Posts Tagged ‘The Times’

What's the ancient Greek for f***?

It is all rather improbable. In 2003, Annabel Lyon, a quiet 32-year-old piano teacher from Ottowa — she’s written two collections of short stories and a children’s book, but still thinks of herself as a piano teacher — starts to write a novel. It is set in Ancient Greece, portrays the coming of age of Alexander the Great, and is narrated by Aristotle. Yes, Aristotle. Not a stylised, “marble statue” Aristotle (as Lyon puts it); a base, flesh-and-bile Aristotle who is preoccupied with cunnilingus, dismemberment and buggery. Who, for example, compares his wit to excrement (“My wit was as dry as mouse droppings,” and “dry little droppings of wit”). Who drinks his own “warm piss”. Who talks in Americanisms and lavishes his narrative with profanities such as “ass-f***er”, “ball-breaking” and “piece of shit”.

Seven-and-a-half years later, The Golden Mean is complete. After a string of horrified rejection letters from publishers, Lyon — who by now is 39 — finds a Canadian publisher willing to take a punt. Months later, when The Golden Mean hits the shelves, it becomes a No 1 bestseller in Canada. The critics love it, hailing Lyon as the heiress to the legendary national treasure Alice Munro (who was shortlisted for the coveted Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize in 2009. Annabel Lyon won). Read the rest of this entry »

The UK: a nation of indecision?

In case you hadn’t noticed, a much-hyped single called Choices is released this week. Written by the mildly irritating English-Swedish pop outfit The Hoosiers, it is a record-breaking 43 minutes long. As if one gimmick wasn’t enough, the band invited fans to write some of the verses and appear in the music video. But even though Choices is a pygmy of a tune compared with the iconic songs of previous eras such as All You Need Is Love, Purple Haze and Smells Like Teen Spirit, The Hoosiers’ new single might one day rank among them as the song of this generation.

The reason? It’s the lyrics, stupid. “Stop giving me choices. Stop giving me choices,” whines Irwin Sparkes, the elfin lead singer. “I’m the victim of this day and age, I’ve forgotten how to feel, I’ve forgotten how to change.”

According to Harriet Bradley, professor of sociology at the University of Bristol, this is an apt summary of the way things are. This week she published the results of a ten-month project looking at how people in the UK deal with choice. The report, State of Confusion, presents the results of a study of 6,000 people from across the UK. The conclusion is resounding: Britain is a “nation crippled by too much choice”. Read the rest of this entry »

Marcus du Sautoy: a national treasure?

Question: what’s a million times five? No, it’s not a trick. The answer is the amount of dollars you could win if you solved all five mathematical conundrums in The Num8er My5teries, a new book by the iconic popular mathematician Marcus du Sautoy. The book is based on a competition set up in 2000 by an American businessman called Landon Clay. Five puzzles, $1 million each.

It could be you.

Or at least that was true until last March, when the reclusive Russian maths genius Grigoriy Perelman solved one of the conundrums — known as the “Poincaré conjecture” — in resounding fashion. “Last week there was a glitzy award ceremony to present the first million dollars to Perelman,” du Sautoy tells me, his voice brimming with customary enthusiasm. “But he didn’t turn up.”

Didn’t turn up? “Mathematicians are rather quirky. We don’t tend to be interested in money,” du Sautoy says. “It’s the glory of eternity that motivates us.” In the eyes of du Sautoy and his colleagues, the Russian has achieved something that has no earthly price. “Personally,” he says candidly, “I’d pay a million dollars to solve one of these problems. It’s a small price to pay to become immortal.”

In The Num8er My5teries, these problems are presented with the flair and vim that has made du Sautoy into something of a national treasure. “I build up to each conundrum with some unexpected questions,” he tells me. “Why did Beckham choose the 23 shirt? Why do cicadas love the number 17? And how can you win the lottery?” (This final question, I suspect, may appeal to gold diggers who see the book as an investment.) “What’s more,” the mathematician continues, “I’ve made the problems into games like Minesweeper and Su Doku. It’s wide open for everyone.”

I am almost inclined to have a crack myself. But then I recall that my last experience with mathematics was at GCSE, 16 years ago (I got a C). If so many extraordinary mathematical brains have tried and failed, what chance could I possibly have?

“Every chance,” du Sautoy says. And I think he means it. “Non-mathematicians sometimes approach things from a whole new angle. The next winner might well be a reader of my book, who became inspired while sitting on the loo.” He notices my sudden amplification of interest. “Though of course,” he reminds me, “if you’re doing it for the money, you’ll never be a real mathematician.”

"Devise a strategy for dealing with trouble ahead."

Hello, Jake, how are you?”

“OK.”

“How was your day at school?”

“OK.”

“Have you got much homework?”

“Yup.”

“What is it?”

“Oh, stuff.”

“Darling, is everything OK? You’re very quiet.”

“Yup.”

“Can you at least look at me when I’m talking to you? I’m asking if you’re OK.”

“I just told you, I’m fine. Stop going on at me.”

“I don’t think checking you’re OK is going on at you. I am your mother, you know.”

“OK, OK, I’m fine, everything’s OK, please can you give me some peace?”

“How dare you . . .”

Before you ask, this is not a memoir from my adolescence. It is an extract from Divas & Door Slammers: the secrets to having a better behaved teenager, a new book by the behavioural expert and inner-city headmaster Charlie Taylor. This dialogue is part of a case study, illustrating how easy it is for parents to alienate their teenagers.

“Teenagers have an inbuilt capacity to annoy their parents,” says the author when we meet at a café in Notting Hill, West London. “The sight of a pair of low-slung trousers, or a great spotty oaf slouched across the sofa, is enough to make any parent’s blood boil.” But, according to Taylor, teenagers can’t always help it. “Their brains are developing at a tremendous rate,” he says. “There is a huge amount of activity flaring in different directions. Neurones are sparking all over the place, making them go haywire.”

This means that if a cycle of bad behaviour is to end, it must be the parents who end it. “Your teenager is not going to change unless you change,” says Taylor. “If you do what you have always done, you will get what you always get.” Read the rest of this entry »

"We did it our way"

We were sitting on the sofa, surrounded by glossy wedding bumph, when my fiancée Isobel had a moment of clarity. “These people are thieves,” she said, tossing aside a brochure for Blenheim Palace advertising two wedding packages – a no-frills option for £16,400 and a standard for £23,900. “We don’t have that kind of money. Let’s set ourselves the challenge of having a lovely wedding for less than £5,000.”

I smiled encouragingly. It was late at night. Within a few hours, I thought, she would recognise this idea for the tomfoolery it was.

The next morning, however, Isobel was fired up. “I’ll do the catering myself,” she said over breakfast. “It will be a really characterful wedding.” I pulled out the Blenheim Palace brochure from my pocket. “But what about the magnificent setting?” I said, mournfully. “What about the after-dinner Belgian pralines?” She regarded me steadily. “We can do it,” she said.

According to the consumer watchdog Which?, the average cost of a wedding in the UK is around £17,000. Moreover, a recent report suggests that couples are being exploited when they tie the knot. “Hotels, florists and hairdressers are being really unfair,” says Lisa Barber, deputy editor of Which? Magazine. “They charge 25 per cent more for weddings than they do for other similar events.” Read the rest of this entry »

'Just having things ‘normalised’ can be a relief'

With some difficulty, I manoeuvre my extra-long double buggy — dubbed “the gondola” — into a room cluttered with plastic toys. The psychotherapist gets up from her beanbag to help me to fold it up. I introduce her to Isaac and Imogen, my seven-month-old twins, and then put them down on the mat. The babies, blissfully unaware of the therapist’s eyes, proceed to give the toys a good gumming. Read the rest of this entry »

'America's brainiest couple'

The people known as “America’s brainiest couple” met over an irregular verb. “It was ‘stridden’,” says Steven Pinker, regarding me steadily from beneath his mop of curly hair. His wife, Rebecca Goldstein, laughs. “Steven cited my use of the word in one of his books,” she explains, “and we started exchanging e-mails about it. You could say that our relationship started with conjugation.”

There could have been no more appropriate way for these two extraordinary minds to meet. Pinker, one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people, is a renowned cognitive psychologist and the author of bestselling books on popular science. Goldstein, a novelist and philosopher, has received a MacArthur “Genius” Award, a Koret International Award and election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her new novel, the mischievously titled 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: a Work of Fiction (Goldstein warns me not to leave out the subtitle) is released in the UK this month. Read the rest of this entry »

'I was determined to give as good as I got'

Denis Avey, even at the age of 91, cuts a formidable figure. More than 6ft tall, with a severe short back and sides and a piercing glare, he combines the pan-ache of Errol Flynn with the dignity of age. This is the former Desert Rat, who, in 1944, broke into — yes, into — Auschwitz, and he looks exactly as I expected. He removes his monocle for the camera, and one of his pupils slips sideways before realigning. It is a glass eye. I ask him about it. He tells me that in 1944, he cursed an SS officer who was beating a Jew in the camp. He received a blow with a pistol butt and his eye was knocked in. Read the rest of this entry »

'the men of happiness'

It is a most unlikely scene. I am in an elegant sitting room in the Royal Society of Arts. Opposite me, sitting uncomfortably side-by-side on a too-low leather sofa, are an English peer and a French Buddhist monk. The contrast is striking. Lord Layard is white-haired, well-dressed and unobtrusive; the Venerable Matthieu Ricard is larger than life in flowing, burgundy robes. Yet despite their differences, these men have a common denominator: both have devoted their lives to the study of happiness. Read the rest of this entry »