The Sunday Telegraph London back issues from February 2003:
Pointers for an even higher performance Derek Higgs explains his role in promoting a debate about improving the effectiveness of non- executives
Feb 02, 2003; ... AT THE time I was asked to conduct the review of the role andeffectiveness of non-executive directors "corporate governance" wasnot a phrase on everyone's lips. WorldCom and other notable collapseschanged all that. My task in promoting debate was thus given a considerable ...
Companies, music and the media offer a heady mix My week - Dame Judith Mayhew revels in the hectic whirl of London business life, is admitted as a liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Vintners and enjoys a rare night off
Feb 02, 2003; ... Monday 6.30am: Alarm for an 8am start at Clifford Chance. For the firsttime in many weeks, I do not have a breakfast meeting. I talk through the week ahead with my indispensable PA, Sam Jubb.We have been a great team for eight years - and she co-ordinates myvarious ...
Factory managers in bullish mood despite squeeze Service sector growth could be coming to an end as financial services feel the pinch of falling shares, says the latest Recruitment Confidence Index A levelling of house price rises may have caused shops' average Christmas
Feb 02, 2003 ... COMPANIES responded to the Recruitment Confidence Indexquestionnaire before the stock market fell out of bed, which mayaccount for an apparent recovery in the general optimism abouteconomic prospects over the next six months. Manufacturing was unexpectedly bullish, reversing the ...
Change that will have to be for the best Interim managers must have superior skills and experience to keep the show moving when they walk into a company, writes Michael Becket
Feb 02, 2003; ... THE perfect solution for a middle-aged manager with experience -even for one who has not been made redundant - would seem to beinterim management. The job has some wonderfully alluring qualities. Interim managers go in to a business for a short time to carry outa specific ...
Ofcom chief fired up for a spot of welding Movers and Shakers
Feb 02, 2003 ... STEPHEN Carter, 38, has been appointed chief executive of theOffice of Communications (Ofcom), the new regulator of broadcasting,telecommunications and radio spectrum management. He is managingdirector of cable company NTL and before that was chief executive ofadvertising agency J Walter ...
Bright ideas and black farces Michael Becket reviews the Top Ten series of commercial disasters
Feb 02, 2003; ... THE Government has produced plenty of great British commercialdisasters, but business has also contributed its own examples offinancial folly. In 1929 the Government, worried about the UK falling behind inaircraft building, created the R101 airship, despite the fact theR100 was ...
That's it for Today
Feb 02, 2003; ... It is important to have a good relationship with your bosses. Ofcourse, you cannot always know whether or not you do have a goodrelationship with them, because sometimes they keep their cardspretty close to their chests. So you try to second-guess; you try toread between the lines. Does ...
Transvestism among the literary lions
Feb 02, 2003; ... It was an extremely disappointing year for the Whitbread Prize.Not in terms of the books, which were all rather good, but in termsof the rows among the judging panel. As chairman of the judges thisyear, I am uniquely placed to reveal the sensational secrets of thefinal ...
Reasons to be cheerful Once labelled beefy, plain and a lesbian, Melanie Chisholm, aka Sporty Spice, has now got her act together - with a new album called Reason and a boyfriend who 'connects me with the normal world'
Feb 02, 2003; ... Melanie Chisholm's latest album is called Reason, and she definesit as follows: "It's generally positive, which is the way I'm tryingto go these days. It says I've found myself in what is generally agood place, but that I still have my moments of darkness andinsecurity. It's me on a ...
Survivor of a madhouse At 12 Augusten Burroughs was sent to live with a mad psychiatrist by his disturbed mother. His best-selling memoir describes the lunacy and abuse he endured - 'I've traded my childhood for a career as an adult,' he tells Helena de Bertodano
Feb 02, 2003; ... For a boy who was abandoned by his parents and grew up in what canbe described, without exaggeration, as a madhouse, Augusten Burroughsseems remarkably unscathed. "I know I seem normal," says Burroughs,now 37, when we meet in New York. "But there are deep scars . . . Iwas completely ...
Why Hindley's costly drugs did not save her In sickness and in health
Feb 02, 2003; ... Myra Hindley's impressive medication regime, as revealed at herautopsy - 24 different types of drug, 42 pills a day - illustrateshow easy it can be to spend a fortune on healthcare to no goodpurpose. I reckon, having totted up the cost of each item in hercupboard full of pills, that her ...
New blonde on the block In two new films, Julianne Moore has cornered the market in 1950s housewives whose lives go disastrously wrong. She talks to David Gritten about peroxide and the price of perfection
Feb 02, 2003; ... It must be something in the genes. In a Venice hotel room,Julianne Moore is relating to me the problems of balancing work andmotherhood, even though she has a babysitter and takes her childrenwith her on film sets. At this precise moment, an anguished wail isheard in the next room: ...
Helen must be spinning in her grave Opera
Feb 02, 2003; ... The Capture of Troy Die Zauberflote Idomeneo Oh dear, oh dear, here we go again. The brilliant but waywardRichard Jones, producer of the deservedly prize-winning WNO Queen ofSpades, of a Paris Julietta that has received rave notices and, ofcourse, that subversive ...
Give us an aria Can television's 'Pop Idol' treatment work for opera singers? Adam Sweeting meets the bathtime Pavarottis and Callases for whom Operatunity knocks
Feb 02, 2003; ... In a bare rehearsal room deep inside the Coliseum in St Martin'sLane, conductor Paul Daniel is prodding aspiring opera star JamesLyttle through the aria Non piu andrai from The Marriage of Figaro."Scrubbed and powdered and primped to perfection!" booms the stocky,crop-headed Lyttle in a ...
High time for the big stage Dance
Feb 02, 2003; ... Henri Oguike Dance Company Two world premieres this week: both in Bracknell. On Wednesdayevening the Wilde Theatre (geddit?) was playing host to the HenriOguike Dance Company. Henri Oguike is a man of some importance. He began his dancinglife at London Contemporary ...
Too much spice Theatre
Feb 02, 2003; ... Midnight's Children Iron The Duchess of Malfi There is a good deal to enjoy in the RSC adaptation of SalmanRushdie's Midnight's Children, at the Barbican. Tim Supple'sproduction is highly spiced and picturesque. There are swirls ofcolour, vivid snatches of Indian ...
Together at last Art
Feb 02, 2003; ... Holbein's Portraits of Sir Henry and Lady Guildford Henry VIII Revealed Marcus Gheeraerts II `I am Johannes Holbein whom it is easier to denigrate thanemulate." So runs an inscription - simultaneously discreet andvainglorious - in the background of Holbein's portrait of ...
Cinema
Feb 02, 2003; ... The Banger Sisters (15) Goldie Hawn: a force for good. That's pretty much the message ofthis baby-boomer comedy about two ageing groupies. Suzette (Hawn, inassociation with Botox) has remained a free-spirited wild child intoher fifties, while Lavinia (Susan Sarandon) has become a ...
Come fly with me Cinema
Feb 02, 2003; ... Catch Me if You Can Irreversible Leonardo DiCaprio, like Johnny Depp, is one of those actors whosehair often does as much hard graft in a film as his face. Sometimesit goes awry: in the chaotic last scene of Scorsese's Gangs of NewYork, Leo looked as if he had found a dusty ...
Terrorised by mutant apples Radio
Feb 02, 2003; ... In a famous series of laboratory experiments back in the 1970s, aYale professor in experimental psychology called Stanley Milgramtricked volunteers into giving painful electric shocks to shriekingvictims strapped into electric chairs. The volunteers believed they were acting as lab ...
Saddam's deadliest weapon Television
Feb 02, 2003; ... Two weeks today I intend to go on the anti-war march in London,thereby registering my first public act of opposition to anythingsince going to an Anti-Nazi League disco above a pub in Islington aquarter of a century ago. From this it can clearly be seen that I ama creature of impassioned ...
'Ancient, private and perverse' A previously unseen sketchbook by the 17-year-old Lucian Freud goes on show in New York this week. Martin Gayford learns what it meant to the artist
Feb 02, 2003; ... In the winter of 1939-40 - the first of the Second World War - asmall party took up residence at a boarding house at Capel Curig innorth Wales. It consisted of the artist Lucian Freud, a school friendnamed David Kentish and the poet Stephen Spender. The winter was hardand there was ...
What about respectability? It is a shame that this book's prose doesn't show enough respect for its readers, says Anthony Daniels
Feb 02, 2003; ... Respect: The Formation of Character in an Age of Inequality by Richard Sennett Allen Lane/Penguin Press, pounds 20, 288 pp pounds 18 ( pounds 1.99 p&p) 0870 155 7222 PEOPLE ARE often angered more deeply by slights to their dignitythan by larger, ...
They were not lovers Anne Chisholm on a couple who found passion in friendship
Feb 02, 2003; ... Transformations of Love: The Friendship of John Evelyn andMargaret Godolphin by Frances Harris Oxford, pounds 25, 330 pp pounds 23 ( pounds 1.99 p&p) 0870 155 7222 THE STORY of how John Evelyn, the 17th-century diarist,philosophical gardener and married man, ...
There were three in this marriage Noel Malcolm on a new study which shows that America was almost as important in the creation of post- war Europe as France and Germany
Feb 02, 2003; ... The Struggle for Europe: The Turbulent History of a Divided Continent, 1945-2002 by William Hitchcock Profile Books, pounds 25, 513 pp pounds 23 ( pounds 1.99 p&p) 0870 155 7222 WHEN THE US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld referred ...
Poverty just ain't what it used to be However miserable poverty may be, says Alasdair Palmer, the poor are not worse off than they were 30 years ago as this book would have us believe
Feb 02, 2003; ... Hard Work: Life in Low Pay Britain by Polly Toynbee Bloomsbury, pounds 6.99, 242 pp pounds 6.99 ( pounds 1.99 p&p) 0870 155 7222 "I'VE BEEN POOR and I've been rich," said the American singerBessie Smith. "Rich is better." Hard Work is an elaboration of ...
Writings on the wall Michael Prodger examines the case of a man afflicted with an advanced bout of artistic monomania
Feb 02, 2003; ... Wrestling with the Angel: The Mystery of Delacroix's Mural by Jean-Paul Kauffmann tr by Patricia Clancy Harvill, pounds 14.99, 198 pp pounds 12.99 ( pounds 1.99 p&p) 0870 155 7222 THE WORDS MOST often used in descriptions of the work of theFrench painter ...
The historian Hugh Trevor-Roper, who died last Sunday, was a regular reviewer for these pages. Here Blair Worden, one of his former research students, pays tribute to a remarkable man
Feb 02, 2003; ... "HITLER DIARY HOAX victim Lord Dacre dies at 89", reported TheTimes last Monday. For the other papers, too, the authentication ofthat fraud by Hugh Trevor-Roper (the name he kept for his writings)in 1983 was the important thing about him. If you believe TheIndependent he ceased to be "a ...
A gathering of poetic gifts Anthony Thwaite celebrates these moving retrospective collections from two of our most venerable poets
Feb 02, 2003; ... New Selected Poems 1964-2000 by Douglas Dunn Faber, pounds 20, 340 pp pounds 18 ( pounds 1.99 p&p) 0870 155 7222 New and Collected Poems by Dannie Abse Hutchinson, pounds 15.99, 426 pp pounds 13.99 ( pounds 1.99 p&p) 0870 155 ...
Four sisters' long march to freedom George Walden enjoys a subtle memoir of four Chinese sisters from the early 20th century through the Cultural Revolution to Mao's demise
Feb 02, 2003; ... Four Sisters of Hofei by Annping Chin Bloomsbury, pounds 16.99, 310 pp pounds 14.99 ( pounds 1.99 p&p) 0870 155 7222 THERE HAS BEEN a plethora of biographies of people whose liveswere devastated by the Chinese Cultural Revolution, but thisremarkable book by a ...
A Yank in north-west Africa Max Hastings applauds this balanced account of the forgotten Second World War campaign where the Americans cut their fighting teeth
Feb 02, 2003; ... An Army At Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943 by Rick Atkinson Little Brown, pounds 20, 681 pp pounds 18 ( pounds 1.99 p&p) 0870 155 7222 THE TORCH landings on the coasts of Algeria and Morocco inNovember 1942 brought American armies to grips with the ...
The literary life
Feb 02, 2003; ... THE GOLDEN sands of the Sahara proved to be exactly that forMichael Palin last year: the account of his televised desertadventures sold 126,472 copies. When sales of his other 10 books -Around The World In 80 Days and Pole To Pole for example - are alsotaken into consideration the total ...
Kill or cure, there's money in it The new John Grisham makes a better legal thriller than a morality tale, says Douglas Hurd
Feb 02, 2003; ... The King of Torts by John Grisham Century, pounds 16.99, 400 pp pounds 14.99 ( pounds 1.99 p&p) 0870 155 7222 ONE YOUNG black shoots another in the streets of Washington. ClayCarter, the harassed public defence lawyer who is forced to take thecase, is puzzled by ...
Smalls and smaller John Preston is comforted by seeing the world through Nicholson Baker's skewed gaze
Feb 02, 2003; ... A Box of Matches by Nicholson Baker Chatto & Windus, pounds 10, 178 pp pounds 10 ( pounds 1.99 p&p) 0870 155 7222 YOU DON'T OPEN a Nicholson Baker novel expecting much in the wayof chariot races or climactic Alpine shoot-outs, but even by hisstandards this, ...
Paperbacks
Feb 02, 2003; ... The Scottish Enlightenment by Arthur Herman Fourth Estate, pounds 8.99 THE AUTHOR, an American professor of history, argues that the 1707Act which united England, Scotland and Wales created the conditionsunder which Scotland was able to emerge from the shadow of the ...
Two for the price of one Sell the family home and you could buy a property abroad - yet still afford to keep a toehold in Britain, says Caroline McGhie
Feb 02, 2003; ... Exchange required: one substantial family home in the Englishcountryside, for a large house in France or Spain and a smallerproperty to let or lock-and-leave in England. Estate agents report that a significant proportion of large housesnow coming on to the market are being offered ...
Grand illusions The price is right, the address impressive and the interior imposing. But, says Sonia Purnell, living in the wing of a stately home can have its drawbacks
Feb 02, 2003; ... It is the ultimate semi-detached. But this is no 1930s villa justoff the A40. The south wing of Peper Harrow House near Godalming,Surrey, commands uninterrupted views over its own "Capability" Brown-designed parkland and one of England's earliest cricket fields. Ithas a limestone and ...
Better bets for good lets Christopher Browne explains how to improve your chances of finding reliable tenants
Feb 02, 2003; ... As a landlord of 12 years with four rental properties in London, Iconsider myself quite an old hand at this business. But it didn'tstop me from being duped. I was letting out a two-bedroom flat in Twickenham. After speakingto several couples who turned out to be either not ...
Wanted: secure home near the boys in blue Diary of an estate agent
Feb 02, 2003; ... Nicola Smethurst PKL Relocation London WC1 MONDAY I contact the wife of a senior executive who is coming over inthree months from New York. She's worried about uprooting her fivechildren, especially the third one who has special needs. I reassureher that PKL ...
Corrosion inhibitors Ask Jeff
Feb 02, 2003; ... You have mentioned that central heating systems should have acorrosion inhibitor added. I have been told that ordinary domesticwashing-up liquid may be used for this purpose. Is this correct, andif so what amount should be used? MW, by e-mail Jeff replies No, this is ...
Bathroom electrics Ask Jeff
Feb 02, 2003; ... You recently suggested earthing a chrome grab-rail above a bath tothe copper water pipes. Scottish Water, which is presently replacingthe iron pipes in the streets in my neighbourhood with HDPE plasticpipes, has advised that it is "dangerous" to earth items to thedomestic water system, ...
Moving a meter box Ask Jeff
Feb 02, 2003; ... Our electricity meter is inside the house and the meter reader hasto come inside to read it. It is also in the way and I would like tohave it moved. Do I need to contact the electricity supplier, or canan electrician do it? And would it be expensive to have it moved? IP, ...
Play the cash card close to your chest On the level - a builder who gives it to you straight
Feb 02, 2003; ... `How much for cash?" is probably the most common bargaining chipin the whole building game. But if you are going to use it, then useit wisely. For example, it is no use getting a builder round to price up yourproposed loft conversion, greeting him at the front door and ...
Where the music still echoes The home of the late Yehudi Menuhin, for sale at pounds 5m, was until recently just as he left it. Caroline McGhie gains a final glimpse of the maestro's life
Feb 02, 2003; ... It is extraordinary how much a well-loved house says about itsowners. Occasionally this is understood and the house is kept forposterity - Charleston in Sussex, for example, is preserved as areminder of the lives of the Bloomsbury Group, and the Red House inBexleyheath, William Morris's ...
Investors scoop up bargains on back of plunging markets
Feb 02, 2003; ... SEASONED investors swooped to pick up shares at bargain prices asstock markets plummeted last week. Leading private-client stockbrokers reported a sharp increase intrading volumes, with buyers outnumbering sellers by as much as 5 to1. A turbulent week saw the FTSE100 end the week ...
With-profits funds perform better than unit-linked pensions
Feb 02, 2003; ... WITH-PROFITS funds are achieving much higher returns for pensionsavers than the more popular stock market-linked plans, despite thegloom around hefty bonus cuts. According to new figures, due to be published in March by MoneyMarketing, the average payout on a 10-year with-profits ...
RBS ready to take on the big four over current accounts
Feb 02, 2003; ... ROYAL Bank of Scotland, which owns NatWest, is to be the next highstreet bank to enter the current-account war, after seeing a 12 percent drop in new customers. The plans have been under consideration for the past few months,having been put on hold while the bank integrated NatWest ...
Graduates can wipe out debts through bankruptcy
Feb 02, 2003; ... STUDENTS leaving university with crippling debts can now wipe themout at a stroke by making themselves bankrupt, following a change ininsolvency rules. Until recently, student loans were not cancelled out bybankruptcy. But last month the Government's Insolvency Servicequietly ...
Equitable changes mind on compensation Beleaguered mutual reverses decision on income drawdown mis-selling and leaves thousands fuming
Feb 02, 2003; ... THOUSANDS of Equitable Life members who were promised compensationfor mis-sold retirement schemes in 2000 have now been told they nolonger qualify for a payout. Equitable set aside pounds 430m to compensate 81,000 people whomay have been mis-sold income drawdown plans between 1993 ...
Standard Life to slash with-profits bonus rates
Feb 02, 2003; ... STANDARD Life, Europe's biggest mutual life insurer, will thisweek add to the gloom in the life insurance sector by slashingbonuses on with-profits policies by an average of 20 per cent andoverall payouts by 15 per cent. The swingeing cuts will further highlight the plight of UK ...
Leighton sidelines Ridsdale in Leeds boardroom coup
Feb 02, 2003; ... PETER Ridsdale, the chairman of Leeds United, is to be stripped ofmost of his executive responsibilities in a boardroom shake-upinitiated by Allan Leighton. Following pressure from the company's major shareholders, Leighton- Leeds' deputy chairman and also chair of Royal Mail - has ...
Brown comes out fighting to reassure the markets
Feb 02, 2003; ... GORDON Brown will tomorrow attempt to reassure markets that theeconomy and the public finances will withstand buffeting from thecollapse in equity prices over the past fortnight. The chancellor's first wide-ranging economic speech in months willalso attempt to rebut the claims of ...
Evans under pressure to retire from BAE chair
Feb 02, 2003; ... BAE Systems is under increasing pressure to make senior managementchanges, as one significant shareholder is planning to vote againstthe re-election of Sir Richard Evans, the chairman, at the annualmeeting in May. Capital Group Companies of the US, which holds around 11 per ...
Trinity Mirror receives pounds 1.3bn bid approach Joint initiative from Apax Partners and Candover could spark takeover battle for the tabloid publisher
Feb 02, 2003; ... TRINITY Mirror, the tabloid and regional newspaper publisher, hasreceived a pounds 1.3bn takeover approach from Apax Partners andCandover, the venture capital groups. The initiative may spark abidding war. Talks between the bidding consortium and Trinity Mirror began inSeptember ....
Lloyds TSB looks a banker for when the upturn comes
Feb 02, 2003; ... WHAT should one make of the current volatility? Can one define astrategy amid seemingly inevitable war in Iraq? Keynes thought a rational approach to irrational markets wasfutile. I cut a simple compromise: that focusing on the essentialsdoes help an investor over the medium to ...
Five reasons for being positive about your finances
Feb 02, 2003; ... DEPRESSED after last week's roller-coaster ride on the markets?Who wouldn't be? But this is no time to give up. There is alwayshope. So, in a bid to bring a little light to your lives, here arefive good reasons to stop panicking and to start taking a morepositive view of your ...
Equitable in perspective
Feb 02, 2003; ... I HAVE received a number of letters from Equitable Lifeannuitants, pleading with me to stop criticising the society ormaking dire predictions about its future. I have obviously paid too little attention to the feelings ofthose who, unlike other members, cannot escape whatever fate ...
Thales set to land Watchkeeper order
Feb 02, 2003; ... THALES, the French defence group, is set to win the sought-aftercontract to supply the Ministry of Defence with the new Watchkeeperbattlefield surveillance, intelligence and reconnaisance system,estimated to be worth pounds 500m. Thales, whose design has been chosen for the UK's ...
Japanese seeking buyer for the London Golf Club
Feb 02, 2003; ... BRITAIN'S golf boom is showing signs of fizzling out, as theLondon Golf Club in Kent, one of Britain's most exclusive clubs, hasbeen put up for sale by its Japanese owners. The club, near Brands Hatch, was built in 1993 for pounds 40m withtwo championship courses, one designed by ...
Aggregates protests to ministers over rail freight grants freeze
Feb 02, 2003; ... AGGREGATE Industries, the pounds 900m cement and constructionmaterials group, will this week write to senior members of theGovernment to protest over the decision to freeze grants to railfreight projects. The company is angered by the move, which it says flies in theface of a ...
Waterstone steps up buy-back campaign and alleges HMV 'mismanagement'
Feb 02, 2003; ... TIM WATERSTONE, the founder of Waterstone's, has sent a dossier onits owner, HMV Group, to leading retail analysts as he steps up acampaign to persuade the retail group to sell him back the 197-strong bookstore chain. In the document, which was e-mailed to a number of ...
Glaxo in talks to launch HIV drug in China
Feb 02, 2003; ... GLAXOSMITHKLINE, Britain's leading pharmaceuticals company, is intalks with the Chinese government to supply Combivir, its Aids drug,to the republic's growing HIV positive population. Jean-Pierre Garnier, the chief executive, is believed to benegotiating with senior members of the ...
Royal Mail to appeal in fight with Postcomm
Feb 02, 2003; ... THE ROYAL Mail is preparing to launch an appeal to the CompetitionCommission, the senior competition watchdog, over price controls onits services drawn up by the regulator, Postcomm. The watchdog will deliver its final verdict on the new pricecontrol regime this week and has ...
GW Pharma still seeking partner as GSK pulls out of cannabis talks
Feb 02, 2003; ... GW PHARMACEUTICALS, which needs a development partner if it is tosuccessfully pioneer the use of cannabis-derived medicines, has beendealt a serious blow to its plans after GlaxoSmithKline, the world'ssecond-largest drugs company, abandoned talks on a possible deal. Geoffrey Guy, ...
Morrisons raises pounds 1bn cash for Safeway bid
Feb 02, 2003; ... SIR Ken Morrison, the chairman of Wm Morrison, has raised pounds1bn which could help the group to inject a large cash element intoits current all-share bid for Safeway. News of the debt facility will increase speculation that Morrisonplans to increase the value of his bid for the ...