On the IEA and Mark Littlewood

For years, whenever I set foot in Italy, our UK Conservative Party used to experience, with what became an almost gratifying regularity, some minor spasm of leadership crisis. These were rarely more than a surprise resignation or sly bit of positioning, admittedly, but welcome all the same, providing as they did enough good, unwholesome fun [...]

Out to lunch

Via Guido Fawkes, news reaches us that shadow culture minister Ed Vaizey MP has been spotted lunching at Scotts of Mayfair — for an heroic, credit crunch-busting three hours, apparently — in the company of the accomplished Channel 4 television interviewee, fashion icon and occasional jobbing BritArtist, Tracey Emin.
Like any successful work of art, this [...]

Manchester blues

Heaven knows, I really did try to write about Conservative Party Conference last week, back when it was topical. On Monday, though, I ended up doing a lot of dusting, particularly those disregarded places just under the hinges of doors, and the bits of banisters that no normally-configured human being ever actually sees. On Tuesday [...]

On forgiveness

For all the calumny so regularly and indiscriminately heaped on it by Conservative commentators, the BBC does sometimes earn its keep. For instance, by accident this afternoon, washing up after lunch and half-listening to the news, I stumbled over this, in which BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner interviews Lord Tebbit on the occasion of the [...]

Futurism at Tate Modern

In the end, the secret of enjoying Tate Modern’s recent Futurism exhibition turned out to lie in the entertainment of modest, perhaps even downright low expectations.
Futurism’s reviews were, almost without exception, dreadful. Some could be discounted, admittedly, in the sense that condemning the cutting-edge offerings of our great-grandparents’ mature years for the sole reason that [...]

On Rory Stewart’s ‘Occupational Hazards’

I wanted to build a gate for the souk as a permanent gift from the [Coalition Provisional Authority] to Amara, so that there would be at least one enduring trace of our presence. We discussed this with the governor, showed him photographs of traditional souk gates from Egypt to Kuwait, and suggested a competition for [...]

Blasting & Blessing: a back to school edition

Well, that all went quickly, didn’t it?
Yesterday was the first day of the Michaelmas quarter at my son’s school. Hence summer is, for all practical purposes, already receding into the realms of fast-fading memory, at least in this household — cue that much-loved season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, coupled with the novelty of being [...]

Remembering Ian Wilder

For quite a number of our local councillors, the business of representing a local community boils down to one of two things —  a particularly rotten and unreliable rung on the way up the ladder of their chosen party-political cursus honorum, to be skipped across swiftly, sustaining as little damage as possible in the process [...]

Ten memorable books

Barendina Smedley chooses her ten most memorable books.

Blasting & Blessing: a sunstruck edition

Barendina Smedley finds that it’s too darned hot to write much, but still has something to say about the Arts Council, the Institute of Economic Affairs, Westminster Abbey and the charms of the London heatwave.