When, at 3 o'clock on the morning of September 30 , I flopped, bleary-eyed, into a chair in a Berlin hotel room, activated my laptop and started to write about John Le Carre's Cold War Trilogy, it did not occur to me that the ensuing post was to be the beginning of my (first) trilogy. The story so far: A…
Going Back To Sunday School
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…
Reindeer in the headlines
Oslo is not the capital of Sweden, and that nice King Harald, who has his photograph taken once a year handing out coveted prizes to clever people, is not the King of Sweden. Harald is King of Norway, which is just as well really as he lives in Oslo which is the capital of Norway (and…
Judge for yourself
Silvio Berlusconi has a mission. Having already successfully nobbled two branches of government - the executive and legislature - he is out gunning for the third. In a speech that in any other country would have had him up in front of the Beak accused of incitement, the newly convicted (this one's for tax evasion) former…
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…
Bend it for Messi
Having reached my majority in an era that nowadays pops up in my kids' History exams, I am today at a stage in life where names and faces are prone to be mixed-and-matched. Every time I hear mention of Lionel Messi I invariably see Lionel Richie's mustachioed head protruding from an FC Barcelona shirt. It was, therefore, no surprise that when the world was…
The lion that squeaked
We all remember those excruciatingly painful dance sequences in end of year school plays. As a long-in-the-tooth tweed jacketed teacher attacked the untuned keys of the upright piano while simultaneously pumping furiously at the worn pedals, budding Nureyevs and Fonteyns would take to the stage. With eyes adamantly fixed on their neighbours the children would twirl to the right and…
Never judge a book by its e-ink screen
Amazon is hardly ever out of the tax headlines these days. Following on from management's mauling by a British Parliamentary Committee late last year and the developing Transfer Pricing dispute with the IRS, last week all eyes were on Amazon's reaction to the Senate's passing of the heat-seeking, this one has your name on it A-M-A-Z-O-N, Marketplace…
Reach for the sky
A story about a Dutch company that did the rounds of the world's press on April 23 got me checking whether the Netherlands, ever the laid back pot-smoker of Europe, celebrated April Fools' Day a few weeks late. In a grand press conference it was announced that candidates are invited to apply for a one-way ticket to…
Roman Circus
"He is not the Messiah, he is a very naughty boy". Thus spake Mandy Cohen, mother of Brian, to the ignorant mob besieging her home, rejecting their mindless veneration of her son. Her statement would have been appropriate at many points in history - the world has had no shortage of false messiahs. The human condition…
Tax Break 