American beauty
Tragically, the number of ballet directors who can orchestrate good programmes and good openings is dwindling these days. Helgi Tómasson,…
Royal rocks
It’s a smallish dark room but, wow, what a lot of sparklers. There are more than 10,000 diamonds set in…
Science fiction as reality
What’s that in your pocket? Magic or art? The near ubiquitous iPhone may be rammed with very new technology, but…
Why Some People Read Poetry
(After W.S. Merwin) Because you know already if you didn’t you would have to make that appointment which means you…
Why Some People Read Poetry
(After W.S. Merwin) Because you know already if you didn’t you would have to make that appointment which means you…
Royal rocks
It’s a smallish dark room but, wow, what a lot of sparklers. There are more than 10,000 diamonds set in…
Science fiction as reality
What’s that in your pocket? Magic or art? The near ubiquitous iPhone may be rammed with very new technology, but…
Our national obsession
If Britain is serious about this Olympic legacy thing, we should get ‘talking about the weather’ added to the list…
Latham’s Law – 8 September 2012
Gerard Henderson is crackers. This is the only conclusion one can reach from his increasingly bizarre attacks on The Spectator…
Wild life
Kigali Eighteen years after Rwanda’s bloodbath I disembarked from my flight and was surprised to see that mortar craters no…
Latham’s Law – 25 August 2012
One of the grave concerns of parents is bullying at school, that unbearable circumstance in which good, hard-working students are…
Bookends: The Saint Zita Society, by Ruth Rendell
Sometimes it seems as if Ruth Rendell’s heart just isn’t in all that killing any more. Certainly, her latest book,…
Bookends: Umpty, umpty, umpty…
According to Ogden Nash, the reason the British aristocracy wrote so much is because they could never understand what they…
Latham’s law – 11 August 2012
This is the story of an Australian Opposition Leader who cried wolf about a new tax. In the months leading…
Bookends: Heading for the rough
Middle age lays many hazards and traps for us, not the least of which is golf. Breaking 80 (Yellow Jersey…
The Tortoise and the Lib Dems
The Lib Dems have been thoroughly ineffectual in the coalition. So much so that some of us — including Hugo…
The Tortoise and the Lib Dems
The Lib Dems have been thoroughly ineffectual in the coalition. So much so that some of us — including Hugo…
Wild life
Kenya coast A loud crash woke us in the middle of our first night at the beach house. ‘Robbers must…
Latham’s Law – 28 July 2012
When Kevin Rudd was rising through the ranks of the Parliamentary Labor party a decade ago, his most diligent critic…
Latham’s law – 21 July 2012
In the public dispute over Labor-Green preferences, Sarah Hanson-Young, the Greens’ immigration spokesperson, made a telling contribution. ‘There’s a big…
Bookends: Deftly orchestrated chaos
The headings set the scene: ‘Last Tango in Balham, in which I meet Marlon Brando on the dance floor of…
Bookends: Cycle of pain
Reg Harris by Robert Dineen (Ebury Press, £16.99) is about a man who was once Britain’s number one athlete: a…
Latham’s Law – 14th July 2012
One of the delusions of life in Canberra is that laws passed on Capital Hill have a big-bang impact on…
Gone with the corsets
Painful, barbaric and Victorian are the words I think of when someone says corset, and yet these torturous contraptions are…
Gone with the corsets
Painful, barbaric and Victorian are the words I think of when someone says corset, and yet these torturous contraptions are…
