The Sunday Telegraph London back issues from March 2002:
DIARY OF AN OLD BODY Two years ago, Gyles Brandreth decided - or rather his wife did - that he should do something about his treble chin, pot belly and sagging bottom. Out went the early-evening Chablis and in came early-morning workouts. Now, his doctor says he is in peak condition. How did he do it?
Mar 03, 2002; ... 8 March 2000 It is my 52nd birthday. This morning I got up, pottered into thebathroom, looked in the mirror and thought, "Mmm, not at all bad,considering." I sauntered into the kitchen and said to Michele, mywife: "How do I look?" She gave me my birthday card and a wintrysmile ...
The tall story of a beauty queen Yana Booth trained at the Bolshoi, but her legs were too long for the ballet. In an exclusive interview, the new Miss Great Britain tells Julia Llewellyn Smith about her transformation
Mar 03, 2002; ... The first thing I notice about Yana Booth is her legs - all 37inches of them. Quite an asset, one would have thought. But for muchof her 21 years Miss Booth's pins have caused her a remarkable amountof trouble. Only last month she was lamenting that she could not geta job, despite being ...
Touring is no holiday for Her Majesty Tim of my life
Mar 03, 2002; ... The Queen has completed her Jubilee tour of Jamaica, New Zealandand Australia, and flies home today. The British press has ceased topay much attention to her foreign visits, almost as if she were onholiday, but they form an important part of her function and, in thecase of the ...
It was such a blinding failure The chairman of Christie's, talking for the first time since the trial of the head of Sotheby's, admits he knew that the two companies were colluding to fix charges. And, Lord Hindlip says, he had no doubt it would end in disaster
Mar 03, 2002; ... In the 40 years Lord Hindlip has spent working for Christie's, hehas seen many changes - but none more remarkable, perhaps, than thenear-thousandfold increase in his salary. "When I started I was paidpounds 6 a week," he tells me. "About pounds 320 a year. PlusLuncheon Vouchers." And ...
Just call me a mad boat chick Tracy Edwards has come out of retirement to face her rival, Ellen MacArthur, in the Jules Verne round-the-world yacht race. Hers will be an all-female crew - and, as she tells David Thomas, she's proud of it
Mar 03, 2002; ... Tracy Edwards spent pounds 1 million on a yacht last week. Sheremortgaged her house - "Again!", she sighs - and picked up a 110-ftcatamaran called Club Med. "Wasn't Ellen MacArthur hoping to buy the same boat?" I ask."Yes," replies Edwards, and a huge grin spreads across her ...
The MMR vaccine is fine - but it mightn't have been
Mar 03, 2002; ... There was a time when science was virtually synonymous withreliable knowledge, and the scientist a rational, objective seekerafter truth. But no more. The weekly diet of exaggerated healthhazards, falsified predictions (Aids, foot and mouth) and confusionof fantasy with fact (pig ...
Costume drama in crisis Ismail Merchant and James Ivory are famous for their glossy period dramas, but their recent output has been disappointing. They tell David Gritten why this will not deter them from embarking on their 47th film
Mar 03, 2002; ... It is exactly 40 years ago that Merchant Ivory's first film wentinto production. In the cut-throat film industry, four decades is anunfeasibly long run, and last week the Merchant Ivory team (producerIsmail Merchant, director James Ivory, screenwriter Ruth PrawerJhabvala) were duly ...
Hello, Starsailor Critical acclaim, a best-selling debut album - the world is Starsailor's oyster. 'And we haven't even got close to fulfilling our musical ambition,' James Walsh tells James Delingpole
Mar 03, 2002; ... Every year at James Walsh's music college in Wigan, one of thelecturers would treat new students to a cautionary tale about theevils of the music biz. Once, the story went, he had played a fewchords at an audition with a famous heavy metal star. He didn't getthe job, but a few months ...
More Eng. Lit. than opera Music
Mar 03, 2002; ... Monster Daniel Barenboim Duke Bluebeard's Castle/ Erwartung Having read in Another Newspaper on Thursday that we are living ina golden age of English opera but not myself having noticed it muchlately, I entered the Theatre Royal, Glasgow, that evening with ...
Collective passion Theatre
Mar 03, 2002; ... The Mysteries My One and Only Iolanthe By now almost everyone interested in the theatre must have heardof The Mysteries, the remarkable South African reworking of themedieval Chester mystery plays which was first seen at Wilton's MusicHall last summer, and which is ...
'Bully' subjects us to a non-stop parade of try-hard profanity and censor baiting
Mar 03, 2002; ... Bully (18) A gaudy slice of tabloid sensationalism dressed up as arty socialcommentary, Larry Clark's Bully makes his first feature, Kids (1995),about junkie teens sleeping their way round New York, look likeBambi. The bully is Bobby (In The Bedroom's Nick Stahl), a ...
Something nasty in Newfoundland Cinema
Mar 03, 2002; ... The Shipping News The Mothman Prophecies Quoyle, the luckless hero of The Shipping News (15), survives achildhood with his vile father by dreaming that he is there bymistake, and that "somewhere in the world my real people longed forme". Yet when the adult Quoyle ...
Toodle pip pip Radio
Mar 03, 2002; ... Sue MacGregor's departure from Today on Wednesday was strangelyaffecting in the end. After all the dire celebrity tributes - "I'mGreg Dyke, Director General of the BBC, I think she's a star andshe'll be greatly missed by everybody" - she had just a few minutesleft, as the pips came ...
Welcome to the cultural closet Television
Mar 03, 2002; ... `Everybody needs a place to think", runs the advertising sloganfor the new arts and culture channel, BBC4. Somehow this seems lessalluring than it ought to be, given that the place where peopletraditionally do much of their thinking is the lavatory. But in thecircumstances - and I shan't ...
Butch twirls Dance
Mar 03, 2002; ... Russian State Cossacks Robin Howard Gala Cossack dancing is essentially a cabaret turn, and I rememberedtoo late that the Peacock Theatre thoughtfully allows drinks to betaken into the auditorium. I think this would probably enhance thejolly, if mildly touristic, atmosphere ...
Premiership hero Art
Mar 03, 2002; ... George Romney William Beckford Today George Romney is generally regarded as an also-ran comparedwith his late 18th-century rivals, Joshua Reynolds and ThomasGainsborough; an artist dismissed in a current history by Sir EllisWaterhouse as the equivalent of a "society" ...
Quests for reassurance There is a mix of melancholia and experimentation in Vernon Scannell's selection of new poetry
Mar 03, 2002; ... JOHN UPDIKE' s deservedly high reputation as a novelist has, atleast on this side of the Atlantic, almost entirely obscured the factthat he is also a gifted poet whose first published work was a volumeof verse, The Carpentered Hen. His new collection, Americana andOther Poems (Penguin, ...
How Right was Kipling? Convictions - political and Imperial - shaped Kipling's life and his writing, says John Gross
Mar 03, 2002; ... The Long Recessional: The Imperial Life of Rudyard Kipling by David Gilmour John Murray, pounds 22.50, 351 pp pounds 19.50 ( pounds 1.99 p&p) 0870 155 7222 EVERY WRITER has his political aspect, but few merit a politicalbiography. Rudyard Kipling, as David ...
Heroes of the war that wasn't Max Hastings on the men and women whose job it was to plan for the aftermath of nuclear attack
Mar 03, 2002; ... The Secret State: Whitehall and the Cold War by Peter Hennessy Allen Lane/Penguin Press, pounds 16.99, 233 pp pounds 14.99 ( pounds 1.99 p&p) 0870 155 7222 IN AUGUST 1991 , after the failure of the KGB's coup to reversethe break-up and reform of the old ...
The Literary Life
Mar 03, 2002; ... A LETTER from an eagle-eyed reader has highlighted the looking-glass world of book classification. It pointed out that for the pastfew weeks Bored of the Rings, a parody of J. R. R Tolkien's Lord ofthe Rings, has appeared in our chart for best-selling non-fiction.Why? Because Gollancz, ...
A star-crossed lover of Verona FC Russell Davies tries to understand an English intellectual's passion for a club noted for its indifferent football and racist fans
Mar 03, 2002; ... A Season with Verona: Travels Around Italy in Search of Illusion,National Character and . . . Goals! by Tim Parks Secker & Warburg, pounds 16.99, 447 pp pounds 14.99 ( pounds 1.99 p&p) 0870 155 7222 IN THE BREAST of millions of European citizens (both male or, ...
One goose-step at a time Noel Malcolm praises a portrait of Mussolini which shows him as having a genius for ruthless pragmatism
Mar 03, 2002; ... Mussolini by R. J. B. Bosworth Arnold, pounds 25, 584 pp pounds 25 ( pounds 1.99 p&p) 0870 155 7222 THE "GREAT MAN" approach to history has become the Straw Man ofhistorical theory - something people refer to nowadays only in orderto jeer at it. And the reasons ...
Best-sellers
Mar 03, 2002; ... Paperback non-fiction 1 A Child Called It, Dave Pelzer (Orion, pounds 5.99). 5,006. 2 The Lost Boy, Dave Pelzer (Orion, pounds 6.99). 4,875. 3 Dr Atkins' New Diet Revolution, Robert C. Atkins (Vermilion,pounds 7.99). 4,799. 4 Black Hawk Down, Mark Bowden (Corgi, ...
The emigrant's tale
Mar 03, 2002; ... The Hunters by Claire Messud Picador, pounds 12.99, 181 pp pounds 10.99 ( pounds 1.99 p&p) 0870 155 7222 "SO DISCOMBOBULATED was I by this invasion of my privacy . . . "There is something incredibly dispiriting about writers who inflictthis sort of stuff on ...
Austerity from start to Finnish
Mar 03, 2002; ... The Story of My Face by Kathy Page Weidenfeld & Nicolson, pounds 14.99, 233 pp pounds 12.99 ( pounds 1.99 p&p) 0870 155 7222 A FEMALE academic, middle aged and hideously scarred, arrives in aremote village in Finland to research the life of Tuomas Envall, ...
Kafka goes to college This tale of American campus life reads like satire, but is it? wonders David Robson
Mar 03, 2002; ... The Horned Man by James Lasdun Jonathan Cape, pounds 10.99, 194 pp pounds 9.99 ( pounds 1.99 p&p) 0870 155 7222 LIKE THE hero of his novel, James Lasdun is a literary academicwho started out in England and ended up in upstate New York. It is ajourney that ...
Victory for digging Peter Jones is bowled over by these reconstructions of classical remains
Mar 03, 2002; ... The Archaeology of Athens by John M. Camp Yale, pounds 29.95, 340 pp pounds 29.95 ( pounds 1.99 p&p) 0870 155 7222 The Forum of Trajan in Rome by James E. Packer California UP, pounds 27.95, 235 pp pounds 27.95 ( pounds ...
Paperbacks
Mar 03, 2002; ... The City of London: Volume IV - A Club No More 1945-2000 by David Kynaston Pimlico, pounds 16 THIS HUGE volume completes David Kynaston's quartet of books aboutthe City of London, telling how, after the Second World War, itmanaged to return to something like its ...
One-man department for transport Railways can work . . . at least when they are designed by Isambard Brunel, says Aileen Reid
Mar 03, 2002; ... Brunel: The Life and Times of Isambard Kingdom Brunel by Angus Buchanan Hambledon & London, pounds 25, 294 pp pounds 22 ( pounds 1.99 p&p) 0870 155 7222 THE FAMOUS photograph of the engineer Brunel in front of thelaunching chains of the "Great Eastern" is a visual ...
A Bauhaus bonanza Built in the 1950s, North End house in Hampstead was designed around a prized inheritance of 1930s furniture. The whole package is now for sale, says Caroline McGhie
Mar 03, 2002; ... North End house in Hampstead, NW3, is something of a Russian doll.Peel back one layer of habitation and you find another inside. It isa rare fusion of complementary periods - a piece of cutting-edge1950s domestic architecture, lovingly designed around a pioneeringcollection of 1930s ...
Britain's ghost houses Increasingly, properties are being sold without the owner ever having spent a night there. Ross Clark reports
Mar 03, 2002; ... Everyone has a few white elephants in their house: purchases thatseemed a good idea at the time, but have lain in some dark cupboardever since. But what if your house itself is the white elephant? Inspite of the horrendous cost of property, increasing numbers ofpeople are buying or ...
In which a rabbit gets shot and chickens are overvalued Diary of an Estate Agent
Mar 03, 2002; ... Arrive at work and start preparing two memorandums of saleletters. I have been fielding offers on my mobile all weekend, muchto the disapproval of my house guests. Spend the afternoon calming down some clients with a pounds450,000 three-bedroom thatched cottage in a pretty village ...
Window drip grooves Ask Jeff
Mar 03, 2002; ... A local builder is fitting some large windows that he has made tothe new brickwork of my extension, which has both Planning andBuilding Regs approval. The window sill drip grooves appear to beflush with the brickwork. The local council states that it wouldprefer them to be at ...
Can I have two boilers? Ask Jeff
Mar 03, 2002; ... Is it feasible to have two separate boilers working one centralheating/hot water system? My wife and I are finding it increasinglydifficult to do all the sawing and chopping required to keep a bigwood-burning stove going all winter. The stove, which has an integralboiler, keeps six ...
Damp brickwork Ask Jeff
Mar 03, 2002; ... My front wall of nine-inch solid brickwork is very damp in one section between the floor and thewindow sill. The property was built in 1970. The front garden doesnot cover the lower-front brickwork, and I suspect that the damp-proof course has broken down. Is the remedy to ...
A lesson for budding builders On the level
Mar 03, 2002; ... When I mention to non-Sunday Telegraph readers that I write abuilding column for a newspaper, a typical response is, "You meanarchitecture?" "No," I reply, "building." "Er . . . you mean DIY?" "No; building." This often results in head-scratching and puzzled ...
Opening this week Tartuffe
Mar 03, 2002; ... The great humbug is back. Tartuffe opens at the Lyttelton Theatre(020 7452 3000) this Tuesday in a new version by Ranjit Bolt, andmuch of the interest is bound to centre on the playing of the title-role. The television-friendly National Theatre has secured MartinClunes (above) for the ...
Classical CDs
Mar 03, 2002; ... Birtwistle Pulse Shadows McFadden, Arditti Quartet, Nash Ensemble/de Leeuw (WDR 3 26867-2). In this 1996 work, Birtwistle interweavesnine pieces for string quartet with nine settings of poems by PaulCelan performed here in Michael Hamburger's translation, although onepoem is sung in the ...
Rock CDs
Mar 03, 2002; ... Log Every Time a Bell Rings an Angel Gets His Wings (Bad TasteRecords). Goodness, what are they putting into the Scandinavian watersupply? How else can it be that every second band that's any good -from The Hives and Royksopp to Kings Of Convenience - is eitherSwedish or Norwegian? Log ...
Videos
Mar 03, 2002; ... Mike Bassett England Manager (EV, 15). Surprisingly watchablemockumentry about a loveable but incompetent England football manager(Ricky Tomlinson). It's crude and old-fashioned (most the playersseem to have walked straight out of The Beano) but keeps you amusedtill the final ...
Rock
Mar 03, 2002; ... Soundtrack of our Lives Swedish rockers who come across likesomething halfway between the Rolling Stones and a Viking coachparty. Manchester Roadhouse tonight, 0161 832 1111; London Cargo Mon,020 7287 0932; Southampton Joiners Arms Tue, 023 8022 5612; LeicesterThe Charlotte Wed, 0116 255 ...
Concerts
Mar 03, 2002; ... Royal Festival Hall, 020 7960 4242, today, 7.30pm: WolfgangSawallisch and the Philharmonia open their Beethoven cycle with theLeonore No 2 overture and Symphonies 1 and 2. Thur, 7.30pm: theEgmont overture and the Eroica Symphony, and Murray Perahia issoloist in the Piano Concerto No ...
Opera
Mar 03, 2002; ... Royal Opera 020 7304 4000. Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle andSchoenberg's Erwartung (Tue, Thur, Sat) with Willard White, KatarinaDalayman and Inga Nielsen. ENO Coliseum 020 7632 8300. Revival of David Alden's production ofAriodante (Wed, Sat). Harry Christophers conducts. Verdi's A ...
Art
Mar 03, 2002; ... Bloomsbury Choice Bloomsbury Workshop 12 Galen Place, off BuryPlace, WC1, 020 7405 0632, to March 15. It is a sad loss to theBritish art scene that after 20 years this is the gallery's finalshow. It has been a pocket of civilisation in a hard-sell world,where its founder and owner Tony ...
Dance
Mar 03, 2002; ... Arc Dance Company Landmark Theatre, Ilfracombe 01271 324242, Wedonly. What the world has been waiting for: a danced version of TheBrothers Karamazov. World premiere of Kim Brandstrup's Brothers usinga score by Jonathan Stone and designs by the award-winning ...
Cinema
Mar 03, 2002; ... Charlotte Gray (15). Cate Blanchett plays the Scottish heroine ofthe title in this lush adaptation of Sebastian Faulks's novel. WhenCharlotte is sent to Vichy France as an undercover agent, she goeswith the secret hope of rescuing her airman lover who has been shotdown nearby. There are ...
Theatre
Mar 03, 2002; ... Lady Windermere's Fan Haymarket Theatre Royal, 0870 901 3356. Theweakest of Oscar Wilde's comedies - but Peter Hall's just aboutsucceeds. Vanessa Redgrave's fine performance papers over thecontradictions in the character of the worldly but self-sacrificingMrs Erlynne; Joely Richardson ...
Nationwide faces conversion vote
Mar 03, 2002; ... THE board of the Nationwide Building Society faces anotherdemutualisation vote at its annual general meeting in July. Andrew Muir, a recruitment consultant from Slough, confirmed lastweek that he would submit a conversion resolution next month. Muir, who has made several ...
Schwab enters fund supermarket war
Mar 03, 2002; ... CHARLES Schwab, the US stockbroking giant, is to launch its long-awaited UK online fund supermarket next week. It will go head-to-head with arch-US rival Fidelity, which launched its own version twoyears ago. The two pioneered fund supermarkets in the US where each has$170bn ...
Trackers spur slanging match
Mar 03, 2002; ... A WAR of words has broken out between managers of the major indextracking funds over which one is the cheapest. New research on tracker charges, released last week by Egg,infuriated Legal & General, which was accused of charging more thanmany actively managed ...
Halifax savings rates seesaw
Mar 03, 2002; ... THE HALIFAX has cut interest rates on its fixed-rate savingsaccounts just two weeks after putting them up. Fixed rates depend on money-market forecasts, and the bank'sdecision reflects expectations that the Bank of England will leaveinterest rates on hold when the Monetary Policy ...
NURSERY STORY FOR ENTERPRISING INVESTORS
Mar 03, 2002; ... DEMAND for for nursery places in the UK continues to outstripsupply, according to Teather & Greenwood. Last week the brokerlaunched The Childcare Corporation 5, the fifth version of anEnterprise Investment Scheme that builds and operates day nurseries,writes Paul Farrow. The four ...
IFA gears up for stampede from Equitable Hargreaves Lansdown set to send transfer forms to 60,000 members
Mar 03, 2002; ... HARGREAVES Lansdown, one of the country's biggest independentfinancial advisers, is preparing to send out 60,000 transfer forms toEquitable Life policyholders in a bid to persuade them to considertheir options. The mailings are set to arrive just days after policyholdersreceive ...
Deutsche Bank to buy Rreef
Mar 03, 2002; ... DEUTSCHE Bank is poised to buy Rreef, the leading US property fundmanager, for $400m as the latest part of its drive to create a vastinvestment management group. The deal will produce a pounds 100m windfall for Haslemere, theAnglo-Dutch property company which owns a 36 per cent ...
Pym succeeds Windeler at A&L
Mar 03, 2002; ... JOHN Windeler, the executive chairman of Alliance & Leicester, isto step down from running the mortgage bank in a management shake-upwhich will see Richard Pym become chief executive. Windeler is understood to have informally agreed to take a backseat as non-executive chairman. The ...
Swedish mail fiasco costs Consignia pounds 20m
Mar 03, 2002; ... CONSIGNIA, the stricken Post Office group, has given away acontrolling stake in Sweden's CityMail, which it bought for pounds20m less than two years ago. Consignia, which is losing up to pounds 1.5m a day, never made anymoney on the investment in CityMail, the major competitor to ...
Robinson steps down as legal ace takes chair at Railtrack
Mar 03, 2002; ... JOHN Robinson will announce this week that he is stepping down aschairman of Railtrack to make way for a legal expert who will leadthe fight through the courts for compensation for shareholders. Steve Marshall, the chief executive, handed in his notice inNovember and will step down ...
BT set for pounds 2bn Europe write-down Poor performances in Germany and Holland prompt talk of disposals
Mar 03, 2002; ... BT is preparing to announce a write-down of almost pounds 2bn onthe value of European assets including the Viag and Telfort fixed-line telecoms businesses in Germany and Holland respectively. TheseEuropean operations were retained by BT when it demerged its formermobile arm, mmO2, in ...
BAT's positive smoke signals make me fume Taking Stock
Mar 03, 2002; ... BRITISH American Tobacco is a conundrum for me. I think its sharesrepresent one of the best risk/reward profiles in these difficulteconomic times. Cash flow is superb and the shares' long-term trackrecord makes history. I rate BAT a "strong hold" at the very least; ashare this column ...
Equitable's policyholders need to trust somebody
Mar 03, 2002; ... WHY has Equitable Life decided to wait until now to start makingfrantic attempts to hang on to its dwindling band of members? Right up to the last few weeks, it appeared to be making no effortat all to stem the flow. More the opposite. Directors gave thedistinct impression that ...
Branded for Ofex
Mar 03, 2002 ... BRANDED Leisure, a company which is planning to open a chain ofhealth and lifestyle venues for women using the Cosmopolitan magazinebrand, is to float on Ofex. Branded is aiming to raise pounds650,000, valuing it at pounds 3m ....
Grantchester sales
Mar 03, 2002 ... GRANCHESTER Holdings, the property company which specialises inretail parks, has disposed of a portfolio for pounds 121m toHenderson Global Investors. The properties total 396,000 sq ft andinclude the Forge Retail Park in Glasgow for pounds ...
Huntsman's head
Mar 03, 2002 ... HUNTSMAN & Sons, the Savile Row tailor, has appointed JoeCarlebach chairman as it strives to consolidate its reputation as oneof Britain's most prestigious bespoke tailors and build itself as aglobal ...
British Land approves Broadgate tower
Mar 03, 2002; ... BRITISH Land is poised to give the go-ahead for the constructionof the first tower block for more than a decade in its flagshipBroadgate complex in the City. The completed building is likely to be worth between pounds 560mand pounds 600m depending on the level of rents agreed ....
BBA backs the penalty shootout
Mar 03, 2002; ... THE British Bloodstock Agency, one of the country's grandestcompanies, will this week reveal that it is transforming itself fromthe rarified world of buying and selling thoroughbred racehorses tothe more garish world of amusement parks through a pounds 1.1macquisition. The BBA ...