• The Daily Telegraph
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• L’Orient-Le Jour
• L'Osservatore Romano
• The Irish Times
• Conservative Home
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• FAZ / Eng.
• NZZ / Eng.
• Magyar Nemzet
• ABC.es
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• London Playbook
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Muscovy

Germany

Well, the Great Transit Strike of 2005 is over with the Transport Workers Union having succeeding in winning for themselves the enmity of the entire city. The Trinidadian Roger Toussaint was elected head of the TWU on a radical platform and radical is what they got. And boy did it blow up in their faces! Listening to the radio the other day I heard stories of decent hard-working people who were waking up at 3:30 in the morning so that they could walk to their jobs and get there on time. Others were sleeping in impromptu locations at their place of employ. All this hassle just because Roger Toussaint wanted his pampered transit workers to retire at 55. Well boo hoo!

One Knickerbocker said: “Roger Toussaint gave up a life of hard work picking sugar cane down in the islands to come up to New York and pick the pockets of decent, hard-working Americans instead!” Well at least it’s all over now, so I can finally catch the Prague exhibit at the Met (oh and the Fra Angelico). I still curse myself for missing the Byzantium exhibit they held; I turned up a day late so I and the young lady who accompanied me assuaged our ire at J.G. Melon’s.

Whilst perusing the British corner of the Hudson Newsstand in Grand Central, waiting for a train home last Sunday after hearing Mass at St Agnes and then attending the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols at St Thomas, I chanced upon a copy of This England, a splendid and reactionary quarterly from that green and pleasant land. It was something of a rediscovery as I have somewhere two copies of This England from 1983 and I am happy to report that the magazine has changed very little. It is a wonderful collection of little articles, stories, anecdotes, and charivari about the Mother Country and doesn’t give the slightest hoot for political correctness. A cozy and comfortable quarterly which I believe any traditionalist from the English-speaking world will enjoy. Irritatingly they did not have the Christmas double edition of the beloved Spectator, so I fear I must do without it this year. (And there was much gnashing of teeth…).

The Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols was superlative as always. It was interesting to note that in the program/weekly bulletin the word ‘Episcopal’ was nowhere to be found, nor any indication that St. Thomas is a parish of the Episcopal Diocese of New York and likewise the Episcopal Church of the United States of America except a very brief statement mentioning that the parish is “in the Anglican tradition”. A parish in denial? Perhaps, but if you were in their situation would you want to face facts? Ignorance is bliss, and it was a blissful service after all. Much enjoyed. My only complaint was that I thought the choir could’ve put a little more oomph in the final verses of Once in Royal David’s City and O Come All Ye Faithful, perhaps with a little help from the organ, but oh well, I’m no choirmaster, deo gratias.

Almost everyone in our little arrondissement of the web has been chiming in with their thoughts on the recent Chronicles of Narnia film, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I have little to contribute other than to say I found it an enjoyable film which I warmly encourage others to see. We found Father Christmas’s lack of headgear disappointing. A mitre would’ve been most appropriate, but his head was bare; perhaps Saint Nicholas should look to the much-vaunted final word in matters sartorial currently sitting on the throne of Peter.

Speaking of matters sartorial, a kerfuffle recently erupted in Missouri when some Communist enemy of all that good and holy banned a kilted student from a high school dance on the grounds that he was not properly attired. If I can trust my profound study of Scottish history (which consists mostly of the first few minutes of that 1959 biopic of John Paul Johns in which Robert Stack plays the title role) then we recall that the boorish Hanoverians banned the kilt for reasons I have forgotten. (I haven’t seen the film in years, and Robert Stack is dead, r.i.p.). I am certain that my readers and I are united in scorn.

I called up the folks at the New Criterion yesterday and Cricket Farnsworth, that hilarious and ever-charming daughter of Connecticut, answered the phone. I asked if there were any commuting woes and Cricket, the token liberal on the staff, just said “Well of course everyone here thinks the union leaders should all be shot.” “Then all is as it should be, Cricket,” I replied, “all is well in the world.” Happily, they have put one of the Jacksons’ Roger Kimball gingerbread men (or ‘Kimballbreadmen’ as they are calling them) to the side for me to consume when I pop down and visit next week. All is well indeed.

It is an eternal and reassuring fact of human nature that when an editor announces that he is stepping down from a great publication, there is not the slightest interest in what he plans to do with his life, or even who he was.

I have received many phone calls from friends and colleagues since announcing last Friday that this would be my last edition, and they only want to know one thing. ‘Who is taking over?’

I wish I knew myself. But since the white smoke has yet to go up, I thought I had better write a general welcome to whoever you are out there. I propose to open the door of 56 Doughty Street and show you — not so much how it’s done — but where it’s done.

You arrive at a big black door in Holborn with a brass plaque, and after you have gained admission, you find a scene of domestic chaos, with dog leads, umbrellas, champagne and other impedimenta. Immediately beneath a sign saying ‘No Bicycles’ you will notice several bicycles.

You will dimly glimpse other offices ahead and to your left, the Books and Arts and Cartoon departments, bulging with the greatest talents in journalism. But if you are like me, you will be overcome with nerves and scoot straight upstairs for your office, on the first floor. As soon as you walk in, your heart will lift.

It is a magnificent room, a huge Victorian drawing-room with a chandelier and three sash windows looking out on the street where Charles Dickens lived, with an assortment of furniture both distinguished and distressed.

As you walk to your desk you cross Ian Gilmour’s (editor 1954–59) carpet, a large, fine and extremely valuable Turkish rug. Occasionally in the last 50 years there have been peeps from Isleworth suggesting this carpet might be returned. You will find these suggestions increasingly easy to ignore.

You sit down at the colossal desk. You find a Black Museum of Spectator history. There is a fragment of red telephone box, rescued by Charles Moore (editor 1984–1990). There is a big yellow molar in a plastic thimble, apparently wrenched from the merry chaps of Frank Johnson (editor 1995–1999). There is a silver-plated statuette of a miner with pick and shovel, presented to ‘The Spectator’ by the townsfolk of Aberdare in 1929. ‘In grateful recognition,’ says the plaque, adding, ‘the greatest of these is love.’

Hear, hear, you say, and try the drawers. You will find the handles mainly broken, but in the bottom left is a fabulous cache of letters congratulating Dominic Lawson (editor 1990–1995) on acceding to your chair. You will by now be blizzarded with your own letters of congratulation, and in some cases you will have received the same letters, from the same people, offering the same columns!

Before you have time to recover, your hugely efficient PA will be patching you through to Downing Street, because the Prime Minister wants to congratulate you in person. You leave instantly, and have half an hour in the sofa room with Tony, during which he will extol the magazine and (quite properly) the genius of Paul Johnson.

If you do the job in the way that we all hope, that will be the last friendly contact you have with the regime. In due course, when Downing Street takes you to the Press Complaints Commission over a story that turns out to be 100 per cent right, you will have to keep your nerve. Old chums will turn up in your office, urging you to capitulate. Don’t.

The Spectator surrenders to no one. The Spectator is always right.

When you return from your audience you may be tired and cold, and I recommend that you light the gas fire. There are few sights more cheering than that fire on a winter’s day, though you should not forget to turn it off when you leave. I did, and the Nigerian security guy put it out with the fire extinguisher.

Once the fire is going well, you may find your eyes drifting to the lovely striped chesterfield across the room. Is it the right size, you wonder, for a snooze…? You come round in a panic, to find a lustrous pair of black eyes staring down at you.

Relax. It’s only Kimberly, with some helpful suggestions for boosting circulation. Just pat her on the bottom and send her on her way. Whatever you do, don’t get depressed if she starts saying ‘noos-stand is sawft this week, Booriss’ (she is American) or that she doesn’t like your cover. That’s her job, and if you put your back into yours you’ll find that news-stand has a way of gently recovering.

Just as you’re drifting off again, the phone goes. There are two phones on the desk, white and black. If it is the white phone, on your first day in the job, I would say it is a dime to a dollar that the caller is Bruce Anderson.

Now Bruce is a wonderful fellow and an excellent writer, but if you happen to tell him, after lunch, that you do not have space for a piece, he is apt to get morbid. ‘I will destroy you,’ he starts saying. ‘I will destroy you and your reputation for ever.’ Do not on any account take fright. He doesn’t mean it. The best thing is to blow kisses down the phone and commission a piece for the following week.
And then the phone goes again, and this time I would wager it is Taki, calling from Gstaad, full of good cheer and anxious to find out whether or not you are going to sack him. At this stage in your editorship the sacking or keeping of Taki is likely to be turned into a culture war of Dreyfus-like proportions.

The Guardian and other papers will start a horrible drumming roar for his dismissal. It is time, they say, that The Spectator showed it has moved on. Soon the whole of civilised London has joined in. Sack Taki! Sack Taki!

Faced with that overwhelming consensus, you have only one choice, though it is of course entirely up to you to decide what that is.
By now the day is drawing to an end, and it is time to see how everyone else is getting on. You stick your head round the next-door office, about a third of the size of yours, and occupied by three people and….Is that a dog? It is Harry, a highly intelligent and handsome Jack Russell, and certainly no smellier than anyone else in the building.

You go upstairs, past girlish giggles and shrieks emanating from the publisher’s office, and you pass other tiny offices, full of editors and computers and industry of all kinds, until you reach the dining-room.

Here you will pass many happy hours, some of them conscious. These are the very windows through which the magazine’s famous cook, Jennifer Paterson, threw the crockery into the garden of the National Association of Funeral Directors next door. This is the table where most of the copy-editing is done on Mondays and Tuesdays, expert hands and eyes buffing and polishing the contributions with the care of Amsterdam jewellers.

And then, last but not least, you go downstairs to pay homage to the advertising and production teams, who keep The Spectator awash with ads for handbags and help to pay your mortgage. Over time you will find that it pays to listen carefully to what they say, and oblige them as far as you can.

So ends the tour of the ancient distillery. The big black door slams behind you for the first time, as it slammed behind me for the last time this week. Thanks to the exertions of the brilliant team you inherit, the magazine is in the pink of financial health with circulation at an all-time high.

You will be urged to drag it ‘kicking and screaming into the 21st century’. But as editor of The Spectator you should not be tied to any particular decade, century, or even millennium.

You are a Time Lord, and your readers expect you to take them to all parts of the human experience, and to remember that the Bible and Homer are far more interesting and important, sub specie aeternitatis, than the price of oil or Tory prospects.

You will be told that the magazine is elitist, and you should take that as a compliment. Every society that we know of has been run by an elite, and every elite needs elucidation.

Every industry or profession needs an angel at the top of their Christmas tree, and in the case of journalism you hold that angel in your hands.

You will receive threatening letters from female journalists, urging you to have more female bylines, starting with their own, and I would not dream of advising you there.

You will find that our proprietors are little short of superb. They are cheerful, tolerant, wise, and eager to develop and improve the magazine.

I have a feeling that they are bluff enough not to mind the occasional laugh at their own expense, but I confess I have not had the nerve to find out.

Like everyone in a new post, you will probably have a tough first six months. You will then discover that you have, by some margin, the best job in London, and I have no doubt that you will have fun to a degree that is almost improper.

When New York magazine speculated on the prospects of an independent New York they postulated Woody Allen gracing a “1 York” note with Rudolph Guliani on the “20 York” note. In Caledonia they’re used to dealing with many different varieties of banknotes. In Scotland alone there are three different institutions authorised ot print currency: the Royal Bank of Scotland, the Bank of Scotland, and the Clydesdale Bank. Northern Ireland, meanwhile, has four: the Bank of Ireland, Ulster Bank, Northern Bank, and First Trust Bank. England and Wales, on the other hand, have but the Bank of England to issue legal tender, that institution having been granted a monopoly so to do in 1921. [More on British banknotes]

Nonetheless, this got me to thinking who and what I would put on New York bank notes if we had them. First of all, none of this “York” business; dollars they are and dollars they would remain in my land of fancy. Anyhow, here’s what I generally came up with: (more…)

So who will replace good Sir Kenneth? The Chancellor is chosen by the General Council of the University of St Andrews, which consists of all graduates and senior academics, so something like 35,000 people are eligible to vote. The following are among those who have been suggested for the position so far:

A while ago, we reported on the planned expansion of St. Nersess Armenian Seminary, the only Armenian seminary outside Armenia over in New Rochelle. Unfortunately, the seminary’s uppity neighbors got their proverbial knickers in a twist over the expansion and have pressured the City Council to deny planning permission (something that sounds very familiar to any Thorntonian; I guess the City of New Rochelle just doesn’t want outstanding educational institutions). Because of this the Board of St. Nersess met and decided it had to move elsewhere, so anyone who has a cool $15,000,000.00 to spare: it’s yours!

The house, on Stratton Road near Iona Prep, was built in the 1920’s by none other than William Randolph Hearst. He never lived there though, but just had it on hand for friends of his who were visiting New York and needed a place to stay. The building, to my recollection, is in fairly good condition, but the 8.65 acres it sits on seems rather small when you’re actually there.

Back in school we had some random day off that no other school had (Founder’s Day, I believe) and so Lucas de Soto and I, ever the adventurers, decided to pop over to the Armenian seminary to see what it was all about. (A Presbyeterian and a Catholic walk into an Armenian Seminary… sounds like the set-up for a bad joke). We turned up unannounced and everyone there was terrifically friendly. The secretary offered us cake, showed us around a bit and then introduced us to “the greatest expert on Armenian history ever” who was leaving for Philadelphia in under half an hour but would no doubt take a few minutes to answer any of our questions (unfortunately I’ve forgotten his name). He too was very friendly indeed and answered all our questions and told us about Armenia, the Church, the Armenian Patriarch of Jerusalem, and about the Divine Liturgy and how it differs from the Mass. We also got to chat with a few of the seminarians who were mulling about the kitchen. The historian even offered to teach us the Armenian language for free, and I was tempted to take them up on it. Lucas and I found it quite fascinating; well worth a day off from school.

Strange as it may seem, Remembrance Day is perhaps my favorite time in the entire British year. It is somewhat surprising that despite the cultural revolution of the past few decades, despite the intellectual, academic, and political assaults on tradition, history, the military, and the time-honoured institutions of this realm, Remembrance Day remains and is widely commemorated. Three times this Remembrancetide I had the opportunity to partake in the annual two minutes silence: first, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month (Remembrance Day itself), then the following evening while watching the unbeatable Festival of Remembrance at the Royal Albert Hall on television, then the following morning at the Remembrance Sunday chapel service, which was followed by the joint service of town and gown at the War Memorial.

It is my firm belief that you can discern a great deal about a country from its ceremonial culture. From the naked paganism of Nazi Germany and the Stalinist banality of Soviet Russia to the splendid majesty of Great Britain and the restrained republicanism of the United States, rituals are not empty acts, but are indeed indicative of an inner soul, an essence.

Most of our readers will not be familiar with the workings of Remembrance Day in Britain. The climax to a typical Act of Remembrance is the two minutes of silence in remembrance of and thanksgiving for the great sacrifice made during all wars. Usually, there are two particular brief epigrams of sorts read, one before and one after the two minutes of silence.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
We will remember them.

When You Go Home,
Tell Them Of Us And Say,
For Their Tomorrow,
We Gave Our Today.

The two minutes of silence is one of the few remnants of dignity in this land. Two minutes in which the entire nation comes to a halt. Railway stations, public streets, shops, offices, even the busy stock exchange come to a complete halt as we stand, silently, to remember uncountable deeds and intangible sacrifice.

America, of course, does not have the culture of Remembrance Day, but celebrates the day as Veterans Day instead. The United States was exposed to the massive slaughter of modern warfare a full fifty years before the Great War so shocked Europe. To this day, no war has claimed the lives of as many Americans as did the Civil War, which led to the creation of Memorial Day. One of the many blessings bestowed upon our country is that we have never had to suffer on such a great scale in our own homeland again, while Europe has witnessed warfare as recently as a few years ago in the Balkans.

The Balkans was where it all started, after all, on that fateful day in Sarajevo, June 1914. The greatest reflection I have read this Remembrance Sunday was Gerald Warner’s column printed in the latest Scotland on Sunday. It is well worth registering with scotsman.com for. Read it.

New York University is a very odd fish. It was founded (as the University of the City of New York) in the 1830’s as an academic refuge for the city’s Dutch Reformed and Presbyterians opposed to the very Episcopalian flavor of Columbia College, though it was never officially aligned to either denomination. Around the turn of the century when Columbia moved uptown to a brand spanking new beaux-arts campus NYU decided to follow suit by moving even further uptown and building their own classically-inspired campus. They kept their buildings in Greenwich Village, however, and by the 1970’s found the Bronx campus (University Heights) to be a burden on the old chequebook and sold it to the City.

In the meantime, NYU was known (and pretty much had been since it was founded) as a “commuter school”, which is to say that most (though not all) of its students were from around the metropolitan area who travelled from home to school and back again. This has completely changed in the 1980’s, as graduates who had done well for themselves (and other philanthropists) began donating large sums to NYU and it remade itself in the image of the normal residential university (again, like Columbia). Of course, having forsaken their proper campus they were stuck with a number of buildings around Greenwich Village and so pretty much began to buy up any building of any size that came onto the market in the neighborhood. [A commenter on Curbed.com says that NYU is probably the largest landowner in the City after Trinity Church. The largest landowner is actually the (Catholic) Archdiocese of New York, followed by Columbia University (which happens to own Rockefeller Center, among other things). After that, I’m not sure but NYU probably has more land, while I would think Trinity Chuch probably has higher returns for the particular land they own.] NYU is now an almost entirely residential university in that even if its students are not living in dorms they are almost certainly not living with their parents nearby. Indeed, the proportion of native New Yorkers has fallen while those from other states and countries has risen markedly.

I’ve had a fair amount of experience with NYU. According to facebook.com I have seven friends there, though one spent his freshman year there and wisely thought “This place is for suckers” and transferred to Georgetown, while another friend (now graduated) never bothered to join the Facebook. Anyhow, in my final year of high school I had a good friend who was a year older than me (a Holy Child girl, troublemakers all) who went to NYU. Most weeks I would head down one afternoon after school (always Mondays actually; I’m a creature of habit and it suited her schedule) and have dinner and, to use the parlance of our times, “hang out” and “chill” until heading back up to yonder Westchester around 9 o’clock. As you can imagine, one met a fair number of NYUers during such perambulations and I have to say, though the young lady in question did have a pretty roommate from Connecticut (a ‘Darienfrau’ as Igby Slocum would say, though she was actually from Guildford), I not even once met a single person with whom I might want to voluntarily spend any of my time. They were, to a man, boring, self-obsessed nitwits, completey devoid of anything interesting. Though (I’m told) a number of Columbians were irate at me for having described their academy as “a fallen institution”, fallen though it is Columbia is still better than NYU. I have not nearly spent the same amount of time at Columbia as I have down at NYU and yet I’ve met interesting people from there. Also, my mother works at Columbia and though she likes to tell many hilarious stories of the freaks she has met amongst the studentry, she also tells of a number of very kind, nice, and interesting students she has had the occasion to meet. I very much doubt this would be the case if she was working at NYU. The most interesting people at NYU are actually the security guards who, although they all take their jobs terribly seriously (and rightly so), are usually much better for some decent chat than the students. Of course, Fordham students are superb and beat NYUers and Columbians any day of the week.

But who, then, are the other NYUers whom I count amongst my friends? They still manage to be interesting folks. Strangely enough none of the eight Violets I know are friends with one another. In addition to the Holy Child girl and the wise Georgetown transfer, there is 3) a fellow Thorntonian (guy), 4) a Bronxvillian guy, 5) a hilarious girl from Larchmont whom I’m good friends with, 6) and 7) two girls, both Californian, I know from the summer I spent at Oxford, and 8) a girl who is a member of my Upper East Side circle of friends. The reader will note the preponderance of females. NYU is very much a feminine university these days; I mean, heck, their athletic nickname is the Violets after all, not the Fighting Irish. Of the guys I know, one’s only their because he’s exceptionally talented in the realm of film, another knew well enough to transfer away from NYU, and the third is a fellow Thorntonian (Thorntonians are known for either surviving in adverse situations or cracking up and going loony, so that accounts for his survival to date). Every NYU girl complains about the lack of available men since NYU predictably attracts a large number of men of… err… “alternative lifestyle options”. Naturally this creates a situation, like the Anglican priesthood, where being a male at NYU one might automatically be tarred with suspicions of being “of an alternative lifestyle” and thus a very large proportion of self-respecting young men are deterred from even applying.

But back to Curbed. So NYU is building yet another dorm and many are complaining about their precious neighborhood being turned into the quarter for spoiled students. Ah well. I’m not terribly troubled. Greenwich Village to me is part of Manhattan’s vast underbelly, a term I use only half abusingly. It’s just that most places below Gramercy Park seem either too crowded or too weird for me to live. It’s not that the underbelly is ugly, there are some beautiful buildings and some quite charming parts. But as the Brits say about France, “lovely place, shame about the people”. And you know, if you go for the SoHo/Chelsea/Village scene, then fair enough. Enjoy it all you like. I’m just an Upper East Side kinda guy myself.

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