Commentariat

Times

Soft politics is out. Hard politics is back. A looming economic crisis is forcing us all to sort out our priorities. Voters must adjust to dearer food, fuel and mortgages. Politicians must adapt to help them.

This summer I've been in that black hole that every working mother falls into at some point: when the childcare fails. The person who was looking after my children decided to leave, and I have been struggling to find a replacement. Some women cope by calling in sick; others hunch over the mobile between meetings, organising extended “playdates” with sympathetic friends and explaining to ageing relatives that Teddy must go in the cold wash, however gooey he is. When you're in the black hole, the gravitational pull of home can become overwhelming.

To judge by Barack Obama's disappointing performance so far in the opinion polls, reflected in the surprisingly subdued atmosphere at the Denver convention, Democrats are suffering a bad case of “buyer's remorse”.

When Lord of the Flies was first written it sold only 3,000 copies before
going out of print. No one could believe in Jack, Piggy and Ralph and the
thought that boys could turn into murderers, lacerating each other’s flesh
and revelling in torture and death.

What do these three men - all comfortably beyond the age of retirement - have in common: Sean Connery, Alfred Brendel, George Steiner?

Russia, according to President Medvedev, is ready for a “new Cold War”. If
politicians, including our own, want a new Cold War, they will get one. But
the fault will be lie as much with us as Russia.

Susan Daniel writes: As Maria Callas’s maestro of choice during the
second part of her career, Nicola Rescigno (obituary,
Aug 7) was also her mentor — as he put it, her “father confessor”. I was
fortunate indeed to have been the recipient of many of the musical
traditions that they shared when he decided to teach me all of the same
repertoire. We worked together in depth for 16 years.

Michael Baxandall was one of the truly original and creative scholars of his
generation. His work as an art historian had a profound impact on broader
study of the humanities. He developed a radically new way of thinking about
the social and cultural significance of the visual arts based on close
analysis of the specifically visual qualities of the work he was studying.
This work ranged from Renaissance painting and sculpture to art of the
Enlightenment period and modern painting. His innovative approach to
analysing the language used in theoretical and critical writing about art,
and his insight into cultural practices that shaped ways of viewing art,
gave a particularly suggestive inflection to the art historical term the
“period eye” that he coined.

It was one of the most evocative of Cold War rituals. On Glienicke Bridge
linking East and West Berlin, prisoners held by each side would be
exchanged, sometimes in a blaze of publicity. In 1962 it was the US spy
plane pilot, Gary Powers, swapped for a Soviet spy. In 1986 it was the
Russian dissident, Anatoly Shcharansky, released to the West as part of a
larger exchange. They were moments of uneasy co-operation between the bitter
enemies of the two blocs. And always, lurking in the background, was the man
who had made the deal possible — Wolfgang Vogel, the East German lawyer,
confidant of top politicians and officials in both Cold War camps.

Sir Edwin Nixon

With their book, 100 Things to Do Before You Die, published in 1999,
Neil Teplica and Dave Freeman, who has died after a fall, created a vogue
for lists of activities that pushed against the envelope of natural human
indolence and encouraged an adventurous approach to travel.

Although he spent about a third of his long life in exile, the oil baron Iosif
Dragan was a devoted and passionate Romanian nationalist.

The Australians have rumbled us. England’s cricketers, all appointed MBEs by
the Queen, apparently cheated when they won the Ashes in 2005. It wasn’t
superior bowling or more dogged batting - or even luck - that won England
the little urn. Instead, it was their secret weapon: Murray Mints.

Graph: fuel
bills compared with the cost of living

When Germaine Greer states her views, you prepare to be provoked. Invited to speak for two minutes in the Radio 3 series Free Thought recently, Professor Greer chose to deride the British obsession with home ownership.

Never shy of controversy, Peter Tatchell, the gay rights activist, has taken on the Roman Catholic Church for “moral vandalism” and “religious desecration”. It seems rather an extreme way to describe the Vatican's decision to exhume the body of Cardinal Newman from a small graveyard near Rednal to transfer it to the Birmingham Oratory in the city centre.

A few months ago Doris Lessing, the novelist and Nobel laureate, was discussing the life-expectancy of Barack Obama, should he win the race to the White House: “He would probably not last long, a black man in the position of president,” she mused. “They would kill him.”

Behind the growth of political broadcasting in Britain in the 1970s and 1980s
was a woman who had joined the BBC straight from school at the age of 17:
Margaret Douglas.

Dick Stanbury was a career diplomat who as a district commissioner in the
Sudan Political Service in the late 1930s found himself judge, administrator
and police chief at the age of 21, governing areas the size of Wales, and
even, at one point, driving a train from Khartoum to Port Sudan during a
railway strike. Asked once how he would like to be remembered Stanbury
responded: Cornishman, man of God and son of Empire. To that one could add
erudite Classicist, first-class cricketer, enthusiastic polo player and
amusing raconteur. Like many of his generation he also had an unflinching
sense of honour and duty.

The Right Rev Anselm Genders, CR, was a member of the Community of the
Resurrection, often known as the Mirfield Fathers or even more simply CR,
for all of his ministry. He was also one of the last “colonial bishops”. For
a century from about 1,860 bishops were sent from Britain to run dioceses in
the far-flung parts of the British Empire. Although this practice largely
ended in the 1960s, Genders was sent to the tiny colony and diocese of
Bermuda in 1977 after many years’ service in the West Indies and southern
Africa.