Adolf Hitler's table manners shocking: British intelligence report

After the Kujau fraud, one does rather wonder at the authenticity of this document. Its provenance would have to be thoroughly investigated before it is taken seriously. There are a number of points which are rather surprising



ADOLF Hitler's uncouth behaviour and shocking table manners appalled his wartime dining companions, according to a secret intelligence report discovered during a house clearance.

The papers, marked “Must be destroyed within 48 hours of reading”, include a psychological profile of the Nazi dictator based on the interrogation of one of his closest aides.

The aide, an officer who kept the appointments diary at Wolf's Lair, Hitler's military headquarters at Rastenburg in East Prussia, described how the Führer bit his nails during meals, gorged on cakes and was often lost in his own thoughts, paying little attention to the conversation around him. He also spoke about the rages that kept Hitler's senior officers in a state of constant terror.

The papers are part of an intelligence summary prepared as the war neared its end and are believed to have been saved by a British officer. They were found at a house in Britain and are to be sold at auction next month.

The unnamed German officer, a lieutenant colonel referred to as PW — prisoner of war — was based at Wolf's Lair for several months in 1943. He dined with Hitler at least 30 times and observed his daily routine. He told the Allies that Hitler would eat only vegetables and stewed fruit and banned smoking in his presence. His meals would be accompanied by one or two glasses of beer.

“Hitler eats rapidly, mechanically, for him food is merely an indispensable means of subsistence,” PW said. Conversation at the dinner table relaxed Hitler and stimulated his thoughts. When he spoke it was “in mellow baritone, without that raucous, unpleasant stridency of his public speeches”.

But the informant added: “At the table and in his speech he shows many facets of rather uncouth behaviour. He abstractedly bites his fingernails, he runs his index finger back and forth under his nose, and his table manners are little short of shocking.”

Although Hitler forswore meat and drank herbal tea in preference to coffee, the report said that he ate “prodigious amounts of cake”, which contributed to his “digestive disorder”.

The officer also gave an insight into Hitler's private life, saying that the dictator told companions that he had never married because he could not allow care for a family to interfere with his duty to the German nation.

He had female companions, including “a Miss Braun”, but it was generally believed that the relationships were platonic. The officer also dismissed as “rumours” speculation that Hitler had homosexual tendencies.

He told how Hitler threw “carpet-biting” tantrums. A major on night duty who failed to pass on a message confirming that the retreat from El Alamein had begun felt the full force of his wrath.

“When Hitler heard about this he threw one of his typical fits and greeted the major with the words, ‘If you say a word in your defence, I'll have you shot'. Then he raved on and finally demoted the major to private.

Hitler also had a profound belief in divine providence and his own destiny, encouraged when an assassin's bomb left him uninjured. The officer left Wolf's Lair convinced that the Führer was a madman.

Terry Charman, a senior historian at the Imperial War Museum, said: “It is a surprise to hear of Hitler drinking beer as it is generally believed he had given up alcohol in 1931. The description of the tantrum is typical.”

The auction will be on on March 5 and the papers are expected to fetch up to 1000 pounds.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25072203-2703,00.html

Styria no longer in the 'wrong' end of Austria

The Styria region is a little untouched gem. When the Iron Curtain fell it suddenly wasn't a place at the "wrong" end of Austria.



Sitting on my sunny terrace munching juicy peaches and looking out over a field of vibrant sunflowers at a temperature of over 30C, I could be in some romantic idyll in the suny south of Europe; in fact, I'm right at the heart of it.

This is the scene that greets me every harvest time here in Styria, southern Austria, my new home since my husband and I left our home in a small village on the Pelopponese in Greece in June 2005. Now, instead of harvesting olives in winter and enjoying our own olive oil, we harvest pumpkin seeds in autumn and press these to make pumpkin seed oil – not as good for cooking as the olive variety, but a delicious salad dressing.

Styria is a little untouched gem. When the Iron Curtain fell it suddenly wasn't a place at the "wrong" end of Austria, going nowhere except towards the Eastern Bloc, but a glorious land of world class spa resorts and medieval towns. There are award-winning boutique wineries where the wine is already sold out before it is even harvested, hiking trails round long extinct volcanoes – oh, and of course all those sunflower fields.

Styria is so unknown that on going into a travel agency in Scotland, my home country, during the move the travel agent looked at me rather strangely when I asked about flights, thinking I'd moved to Syria in the Middle East. They do both have one thing in common, though – their hospitality. When my parents visited for the first time, my neighbour Maria was up at the crack of dawn to bake doughnuts which she very kindly presented to us for breakfast.

My mum and dad were impressed and so was I. In fact we sometimes think we must look underfed as baskets of food regularly appear on our front step – juicy purple aubergines, home-made bread, apples and of course bottles of pumpkin seed oil.

So why Styria? My "Mann" is a Vorarlberger – from that part of Austria next to Switzerland and Liechtenstein that is terribly mountaineous, terribly built-up and terribly cold. So when hubby wished to return to his homeland for health reasons – he has bad kidneys and liver and the Greek hospitals didn't exactly inspire confidence should he ever need dialysis – I, having got used to the Mediterranean lifestyle and especially the sunshine, said: "OK but we need to come back to the sunniest part of Austria" – and this is it!

Temperatures can reach the high 30Cs in summer – in fact we once measured 43C – but there's enough rain in between to irrigate the crops, and the growing number of golf courses in the area. And, of course, fill the pool without feeling guilty about the farmer down the road who has no water for his goats. In summer the climate tends to be subtropical and in winter we can sometimes enjoy lunch on the terrace or just as easily celebrate a white Christmas!

One thing is for sure, though; your euro or pound goes a lot further here than in other, more well-known parts of Europe. Our local Gasthaus does a super two course lunchtime menu with salad for under six euros. However, by far the most atmospheric places to eat are the buschenschanken or wine taverns, conveniently located next to the vineyards so you can enjoy breathtaking views while you have a mile-long-sandwich covered in locally produced meats or cheeses and some fine wine for under five euros.

But you have to hurry as buschenschanken are only open as long as they have enough of their own wine to sell. Many have their own rooms to let and "Urlaub am Weinbauernhof" (living with the winemakers) is fast becoming a popular experience. What's even more interesting is the price. Our local, the Erlebnisbauernhof has apartments for two with kitchen, WC, bathroom, living and dining area, bedroom and use of sauna for €32 per night. That's not per person but per apartment and also includes use of a pool with views over the vineyards. Bed and breakfast in a private house or Gasthaus can be had from €16-30 per person per night.

My greatest fear about the weather has not materialised; in fact, I look forward to some rain to water the garden. This is a very rural area with picturesque villages on golden hillsides and people who have a close connection with the land. It seems almost everybody here is self-sufficient to some degree with many having pigs, hens, goats or hares in their back yards and a garden full of fresh organic veg.

Property is much cheaper than more well-known parts of the country and also comes with a lot more land and space. Agricultural lands sells for about three euros per square metre and building land for about €11. Friends of ours are selling their farmhouse, with around 7,000 square metres of land, for €127,000 (details on www.remax.at).

Our "new" neighbours are Slovenia to the south, a favourite haunt for super fish meals even cheaper than in Austria. In fact on the new motorway we are a mere two and a half hours' drive from the Venetian jewel of Piran on the Slovenian coast. About 90 minutes away is another jewel, this time in Croatia; if you can't make it to Vienna, Varasdin is a good second best.

You feel as though you could meet Franz Josef, the last Habsburg emperor, around any corner. The border with Hungary, and its excellent Sunday markets, is under an hour from here too, so its actually possible to experience four countries in one day. Not bad for the "wrong" end of Austria!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/4360950/Styria-no-longer-in-the-wrong-end-of-Austria.html

Captain extraordinary: Ivan Castro of the U.S. Special Forces

Some of the warriors of old are still with us

CAPT. IVAN CASTRO will tell you he's an ordinary man, basically. You may wish to disagree. He is an officer in the U.S. Special Forces, and blind. He was blinded while fighting in Iraq about two and a half years ago. He did not then leave the military. He persevered, to an astonishing degree. He has attracted interest all over the country, as well he might.

He was born in Hoboken, N.J. (same as Frank Sinatra), in 1967. His parents were from Puerto Rico. His dad was a cook and other things, and his mother was a factory worker and other things. How he got that interesting name, "Ivan Castro," he doesn't know. His sister's name is Olga! The family moved to Puerto Rico when he was twelve. He wanted to be a policeman, a fireman, a soldier--"something with action," as he says. He went to a military high school, and joined the Army when he was 20. He expected to stay for four years. He fought in the Gulf War-and continued in the military. "I had done so much in those four years," he says, "it just didn't make any sense for me to get out."

After the Gulf War, he was in Bosnia, Colombia, and other places. And then he was back in combat, this time in Afghanistan. He was a platoon leader in the 82nd Airborne. In due course, he was in Iraq. It was in September 2006 that the mortar blast came. His injuries were extensive: his right eye gone, his left eye beyond repair, his lungs collapsed, etc. There is a long list of injuries and problems. "Believe it or not," he says, "we keep discovering things that are coming up-- injuries we weren't aware of."

I have come to see him in his office at Fort Bragg. He is a personable man, the kind who puts people at ease. There is also about him the air of command. He's the kind of soldier about whom people say, "Officer material." A white cane leans against the wall. On another wall is a picture of Captain Castro and his wife with President Bush. There is also a letter from Bush.

And Captain Castro has a specially equipped computer--one that reads him his e-mail, for example. He'll tell you, "I used to hunt and peck. But when you're blind, you can't do that. So I had to learn to type."

When that mortar round went off, "I was fighting to stay alive, fighting not to give up. That's all I remember. I knew I didn't want to die. I knew I wanted to come back to my wife and son." He was unconscious for six weeks. Then he woke up and began his recovery. His wife and mother-in-law never left his bedside.

After his surgeries and rehabilitation, the 82nd was "going to send me to the Warrior Transition Battalion"-that would ease the transition out of the military and into some other kind of life. He would begin life as a disabled vet. "But that was not my intent. My intent was to stay in the Army, to continue my service. I had been doing it for more than 18 years. Why should I give it up now?" (Others might have thought of reasons.)

He told Special Operations that "I wanted to serve as long as they gave me the opportunity, and I wanted to be productive. I didn't want to be sitting down licking envelopes and shredding paper." They agreed. His group commander said, "I'm going to treat you like everyone else, like every other captain here. And I'm going to expect a lot out of you"--which is what this captain wanted.

Why did he not simply give up, and slink away? "My mother, my dad: They were really hard workers. My mother was a survivor. They divorced when I was five, and she worked really hard for everything she had--and she taught me to work hard as well." Castro worked a lot as a kid, and "I was the man of the house. When something broke, I had to fix it. Had to figure it out." His military training made him tough, too: Ranger School, the Special Forces Qualification Course. Those are not cakewalks.

Also, he feels he has an example to set: for his peers, for the soldiers who were under his command. About those soldiers, he says, "They kind of look up to me. I can't let them down." There is the public to consider, too: "When I don my beret, and go out with my cane, people stop and stare." He can feel it. And "if you're a Special Forces Ranger, everyone expects more from you. You're never cold, you're never hungry, you're never tired."

Plus, "I got a son who's 15. I got bills to pay. I'm a husband. Just because I'm blind or injured doesn't mean I don't have to pay my mortgage or stuff like that." His wife, Evelyn, was a speech pathologist in a public-school system. Now she works with injured service members in an Army hospital. Castro describes her as his hero. For one thing, "she never expected to be married to a blind guy."

He also has laudatory words for military doctors and nurses: "We think about the soldiers that get hurt, and we don't think of the doctors and nurses who every day have to see the trauma and suffering that service members go through. It's tough on them. I'm pretty sure they have some post-traumatic stress as well."

Last year, Ivan Castro ran five marathons. (Best time: 4 hours, 11 minutes. He hopes to break the four-hour barrier this year.) He also did a triathlon. And climbed Grays Peak in Colorado (14,270 ft.). He lives life with gusto, whether running a marathon or visiting a museum: “I went to the Air Force Museum in Dayton. I didn’t see it with my eyes, but they let me put my hands on the aircraft. Incredible.” At Fort Bragg, he oversees the Spanish-language lab and carries out various administrative and logistical tasks, “making sure that soldiers are ready to deploy.”

He wanted to command an A-team, but “that wasn’t meant to be, so maybe, by taking this job here, I can clear somebody from having to do this job,” and let such a person “do the things that I wanted to do: go out and lead.” (Have you heard anything nobler than that lately?) “Right now, my main focus is what I can do to help other service members, and anyone else. It’s not about Ivan.”

He speaks before groups all over the country: various associations and organizations. He does a lot of teaching, too, particularly of those who face severe challenges, physical and mental. And he wants to accept no limitations. “If someone tells me I can’t do something, I have to keep myself from punching him in the nose. Instead of saying that I can’t do something, let’s figure out a way for me to do it.”

And how are his spirits? “I’m not going to lie to you: We all have our good times and bad times. I’m just like anyone else.” When the doctors told him he would never see again, “I was extremely, extremely bitter. I was at the point where I asked the Lord above, ‘Why me?’ I was bitter with the Lord, angry with the Lord.”

One day, “my wife came in and told me, ‘Ivan, if you could only see the hospital ward: You just don’t know how fortunate we are.’ It’s sad to say, but other service members have had to make a huge sacrifice. I have to be grateful for what I have, instead of dwelling on what I don’t have. I miss not seeing, I’m not going to lie to you. But I have two legs, two arms, I can talk, I can eat, I can laugh. I have my memory.”

Further, “I’m a military guy, and I speak in military terms: God has a mission for me. A plan, an operation.”

Castro has what he calls his “demons in the darkness,” or “demons in the closet.” And “the closet is my brain. I don’t see anything. I’m totally blind. I have no light perception. And when the demons want to take over, as soon as they try to, I try to keep them out. I think about all the things I’m grateful for: my wife, my son, the Lord above, His mission for me.” There are days “when I walk into the wall, both literally and figuratively. I try to take a step back and not get angry and figure out a way to go around things.”

And “you know the best thing about being blind?” (I couldn’t imagine what the answer would be.) “I saw for 39 years. So I was able to see the world for 39 years. I’ve traveled around the world. I saw the good, the bad, and the ugly. The good thing about now is: Everything is beautiful, in my mind. The grass is always green. There’s never graffiti on the walls. There’s no trash. Everybody looks good — everybody’s in shape, everybody’s a movie star or rock star.” And race is out the window: “There’s no brown, white, or black.”

A visit with Ivan Castro will teach you, or remind you, not to complain. It will remind you what a free people owes its warriors. And it will remind you to be in awe of those who do the awe-inspiring.

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Captain+extraordinary%3a+Ivan+Castro+of+the+U.S.+Special+Forces.-a0192591468

Charm in perspective

By Mangal Kapoor



Who was the real Dai Llewellyn? As I read the obituaries last week of the self-styled “seducer of the valleys”, who died on Tuesday at the age of 62, my mind returned to our last meeting in November, when I went down to Kent and took him out from his hospice for the day.

He wanted to visit the place he called home, a cottage on the estate of his friend Patrick Meehan. As I drove, some half-remembered lines from Betjeman’s Song of a Nightclub Proprietress came to my head. “But now I’m broke and done for / What on earth was all the fun for? / For I’m old and ill and terrified and tight.”

Dai was suffering from cirrhosis, a brain tumour, prostate cancer and diabetes: he looked wistful as I recited. “That just about sums me up. Except, of course, I’m not broke. I am actually doing quite well at the moment.”

We had arrived. As the gravel crunched beneath my wheels, Meehan’s chauffeur came out with a message. The social security department had called, about Dai’s application for benefits. So the last myth about Dai Llewellyn, rich socialite, baronet and bon vivant, was blown.

Not that I had believed the legend. Not, at least, for a long time. We’d first met in the glorious Thatcherite era of the 1980s, when England seemingly first discovered champagne, and when anyone hungry for entry to the royal enclosure at Ascot racecourse needed to be sponsored by someone who’d been going there for 20 years. Dai was the apparent pinnacle of social London: an Old Etonian heir, good-looking, popular and generous – particularly to the hundreds of new plutocrats who sought an entrée into the world he represented.

Charm, connections, endless good cheer – Dai had them all, plus a grand house in Cadogan Square and a dashing younger brother who just happened to have been the lover of Princess Margaret. He never missed a chance to refer to his family’s ancestral mansion in Wales, nor did he let any rich person who aspired to the royal enclosure slip by. For a certain fee, or perhaps a very good deal on a car – say, 100% off the list price – there was always a way to get his new best friends signed in, to join the dukes, polo players and models at his lavish picnics in the racecourse car park.

It was not always clear where the money for the liveried butlers and Fortnum’s hampers came from: the Welsh coal mines that had made his family’s fortune, maybe, or rich Pakistanis, including those who were ever present at his parties. The rest of the cast at Cadogan Square changed repeatedly: Bubbles Rothermere and the Duchess of Argyll one week, the Maharajah of Baroda and the von Bismarcks the next.

Dai was busy promoting a new “über-exclusive lifestyle service”, called Club Royale. For a joining fee of £5,000, members would somehow whirl between Positano, Acapulco, St Moritz and St Tropez. There was a club HQ in Mayfair with a restaurant, disco and bar, and regular events would be organised, as well as automatic membership of every hunt, every racecourse and several smart clubs around the world. The friends I introduced included a Japanese heiress and a Dulwich businessman, plus a young wine merchant who was thrilled at the big orders that poured in. My chums complained that the club was not quite working, but I felt I had to be loyal to Dai, who had taken me up with enthusiasm, introducing me round town as the young man “with the marvellous laugh”. It was more difficult when I heard the wine merchant had never been paid.

Around the time of the inevitable, slightly messy demise of Club Royale, Dai’s fortunes dived when he lost a libel case against the former debutante and PR Liz Brewer, a bitter rival in the social introductions game. Although the court awarded damages, Brewer was thwarted by Dai’s lack of any identifiable fixed assets and his skill at moving house and keeping ahead of the bailiffs. Gradually Dai, once a staple of the gossip columns, faded from the public consciousness.

Not, of course, that this stopped him honing his magnificent raffish Old Etonian aristo act on the unwary and the easily charmed: he had in fact attended Eton for a few terms but was expelled and spent the rest of his schooldays at Milton Abbey, a minor public school catering for those of a more sporting than academic bent. As for the aura of wealth, he had certainly been brought up in comfort and his family were part of the Monmouthshire county set. But the ancestral fortunes had declined considerably since the Llewellyn acquisition of a baronetcy from Lloyd George, and eventually his parents sold their country house.

Undeterred, he continued to invite people down to Wales to stay there. Of course, he always had to cancel at the last minute, giving ever more baroque excuses, depending on the status of those he was letting down. I once warned him that some particularly keen Americans had bought new tweeds and a Welsh phrase book at Harrods for the occasion.

Some time after the Brewer debacle, I was working at the London Evening Standard and, thinking it would be fun to resurrect Dai, looked him up and dropped his name into a few amusing stories. In no time he was weaving his old myth-making magic on a wider public. Knowing his circumstances, I reeled with laughter as I read his boasts of “crossing the Atlantic in private planes and yacht-hopping while relaxing in Sardinia – Calle de Volpe”. Our mutual friend Lady Edith Foxwell and I joked that it was a misprint and that he had really said “sardines in Vauxhall”.

She and I set up a monthly social pictorial called Voila!, pitched somewhere between Tatler and Hello!. Dai came on board and insisted on employing only titled people. The Earl of Westmorland was the sporting editor; the Marquess of Bland-ford, the motoring correspondent.

Billed as the first magazine written by the aristocracy for the aristocracy, we were an overnight sensation – on television and in the newspapers every day, invited to every party. But when our advertising team sold ads for cash, Dai steered them towards barter, swapping ad space for free meals, champagne and exotic holidays: lovely for him; not so good for the balance sheet. In addition to this, Dai hijacked the company chequebook so that no one could keep track of things, although I was a founding shareholder. Had Dai planned to milk the magazine as a means to get free meals and holidays all along? Surely not.

In January 1994 I persuaded the Hon Jonathan Harmsworth, the son of Lord Rothermere, chairman of the Daily Mail and General Trust, to buy Voila! for £150,000. It was a great deal for us, for although the magazine had a high profile and good sales, the rent was overdue, we had no assets and there was no money in the bank. Perversely, Dai blocked it, suggesting I hold out for £1m. Shortly afterwards the Lebanese publisher got fed up, closed the title and retired to Beirut. Dai acquired a lucrative sideline in writing syndicated articles blaming me for the collapse of Voila!.

Dai didn’t suffer long: he became the PR for the new Dorchester nightclub, succeeding one Major Brian Wright, uncle to the Duchess of York and former butler to the Duke of Devonshire. When I took a Greek shipowner there for a drink at Major Wright’s invitation, the major looked him up and down and said: “I must say you are very well dressed for one of your race.” His particular brand of charm was judged not quite suitable for the target clientele of the Dorchester, but Dai’s was and he landed a job perfectly suited to his particular genius, one that brought with it a Mayfair mews house. His twinkling eyes, green velvet smoking jacket and cries of “Darling! Wel-come!” made the Dorchester club so popular with the smart set that Annabel’s was virtually deserted for a few months.

He was now pushing 50 but women still found him irresistible. He had been so successful at creating his image as an amazing lover and rich heir to a title that, with his genuine warmth and charisma and his impressive array of friends, he seemed a very good catch.

By the mid1990s, however, his weight had ballooned, he was drinking too much and he admitted to dyeing his hair with bootblack – and yet women still threw themselves at him. He was particularly popular with older divorcees and Essex-girl types. I introduced him to a rich Persian friend: when their affair fizzled out, she ended up writing a book about gigolos. Therapy, perhaps. It was never published.

I recall a rich American with a mansion in Kensington and a Gloucestershire estate, who turned weak-kneed and starry-eyed over Dai as late as 2002. “My God!” she marvelled. “Just how did you get to meet people like that?” And of course, out of loyalty, I backed up Dai’s outrageous claims.

But people he visited in recent years said he would come for a weekend and stay three weeks, drinking the house dry. “ ‘I’ll replace it,’ Dai promised, turning up with a bottle of Tesco own-brand whisky after consuming several cases during his extended stay,” said one host. The truth was, he generally had nowhere else to go.

Meanwhile, the Dorchester club was losing its cachet. Dai eventually left, selling a story to The Sun about how he had busted a vice ring there. Secretly, many of his friends speculated that if the vice ring existed, he was running it. He lost the mews house but in characteristic style still gave the Mayfair address, Adams Row, as his own for many years.

Close friends were told he now had a “chic little pad in Soho”. He was the PR for an Italian restaurant, but when I dropped by for lunch, the owner said he was late and sent me to a lino-floored, neon-lit dormitory of bunk beds above Piccadilly Circus, which Dai shared with a large number of Italian waiters. He was furious to be seen there, but made light of it, saying his digs reminded him of his army days. We descended through a rabbit warren of corridors to the “meat rack”, the gay red-light district in the shadow of Eros’s statue, Dai desperately maintaining a jaunty air as if he were on a shoot at Blenheim Palace. I never told anyone else, but it was his home for some considerable time.

Salvation was on the horizon in the form of Deborah, a pretty Jewish divorcee. Dai proposed to her and moved into her house in St John’s Wood. She offered to pay all his gambling debts and even said he would not have to sleep with her (his famed sexual prowess was on the wane by now). But he suddenly announced via the gossip columns that he hardly knew her and had not proposed.

Deborah was devastated. Her father had a stroke and she suffered a breakdown. She told me that every time Dai looked out of her window towards Regent’s Park he thought to himself: “If only it were Sloane Square.”

She may have been right, but when he did have a rich lover in Sloane Square, he fluffed it. Lady Wilcox – who now sits in the House of Lords as Baroness Wilcox – was blonde, widowed and adoring and lived with him for years. She told me she ended their affair at the end of the 1980s when he interrupted a meeting with the governor of the Bank of England. Walking into her drawing room stark naked at noon, he demanded to know why there was “no f****** milk for my cornflakes”.

Eventually Dai found a home with his old friend Meehan, once the co-host of the famous picnics at Royal Ascot. Dai was allowed to use the idyllic cottage in the grounds of his Kent estate. Of course, when Meehan went away, Dai promptly moved into the main house and invited friends from London down to “his” country estate.

So here I was driving Dai from his hospice to see what had been his last refuge for perhaps the final time. Considering his condition, he was remarkably cheerful, swigging what he said was red wine from a plastic bottle. I suspected it was Ribena laced with morphine to control the pain. I had urged other friends to come down, and had even suggested a party in the hospice room, but such was the cynicism that Dai engendered by then that some joked he was feigning illness to get free accommodation, or as a publicity stunt. Even Meehan’s daughter, Nathalie, made cracks about the mice who had been stealing the whisky, and one of the staff hinted that Dai had borrowed money from him.

Dai gave instructions to Meehan’s chauffeur to renew his car tax for a year and said he would be back for Christmas. I realised it was important for him to believe he was not dying. As he went back to the hospice, saying goodbye to his cottage for the last time, he was rather sad to have lost his “lucky” cloth cap.

He turned to me. “Ninety per cent of the things between us are better left unsaid. But I have not been particularly proud of my behaviour all the time. If I do get that backdated disability benefit, you must come down again and I’ll spend it all on lunch with you.” I drove back to London. The party was over.

Source

Another account of Sir Dai here

It’s 1759 and all that ... or the history you never learnt at school

1066 is more famous, 1415 (the year of Agincourt) more Shakespearean and 1939 more globally significant. But there is another year whose impact on every area of British life is becoming ever more apparent: 1759.

Its legacy echoes through today’s headlines, with the collapse of the ceramics firm Waterford Wedgwood (founded 1759). The latest Guinness’ advertising campaign (“17:59. It’s Guinness time”) refers to the date when Arthur Guinness built a brewery for stout in Dublin.

One of the salient achievements of an extraordinary year will be celebrated at the British Museum, which opened 250 years ago today. The Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew were also new in 1759.

The most obvious advances were on the battlefield. There were British military successes around the globe in “the year of victories”.

The City was emerging as the financial centre of the world on the back of its importance to shipping and trade. And the first stirrings of the Industrial Revolution were encouraging Josiah Wedgwood and Arthur Guinness to begin building their empires.

The historian Frank McLynn, author of 1759: The Year Britain Became Master of the World, believes that the year should “be as well known in British history as 1066”, the year of the Norman Conquest. In comparison, Magna Carta in 1215 changed nothing, he said. Other armadas followed the one in 1588 that Drake and Raleigh destroyed. Trafalgar and Waterloo in 1805 and 1815 were great victories but, set against the broad sweep of developments in 1759, “changed little”.

So what forces meshed in Britain halfway through the 18th century to remould the world?

The German-speaking monarch George II had little to do with it. By 1759 he had withdrawn from the world. He died on his toilet a year later. Government was steered by William Pitt the Elder, who was loathed by the King, but had a visionary conviction that trade backed by naval superiority could make Britain a world power.

The combatants of the Seven Years War were all European (Britain and Prussia on one side, France, Russia and Austria on the other) but that year British forces won crucial victories in India, the Caribbean and North America as well as near Düsseldorf and off the coast of France. The best known was probably the taking of Quebec, secured by Major-General James Wolfe, who died in the battle.

The defeats that France suffered in 1759 were a significant contributor to the vast debts that led to the French Revolution 30 years later. They gave the East India Company a freer hand in India and also determined that the 13 British colonies in America felt safe enough from French conquest so that they could demand independence from the Crown.

Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum, sees the opening of his institution and Kew as “the first coherent intellectual response to globalisation”. The British Library and the Natural History Museum were also important. These were civic collections, not collections belonging to royalty or to universities.

“What you have, available for free for everybody for the first time, is the whole concept of the world: what’s grown, what’s been made, what’s been written and what’s been thought. This is the beginning of the whole notion of citizen access to information.”

The trusteeship structure of the British Museum, enabling government to fund the institution but not to control it, became the model not just for every museum in the English speaking world “but for the BBC, the Open University and the internet, because Tim Berners-Lee [the father of the world wide web] is so much part of this British tradition of free access.”

That was the year

— George and Martha Washington are married: a union that helps to beget the Union in North America

— Lacking a port in which to refit and resupply, the French Navy leaves the coast of India after a series of minor engagements with the British and never returns

— Robert Burns is born and will go on to inspire a uniquely Scottish literature. “Arise to deck our land!”

— Adam Smith publishes The Theory of Moral Sentiments, providing an ethical underpinning to his later work The Wealth of Nations

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article5519484.ece

Simple, well-known names work best

Naming a child is, like most things in Britain, as much about class as it is about fashion. Unless you happen to be committed to one of those quaint but unpronounceable family names - St John, Princess Tiaamii - then baptising your progeny offers an unmissable (and sometimes unwitting) opportunity to display your social ambitions.

For many years those wishing to play down privilege have tended to use names such as Fred, Stan, Jake or Sam. These all perform equally well in the stands at Queens Park Rangers as they do on the fields of Eton, leaving more obvious middle and upper-class names such as Ptolemy and Orlando on the sidelines. Similarly, for the self-made man with a few leftover rough edges, Tamsin seems so much more tempting than Tracey.

The penchant for more traditional names is an interesting development. Elizabeth and William are both solid all-weather names, indicative of the sort of middle-class aspirations - a job, a stable home, not being a contestant on Big Brother - which have, in recent years, fallen out of favour. And so it seems that in times of trouble we turn to old certainties and trusted authority.

Besides, these are versatile names. They abbreviate well and can be shortened according to social requirements. If a William finds himself attending a large inner-city comprehensive, he can become Billy; if he gets himself into grammar school, he can be a Will. If he ends up an Oxford Don, he can style himself Willem, possibly with the addition of an intellectual initial. Will is both the name of the heir to the throne and of several reliably cool figures, such as the actor Will Smith and the musician Will.i.am, of the Black Eyed Peas. Ditto Elizabeth: Liz, Lizzy, Bess - it is the ultimate social chameleon.

In an uncertain world, we give names full of potential. And if you have recently received a visit from the stork and are casting around for inspiration, try applying this infallible test of a name's universality, taught to me by a friend from Sheffield. Does it work in the context of a cold, muddy football pitch? As in “Oi, Peregrine, you cloth-eared fool, fetch t' bloody ball”. Simple, but surprisingly effective.

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/families/article5435373.ece

The story of the crystal apple -- and other Boris-isms

"London stands at a crossroads. Can this new Conservative mayor help the world's leading financial center weather the economic downturn, or will he be caught out? Can he persuade North Americans to come to this great city and spend their dollars? Can he deliver air-conditioning on the underground system for the first time in 150 years? Can he reduce bus crime, make transport safer, and simultaneously jump-start the frozen housing market? Yes, he can, my friends!"


"That's your blistering introductory paragraph, to get your piece off to a really flying start," says Boris Johnson. Behind schedule, just arrived at City Hall on his bike, London's mayor proposes to spare us the hassle of an interview and simply dictate this article for me. I've heard worse offers.

Until his surprise win last May, Mr. Johnson was one of Britain's best-known journalists. This half-parody of his former craft and new life in big-league politics manages to capture some of his challenges and give a taste of an inimitable style toned down, but hardly dulled, by the recent metamorphosis.

"I have to do things my way, otherwise I'd kind of explode," he says. "But . . . I'm afraid there are just times" -- here comes one of numerous playful jabs at the gray Scot at 10 Downing Street -- "when you have to be Gordon Brownian. You just got to, got to, got to."

Previously (in)famous because of a propensity for petty scandals and lively logorrhea, Mr. Johnson convinced enough voters he was serious to unseat London's cockney king, "Red Ken" Livingstone, the two-term incumbent and favorite -- "Mayor Leavingsoon," in Mr. Johnson's campaign shorthand.

Seven months in, here's the bigger surprise: Even detractors say Mr. Johnson is doing a good job. He's the most popular figure among Tory faithful (though not the party leadership) and by some accounts in the country as a whole. All of Britain knows him as Boris; close family use Al, from Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson. If David Cameron stumbles in his bid to force Labour from power at the next election, Mr. Johnson -- the only Tory politician to win an executive post since 1992 -- would be the favorite to take over Margaret Thatcher's old party.

Days after his election, this all seemed highly improbable. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg stopped by, and there was a little mix-up over the customary gifts. Mr. Bloomberg gave the new London mayor a Tiffany & Company signature box with a crystal apple symbolizing New York City. In return he got a button-down dress shirt covered with a map of London's subway system from Mr. Johnson, who confessed it was an impromptu choice.

The mayors of the world's two financial capitals now claim to have a special relationship -- "very friendly relations," in Mr. Johnson's words. Is the gift episode forgotten, I wonder?

"I am a very proud user of his crystal apple. Where is his crystal apple?" Mr. Johnson looks around and comes up empty-handed. "Someone shot-putted it into the Thames. I don't know what happened to it. Very, very, very, very beautiful object. I'm very grateful to New York and its citizens for my crystal apple. And I'm a proud citizen of New York, a point I would not hesitate to remind you of." Mr. Johnson, mischievous smile and all, was born in Manhattan.

Back to serious matters. This autumn, when the financial system nearly collapsed, Mr. Johnson stood up to defend bankers. His was a rare voice. "Someone had to," he says. Financial services account for nearly a tenth of Britain's economy, far larger in London. Mr. Johnson says he approached Mayor Bloomberg with an idea: "Why don't we form an alliance against ill-thought regulation now, or mistakes we could make now that impede the financial sector, the Anglo-Saxon model, from developing in the future, and let's see if we could find some things in common."

The response? "I have to say I got a bum's rush there. His view was actually, for one reason or another, he didn't see much scope for cooperation. And the reality is that these two great metropolises. . . metropolaise. . ." -- the Oxford classics graduate, author of a survey of the Roman Empire, suddenly wants to stick the ending. "Metropoli?" chimes in his aide. "If it was Greek, it would be poleis," he says, ending the digression. The cities, in any case, "are in competition."

Created in 2000, the London mayor's job lacks the New York post's powers, which could hinder Mr. Johnson's ability to implement his campaign promises to cut into rising crime and ease transport headaches. So far, Mr. Johnson has managed the high expectations well.

In one of his first acts, he banned alcohol on public transport -- a Bloomberg-like act, I point out. "I'm by nature a libertarian," Mr. Johnson shoots back, "but I thought there was a general freedom that people ought to have to be able to sit on the Tube late at night without having some guy with a six pack of beer leering at them in a threatening way."

On the night before the ban went into effect, Londoners rung out the old tradition of boozing in transit with parties/protests on subway trains and buses. "Thousands of young people were hurling execration at my name," says the mayor. "I thought: This is fantastic. It took Margaret Thatcher 10 years before she had mobs of urban youth denouncing her."

In another headline-grabber, this past fall Mr. Johnson pressured out the Metropolitan Police chief, Sir Ian Blair. A favorite of Labour, Sir Ian was criticized by the right for turning a blind eye to Islamic hate preachers in London. Mr. Johnson took the politically risky move, but cited other reasons, and ducks questions about the terrorist threat in his town. "The best and most effective way of defusing the extremists is to engage and support the moderates," he offers -- a line that his journalist self might have dismissed with a neat word like bilge or pablum.

Municipal government would seem ill-suited to a man noted for a quick wit and a short attention span. But he acts the part, his own way. Mr. Johnson describes in some detail a tunnel planned under the Thames, which, he says, "is going to have a quite colossal bore" -- clearly the opening's too tempting not to take -- "a bore even more colossal than Gordon Brown himself."

Talking up the need for bigger apartments at the introduction of his new housing strategy, he says Londoners have grown too fat to live like Hobbits. He indulges his passion for cycling by seeking to make London friendlier to bikes -- for aesthetic green reasons, he says, to get people out of cars and fat burned off their bodies. Recently, he infuriated earnest greens by describing climate change as "a religion" in his weekly column. "Not all religions are bad!" he says. "Climate change might be the faith that supervenes and brings the human race together. Fear of the Sun God. . ." he adds, before trailing off in a chuckle.

Mr. Johnson won a safe Tory seat in Parliament in 2001 while keeping a foot in journalism. He looked finished in politics on numerous occasions. He is a walking Bartlett's of political incorrectness. A Boris campaign pitch: "Voting Tory will cause your wife to have bigger breasts and increase your chances of owning a BMW M3." On Portsmouth: "[A city of] drugs, obesity, underachievement and Labour MPs." On Liverpool, after a Liverpudlian was beheaded in Iraq: "Wallow[ing in] victim status . . . and their sense of shared tribal grievance about the rest of society."

On London hosting the 2012 Olympics, spoken while in Beijing this summer: "I say to the world: Ping Pong is coming home!" On his talent for gaffes (see entries above): "My friends, as I have discovered myself, there are no disasters, only opportunities. And indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters." On himself: "Beneath the carefully constructed veneer of a blithering buffoon, there lurks a blithering buffoon."

The image of an upper-class Clown Prince from the fields of Eton made Mr. Johnson easy to like and to dismiss. But he is no shallow English toff. He excelled at school. Nor is his background as posh as his accent might suggest. On his parental side, Mr. Johnson is a second-generation immigrant; his great-grandfather was interior minister in the last Ottoman government. Throw in some Jewish ancestors and a direct lineage to King George II, and the image takes on new dimensions.

So, I ask him, are the gaffes now history? Mr. Johnson says flatly, "No," then extrapolates, "What is a gaffe? A gaffe is in the eye of the beholder." I offer Michael Kinsley's definition -- when a politician tells the truth -- and Mr. Johnson says, "Yeah, I would have thought one of the reasons I get elected is because people think I might accidentally blurt the thing they're thinking."

What's the biggest misconception about you? He turns to false flattery: "It's a brilliant question, it's a brilliantly devised, an elaborately constructed trap. I can see the stakes winking at me at the bottom of this leaf covered pit. . . . There are obviously plenty of criticisms that people make of me that I could individually try to demolish, but life's too short."

The Tories are no longer Mrs. Thatcher's party. After three consecutive drubbings in national elections, Mr. Cameron, a former ad man, has revived the party's fortunes, freshening up its image without resolving what these new Tories truly stand for. The party, says Mr. Johnson, is a "much broader, more generous operation," but some Thatcher bedrock principles remain. Such as, he says, standing by "people who are getting hit by high taxes, insecurity on the streets, crime that could be dispelled with a little bit of common sense."

I keep asking repeatedly -- as others do -- what else? Mr. Johnson never looks irritated, though he probably should be. At last, "Oh boy, you know what conservatism is. Do I have to describe it? A belief in the old ways of doing things and all that sort of jazz."

The next elections are due in 2010, perhaps sooner. In the fall of 2007, Prime Minister Brown raised expectations and then got cold feet on calling early elections. His popularity plummeted. Now he's back up in polls and so is speculation. On Mr. Johnson's desk sits a tabloid cover mooting a possible June 4 poll. I point to it.

"Bring it on!" says Mr. Johnson, lighting up. "My message to Gordon Brown through the Wall Street Journal is: You great big quivering gelatinous invertebrate jelly of indecision, you marched your troops up to the top of the hill in October of [2007]. Show us that you've got enough guts to have an election June 4. Gordon: Man or Mouse?!"

His press aide shakes her head, puts it in her hands and laughs. Boris Johnson is enjoying himself.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123094404164150567.html?mod=djemEditorialPage

Nazi E-boat saved by military enthusiast

The last Nazi E-boat, which took part in an infamous raid during the Second World War, has been saved by a British military enthusiast.

Schnellboot-130, once the fastest vessel in the world, helped attack an Allied convoy off Slapton Sands, in Devon, in a battle in which nearly 1,000 Allied soldiers were killed.

On the night of April 27, 1944, the boat was one of nine German vessels patrolling the English Channel when they stumbled upon Operation Tiger, which was the rehearsal for the D-Day landings.

The convoy launched a raid and killed 946 Allied soldiers. Allied chiefs initially covered up the loss, keen to avoid the enemy becoming aware of what it had achieved or getting wind of any planned invasion of Europe.

After the war the Schnellboot was seized by the British and used to land spies behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War but was then left in a dockyard and eventually began to disintegrate.

Enthusiast Kevin Wheatcroft has now come to the rescue of the vessel.

Mr Wheatcroft, whose family owns the Donington Grand Prix museum, in Leicestershire, paid just £1 for the hulk but will now spend around £3 million restoring it.

He recently acquired the salvage rights on three sunken Schnellboots off the Danish coast and plans to bring up original parts to help the restoration.

The project will take up to five years after which it is hoped the vessel will become a floating museum and visitor attraction.

Mr Wheatcroft said: "I've always been fascinated with Schnellboots and she is one of the most famous.

"The intention is to return her to her original state and into a moving museum."

He added: "Over the years I have collected a lot of parts including engines, gun platforms, a complete radio and bridge equipment.

"I have acquired salvage rights on three Schnellboot wrecks off the Danish coast. They were sunk after the war in 1948 and 1949, so are not war graves.

"I hope to be able to get an armoured bridge, torpedo tubes and mine racks from the sunken ships.

S-130 was recently lifted from the water and a building will now be put up around her while the work is carried out a few miles along the coast from Slapton Sands.

The Schnellboots were small, fast and effective – and had been devised as a result of the Versailles restrictions set at the close of the First World War.

With the Germans banned from building large warships they embarked on an ingenious naval development programme, resulting in the Schnellboots.

The allies called them E-boats – the "E" standing for enemy.

They were propelled by three powerful Mercedes diesel engines and could travel at 55 knots, faster than any other naval vessel.

The boats had a wedge on the stern that prevented the bow from rising as it accelerated so the guns fired more accurately. That technology is today used on US destroyers.

Wyn Davies, a naval architect and maritime historian, said: "She is the last survivor of a hugely important class of warship that gave our coastal forces quite a headache.

"They introduced several new features, the most useful of which was the use of diesel engines to power them.

"This ended the need for stocking inflammable petrol on board.

"These craft formed the basis for post war development of similar vessels for most Nato navies."

Source

The world's most wonderful Peppercorn

Standing proudly in its sparkling new green livery, it is the ultimate big boy’s toy – the first steam locomotive built in more than 40 years.

And the privilege of getting it under way on its first official journey will go to Prince Charles.

Charles, whose investiture as Prince of Wales came months after the last steam train service was scrapped, has agreed to name – and drive – the Tornado steam engine at a special ceremony next year.



The Prince will ride on the footplate as the 105-ton engine pulls the Royal Train – with Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall as a passenger – on its inaugural journey in February.

The engine, whose full title is Peppercorn Class A1 Pacific 60163 Tornado, was built for £3million following donations from thousands of enthusiasts.

Tornado was unveiled while undergoing tests last month and will go into active service on the East Coast Main Line, pulling ‘specials’. It will leave its home at the National Railway Museum in York for the Royal journey before embarking on a series of tours between York, Newcastle and London.

Perhaps unsurprisingly for a man who often champions traditional architecture and farming methods, the Prince has an abiding passion for steam engines.

He makes sure that at least one of his public appearances each year involves riding or driving a steam locomotive. The Royal Train that took him and Camilla on their honeymoon at Balmoral was pulled by a steam engine.



The A1s were among the last steam engines to be withdrawn from service in favour of the more reliable but less romantic diesels.

British Rail scrapped them in 1966 and the final steam-powered journeys took place in November 1968, a few months before Charles’s investiture as the Prince of Wales.

No A1s survived, so in 1990 a group of railway enthusiasts began their project to build an engine from scratch. They set up the A1 Steam Locomotive Trust, asking supporters to donate the price of a pint of beer a week – £1.25 at the time – and slowly completed Tornado. After 18 years, the engine made its first run, of 120 yards, along track in a rail yard in Darlington on November 4.

It completed a further successful test run two weeks later, reaching 75mph between York and Newcastle.

Since the tests, Tornado has been given its new coat of Apple Green paint, the same shade as the first 30 A1s and the original colour of the Flying Scotsman.

Tornado will reach top speeds of up to 100mph with shorter ten-carriage trains.

Trust chairman Mark Allatt said: ‘The steam locomotive is the nearest thing Man has created to a living thing. You can’t turn it on. You can’t turn it off. You coax it along and it hisses and it bubbles and that is not like a modern machine.

‘A child when they first draw a picture of a train, they never draw diesel, they draw a steam engine. And that is what it is all about.’


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1094505/Its-new-steam-train-40-years--Charles-Prince-Rails-gets-drive.html

Rail Britannia: Newly found pictures reveal how train travel was once a glorious experience, not a shabby ordeal

The golden age of steam was never more glorious than during the heyday of the Great Western Railway. As these newly discovered photographs reveal, the everyday workings of God's Wonderful Railway (as it was dubbed) reveal a world of style, order and civility almost unimaginable to harassed commuters.

A waiter serves serves tea in a dining car in the Thirties when being a GWR employee was considered a prestigious job

Uniformed porters carrying bags, dining cars where you would actually want to eat and stations that seem more like temples than places of transit  -  all this is a world away from the crowded, ugly and noisy experience of train travel in Britain today.

It is a timely reminder that there was a time, a few decades back, when travel was a glamorous experience and where the passengers' comfort was paramount. This glimpse into a long-forgotten world would have remained lost and forgotten itself were it not for a tireless team of volunteers.

A Class 4 locomotive suspended from the ceiling in preparation for a valve fitting at Swindon Works in 1951

They pieced together the details of these pictures, which were discovered by chance when Swindon council acquired the old GWR workshops eight years ago. Piled up in scores of boxes, unlabelled and in disarray, was a pictorial treasure trove of GWR's heyday. It has taken thousands of hours of research by rail enthusiasts to sift through them and piece together the stories behind them for the Museum of the Great Western Railway in Swindon.

Holiday crowds waiting to board The Torbay Limted Express in 1926

'Our volunteers are retired railway workers, engineers and people who have knowledge of rail history,' says Elaine Arthurs, one of the curators. 'They set to work on the photographs and were able to provide details about each of the images.' What they discovered casts new light on the workings of this most remarkable of British railway companies, which operated lines linking London with the West Country, South-West England and South Wales. It was none other than the 19thcentury engineering genius Isambard Kingdom Brunel who had the vision that made this railway line the most advanced in the world at the time.

This publicity shot from the Thirties emphasises the style and cool sophistication of train travel at the time

Mooted by Bristol merchants concerned that they were losing port trade to Liverpool, the Great Western Railway company was founded in 1833. Brunel was appointed the company's engineer, and work commenced. The first stretch of line, from London Paddington to Maidenhead Bridge station, a distance of 22.5 miles, was opened on June 4, 1838. More lines followed, with Reading opening in March 1840, and Bath at the end of August. Brunel worked at a furious rate, and gave the line such engineering marvels as Paddington Station, the Chepstow Bridge and the Box Tunnel. By the early years of the 20th century, the GWR's links with Cornwall and Wales led to it being dubbed the Holiday Line.

GWR prided itself on being on the cutting edge of innovation with its vending machines

For a generation of holiday makers, the view from one of the two-tone chocolate and cream carriages provided their first glimpse of the south Wales countryside or the Devon and Cornish coast. The true stars of the company, however, were its steam engines. Magnificent, chrome, green and black creations, these powerful locomotives were at one point emerging from the heat and fury of the GWR workshop in Swindon at a rate of two a week. It was their efficiency that allowed the company to prosper, even during the height of the Great Depression, when a number of these photographs were taken.

Restaurant cars were introduced for first class passengers in 1896 and four years later for second class travellers. Here a chef prepares a meal in 1946

So popular was the railway that when the last steam engine, the Clun Castle, left Paddington on June 11, 1965, a crowd of well-wishers mobbed it. For the crowds that turned out that day and for the thousands of travellers who had graced the line over the years, many might have agreed with Robert Louis Stevenson when he remarked: 'I travel not to go anywhere, but to go . . . The great affair is to move.' Having experienced the romance of the GWR, for these commuters the journey was all.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1093975/Rail-Britannia-Newly-pictures-reveal-train-travel-glorious-experience-shabby-ordeal.html

The latest installment of Boris

They seek him here, they seek him there, that damned elusive London Mayor. Everyone has just seen Boris, cycling down the highway or jogging across Tower Bridge in his woolly hat. And yet, like the Scarlet Pimpernel, Mr Johnson is impossible to pin down. Three attempts to interview him have been thwarted at the last minute. Even our meeting this week is nearly cancelled the evening before it is due to take place – then rescheduled twice on the morning of the event. Eventually, we are given a half-hour slot for lunch with the mayor – but he is running 45 minutes late and sends a series of aides to order for him before he arrives. “Girls, girls, sorry to keep you waiting,” he says, as he plonks himself down at the table before asking for a glass of red wine. Too busy to touch his food, he orders a doggy bag - then forgets to pick it up when he leaves.

Once the loveable English eccentric, who was as comfortable on Have I Got News for You as in the House of Commons chamber, suddenly showed that he could do serious during the mayoral election campaign. He didn’t drink, he combed his hair and he stopped cycling through red lights. He appeared determined to stay on track. But, as Mr Johnson has admitted himself, it’s much more fun to blow up the line and see what happens. His cartoon hero is, he tells us, Dennis the Menace.

Since taking over at City Hall in May he has become more chaotic, unpredictable and outspoken again. His short-back-and-sides has grown out.

“Do you think I threw a deliberate fire blanket of tedium over the mayoral campaign?” he says. “Did I ham up the buffoon image or did I get trapped in it? Neither of those two options seem to be particularly attractive. That level of auto-analysis is beyond me.”

Now, however, Mr Johnson isn’t just an MP, magazine editor or columnist – he is the highest elected Tory in the land. With a budget of £11 billion, and the endorsement of 1.2 million voters, he is a trailblazer for the new Conservatives. He went to Eton and Oxford (joining the Bullingdon Club) before David Cameron. He even holidayed in Corfu when George Osborne was still at school. Everything he does in London is seen as an indicator of what the Conservatives might do in power.

But, he says: “There is no fly-by-wire thing going on. We are doing our own thing. This is not some Petri dish in which various Tory ideas are being inserted like bacilli.”

In fact, Mr Johnson is carefully building up his own political identity to match his celebrity persona. He wants to replace Heathrow with “Boris Island”, he has proposed an amnesty for asylum-seekers in London and he has defended the City fat cats, in contrast to Tory high command.

His most dramatic intervention as mayor has been to ease out Sir Ian Blair as Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police – leading to accusations of politicisation. This week the mayor, who is chairman of the Metropolitan Police Authority, got involved in the Damian Green case, saying he believed that the police investigation into his friend was “doomed”.

“I am not going to go into that – ça suffit. I am not going to tell you anything. I am an exhausted volcano, I am a defunct man, I have let it all hang out,” he says when we ask whether he overstepped the mark in giving his views.

“Of course I haven’t prejudiced the case. Even if there is a trial, nothing I have said is remotely prejudicial. You can tickle my toes, you can pull my teeth out, I am not going to talk about Damian any more. I direct you to what I said on the day of Damian’s arrest. It was perfectly formulated but I have forgotten what it was.”

But, we say, lots of people think that it is improper for the head of the police authority to criticise a current investigation. At this point Mr Johnson breaks into song, declaring: “Let them think it’s weird, let them think it’s weird, I don’t care.”

Is he angry with the police because they seem to be on Labour’s side? “They aren’t politicised.”

But it is clear that he thinks that the mayor should, as in New York, have more power over the appointment of the commissioner. “The democratic component is provided by the mayoralty and we should refine and develop that.”

Having got rid of Sir Ian, would he be happy to see him replaced permanently by Sir Paul Stephenson, the man responsible for the raid on Mr Green’s office? “There is a strong list of candidates to succeed Sir Ian,” he replies. “The Home Secretary will make her appointment in the normal way in consultation with the Metropolitan Police Authority, which I chair, which will make its recommendations, and I personally will make my representations.”

So will he be happy if Jacqui Smith chooses Sir Paul? “Blah,” he replies. A fire alarm goes off. “Hah, I’ve just organised that,” he declares before changing the subject.

In general, he says, the police are doing a good job. “There’s a massive disparity between what they are achieving and the public perception of what they are achieving. People don’t feel as safe as statistics say they should be feeling.”

As London’s elected representative, he receives regular briefings on the danger from terrorism. “There is a chronic threat,” he says. “The sheer number of people who could potentially be a risk is very large. We have 40,000 young men a year going to and from Pakistan. It is easy for someone to disappear into a tribal area and get up to God knows what. Since 9/11 there have been 13 foiled outrages.”

The attacks on Mumbai have, he reveals, led to a stepping-up of security on the Thames. “There is a great deal of work going on. There certainly are extensive preparations to stop a Mumbai-style operation on the Thames. They have thought all that through. There is substantial organisation to guard against the possibility of some sort of riparian assault.”

Mr Johnson wants an amnesty for illegal immigrants in London – a policy that he would like Mr Cameron to adopt as party policy for the country. “I certainly think the Conservative Party should look at this nationally,” he says. “There are probably 700,000 people living illegally in this country of whom 400,000 are in this city. Their position is precarious, it would be sensible if, after a considerable interval, they were able to earn their way into society. I don’t argue this out of some Christian idea of clemency or forgiveness, I argue it from hardheaded economic and political assessment. It’s not a good thing to have a substantial minority of people living here in illegal circumstances when there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell of them being put on a plane and expelled.”

He is just as worried about the super-rich leaving London. The rise in national insurance announced in the Pre-Budget Report made him “apprehensive”. And, he says: “The 45p top rate is a bad signal, it’s a bit of red meat pointlessly poked through the bars to slavering lobotomised Labour backbenchers.”

He also disagrees with the tax on “non-doms” – non-domiciled residents. “Measures which deter talent from coming to the City of London are generally to be deprecated.” His language about the bankers has been markedly different from the rhetoric used by Mr Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor.

“We were both speaking English,” Mr Johnson says. “I’m a friend of the bankers but do not forget this is a bankogenic recession. It wasn’t produced by some oil shock, it was produced by a crisis in the financial services industry. The recession will be a lot worse than it need be unless the banks understand that they need to reach out and help small businesses.”

Does he think that green taxes are a good idea in an economic downturn? “Green taxis [sic] are a brilliant idea,” he replies. “I’m very pleased that since I’ve been in office I’ve cut at least two taxes – one on gas guzzlers and one on the extension of the congestion zone. They were environmentally trivial.”

The mayor wants Londoners to spend their way out of a recession. “People who have money should spend,” he says. He won’t say what his personal fiscal stimulus will be. “I have many outgoings and I give far too much away,” he says. “I don’t like to brag, I wouldn’t dream of telling Times readers about the £200,000 I’m giving over four years to charity.”

To placate those who thought that he was juggling too many jobs, Mr Johnson agreed to give away £50,000 a year – a fifth of the salary he earns from his Daily Telegraph column – to London charities. “David Cameron had nothing to do with it. If you put that I was forced to do it by some f****** Cameron bollocks I’ll be extremely annoyed. It was out of pure goodness, sweetness, Mahatma-like compassion. I would like everyone to give away a fifth of their income.”

The Olympic Games are in his view a worthy beneficiary of government money. “We don’t want Spam fritters and an austerity Olympics – the whole of London is going to be street parties. People will love it.”

He is talking to some of Britain’s most prestigious universities about a plan to turn the Olympic Park into a “higher education hub”, funded by the Chinese. “I want a new university for people who aspire to get a first and a Blue.” He is also talking to Beijing about funding a new airport in the Thames Gateway – the so-called Boris Island. “The idea of endlessly expanding Heathrow is out of date and environmentally extremely foolish. There are plenty of sovereign wealth funds around who might be interested in investing.”

Mr Johnson has a Utopian vision for London. “I want a city with a wonderful new bike-hire scheme, with many more trees. I want a big programme of youth opportunities to cut knife crime, and traffic that flows freely. I want a London where people say they had a mayor who really cared about architecture, a mayor who said that too often when you look at buildings in London they could have been motels in Stuttgart or trade fairs in Trondheim. I want the people of London to have restored to them the Routemaster bus that was so brutally taken away from them.”

Would the mayor like to extend his vision to the whole of Britain? “Oh no, have they seen my Boris-for-PM placard?” Mr Johnson says to an aide. “A member of the Unite union bought it for me.”

So does he want to get to No 10? “No, my appetite for power is glutted. As Margaret Thatcher almost said, there is such a thing as satiety.”

Boris the Menace

Full name Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson
Age 44
Education: Eton and Balliol College, Oxford (where he read classics)

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article5295285.ece

Jewish and Moorish ancestry among Spaniards

The medieval reconquest of Spain from the Moors left a genetic legacy that can be detected today in the DNA of men from the Iberian Peninsula, scientists have discovered.

A high proportion of Spanish and Portuguese males have a genetic profile indicative of North African or Jewish ancestry, according to research that sheds light on the region’s history. As many as one in five has a Y chromosome of apparently Jewish origin, while one in ten has a Y chromosome showing a North African heritage.

“These proportions attest to a high level of religious conversion, whether voluntary or enforced, driven by historical episodes of social and religious intolerance, that ultimately led to the integration of descendants,” said Professor Mark Jobling, of the University of Leicester, who led the research.

After the Fall of the Roman Empire, Spain was ruled from the 5th to the 8th century by the Visigoths, who established a Christian kingdom. In 711, however, an Arab army crossed the Strait of Gibraltar, beginning several centuries of Muslim rule.

The Moors tolerated both Christianity and Judaism, but Christians nevertheless progressively sought to reconquer the peninsula over a period of several centuries known as the Reconquista. When the Christian kingdoms of Aragon and Castile were united in the 1470s under Ferdinand and Isabella, they began the final phase of the Reconquista. The last Moors were expelled from Granada in 1492 by the “Catholic monarchs”, who began to enforce Christian orthodoxy.

Jews and Muslims were forced to convert, and the Inquisition was established to persecute as heretics those who maintained their old religions. Many converted Jews, or conversos, and converted Muslims, or moriscos, were expelled.

However, as well as their contributions to architecture, food and culture, they left behind their DNA, the study in the American Journal of Human Genetics reports. It examined the male Y chromosome to chart patrilineal descent. While women have two X chromosomes, men have one X and one Y, and the Y is always inherited from their fathers, remaining intact in the male line from generation to generation.

While the majority of modern Spanish men have a Y chromosome type that is common throughout Europe, a high proportion have profiles that correspond with a converso or morisco background.

Professor Jobling added: “In the long term, Jews and moriscos were either kicked out or were forced to integrate. That’s what we see the effect of now, the integration of their descendants.”

The results also show the extent to which it is possible to trace the impact of historical events through modern DNA.

Similar research has recently shown that the Crusaders may have left a genetic mark on modern Lebanon, where a high proportion of Christian men today have a Y chromosome of European origin.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article5289283.ece

Vast underground glaciers reported on Mars

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has detected vast glaciers of water ice under Martian ground, researchers say. The findings could present new avenues for the search for life on Mars, they add, or provide water to support future human exploration. Scientists analyzed data from the spacecraft's ground-penetrating radar and report in the Nov. 21 issue of the research journal Science that buried glaciers extend for dozens of miles (kilometers) from the edges of mountains or cliffs. A layer of rocky debris blanketing the ice may have preserved the underground glaciers as remnants from an ice sheet that covered middle latitudes during a past ice age, scientists said.

This finding is similar to massive ice glaciers that have been detected under rocky coverings in Antarctica. "Altogether, these glaciers almost certainly represent the largest reservoir of water ice on Mars that is not in the polar caps," said John W. Holt of the University of Texas at Austin, lead author of the report. "Just one of the features we examined is three times larger than the city of Los Angeles and up to half a mile thick."

Scientists have puzzled over what are known as aprons -- gently sloping areas containing rocky deposits at the bases of taller geographical features -- since NASA's Viking orbiters first observed them on the Martian surface in the1970s. One theory has been that the aprons are flows of rocky debris lubricated by a small amount ice. Now, the shallow radar instrument on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has offered "the smoking gun pointing to the presence of large amounts of water ice at these latitudes," said Ali Safaeinili, a shallow radar instruments team member with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

Radar echoes received by the spacecraft indicated radio waves pass through the aprons and reflect off a deeper surface below without significant loss in strength, he explained; that would be expected if the apron areas consisted of thick ice under a relatively thin covering. The radar doesn't detect reflections from the interior of these deposits as would occur if they contained significant rock debris, he continued. The apparent velocity of radio waves passing through the apron is consistent with a composition of water ice, he said.

http://www.world-science.net/othernews/081120_mars

Iceland

Iceland is unlike anywhere else, an incongruous mix of sublime scenery and few resources, writes David Marr.

Some countries start badly. We're driving over lava flows under a low sky in a taxi that might as well be eating our money. It's a grim scene. Reykjavik looks like a row of sheds impossibly far away. The driver is taciturn. On this bleak summer afternoon it's 11 degrees outside. In the distance by a range of grey hills, steam is rising from the landscape. We shell out kronur to the tune of $140 and find ourselves dropped on the footpath at the wrong address. In the rain.

But at about 9.30 that night, the sun comes out. We are wandering back to the apartment after a plate of fish and chips when, for a few miraculous minutes before the sun sets, the street is washed with light. On the far side of the harbour, the mountains turn soft green and seem to float in the sky. It's a brief, uplifting moment: a promise of what's to come and a warning to be patient. Iceland isn't meant to be easy.

No one can really explain why anyone came here in the first place. Weren't there other islands without volcanoes further south? Islands where Vikings in the ninth century could take their sheep and stolen Scottish brides? Tourists face the same question: why here?

A part of Iceland's powerful draw is the sheer incongruity of the place: a toy-box civilisation built on one of the least hospitable stretches on earth. The women are beautiful, the men are plain, the scenery is sublime, the roads are dodgy and everything is expensive. Iceland has no military, no railways, no forests, no weeds, no safety railings and no lifts. The population is smaller than Tasmania's and most people speak English. This is one of those relaxing countries where there's no expectation visitors will learn much beyond a few polite phrases: yes (ja), no (nei), hello (hallo), thanks (takk). It's not hard.

One useful word, not apparently found in dictionaries, sounds like yay-ja and is heard all the time. It's a gap filler that means "yes" but also "give me a minute to think" or "I'm getting bored" and, when inflected with purpose, "I think you're a bit of a dickhead". It's a one-word demonstration of the Icelandic way of making do with few resources.

The sun shines brightly in Reykjavik for days. It's a pretty town. The houses clad in corrugated iron are painted bright pink and blue and lavender and rust red. Along fashionable Laugavegur where rainbow flags are still flying after Gay Pride, turf is being laid in shops and galleries in preparation for Culture Night. Turf matters in Iceland; it's a land of turf walls, turf roofs and, in 2008, even turf art.

The streets are crowded with American vulcanologists. Famous as the setting of the Fischer-Spassky World Chess Championship of 1972 and the Reagan-Gorbachev summit of 1986, Reykjavik is hosting a world gathering of volcano watchers. Anything could erupt at any moment. Iceland's city power, earthquakes, perpetual hot water supply, geysers and lava fields come courtesy of a rip across the landscape where the Eurasian and American continental plates are coming apart.

At some point Iceland is going to split in half. Fish, aluminium and tourism have made it one of the wealthiest countries in the world, although that wealth is falling apart due to the global credit crunch.

Before setting off on our trip round the country, we hear many warnings. "Roads are a new thing in Iceland," warns the woman cutting my hair. "Before the war we only had horse tracks but the Americans came and brought roads." Roads avoid known "elf habitations" - true.

Other big safety issues are blind crests, precipitous drops and gravel. Iceland is a major gravel nation. Rent-a-cars get about looking as if they're sprayed with gun shot. The firms just flag the holes with little yellow stickers - and you head out of town, soon leaving behind both sunlight and the BBC World Service.

Somewhere ahead is Snaefellsnes, a mighty glacier-capped mountain, invisible in the murk and driving rain. We retreat to the swank Hotel Budir and eat lobster and sheep's head pate in the middle of the wilderness. Next morning the sun is shining and I ask the woman at the desk if it's always like this: a burst of sun in the morning and rain for the rest of the day. "No," she replies. "There is no pattern. It's random."

The sky lifts and we begin a long day driving north through the fjords. You have no idea how beautiful this country is unless you've stood on one of these hillsides and stared almost to infinity across fjords and bare mountains out to sea. Photographs give the colour but can't convey the scale. Iceland is elemental, mysterious and huge.

We miscalculated. Fjords take time. We drive a long way in and out to make headway along the coast. On the few short cuts over the mountains, the roads are gravel, the drops terrifying and railings rare. There are huts in the passes tethered to the ground by steel cables to shelter stranded travellers. Road signs give gradients up and down. The worst we face that day - 18 per cent - may not sound steep but the descent in failing light is heart-stopping.

We should have arrived hours ago when we round another headland and see yet another long climb ahead. It's almost dark and raining again. But in no time we're looking down into a perfect little fjord before slithering down into Djupavik with its ruined herring factory and one rough, good pub. It's late but they open the kitchen for us and the food is good.

We're learning the rules of the road. When you're exhausted, when you just want the day to be done with - Iceland offers something more, something unexpected and wonderful. I find myself swearing all the time. Often the only right response to the jaw-dropping surprises of this country is that one sharp word that may, come to think of it, be Icelandic in origin.

The land is gentler as we follow Route One towards Akureyri, the only other town with claims to be a city. We see red-roofed farmhouses in windswept valleys, each with a flagpole and a waterfall and a few fields of mown hay.

We learn to read the rivers: the smoky green of snow melt; muddy purple where fields of lava are being torn away; and creeks so pure the water seems invisible. Nailed on bridges is one of the strangest signs in the world: a red stripe across euros, dollars, pounds and kronur. It means: this stream is not a wishing well. Don't throw money.

Forests of birch and poplar are being planted. Iceland was denuded about seven centuries ago and has been naked since. Global warming is one threat to this country - glaciers are retreating and a hottest-ever 26.2 degrees was recorded in Reykjavik this summer. But a greater threat to its unique look is reforestation. It should be stamped out before Iceland loses its picture-book nudity.

No trees will ever grow in the lunar hinterland of boiling mud pools, geysers and fields of sulphur that haven't quite cooled since eruptions centuries ago.

All's quiet on Iceland at the moment but a magnificent film installation of Surtsey appearing out of the sea in 1963 can be seen at Reykjavik's Culture House and there is a mesmerising video at the Skaftafell National Park Visitors Centre of the 1996 eruption under Vatnajokull's mighty ice cap.

Why do we find hot rock being flung around so fascinating? Or water falling over cliffs? This is a place where the crust is thin, rivers are new, glaciers run to the sea and, depending on the season, the sun barely sets or barely rises. Iceland is one of those places we come to watch nature break the rules.

We didn't hire horses or take snowmobiles on the glaciers; we didn't go whale watching - two pilot whales came to us, cavorting one morning in Akureyri harbour - and we didn't go fishing or hike across the mountains. But we did just about everything else. I even got booked for driving at 110kmh. After a solemn interview in the back of a police car, payment of about $300 and being handed a ticket that detailed the exact longitude and latitude of the offence the officer said: "We now consider the case closed."

Reykjavik seemed tame when we returned but that Friday night it erupted as, we're told, it always does at the weekend, with the runtur - a pub, bar and club crawl that roars through until breakfast. On those last days we drove through a wild storm to eat lobster, spent a fruitless afternoon looking for puffins and ended the holiday on a lava field basking in the misty waters of the Blue Lagoon in Grindavik.

Iceland had one last surreal experience for us before our midnight flight. It was cold, it was dark, it was raining and the pool was nearly empty. A young attendant in full arctic gear stood on the boardwalk arguing with a couple of Americans who, it seemed, wanted to have sex in the swirling steam. They were stridently claiming a right to privacy. "That's what they all say," said the attendant and with perfect good humour threatened to see them jailed for breaking the decency laws. We left them to their argument.

In a country that has seen everything, not quite everything goes.

http://www.smh.com.au/travel/elemental-as-anything-20081113-633w.html?page=-1