The Sunday Telegraph London articles from March 2003

The Sunday Telegraph London back issues from March 2003:

The tax crisis that cost Harold dear

Mar 02, 2003; ... After writing about a seventh-century burial mound at Sutton Hoolast week, I thought I had better try and make this column more up todate. So this week I am going to write about the Battle of Hastings.I went for a tour of the battlefield (at Battle) last week, and whilewandering around ...

Bryan Ferry keeps his cool The rock survivor, who has recently broken up with his wife of 20 years, has just begun a demanding series of concerts. 'Touring is easy,' he says. 'Real life is more tricky'

Mar 02, 2003; ... Bryan Ferry has been described as "the coolest living Englishman",but he is currently touring Britain with a solo album called Frantic.He says the title was intended as a joke, yet it illuminates one ofthe curious things about Ferry. As a performer he is famously,perhaps pathologically, ...

A very Irish sort of hell Mary Norris is a survivor of one of the notorious Magdalene Laundries, now the subject of a film. Here, she tells Angela Lambert how the workhouse nuns imposed a barbaric regime on 'immoral' Irish girls. The reality, she says, was 'a thousand times worse' than the film

Mar 02, 2003; ... `Those places were the Irish gulags for women. When you wentinside their doors you left behind your dignity, identity andhumanity. We were locked up, had no outside contacts and got no wagesalthough we worked 10 hours a day, six days a week, 52 weeks a year.What else is that but slavery? ...

Why sex education is riddled with double Dutch

Mar 02, 2003; ... There are two types of untruth that permeate the claims andpronouncements of the several pressure groups concerned with healthissues. The first is the simple "factoid", which has all theappearance of being a fact, sounds plausible and is supported by someimpressive-sounding statistics - ...

'I'm terrified all the time' Martin Scorsese was brought up by 'priests and gangsters'. But his real education took place in the cinema. He tells Nigel Farndale why the closing lines of 'Brief Encounter' mean so much to him

Mar 02, 2003; ... I should be prepared for the sight of Martin Scorsese in hisslippers. I have, after all, just met his (fifth) wife Helenwandering around their suite in the Dorchester in her dressing gown.But Marty - everyone calls him Marty - is wearing authentic, MrBadger-style carpet slippers, not the ...

Real and solitary agonies Cinema

Mar 02, 2003; ... Adaptation Solaris I loved Spike Jonze's Adaptation (15), but then I suspect thatcritics are predisposed to love it, because - like the Coen brothers'Barton Fink - it dwells on the solitary agony of writing. CharlieKaufman, the screenwriter, has written himself into this film ...

Painting by numbers for the love of Frida

Mar 02, 2003; ... Frida (15) Halfway through Julie Taymor's biopic of the volatile Mexicanpainter Frida Kahlo, Frida (Salma Hayek) starts raving about the workof Andre Breton. "Your paintings express what everyone feels," shecoos, monobrow waggling. "That they are alone and in pain." Anyonestill ...

Transfixed by life's transience Music

Mar 02, 2003; ... The Cunning Little Vixen La Damnation de Faust Surprisingly it is 10 years since Bill Bryden's production ofJanacek's The Cunning Little Vixen was last revived at the RoyalOpera House and its welcome return gave a lot of pleasure to thefirst-night audience ...

Our restoration tragedy The National Gallery has long denied that its cleaning has wrecked its finest work. But the Titian show supplies irrefutable proof, writes Michael Daley

Mar 02, 2003; ... Quite unexpectedly, the hitherto carefully maintained defences ofthe National Gallery's picture cleaning policies are in disarray.Their hollowness has been painfully exposed by glaring disparities ofcolour and tonality between four paintings assembled for the currentTitian ...

Dashing light comedy Theatre

Mar 02, 2003; ... Love's Labour's Lost Honour My Brilliant Divorce Arsenic and Old Lace Accidental Death of an Anarchist Trevor Nunn's production of Love's Labour's Lost, at the OlivierTheatre, marks the end of his six years as artistic director of theNational. It is ...

All things bright and banal Art

Mar 02, 2003; ... Days Like These Richard Artswager Is the game up? Is art over? Jonathan Watkins, one of the curatorsof Tate Britain's new exhibition, Days Like These (to May 26,sponsored by Volkswagen), seems to think as much. These days hewrites, "There is an aesthetic atheism abroad. Ideas ...

The ass in the abyss Radio

Mar 02, 2003; ... There have, over the years, been quite a few attempts to get tothe bottom of this whole religion malarkey. Jews, Christians andMuslims have met from time to time to have a chinwag but somehowthey've never settled the question of who's right and what it's allabout. Still, another ...

Mid-life priapism Television

Mar 02, 2003; ... Although I don't much like to acknowledge it, I suspect thatManchild (Tuesday, BBC1) is aimed squarely at people like me.Vigorous but gouty types, much beset by troublesome priapism andhopeless immaturity. The men in Manchild are several years older thanI am, you understand - just to ...

2.3 quadrillion reasons for guilt John Preston on how old-style fingerprinting has given way to genetic fingerprints in murder cases

Mar 02, 2003; ... Pointing from the Grave by Samantha Weinberg Hamish Hamilton, pounds 14.99, 351 pp pounds 12.99 ( pounds 1.99 p&p) 0870 155 7222 IN APRIL 1984 , Helena Greenwood, a young British scientistspecialising in DNA research, was sexually assaulted in her home ...

Multiple choice terrorism

Mar 02, 2003; ... Holy Terrors: Thinking about Religion after September 11 by Bruce Lincoln University of Chicago Press, pounds 17.50, 142 pp pounds 17.50 ( pounds 1.99 p&p) 0870 155 7222 The Demon in the Freezer: The Terrifying Truth about the Threatfrom Bioterrorism by ...

The other clash of cultures The Iraq crisis has highlighted the long- standing differences between Europe and America, says Anne Applebaum

Mar 02, 2003; ... Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order by Robert Kagan Atlantic Books, pounds 10, 104 pp pounds 10 ( pounds 1.99 p&p) 0870 155 7222 THIS IS A book that will be easy to dismiss, and those who dismissit will be very wrong to do so. The ease ...

The land that luck forgot This book endears one to hapless Paraguay, says Anthony Daniels

Mar 02, 2003; ... At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig: A Riotous Journey into theHeart of Paraguay by John Gimlette Hutchinson, pounds 14.99, 363 pp pounds 12.99 ( pounds 1.99 p&p) 0870 155 7222 IF ONE HAD to select the country with the most consistentlydisastrous history over the ...

Revenge and raunchiness Peter Jones on what a sex scandal can tell us about the attitudes of ancient Greece

Mar 02, 2003; ... Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life inAncient Greece by Debra Hamel Yale, pounds 16.95, 200 pp pounds 16.95 ( pounds 1.99 p&p) 0870 155 7222 THE SOURCE for this gripping story of politics, sex and sleaze inancient Athens is the famous ...

Opera buffa, serious man Thirty nine operas and celebrity status were not enough for Rossini, says Michael Kennedy

Mar 02, 2003; ... Rossini: A Life by Gaia Servadio Constable, pounds 20, 244 pp pounds 18 ( pounds 1.99 p&p) 0870 155 7222 THIS EXCELLENT and very readable biography of Gioachino Rossinidoes not pretend to tell us anything new about his music. For that wecan go elsewhere. But ...

Innocents and experience Anne Chisholm on an unnervingly frank memoir of childhood and mother-love

Mar 02, 2003; ... Seeking Rapture by Kathryn Harrison Fourth Estate, pounds 15.99, 211 pp pounds 13.99 ( pounds 1.99 p&p) 0870 155 7222 A PAINFUL childhood is usually a rich seam for writers. KathrynHarrison is a beautiful blonde American novelist in her forties whosefirst ...

The artist inside the spy Alexander Waugh is fascinated by the poetic, artistic and musical past of a former British spy

Mar 02, 2003; ... The Other Brian Croziers by Brian Crozier Claridge Press, pounds 15 pbk, 325 pp pounds 15 ( pounds 1.99 p&p) 0870 155 7222 THE CHIEF LITERARY critic of The Daily Telegraph for 30 years,between 1909 and 1939, hated the third degree of comparison. "To usea ...

The Literary Life

Mar 02, 2003; ... THIS THURSDAY, March 6, has been designated World Book Day - butbefore you get too excited, be advised that all this means is that 14million book tokens, worth a measly pounds 1 each, will bedistributed among schoolchildren across the land. The fact that onlyone token can be used in the ...

Beasts and burdens Roger Scruton praises this subtle account of the ways in which humans differ from animals

Mar 02, 2003; ... The Philosopher's Dog by Raimond Gaita Routledge, pounds 14.99, 213 pp pounds 14.99 ( pounds 1.99 p&p) 0870 155 7222 RAIMOND GAITA belongs to the small class of academic philosopherswho are both competent in their subject and also able to write aboutit in a ...

The haunting President The myth of Abraham Lincoln is not as powerful as the reality, says Raymond Seitz

Mar 02, 2003; ... Lincoln by Thomas Keneally Weidenfeld & Nicolson, pounds 14.99, 202 pp pounds 12.99 ( pounds 1.99 p&p) 0870 155 7222 IN APRIL 1865 , Abraham Lincoln recounted for his wife, Mary Todd,and a close aide, Ward Hill Lamon, the story of a dream that had cometo him ...

The battle for prime time

Mar 02, 2003; ... Playing the Game by Sarah Sands Macmillan, pounds 10.99, 248 pp pounds 9.99 ( pounds 1.99 p&p) 0870 155 7222 IN ITS RUDIMENTS , Playing the Game is the film All About Evetransferred to the world of television journalism. An ageing femalenewscaster feels the hot ...

Thoroughly modern Millicent

Mar 02, 2003; ... Diary of an Ordinary Woman by Margaret Forster Chatto & Windus, pounds 16.99, 406 pp pounds 14.99 ( pounds 1.99 p&p) 0870 155 7222 MARGARET FORSTER has always been fascinated - in an unembittered,straightforwardly feminist way - by hidden lives (women, ...

Paperbacks

Mar 02, 2003; ... Wrong Rooms by Mark Sanderson Scribner, pounds 7.99 MARK SANDERSON made a promise to his terminally ill lover that hewould help him end his life if the suffering became too great.Fulfilling that promise very nearly led Sanderson to suicide, but hesurvived to write ...

Memory trapped in ice

Mar 02, 2003; ... Heligoland by Shena Mackay Jonathan Cape, pounds 15.99, 199 pp pounds 13.99 ( pounds 1.99 p&p) 0870 155 7222 SHENA MACKAY's ninth novel, Heligoland, is the story of a hermitcrab in search of a shell. When we first meet Mackay's diffidentheroine, Rowena Snow, she ...

Through the barricades Gated developments are becoming increasingly popular, but how much security do homeowners really want? Sarah Lonsdale considers whether 'fortressing up' is worth the trouble

Mar 02, 2003; ... When Margaret Thatcher and her husband Denis bought their neo-Georgian Barratt home off the south circular in Dulwich, south Londonin 1985, gated developments were something of a rarity, and the then-Prime Minister was mocked mercilessly by her political enemies forher pounds 475,000 ...

Bloomsbury flowers again Once it was a famed haunt of writers and artists. Now, finds Caroline McGhie, buyers with a sense of adventure and literary history are putting Bloomsbury back on the map

Mar 02, 2003; ... It sometimes takes a movie to make us re-examine pockets of Londonwe have overlooked. With the release of the film The Hours, allthings Bloomsbury - the people, the paintings, the novels - have comeunder the spotlight, and we realise that the area from which theseearly 20th-century ...

Plastic felt condensation Ask Jeff

Mar 02, 2003; ... We had our roof re-tiled two years ago. The builder used a light-weight plastic type of felt under the tiles, which was different fromthe original heavy tarred hessian felt. The following winter, whenthe temperature dropped to freezing, we found condensation runningdown the inside of the ...

Concrete patio crack-up Ask Jeff

Mar 02, 2003; ... Last spring we laid a new patio, which was constructed in twosections, laid on hardcore and finished with ready-mixed concrete.Our problem now is that one half is perfect but the other hascompletely broken up and appears to have reverted to ballast. Theweather conditions were dry at the ...

A cloudy outlook for solar heating On the level - A builder who gives it to you straight

Mar 02, 2003; ... The Government's Energy White Paper, published last week, has beenaccompanied by all the usual entreaties to us to save the planet fromglobal warming by turning our thermostats down. I have yet to be swayed by this argument. I'm not saying the earthisn't warmer than it used to be ....

Pimpernel's asylum

Mar 02, 2003; ... The people of Sittingbourne recently protested about the purchaseby the Home Office of the town's only hotel for use as an asylumseekers' hostel. It is not the first time, however, that asylum-seekers have caused controversy in Kent by being housed in appealingquarters. During ...

Britain's vanishing clifftops

Mar 02, 2003; ... Three weeks ago, Derek Hallet found 50ft of garden at his home atLyme Regis, Dorset, had crumbled towards the beach. Nothing had movedfor 40 years before the landslip, which left the cliff edge only 26ftaway. Like others, Hallett bought his flat - one of four in an 1840house - 10 ...

The brink of disaster Andrew Morgan meets Norfolk villagers who face ruin as the sea devours their homes

Mar 02, 2003; ... Malcolm and Erica Barber have lived on the sea front in theNorfolk coastal village of Happisburgh for the past 11 years.Recently, though, the seafront has shifted alarmingly close forcomfort. The acceleration of cliff erosion has put their garagebarely 30ft from the edge and made the ...

Rupert manager faces axe over mauled savings

Mar 02, 2003; ... INVESCO Perpetual is to ditch the fund manager of its muchpilloried children's unit trust - the Rupert Fund - following yearsof abysmal performance. The fund, in which about 70,000 children have savings and whichuses the famous comic strip bear as its mascot, is languishing ...

The house where bats wear tin hats Diary of an Estate Agent

Mar 02, 2003; ... MONDAY We've just run a wanted ad for one of our clients who has pounds650,000 to spend and a rather demanding brief: "Academic relocatingto Devon seeks spacious period property to accommodate himself, wife,four teenage children, mother-in-law, elderly aunt and neurotic ...

Grim picture for art investors

Mar 02, 2003; ... INVESTORS are set to lose millions of pounds as the UK's largestcorporate art company teeters on the brink of collapse. The Department of Trade & Industry is now poised to close down thecompany, Taylor Jardine, which has attracted pounds 6.4m frominvestors over the past four years ....

Retirees lose income as annuity gamble backfires

Mar 02, 2003; ... PEOPLE who delayed buying an annuity last year in the hope of astock market recovery face a 35 per cent drop in retirement income. Experts fear that thousands of people held off buying an annuitylast year, after two years of poor stock market returns. WilliamBurrows Annuities, the ...

New campaign on pensioner poverty

Mar 02, 2003; ... HELP the Aged has accused the Government of failing to address thepensions crisis, which it says has led to a substantial increase inpensioner poverty since the mid-1990s. The charity launched a new campaign on this issue today. It claimsthe declining value of the state pension, ...

New Barclays portfolio of simple savings 'Sandler-friendly' schemes on sale tomorrow

Mar 02, 2003; ... BARCLAYS BANK says it will be the first big bank to launch a rangeof "Sandler-friendly" products. They will go on sale in its 1,800branches tomorrow. The bank says it is "taking the spirit of Sandlerto the High Street". Ron Sandler was commissioned by the Government to conduct ...

Wiggins may be on course to take off Tacking stock

Mar 02, 2003; ... THERE are situations and phases in shares when, as hard as onetries, one cannot predict events. The usual response is to treat thesituation as speculative instead of investment grade. But whether one is mainly an investor or speculator (the edges doblur!) one is wrestling with ...

Bonus statements: can anyone make sense of them? Comment

Mar 02, 2003; ... INSURANCE companies are coming to the end of their "bonus season".Pru and L&G are among the last of the big insurers to deliver theirannual bonus statements. For policyholders, this is not exactly a fun time of year, as theywait with bated breath to see what, if anything, will be ...

New Star eyes Seymour arm

Mar 02, 2003; ... NEW STAR Asset Management is in talks to buy the fund managementarm of Seymour Pierce, the listed investment banking and funds group,in a deal worth around pounds 15m. The talks come after Seymour Pierce said last October that it waslooking at separating its investment banking and ...

CAT to raise Oxford Glyco bid

Mar 02, 2003; ... CAMBRIDGE Antibody Technology, the biotechnology company, ispreparing to raise its offer for Oxford GlycoSciences in an attemptto head off a rival bid from Celltech. CAT, led by Peter Chambre, the chief executive, made an agreed all-share offer for OGS, in late January - then ...

Investec slashes its London staff

Mar 02, 2003; ... INVESTEC, the South African financial services group, has slasheda quarter of its staff at its UK investment banking arm. The group, whose shares are listed on the London and Johannesburgstock exchanges, axed 38 of its 143 staff and warned last week thatsome of its highest-paid ...

French government to privatise Charles de Gaulle airport

Mar 02, 2003; ... CHARLES DE GAULLE airport, Europe's second largest after Heathrow,has been quietly added to the French government's list of asset salesintended to raise pounds 6bn this year. Preliminary talks have opened with banks on the privatisation.However, stock market conditions and union ...

Three launches 3G services - but without handsets

Mar 02, 2003; ... THREE, the first of the mobile telecoms operators to bring thirdgeneration services to the UK, is to "launch" its service tomorrowwithout any handsets. In a deeply embarrassing start for the company, formerly known asHutchison, customers will be able to order handsets from high ...

Government U-turn allows BBC to show digital channels on analogue TV

Mar 02, 2003; ... THE GOVERNMENT is preparing to make a dramatic U-turn inbroadcasting policy by allowing the BBC's controversial new digitalchannels to be shown on analogue television. The Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) is consideringrule changes that will allow digital broadcasters ...

Charman targets $1.6bn float of Axis on New York market

Mar 02, 2003; ... JOHN CHARMAN, one of the wealthiest and best-known figures inBritish insurance, is set to make a further personal fortune byfloating Axis Speciality, a reinsurance and insurance business, formore than $1.6bn on the New York Stock Exchange. Axis, where Charman is president and chief ...

Davis Service to sell tool hire arm to management in pounds 130m deal

Mar 02, 2003; ... DAVIS Service Group, the textile and building services company, ispreparing to sell its HSS tool hire division to its management in adeal worth around pounds 130m. Davis purchased HSS from John Mowlem in 1993 for pounds 52m whenthe tool hire business had 170 shops in the UK and ...

Bank urged to cut rates on retail fears

Mar 02, 2003; ... DIGBY JONES, the director general of the Confederation of BritishIndustry, has called on the Bank of England to cut interest ratesagain next week, as fears of a sudden slowdown in consumer spendinggrow. Jones's plea comes ahead of Tuesday's CBI retail survey, which isexpected to ...

Bonuses take another pounding The Pru and L&G have joined the ranks of insurance giants cutting payouts. How worried should policyholders be? Emma Simon reports

Mar 02, 2003; ... TWO OF Britain's biggest insurance companies slashed bonus rateslast week, reducing the final payouts on millions of pensions,endowments and bonds. Prudential and Legal & General are the latest insurers to maketheir annual bonus declarations on with-profits policies ....

Hands is in terra incognita Guy Hands admits to Mary Fagan that the going has been tough since he left Nomura

Mar 02, 2003; ... These are uneasy times for Guy Hands, the ex-Nomura banker whowas, in his heyday, one of the City's most celebrated dealmakers. It is less than a year since Hands left Nomura, the huge Japanesesecurities firm, where he embarked on a pounds 3.5bn buying spree ofassets from pubs and ...

Six Continents will exile Prosser to keep Osmond out

Mar 02, 2003; ... How much should shareholders pay for the financial acumen of whizz-kid entrepreneurs? The answer to that question will probablydetermine the fate of Six Continents, the hotels and pubs group thatfaces a hostile bid from Hugh Osmond tomorrow. As Damian Reece shows on Page 9, Osmond ...

Brown gets his woman

Mar 02, 2003; ... IT HAS been the longest appointments process in history. In May1997, Gordon Brown urged Rachel Lomax to smarten up New Labour'simage as an equal opps employer by becoming deputy governor of theBank of England. But - slightly oddly - she spurned him, decidingthere was more fun to be had ...

Ernie draws the millions Premium Bonds are pulling in record levels of investors' cash, says Nic Cicutti, as National Savings becomes the savers' safe haven

Mar 02, 2003; ... NATIONAL Savings & Investment may have cut savings rates twice ina fortnight, and reduced the odds of winning a prize with PremiumBonds, but it appears that customers can't get enough of itsproducts. NS&I is attracting many hundreds of millions of pounds each month.The ...

Do blue movies make blue chips?

Mar 02, 2003; ... Even in recessions, there's one thing that always sells - sex. Thepublic's insatiable appetite for vice never seems to diminish. Andthanks to commercial sex becoming mainstream, the porn industryworldwide is bigger than ever. Estimates of the scale of the world's X-rated market are ...

Weak investment will be Brown's undoing

Mar 02, 2003; ... BIT by bit, the Brown revolution is unravelling. Last week sawanother wheel fall off the chancellor's wagon as news emerged thatinvestment in the British economy had plunged. Why is investment soweak and what will the consequences be? Uncomfortable truths THE chancellor's ...

Stone me! A bank wants to become user-friendly

Mar 02, 2003; ... In the long list of British banks that got it completely wrong,Abbey National is now right up there with the best. Seduced by the1990s boom into believing it could be world class at a host ofactivities beyond its core competence, it ended up being world classat just one: scoring own ...

Down go the rates again Savers are bearing the brunt of the cut in the base rate, writes Paul Farrow

Mar 02, 2003; ... THERE was more doom and gloom for savers last week: high streetbanks and building societies slashed savings rates again, followingthe shock quarter of a percentage point cut in the base rate at thestart of the month. Among those announcing rate cuts were HSBC, Abbey National, ...

'I would say to any investor in life insurance - be very, very cautious' How much more pain is in store for beleaguered life funds? Grant Ringshaw reports

Mar 02, 2003; ... Hugh Osmond, the serial entrepreneur currently attempting toacquire the leisure group Six Continents, was last summer lining up abid for Britannic, the ailing life insurer. However, the plan wasswiftly ditched after Watson Wyatt, the leading actuary hired byOsmond to assess the business, ...

Abbey: too clever by half After years of believing itself invincible, the bank has announced losses of almost pounds 1bn. Grant Ringshaw examines what went wrong

Mar 02, 2003; ... Just over two years ago, Abbey National's wholesale bank appearedto be a powerhouse generating fabulous earnings growth at Britain'ssixth largest bank. In little more than a decade, profits at thedivision went from zero to a whopping pounds 575m in 2001. While the rise of the ...

How to survive the school fees shock As the cost of independent education soars, many parents will have to juggle their finances. Barbara Oaff looks at the options

Mar 02, 2003; ... PARENTS are used to independent school fees rising, but thisyear's double-digit price hike may shock them. Charges for 2003-2004are expected to go up by at least 10 per cent. While some high-earners will have little difficulty meeting theextra cost, others will be forced to take a ...