Issue 85
April 2003
Contents
General de Gaulle
20th April 2003 — Issue 85
An irascible de Gaulle talks to Douglas Johnson on boring England, declining France and the Iraq crisis. The great strategist is not impressed with Chirac's handling of America - or could he just be a little bit jealous?
Communications bill: inside story
20th April 2003 — Issue 85
As the communications bill passes into law there will be rows about the power of Rupert Murdoch and the BBC. But it is the convergence between television, computers and mobile telephones that has required a new regulatory framework
Where the dead live
20th April 2003 — Issue 85
It is a myth that death has replaced sex as our big taboo. Death is easy to talk about. What is hard is to give it modern architectural form. Our cemeteries express a wider loss of faith in civic culture
Richard Rorty
20th April 2003 — Issue 85
He is arguably the most influential philosopher of our time: a radical American who is against war in Iraq - and against truth, reason and science. Yet his radicalism turns out to be oddly disarming
Desecrating Wagner
20th April 2003 — Issue 85
Contemporary Wagner productions "domesticate" the dramas, betraying a fear of sublime experience and the power of myth. Taking myth seriously was Wagner's big idea
The Texas nexus
20th April 2003 — Issue 85
George W Bush's conservatism, a Texan political tradition dating back to the years of the southern confederacy, now dominates within Washington. The American right has been Texanised
Middle eastern democracy
20th April 2003 — Issue 85
Is the middle east ill-suited to democracy? Can America impose it? Or are home-grown models already showing signs of life?
Unoriginal art
20th April 2003 — Issue 85
Why the obsession with originals? If a painting communicates a truth, then a precise copy should be able to do the same job
Was Einstein wrong?
20th April 2003 — Issue 85
The idea of a variable speed of light, championed by an angry young scientist, could one day topple Einstein's theory of relativity
The greatest myth
20th April 2003 — Issue 85
American myths about the second world war fuel rhetoric over Iraq. Real survivors of the "greatest generation" merit better history
The monk of metaphor
20th April 2003 — Issue 85
James Wood, Britain's most brilliant literary critic, has published a novel. Can the merciless arbiter live up to his own critical standards?
Interviewing the interviewer
20th April 2003 — Issue 85
Janet Malcolm once wrote about the duplicitous relationship of journalists to their subjects. Elena Lappin talked to Malcolm, less about her Chekhov book than herself
In search of the ineffable
20th April 2003 — Issue 85
Most mysticism is, in scientific terms, mush. Yet the mystic's experience of wonder may in fact be the same animating spirit that lies behind science