If challenged to a game of Word Association, top of my list of responses to "Berlin" would not be "Morality"; in fact it would be hard-pressed to make it as high as the bottom of my list. Dietrich (The Blue Angel), Liza with a Zee (Cabaret) and Political Movement with a Zee (every war movie between…
Obama, Join The Circus!
I read everything that John Le Carre ever wrote until he, like Paul Simon, went African. His Cold War novels had me chained to the page. Who could forget the very end of the Quest for Karla Trilogy as Smiley's People, the last in the series, draws to a close? Spoiler Alert - you may be about to…
The life and times of Prince George
The late editor of Punch, Alan Coren, informed a friend after his first golf lesson that it was " a hideous, hideous game and, as for the bunkers, it was no wonder that Hitler died in one." Following the communique at the end of the G20 meeting in Russia last week, it remains to be seen…
Populist leaders are ruled. OK?
Never one for crosswords or brain teasers, in my younger days I got my quiz kicks from lineups of leaders at G7 Economic Summits. Always familiar were the Presidents of the US and France, the Chancellor of Germany and the Prime Minister of the UK. The Canadian premier would generally give himself away by the jutting jaw honed…
Holy smoke
On Tuesday I was asked to review a generic letter to clients that had been "professionally" translated from Hebrew to English. Wielding my red pen with the hungry anticipation of a famished vampire, I proceeded to correct just about everything on the page except the spaces between the paragraphs. Not being able to resist the kind…
Tax Wars: The Authorities Strike Back
Suicide is not a laughing matter. Last week marked fifty years since American poet, Sylvia Plath, took her own life, and the benefit-of-hindsight news stories on the subject were uniformly depressing. It is interesting, therefore, that one of the most successful comedy series in television history opened each week with a song about suicide. Thirty years ago…
Tax Break 