From John Banville’s TNR review of The Letters of Samuel Beckett, 1929-40: In London, Beckett considered a number of possible day jobs, toying with the notion of becoming an airline pilot or–wait for it–an advertising copy writer. (There is food for a dinner-party game, devising the jingles that Beckett might have thought up for washing
Like James, I thought there’s some interesting stuff in David Brooks’ column today. On the other hand there’s also a fair quantity of stuff with which one might take some issue. To wit: Today, if Republicans had learned the right lessons from the Westerns, or at least John Ford Westerns, they would not be the
Say it ain’t so, Harriet! Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman has denied a report she would fight for the party leadership, as speculation grows over Gordon Brown’s position. She insisted the story was “simply not true” and under “no circumstances” would she be a candidate. She told the BBC’s Today programme: “I don’t want to
There’s a telling line in this story from the Mail which (if true!) gets to the heart of Gordon Brown’s sense of himself. Apparently he was unhappy with the line of questioning being pursued by a recent TV interviewer, leading Brown to complain, off-camera, that “You are impugning my integrity.” Now if ever a complaint
The latest news should obviously have you feeling Very, Very Afraid: Mexico has revised down the suspected death toll from swine flu from 176 to 101, indicating that the outbreak may not be as bad as was initially feared. Health Minister Jose Angel Cordova told the BBC that, based on samples tested, the mortality rate
Last week it was Dolly Parton in this (newly created!) slot; this Saturday it’s the turn of another great country diva, Emmylou Harris. I saw her at the Royal Concert Hall in Glasgow last year and, truth to say, it was probably only a 6/10 gig. I think Norm’s assessment of her performance in Manchester
Generalisation of the Day comes from Jay Nordlinger at National Review: In my experience — and I’m just generalizing here — the better the person, the more positive he is about George W. Bush. Well! Look, I don’t hate Dubya and I was glad he defeated Al Gore, but the notion that liking the 43rd
Iain Martin – who’s been blogging has been splendid lately – is right: the Tories should be worried that Labour might unseat Gordon Brown and fight the next election under new leadership. It’s hard to see how even this could win the election for Labour, but at the very least it might limit the losses
As part of an excellent back-and-forth with Daniel Larison on the question of patritism, Noah Millman asks: Can one hold that both Marsall Petain and General de Gaulle were French patriots? I think the answer to this one has to be “yes.” You can’t hold that both were right, but you can believe that both
The other day, Danny Finkelstein asked if Peter Mandelson has “given up”. He was reflecting upon Mandelson’s wistful declaration that his career “has not been as successful as I wished. You have certain goals and I never acheived them. That’s a disappointment for me.” Danny professed himself astonished by this, arguing that by any measure
Good lord, it’s like the last thirty years never happened: the Irish government wants a new law to prohibit blasphemy. If passed then, astonishingly, the courts will be asked to decide if the supposed victim has been sufficiently outraged for there to have been an offence. Remarkable. And expensive too since it could cost you
If they can panic in Washington DC, then, for heavens’ sake, we can have some hysteria here too: The first Britons confirmed to have caught swine flu have been discharged from hospital after recovering. This will obviously disappoint the BBC, who’ve been hoping that Swine flu will make up for the great disappointment that was
Karl Rove’s latest column is quite something. He writes that: Another emphasis in the Obama 100 days talking points is that the president is a decisive leader. However, Mr. Obama is enormously deferential to Democrats in Congress and has outsourced formulation of key policies to them. He appears largely ambivalent about the contents of important
Like Mr Larison I wish Mr Salam had not cut this paragraph from this (excellent) piece on the popularity of the paranoid style: So despite the fact that Obama has been a church-going Christian for most of his adult life, more than a tenth of the country believes that while roaming the streets of Jakarta
It’s true you know, Barack Obama does want to un-make the United States of America. First he takes a quick cricket lesson from Brian Lara, now he’s reading Joseph O’Neill’s (splendid) Netherland – a novel that is, at least in part, about cricket in New York City. Could anything be more un-American? Of course not.
The shocking thing about the government’s defeat this afternoon is that it can be described as a shock at all. And parliamentarians wonder why they are viewed with, to put it mildly, disdain? Anyone with an ounce of commonsense can see that it is grotesque to tell the Gurkhas that they may fight in the
No-one would argue that Barack Obama is without ego. Then again, that’s also true of most politicians. Mark Steyn, however, objects that Obama “seems to see himself as Nelson Mandela and the previous regime as the old National Party”. This seems a stretch given that the evidence proffered is Obama’s quip that We cannot pretend
Stephen Walt and Dan Drezner each list ten films they think merit inclusion in a Foreign Policy Film Festival since they shed some light, one way or another, upon international relations. Well, that’s a parlour game everyone can play. No need to hold tenure! Professor Walt suggests that war movies, spy capers and propaganda films
Well, you gotta hand it to them. The Republican party’s base finally got rid of Republican-In-Name-Only Arlen Specter. The Pennsylvania Senator has had enough and isn’t going to take it anymore. He’s now a Democrat. And so, a heretic was cast into the wilderness and the conservative movement offered great hosannas of joy. Better to
Identity Cards would be a Bad Idea even if there were any reason to suppose they would work. So I’m intrigued by the suggestion Pete mentions that this multi-billion pound absurdity might be cancelled. Because of the state of the public finances of course. I doubt it will be abandoned since a) government value control