Society

Thursday

Jemima Lewis

I wish I had the strength of character to be a liar

It’s wrong, I know, but there’s something thrilling about a really humungous lie. It’s wrong, I know, but there’s something thrilling about a really humungous lie. Consider, for example, the sheer brass neck of Alan McIlwraith — or Captain Sir Alan McIlwraith KBE, DSO, MC, as he prefers to be known. This mysterious young war hero was pictured recently in the celebrity magazine No. 1 sipping champagne at a charity function. He was dressed in full military regalia, his breast clattering with medals, accompanied by a woman described as his wife, ‘Lady Shona’. Sir Alan’s decorations were, he claimed, won on the battlefields of Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Northern Ireland and

Roger Scruton

An unhappy birthday to Sigmund the Fraud

Roger Scruton says that the century and a half since Freud’s birth has been marred by his imagined diseases of the mind Freud was born 150 years ago, on 6 May 1856, the same year as Wagner finished work on Die Walküre, the work which dramatises all the themes, from dreams to incest, that were to fascinate Freud. There is no doubt in my mind that it was Wagner, not Freud, who got things right, and that a knowledge of Wagner’s masterpiece casts serious doubts on Freud’s claims to originality. However, Freud’s reputation remains as great today as it was in my youth, when the Kleinians, the Jungians and the

Paul Johnson

Space is illusory and time deceitful

‘Nothing puzzles me more than time and space,’ wrote Charles Lamb, ‘and yet nothing troubles me less, as I never think about them.’ ‘Nothing puzzles me more than time and space,’ wrote Charles Lamb, ‘and yet nothing troubles me less, as I never think about them.’ Well I do; more and more, as becomes someone of my age, for as Dr Johnson said, ‘At seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest.’ Space is fiendishly difficult. I get lost in the intricacies of String Theory and the debate about whether there are nine dimensions or ten. Much easier to believe in miracles. I recently heard the great Oxford mathematician Sir

Wednesday

Paul Johnson

A man need not be a Byron to get by

It is a curious fact, well attested by history, that a downright ugly man need never despair of attracting women, even pretty ones. The recent uproar over John Prescott and his mistress is a good example. Of course this may have been a case of power acting as an aphrodisiac. Henry Kissinger, a keen student of such matters, has always insisted that power, or even mere office, is a sexual magnet. I recall him leaning across a dinner table, at a time when the antics of the late Alan Clark were in the headlines, and seeking from me an explanation of Clark’s success. He was particularly struck by the conquest

Matthew Dancona

‘Everything we think about the wars on terror is wrong’

Philip Bobbitt tells Matthew d’Ancona, we must start from scratch if we are to beat the terrorists Cometh the war, cometh the guru. South of Baghdad, insurgents shoot down a US helicopter, killing two US servicemen, days after five British military servicemen died when their Lynx was brought down in Basra. Iran’s President scornfully rejects the EU’s latest desperate bid to stop him building nuclear weapons. A parliamentary report on the 7 July bombings reveals terrible intelligence errors. The Afghan foreign minister complains that Osama bin Laden is still at large in Pakistan. A war on many fronts: but are we winning? Step forward Philip Bobbitt, a tall, immaculately dressed

David Rennie

A Cold War card index is Romania’s best hope

Bucharest In 1950s Romania, as Stalinist terror descended, a mania evolved for hunting down ‘foreign spies’. Early victims included former staff at the British military mission in Bucharest, some of whom were shot for their services between 1944 and 1947. Even doormen at the mission, or secretaries, were sentenced to hard labour. As the terror spread, to have frequented the British Council library in Bucharest was enough to bring charges of ‘espionage’. A minimum sentence might involve two years’ canal-digging near the Black Sea. Half a century on, Romania is set to join the European Union. Stalinist evil is supposed to be long gone, replaced by the improving banalities of

Alec Russell

Was this the day McCain won the White House?

Lynchburg, Virginia John McCain has definitely had happier days than last Saturday. As he mounted the podium at Virginia’s Liberty University, once memorably described by its founder, his long-time enemy, as a ‘bible boot camp’ he had a wistful, almost haunted expression. When it was his turn to address his audience of starry-eyed Christian students, there was none of the usual McCain passion and verve. ‘Let me just say that I wish you all well,’ he said. It was hardly the speech to send them out afire to change the world. Rather it was his host, the university’s founder and chancellor, the Revd Jerry Falwell, resplendent in academic robes, who

Jemima Lewis

Go on: buy a tomato plant, not a frock

My fiancé is engrossed in a book called Happiness by the economist Richard Layard, from which he reads aloud pertinent statistics. ‘People are happiest in the year they get married,’ he will lugubriously announce, ‘and after that it’s downhill all the way.’ Or: ‘Having children does make you happy, but only for two years.’ Or, plangently, as the evening light begins to fade: ‘Most people are happiest at the end of the day.’ His normal bedtime reading is The Lawn Expert by D.G. Hessayon which, it seems to me, has a rather more uplifting effect on his mood. But the study of happiness is very au courant, having recently been

George Trefgarne

Capital gains from the super-rich

Suddenly it is starting to look as if the period after 1914 — when London lost its position as the financial capital of the world to New York — was an aberration Suddenly it is starting to look as if the period after 1914 — when London lost its position as the financial capital of the world to New York — was an aberration, a downturn in an otherwise upward trend. Stroll around Chelsea, Belgravia and Holland Park and see the flash cars with blacked-out windows, waiting with chauffeurs inside. Listen to the foreign voices echoing down Bond Street; chat to estate agents, or to bankers or art dealers or

Jonathan Davis

Is this the peak of the bull market?

Conventional wisdom in the investment world is that it is hard, if not impossible, to call the really important turns in the stock market. You will struggle to find a professional investor who admits to being any good at market timing, and even more so to find a finance professor who will do anything but deplore those who have the presumption to try. In Winning the Loser’s Game, his brilliant analysis of the investment business, the American consultant Charlie Ellis speaks for the wise when he counsels private investors, ‘Market timing is a sin. Don’t ever try it.’ Warren Buffett agrees. The 24,000 shareholders who made the annual pilgrimage to

Allister Heath

Manhattan is full of bargains

There we were, hopelessly lost in the New York subway. The clock was ticking; we were supposed to meet some friends for lunch and there was no option but to swallow our pride and ask for help. I approached two young women loaded with shopping bags. ‘No idea, mate. We’re from Brighton.’ When we eventually crawled out of the subway, my wife and I decided to play a new game: spot the British shopper. The women were especially entertaining — they hunt in packs, stay in slightly grotty hotels in Midtown, camp out at Bloomingdale’s, Macy’s and the cheap electronics shops on Broadway, and generally behave like children in a

Jaspistos

Faking it

In Competition No. 2443 you were invited to supply a letter from someone on holiday pretending they are having a good time when in fact they are not. This was tricky because some of the incidents described were beyond the pretence of enjoyment. Simon Massey, for instance, led off with: ‘See Naples and die, they say. Well, you know how literal your father is — or was, as we shall now have to get used to saying.’ I was amused by Adrian Fry’s hotel in Chechnya — ‘wonderfully intimate: local couples can’t afford more than a couple of hours here but certainly enjoy it’ — and J.H. Smith’s unBellocian hiking

D J-Taylor

Delivering the goods

Listing page content here The funniest episode in Leo McKinstry’s biography of Sir Alf Ramsey (1920-99) finds its subject — the time is 1973 — reaching the end of his tether with the talented but undisciplined Manchester City forward Rodney Marsh. ‘I’ve told you that when you play for England you have to work harder’, Sir Alf harangues his wayward protégé. ‘I’ll be watching you and if you don’t, I’m going to pull you off at half-time.’ ‘Christ!’ Marsh mutters. ‘At Manchester City all we get at half-time is a cup of tea and an orange.’ Here in the twilight of Ramsey’s career, this ‘typical piece of cockney wit’ marked

Robert Beeston

The double life of a people

Listing page content here The crowd of bearded men looked and sounded as though they meant it, punching the air in unison and chanting the familiar slogans: ‘Death to America!’, ‘Death to Israel!’. A quarter of a century after the revolution that swept the Islamic regime to power the official message in Tehran had barely altered. America remained the ‘Great Satan’ and Britain, Iran’s traditional foe, still merited the title ‘little Satan’. But a chance encounter with one of the participants in this supposedly spontaneous, but evidently well-rehearsed, demonstration revealed a very different side to the country. ‘You are from England?’ he said, beaming. ‘You are welcome. My cousin lives

Allan Massie

The fate of the Running Man

Listing page content here Evelyn Waugh told Ann Fleming that ‘Tony Powell’s latest volume [Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant] is a sad disappointment — only three pages of Widmerpool’. That was in 1960. A few years earlier, my classics master, urging me to read Powell, said, ‘The pre-war novels; I don’t like this chap Widmerpool.’ Few Powell fans would agree. Most are on Waugh’s side, delighting in the monster. Still, I’ve been thinking about a question posed by Colin Donald in a paper given at last December’s Anthony Powell Centenary Conference. ‘Does Widmerpool “add up” as a character?’ he asked. ‘He certainly has a varied career, progressing from awkward, unpopular boy to

Saturday

The Spectator

Letters to the Editor | 13 May 2006

Listing page content here Mosley is no EU heroFrom David MeikleSir: In his review of Blackshirt: Sir Oswald Mosley and British Fascism by Stephen Dorril (Books, 6 May), David Pryce-Jones makes the disgusting suggestion that those who support the European Union, like Kenneth Clarke MP, are somehow continuing the work of the fascist Oswald Mosley. To try to make a link between the EU (and those who support the idea) and the ugly ideology of fascism is plain ridiculous. European nations came together, after the horrors of Nazism nearly conquered and destroyed Europe, to form an organisation that would ensure we would never go to war with one another again.

Dot Wordsworth

Mind your language | 13 May 2006

This year we celebrate the centenary of the coining of the word aeroplanist. It meant the driver of a flying-machine, a device that had been invented three years earlier. After two decades of struggle, aeroplanist gave way to pilot, which in this sense arrived in 1907. Interestingly enough, sky-pilot, meaning a clergyman, predates the invention of heavier-than-air flight. The first recorded use of sky-pilot is in this very magazine, in the issue of 30 December 1893. Another aerial usage from 1906 that failed to fly was aerodyne, which seemed at first more stylish than flying-machine. The word that settled down as the English for the Wright brothers’ invention was aeroplane.

Jeremy Clarke

Just the ticket | 13 May 2006

I’ve got my ticket. I can’t quite believe how I managed it — I keep studying it under a magnifying glass and holding it up to the light to make sure it’s real — but I’ve got one. And like a lover who has to introduce the subject of the loved one into every conversation, I tell people who aren’t remotely interested in Saturday’s FA Cup Final all about it. It’s a kind of revenge. Village life consists mainly of people pinning you up against a dry-stone wall and telling you things that neither concern nor interest you. Have you ever driven through a rural area and remarked how village

Frank Johnson

Hugo Chavez: a man with the perfect name to be a Cameroon MP

Two weeks ago I mentioned here the Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez; I think he is the international Left’s best hope at present: anti-American without being bin Laden. He causes trouble for the United States, but in the old-fashioned Cold War way for a Latin American: delivering two-hour speeches about gringo imperialism to various mobs, attributing Latin American poverty to American corporations, being lauded by the former Mrs Jagger, and being written up by the evergreen Richard Gott in the Guardian, who did the same for Che Guevara so many years ago. All Camden could rally to such a leader. Soon he will receive the greatest honour which the British Left

Simon Nixon

Jumping on the low-fat bandwagon

Simon Nixon says food companies will make money out of the government’s obsession with obesity – and consumers will pay Sometimes life really does imitate art. It’s less than 10 years since the satirist Chris Morris made his infamous episode of Brass Eye in which he persuaded a host of self-important politicians and celebrities to stand in front of the camera and utter lurid warnings about the risks of ‘cake’. This dangerous substance was said to be having a devastating effect on children. ‘One girl threw up her own pubic bone,’ claimed a Tory MP who went on to ask questions about ‘cake’ in Parliament.Well, cake is now firmly back