Cameron the History Man

Interesting long interview by Simon Schama with David Cameron (right) in the Financial Times (registration) today.
The first thing I ask him is to imagine Florence, 16 years hence, about to do her history GCSE (in the restored version of the curriculum I push him to reinstate), asking her pa what he’d done to deserve the plaudits. An [...]

By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Saturday, 2 October 2010 at 6:38 pm

Status Quo. Traitors.

It seemed a touch curious that Status Quo’s anti-war song, In The Army Now, was being used as a fundraiser for war vets in the UK. Now that I’ve finally got round to listening to the “re-worked lyrics” of the 2010 version, my jaw is on the floor.
Here’s what they have changed – in ascending [...]

By Stephen Foley | Arts | Saturday, 2 October 2010 at 4:01 pm

Let parents be parents and let teachers teach

As a teacher, one of the main debates that I find myself in at the moment with colleagues in the staffroom and parents alike, is the Coalition government’s recent introduction of free schools, which are state-funded schools set up in response to parental demand, the most high-profile attempt being led by writer and parent Toby [...]

By Kevin Rooney | Battle of Ideas | Saturday, 2 October 2010 at 8:30 am

The Car Crash and “Scenario 4″

A while ago, I promised some more nuggets from the revised paperback edition of Andrew Rawnsley’s The End of the Party, to which the author with his trademark modesty has failed to draw the world’s attention.
He reports that, during the election campaign, Tony Blair misheard someone who told him about a car that crashed into [...]

By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Friday, 1 October 2010 at 10:08 pm

More reasons why the Iraq war was not wrong

I seem, or rather Ed Miliband seems, to have (re)started something with the declaration that the invasion of Iraq was “wrong”, about which I wrote on Wednesday.
This generated a large number of comments, some of the authors of which seem to be coming to the issue for the first time, and some of them seem [...]

By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Friday, 1 October 2010 at 6:41 pm

Jacek Laszczkowski’s remarkable voice

It’s commonly assumed that counter-tenor is the highest male register, but as those who have seen Lukas Hemleb’s production of Agostino Steffani’s ‘Niobe’ at Covent Garden will attest, there’s a voice still higher – the male soprano. And this wacky show points up the differences between these registers – and between varieties of counter-tenor – [...]

By Michael Church | Arts | Friday, 1 October 2010 at 6:35 pm

“The most incredible feeling”

Two quotations to deepen the gloom. A friend who left the Labour Party to join the SDP in the 1980s writes:
I was all ready to rejoin Labour before Ed got it. Even if I agreed with him on some things, his whole campaign was just so horribly cynical. Does anyone think that if he’d been [...]

By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Friday, 1 October 2010 at 5:49 pm

Celebrating older people for a change

October 1st is the UN International Day for Older People. A couple of weeks after the Pope (aged 83) was welcomed by the Queen (aged 84) and the Duke of Edinburgh (aged 89) there might seem to be no need in Britain to argue the case for incorporating older people into broader society. But there [...]

By Sir Richard Jolly | Notebook | Friday, 1 October 2010 at 5:23 pm

How I took on three England rugby internationals… and lived to tell the tale

What happens when a 20-a-day smoker who’s never been to a gym goes up against three England rugby internationals? Simon Rice donned his tracksuit to find out…
When I arrived at Twickenham Stoop, I was handed a waver to sign that stated I wouldn’t sue if I broke my leg. I knew then that my concerns [...]

By Simon Rice | Sport | Friday, 1 October 2010 at 1:20 pm

Shadow Catchers: Camera-less photography

Smudgy and beautiful photographs can be captured without a camera using a variety of methods, including casting shadows on chemically treated surfaces.

The Shadow Catchers exhibition includes the work of five international contemporary artists Floris Neusüss, Pierre Cordier, Susan Derges, Garry Fabian Miller and Adam Fuss.

By Matilda Battersby | Arts | Friday, 1 October 2010 at 12:30 pm