Features

Saturday

Piers Paul-Read

Misogyny is not just for men

‘Was it Vauvenargues or Chamfort,’ asks Pierre Costals in Henri de Montherlant’s novel Pity for Women, ‘who said that one must choose between loving women and understanding them?’ Most men would rather love women than understand them, and most women would rather be loved than understood. Women particularly resent men taking a scalpel to dissect, let alone disparage, the feminine psyche, which makes it difficult for a man to write about misogyny; yet there are signs that it is on the rise and, since good relations between the sexes is so fundamental to human happiness, it is perhaps pertinent to ask why.

Rod Liddle

We should all be free to call each other ‘coconut’

I asked my local greengrocer for a couple of blood oranges last weekend. They were to go with an orange cake I’d baked for some left-wing friends who were coming over — a nice left-wing cake, I thought. No flour or butter in it (both right-wing ingredients, historically), just ground almonds, eggs, sugar and oranges. A cake eaten in parts of Spain which were implacably opposed to the Falangists, and also enjoyed in Morocco which is, de facto, a left-wing place because it’s in Africa. Or that’s what I thought at first. Then I noticed a line in the recipe that said I had to examine the cracked eggs with a magnifying glass to make sure there were none of those tiny red bits of embryonic chicks which you sometimes get with eggs.

Saturday

James Forsyth

Osborne is becoming the true Tory leader

There’s one subject that you don’t raise with David Cameron’s circle if you want the conversation to last: the election result. They don’t like to be reminded that they failed to win a majority. The Cameroons have been persuading themselves that coalition government is the best possible result. No. 10 has been dubbed ‘the love nest’ by the rest of Whitehall. The Tories inside gush about their new Liberal Democrat colleagues. But just next door, there is a man who is still obsessing about how to win a Tory majority. George Osborne has digested the election result, does not regard it as a success, and is seeking to learn from it how best to create a Tory parliamentary majority in this country again.

Fraser Nelson

The oracle speaks

Robert Chote’s Institute of Fiscal Studies is widely seen as the source of all wisdom on economic matters. So what did its director make of the Budget? Fraser Nelson asks him A British Budget is never over until Robert Chote has spoken. It’s unclear just when this was inserted into Britain’s unwritten constitution, but his status was obvious from the audience gathered to hear his verdict on Wednesday. Policymakers, economics editors, broadcasters — all had come to note down, and take as gospel, what this friendly, slightly gangly 42-year-old had to say. ‘It’s amazing how one man came to wield so much power,’ muses a Treasury source. Just what to do about it has been on the Tories’ minds for some time.

Mark Palmer

A social pariah in the shires

We like our little cottage in a pretty Wiltshire village on the River Kennet — and we just hope the village likes us. It’s hard to tell. ‘I see you’ve been doing a lot of work on the house. So, have you finally moved in or are you [slight pause, crinkle of nose] weekending?’ asked one of the village’s grand dames. ‘Oh, yes, we’re very much here and loving it,’ I said. There was no need to mention that London is where we live, Wiltshire is where we flop, and that we don’t even get down every weekend. Don’t tell anyone, but we are guilty of fortnighting. Even so, we made the cut for drinks (6.30to 8.30 p.m.

Jrh Mcewen

Fowler’s match: 100 years on

This week marks the centenary of what might just be the greatest cricket match of all time: Fowler’s match, the epic battle between Eton and Harrow in 1910. This week marks the centenary of what might just be the greatest cricket match of all time: Fowler’s match, the epic battle between Eton and Harrow in 1910. On 8 and 9 July that year, Lord’s was packed to the gunwales. It was the social and sporting event of the year. Back then, Eton vs Harrow mattered a lot — and not just for the public-schooled elite. Everyone supported one school or the other. That year, Harrow won the toss and elected to bat. On a soft but not difficult pitch, they scored 232. The opening bowlers for Eton, R.St.L. Fowler (the captain) and A.I. Steel (whose father A.G.

Rod Liddle

Meet the real Diane Abbott — metropolitan, faux-left and middle-class

Years ago I used to spend one evening a month in some dank and frowzy local authority hall attempting to prevent crazed and scary lesbians from becoming my local MP or councillor. This was during my time as a Labour party activist in south London — and attendance at the staggeringly dull ward meetings was compulsory for a small group of us who hoped that one day the party might select candidates who had not whizzed in from the Kuiper Belt or the Oort Zone, that strange, dark and cold place on the edge of our solar system from which all manner of trouble emanates.

William Cook

Belgium meets its Waterloo

Last weekend, on a windswept plain about ten miles south of Brussels, 3,000 grown men dressed up as soldiers to re-enact the Battle of Waterloo. Performed every five years, on the original battlefield, this noisy extravaganza attracts more than 50,000 visitors, and on Sunday I was one of them. It was an extraordinary experience, more vivid than any movie. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. Yet what’s most intriguing about this surreal Belgian spectacle is what it reveals about our muddled idea of Europe — and the people in the biggest muddle are the Belgians themselves.

Ed Howker

Death of a dandy

In the final interview before his death last week, Sebastian Horsley told Ed Howker about being ‘the high-priest of the dandy movement’, a heroin addict and a self-confessed fraud His artwork was described as ‘dreadful’, his poetry as ‘pointless’ and he was denied entry to the United States for what the authorities called ‘moral turpitude’. But Sebastian Horsley excelled at failure. When a play of his memoirs opened this month at the Soho Theatre, the book had fallen out of print. Even his death last Thursday, of a heroin overdose, was completely accidental — otherwise, as friends said, he would not have passed up the chance to pen a lengthy suicide note.

Tom Bower

The real villain of BP

At Tony Hayward’s inquisition in Washington last week, the hapless BP chief executive resisted the temptation to condemn his predecessor, Lord Browne of Madingley, by name. Instead, pressed repeatedly to explain why BP had breached safety regulations on over 700 occasions, Hayward described 2006 as the corporation’s worst year. That was John Browne’s last full year as chief executive. He left the job humiliated, having been exposed for signing an untruthful court statement. Ever since, Browne has defended that dishonesty as a unique aberration. But as the American investigation of the Gulf catastrophe develops, the blame for the poisonous legacy inherited by Hayward will increasingly be heaped on Browne.

Saturday

Charley Boorman

The connoisseur’s guide to Paris

Charley Boorman is an ambassador for the American Express® Platinum Card and a Cardmember. Here he shares his experiences and the one thing to do in Paris. The French capital is a melting pot of cultural diversity and is jam-packed with things to do and see. It is little wonder then that 45 million people visit the City of Light every year. ‘Whenever I journey away from home, I am always looking for new and exciting adventures,’ says Charley. ‘I love seeing cities and places from a different perspective. On a recent trip to Paris, I discovered the one thing you just can’t miss if you are in town: a private tour of the city in a quintessentially French car, the Citroën 2CV. ‘First, we did the classics.

Melissa Kite

Why I decided to kill Tamzin Lightwater

V sad... No, it’s no good, I can’t talk like that. Only she can, which is why the retirement of Tamzin Lightwater is very sad because she is so much funnier than I could ever be. I know this because I once saw an irate posting on the internet under the heading ‘Who is Tamzin?’, by a man outraged by the suggestion that she might be me. This was ridiculous, he said. Tamzin was funny and clever which proved she could never be a woman, least of all that ghastly Melissa Kite. Well, I can understand that. Tamzin had a lot of extremely loyal followers who were intensely protective of her. Since she announced her retirement — and my involvement — I have been inundated with (v lovely) messages from people begging me to bring her back.

Gerard Baker

Germany’s eurozone dilemma: should they stay or should they go?

As the euro continues to dance on the brink of calamity, the people responsible for the deepening debacle have finally come up with a scheme that will save it once and for all. It’s a cunning plan that draws heavily on that old joke about a European heaven and hell. You’ll be familiar with it: in heaven the police are British, the cooks are French and the engineers are German; while in hell, the police are German, the cooks are British and it’s all organised by the Italians. The euro version goes like this: fiscal policy is run by the Greeks, the Spanish and the Italians; interest rates are set by a central bank in thrall to politicians in France and Italy, and it is all organised by a Portuguese socialist and a Belgian.

Max Hastings

How much defence can we afford?

Max Hastings says that the stakes are high for Liam Fox’s strategic defence review: but we must maintain our current troop numbers and cut in other areas to pay for them Britain’s armed forces are entering a dangerous period of upheaval. The new government’s strategic defence review (SDR) will impose swingeing cuts, and the only uncertainty concerns where the axe will fall. Defence Secretary Liam Fox has announced — in the Sunday Times, rather than to parliament, that the Chief of Defence Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, will step down in the autumn. Stirrup will therefore remain as a lame duck while the SDR is carried out. This is deliberate.

Rod Liddle

Our kids should be learning Arabic not French

Even the French know the game is up, says Rod Liddle. What’s the point in us teaching their language when, in the end, it will be as obsolete as Cornish It’s a strange thing. Once they have been relieved of office, they start talking a modicum of sense. First we have Ed Balls suggesting that all foreigners should go home because the River Tiber is beginning to foam with much blood, just like Enoch — a Labour supporter himself for a while, remember — once advised. And now we have the former minister Chris Bryant telling the French that their language is absolutely pointless and that nobody should bother learning it, not even the French. Teach the kids Mandarin, Spanish, Portuguese and Arabic instead, he said.

Jaakko-Kooroshy

The Afghan ‘mineral strike’ is just spin

This week, just as things were looking at their bleakest in Afghanistan — growing casualties and the damning report on the links between Taleban leaders and the Pakistani secret service — the Pentagon pulled a rare piece of good news out of the hat: Afghanistan, it turns out, is not only a poppy-growing paradise but also a mining El Dorado. Around $1 trillion worth of minerals has been discovered (says the US Geological Survey) and according to enthusiastic US and Afghan officials, this stunning potential could make mining the future backbone of the Afghan economy. Well, hooray, then let’s not pull out so hastily, people have begun to say.

Andrew Gimson

The Tories’ history man

Andrew Gimson talks to Alistair Cooke, the godfather of the Cameroons, about Dave’s temperament and Hilton’s penchant for ponchos As David Cameron solicits approval for deep spending cuts, he has assured the public: ‘We’re not doing this because we want to, we’re not driven by some theory or ideology.’ Cameron remains very anxious not to be taken for a closet Thatcherite, who beneath the cloak of necessity is pursuing ideological politics. If the Prime Minister wished to make a properly Tory case for cutting himself free from an outdated programme, he could do worse than turn to Alistair Cooke, who played a part in the political education of most of the Tory authors of the coalition government.

Charlotte Moore

Aunt Barbara’s fireplace

Charlotte Moore on her intrepid relative, who numbered many of the great Victorians — Rossetti, Gertrude Jekyll, George Eliot — among her closest friends ‘A young lady... blessed with large rations of tin, fat, enthusiasm, and golden hair, who thinks nothing of climbing up a mountain in breeches, or wading through a stream in none.’ So Dante Gabriel Rossetti described his new friend Barbara Leigh Smith, later Bodichon. ‘Aunt Barbara’ stood out, vibrant even among a pretty exceptional bunch. She was an artist, traveller, journalist, feminist agitator, co-founder of Girton College, architect of the Married Women’s Property Act, philanthropist, plantswoman and friend.

Saturday

Boris Johnson

More power to the press

It has for many years been a commonplace of political analysis that journalists have grown in stature as we politicians have shrunk. But the full reality of our reduced condition was rammed home to me, yet again, on the morning after the general election. On the invitation of the BBC I went on telly to comment on the prospects of an exciting new Lib-Con coalition. I was falteringly trying to give my opinion when my interviewer, Jeremy Paxman, broke in. ‘Haven’t you got a city to run?’ he said with his trademark testiness. ‘Then why don’t you go off and run it!

Douglas Murray

We’ll never know the truth of Bloody Sunday

On 30 January 1972, a 41-year- old man named Barney McGuigan stepped out from behind a block of flats in Londonderry. Some witnesses saw a white handkerchief in his hand, others remember his hands being empty. Across the road, a soldier from the 1st Battalion of the Parachute regiment was seen by another soldier going down on one knee to a firing pos-ition. A bullet entered McGuigan’s head from the back. The head exploded, as one witness told the judge, ‘like a tomato’. Thirty years after this incident the soldier accused of firing that shot, Soldier ‘F’, testified in London. In the humming air-conditioned room, a mortuary photo of McGuigan’s head was shown to him at the request of the family’s lawyer.