July/August 2009 Issue 14

Manchester Square 5

Counterpoints Party politics; Representing the rurals; Republican crisis; German lesson;Dawkins and Miss Marx; The business of human rights;Homeward bound; Starting a war on expenses 10 Columns On the contrary Lionel Shriver puts GordonBrown on the couch 17 Living History Michael Burleigh attacksBritish selfrighteousness over Sri Lanka 19 Points East & West Emanuele Ottolenghi analyses the Iranian election result 20 The Outsider Douglas Murray calls for a revolution at Westminster 23 Marketplace Tim Congdon highlights the failure of Labour’s tax-raising policies 24 Jurisprudence Joshua Rozenberg has his doubts about a new court in Qatar 25 Guest Speaker Chris Woodhead implores Michael Gove to be braver with his education policies 26 The Way We (Don’t) Live Now Peter Whittle provides his alternative summer highlights 27 Dispatches Piers Paul Read takes the pulse of Catholic America 28 Nidra Poller reports on a shocking murder trial in Paris 30

COVER ILLUSTRATION byandrécariliho

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The Mole An insider gauges the mood within the Parliamentary Labour Party 74 Little Platoons Maggie’s Cancer Caring Centres 75 Dialogue When Britain feared the Blackshirts Nicholas Mosley and Raymond Carr discuss the history ofBritish fascism 32

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Features Give us poetic justice Clive James argues for change at Oxford 38 The post-American Presidency John Bolton is dismayed by Obama’s foreign policy 42 The Tory who wasn’t there Stephen Glover wonders whatDavid Cameron really stands for 46 Banking on Allah Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens exposes the flaws in sharia finance 50 Only God can save us from ourselves Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali saysBritain faces a deep moral crisis 52 They who speak for England Nick Cohen sympathises with a country that’s fed up with its rulers 56 Adventures of a book in Africa Michela Wrong battles to get published in Kenya 60 Time to abolish the Arts Council Marc Sidwell calls for a radical overhaul of public culture funding 64 Slaves of the bonus culture Kenneth Minogue deplores the demise of professionalism 66 Exile on Jermyn Street Jonathan Foreman remembers his father, blacklisted filmmaker Carl Foreman 70 Civilisation Critique John Cottingham on Susan Neiman’s view of the Enlightenment 78

Books Martin Gilbert on Balfour and Weizmann by Geoffrey Lewis; ‘A Senseless, Squalid War’: Voices from Palestine 1945-1948 by Norman Rose; One State, Two States: Resolving the Israel/Palestine Conflict by Benny Morris; Ruth Scurr on Venus of Empire: The Life of Pauline Bonaparte by Flora Fraser; John Gross on Rosenfeld’s Lives: Fame, Oblivion, and the Furies of Writing by Steven J. Zipperstein; Noel Malcolm on An Intellectual History of Cannibalism by Catalin Avramescu; Caroline Moore on The Last Englishman: The Double Life of Arthur Ransome by Roland Chambers; Robert Low on Cockroach by RawiHage; David Robson on Surviving by Allan Massie 81 Cosmos David Wark is amused by Hollywood’s sloppy science 88 Film Peter Whittle thinks the art-house movie Antichrist isn’t art 90 Television Nick Cohen defends the property queen, Kirstie Allsopp 91 Theatre Minette Marrin studies the superstar effect on the London stage 92 Art Michael Prodger compares two eclectic exhibitions 93 Music Jessica Duchen celebratesHaydn’s Creation 95 Imagination Party Lines Daisy Waugh eavesdrops on the chattering classes; Whatever by Peter Blegvad 96 Text Orhan Pamuk acknowledges his debt to Gustave Flaubert 99 Joseph Epstein Kuperman Awaits Ecstasy: a short story 104 Drawing Board Christiane Baumgartner 110 Overrated/Underrated Ken Loach and Joseph Losey 112 Chess Dominic Lawson describes the greatest chess tournament of all time 114

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