Features

Saturday

Freddy Gray

Time for his close-up

What’s the matter with Ralph Nathaniel Twistleton-Wykeham Fiennes? In pictures, he looks so self-conscious and morose. Maybe it’s just his acting face. In the flesh, though, he’s different. He is friendly. Midway through what must be an exhausting press junket at the Soho Hotel, he remains remarkably enthusiastic, and eager to discuss Coriolanus, his new film, of which he is both director and leading man. ‘It’s Shakespeare at his bleakest,’ he says, excitedly. ‘He’s not offering us, as he does in the comedies and in some of the histories, a sense that the future is full of hope.

Alex Massie

A strong dose of Devo Max

Edinburgh Something astonishing is happening in Scotland. For the first time in a political generation the Scottish Conservative & Unionist Party has an opportunity to become relevant to public life north of the Tweed. And it is all thanks to Alex Salmond, now the unlikely potential saviour of Scottish right-of-centre politics.The First Minister is a formidable politician who appreciates that politics is frequently pregnant with irony. This is one such occasion: the Conservatives, steadfast opponents of devolution, can be saved by a stronger dose of Home Rule. That is, Tories should insist on the third option which Salmond wants to offer voters in the referendum on independence. This would fall short of total independence, but increase financial powers for the Scottish parliament.

Saturday

Patrick Allitt

Elephant trap

The Republican voters of Iowa could not make up their minds. Months of flirting with different candidates preceded their decision to give Rick Santorum a moment in the sun. Hardly able to believe his own good luck, he could not help knowing, even in the euphoria of his virtual dead heat with Mitt Romney for first place, that he too would probably sink back into the obscurity from which he had only just emerged. He told his astonished supporters, gathered in a ballroom in Johnston, Iowa, ‘I’ve survived the challenges so far by the daily grace that comes from God.’ Romney remains the presumptive Republican candidate, having won in Iowa by eight votes, but suddenly Santorum looks like the principal alternative.

Tanya Gold

A dream of sorts

The Magic Kingdom, Disney World, Florida is such a violent battle between cynicism and innocence that a writer’s head may blow off. There are three Disney parks within screaming distance and beyond that, the wastelands of America. If it feels as though it sprouted out of the swamp fully formed, that is because it did. At the centre is Cinderella’s castle, modelled on Mad Ludwig of Bavaria’s Neuschwanstein, but madder. At the gate, a bag search. Your bag will be searched, even though you cannot fit a Kalashnikov inside a Goofy rucksack. Inside, a sign: ‘Meet the fairies. Wait time — 45 minutes’. Some days 100,000 people come here, and there are queues, fights, deaths.

Richard Dowden

After Mandela

It produced one of the greatest leaders of the 20th century. It fought a violent race-based dictatorship and replaced it with the most liberal constitution the world has ever known. Its song, a poignant Christian hymn, became South Africa’s national anthem. Since it came to power in 1994, about two thirds of South Africans vote for it. Yet now, as it lavishly celebrates its 100th birthday this week, it has a reputation for corruption and incompetence. So whatever happened to South Africa’s African National Congress? The ANC was formed as the Native National Congress by urban middle-class Africans and chiefs to protect and promote African interests after the Boer War, when peace between Boers and the British came at the price of African rights to own property and vote.

Philip Delves Broughton

Bankers or bust

Last year a single sector of British industry was responsible for generating 12 per cent of government tax receipts, with just 4 per cent of the workforce. You would think the government would be grateful to these hyper-productive worker bees, at a time when it needs every penny of tax. Solicitous even, as it is with ‘clean tech’ firms and Silicon Roundabout start-ups, which deliver nothing close to this kind of tax revenue. Not a chance. Because the sector is financial services, and three years after the financial world imploded — with Britain still plodding its way through the valley of economic death — banker bashing is still considered political gold.

Ian Thomson

Montserrat Notebook

Montserrat, a smoulderingly beautiful volcanic island in the British West Indies, is a 15-minute flight from Antigua. Apart from me, the only passenger on the propeller plane is a birdwatcher from England, who hopes to catch a glimpse of the ‘critically endangered’ Montserrat oriole. After the volcano eruptions of 1995 to 1997, the island’s old capital of Plymouth was entombed in 40 feet of ash, and people air-freighted in their thousands to Gatwick. There is now a swelling Montserratian community in Stoke Newington, north London. ••• As a British dependency (one is not allowed to say ‘colony’), Montserrat receives £10 million a year in British government aid and a further £8 million in grants.

Saturday

Anne Applebaum

Russia’s new dissidents

Alexei Navalny, the de facto leader of the demonstrators who thronged freezing Moscow on Christmas Eve, minces no words. On ­rospil.info, a website he founded that is dedicated to the investigation of local and municipal corruption, he introduces the topic like this: ‘Why is all of this necessary? Because pensioners, doctors and teachers are practically starving while the thieves in power buy ever more villas, yachts, and the devil knows what else.’ Nor does Navalny shy away from sharp visual imagery. Another one of his projects is to collect photographs of potholes, crumbling motorways, cracking bridges and other road catastrophes waiting to happen.

Freddy Gray

The audacity of Obama

Can the President really pose as the ‘fair shake’ candidate? Barack Obama knows that, after three unsuccessful years as president, he cannot again sell himself to the electorate as a messiah who brings hope and change. The hope that accompanied his election vanished as the American economy continued to sink. Little has changed. But the unpopularity of the Republicans — widely seen, even among conservatives, as America’s nasty party — has given Obama an opportunity to re-invent himself for re-election in 2012. He is now the president who wants to ‘give everyone a fair shot’: he stands for honest, hard-working people against big business; for blue-collar jobs against multinational asset-strippers; for working mothers against Washington lobbyists.

Dennis Sewell

Mission Impossible

At the height of empire, Britain used to send missionaries out to Africa and Asia to instruct the natives in personal hygiene, instil good table manners and preach the gospel. The occasional unlucky one found himself in a cannibal’s pot for his trouble; but mostly they won out, establishing themselves as the kindly, civilising arm of imperialism, founding schools and clinics, and converting the heathen. Back home, the public was jolly proud of them. British missionaries were both an expression and a source of Britain’s muscular national self-assurance. So what are we to think of ourselves today, now that we are on the receiving end of missionary attention?

Melissa Kite

On the wrong track

The high-speed rail link will spell disaster for the countryside – and for Cameron My outing with the Bicester hunt has already taken me over a five-bar iron gate when a lady on a handsome dapple grey pulls up alongside me. ‘You’re visiting, aren’t you?’ she says, as our horses snort and stamp. ‘You need to know that the next bit is called the black run.’ Seconds later we are hurtling through a fine, rainy mist over hedge after hedge. As we approach the first, I let out a tremendous shout which surprises even me. ‘Go on!’ I’m not yelling at my horse, a hireling called Ruben who is terrific; I’m yelling at myself.

Lloyd Evans

Meryl, Maggie and me

Director Phyllida Lloyd on Meryl Streep’s eerily accurate portrayal of the Iron Lady Maybe she’s lost interest. Perhaps she’s just knackered. Almost certainly she’s had a bellyful of listening to herself talking about her film, The Iron Lady. When I meet Phyllida Lloyd, who also directed the 2008 smash hit, Mamma Mia, I’m expecting to find the sparkling quintessence of Hellenic romance and frivolity. But she’s all in black, and all on her own, in the sort of under-lit room where freed hostages are debriefed. On the table sits a bit of half-finished lunch in a cardboard box. Next to it there’s a litre bottle of diet lemonade. As soon as I arrive she scoots out to grab a loo-break.

Interconnect

Travel Extra: Blue Danube – Cruising for Christmas

How was it for you? Christmas, I mean. Was it a week of joy and revelry? Or was it, like mine, a rather miserable few days of pretending not to be bored stiff? The solution may be to take a year off — take a cruise: somewhere that matches the character of the season. There is no place on earth more beautiful than the banks of the Danube in December. Fire scorches the mantelpieces of ancient schlosses, snow covers the forests, the lights glimmer in the waters below Budapest, and songs resonate around the drinking halls of Salzburg. What more magical way of spending Christmas?

Patrick Allitt

Travel Extra: Cruise – Breaking the ice

Alaska is best seen by ship, says Patrick Allitt – just so long as you choose the right season For two thirds of every year Alaska is a nightmare of ice and darkness. For 16 or 17 weeks, by contrast, it’s one of the most beautiful places on earth, and anyone who can find a way to get there should seize the opportunity. John Muir, the pioneering American environmentalist, cautioned young people not to see it too early in their lives because ‘the scenery of Alaska is so much grander than anything else of its kind in the world that, once beheld, all other scenery becomes flat and insipid’. So much of the country is inaccessible by road that the best introduction to Alaska is by ship.

Johnnie Kerr

Travel Extra: First steps on skis

When I was just starting out on the slopes, a slip of a boy with nothing but training skis and a dream, there were a number of issues I wish someone had warned me about: 1. Don’t let your mother kit you out The piste is really just a massive catwalk. I look all right these days, but I had to learn the hard way: skiing on a hot day in a puffy bright yellow onesy, goggles and a crash helmet is apt to cause scoffing from overhead chairlifts. 2. Know your limits Stick to the blue runs (the equivalent of a 20mph zone near a driving school) and try to restrain yourself from jumping. If you remember nothing else, remember this: never under any circumstances attempt a black run (the equivalent of the A9 between Inverness and Pitlochry), unless you’re sure you’re ready.

James Delingpole

Travel Extra: Ski – Man against mountain

A friend of mine called Mike Peyton had what he modestly describes in his memoirs as an ‘average war’. It included having his battalion of the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers overrun and wiped out in the Western Desert; nearly starving to death in an Italian POW camp; witnessing the bombing of Dresden; escaping from his camp to fight for several months with the Soviet army, personally killing many Germans. I asked him what it had felt like. He replied: ‘You know when you’re on a black ski run and you look down and you say: “Can I manage this?” Then you get down and you think: “How did I manage that?” That’s what it’s like. If you come through the other side, war is a fantastic experience.

Kate Eshelby

Travel Extra: Return to Zimbabwe

Who would have thought that a pig and an elephant would become best friends? ‘When we began looking after Kimba, an orphaned elephant, she took an instant liking to Whisky, our pig,’ says James Varden, my guide. ‘Elephants are social animals, so they slept together. Whisky was extremely protective of Kimba and panicked if she was not there.’ I last came to Zimbabwe in the 1990s when tourism was blooming — so I’m interested to see what Mugabe has done to his country. Some friends criticised me for coming here, asking why I was supporting a dictator. ‘Most Zimbabweans want peace and to get on with life,’ James says. ‘When tourists come it gives us hope. And although Mugabe gets the visa money, the ordinary people benefit far more.

Charles Moore

Travel Extra: Safari – The ride of a lifetime

It’s not easy seeing the Masai Mara on horseback, says Charles Moore – but it’s also impossible to forget On the third day, we left our original camp to ride 30 miles to the next. There were 15 of us, including our leader Tristan Voorspuy and two Masai grooms. We had all gathered for a moment in a salt-lick when a dik-dik, one of the smallest of the African antelopes, shot out from a bush under our feet. The horses reared and bucked, each frightening the others. One of our party, Sophie, fell on to the hard ground, and cried out in pain. She had broken her wrist. Much of the Masai Mara is remote from proper roads, let alone from hospitals and doctors. Tristan did what he could by intermittent mobile telephone to find the Flying Doctor.

Saturday

Sinclair McKay

Silent night

There is one carol that has particular resonance for Londoners: ‘Silent night, holy night’. Just the idea of it can bring on an involuntary shiver of pleasure. In the 36 or so hours between Christmas Day and Boxing Day, after a solid month of the eldritch screeches of office parties and Westfield shopping, we city slickers are suddenly granted something more valuable than gold. The profound quiet — both in the darkness and the daylight — gives us a glimpse of the unsuspected soul of the city. The silence also tells us something about our everyday lives that, even subconsciously, some of us might want to change.

Sam Leith

Blast through Boxing Day

Video games are an ideal gift – especially the violent ones Not long ago, Salman Rushdie took to Twitter to say, ‘Passed this billboard: “From the Makers of Doom… Rage!” What does it say about us that these are the names of games?’ The author of Fury had a point. Video games are now bigger business than movies, and the biggest business in video games is war: exploding aliens, terrorists being shot in the spine, guns, guns, guns. To those who don’t know their FPSs from their STDs, it looks like a bewildering miasma of regressive male adolescent nonsense. Which, of course, it is.