Rupert Murdoch showed a ruthless strain in his personality yesterday. Here are some anecdotes about the man from Craig Brown. Diary, Craig Brown, The Spectator, 12 September 1987. As TUC delegates bore on about Nye Bevan and the Tolpuddle Martyrs, journalists attempt to remain sane by exchanging fond memories of their own mythological figures, the
The news that gas and electricity bills will rise by 18 and 16 per cent respectively will have many reaching for a bottle of scotch just to keep warm. At an immediate level, this is another act in the ongoing drama about rising living costs; but it runs deeper too. British Gas says that the
Continuing our series of posts marking Mervyn Peake’s centenary, here is a piece written by Peake’s friend, Rodney Ackland, after the former’s untimely death in November 1968. Thit and thefuther by Rodney Ackland, The Spectator, 20th December 1968 Any reader who has once been lost to the world in the stone fields and labyrinths of
Frank Dikötter’s history of Mao’s great famine took the Samuel Johnson prize last. The prize is the most prestigious non-fiction award in Britain, carrying a cheque for £20,000. It also gets an hour long special on BBC2’s The Culture Show, worth its weight in pixels to publishers of challenging and largely unmarketable books. The programme
Released by News Corporation this afternoon: “Statement from Rupert Murdoch, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, News CorporationLondon, 6 July, 2011 – Recent allegations of phone hacking and making payments to police with respect to the News of the World are deplorable and unacceptable. I have made clear that our company must fully and proactively cooperate
It is Mervyn Peake’s centenary this week and there have been parties thrown in his honour across the country. Gormenghast lours over this revelry, as if a still breathing creation has outgrown its dead creator. This seems only natural: Anthony Burgess once described the Gormenghast trilogy as one of the ‘most important works of the
Jarvis Cocker on Writing and Publishing his Lyrics from FaberBooks on Vimeo. Faber&Faber’s excellent The Thought Fox blog carries an interview with Jarvis Cocker on how to write lyrics. The key, it seems, is to record the mundane, especially if it happens in Sheffield; although I suspect you need more than a pair of horn
The news that 1,400 jobs are to be shorn from Bombardier’s train manufacturing plant in Derby has sent the worlds of business and politics into collision. Ostensibly, these job losses are the result of the Department of Transport’s decision to award the Thameslink renewal contract to German company Siemens. And unions warn that the 12,000
What a good idea. Faber have launched a Waste Land app. Among the numerous features is T.S. Eliot reading from The Waste Land. Listening to it, I was reminded of the opening lines of Four Quartets (Time present and time past/ Are both perhaps present in time future). There seems something fitting about Eliot’s patricianly
At the end of last month, the British Library signed a deal with Google to digitise 40 million pages from its collection. Today, Tristram Hunt has written a piece in the Guardian welcoming the change, but saying that, when it comes to history, it’s best to dirty your hands in an archive. He has set
Michael Moorcock, China Miéville, Hilary Spurling and AL Kennedy celebrate the life and work of Mervyn Peake, who was born 100 years ago next Saturday. Editor of the Times James Harding talks to his predecessor William Rhys Mogg about the latter’s memoirs (£). ‘What did you think of Ted Heath? “Well, I liked him, but
In a post over at the Staggers, defence and security expert Matt Cavanagh has compared and contrasted Barack Obama’s review of US counter-terrorism policy and the coalition’s recent update of the Prevent strategy, together with David Cameron’s professed ‘muscular liberalism’. Here are his insights: ‘The new (American) strategy contains a fairly detailed discussion of the
The PSNI is clear that last night’s riots on Castlereagh Street, East Belfast, were not linked to sectarian paramilitary activity. Rather, this was a ‘spontaneous demonstration’ against the police. As I wrote last week, gangs on both sides of the Ulster divide have been targeting the police in recent months; and they rely on exploiting
The news that the EU seeks a budget of £1 trillion between 2013 and 2020 inspired disbelief rather than ire. President Barroso’s almost childlike insistence that the proposal was ‘relatively small’ was amusing, certainly not alarming. It’s a classic EU trick: pitch for 5 per cent and a string of crazy financial measures (including a
There is no rest for IDS. Yesterday he was in Madrid talking about youth unemployment and immigration and today he turns his attention to child poverty. Of all life’s accidents, the accident of birth is the most decisive. It is said that a child’s prospects are determined by the age of five, and numerous other
The Booktrust has cancelled the John Llewellyn Rhys prize this year because it is suffering a ‘lack of funds’. £13m was cut from the Booktrust’s annual grant from the Department of Education was cut earlier in the year and the organisation has been forced into retrenchment. Now, it is a pity that this widely respected
The Greek parliament has passed a vital bill to approve Prime Minister Papandreou’s austerity package, which was imposed by the European Union. The bill passed by 158 votes to 138, which suggests that some of those on the opposition benches abstained. The markets rose this morning in anticipation of the bill’s safe passage; the
VERDICT: Once again, Ed Miliband caught David Cameron out on an obscure point; this time about NHS reform. But, it was much too narrow a line of questioning and he had nothing to say on today’s other issues (Greece, Ken Clarke’s knife crime u-turn or tomorrow’s strikes etc.). Indeed, Labour was silent on the issue
Ed Miliband is learning. He has written a blog on Thursday’s strikes and it is plain that he has learnt from the errors he made during the March against the Cuts by associating himself with militancy. First, he places himself firmly on the side of parents who will be inconvenienced by Thursday’s strikes: “The Labour
The 24 members of the IMF board are meeting to see if they can agree that Christine Lagarde should be the organisation’s next leader without a formal vote. Lagarde has already gained formidable backing. 40 per cent of the membership had indicated its support before today’s meetings, while her closest competitor, Mexican Augustin Carstens, had