There are people sent to depress us, and prominent among them is Mark Steyn, whose speciality is apocalyptic predictions. Following his bestseller America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It, which was about the collapse of all of the Western world with the exception of the United States, he is now predicting
What is the opposite of a riot? It must be the serenity of the Isle of Bute. This island, close to Glasgow in the firth of Clyde, is not merely riot-free, it is almost spookily calm. When I visited it last week for the first time, I heard vague talk of a drug problem in
At about 5.15 p.m. on 9 April 1953, Wilma Montesi, a 21-year-old woman of no account, leaves the three-room apartment in a northern suburb of Rome that she shares with her father, a carpenter, and five other members of the family and never returns. Thirty-six hours later her body is found by the edge of
Anyone who thinks that a stable and loving family background is the key to a happy life had better read this book; for its protagonist, now 80 years old, was rejected as a baby by his unmarried mother, looked after by a doting and doted-on grandmother until he was four, and then, inexplicably (given that
The author describes this book as an ‘auto- biographical novel’, but since it would be quite beyond me to distinguish fact from fiction in this hair-raising account of his childhood years, I propose to treat it as if it were all true, especially as I can’t imagine anyone making any of it up. The author
Sarah Palin was once a contender: a no-nonsense mom and a serious politician. Now she’s just a greedy celebrity with a grasping family, says Alexander Chancellor Sarah Palin’s ignorance and inarticulacy are so constantly on display that she can’t just be simulating them to strengthen her popular appeal. They are also attributes in which she
So Anna Nicole Smith — the poor, talentless Texan girl who by virtue of the most enormous bosom became a stripper in a Houston clip joint and married one of its regular customers, a wheelchair-bound oil billionaire 63 years her senior — is to be the subject of a new opera that will receive its
The man who invented the breathalyser more than 50 years ago was called Robert Borkenstein, a former policeman who had risen from the ranks to become head of the Department of Forensic Studies at Indiana University. He was very proud of his achievement. ‘If we can make life better simply by controlling alcohol, that’s a
It’s odd that a writer as excellent and long-established as Ian Jack hasn’t ever written an actual book but has stuck doggedly to the humble trade of journalism, of which this volume is a collection. It’s odd that a writer as excellent and long-established as Ian Jack hasn’t ever written an actual book but has
I’m just back from New York, where I met friends from the New York Times. Their morale, they said, was low. This is a typical complaint of journalists everywhere; for not only are they seldom content with their lot but, more than people in any other trade, they love to analyse and expound upon their
The third volume of Simon Gray’s incomparable ‘smoking diaries’ opens with a bold statement of intent to drop the habit that has sustained and comforted him for more than six decades. The third volume of Simon Gray’s incomparable ‘smoking diaries’ opens with a bold statement of intent to drop the habit that has sustained and
No foie gras was served at the banquet for Nicolas and Carla Sarkozy at Windsor Castle last week, which was hardly surprising, since the Prince of Wales, who was very much in evidence, had recently joined the swelling ranks of those who regard the force-feeding of ducks and geese as a barbaric practice. In February
The story goes that my great-grandfather Murray Finch Hatton, MP for Lincolnshire in the 1880s and later 12th Earl of Winchilsea, shot an African tracker in the leg while big-game shooting in Kenya. Mortified by what he had done, he rushed forward and gave the tracker a golden guinea. The man limped off, but soon
The first thing that came into my mind after reading Gone to New York was a song — ‘Why, oh why, oh why, oh/ Why did I ever leave Ohio? Why did I wander to find what lies yonder/ When life was so cosy at home?’ This splendid, nostalgic song from the 1953 Leonard Bernstein
This, as its title suggests, is a poignant book. In his account of the world’s last great polio epidemic in Cork, to which he fell victim at the age of six, nearly 50 years ago, Patrick Cockburn is neither self-centred nor self-pitying. He shows journalistic detachment in discussing the history and character of this terrifying
Andrew Marr is a great adornment to his — our — trade. He is terribly clever and well-read, and I am sure he could have done something serious and useful with his life. But he decided early on that journalism was the thing for him. Despite his first-class degree in English at Cambridge, it quickly
It had never occurred to me that India might have an obesity problem, but apparently it does. Just before leaving India this month to return to Britain, where I found an obesity panic going on — see this week’s cover story — I chanced upon a story in the Times of India headlined ‘Obesity costs