Richard Wollheim brought out the best in all of us Mr Brown's supposed concern about the differences within the EU is just a device to bolster his political campaign against the euro.. As with most of the issues of "convergence" that Mr Brown cites as barriers to joining the eurozone, they will disappear once Britain has joined. Yet the US savings and loan disaster was the classic case of what goes wrong when the state becomes involved in guaranteeing financial institutions.The right way to bring the British and Continental housing markets closer together is simply for Britain to adopt the euro. And the worst idea of all is that promoted by a consortium of banks, including Northern Rock, that the European Union should underwrite fixed-rate long-term loans, which could then be offered at lower rates of interest.As we report today, the US home loans market is being cited as the model for this proposal. We have a higher level of home ownership, so the effects of interest-rate changes are felt more widely and immediately here.The wrong lesson to draw from this contrast is that the Government should direct or subsidise British citizens to make them behave more like Continentals. We have mortgage payments that change every time the Bank of England changes interest rates; they tend to take out mortgages at interest rates that are fixed for the whole 25-year term. It may seem surprising that a pro-European newspaper should make this point, but Britain should not change policies simply to make it easier to adopt the euro. We should only pave the way for joining the eurozone if such preparation is itself in our national interest. That is why we are sceptical about Gordon Brown's advocacy of fixed-rate mortgages as a way of bringing the British housing market more into line with that on the Continent.The Chancellor is right to draw attention to the big differences on either side of the Channel. Richard Wollheim brought out the best in all of us.John Richardson. So long as Richard was alive, I found the sheer density of this book painful Since his death, I am able to read it with delight It must not be allowed to become a chef d'oeuvre inconnu The same goes for his oral history. For the last 10 years or so, he made a point of interviewing most of his friends about their lives and ideas A potential goldmine.
The book, which recalls Michel Leiris's 1939 masterpiece, L'Age d'homme, portrays the Thames Valley life of his affluent parents - the distant, dandified father he revered; the beautiful, mindless "Gaiety Girl" mother he came to regret loathing - in dazzling detail.However, the dark heart of the book is a merciless, microscopic examination of the development of Wollheim's psyche, not least of his realisation that the price of love is fear. Wollheim regarded this as "the best piece of work" he had "ever done". Much the same could be said of the recent and as yet unpublished memoir of his early days ("Germs," a title that one hopes will be changed). This resulted in his embarking on a lengthy Kleinian analysis in the 1950s. |
 |
 |
