaire of Boris Johnson’s crummy old digs at 76 rue van Campenhout – have not really gone to his head. Yes, he appears dutifully on the BBC as vice-president of the European Commission
They love to hate us
We are going through one of those horrible and debilitating periods in our history when we are convinced that everybody hates us. Racked with grief, we may even begin to hate ourselves – and thus climb into bed at night praying that we might wake up as Turks. Or Irishmen. It is partly the Eurovision
Television creates terrorists
Driving through the streets of Baghdad last week, I was struck by the number of satellite dishes for sale everywhere. After years in which the appliances were banned by Saddam, freedom is sprouting all over the skyline. There is still an almost total absence of local media, so that Iraqis know nothing of what is
Saturday
Quick-fix solutions
Here’s a random sample of my postbag: an invitation to a mixed exhibition of nine artists’ interpretation of ‘focus’ through painting, photography, digitisation and computer manipulation; notice of a show of photo-text, photo-document and photo-juxtaposition-cum-montage pieces about HIV and place; and the press release for an installation of scarlet mobility scooters which is supposed to
‘I let go of life’
A purple-coloured Korean saloon was gaining on us fast as we zigzagged the wrong way up the motorway. My toes ached as I forced the accelerator into the floor. The jeep gamely shuddered and rattled as the exhaust dropped off, the whine of the engine turning into a desperate roar. When I was growing up,
Growing old gracelessly
My parents died quickly and hygienically, without any sort of precursory illness. I have no siblings, aunts, uncles or cousins whose descent into sordid infirmity might have obliged me to visit them. I have a small platoon of children, it is true, but they all live with their mothers and have saved me from childhood
British churchmen back Mugabe
It is remarkable for Britain to be visited by a saint. But that was surely our good fortune last week, when Pius Ncube, the Archbishop of Bulawayo, passed through London. This gentle and soft-spoken former goatherd is a man of great holiness. In a country where churchmen have kept quiet, Ncube has consistently spoken out
Why we must veto this alien constitution
The history of the Conservative party as the constitutional party has ensured that the issue of Europe is far more troublesome for us than for our political rivals. It was ever thus. The early struggles over entry to the Common Market were fierce, although relatively gentlemanly. Dissent rumbled on in opposition and during Margaret Thatcher’s
Saturday
Luxury Goods SpecialWild-boar hunting
Don’t worry,’ said our guide, Niels Bryan-Low, his eyes bright with malice, ‘the only time a wild boar is really dangerous is if you get between a mother and her baby.’ A few minutes later, crunching across a patch of orange ferns, there was blur of movement to our right. Niels froze, sniper-style, and we
Luxury Goods SpecialJigsaws
If you thought that wooden jigsaw puzzles were a quaint blast from the past, long consigned to the dustbin of recreational history, along with sticks, hoops, tops and diabolo, let me assure you that it ain’t necessarily so. First thought up by Thomas Spilsbury, a printer of maps, in the early 1760s, the original ‘dissections’
Luxury Goods SpecialMonocles
I have been toying with the idea of founding a Cyclops Club, drawing its membership from the dwindling band of individualists who persist in defying the zeitgeist of Cool Britannia by wearing a single eyeglass, commonly known as a monocle. We are a species threatened with extinction and we probably qualify for victimhood, as an
Luxury Goods SpecialGold
Golden days, golden child, as good as gold, heart of gold, golden oldie – from the cradle on, gold plays an important part in our language and imagination. The word ‘gold’ is used in praise, celebration, congratulation and reward. Yet few of us have any notion of where it comes from, or even why gold
Luxury Goods SpecialBusiness class
I have always really, really hated flying. The first whiff of an airport and I’m scared out of my wits. But not only am I terrified; I also loathe and resent the contempt in which passengers are generally held by the airlines – the way we’re herded like cattle and the way we’re expected to
Luxury Goods SpecialTreasures in Heaven
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in the fullness of Time, even Rolexes rust. Fast cars, foxy clothes, fancy wines and fine jewellery are fun while you can enjoy them, but when you find yourself facing Eternity, you can’t take those goodies along. When push comes to Judgment Day, all such trinkets turn to trash.
Luxury Goods SpecialNew ways to keep Old Masters
It seems that hardly a week goes by without the threat of another great work of art leaving these shores. Certainly Tate director Sir Nicholas Serota must think so. Just as he announces, with palpable relief, that a private benefactor has stepped forward and promised £12.5 million to ‘save’ Sir Joshua Reynolds’s celebrated portrait of
More than men with bells
Those of us who worked at the Arts Council of Great Britain, some 40 years ago, were as often as not introduced, even by our own families, as being at or from ‘the British Arts Council’. In vain did we explain that lumping these two institutions together was utterly inaccurate, that the Arts Council brought
Something fishy for Haddock
If there is any justice in the world, Captain Duane Haddock of US special forces is due a medal. He was, we can reveal, the first coalition soldier to find something approaching concrete evidence of Saddam’s evil arsenal of weapons of mass destruction; to wit, a trailer believed to be a mobile bio-weapons laboratory found
Road-map to Hell
Colin Powell has said that he can see signs of progress over the Middle East road-map. Israel, he noted, had taken measures which ‘constitute the beginning of the road-map process’. Well, that’s just terrific, Mr US Secretary of State, because we all know that the big issue is that Israel has not accepted the road-map,