The trouble with older fathers, p14

Don’t drink and ski, p50;

do drink and ski, p65

Two centuries before Midsomer, p15

THE WEEK

3 Leading article 7 Portrait of the Week 9 Diary Alexander Chancellor 11 The Spectator’s Notes 15 Barometer 17 Rod Liddle 19 Mind your language 20 Ancient and modern 22 Matthew Parris 26 James Delingpole 27 Letters 35 Any other business Martin Vander Weyer

12 One week to get a grip Can Osborne’s budget straighten out the coalition’s unsteady path? James Forsyth 13 George Szirtes

‘Southern Belle’: a poem 14 Old father time The selfishness of late parenthood

Carol Sarler 15 Cameron’s war cry The cost of posturing on Libya

Daniel McCarthy 16 Le Pen: the next generation France’s rising far right

Janine di Giovanni 19 Tokyo waits Neighbourliness after the quake

Tania Coke 20 Why the Saudis are in Bahrain The Middle East’s real dividing lines

John R. Bradley 24 Locked to the keys Why can’t I write without a laptop?

Mark Mason

BOOKS & ARTS

Boks 38 Victor Sebestyen Gulag Voices, edited by Anne

Applebaum; Gulag Boss, by Fyodor Mochulsky 40 Jonathan Cecil

The Actors, by Brian Masters, 43 Frederic Raphael French Cinema, by Charles Drazin 44 Jonathan Sumption Justice for Hedgehogs, by

Ronald Dworkin 45 Ian Thomson Edgelands, by Paul Farley and

Michael Symmons Roberts 46 Claudia FitzHerbert When God was a Rabbit, by

Sarah Winman Connie Bensley ‘I Am My Son’s

Fourth Child’: a poem Bookends Andrew Petrie

Cover by Nicholas Garland. Drawings by Michael Heath, Castro, Ian Tovey, Jonathan Cusick, Holland, Hunter, Adam Singleton, Grizelda, Geoff Thompson, Bernie, Nick Newman, Richard Jolley, Len, Cookson, Colin Wheeler, Tim Bales and Dorrance. www.spectator.co.uk To subscribe to The Spectator for £104 a year, turn to page 44 Editorial and advertising The Spectator, 22 Old Queen Street, London SW1H 9HP, Tel: 020 7961 0200, Fax: 020 7961 0250, Email: editor@spectator.co.uk (editorial); letters@spectator.co.uk (for publication); advertising@spectator.co.uk (advertising); Advertising enquiries: 020 7961 0219 Advertising fax: 020 7961 0020 Subscription and delivery queries Spectator Subscriptions Dept., 800 Guillat Avenue, Kent Science Park, Sittingbourne ME9 8GU; Tel: 01795 592886 Fax: 0870 220 0290; Email: spectator@servicehelpline.co.uk Newsagent queries Spectator Circulation Dept, 22 Old Queen Street, London SW1H 9HP, Tel: 020 7961 0200, Fax: 020 7961 0057, Email: dstam@spectator.co.uk Distributor COMAG Specialist, Tavistock Works, Tavistock Road, West Drayton, Middlesex UB7 7QX Vol 315; no 9525 © The Spectator (1828) Ltd. ISSN 0038-6952 The Spectator is published weekly by The Spectator (1828) Ltd at 22 Old Queen Street, London SW1H 9HP Editor: Fraser Nelson

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the spectator | 19 March 2011 | www.spectator.co.uk