Page 4
PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
The SpectatorThe British character M r Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said in a speech to the Con- federation of British Industry that he sought a consensus in the nation in...
Page 5
SPECTAT THE OR The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL
The SpectatorTelephone: 0171-405 1706; Telex 27124; Fax 0171-242 0603 TIME TO CHOOSE H ere it comes, one of those hard choices Tony Blair talks about. The United States is inching towards...
Page 6
POLITICS
The SpectatorHow the Europhiles plan to dumb down the debate BRUCE ANDERSON T he director-general's plot is unravel- ling. Adair Turner, the DG of the CBI, is determined to throw his...
Page 7
DIARY
The SpectatorRORY BREMNER M y hopes of a weekend lie-in were shattered last week when a friend told me he was taking part in the London to Brighton veteran car rally, and would I see him off...
Page 8
ANOTHER VOICE
The SpectatorThe difference between Mr Blair and Mr Brown MATTHEW PARRIS As with country, so with party: he is not dismissive of the political tradition which made him. A Scot, he has come...
Page 9
NO, MR PRESIDENT
The SpectatorMr Blair may want to be President of Britain, is tougher than he thinks SINCE the general election in May, there have been 86 diyisions in the House of Commons. The Prime...
Page 10
Second opinion
The SpectatorIN MY youth, now long-lost, thank God, I had a teacher who admired Bernard Shaw to the point of idolatry. He even adopted as his own Shaw's estimate of Shakespeare, as expressed...
Page 12
THE APPEAL LOUISE LOST
The SpectatorMark Steyn says American parents are 'nuts' to employ Britons like Miss Woodward New Hampshire I HAPPENED to be at Gate 132 at Newark airport when Louise Woodward received her...
Page 14
`SOME OF THEM LACK SENSITIVITY'
The Spectator. . . Betty Boothroyd tells Petronella Wyatt. She's talking about those new Labour women MPs WE HAVE read a great deal about the number of new women who have recently become...
Mind your language
The SpectatorYOU KNOW how it is when people start spelling out their names with 'T for Tommy, 0 for orange', and so on. I find this very confusing. A parallel case is the increasing habit of...
Page 16
ISAIAH: A DISSENTING VOICE
The SpectatorMichael Tanner thinks that some of the eulogies of the newly deceased philosopher have been excessive `OUR greatest thinker — straddling a ter- rible century' ran the headline...
SPECtATOR
The SpectatorHow to save yourself 51 trips to the library . . or over £41 on The Spectator If you're forced to share The Spectator with fellow students, then you'll know how difficult it...
Page 18
MR BLAIR'S WORST MISTAKE
The SpectatorSUM Simon reveals the internal New Labour politics behind the government's Formula One U-turn ORDINARILY, there are no prizes for spotting which of Tony Blair and rank Dobson...
Page 20
A COUNTRY TO DIE FOR
The SpectatorStephen Bates on why Belgium is a good place in which to be a murderer Brussels THE stately matrons of Brussels hug themselves a little tighter and clutch their snappy...
Page 22
THE RISE OF THE POLITOCRACY
The SpectatorAlice Miles opens a door on the cross party partying of the new political class IT WAS a week after John Major called the general election and Parliament had just been...
Page 24
AND ANOTHER THING
The SpectatorIs nice Mr Rusbridger becoming Britain's Porkie-in-Chief? PAUL JOHNSON y wife Marigold says, 'Do you have to go on about that nice Mr Rusbridger?' The answer is: yes — duty...
Page 28
. . . a seamless mind
The SpectatorMICHAEL thought seamlessly when so many of his contemporaries were keeping their ideas in watertight compartments. Up at Oxford, he had met the chief of the Washugga tribe, who...
CITY AND SUBURBAN
The SpectatorThe Chancellor with a song in his heart and a hole in his pocket CHRISTOPHER FILDES T he new Labour Chancellor took up his work with, as he told us, a song in his heart. He...
Impresario with . . .
The SpectatorI WENT to lunch with Michael Von Clemm in the Mayfair town house he had colonised for Merrill Lynch. French win- dows opened out onto a lawn and the catering was by the Roux...
Formula Two
The SpectatorMY racing correspondent, Captain Thread- needle, writes: Plans are afoot or ahoof in Portman Square, secretive headquarters of the Jockey Club, to have horse-racing reclassified...
Page 30
Simply wrong
The SpectatorSir: Sorry, dear Spectator, but you've really got it all wrong about Messina (Leader, 8 November). In 1955, ten years after the war, both France and West Germany were still...
That man again!
The SpectatorSir: Many a New Labour fellow-traveller or apparatchik is a Widmerpool (Letters, 8 November), but, because the law has not been clarified, it might be libellous to name them....
A social(ist) disaster
The SpectatorSir: In his very clear review of the life of Lord Callaghan, covering two pages of your edition of 8 November (Books), Alan Watkins omits a point which might be con- sidered of...
LETTERS Defender of the Faith
The SpectatorSir: I was surprised to learn that Britain is `an artificial creation of four nations initial- ly cemented together by the Protestant reli- gion, the Empire and war'...
Sir: R.H.A. Winchester writes (Letters, 8 November) that he does
The Spectatornot recognise any Widmerpools within the HAC of today. This is of course correct. Real Widmer- pools are to be found only in the regular Army, and then only in the Guards and...
Sir: Ideally today's Widmerpool candidate served as an officer in
The Spectatorthe second world war, became a Labour MP, thence to the Lords, is by nature a blusterer and a verbal bully, and, for me, the one man who fits this description is Denis Healey....
Page 34
A good Speaker
The SpectatorSir: When Robert Rhodes James castigated at length those of us who paid tribute to the life of Viscount Tonypandy (Not as nice as all that', 18 October), I was moved to com-...
Sir: Unattractive but vain, pompous, opin- ionated rather than knowledgeable,
The Spectatordefer- ential to power and politically correct atti- tudes, who are the modern Widmerpools? Surely, almost to a man, the bishops of the Church of England. Revd Anthony Hammond...
Favouritism
The SpectatorSir: Now Bernie Ecclestone has had his money back, can Labour voters have their manifesto commitment back too? If the tobacco companies and their friends haven't paid for this...
The sober truth
The SpectatorSir: Friendship is a fine thing but the 'cer- tain amount of alcohol' Alistair Cooke (Letters, 1 November) says he drank with Mr and Mrs Neil Hamilton 'over many hours' seems to...
Malice in high places
The SpectatorSir: The letters written in support of Nicholas Soames (6 November) were pre- dictable. I had hoped that someone would write recalling his verbal onslaught on Diana, Princess...
Come clean
The SpectatorSir: I notice with regret that E-Mail addresses are now being appended to some of the letters in your correspondence col- umn. Please may I make a plea that full addresses be...
Sir: I would like to make it clear at the
The Spectatorout- set that I do not approve of this Widmer- pool business. But a friend of mine has asked me to point out that the Widmerpool to end all Widmerpools is Richard Bran- son. Mrs...
Page 35
MEDIA STUDIES
The SpectatorWhy Mr Murdoch's price war is a war on quality STEPHEN GLOVER I have been asking myself again why Rupert Murdoch's price war is wrong. The question arises because three peers...
Page 36
James Lees-Milne
The SpectatorIf I were more learned in theology I would probably choose A. N. Wilson's Paul, the Mind of the Apostle (Sinclair - Stevenson, £17.99) as my first book of the year. It is...
CHRISTMAS BOOKS I
The SpectatorBooks of the Year The best and worst books of the year, chosen by some of our regular contributors Bevis Hillier Suppose Fred Astaire had agreed to teach a beginner how to...
Page 38
Jane Gardam
The SpectatorThe most impressive book I've read this year is Simon Schama's Landscape and Memory (Fontana Press, £16.99) which is a series of journeys through space and time examining the...
Deborah Devonshire
The SpectatorThe first was sent to me to review. It was a wretched volume on that most dreary of subjects, class. It was repetitive, dull, inaccurate and a thundering bore, so I sent it...
Anita Brookner
The SpectatorThe best English novels of the year were undoubtedly John Banville's The Untouch- able (Picador, £15.99) and Ian McEwan's Enduring Love (Cape, £15.99), both seri- ous, clever...
Philip Hensher
The SpectatorA bumper year for fine biographies of artists; Calvin Tomkins on Duchamp (Chatto, £25), Jenny Uglow on Hogarth (Faber, £25) and Ian Gibson's tactful, scrupulous life of that old...
Jonathan Cecil
The SpectatorI read two excellent — wildly different autobiographies: Frank Muir's — mellow, hilarious, at times nicely astringent (A Kentish Lad, Bantam, £16.99) — and Stephen Fry's painful...
Penelope Fitzgerald
The SpectatorIn The Scholar Gypsy (John Murray, £16) Anthony Sampson tracks down the lives of his grandfather, the respected first librarian of Liverpool University and great authority on...
Page 39
Alan Watkins
The SpectatorIn a period when television creates largely spurious 'constitutional experts', it is a pleasure to welcome books by two real ones: Rodney Brazier's Ministers of the Crown (OUP,...
Paul Johnson
The SpectatorThe handsome paperback edition of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musi- cians edited by Stanley Sadie in 20 volumes (Grove £350) has given me great pleasure this year. I...
Carole Angier
The SpectatorFor the second year in a row (and probably much longer, but my memory doesn't go back that far), not one of my Best Books of the Year is English. That must mean some Best...
Raymond Carr
The SpectatorI like books which deal with great events and great topics. Such a great topic is the theme of Richard Fletcher's The Conver- sion of Europe: From Paganism to Christian- ity,...
Francis King
The SpectatorThe best novel to come my way was Santa Evita (Anchor, £6.99) by the Argentinian Tomas Eloy Martinez — a superb reinven- tion of the life and, more importantly, the afterlife of...
Nicholas Harman
The SpectatorPatrick O'Brian's The Yellow Admiral (HarperCollins, £6.99), perfect for bed- time, drove me back addicted to earlier books in his learned, cranky saga. Orlando Figes' A...
Page 40
Something less than Frank
The SpectatorPhilip Hensher ALL THE WAY: A BIOGRAPHY OF FRANK SINATRA by Michael Freedland Weidenfeld, £20, pp. 438 W hoever it was who remarked that music journalism is largely produced by...
SUBSCRIBE TODAY-
The SpectatorRATES 12 Months 6 Months UK 0 £93.00 0 £47.00 Europe (airmail) U £104.00 0 £52.00 USA Airspeed U US$151 ❑ US$76 Rest of Airmail 0 £115.00 0 £58.00 World Airspeed . CI £107.00 0...
Page 41
From Salisbury to Southampton
The SpectatorFelix Pryor THE GENIUS OF SHAKESPEARE by Jonathan Bate Picador, £20, pp. 336 I was reading an interesting manuscript the other day. It was a diary of someone as yet...
Page 42
The myths of Old Labour
The SpectatorJohn Vincent FIFTY YEARS ON by Roy Hattersley Little, Brown, £20, pp. 404 F or most of my life the answer to any charge that Labour no longer bred states- men has been: look at...
THE SPECTATOR BOOKSHOP
The SpectatorAll the books reviewed here are available from THE SPECTATOR BOOKSHOP Telephone: 0541 557288 Facsimile: 0541 557225 We accept payment by credit card ACCESSNISA/AMEX/SWITCH or...
Page 43
Order, counter- order, disorder
The SpectatorCaroline Moore WAIT TILL I TELL YOU by Candia McWilliam Bloomsbury, £14.99, pp. 244 T he short stories in Wait Till I Tell You are, as the jacket flap tells us, 'bonded ... by...
Page 44
Any advance on a thousand?
The SpectatorNicholas Harman QUESTIONING THE MILLENNIUM by Stephen Jay Gould Cape, £12.99, pp. 190 I t's one of those known facts, isn't it, that millenniums are significant? For instance...
Page 45
Patience on a monument
The SpectatorSophia Watson A PERFECT WIFE by Cristina Odone Orion, 116.99, pp. 217 A government is in its sleaze-ridden death throes, the opposition is lying in wait, preparing for its own...
Page 46
All the stage's a world
The SpectatorMichael Portillo OPERA AND POLITICS by John Bokina Yale, L17.50, pp. 264 W hen I picked up this excellent book by John Bokina, I mistakenly thought it was called Politics and...
Most can manage God
The SpectatorDigby Anderson DOES CHRISTIANITY CAUSE WAR? by David Martin Clarendon Press, £30, pp. 226 D avid Martin wants 'to discuss a ques- tion which is actually asked'. Professor...
Page 48
Collapse of stout party
The SpectatorSimon Boyd REQUIEM FOR A FAMILY BUSINESS by Jonathan Guinness Macmillan, £20, pp. 390 J onathan Guinness sat on the board of the Guinness company from 1961 when he was 31 until...
Page 49
The number that never stops
The SpectatorThomas Blaikie THE JOY OF PI by David Blatner Penguin, £12.99, pp. 124 E ven those, like myself, largely befuddled by maths at school will remem- ber that moment of initiation...
Page 50
ARTS
The SpectatorNavarino's conflict of cultures Images of literature and art played a crucial role in this naval battle, writes David Crane F rom the sound of things lunch at the Karalis...
Page 51
Exhibitions 1
The SpectatorWake or celebration? Martin Gayford T his, or possibly next, year marks the 500th anniversary of Hans Holbein's birth. It isn't quite clear whether he was born in 1497 or...
Page 52
Exhibitions 2
The SpectatorJane Joseph: Drawn in Place (Morley Gallery, till 27 November) Matthew Radford: New Paintings (Todd Gallery, till 29 November) Shades of grey and urban life Andrew Lambirth...
Page 53
Opera
The SpectatorLe Comte Ory Die Entfiihrung aus dem Serail (Glyndebourne Touring Opera, Norwich) Ménage a trois Michael Tanner T o anyone who isn't in the thick of London's operatic...
Page 54
Salerooms
The SpectatorThe hard sell Susan Moore Here, 12 Picasso paintings sold for $164 million. The star lot was The Dream' of 1932, an ecstatically sensual portrait of the artist's 22-year-old...
Page 55
Dance
The SpectatorGrass (The Place) Naked passion Giannandrea Poesio striking feature of Javier de Frutos's choreography is his distinctive movement vocabulary that encompasses and, at the same...
Page 56
Theatre 1
The SpectatorTongue of a Bird (Almeida) Into the Woods (Haymarket, Leicester) Henry V (Barbican) In the clouds Sheridan Morley I have always been uneasy about plays in which people flap...
Page 57
Theatre 2
The SpectatorBeckett Shorts (The Other Place, Stratford) Dark moments James Treadwell D uring the interval between the two miniature trilogies that comprise this pro- duction, an elderly...
Page 58
Theatre 3
The SpectatorA vision made real Douglas Johnson T his is drama that encircles a story. But it is drama without a plot. The story is that of a man who has hired a woman to spend several...
Page 59
Cinema
The SpectatorGI Jane (15, selected cinemas) Close shave Mark Steyn S he's back and this time she's still angry. In the old days at MGM, they used to keep a calendar in the office with...
Page 60
Gardens
The SpectatorStick around Ursula Buchan H ow important it is for humanity always to make a virtue out of necessity. Now that affordable, highly-skilled profes- sional gardening help is as...
Radio
The SpectatorDumbed down or is it up? Michael Vestey I hesitate to call a programme a dog, as we have two of these animals at home. Flo- rence and Wilfred be their names, and as I write...
Page 61
Television
The SpectatorThe coma service Marcus Berkmann J eremy, thank you very much,' said Gavin Esler. 'We'll obviously come back to you later.' Of course we will, because on BBC News 24 that's...
Page 62
The turf
The SpectatorBrave little battler Robin Oakley A picture sometimes tells you several times more than a thousand words. The image of Singspiel hobbling from the Hol- lywood Park track in...
Page 63
Country life
The SpectatorShooting times Leanda de Lisle 0 ur brown labrador Pepsi isn't a very enthusiastic gun dog. He lolls by Peter as pheasant rain down around them. You half expect him to start...
High life
The SpectatorWild stories Taki a Kennedy-hater par excellence, I never thought I'd see the day when I would come to the defence of 'Camelot', but then I never figured on anyone as immoral...
Page 64
BRIDGE
The SpectatorThe full monty Andrew Robson A GRAND SLAM is worth bidding at Rubber bridge if the odds are two to one in your favour. North, Harry Dalmeny, must have rated his chances as...
Page 65
TODAY'S restaurant trade seems to have passed into the hands
The Spectatorof the empire- builders, headed by Sir Terence Conran and Marco Pierre White, and of these the greatest appears unequivocally to be Sir Terence. Already he has a dozen restau-...
Page 66
CHESS
The SpectatorTop heavy Raymond Keene AFTER RECENT TRIUMPHS, such as winning the European Team Championship, the England side suffered an unpleasant reverse at the World Team Championship...
ISLE OF
The SpectatorCOMPETITION ISLE OF I J SISLIE WELT SCOTCH %Flat URA j si tj ,,,, ,,, 13 ,,,, (. 1- , i Updated pilgrims Jaspistos IN COMPETITION No. 2008 you were invited to supply, in...
Page 67
No. 2011: Victorian values
The SpectatorI have just read a spoof poem which in style, sentiment and subject-matter is quintessentially and risibly Victorian. You are invited to supply such a poem (maxi- mum 16 lines)....
Solution to 1334: Well, well
The Spectatoraki a . t EIREICIr acne Ellarlein Lag Bonn EMI Ertori .0mo E 3 E A T . le CI Clallialla ..13 a An I as 111 E El CI i] 13 2t n I .11131:1 uninIMINIE1311/CIMEI...
CROSSWORD 1337: 1337 by Dumpynose
The SpectatorA first prize of £30 and a bottle of Graham's Late Bottled Vintage 1991 Port for the first correct solution opened on 1 December, with two runners-up prizes of £20 (or, for UK...
Page 71
YOUR PROBLEMS SOLVED
The SpectatorQ. A friend of mine is a very witty writer but her conversational potential is hampered, in my view, by an irritating personal habit. When she is reaching the punch line of an...
SPECTATOR SPORT
The SpectatorWorld Cup frenzy Simon Barnes IT IS the sportswriter's vanity to attend the biggest events, and I wasn't at the opening match of the World Cup in 1990 when the holders...