Given the hold that Goethe had over the German elite in the 1920s, it is impossible that the Weimar Republic’s leaders could have been ignorant about what happens when desperate politicians start printing money. In Part II of Faust, the devil suggests to an emperor that he solves his fiscal crisis by mass-producing banknotes. He
Home After the resignation of Liam Fox as Defence Secretary, a report by Sir Gus O’Donnell, the Cabinet Secretary, found that there had been a ‘clear breach’ of the ministerial code in his working relationship with Adam Werritty, who had accompanied him on 18 foreign trips. Dr Fox, he said, had been warned about Mr
• Mummy’s secret recipe A terminally ill taxi-driver from Torquay has volunteered to be mummified for a Channel 4 documentary. Here is what Egyptian mummification involved, according to Herodotus: — Extract brain through nostrils. — Cut opening in side of torso with sharp stone and remove contents. — Wash cavity with palm wine and pounded
• Gone with the wind Sir: Your recent campaign against wind farms is brought, perhaps, to a conclusion by Matt Ridley’s splendid article on shale gas (‘Shale of the century’, 15 October). Yet at no time have you referred to that other blot on the domestic landscape, the solar panel. I wonder why. As with
A blue tide has washed over the latest nominations for The Spectator’s Readers’ Representative award. Last week, your votes were for parliamentarians from right across the political spectrum: Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat, even the occasional Ukipper. This week, they are mostly for Conservatives. Perhaps this is a sympathy vote following Liam Fox’s resignation. Perhaps it
Here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the last week. Daniel Finkelstein is left slightly underwhelmed by Martin Scorsese’s biopic of George Harrison. Fraser Nelson laments the poverty of Britain’s energy debate, and offers a bottle of champagne to anyone who can help to explain George Osborne’s growth plan. James Forsyth charts
