Tattoo 2
‘Are you sure you want me to carry on with this, Mr Dimbleby?’
The Spectator
Thursday
Kafka
‘It’s not Kafkaesque, it’s normal.’
Fish 2
‘It’s such a perfect day, I’m glad I spent it with you...’
Instant
‘Instant? Certainly, madam. Take a seat and someone will be with you in a minute.’
Panda 2
‘We are very happy with the Chinese-themed room but could you remove the panda, please.’
Blue
‘Could that be from his blue period?’
Cut
‘It’s the director’s cut.’
Houseprices
‘I can’t see us ever having a boring housebuying anecdote of our own.’
Celeste
‘Where is everyone? It’s like the Marie Celeste in here.’
Energy 4
‘Want to switch energy suppliers?’
Shareholder
‘In these straitened times, our shareholders need more money.’
Stalking
Barometer: David Dimbleby is not alone (unfortunately)
Whose tattoos? David Dimbleby, 75, has had a scorpion tattooed on his right shoulder. Some more tattoo-wearers who perhaps ought to know better: — Lady Steel, 71, wife of former liberal leader David Steel (pink jaguar on left shoulder). — Vanessa Feltz, 51 (photographed with Bob Marley on left arm, although it’s not known to
Letters: Cyclists reply to Rod Liddle, and an MP replies to Hugo Rifkind
Rod rage Sir: Like most cyclists, who also own a car and pay road tax, I enjoy a pedal along the lanes where I act with consideration for other road users, and the vast majority of them treat me likewise. Cycling in traffic is quite scary but now I know that Rod Liddle could be
Portrait of the week | 14 November 2013
Home EDF Energy said it would put up prices by 3.9 per cent. BT Sport spent £897 million on the rights to show Champions League football for three years, provoking a 10 per cent fall in BSkyB shares. The rate of inflation fell from 2.7 per cent to 2.2, as measured by the consumer prices index; as measured
Vive la France! Everyone else, led by Obama, is capitulating to Iran
President Obama’s flagship foreign policy of ‘leading from behind’ has had some surprising consequences. Not least among them is that France now appears to be leading the free world. During the current set of negotiations in Geneva between Iran and the P5+1 countries, America, Russia, Britain, China and Germany seem eager to declare a breakthrough.
Books and Arts – 14 November 2013
Spectator writers pick their books of the year
Mark Mason JFK’s Last Hundred Days by Thurston Clarke (Allen Lane, £20) brilliantly captures Kennedy’s entire life through the prism of his final months. Deliberately thrusting his crotch for an official portrait, musing about assassination (he even acts it out in a game of charades, covered in ketchup), folding his monogrammed handkerchiefs to hide the
Monday
Lest We Forget
One remarkable fact of recent years is that even as the veterans of the first world war have died and as those who served in the second world war have headed through their eighties and beyond, the memory of the 20th century’s two most devastating wars has continued to be honoured with thoughtfulness and devotion.
