March 2009 Issue 10

Manchester Square 5

Counterpoints Melanie McDonagh on excommunication; Edith Johnson on Maya Angelou; Robin Simcox on Islamist “think-tanks”; Mara Delius on von Stauffenberg’s legacy; Minette Marrin on euphemisms; Daniel Johnson remembers Rabbi Sidney Brichto 10 Columns Points East & West Emanuele Ottolenghi warns that Israel cannot afford to be divided 14 The Outsider Douglas Murray on the reality behind Geert Wilders’s ban 15 The Way We (Don’t) Live Now Spike Vrusho is thrilled by a fellow American’s success in English football 16 Marketplace Tim Congdon says Keynes’s role in battling theDepressionmayhavebeenexaggerated 17 Guest Speaker Razeen Sally urges market liberals to come up with fresh ideas for a changing world 18 Open Season Ed Smith says bankers wouldn’t last long on the football pitch 19 Dispatches Jonathan Foreman visits the Mumbai slums featured in Slumdog Millionaire; James Shinn is moved by a film that reveals the new Afghans 22 The Mole An insider explains why the House of Lords remains indispensable 24 Little Platoons Vivat Trust 25

COVER ILLUSTRATION byandrécarilho

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Dialogue Helping Africa break free Dambisa Moyo and Richard Dowden discuss aid dependency and a new way forward for the continent 26 Features Dreams for their children Ellen Alpsten celebrates Kenya’s emerging middle class 32 Don’t write off America George Walden warns the declinists to be careful what they wish for 36 To hell with niceness Kenneth Minogue deplores politicised compassion in schools 36 A strange rush for the exit Robin Aitken asks why the global suicide rate is going up 40 From Treblinka to Tannenberg Simon Scott Plummer tours a landscape bearing the scars of history 42 Rewriting Polish history Adam Zamoyski highlights the unlikely success story that is Poland 44 A tale of sadness and forgetting Michael Weiss weighs up the charges against Milan Kundera 48 Letters A nuclear-free Middle East; Beekeeping bother; Poet Laureate; In defence of Annie Lennox 50

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Civilisation Critique Frederic Raphael argues that the film of The Reader is as tawdry as the novel 54 Cosmos David Wark explains why anti-matter matters 58 Utopia Kathryn Hughes says there won’t be a cosmetic crunch 59 Books Myron Ebell on The Vanishing Face of Gaia by James Lovelock and He Knew He Was Right by John Gribbin and Mary Gribbin; David Scott on The English Civil Wars 1640-1660 by Blair Worden; Noel Malcolm on Beauty by Roger Scruton; Philip Mansel on Dancing to the Precipice: Lucie de la Tour du Pin and the French Revolution by Caroline Moorehead; Alasdair Palmer on The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work by Alain de Botton; and Caroline Moore on Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada and The Glass Room by Simon Mawer 61 Imagination Party Lines Daisy Waugh eavesdrops on the chattering classes; Whatever by Peter Blegvad 68 Art Michael Prodger explores Constable’s portraits and the power of a Persian Shah 69 Television Nick Cohen is appalled by the narcissism of current documentaries 70 Film Peter Whittle finds Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino predictable 71 Theatre Minette Marrin is bewitched by the near-perfection of Shun-kin 72 Music Ian Bostridge muses on the pitfalls of singing in Death in Venice 73 Text Björn Kern wrestles with the moral dilemmas facing patients and carers as the end of life approaches 74 Drawing Board Stephen Taylor applies scientific accuracy to the contemporary English landscape 78 Overrated/Underrated Obama adviser Samantha Power and Washington columnist Charles Krauthammer 80 Chess Kings and Queens: can women ever play as well as men? Dominic Lawson 82

www.standpointmag.co.uk

March 2009

Standpoint

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