2001 Articles by Amanda Foreman

The Guardian: November 2001
Plane Crash in New York

AA flight 587, bound for Santo Domingo, crashes into Queens. 'It is a test’, Mayor Guilliani says. I believe him. I just wish I knew who was doing the testing: God or Ossama Bin Laden?
Two months ago we all witnessed things that should never leave the realm of fantasy. But there is a quantum difference between watching an event on television and living through it. Perhaps that is why some journalists in the UK were able to write so cavalierly about America’s 'bloody nose’......................................
The Saturday Telegraph Magazine: October 2001
George IV

Selfish to an insane degree, untrustworthy, and lazy, but also utterly unrestrained whether over women, money, or his emotions, George IV (1762-1830) remains on the periphery of public consciousness. His influence is everywhere: Regency design, Regency architecture, Regency novels, but the man is missing. It is necessary to see the palaces he built to understand the true measure of George’s talents. Most people know about Brighton Pavilion, but few are aware that he was also responsible for much of Buckingham Palace, and for the magnificent interiors of Windsor Castle. Indeed, George spent the last seven years of his life turning Windsor into one of the finest palaces in Europe......................................
The Wall Street Journal: September 2001
Review of Simon Winchester's 'The Map that Changed the World'

The Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy once said, 'The highest wisdom has but one science - the science of the whole - the science explaining the whole creation and man's place in it.’ Even today, despite huge advances in knowledge and understanding, we still wonder about the mystery of creation. The answer to Why, let alone How, remains mired in controversy. But at least we do know When. That is thanks, in the first instance, to William Smith, a 19th Century surveyor from the south-east of England, who realized that the layers of the earth’s rock represented the passage of time.
Simon Winchester, the author of the best-selling 'The Professor and the Madman’, has turned his attention from the origins of the Oxford English Dictionary to the birth of geology. He studied the subject as an undergraduate and, clearly, his love for rocks and nature has stayed with him......................................
Food and Wine Magazine: May 2001
A Visit to Cardiff

It is the poet, Dylan Thomas, who most clearly captures the eerie beauty of Wales. The poem, 'Under Milkwood', about a fictional Welsh town, begins with the line, "Moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black." These words have always made me think of Cardiff. In contrast to Britain's other capital cities, Cardiff is tiny and remote. It lies along the southern coast of Wales; a lonely outpost, born out of the Industrial Revolution and yet possessing fewer than half a million inhabitants.
For a hundred and fifty years Cardiff grew rich on fish and coal exports. A showcase for Victorian architecture, its massive docks and stone buildings dominated the surrounding green valleys. But when the mines closed and the fishing stocks dwindled the city gradually decayed. Its beautiful bay became a maritime graveyard and a source of pollution. By the 1980s, Cardiff was a byword for inner-city blight, suffering from racial violence, mass unemployment, and crumbling amenities......................................

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