The Sunday Telegraph London back issues from May 2006:
Bare buttocks in the grass, please
May 07, 2006; ... LAST WEEK, AND I DON'T THINK IT MADE all the papers, the Dutchprime minister, Jan Peter Balkenende, admitted he was boring. MrBalkenende (hardly a man for first-name terms) is a member of thelower chamber of parliament, known as the Tweede Kamer. How perfectthat a man who has the ...
And I thought internet dating was for weirdos ...
May 07, 2006; ... Last year, I proposed to my girlfriend. I did it on the roofterrace of my flat, beneath the summer stars, by the neighbouringpizza restaurant's loudly humming air-conditioner. Happily, sheaccepted my proposal, once she had worked out what I was saying abovethe din. Why am I telling you ...
Jools Holland St James', Cooling, Kent
May 07, 2006; ... 'The Daily Telegraph Guide to England's Parish Churches' by RobertHarbison (Aurum) is available for pounds 14.99 (rrp pounds 16.99) +pounds 1.25 p&p. To order call Telegraph Books on 0870 428 4115 My first visit to St James' was at the end of the last century andI'm pleased to ...
THE RON HOWARD CODE From child star to Oscar-winning director, Ron Howard has been the golden boy of Hollywood All his life. So 'The Da Vinci Code' should have been plain sailing. Not so, he tells Nigel Farndale: 'I lose sleep on every movie'
May 07, 2006; ... I WOULDN'T SAY MEETING RON HOWARD WAS AN ANTI-CLIMAX, exactly. Idid not, after all, expect the 52-year-old, Oscar-winning directorand movie mogul to be like his friend Russell Crowe, an excitingmixture of bluntness and volatility. Nor did I imagine him to be likeDon Simpson, the ...
LINES FROM THE HEART When Grey Gowrie emerged from the trauma of a heart transplant, he started writing poetry - for the first time in 40 years. hospital, he tells John Preston, was 'a liberating experience'
May 07, 2006; ... 'IT CERTAINLY GAVE ME A SUBJECT,' says Grey Gowrie. 'One of theinteresting things about being in hospital is observing yourselfbeing turned into an object. In a curious way, this is liberating.Your personal hang-ups fade away.' In the summer of 1999, Gowrie went into Harefield ...
CINEMA
May 07, 2006; ... Mission: Impossible III Confetti The Magician Tom Cruise is all set to jump off an office block. It's 80 storeyshigh. His plan is to swing on to the roof of its neighbour. Onceinside, he'll kill 20-odd guards, breach the highest levels ofsecurity, steal a vial of ...
THEATRE
May 07, 2006; ... Krapp's Last Tape Othello Hamlet No matter how good, bad, long or short the play, I always emergefrom the Pit at the Barbican with the feeling that I have just made adesperate escape rather than merely an exit. And never was thisfeeling so intense as after seeing ...
ART
May 07, 2006; ... The notion of the artist as an 'outsider' is one of considerableantiquity. Plato contended that artists were too unstable to have anypart in his ideal Republic. Socrates felt that no creative writercould really be any good unless he was at least a little bitdisturbed: 'If a man comes to ...
Opera and concerts
May 07, 2006; ... Royal Opera House London, 020 7304 4000. Domingo stars in Alfano'sCyrano de Bergerac (Mon, Thur). Opera North The Lowry, Salford, 0870 787 5785. Puccini's Larondine (Tue, Thur), Le nozze di Figaro (Wed, Fri), and Weill's Armsand the Cow (Sat). Scottish Opera Theatre Royal, ...
Rock
May 07, 2006; ... Hard-Fi Still the best thing from Staines since Ali G. ManchesterApollo, tonight, Mon, 0870 401 8000; Edinburgh Corn Exchange, Tue,0131 443 0404; Wolverhampton Civic Hall, Wed, Thur, 01902 552 121. Richard Ashcroft His latest melodic wonders bulked out with morememorable Verve ...
Films
May 07, 2006; ... 16 Blocks (12A). Efficient thriller starring Bruce Willis as abloated wreck of a cop who has to ...
Dance
May 07, 2006; ... Birmingham Royal Ballet Birmingham Hippodrome 0870 730 1234, Wed-Sat: Ashton's La Fille mal garde. Paco Pea Peacock Theatre, London, 0870 737 0337, to Sat. The greatflamenco artist's A Comps ('To the ...
Theatre
May 07, 2006; ... The Voysey Inheritance Lyttelton, 020 7452 3000, Mon-Thu, in repto June 7. Harley Granville Barker's drama about disgrace in aprivileged family. Dominic West is charismatic as ...
Art
May 07, 2006; ... Zarina Bhimji Haunch of Venison, London, 020 7495 5050, Wed toJune 6. Emotional photographs from 1998-2006 by this importantUgandan artist. Out of Beirut Modern Art Oxford, Oxford, 01865 722 733, Sat toJuly 16 ....
Radio
May 07, 2006; ... The Reunion Woman's Hour Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind?Absolutely, so far as possible, for mental health reasons alone.Friends Reunited is well known to have caused all kinds of trouble.And The Reunion, the programme devised for Sue MacGregor ...
TELEVISION
May 07, 2006; ... The Happiness Formula The Impressionists New Street Law Lost My mother once told me that she didn't think I was 'built forpleasure', while my wife recently claimed to see negativity rollingoff me in dark glowering waves. But am I happy? Certainly not ....
The Big Ask POP 2
May 07, 2006; ... How's this for a nightmare scenario? You're the former host of afamously sarcastic TV pop show, and you're introducing the twoleading members of a notoriously humourless rock band at a benefitgig for a serious environmental cause. Your stand-up routine aboutbeing invited to Elton John's ...
POP
May 07, 2006; ... Take That Kieran Hebden with Steve Reid The world is, it seems, now dreadfully ready to be nostalgic forTake That, an early 1990s pop phenomenon who sang songs by BarryManilow and the Bee Gees and spawned the half-crazed Robbie Williams.And in Birmingham thousands of ...
LOAD DOWN BIRMINGHAM ROYAL BALLET'S SUPREMO
May 07, 2006; ... Gorillaz: Demon Days Is this rap? God, I feel old, but I saw thison MTV on tour in Hamburg and it became the soundtrack of the summerfor my youngest son (10) and I. John McCabe: Symphony No 4 Of Time and the River A blazingmasterpiece. I was at the British premiere about 10 years ...
Classical
May 07, 2006; ... King, a Cathedral Opera Madam Butterfly LSO/Haitink The fatal friendship between King Henry II and Thomas Becket, andthe latter's martyrdom on December 29, 1170, still exert a terriblefascination, and last Friday, in the nave of the site of the crime,Canterbury ...
Dance
May 07, 2006; ... Michael Flatley: Celtic Tiger Paco Pea: A Comps You'd think Michael Flatley would be content to rest on hislaurels. Such comfy laurels, too: pad in Knightsbridge; villa on theRiviera; house in Barbados; mansion in Cork; bedsit in Balham (onlykidding). One learns all this and ...
Photography art sales
May 07, 2006; ... There are three things you need if you want to collectphotographs. First, is a dealer who can explain the pounds 50,000difference in price between what look like two identical photographs;the second is a good pair of eyes to spot any damage; and the third,a capacious fridge. Photographs ...
FORTHCOMING SALES
May 07, 2006 ... Locomotive No 1 model, Bonhams, pounds 65,000- pounds 75,000 Important Worcester Porcelain, The R David Butti Collection,Bonhams New Bond Street, Wednesday. Highlights of this impressivecollection include a soup plate by John Flight from the 'Hope'service, c 1790, with an ...
First Buy, Next Buy
May 07, 2006; ... My first buy was an early Matisse pencil drawing of a seated nude.I bought it in 1946, when I'd just gone up to Oxford - it was sold tome by another chap there who went on to be a dealer, but at the timehe'd got into bad trouble with gambling, so he needed to get rid ofit. I'm very fond ...
OUT THIS WEEK Pop
May 07, 2006; ... DANIEL JOHNSTON Lost and Found Sketchbook pounds 13.99 Far from the marginal outcast depicted in magazine profiles andaward-winning documentaries, this troubled Texan singer-songwriterhas actually played a pivotal role in the evolution of American under-ground rock. His ...
OUT THIS WEEK Classical
May 07, 2006; ... ELGAR, CHAUSSON Violin Concerto, Pome Graffin, RLPO/ Handley. Avie pounds 13.99 This performance of Elgar's concerto uses the work's manuscriptbefore certain passages in the violin part were rewritten by itsdedicatee and first player Fritz Kreisler. Before Kreisler came ...
OUT THIS WEEK Games
May 07, 2006; ... ROGUE TROOPER EIDOS (PS2, Xbox, PC), pounds 29.50- pounds 39.50 When a platoon of Universal Soldier-type super grunts is betrayed,Rogue is the only one left to carry out some payback. Your squad, however, lives on, amusingly, in the form of'biochips', which improve ...
OUT THIS WEEK DVDs
May 07, 2006; ... MARCH OF THE PENGUINS Warner, U, pounds 17.99 This year's Oscar-winning documentary, directed by Luc Jacquet,charts the breeding cycle of the Antarctic's emperor penguins. Theywaddle 70 miles across the ice to find a mate, then take turnsguarding the single egg as first the ...
Biography Munro Price on the 'sea-green incorruptible' who turned France blood-red
May 07, 2006; ... Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution BY RUTH SCURR CHATTO & WINDUS, pounds 20, 388 pp T pounds 18 ( pounds 1.25p&p) 0870 428 4115 Even 200 years after his death, Maximilien Robespierre remainsbaffling. He began as a humanitarian lawyer who collapsed ...
TITLE DEED: HOW THE BOOK GOT ITS NAME 'NEVER LET ME GO' BY KASUO ISHIGURO
May 07, 2006; ... Ishiguro revealed in an interview last year that Never Let Me Gowas originally the title of a completely different book, one about agroup of struggling song-writers. (In the eventual book, about humancloning, 'Never Let Me Go' is the title of a fictitious song that thenarrator sings to ...
Memoir Carole Angier enjoys a bittersweet story of family and sugar substitutes
May 07, 2006; ... Sweet and Low: A Family Story BY RICH COHEN JONATHAN CAPE, pounds 12.99, 273 pp T pounds 11.99 ( pounds 1.25 p&p) 0870 428 4115 If a writer has too good a tale to tell, he can forget to tell itwell. Rich Cohen doesn't fall into this trap. He always wanted ...
Biography Catherine Shoard is daunted by a weighty biography of a big man
May 07, 2006; ... Orson Welles: Hello Americans BY SIMON CALLOW JONATHAN CAPE, pounds 25, 528 pp T pounds 23 ( pounds 1.25 p&p)0870 428 4115 It's not just the Happy Meal that's getting bigger. Biographies,too, are being supersized. Michael Holroyd's life of Shaw weighed inat ...
Film stars John Preston is surprised that Ava Gardner and Joan Crawford found time between their flings for films
May 07, 2006; ... Ava Gardner BY LEE SERVER BLOOMSBURY, pounds 20, 551pp pounds 18 ( pounds 1.25 p&p) 0870428 4115 Joan Crawford: Hollywood Martyr BY DAVID BRET ANOVA/ROBSON, pounds 16.99, 299 pp T pounds 14.99 ( pounds 1.25p&p) 0870 428 4115 In 1941 ...
Thinkers We need our intellectuals, says Kenan Malik, even if we are not always sure why
May 07, 2006; ... Absent Minds: Intellectuals in Britain BY STEFAN COLLINI OXFORD, pounds 25, 526 pp T pounds 25 ( pounds 1.25 p&p) 0870428 4115 I never thought of myself as a Grumpy Old Man. Until I readStefan Collini's new book, that is. Now I realise that not only haveI become ...
LITERARY LIFE
May 07, 2006; ... Alan Hollinghurst, Graham Swift and Penelope Lively were amongthose who gathered at the Savile Club in London to mark Martyn Goff'sretirement as grand puppet-master of the Man Booker Prize. Inaddition to the three novelists who had actually won the prize, short-listed authors, judges ...
Cricket A lack of cricketing ability is no reason to limit your playing horizons, discovers Tom Fort
May 07, 2006; ... Penguins Stopped Play: Eleven Village Cricketers Take on the World BY HARRY THOMPSON JOHN MURRAY, pounds 16.99, 242 pp T pounds 14.99 ( pounds 1.25p&p) 0870 428 4115 Every cricket club needs a Harry Thompson. From the outside thereis nothing abnormal about ...
Antiquity Peter Jones on the reverberations set off by the assassination of julius caesar
May 07, 2006; ... Et Tu, Brute? The Murder of Caesar and Political Assassination BY GREG WOOLF PROFILE, pounds 15.99, 199 pp T pounds 13.99 ( pounds 1.25 p&p) 0870 428 4115 The Sons of Caesar: Imperial Rome's First Dynasty BY PHILIP ...
PAPERBACKS
May 07, 2006; ... WHY MOST THINGS FAIL BY PAUL OMEROD, FABER, pounds 8.99 That most commercial and public policy ventures will not succeedis a truth all too seldom acknowledged. Drawing upon recent advancesin biology Omerod helps us to understand the surprising consequencesof the Iron Law of ...
PAPERBACKS
May 07, 2006; ... THE ACCIDENTAL BY ALI SMITH, PENGUIN, pounds 7.99 The setting is a Norfolk holiday cottage in the summer of 2003,where a nuclear family's domestic crises are brought to the fore bythe arrival of an enigmatic stranger. With the Iraq war rumblingoffstage, Ali Smith subtly ...
Fiction Selina Hastings can't praise this saga of serial marriage too highly
May 07, 2006; ... A Much Married Man BY NICHOLAS COLERIDGE ORION, pounds 12.99 464 pp T pounds 11.99 ( pounds 1.25 p&p)0870 428 4115 The hero of Nicholas Coleridge's irresistible new novel, A MuchMarried Man, is the handsome young heir to a private bank and to ahistoric old house and ...
Fiction The reader loses too in this match made in hell, says Katie Owen
May 07, 2006; ... Double Fault BY LIONEL SHRIVER SERPENT'S TAIL, pounds 10.99, 340 pp T pounds 10.99 ( pounds1.25 p&p) 0870 428 4115 Double Fault is presented as Lionel Shriver's new novel but wasactually first published in the USA in 1997. One of several previousnovels by this ...
Fiction Jane Shilling finds a touching story of longing woven into a set-piece comedy
May 07, 2006; ... Digging to America BY ANNE TYLER CHATTO & WINDUS, pounds 16.99, 277 pp T pounds 14.99 ( pounds1.25 p&p) 0870 428 4115 It is 8pm on Friday, August 15, 1997, and two very differentfamilies are waiting by the arrivals gates at Baltimore airport. Bradand Bitsy ...
Fiction Matthew Alexander on glam rock and anarchy
May 07, 2006; ... Johnny Come Home BY JAKE ARNOTT SCEPTRE, pounds 12.99, 278 pp T pounds 11.99 ( pounds 1.25 p&p)0870 428 4115 Jake Arnott achieved immediate success in 1999 with his dbut TheLong Firm, a novel about the Kray twins, homosexuality and 1960sorganised criminal culture ....
Fiction David Robson is impressed by this fresh take on an old fable
May 07, 2006; ... Seeds of Greatness BY JOHN CANTER JONATHAN CAPE, pounds 12.99, 343 pp T pounds 11.99 ( pounds 1.25p&p) 0870 428 4115 John Canter's first novel is a reworking of the fable of the hareand the tortoise. The hare is the charismatic Jack, who is expelledfrom school for ...
SUSANNA YAGER ON NEW CRIME FICTION
May 07, 2006; ... There's more good foreign crime fiction being translated intoEnglish than ever before, and it is notable how much more compact itgenerally is than many bloated Anglo-Saxon novels. DominiqueManotti's Dead Horsemeat (Arcadia, pounds 10.99) is a sophisticatedFrench police procedural, which ...
INTO THE LISTS John Sutherland discovers a way to measure a novel's quality
May 07, 2006; ... The contemporary book trade has at its disposal, thanks to thedigital revolution, monitoring powers that would make the Stasijealous. It can determine, to single figures, how many titles arepublished a year. Publishers can determine, to the single copy, howfast books are leaving their ...
BOOK CLUB
May 07, 2006 ... George Orwell responded to the publisher Victor Gollancz'srejection of Homage to Catalonia with the comment: 'Gollancz is ofcourse part of the Communist-racket.' Is the book's account ofStalinist skulduggery effective? We would welcome your views on ourbook for May, chosen by Antony ...
MOTORING The fox is VW's first true people's car. But will it be the people's choice, asks Neil Lyndon
May 07, 2006; ... Volkswagen Fox 1.2 Price: pounds 6,590 BHP: 55 Top speed: 92mph 0-62 mph: 17.5 secs Average fuel consumption: 46.3 mpg Insurance group: 1E THE LAUNCH, IN THE SOUTH OF England, of the new sub- pounds 7,000Volkswagen Fox occurred on the ...
GADGETEER
May 07, 2006 ... Frighten small children with a 128Mb USB flash memory plasticthumb from www.dynamism.com. $89 plus p&p. UK freephone: 0800 072 9160 Asthe World Cup approaches, manifest the triumph of hope overexperience by pinning the nation's colours to your iPod nano. Trouble is the nano is ...
TURN ON NOVELIST ANNE FINE, NO RAIL TRIP IS COMPLETE WITHOUT A POCKET PAPER-CUTTER
May 07, 2006 ... I HAD A POCKET PAPER- cutter that was confiscated last year, to myeternal grief, at Singapore airport. My stepson Tom bought it about10 years ago in a stationery shop in Edinburgh. It was just so lightand so tidy. I live in Co Durham and am constantly going on trains toLondon to work and ...
GADGETEER The watch lover
May 07, 2006 ... They are a fussy lot at Patek Philippe, writes Nick Hurrell: theymake the average Swiss watchmaker look slapdash. The new AnnualCalendar Chronograph has a complicated mechanism boasting theremarkable ability to differentiate between months of 30 and 31 days(February is a bugger, of ...
TAKE FIVE GOT THE CAR, NOW FOR THE SUITCASE ... WE TEST THE LATEST BRANDED CARRY-ONS
May 07, 2006 ... Avoid the delicate attentions of baggage-handlers with a carry-onthat pays homage to the car (or motorbike) you abandoned in long-term parking. These all comply with new Department of Transport sizerestrictions MINI Anything intended to fit the boot of a Mini will also ...
Channel hopper
May 07, 2006; ... The academy shall speak with one voice, and its verdict shall beheard throughout the land. And a watching nation, driven almost toinsanity and the rending of garments by anticipation, shall finallyknow closure on the issue that has played on its mind these past fewweeks. Can Noel Edmonds ...
MEET BRITAIN'S GREENEST HOMEOWNER Mark Barthel's detached home was once like all its suburban neighbours. Sonia Purnell discovers how he was able to turn it into a temple of recycling and energy- efficiency at little cost to himself and the comfort of his family
May 07, 2006; ... Get your greens Far from being a sandal-wearing beardie, green guru Mark Barthelis a former City commodities broker and still cuts a dapper figure inhis pinstripe suit and crisp business shirt. From the front, his modern detached family house on the outskirtsof Bracknell, ...
ROUND THE HOUSES
May 07, 2006; ... Boom in Belgravia and Bulgaria It's certainly springtime for Chelsea and Belgravia, where theaverage price of a flat ( pounds 507,724) has risen pounds 14,978per month for the past four months. Annualised price growth in primecentral London stood at 14.7 per cent in April, the ...
Deep in the country Speed dating is proving a surprising hit in the shires. Rory Knight Bruce says everyone would be happier at the old village dance
May 07, 2006; ... Village dances were once a weekly fixture in rural Devon. Theywere where locals met up, danced a bit, drank the odd Tizer, playedcribbage and enjoyed each other's company. Young Farmers soon realised such get-togethers were an opportunityfor sizing up assets. Because farmers don't ...
County notebook
May 07, 2006; ... Climb the hills behind the village of Turville to reach a lonelywindmill from which you can see all the way down the valley. Headback to Turville, where the highwaymen used to ...
COUNTIES OF BRITAIN 13. BUCKINGHAMSHIRE While the cottages no longer house farm labourers and the old bucolic greetings have disappeared, the beech woods remain in a county steeped in history, where the author has lived since childhood
May 07, 2006; ... Buckinghamshire is, in part, one of the nearest to London of allthe Home Counties, and yet where I live, in the Chiltern Hills, I canlook out from the beech woods across stretches of fields and not seea house as far as the eye can reach. I have lived here since I was a child when ...
For sale in Buckinghamshire
May 07, 2006 ... Chiltern views Bottom Cottage, at Highwood Bottom, Speen, threebedrooms and separate office, pounds 680,000, left; Brook ...
Surrey, without breaking the bank It really is possible to find affordable homes in Britain's most expensive country. But you have to know where to look, reports Belinda Smith
May 07, 2006; ... Janet McCarthy must have one of the toughest jobs in property. Shescours a county of stockbrokers and stars, and a byword for wealth,in search of "bargains'' for first-time buyers. Undaunted by thehighest average house prices of any county in England and Wales, theproperty finding agent ...
Is the old plaster best? On the level
May 07, 2006; ... Patching a lath-and-plaster wall can be an interesting experience.Until about 70 years ago, before plasterboard was widely used,ceilings and internal partition walls were lined with individualstrips of timber lath and plastered over. The laths themselves, aboutan inch or an ...
The room planners How to get your living room ready for summer
May 07, 2006 ... PAULA SUGGESTS: While banishing your winter clothes to the back of the closet,don't stop there. Give your sitting room a lift with a fresh look forthe warmer months. Put away heavy fabrics in dark colours (curtains, cushion covers,throws, rugs etc), and reposition dark ...
Give it up for the boudoir-style bathroom Homeowners are sacrificing spare rooms to create the latest must-have in open-plan living, reports Lesley Gillilan
May 07, 2006; ... More of a luxury home spa than a functional washroom, the familybathroom is undergoing yet another transformation. Forget the wetroom: the latest must-have is a boudoir-style comfort zone,furnished, with double-ended island baths, twin basins and steamcabins, plus soft-furnishings and a ...
The cabbage patch convert First-time kitchen gardener Alex Mitchell tries her hand at living off the land
May 07, 2006; ... The box hedging is perfectly trimmed, bordering triangles ofspring cabbages, broad beans, cauliflowers and lavender. Tulips waveperkily above a sea of red and green lettuces, while leeks and onionsstab regimented lines among the salad, edged by alpine strawberries.Aged red brick paths ...
Garden chemicals
May 07, 2006; ... Do herbicides have advantages over weeding and are they safe? A big factor is the size and condition of your plot. In my half-acre garden with meadows and establishing tree and woodland belts,which is maintained with, at best, two days' labour a week, I findcertain herbicides ...