Family

Saturday

Jonathan Mirsky

The ultimate price

Lesley Downer is one of the most unusual authors writing in English. Years ago, determined to become an expert on the Japanese geisha, ultra-sophisticated entertainers and hostesses who are neither prostitutes nor courtesans, she became a Kyoto geisha herself and wrote Geisha: The Secret History of a Vanishing World. Now she has written her second novel (the first being The Last Concubine), the story of Hana, a young samurai wife in the late 1860s. She lives in Edo, soon to become Tokyo, the capital of Japan. The country is being ripped apart by civil war — vividly narrated here — and, no longer isolated, is adopting enough Western ways to

Saturday

D.J. Taylor

Dogged by misfortune

Unusually for a work of fiction, Tim Pears’ new novel opens with a spread of black-and-white photographs, part of an ‘investigator’s report’ into a fatal collision said to have taken place on a Birmingham dual carriageway in the summer of 1996. Unusually for a work of fiction, Tim Pears’ new novel opens with a spread of black-and-white photographs, part of an ‘investigator’s report’ into a fatal collision said to have taken place on a Birmingham dual carriageway in the summer of 1996. The victim is a six year-old girl named, Sara Ithell. Her father, 35 year-old, Owen, loses both his right hand and his livelihood as a jobbing gardener to

Saturday

Byron Rogers

The stuff of legend

This book could have been a classic. It starts as an account of the author’s family, no better, no worse than many such; but then, amongst the grandparents and the uncles, one figure starts to shoulder his way through the rout of characters, slowly at first, but then, perhaps two thirds of the way through, you realise he is dominating everything. Macdonald Hastings, the author’s father, is one of the great comic, and tragic, figures of our time. Without him, the book would have been Henry IV, Parts I and II without Falstaff, a chronicle of events and people doing extraordinary things. With him, the writing quickens, the perception deepens,

Saturday

Jonathan Mirsky

Throw it in a stream

I know a British couple with a Chinese daughter, pretty and fluent in English. Of course the little girl was adopted. It is necessary to steel one’s self against three agonising thoughts: how did such children come to be here, why does one never meet an adopted Chinese boy, and what does one reply when the adopted Chinese child asks, ‘Why did my real mother let me go?’ There is already substantial information on this subject, including television documentaries, none of it mentioned by Xinran. No one has exposed the scandal of Chinese orphanages, the starting point for the traffic in babies to foreigners — there are now well over

Andro Linklater

The greatest rogue in Europe

On 11 November 1743, the most sensational trial of the 18th century opened in the Four Courts in Dublin. The plaintiff, James Annesley, claimed that his uncle, Richard Annesley, the sixth earl of Anglesey, had robbed him of immense estates in England and Ireland worth £10,000 a year. The scale of the theft and the rank of the alleged thief would by themselves have made the case exceptional. According to Viscount Perceval who was present, it was ‘of greater importance than any tryall ever known in this or any other kingdom.’ But what really attracted attention was James Annesley’s allegation that in 1727, the year he became heir to the

Thursday

James Forsyth

Cameron and the power of the bully pulpit

I must be one of the very few people who would genuinely like to see David Cameron give another speech on chocolate oranges. There was much mockery of it but it contained a very important point: there are some things that a business can do that have negative externalities to which the appropriate response is not taxation or regulation but social disapprobation. So, it was good to see Cameron promising both to use the power of his office to call out companies that sell age inappropriate products and to make it easier for people to protest against such behaviour. There are other areas where I expect social pressure could be

Monday

Peter Hoskin

The Tories’ new poster campaign is a massive improvement over the last

I know there’s a danger of expending too many words on poster campaigns, so just a quick post to flag up the designs the Tories launched this morning.  There’s one of them above, and two more based on the same theme – “I’ve never voted Tory before, but…” – which you can see here. To my eyes, at least, they’re a massive improvement over the last, graveyard poster: refreshingly positive, while also attacking The Way Things Are Now.   Now, I know there are CoffeeHousers who liked the Death Tax poster precisely because it got down ‘n’ dirty, taking the fight to Labour.  But, despite their sunnier front, these latest

Saturday

Peter Hoskin

Cameron brings some clarity to the table

Maybe it’s just a slow Saturday, but the Conservatives’ latest WebCameron video (see below) strikes me as one of the most effective yet. The pitch is straightforward: make an appeal to people who voted New Labour or who “have never voted Tory before”.  So things like Sure Start and the minimum wage get a namecheck. But, aside from that, it’s striking just how clearly and unequivocally Cameron sets out Tory commitments such as recognising marriage in the tax system. Indeed, the passage on the “root causes of our social breakdown”, and how the Tories would deal with them, harkens back to his powerful address at the party conference.  Only, this

Susan Hill

Unhelpful issues

It would not have been so easy to describe what Joanna Trollope’s early novels were ‘about’ in a few words, but recently she has been writing what the Americans call ‘issue books’, and they can be more readily encapsulated. It would not have been so easy to describe what Joanna Trollope’s early novels were ‘about’ in a few words, but recently she has been writing what the Americans call ‘issue books’, and they can be more readily encapsulated. The Other Family is about just that — a man who has, or had, two of them. We only meet Richie in death; at the start of the book Chrissie and their

Saturday

Patrick Skene-Catling

The Knights of Glin

In this splendid, monumental slab of a book, Desmond Fitzgerald, the 29th Knight of Glin, has made the chronicle of his family epitomise the whole turbulent history of Ireland since the arrival of the Normans. The survey includes chapters by academic genealogists and other historians, with less formal contributions from the Knight himself and his wife, Madam Olda Fitzgerald. The illustrations are comprehensive: ancient maps and land- scapes and portraits ancient and modern. There are a characteristically misty watercolour by Louis le Brocquy and photographs of architectural embellishments, fine furniture and paradisal gardens. The Knights of Glin, like some other Irish aristocrats, have had to do some fancy footwork to

Tuesday

Peter Hoskin

A sensible Tory rethink on marriage tax breaks

There’s something quite refreshing about David Cameron’s plan to offer a tax break to married couples.  It says, simply: this is what I believe.  And it does so in spite of polling data and strategic arguments to the contrary.  This is one area where you certainly couldn’t accuse the Tory leader of caring too much about what other people think.  But refreshing or not, that doesn’t make it good policy.  Of course, there’s a tonne of empirical data which demonstrates the benefits of marriage.  That’s important and persuasive.  But, as I’ve written before, there are reasons to doubt the efficacy of a tax break in particular.  And I don’t think

Monday

James Forsyth

Cameron takes a brave line on family policy

David Cameron’s speech today at the launch of Demos’s Character Inquiry was both brave and significant. His message was that it is parenting, not material wealth, that plays the most important role in determining a child’s prospects in life. As Cameron put it, ‘What matters most to a child’s life chances is not the wealth of their upbringing but the warmth of their parenting.’ This message is easily caricatured — ‘Millionaire Cameron says poverty doesn’t matter’ — but it is important and, as recent academic research shows, true. (This is not to say, that poverty doesn’t matter, it clearly does, but that material poverty is not the sole determinant). Cameron’s

Saturday

Fraser Nelson

Balls pitches for the leadership

The Ed Balls leadership cart is revving up a gear. He wants to position himself as the main mover behind the election campaign, now that Gordon Brown is dead in the water. It was his plan to stop Darling jacking up VAT to 20 percent, so he can accuse the Tories of wanting to do that (it’ll be more like 22.5 percent IMHO – but that’s another story). And now Balls has told tomorrow’s Sunday Times that Labour’s election focus will be on the family. “In the past I think our family policy was all about children,” says Father Balls. “I think our family policy now is actually about the

Wednesday

Peter Hoskin

Willetts takes on the nudgers

The Guardian’s interview with David Willetts is a decent preview of the Tories’ forthcoming green paper on family policy, and is neatly summarised by Jonathan Isaby here. Although I have my doubts about some Tory thinking in this area, there are a few encouraging ideas in there – such as relationship guidance schemes modelled on those provided by the Bristol community family trust. One of the most eye-catching passages of the interview comes when Willetts takes on the “nudgers” in his own party, who are keen on influencing public behaviour but feel that promoting marriage may be a step too far: “Willetts believes that marriage should be promoted and protected as he expresses

Wednesday

James Hamilton

The last man to know everything

Joscelyn Godwin, the author of this vast and beautiful book, admits at the outset that while Athanasius Kircher was held in awe during his lifetime in the 17th century as ‘some rugged headland jutting out to sea’, when he died this had been eroded to the point of collapse: ‘the seas wash over it as if it had never been.’ Kircher’s triumph and tragedy was that his work was the final complete expression of magic, arcana and dogma, and when he died the world was moving into the Age of Reason. Joscelyn Godwin, the author of this vast and beautiful book, admits at the outset that while Athanasius Kircher was

Wednesday

Sarah Burton

His island story

‘If you don’t come to terms with the ghost of your father, it will never let you be your own man.’ Here Christopher Ondaatje (brother of novelist Michael) combines his voyage of filial discovery with another quest: to pursue his obsession with a story he heard at his father’s knee, of a man-eating leopard. ‘If you don’t come to terms with the ghost of your father, it will never let you be your own man.’ Here Christopher Ondaatje (brother of novelist Michael) combines his voyage of filial discovery with another quest: to pursue his obsession with a story he heard at his father’s knee, of a man-eating leopard. If the

Anne Applebaum

Skeletons in the cupboard

Freudian analysis, Soviet communism and the garment industry: what do all of these things have in common? If your answer has something to do with central and east European Jews born at the end of the 19th century, you wouldn’t be far off. Freudian analysis, Soviet communism and the garment industry: what do all of these things have in common? If your answer has something to do with central and east European Jews born at the end of the 19th century, you wouldn’t be far off. That generation formed an important part of the intellectual and mercantile elite of Europe, but not the political elite — which is partly why

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Kids These Days…

Coming to a Christmas cinema screen near you next year. It is a dream that has been shared by lovers across the centuries – the chance to elope to exotic lands. But few would have been as bold and spontaneous as six-year-old Mika and his five-year-old sweetheart Anna-Bell who, after mulling over their options in secret, packed their suitcases on New Year’s Eve and set off from the German city of Hanover to tie the knot under the heat of the African sun. The children left their homes at dawn while their unwitting parents were apparently sleeping, and took along Mika’s seven-year-old sister, Anna-Lena, as a witness to the wedding.

Thursday

Wednesday