The Sunday Telegraph London back issues from February 2001:
Five rules for a perfect holiday Time of my life
Feb 04, 2001; ... At this time of year people are beginning to pick their holidaydestinations from the travel sections of the newspapers. I never do.I read them, of course, but only the articles about the places Ialready know, to see if they've changed; just as I'm only interestedin the television ...
Flora would be proud of us After collapsing in court as the Lockerbie verdict was returned, Dr Jim Swire, the bereaved father who led the campaign to bring the Libyans to court, is too exhausted to continue the fight. But the anguish he and his wife feel will not be appeased
Feb 04, 2001; ... Nine months ago, on an overcast May morning, Dr Jim Swire and hiswife, Jane, loaded their car and set off for Harwich to catch the7am ferry to the Hook of Holland. It was a momentous morning: dayone of the trial of the two Libyans charged with the murder of theirdaughter ...
My son's autism is my fault Despite doubts, the novelist Marti Leimbach agreed to let her 19-month-old son have the MMR jab, only to watch him fall victim to autism soon afterwards. Now she is overwhelmed by feelings of guilt
Feb 04, 2001; ... The current television campaign in which an innocent, beautifulbaby is placed in a jungle where a menacing tiger lurks, is exactlythe same advertisement for the MMR vaccine which eventually sent meto get my son Nicholas his jab. There was something about thecautionary voice telling of ...
Rubbish is fine - except on the Sabbath Me and my God - Benjamin `Binman' Pell talks to Frances Welch
Feb 04, 2001; ... Benjamin Pell is otherwise known as Benji The Binman; he earnshis living rifling through the rubbish of celebrities, lawyers andmanagers. He has made an estimated pounds 250,000 selling storiesabout celebrities, ranging from the pop group All Saints to JonathanAitken. Pell seems ...
Why are doctors sensitive about food intolerance? In sickness and in health
Feb 04, 2001; ... I have only just discovered the origin of the term "humble pie".The " 'umbles" are apparently a deer's heart, liver and entrails,which were made into a pie for the gamekeeper and his fellows to eatin the kitchen. Meanwhile, the lord of the manor and his entouragewould eat the deer's meat ...
And here's to you, Miss Donohoe Amanda Donohoe made her name wearing few, if any, clothes opposite Oliver Reed in Castaway. Fourteen years later, she is about to undress again - when she takes over from Jerry Hall as Mrs Robinson in The Graduate. But she loves dressing up too, she tells Hilary Alexander
Feb 04, 2001; ... Amanda Donohoe should be accustomed to nude scenes. After all,the film that launched her Hollywood career in 1987, the desert-island adventure Castaway with Oliver Reed, had a wardrobe budgetthat was stripped down to the bare essentials for the then 23-year-old. Yet she is not ...
She ain't heavy, she's my cousin Ballet
Feb 04, 2001; ... Paquita Not all ballets live for ever. Some just die of old age, butothers have all their jewels stolen to provide gala showpieces andthe original scenario is left for dead. This was the fate ofPaquita. Paquita was first danced at the Paris Opera in 1846 withchoreography by ...
Nothing was dull with Nancy around Nancy Mitford's `Love in a Cold Climate' starts on BBC1 tonight. Her sister, The Duchess of Devonshire, remembers their eccentric family life and celebrates Nancy's work
Feb 04, 2001; ... `NANCY, Pam, Tom, Diana, Bobo, Decca, Me," intoned in a peculiarvoice was my answer to anyone who asked where I came in the family. Nancy was 16 years older than me. She was my godmother as well asmy sister, my mother having run out of women friends to fill thatrole after so many ...
Aliens have invaded Start the Week Radio
Feb 04, 2001; ... There are few better ways of beating the Monday morning blues, Ifind, than tuning in to Start the Week (Radio 4, Monday). Withinminutes, I will have forgotten that I've five days of work ahead ofme. For I will have been reduced to such a state of rabid,teethgrinding fury that the only ...
Gibson goes girly Cinema
Feb 04, 2001; ... What Women Want The Claim Shadow of the Vampire Second Skin Frankly, I'm beginning to find Mel Gibson a little scary. As ifsiring six children and directing and producing zillions of films,and uncovering his bottom in them weren't enough, he's now decidedto ...
Africa's damp, dark secret Television
Feb 04, 2001; ... The natural world has lost a bit of its lustre lately. It'shardly surprising. Some of those animals must have appeared ontelevision so many times that they've taken on the droopy cast ofold soap actors - one eye fixed on their repeat fees, going throughthe motions, nothing more. Another ...
The angry old man of the theatre Arnold Wesker's current reputation rests more on his `impossible' behaviour than on his plays. As a new edition of his works is published, the playwright tells Gyles Brandreth why the world has got him wrong
Feb 04, 2001; ... In anticipation of my meeting with the playwright Arnold Wesker -co-founder of the "kitchen sink" school of drama and, with JohnOsborne, pioneer "Angry Young Man" - I telephoned four seniorfigures in the world of English theatre and received precisely thesame reaction from each of them: ...
Labour of laughter Theatre
Feb 04, 2001; ... Feelgood Medea We have had to wait nearly four years, but at last we have got aplay that does justice to some of the comic (and not so comic)aspects of the present government. Alistair Beaton's Feelgood, atthe Hampstead Theatre, has its imperfections, but at its best it ...
Big Ben strikes a lyrical, ecstatic chord Opera
Feb 04, 2001; ... It can't have been two months ago that the Canadian tenor BenHeppner was pinning us to the backs of our seats with his Aeneas inthe LSO's thrilling Les Troyens. Last Sunday, he was performing asimilar service, with the Royal Opera House Orchestra conducted byChristian Thielemann, singing ...
All the world's a semi-stage, with lighting Opera
Feb 04, 2001; ... Tristan und Isolde The Rhinegold Palestrina Ben Heppner concert We seem increasingly to be living in an age of semi-staged opera.This is less of a soft option than it sounds, given the punishingdifficulties of putting on most of Wagner's music dramas at all ....
So easy, so urban Art
Feb 04, 2001; ... Century City Give & Take The curse of current contemporary art shows is what one mightcall "piggybacking". This is a marketing ploy whereby new work,however inappropriate, is hyped by displaying it alongside that ofpast masters. The latest examples of piggybacking are ...
The Literary Life
Feb 04, 2001; ... SIR VIDIA NAIPAUL , who often takes a dim view of popularculture, has finally been seduced by the silver screen. Until now,the Booker Prize-winning novelist has never allowed any of his worksto be adapted for the cinema but last month in the Caribbeanshooting began on The Mystic Masseur, ...
Words to accompany the music Geoffrey Norris finds that Alfred Brendel's essays reveal the rare intelligence behind the musicianship
Feb 04, 2001; ... Alfred Brendel on Music: Collected Essays by Alfred Brendel Robson Books, pounds 16.99 pbk, 418 pp pounds 14.99 (free p&p) 0870 155 7222 AMONG THE COUNTLESS illuminating phrases that leap out from thisvigorous collection of Alfred Brendel's writings, there is one ...
Killers sent to plague us The human cost of history's lethal epidemics defies imagination, and they might not have finished with us yet, says John Adamson
Feb 04, 2001 ... The Black Death: A History of the Plagues, 1345-1730 by Bill Naphy and Andrew Spicer Tempus, pounds 25, 192 pp pounds 22 (free p&p) 0870 155 7222 FOR MOST OF us living in the cosmetically-enhanced, youth-venerating, mortality-denying West, the ...
Propaganda with popcorn Some British films were co-opted into the Cold War but, says Gerald Kaufman, they were on the right side
Feb 04, 2001; ... British Cinema and the Cold War: The State, Propaganda andConsensus by Tony Shaw I. B. Tauris, pounds 39.50, 281 pp pounds 35 (free p&p) 0870 155 7222 IT WAS LENIN who pronounced: "The cinema is for us the mostimportant of the arts." The more ferocious ...
Maps but no sense of direction Russell Davies is disappointed by a tale of cartological crime that loses its way
Feb 04, 2001; ... The Island of Lost Maps: A True Story of Cartographic Crime by Miles Harvey Weidenfeld & Nicolson, pounds 12.99, 405 pp pounds 10.99 (free p&p) 0870 155 7222 IT IS A curious but observable fact that while a woman who isunsure of her whereabouts will ask ...
Napoleonic nuptials The innocent who became the Emperor's second wife turned into a subtle politician, says Andrew Roberts
Feb 04, 2001; ... Napoleon and Marie Louise: The Second Empress by Alan Palmer Constable, pounds 20, 268 pp pounds 18 (free p&p) 0870 155 7222 AT LAST MONTH'S International Napoleonic Fair, Bernard Cornwell,the author of the Sharpe series of novels, declared that to be afine ...
Golden delicious David Robson on a compelling story of apples and the quest for love
Feb 04, 2001; ... The Hesperides Tree by Nicholas Mosley Secker & Warburg, pounds 15.99, 311 pp pounds 13.99 (free p&p) 0870 155 7222 TO THE GREEKS , the Hesperides were mythical creatures, parthuman and part goddess, who lived beyond the ocean at the limits ofthe world. They ...
Courtroom dramatics Susanna Yager finds trials as well as tribulations in her selection of the latest crime fiction
Feb 04, 2001; ... MOST LEGAL THRILLERS repeat a familiar formula, making thecourtroom the focus of the book, but Richard North Patterson'sProtect and Defend (Hutchinson, pounds 9.99 pbk) goes far beyond theconventional trial drama. The newly elected American President wantsto appoint a liberal woman as ...
Paperbacks
Feb 04, 2001; ... Chasing Shadows by Hugo Gryn with Naomi Gryn Penguin, pounds 6.99 THERE HAVE been many personal accounts, but it must surely beHugo Gryn's - he himself was in Auschwitz and in the Lieberoselabour camp, where his father died in his arms - that conveys ...
The wrong kind of American hero Richard Overy on the story of the only American woman to be executed for treason by Hitler
Feb 04, 2001; ... Resisting Hitler: Mildred Harnack and the Red Orchestra Shareen Blair Brysac Oxford, pounds 18.99, 498 pp pounds 16.99 (free p&p) 0870 155 7222 MILDRED FISH-HARNACK ought to be remembered as a monument tocivil courage in the face of tyranny. Yet her legacy as ...
Sleeping beauties waiting for a rescuer to call Two years ago it was a derelict `home at risk'. Now it is selling for pounds 600,000. But, finds Caroline McGhie, Seagate Hall in Lincolnshire is just one of many grand old houses that have slumbered for too long
Feb 04, 2001; ... Out near the Wash in East Anglia might seem the strangest ofplaces to lavish time and money on an historic wreck. For this is anaustere landscape, where driveways are more likely to hold a broken-down tractor than a Mercedes. But it is one which retains an integrity that many more ...
Diary of an estate agent
Feb 04, 2001; ... Luke Pender-Cudlip, head of flat sales, Knight Frank, Kensington MONDAY The alarm bleeps at 6.25am. Throw a shirt and suit on over myrunning gear and leave Balham seven minutes later. It's not that I'ma masochist. A prompt start makes the difference between a best ...
Shove thy neighbour If the people next door are driving you nuts, says Ross Clark, you could try knocking on the door and making a polite request. Failing that, you'll have to take more drastic action
Feb 04, 2001; ... As millions of flat-dwellers already know, it doesn't take a wildparty to make you aware of your neighbours. Telephones ringing,cupboard doors opening and closing, lavatories flushing and bathsrunning can be just as infuriating, as Cindy Crawford's neighbours,John and Marina French, ...
Go balmy about the Bahamas Unspoilt, uncrowded and still good value, Grand Bahama is perfect for buyers seeking an island haven, says Jane Slade
Feb 04, 2001; ... Steve Jervis arrived on Grand Bahama from Birmingham three yearsago with his wife, Tracey, three children and three suitcases. Hewas looking to invest the proceeds of a business sale and fell inlove with the desert island. "Two hundred years ago I would have been a cowboy exploring ...
Life's a beach if you own it
Feb 04, 2001; ... British buyers are snapping up foreign properties, from theCaribbean to the Cote d'Azur, their enthusiasm fuelled by a strongpound, a good year in the City and better transport links. "There is a lot of interest in second homes," says Patrick Dringof Knight Frank's international ...
Cold comfort Ask Jeff
Feb 04, 2001; ... In the recent correspondence about central heating you haverecommended leaving the heating on constantly but changing thethermostat settings at night. When I lived in military quarters inGermany about 10 years ago we had combined time switches/thermostats that allowed for higher or lower ...
Leak-proof Ask Jeff
Feb 04, 2001; ... In your column (Jan 7) you described the need for cavity trays,which is exactly the problem I have with my 1920s house. It has hadtwo bay windows extended, with wider roofs. During south-west galesthe ceiling leaks in the ground-floor rooms where the bays cutthrough the outside wall. But ...
Talking timber Ask Jeff
Feb 04, 2001; ... I wonder if you can tell me of any of the larger builders who arecurrently constructing timber-framed houses in central or southernEngland. Between 1984 and 1995 I lived in a timber-framed house,built by Wimpey, in Warwickshire. I found it much warmer than aconventional brick-and-block ...
On holiday, I'm just a running-repair man On the level - A builder who gives it to you straight
Feb 04, 2001; ... My story last week about the Changing Rooms designer who likedfixing holes with parcel tape has brought forth a response from noneother than my own father, Len Howell. He reminded me of an incidentmany years ago, during our annual family holiday on the Isle ofWight, when he dreamed one ...
Standard Life cuts home loan rates ahead of MPC decision
Feb 04, 2001; ... STANDARD Life Bank will tomorrow announce a cut in the standardvariable rate on its Freestyle mortgage from 6.95 per cent to 6.75per cent, ahead of the expected base-rate cut on Thursday. New borrowers, who benefit from a discounted rate for the firstsix months, will now pay just ...
Charities to cash in on Tesco cashpoints
Feb 04, 2001; ... TESCO will make a charitable donation each time a customer usesone of its cash dispensers, from this week. The move represents another step in the supermarket's campaign toguarantee shoppers easy access to their money and follows previousthreats to ban rivals' cashpoints that made ...
IFA at centre of Equitable rumpus
Feb 04, 2001; ... A FRESH storm is brewing over Equitable Life's decision to sellits 450,000-strong mailing list to a firm of financial advisers andits members' action group. Whitechurch Securities, the Bristol-based IFA, is using the listto contact policyholders, offering them guidance and help on ...
Banks bite back at consumer group's attack
Feb 04, 2001; ... HIGH street banks have hit back at criticism from the Consumers'Association that they are short-changing loyal customers by payingdire rates of interest. The CA's latest Which? investigation on banks reveals that majorbanks and building societies are still failing to pay ...
With-profits mauled by CA report
Feb 04, 2001; ... THE CONSUMERS' Association is poised to release a damning 70-page report into the pounds 400bn with-profits industry and demand aCruickshank-style investigation into the sector. The pressure group will officially announce on Tuesday that itwants to see a government-backed inquiry ...
Club Med to leap on Gymnase
Feb 04, 2001; ... CLUB Mediterranee, the international holiday business, is poisedto acquire Gymnase Club, one of Europe's leading health and fitnesscompanies in a deal worth 60m ( pounds 38m). The deal marks a radical move for Club Med which is understood tobe keen on diversifying away from its ...
Camelot puts lottery online
Feb 04, 2001; ... CAMELOT is close to completing a deal that will put the NationalLottery online later this year - allowing customers to buy lotterytickets or virtual scratchcards using a digital television orpersonal computer . Industry observers expect internet and digital TV sales oflottery ...
Willis prepares for stockmarket come back
Feb 04, 2001; ... WILLIS Group, the world's third largest insurance broker and riskmanager, is believed to be looking at a return to the stockmarketjust two and a half years after the group was taken private. Willis is understood to have called in Goldman Sachs, theAmerican investment bank, to look ...
Bruce is back with a Capital Pub venture
Feb 04, 2001; ... DAVID Bruce, the entrepreneur who founded the Firkin chain, is toraise pounds 10m to form a new business that will build a chain ofunbranded, freehold managed pubs in London. The Capital Pub Company is being formed as an enterpriseinvestment scheme to offer investors tax relief ....
GE Capital in last gasp bid for Equitable
Feb 04, 2001; ... GE CAPITAL, the financial services arm of General Electric, thegiant American conglomerate, has made a last-minute pounds 1.2bnoffer to buy Equitable Life, the stricken mutual life insurer. The bid, which was sent to Equitable's management late on Friday,came as Halifax was this ...
Coral plans rescue refinancing Betting group's pounds 52m loss increases pressure on venture capital backers at Deutsche Bank
Feb 04, 2001; ... CORAL Group, the country's third largest bookmaker, has crashedto a pounds 52.2m pre-tax loss and has been forced to seek urgentrefinancing to stave off financial disaster, including a breach ofits banking covenants. New information contained in the company's filings with ...
Are Cat marks up to scratch? With differing criteria for home loans, credit cards and bank accounts, people are confused, says Teresa Hunter
Feb 04, 2001; ... The announcement last week by Melanie Johnson, economic secretaryto the Treasury, that Cat marks would now be applied to credit cardsand basic bank accounts will have left millions of people bemused.What exactly, they will have asked themselves, are Cat marks? In a recent survey of ...
Frogmore goes south
Feb 04, 2001 ... FROGMORE, the property company which is in the process of takingitself private, has won planning consent for a pounds 220m officedevelopment on the south side of Westminster Bridge. The planning application is being supported by 3i, the venturecapital company. Frogmore, which is ...
NCL buys Panmure
Feb 04, 2001 ... NCL Securities, the privately-owned asset management group, isbuying Panmure Gordon Investments, the private client fund managerowned by WestLB, the German banking group. The deal, which is believed to be worth around pounds 20m, willincrease NCL's private client business by around ...
Ogilvie Thompson to step down from Anglo
Feb 04, 2001; ... JULIAN Ogilvie Thompson, the chairman and former chief executiveof Anglo American, the pounds 12bn mining company, will announce hisretirement when the untangling of Anglo's cross shareholding with DeBeers, its sister company, is completed later this year. Ogilvie Thompson, who has ...
Maiden has eyes on German media group
Feb 04, 2001; ... MAIDEN, the British outdoor media company that controls many ofthe poster sites around Britain, is in talks to buy Stryer, a Germanposter group which controls all the advertising on Germany railways. NM Rothschild, the merchant bank, is thought to be holding talksto buy the ...
Weetabix wakes up to fall in profits
Feb 04, 2001; ... WEETABIX, the family-owned breakfast cereal business, hassuffered a fall in profits for the first time in many years.Thecompany, controlled by Sir Richard George, has just filed its annualresults for 2000 which show that pre-tax profits fell from pounds53.5m in 1999 to pounds 51.1m last ...
Mendoza joins forces with Buffett
Feb 04, 2001; ... ROBERT Mendoza, one of Wall Street's most famous investmentbankers, has teamed up with Warren Buffett, the legendary investor,to create a radical new company that specialises in the riskmanagement of financial derivatives. Mendoza is leaving Goldman Sachs after less than a year ...
Brancote to withdraw from bid talks
Feb 04, 2001; ... Brancote, the gold mining company, is believed to have called offbid talks with some of the world's largest mining groups and hasdecided to develop its rich project in the south of Argentina on itsown. The company announced it was in bid talks last November. Sincethen it is ...
Cisco to make a play for Gameplay
Feb 04, 2001; ... CISCO Systems, the $270bn US computer giant and one of theworld's biggest companies, is in talks to acquire a stake of up to20 per cent in Gameplay, the quoted computer games retailer whichannounced 270 job losses on Friday. At Friday's closing price for Gameplay shares of 97.5p, a ...
A nation of terrified taxpayers A new survey says 70 per cent of us want to cheat the taxman. So why don't we? We're too scared, says Jenny Knight
Feb 04, 2001; ... Nearly three in four British taxpayers would cheat the taxman ifthey thought they could get away with it, according to a surveyconducted by economic psychologists at Exeter University. But thisis not because we are more honest than other Europeans - just morepetrified of tax inspectors ....
This is no way to advise Equitable Life's members MONEY COMMENT
Feb 04, 2001; ... EVERYONE is desperate to get their hands on the well-heeled, well-bred bloke perceived as the archetypal Equitable Life investor.Doctor, lawyer, policitican - just the type that has the personalfinance industry drooling excitedly. To a large extent, the myth is rooted in reality ....
Tesco to slash pounds 70m off prices
Feb 04, 2001; ... TESCO is drawing up plans to slash up to pounds 70m off itsprices in an attempt to steal customers from Sainsbury's andSafeway. The latest round of cost-cutting - codenamed Project Gordon- will be announced later this month. News of the price-cutting dashes hopes that Tesco, one of ...
S&N Peroni bid barred by family
Feb 04, 2001; ... SCOTTISH & Newcastle has lost out on a bid to acquire a 33 percent stake in Peroni, the Italian beer business, for pounds 60mafter the brewer's founding family exercised pre-emption rights overthe stake. The shares were owned by Danone, the French food giant, whichsold its ...
Liberty walks away from the catwalk
Feb 04, 2001; ... LIBERTY, the upmarket London department store, is planning toscrap its high fashion, ready-to-wear collection and pull out ofmail order and e-commerce as it retrenches to concentrate on coreretailing activities. An announcement giving further details isexpected tomorrow. Liberty ...
How to turn the Dome into a legacy
Feb 04, 2001 ... YOU do not need me to tell you the sale of the Dome is in acomplete shambles. The shortcomings of the sad process have becomedaily fayre for journalists throughout the land. I hear that theGovernment will shortly terminate Legacy's exclusive negotiatingrights to buy the site, despite the ...
Equitable's little Xtra
Feb 04, 2001 ... WHAT on earth is happening at the Halifax? Have they suffered acollective rush of blood to the head in that solid Yorkshire town?How else can you explain the group's bizarrely counter-intuitivedecision to bail out Equitable Life, that derelict heap of the lifeassurance ...
Act quickly to beat another stealth tax The chancellor is clawing back tax relief on life cover within pension contracts. But Annie Shaw says there's still time to take advantage of the old rules
Feb 04, 2001; ... Tax relief on life assurance cover for individuals is about toundergo the greatest revolution since premium relief was withdrawnon new policies in the early 1980s. In this, the latest of Gordon Brown's stealth taxes, the rulesrelating to tax concessions on the life cover that can ...
Investors need `sex magick' The Maverick
Feb 04, 2001; ... I THINK I have discovered where I've been going wrong in makinginvestments. I've been undertaking fundamental analysis, talkingwith managements, studying industries, financial ratios and soforth. What I really should have been doing is financial psychicism. This is a new method of ...
Banks find life interesting
Feb 04, 2001; ... MERVYN KING, the deputy governor of the Bank of England, oncefamously admitted to a burning ambition - to make monetary policyboring. Events over the past few weeks have made it clear that hisambition remains unfulfilled. Indeed, central bank watchers are infor one of the most ...