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Fresh air
The SpectatorI t has become a cliché in recent days to contrast the gloomy jowls of Gordon Brown, performing emergency surgery to his spending plans in the Commons, with the beaming...
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Tory!
The SpectatorTory! Tory! Cameron is coming! Hurrah, hurrah! PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK M r David Cameron was elected leader of the Conservative party in a ballot of members, beating Mr David...
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MAX HASTINGS
The SpectatorT he avalanche of words on last week’s Adair pensions report seemed to miss one significant point. Retirement is likely to be delayed to 67 or even later. Yet there is no...
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nOunCS
The SpectatorANDY M C SMITH Why do my Labour friends send their children to private school? A good friend said something strange the other day. Her daughter, who is approaching her final...
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THE SPECTATOR’S NOTES
The SpectatorCHARLES MOORE S o now conservatives, and particularly Conservatives, must all change ‘the way we look, the way we feel, the way we think and the way we behave’. It is a tribute...
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The triumph of tradition
The SpectatorPeter Oborne says that David Cameron has arrived at exactly the right time to reshape British politics by reclaiming the centre ground for the Tories B ritish politics froze for...
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Use your head
The SpectatorTheodore Dalrymple believes that wearing proper hats — not hoods or woollen beanies — could encourage self-respect and civility in the young W hy do men behave so badly...
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Ancient & modern
The SpectatorThe principles behind ‘synthetic phonics’, the latest educational reading nostrum, have been around for thousands of years. Heaps of papyrus exercises, exercisebooks (and a...
The great art bubble
The SpectatorWilliam Cash on how record prices are making the contemporary art market an insider trader’s dream L ast week, on my second evening at Art Basel Miami, the Cannes Film Festival...
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The best v. the worst
The SpectatorWilliam Shawcross says that premature pull-out from Iraq would be a betrayal of everything we stand for J ust over a year ago Charles Duelfer was almost murdered by a suicide...
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Mind your language
The SpectatorThe plum, says Mrs Beeton, ‘is not a nourishing fruit, and if indulged in to excess, when unripe, is almost certain to cause diarrhoea and cholera’. That is from the first...
How Europe betrays the poor
The SpectatorNeil O’Brien says that the EU will offer the Third World nothing at the world trade talks next week N ext week ministers from 150 countries will meet in Hong Kong to try to...
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Lessons from Latin America
The SpectatorDaniel Hannan on why South Americans don’t want to imitate the European Union E uro-diplomats are grinding their teeth in frustration. For 15 years they have been urging the...
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‘Asians don’t hug’
The SpectatorEric Ellis on the background to the hanging in Singapore last week of an Australian drug-dealer Singapore N o one outside Singapore’s steeltrap judiciary knows for sure...
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ANOTHER VOICE
The SpectatorMATTHEW PARRIS My war in Spain with the the water terrorist L ast winter, from the town of Manresa in Catalonia, I wrote on this page about an ancient house in the Pyrenees; a...
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CITY AND SUBURBAN
The SpectatorCHRISTOPHER FILDES I get a bung from the unjust steward — he must be due for an audit G ordon Brown is a son of the manse, so he will have been brought up on the Parable of...
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Austria and the Jews
The SpectatorFrom the Austrian Ambassador Sir: In Austria it is illegal publicly to deny the Holocaust (‘Let Irving speak’, 3 December). ‘Words are deeds,’ said Sigmund Freud, and in Austria...
All style, no substance
The SpectatorFrom Nigel Tipple Sir: Peter Oborne excelled himself in his final Cameron campaign address (Politics, 3 December). ‘A major presence on the national stage’, ‘massive...
Red or dead
The SpectatorFrom Sir Peregrine Worsthorne Sir: Unquestionably, as Oleg Gordievsky points out (Letters, 26 November), the Soviet Union, long after it had ceased to believe in communism,...
Duel nationality
The SpectatorFrom Clark McGinn Sir: The last duel in Scotland (and in fact the UK) was not fought by James Landale’s forefather (Books, 26 November). It took place on 2 March 1899 in the...
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AND ANOTHER THING
The SpectatorPAUL JOHNSON Odd man out in the age of ‘celebs’ T he world of mammon has never been more blatant and noisy. A businessman, a caricature plutocratic monster, pays himself a...
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INVESTIGATION
The SpectatorWhat Britain can learn from China Andrew Neil fears that Britain might sink with the dirigiste Europeans rather than rise to the capitalist Chinese challenge O f all the...
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A talent for the unexpected
The SpectatorPhilip Hensher S OME P OETS , A RTISTS AND ‘A R EFERENCE TO M ELLORS ’ by Anthony Powell Timewell Press, £25, pp. 400, ISBN 1857252101 A novelist needn’t know anything, but...
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Dics of fun quots
The SpectatorBevis Hillier A few years back I had an argument with Ned Sherrin (now, but not then, a friend), which I have to say he won. Reviewing the first edition of his Oxford...
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Nearly a burnt-out case
The SpectatorCaroline Moore M ELVILLE : H IS W ORLD AND H IS W ORK by Andrew Delbanco Picador, £25, pp. 415, ISBN 033037107X ✆ £20 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 W ould-be artists clinging...
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Challenged at the top level
The SpectatorSarah Burton BALD: F ROM H AIRLESS H EROES TO C OMIC C OMBOVERS by Kevin Baldwin Bloomsbury, £9.99, pp. 229, ISBN 0747569509 ✆ £7.99 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 C oming as I...
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Christmas art books
The SpectatorDavid Ekserdjian T he only halfway festive offering in this year’s crop of art books is Laurence Kanter and Pia Palladino’s Fra Angelico (Yale, £40). Even in these secularised...
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Floundering in the shallows
The SpectatorFrederic Raphael N O M AN ’ S L AND by Graham Greene, with a foreword by David Lodge, edited by James Sexton Hesperus, £9.99, pp. 114, ISBN 184391414X ✆ £7.99 (plus £2.45 p&p)...
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How not to lose your shirt in China
The SpectatorJonathan Mirsky O NE B ILLION C USTOMERS : L ESSONS F ROM THE F RONT L INES OF D OING B USINESS IN CHINA by James McGregor Nicholas Brealey, £14.99, pp. 312, ISBN 1857883586 ✆...
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A brace of noble piles
The SpectatorJohn Martin Robinson R OUND A BOUT C HATSWORTH by the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire Frances Lincoln, £12.99, pp. 176, ISBN 0711225370 ✆ £10.39 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655...
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A hedonist of the old school
The SpectatorAllan Massie N ORMAN D OUGLAS : A P ORTRAIT edited by Wilhelm Meusberger, Michael Allan and Helmut Swozilek Edizione La Conchigli, Via le Botteghe, Capri, Euros 37, ISBN...
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Alternative reading
The SpectatorSurprising literary ventures Gary Dexter A NSWERS TO C ANCER (1962) by William Gaddis Image courtesy of Washington University, St Louis The William Gaddis canon is limited to...
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Let’s get serious
The SpectatorStephen Pettitt on the importance of reversing the marginalisation of classical music O n 4 November, in the middle of the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s 80th birthday concert for...
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Exhibitions
The SpectatorBeguiling visionary Andrew Lambirth Samuel Palmer: Vision and Landscape British Museum, until 22 January 2006 T his year is the bicentenary of Samuel Palmer’s birth, and the...
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From tax to culture
The SpectatorFelicity Owen T he splendid extensions to London’s art institutions have been widely celebrated yet the renaissance of Somerset House has barely made news beyond the...
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Reclaim our streets
The SpectatorJosie Appleton A new Arts Council-funded book suggests that members of the public should urinate on national monuments all in the name of ‘corporate subversion’, of course. DiY...
Martin Fuller’s latest exhibition can be seen at the Adam
The SpectatorGallery, 24 Cork Street, London W1 (until 22 December). Fuller was born in Leamington Spa in 1943, and in the Sixties went to the Mid-Warwickshire and Hornsey Colleges of Art,...
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Pop music
The SpectatorWeeds and wets Marcus Berkmann W hat makes you cry? I hesitate to ask this question in The Spectator , some of whose readers will not knowingly have blubbed since Mafeking....
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Pillars of the community
The SpectatorMark Steyn March of the Penguins U, selected cinemas M arch of the Penguins , a documentary film about penguins on the march, was a smash hit in America, and as such became one...
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Change of heart
The SpectatorToby Young Sunday in the Park With George Menier Chocolate Factory Emperor Jones The Gate When You Cure Me The Bush W hen I started writing this column in 2001 I didn’t have...
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Dance
The SpectatorShorn of drama Giannandrea Poesio Edward Scissorhands Sadler’s Wells Theatre F ew performance-makers possess Matthew Bourne’s ability to create a striking opening sequence....
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Opera
The SpectatorChallenge accepted Michael Tanner Falstaff English Touring Opera, Cambridge Violet Guildhall School V erdi’s Falstaff is an opera which I have usually found it easier to...
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Television
The SpectatorCover your ears Simon Hoggart W alking With Monsters (BBC1, Thursday) is an astounding produc tion, making Walking With Dinosaurs look as homely as Animal Hospital . Gosh,...
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Radio
The SpectatorAddicted to Powell Michael Vestey R adio Four marked the centenary of the birth of Anthony Powell by serialising for Book at Bedtime his novel From a View to a Death , a...
Stars of the future
The SpectatorRobin Oakley R ussia’s leader Vladimir Putin said the other day that he had got on better first time at George Bush’s ranch than he had expected. ‘He must have thought: “What’s...
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Sliding back to anarchy
The SpectatorTaki New York M y last week in the Bagel and then back to good old London. And it’s just as well I’m still here, or some of Sunny Marlborough’s children might take a swipe at...
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Suits you
The SpectatorJeremy Clarke F or the first time in five years I have a brand-new suit. Charcoal grey with wide grey and blue pin-stripes. Singlebreasted. By Christian Dior. I got it in a...
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Looking for Leipzig
The SpectatorJames Delingpole David Hearsey, DFC, was a bomber pilot. Here he recalls participating in a raid over Leipzig in his Handley Page Halifax in February 1944. W e set out on an...
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Miss Mealy-mouth
The SpectatorJaspistos In Competition No. 2421 you were given an opening couplet of a poem, ‘I knew a girl who was so pure/ She couldn’t say the word manure ’ and invited to continue for a...
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SPECTATOR SPORT
The SpectatorComparing colossi FRANK KEATING E ngland’s cricketers came rudely down to earth in the rose-red sandstone of Lahore, and they remain in the old Punjab for another week as they...
YOUR PROBLEMS SOLVED Dear Mary
The SpectatorQ. Recently I agreed to a male friend of mine’s suggestion to take out a couple that we both know. I said that I would pay for half the dinner as the couple had entertained me...