March 2012 Issue 40

Manchester Square Judt’s judgment 5

Counterpoints Standing up to Stalin; Fewer shrinking violets; Insulting Ike; The Obama doctrine; At home with Turner 9

Letters Euro laws; Pragmatic piety; Yorkshire spirit; Svetlana’s faith 14

Columns Party Lines Daisy Waugh wonders who’s game for the London Olympics 15 The Outsider’s Diary Douglas Murray demands an inquiry into the Leveson inquiry 17 European Eye Mara Delius is intrigued by Berlin’s latest fad: eating kosher 18 On the Contrary Lionel Shriver declines to be offended by Top Totty beer 19 Points East & West Emanuele Ottolenghi says the EU’s dialogue with Syria has been an unmitigated disaster 20 Living History Michael Burleigh vindicates President Obama’s foreign and defence policies 21 Marketplace Tim Congdon warns that too much City regulation will damage the UK economy 22 Jurisprudence Joshua Rozenberg wonders if you can have war crimes without a war 23 Open Season Christopher Fildes mourns the passing of the great British pension scam 24

Overrated: Umberto Eco, 78

Civilisation daley h ael mic by

C OV E R

Will Michael Gove go all the way to No 10? Iain Martin interviews the Education Secretary about his reforms, his battles and his ambitions 28 Chaos in the classroom Matthew Hunter, a comprehensive school teacher, describes how discipline became education’s dirtiest word 32

Free at last Katharine Birbalsingh says the free school revolution is changing lives 16 Culture and Anarchy Simon Heffer is left (almost) speechless by Britain’s attitude to foreign tongues 82

Dispatches Mitt, Rick, Newt and Ron Andrew Roberts in New York assesses the state of the Republican primary race 26 Features Everybody cheats. So why shouldn’t I? Kenneth Minogue contends that corruption is a consequence of moral confusion—and too many rights 34

Twelve more years of Putin? Nyet! Edward Lucas reports that Russian voters are becoming disillusioned with official greed and incompetence 36

Eternal land of the golden fleecing Frederic Raphael observes that the Greeks have been lining their own pockets since Agamemnon’s day 40 In search of Vienna’s vanished Jews Giles MacDonogh recreates a unique era in the history of the Austrian capital 42 In the footsteps of Old Fritz Simon Scott Plummer tours the battlefields of the Seven Years’ War 44

Critique Jeremy Jennings traces the ideas behind the French separation of Church and state 51

Books Stella Tillyard on Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion by Anne Somerset; J.W.M. Thompson on The Court Journals of Frances Burney; Conrad Leyser on The War on Heresy by R.I. Moore; Robert Low on The Selected Letters of Charles Dickens and P.G. Wodehouse: A Life in Letters; Anthony Julius on You Can’t Read This Book by Nick Cohen; Allan Massie on Joseph Roth: A Life in Letters and Three Lives, a biography of Stefan Zweig by Oliver Matuschek 55

Text New Poetry Clive James 63

Spain and the Conquest of China Hugh Thomas 64

Critics Music Norman Lebrecht laments Thomas Quasthoff’s retirement 68

Art Michael Prodger enjoys the zest for life of Zoffany 69

Theatre Anne McElvoy is left breathless by the National Theatre’s latest farce 70

Film Peter Whittle finds Stephen Daldry’s 9/11 movie trite and vulgar 72

Television Nick Cohen wonders why British political drama doesn’t match up to the latest Danish offering 73

Cosmos Michael Heller contemplates the science of chance 74 Drawing Board New York’s Photo League William Meyers 76

Overrated/Underrated Umberto Eco/Claude Lanzmann Daniel Johnson and Frederic Raphael 78

Chess Dominic Lawson is knocked out by a Chinese rookie 80

Wine Saintsbury treads in the footsteps of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza 81

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