Glamorous Peckham, p45

An education in laughter, p36

The changing face of Pedro Almodóvar, p42

THE WEEK

5 Leading article 8 Portrait of the Week 11 Diary Alexander Chancellor 12 Politics James Forsyth 13 The Spectator’s Notes 16 Barometer 17 Rod Liddle 20 Ancient and modern 25 Hugo Rifkind 27 Letters 28 Any other business Merryn Somerset Webb

Deborah Ross and Martin Vander Weyer return next week.

BOOKS & ARTS

AFTER GADDAFI 14 Libya’s chance Will the new nation be worthy of the struggle against Gaddafi? Justin Marozzi 15 Don’t thank Obama He failed the Libyans

Andrew Roberts 16 Democracy? What about oil? Give us commercially savvy diplomacy Christopher Meyer

18 Beauty besmirched Wind power vs national heritage

Michael McMahon 20 Phone Hacking, Inc Inside the privacy-invasion industry

Simon Wessely 26 Borneo notebook Jesse Norman Boks 30 Sam Leith The History of England, Volume I, by Peter Ackroyd; A Short History of England, by Simon Jenkins 32 Kathy O’Shaughnessy The Last Hundred Days, by Patrick McGuinness Connie Bensley ‘The Body in the Library’: a poem Ian Thomson The Last Ambassador, by Tina Tamman 33 Sarah Burton Stealing Rembrandts, by Anthony M. Amore and Tom Mashberg; Art Theft and the Case of the Stolen Turners, by Sandy Nairne 34 Jane Ridley The Last Colonial, by Christopher Ondaatje 35 Charlotte Moore We Are Beseiged, by Barbara Fitzgerald Bookends Mark Mason 36 A.N. Wilson Mr Tibbits’s Catholic School, by Ysenda Maxtone Graham

Frank M.Ahearn 23 Marine Le Pen speaks An interview with the FN leader

Joseph A. Harriss 18 Mind the gap Psychiatry, neurology and ME

Cover by Christian Adams. Drawings by Michael Heath, Castro, Ian Tovey, Holland, Kipper Williams, Nick Newman, Geoff Thompson, Dorrance, Grizelda, RGJ, K.J. Lamb, McCoy and Hunter. www.spectator.co.uk To subscribe to The Spectator for £104 a year, turn to page 27 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 316; no 9548 © 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 | 27 August 2011 | www.spectator.co.uk An ABC of grade inflation, p16 and p60

Going down a storm, p43

LIFE

Arts 39 Lloyd Evans The insane merriment of the world’s largest and wackiest festival 40 Fringe Round-up

Lloyd Evans 41 Music

Michael Tanner 42 Cinema The Skin I Live In

Rebecca Nicholson 43 Exhibitions Treasures of Heaven; Forests, Rocks,

Torrents: Norwegian and Swiss Landscape Paintings Andrew Lambirth 44 Radio Kate Chisholm 45Television James Delingpole Culture notes Peter Robins Travel 47 When the ships come in Ullapool’s big day Mary Wakefield 48 Whisky choice Jonathan Ray 49 Genteel Glasgow It exists! Bruce Anderson Life 51 High life Taki Low life Jeremy Clarke 52 Real life Melissa Kite 53 Motoring Alan Judd 53 Bridge Susanna Gross And finaly . . . 58 Chess Raymond Keene 59 Competition; Crossword 60Status anxiety Toby Young Dave Michael Heath 61 The Wiki Man

Rory Sutherland Your problems solved Mary Killen 61 Drink Bruce Anderson Mind your language Dot Wordsworth

I don’t foresee Libya’s triumphant Islamists joining Mandelson in a shooting party, unless they strap Semtex to their chests first Rod Liddle, p17

Dead young people are so much easier to project your fantasies of greatness on to than people who are alive and fat and ageing James Delingpole, p45

As the yobs were getting stuck in, I was breaking the speed limit. No prizes for guessing who got the swiftest punishment Melissa Kite, p52

Contributors

Justin Marozzi is the author of South from Barbary: Along the Slave Routes of the Libyan Sahara. Simon Wessely is Professor and Head of the Department of Psychological Medicine and Vice Dean of the Institute of

Psychiatry at King’s College London. Sam Leith’s You Talking to Me? Rhetoric from Aristotle to Obama will be published in October.

the spectator | 27 August 2011 | www.spectator.co.uk

Andrew Roberts’s books include A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900 and Masters and Commanders.

Charlotte Moore’s Milicent’s Book, based on the 19thcentury diaries of a teenage girl, is published next month.

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