The Sunday Telegraph London back issues from September 2002:
Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda were the most celebrated couple of the 1920s. These previously unpublished love letters reveal how their devotion was gradually torn apart by his alcoholism and her mental instability
Sep 01, 2002 ... To Scott Spring 1919 Montgomery, Alabama All these soft, warm nights going to waste when I ought to belying in your arms under the moon - the dearest arms in all the world- darling arms that I love so to feel around me. How much longerbefore they'll be there to stay? ...
Free books are filling my postbag
Sep 01, 2002; ... It is International Literacy Day next Sunday, and the NationalReading Campaign is encouraging everyone to make it Swap a Book Day.This sounds a good idea, but I have to record that readers of thiscolumn have already gone further in their enthusiasm for promotinggood literature by ...
Dazzlingly down to earth Ever since Abigail's Party, Alison Steadman has staked a claim as Britain's leading satirical actress. As her new play opens in the West End, she explains: 'All comedy is cruel'
Sep 01, 2002; ... As I leaf through Alison Steadman's voluminous press cuttings, thephrase that keeps hitting me is "national treasure". At the age of56, and with an OBE on her dressing table, that's the epithet withwhich she has been lumbered. She has certainly come by it honestly. For Steadman is ...
My son wouldn't lie to me Zacarias Moussaoui has been charged with belonging to the terrorist cell responsible for the September 11 attacks, and if found guilty faces the death penalty. In her first interview, his horrified mother tells Kim Willsher how he was brainwashed by 'evil' fanatics
Sep 01, 2002; ... Aicha el Wafi has a gold-framed photograph of an endearing-looking little boy in one hand and a sodden handkerchief in theother. "That's how I remember him," she says, waving the picture sadlyand dabbing her eyes. "He was my little chou, my baby . . . of all mychildren he was the ...
Reflexology and knee-jerk reactions
Sep 01, 2002; ... Over the past two decades reflexology, the gentle art of footmassage, has emerged from obscurity to become one of the most popularand universally practised of the complementary therapies. This mustbe gratifying for its practitioners, if a bit puzzling for anyone whohas ever glanced at ...
The long walk home A new film about three Aborigine girls who walked 1,000 miles through the outback reveals the truth of Australia's Stolen Generations. Demetrios Matheou talks to the author and director of 'Rabbit-Proof Fence'
Sep 01, 2002; ... The writer Doris Pilkington grew up believing that her mother haddeliberately abandoned her at the age of four in a forbidding state-run institution far away from her family, her people and herbirthplace in the Western Australian desert. "I really resented her.The thought that my mother ...
Sexy, self-conscious Dance
Sep 01, 2002; ... Play Without Words Bounce Remember how pretty women would surreptitiously straighten theirsuspenders as they got up from a chair? How they would carve a freshsmile with their sharp crimson lipsticks? How neatly Brylcreemedchaps straightened their ties in response? Matthew ...
At last, Wagner taken seriously Music
Sep 01, 2002; ... Siegfried Die Liebe der Danae Salzburg concerts Romeo et Juliette Scottish Opera's unfolding Ring cycle has reached Siegfried,performed during the Edinburgh Festival at the Festival Theatre. Themerit of Tim Albery's production from the start has been ...
Beefing on about early music The farmer and conductor Sir John Eliot Gardiner tells Michael White how the Merry Widow makes cows comfortable
Sep 01, 2002; ... Urban sophisticate I may be, but I listen to The Archers, I knowabout the harvest, and I wasn't too surprised to find it in fullswing when I arrived last week at John Eliot Gardiner's farm in thedepths of rural Dorset. The only thing that took me unawares wasfinding Gardiner himself in a ...
By the light of the silvery moon Art
Sep 01, 2002; ... `You're very interested in space and light," I once remarked to apainter, lost for anything else to say about his work. "Well," hereplied succinctly, "There isn't anything much else, is there?" It was a good answer - and profoundly revealing of the way inwhich painters think - but ...
Salaam Romeo and Juliet Theatre
Sep 01, 2002; ... Romeo and Juliet The Threepenny Opera Kristin Chenoweth Verona was good enough for Shakespeare, but the production ofRomeo and Juliet at the Chichester Festival Theatre shifts the actionto 16th-century Istanbul. The director, Indhu Rubasingham, hasn'tmade the change ...
A pain at home is a pain abroad Television
Sep 01, 2002; ... There are times when I feel that being a television critic israther an effete profession for a vigorous hunter/gatherer such asmyself. There are others, however, when the strain of getting througha programme is so great that I reckon I deserve some sort ofcommemorative sash at the end of ...
What do you believe? Radio
Sep 01, 2002; ... `Ya either got faith or ya got unbelief and there ain't no neutralground," Bob Dylan sang in his fundamentalist phase (Precious Angel).In its way, the sentiment would serve as a good if brisk review ofBel Mooney's programme, Devout Sceptics (Radio 4, Tuesday), in whichshe talks to people ...
White night of the soul Cinema
Sep 01, 2002; ... Insomnia Windtalkers If Al Pacino's face were a suitcase, it would have travelled allround the world twice, and then been dumped for a decade in the leftluggage depot of Sarajevo airport. From his hangdog eyes to thebattered hollows of his cheeks, he looks uniquely ruined and ...
The bottom has been hit
Sep 01, 2002; ... The Sweetest Thing (15) The sweetest thing in a bucket of lemons, this execrable girls-go-gross-out rom-com makes the mistake of thinking that if you putCameron Diaz anywhere near a bodily fluid you've got a hit on yourhands. But what made There's Something About Mary funny was ...
Footballing fraternity Julie Welch on Jack and Bobby Charlton, brothers, team-mates but not friends
Sep 01, 2002; ... Jack & Bobby: A Story of Brothers in Conflict by Leo McKinstry Collins Willow, pounds 18.99, 492 pp pounds 16.99 ( pounds 1.99 p&p) 0870 155 7222 TO REPHRASE Oscar Wilde: to produce one of the nation's greatestfootballers may be regarded as an achievement; to ...
The lucidity of the Laureate Vernon Scannell assesses Andrew Motion's first collection since his elevation to the post of the nation's official poet
Sep 01, 2002; ... Public Property by Andrew Motion Faber, pounds 12.99, 102 pp pounds 11.99 ( pounds 1.99 p&p) 0870 155 7222 THREE YEARS ago Andrew Motion, then aged 49, was appointed PoetLaureate in succession to Ted Hughes. Public Property, a title whichI take to be ...
A shocking lack of decorum In yoking his own domestic tribulations to the millions killed by Stalin Martin Amis is guilty of bad history and worse taste, says Orlando Figes
Sep 01, 2002; ... Koba the Dread by Martin Amis Jonathan Cape, pounds 16.99, 306 pp pounds 14.99 ( pounds 1.99 p&p) 0870 155 7222 HISTORY IS a debt the living repay to the dead. A good historianneeds many qualities: imagination; judgment tempered by human empathyand ...
The loneliness of the long-distance mother Is Margaret Drabble still exercising family demons in this novel, wonders Caroline Moore
Sep 01, 2002; ... The Seven Sisters by Margaret Drabble Viking, pounds 16.99, 306 pp pounds 14.99 ( pounds 1.99 p&p) 0870 155 7222 MARGARET DRABBLE's new novel is psychologically fascinating; yetthe aspect I found most interesting is, I suspect, precisely what mayput off many ...
Death off the rails
Sep 01, 2002; ... The Necropolis Railway by Andrew Martin Faber, pounds 10.99 pbk, 231 pp pounds 10.99 ( pounds 1.99 p&p) 0870 155 7222 PEOPLE (or should I say men?) who are passionate about steamengines will love this novel. It is set in 1903, the great age ofsteam, and the ...
A revolutionary kind of truth This novel may be careless and provocative, but George Walden greatly admires its audacity and verve
Sep 01, 2002; ... Platform by Michel Houellebecq tr by Frank Wynne Heinemann, pounds 12.99, 362 pp pounds 11.99 ( pounds 1.99 p&p) 0870 155 7222 MICHEL HOUELLEBECQ (pronounced Wellbeck) is a controversial, prize-winning French novelist who sells in hundreds of thousands. In ...
From a clear blue sky
Sep 01, 2002; ... Dead Air by Iain Banks Little, Brown, pounds 16.99, 408 pp pounds 14.99 ( pounds 1.99 p&p) 0870 155 7222 THIS IS Iain Banks's first book for three years - not much of agap by most standards, but an epic sabbatical for someone who'spublished 19 novels since ...
Achilles is such a heel
Sep 01, 2002; ... The Songs of the Kings by Barry Unsworth Hamish Hamilton, pounds 16.99, 244 pp pounds 14.99 ( pounds 1.99 p&p) 0870 155 7222 ALTHOUGH Barry Unsworth's novel is set prior to the Siege of Troy,its characters talk more like a bunch of middle-managers at a ...
Modify to survive
Sep 01, 2002; ... Wake Up by Tim Pears Bloomsbury, pounds 16.99, 227 pp pounds 14.99 ( pounds 1.99 p&p) 0870 155 7222 A NOVEL about genetic modification sets alarm-bells ringing. Do wewant those dreary arguments, mostly from ideologically entrenchedpositions, transposed to ...
When memory is all that matters Jane Shilling enjoys some subtle Anglo-Irish pleasures
Sep 01, 2002; ... The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor Penguin, pounds 16.99, 228 pp pounds 14.99 ( pounds 1.99 p&p) 0870 155 7222 WILLIAM TREVOR'S new novel is a tender study in the art of loss.The year is 1921. At Lahardane, an 18th-century house on the Irishcoast, the ...
Puffing her way around a continent Mark Sanderson on an account of a train journey across the US in a smoking compartment
Sep 01, 2002; ... Stranger On A Train by Jenny Diski Virago, pounds 15.99, 280 pp pounds 13.99 ( pounds 1.99 p&p) 0870 155 7222 IN 1960, WHEN Jenny Diski, the novelist, was a troubled 13-year-old, she spent her holidays riding round the Circle Line on theLondon Underground. A ...
Page-turner Which is the most exciting book you've ever read? Continuing our series, the novelist Paul Bailey chooses the collected Richard Hannay novels of John Buchan
Sep 01, 2002; ... I DISCOVERED John Buchan's Richard Hannay novels only 10 yearsago, and when I'm in the dumps I pick up Penguin's omnibus edition ofall five and am instantly transported into a vanished England, afreezing Scotland and an Empire where the sun is just beginning toset. It's a world in which ...
The civil war that never was Richard Rex considers a study of the popular rising that threatened Henry VIII with civil war
Sep 01, 2002; ... The Pilgrimage of Grace: The Rebellion that Shook Henry VIII'sThrone by Geoffrey Moorhouse Weidenfeld & Nicolson, pounds 25, 361 pp pounds 23 ( pounds 1.99 p&p) 0870 155 7222 "WHY WAS THERE so little opposition to Henry VIII's Break withRome?" was once a hardy ...
Paperbacks
Sep 01, 2002; ... Ted Hughes: The Life of a Poet by Elaine Feinstein Phoenix, pounds 8.99 TED HUGHES was not only one of the finest English poets of the20th century but also, to those privileged to know him, an engagingcompanion and a faithful friend. He was a hugely popular ...
Murdering between the lines Russell Davies on the bizarre story of a man who was an accomplished forger but amateurish killer
Sep 01, 2002; ... The Poet and the Murderer by Simon Worrall Fourth Estate, pounds 15.99 pounds 13.99 ( pounds 1.99 p&p) 0870 155 7222 IN AN AGE necessarily obsessed with ID and authentication, allforms of impersonation are bound to fascinate us increasingly. Sothere is something ...
Eminent and not-so-eminent John Gross enjoys A. N. Wilson's pick- and-mix compendium of the men and women who summed up the Victorians and their values
Sep 01, 2002; ... The Victorians by A. N. Wilson Hutchinson, pounds 25, 724 pp pounds 23 ( pounds 1.99 p&p) 0870 155 7222 A. N. WILSON has chosen the title of his new book with care. It isnot so much a history of the Victorian age (though within limits itis that, too) as a ...
Lessons in cyberspace An internet-based scheme allows children who cannot cope with school to study at home instead. Tessa Boase reports
Sep 01, 2002; ... Warren became "disengaged from the learning process" (as thejargon has it) at around 11 years old. By 14 he hadn't attendedschool for two years and was running wild, thumbing his nose at theweekly two hours of home-tutoring which his local education authorityprovides for excluded ...
Your place or mine? With the average marrying age now close to 30, the chances are that when couples do tie the knot, both will own a property. Anthea Masey finds out how they can maximise their assets
Sep 01, 2002; ... Over the past decade, the average age at which couples get marriedhas risen by three years. Demanding jobs and the desire to establisha career before settling down means that women now marry for thefirst time at 28 and men at 30. Not surprisingly, this trend ishaving an impact on the ...
How to get the best deal
Sep 01, 2002; ... MANY COUPLES ARE caught off guard by the dilemma of what to dowith the homes they have owned as single people. To get the best dealout of the property market, you need to ask yourself some hard-headed questions. Letting one or both properties is an option, but remember it ...
Adventures in the back alleys London's latest fashionable flats are springing up next to dustbins or behind car parks. But are they a safe buy? asks Caroline McGhie
Sep 01, 2002; ... Shortages of development sites and spiralling property prices areforcing niche developers in London to sneak into the former slums andback alleys. Beech-wood floors and sculptural taps are mixing withthe dustbins and council estates - where developers and agents hopethey will fetch the ...
Can't go wrong with property? Look at Japan
Sep 01, 2002; ... Many will recall coming back from holiday in the late summer of1989 to a changed world. Suddenly, the gazumpers had fallen silentand the building societies were calling in debts rather thanadvancing 100 per cent mortgages. So began a slide in house priceswhich lasted six ...
Bamboo flooring Ask Jeff
Sep 01, 2002; ... We are having hardwood flooring fitted throughout our flat, as ourson is asthmatic and we have been advised to get rid of the carpets.However, two separate carpenters have told us that hardwood shouldnot be used in the kitchen or bathroom, as the moisture will causethe wood to swell and ...
Repointing soft bricks Ask Jeff
Sep 01, 2002; ... The brickwork of my Victorian cottage has been repointed invarious different styles and materials and looks like a real bodgedjob. I would like to rake it all out and repoint in lime mortar, butthis is easier said than done. Using a hammer and chisel oftendamages the surrounding bricks ...
Poor NHBC standards Ask Jeff
Sep 01, 2002; ... Two years ago I bought a new detached house with attached doublegarage. The garage is built of a single skin of red bricks and theexposed SW facing wall lets through copious quantities of rainwater.The builder and NHBC (National Housebuilding Council) both claim thegarage is built to ...
The sound of another building U-turn On the level - a builder who gives it to you straight
Sep 01, 2002; ... A recent story in the Isle of Wight County Press described how alocal woman who rang the police to report that somebody was drillinga hole through the wall of her house called back two minutes later tosay the noise was actually coming from an electric toothbrush in thebedroom. It ...
Masterpiece or monstrosity? Brackenfell is thought to be the only home designed by the architect of the Royal Festival Hall. But its brutal style is not for everyone, finds Helen Pickles
Sep 01, 2002; ... First-time visitors to Brackenfell are never shy about trying tofigure out its origins. "Was it a school?" they ask. "Is it from theFifties, or the Sixties?" Such guesses are neither flattering noraccurate - but that's the price you pay if you live in a mould-breaking architect-designed ...
Bungey set to quit Cordiant
Sep 01, 2002; ... MICHAEL Bungey, the chief executive of Cordiant, the embattledadvertising and public relations group, is to step down within thenext six months. The announcement, which is expected to be made when Cordiantreveals interim results on Friday, is part of a strategic shake-up asthe ...
ITV groups face collusion probe
Sep 01, 2002; ... CARLTON Communications and Granada have been ordered by theIndependent Television Commission to reveal details of how they selladvertising on the ITV network. Sir Robin Biggam, the ITC chairman,wants assurances that they are not colluding on prices and has saidthat he may seek the advice ...
Banks threaten to end investment in trains
Sep 01, 2002; ... THREE banks that have invested almost pounds 4bn in new trainssince Railtrack was privatised are demanding an urgent meeting withthe Strategic Rail Authority. They say they can no longer riskfunding the industry. HSBC Rail, Porterbrook, owned by Abbey National, and Angel ...
Diageo opts for pounds 1bn share buyback
Sep 01, 2002; ... DIAGEO, the Smirnoff vodka to Guinness drinks giant, is planningto return pounds 1bn of cash to its shareholders. The group willprepare the way for a share buy-back programme when it presents itsannual results this week. The company is set to receive pounds 1.5bn this October from ...
Arcadia bid: Green drops Baugur Offer for high street stores group is no longer linked to Icelandic retailer under investigation for alleged fraud
Sep 01, 2002; ... PHILIP Green, the flamboyant retail billionaire, will this weekattempt to rescue his audacious bid for Arcadia, the Top Shop toDorothy Perkins stores business, with a revamped pounds 770m cashoffer. Green will scrap a controversial side agreement to sell assets toBaugur, the ...
Morley prepares bid for Global Switch
Sep 01, 2002; ... MORLEY, the fund management arm of Aviva, is in talks to acquireGlobal Switch, the internet hotels company owned by Chelsfield, theproperty group. Global, which has suffered from the downturn in thetechnology sector, is said to be worth around pounds 400m. Morley is expected to set ...
Teather to sell private client business
Sep 01, 2002; ... TEATHER & Greenwood, the listed securities house and stockbroker,has put its private client fund management business up for sale witha price tag of between pounds 10m and pounds 20m. The company is understood to have appointed investment banks,including Hawkpoint, the corporate ...
Boards 'must disclose policy on non-execs'
Sep 01, 2002; ... COMPANIES should be forced to disclose how they select and recruitnon-executive directors and explain in their annual reports howbodies such as remuneration committees work, according to theInstitute of Directors. The proposal is expected to form part of theIoD's submission to the ...
British Energy ponders US sale
Sep 01, 2002; ... BRITISH Energy is considering the sale of all or part of its NorthAmerican operations which are thought to be worth between pounds 1bnand pounds 1.5bn. The proceeds would help shore up the nucleargenerator's finances as it struggles to cope with depressed wholesalepower prices in the ...
Haslemere plans pounds 400m disposals
Sep 01, 2002; ... HASLEMERE, the Anglo-Dutch property company being taken private ina pounds 900m deal, will this week announce disposals totallingpounds 400m. The move will fuel speculation that Haslemere is preparing a bidfor Grantchester, the retail warehouse developer that is currentlythe ...
BBC wins pounds 350m state funds
Sep 01, 2002; ... THE BBC has won approval for a new pounds 350m cash facility fromthe Government to invest in its burgeoning commercial activitieswhich sell the corporation's intellectual property and technicalexpertise around the world. The funds will be used to expand the BBC's global presence as ...
Arcadia's place in Green's dream If Philip Green's bid for the Burton to Miss Selfridge chain of stores succeeds, he will be the King of the High Street. And don't bet against it. 'If you don't win, life is boring,' he tells Grant Ringshaw
Sep 01, 2002; ... Philip Green is on a roll. If he gets his way and succeeds in hispounds 770m bid for Arcadia he will be the undisputed king of thehigh street. Not bad for the abrasive and flamboyant retailer wholaunched his empire almost three decades years ago with a pounds20,000 bank loan ....
They think it's all over... it's not for Marconi
Sep 01, 2002 ... What now for Marconi? The announcement last week that it hasreached agreement with creditors owed pounds 4bn was as low on detailas it was tentative. The one fact was confirmation that shareholderswill now be left with just half of 1 per cent in the company - asrevealed a week ago in The ...
A salutary health warning
Sep 01, 2002; ... RECENTLY we have seen so many multi-billion pound collapses suchas Marconi that it is easy to miss smaller disasters. But each can bea mini-tragedy and a truly gruesome experience for all concerned.These corporate implosions are not restricted to the obvious casualtysectors such as ...
No easy cure for the German patient
Sep 01, 2002; ... CENTRAL bankers gathered this weekend for their summit at theinauspiciously named Jackson Hole, Wyoming, will of course be worriedabout the US economy. But they should be at least as concerned aboutEurope. Last week the influential Ifo survey of the German businessclimate showed a third ...
From a toga party to a bid battle
Sep 01, 2002; ... There I was, dressed in an ill-fitting toga that felt more like aset of Bhs curtains, sipping champagne and scoffing canapes withPhilip Green and Stuart Rose. My embarrassment at appearing like anextra from a Carry On movie was tempered only by the fact that two ofBritain's most highly ...
Book into Hilton Group
Sep 01, 2002 ... HILTON Group (191p), the leisure business headed by David Michels,chief executive, confirmed everyone's suspicions last week that theEuropean hotel market is seeing no recovery. The group announced adrop in interim operating profits to pounds 167.7m from pounds 183.9ma year earlier. The ...
Riches for the regional rags Damian Reece explains why local newspaper groups are booming
Sep 01, 2002; ... Worries about war and environmental disaster may be grippingnational newspaper readers but advertisers seem more concerned aboutevents in Barnsley than Baghdad. While national groups endure the worst advertising recession inmemory, local media groups claim to be seeing the best ...
CorrectionOmnicom
Sep 01, 2002 ... Last week we said that McCann-Erickson is owned by Omnicom andthat the parent company had ...
Second spin of the wheel for Bell Two years after cashing in its casino chips, Ladbrokes wants to get back into the game. The chief executive, Chris Bell, is unabashed by the U-turn
Sep 01, 2002; ... The chief executive of Britain's biggest betting chain is not muchof a gambler. Or so says Chris Bell's old friend Alan Smith, theSomerfield chief executive with whom he religiously spends oneweekend a year in a caravan in Northumbria playing three-card bragfor cash. "He's rotten ...
Should you check in to Jarvis Hotels? Taking stock
Sep 01, 2002; ... AN INTERESTING example of contrarian behaviour is Jack Petchey'sdetermined buying of shares in Jarvis Hotels. The motors-to-propertytycoon appears an enterprising private investor compared with theCity herd. An ideal contrarian buy is a company well established inits sector, with ...
How to avoid sinking into the R&SA quicksand COMMENT
Sep 01, 2002; ... Are you wondering why you allowed yourself to be seduced by thathoney-tongued salesman into signing up for a pension or endowmentpolicy or a with-profits bond with Royal & SunAlliance? I'm notsurprised. Once seen as solid as a rock, R&SA now looks more like quicksand.It's due to ...
Packaged accounts cost a packet Banks make a mint selling over- priced extras we just don't use, says Emma Simon
Sep 01, 2002; ... Would you pay pounds 100 for a service that saved you just pounds50? You could be if you are one of the millions of bank customers whopay annual fees for "packaged" bank accounts. Although no bank has had the courage to bring back charges onordinary bank accounts, an estimated 6m ...
Soaring IHT policy premiums
Sep 01, 2002; ... MY WIFE and I are both 74. Nine years ago, we took out a pounds120,000 unit-linked whole-of-life policy for inheritance tax purposesat a premium of pounds 540 a year. Our insurance company has nowinformed us that the premium will be increased by 525 per cent topounds 2,815 ....