Alasdair Palmer

Alasdair Palmer is a former Home Office speech writer.

Saturday

Alasdair Palmer

How Leonardo did it

From our UK edition

Alasdair Palmer talks to the French artist who has discovered the secret of the Master’s technique How did he do it? Among the many great unanswered questions about Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘Mona Lisa’, that has long been one of the most puzzling. Part of the perennial appeal of the ‘Mona Lisa’, and one reason why, today, there is a perpetual crowd in front of it in the gallery in the Louvre where it sits, protected by thick glass, is that it does not seem possible that the ‘Mona Lisa’ was executed by a human hand.

Saturday

Alasdair Palmer

Life, liberty and terrorists

From our UK edition

‘When it comes to the British courts,’ Charles Clarke insists, ‘I am a perpetual optimist.’ Which is fortunate, because he needs to be. We met on the day the Law Lords proclaimed that the government was not permitted to detain terrorist suspects on the basis of evidence which might have been extracted under torture. The government had been arguing that it needed to be able to use such information in court in order lawfully to detain people who were a threat to the British public. The Law Lords called that argument ‘disquieting’ and ‘disturbing’. It was merely the latest in a series of reverses that the government’s policies to combat terrorism have suffered at the hands of the highest court in the land.

Saturday

Alasdair Palmer

The American way of torture

From our UK edition

Alasdair Palmer on how the White House is trying to defeat Senator McCain’s anti-torture Bill America is starting to get anxious again about its use of ‘aggressive interrogation’. The more usual name for what the Americans have been doing to some of the people they think are terrorists is ‘torture’. When the pictures from Abu Ghraib first became public 18 months or so ago, they caused a flurry of agonised self-examination among senior officials in the country’s armed forces and intelligence services. That quickly passed when it was decided that what happened in Abu Ghraib wasn’t officially sanctioned.

Saturday

Alasdair Palmer

Small is beautiful

From our UK edition

The Cambridge Illuminations, the Fitzwilliam Museum’s exhibition of mediaeval manuscripts, wasn’t very crowded when I visited last Sunday. The show comprises principally images of devotion, damnation and prayer, conceived and produced by men devoted to poverty, chastity and obedience. That background seems to put a lot of people off. Poverty, chastity and obedience ...how much more remote from present-day values can you get? And yet, on closer inspection, The Cambridge Illuminations turns out to be a kind of miracle — a breathtaking collection of stupendous paintings that will delight anyone who loves beautiful things. The art here is not only gorgeous, and executed with an exquisite delicacy rarely equalled anywhere; it is also much less alien than might be expected.

Alasdair Palmer

Is torture always wrong?

From our UK edition

The officers who pumped seven bullets into Jean Charles de Menezes as he sat in a Tube train in Stockwell station on 22 July believed he was a suicide-bomber about to detonate a bomb. They were wrong, and may now face trial for murder. Whether or not they are prosecuted, however, it is almost certain that the Metropolitan Police’s policy of killing people who its senior officers believe are about to detonate bombs will remain. Sir Ian Blair, the Commissioner of the Met, has said it will stay, and insists it has been approved by the Home Office, the Crown Prosecution Service and the Metropolitan Police Authority.

Saturday

Alasdair Palmer

Railtrack’s show trial

From our UK edition

Alasdair Palmer says the charges against Railtrack’s Gerald Corbett are the cynical prelude to a law on corporate killing The families of the four people who were killed in the Hatfield rail crash are reported to be ‘jubilant’ that a total of six managers from Railtrack and Balfour Beatty are to be charged with manslaughter. They are also said to be quite pleased that Railtrack and Balfour Beatty, the companies with responsibility for maintaining the Hatfield track, are to face charges of ‘corporate manslaughter’, and that five other executives will be tried. It is, they say, a sign that ‘people will be held accountable’. The legal process itself, however, is likely to disappoint them.