PART 6: STRUCTURE AND MEANING

Complete with the correct phrases from the list.

THE CASE FOR VEGETARIANISM

(01)........., the vets themselves are (02).........: (03)......... wished to remain anonymous. He
said, "I hardly eat any meat these days, especially not in restaurants. In my opinion, it is
not a wholesome product any more, (04)............. I don't trust many of the producers or
slaughterers I know. There is no effective (05).........." Thus, a meat inspector on an
poultry line has three to five seconds to examine each bird and judge (06).......... One vet
(07)......... admitted that if a tumour is found it is cut out but the rest of the carcass is
passed as (08).......... (09)......... that the consumer is forcing change. Thus Gallup poll
findings suggest that three million Britons now eat no red meat. In the past five years,
three new anti-meat magazines (10)..........

A involved in meat inspection K start up

B have been launched L as far as meat is

concerned

C whether or not it is healthy M moreover

D speaking up
N one who reported
E sometimes rather worried

F plans for the future O it would seem

G at least much of it isn't

H ready for eating

I means of policing

J fit for human consumpt

Answers:
01. L. As far as meat is concerned
1
02. E. sometimes rather worried (D)
03. N. one reported
04. G. at least much of it isn’t
05. I. means of policing
06. C. whether or not it is healthy
07. A. involved in meat inspection
08. J. fit for human consumption
09. O. It would seem
10. B. have been launched

2. LIVING LONGER

For the first time, science (01)..... that the aging process (02)...... Life expectancy could
be doubled. Aging used to be mysterious and now it isn't. It is a problem that has been
solved. Scientists say (03)..... in laboratory insects (04)..... the extension of life. They
have bred fruit-flies that can live for the equivalent of about 150 human years. They have
discovered that a longer-lived fly that (05)..... one particular genetic trait. The genes of
what they call "Methuselah" fruit flies contain the recipe for a particularly powerful
protein that can neutralise damaging chemicals. These chemicals, known as "free
radicals", (06).....: a single atom of oxygen is one example. Free radicals are produced
(07)...... They are highly reactive and can tear apart important biological molecules such
as DNA. The protein (superoxide dismutase) produced by the Methuselah fruit-flies mops
up the free radicals (08)..... their destructive work. All that (09)..... is to move from
worms and flies to men, not all that far, and deliver the appropriate gene (10)......

A cause the aging process H so that they cannot perform

B has a greater abundance of
C remains to be done
D which are close
F can be slowed down
G will not create difficulties
I offers a realistic possibility
J inside the system
K to the human system
L that they have identified
M they expect to succeed

Answers:
01. offers a realistic possibility
02. can be slowed down
03. that they have identified
2
04. the genes that are responsible for
05. has a greater abundance of
06. cause the aging process
07. naturally within the body
08. so that they cannot perform
09. remains to be done
12. to the human system

3. TOO MANY PEOPLE

Too Many People, by Sir Roy Calne (pronounced Carn), was published in August. The
author is a pioneer of transplant surgery. In the past seven years, he has performed five
heart-lung-and-liver grafts, five of whom are still alive. Thousands of people,
(01) ................., are still alive thanks to his efforts. It is ironic (02) .................

In fact, medical discoveries have brought about a population explosion that is already
unleashing war, famine, pestilence and death on a scale (03) .................. The book
proposes extreme means to limit childbirth. It warns, and leaves the reader in no doubt,
(04) ................. .
Sir Roy says: "If you come to me in pain and frightened, it is my duty to help you. But
(05) ................., I regard transplant surgery as irrelevant. There are about a billion people
living in the streets of mega-cities (06) .................."

A. that there is excessive breeding

B. as a citizen of the world
C. having too many babies
D. that threatens civilisation itself
E. dying from fatal illnesses
F. on the verge of starvation
G. what he says about the future of the planet
H. that his book is more about limiting life than extending it
I. that will be impossible for doctors to treat
J. that there is not much time left

VANISHING FORESTS

A recent report from the United Nations indicates that the world's tropical forests are
vanishing faster (01) ....................... Up to 50 million acres a year are disappearing,
almost the area of West Germany, 50 per cent more than expected. The World Resources
3
Institute, (02) ......................, says (03) ...................... was "a tragedy for the biological
richness of the earth and an ominous signal for the climatic conditions of the future."
About 100 forest species become extinct every day, with irreparable loss of part of the
world's genetic resources. The report says that deforestation accounts for a third of the
world's emissions of carbon dioxide, the biggest cause of global warming.

The loss of the forests is largely the result of overpopulation. Hungry landless masses in
Africa, South America and Asia compete with commercial logging for the available
resources. At the moment, the landless masses are winning. The overwhelming bulk of
the wood and timber of tropical forests is burnt where it stands. (04) ...................... , only
17 per cent goes for industrial use. The rest is used for firewood. The concept
(05) ...................... is predominant. It is the central reality of the deforestation crisis. In
1988, 60 million acres of Rondonia in the Brazilian Amazon was burnt for grazing and
cropland. Billions of dollars worth of timber went up in smoke, wasted because there was
no ready economic market for it. The forest was seen to have more value as agricultural
land (06) ...................... .

A. that natural forest is spare land ready for agriculture

B. than as woodland
C. which compiled the report
D. that it is wasteful
E. than as standing forests to be harvested
F. than previously thought
G. that there would be little timber remaining
H. that the rising rate of deforestation

Answers:
01. F. than previously thought
02. C. which compiled the report
03. H. that the rising rate of deforestation
04. J. of that which is extracted
05. A. that natural forest is spare land ready for agriculture
06. E. than as standing forests to be harvested

Paper 5

1. LETTER FROM HOTEL TO CLIENT

Dear Mr Canelli

Thank you for your enquiry about the availability of accommodation and conference
facilities during the last two weeks of October.
4
We have one conference room, the Alexandra, available in that period. The Alexandra
will accommodate from 30 to 50 delegates, depending on how many attend.. You can see
a photograph of the room on page four of the enclosed brochure. Naturally, fax and telex
services, as well as secretarial assistance and translation service, are available.

I note from your letter that you expect 25 to 30 delegates to go to the meeting and will
require an equivalent number of double rooms. We advice booking a higher number of
rooms in case more decide to come than you expect. Since the hotel has 300 double
rooms, all with twin beds, we can usually offer rooms on six to four weeks notice during
the off-peak season. If less than four weeks' notice is given, difficulties may arise.

For a group booking such as yours, we offer a business terms discount of 40 per cent of
the total, excluding service charge and VAT, conditional on a minimum stay of five
consecutive nights being booked.

Yours faithfully

Jim,

Here's the hotel's answer. How does it (01)......... you? The brochure has a (02)......... of
the room taken with a wide-angle lens, (03)......... it is probably a lot smaller than you can
(04)......... from the photograph. A lot will depend on the number of people who
(05)..........

The discount sounds good, but as we (06)......... want three nights it won't (07)......... to us.
Perhaps you could get (08)......... them and see if they'll give us some sort of (09)..........

We had better (10)......... our minds pretty soon because they want to know four weeks in
(11)........., and as we plan the conference over Easter they are sure to be rather (12).........
booked.

Answers:
01. strike, look to, sound to
02. snap, shot, snapshot (NOT photo),
picture

03. so (NOT and)

04. tell (NOT see), make out
05. turn up (NOT come), take part (NOT participate), show up
06. only
07. apply
08. back to, on to
09. reduction, deal
10. make up
11. advance
12. heavily (NOT fully)
5
2. A LETTER OF COMPLAINT

Hello, Mr Robinson. I'm sorry to hear that the desk we sent you has arrived at your office
so badly damaged. It must have happened during transportation, Yes, it must have fallen
from quite a way to cause that amount of damage. The best thing to do is drop a note to
the people you asked to pick it up, telling them that the thing has split right across the top,
and asking them to get it back to us. Send a copy to me, and I'll get after them for the cost
of the desk. In the meantime we'll send you another desk using our own van.

Dear Sirs

Your company delivered a self-assembly desk to this (01)..... on August 6. On receipt, I

told your (02)..... men that the outer flat-pack (03)..... was badly damaged.

Subsequently, on (04)..... the wrapping, I found the desk top to be split. The supplier,
Office Supplies Limited, of Banstead, assure me that the goods were in perfect (05).....
when (06)..... from their warehouse. I must, (07)....., conclude that the damage occurred
during (08)..... when the goods were in your care.

The desk appears to have been dropped from a considerable (09)..... so that the wooden
top has splintered and cracked completely across. It is unusable and will have to be
(10)......

The desk remains available for your inspection. I should be grateful if you would remove
it as soon as possible and deliver it to the manufacturer at Banstead to (11)..... I am
sending a copy of this letter, and who will be seeking (12)......

Answers:
01. address
02. delivery
03. container
04. removing
05. condition
06. collected
07. therefore
08. transit
09. height
10. returned
11. whom
6
12. compensation

3. We need to put out a notice about next month's Jobs Forum. It happens every year, and
last year we left it too late. It gives everyone a chance to meet someone who might give
them a job, especially as we get big companies from all over the country and small firms
from nearby. Over sixty will be there. They will all send people, usually from their
human resources departments, but certainly those who are responsible for assessing and
hiring staff, and know what's what in their different firms. It gives people the chance to
decide more realistically what the choice is and what they may want to do and which
particular firms they prefer.

JOBS FORUM

The (01) ..................................... college Jobs Forum will be (02) .....................................

over two days, 10 and 11 May. Students will have the (03) ..................................... to
meet (04) ..................................... employers, both local and (05) ..................................... .
Over 60 firms will (06) ..................................... . Their (07) ..................................... will
be able to provide students with a wide (08) ..................................... of information about
their (09) ..................................... companies. Students will be able to question
(10) ..................................... managers and form a (11) ..................................... as to the
jobs which are on (12) ..................................... .

Answers:
01. annual 10. personnel
02. held 11. judgement
03. opportunity 12. offer
04. potential
05. national
06. attend, participate
07. representative
08. range, variety
09. respective, own

Paper 1: Reading

Part 1

1. PART 1: COMPREHENSION: DEFORESTATION

Answer the following questions with reference to the article which follows.Choose from
A to G the answers to the numbered questions.

According to the passage, where is vegetation

01. ... burnt because there is no market for it? ..................
02. ... extremely difficult to regenerate? ..................
03. ... stolen for profit? ..................
04. ... burnt for pastoral purposes? ..................
7
05. ... almost 50 per cent destroyed? ..................
06. ... in need of police protection? ..................
07. ... in economic competition with grassland? ..................
08/09. ... being destroyed in national parks? .................. ..................
10. ... threatened by a policing action? ..................
11. ... mostly used for firewood? ..................
12. ... the subject of competition between peasants and the timber industry? ..................

A. Asia

B. Amazonia

C. Brazil

D. Vietnam

E. Peru

F. Arizona

G. Bolivia

DEFORESTATION

A recent report from the United Nations indicates that the world's tropical forests are
vanishing faster than previously thought. Up to 50 million acres a year are disappearing,
almost the area of West Germany, 50 per cent more than expected. The World Resources
Institute, which compiled the report, says that the rising rate of deforestation was "a
tragedy for the biological richness of the earth and an ominous signal for the climatic
conditions of the future." About 100 forest species become extinct every day, with
irreparable loss of part of the world's genetic resources. The report says that deforestation
accounts for a third of the world's emissions of carbon dioxide, the biggest cause of
global warming.

The loss of the forests is largely the result of overpopulation. Hungry landless masses in
Asia compete with commercial logging for the available resources. At the moment, the
landless masses are winning. The overwhelming bulk of the wood and timber of tropical
forests is burnt where it stands. Of that which is extracted, only 17 per cent goes for
industrial use. The rest is used for firewood. The concept of natural forest as spare land
ready for agriculture is predominant. It is the central reality of the deforestation crisis. In
1988, 60 million acres of Rondonia in the Brazilian Amazon was burnt for grazing and
cropland. Billions of dollars worth of timber went up in smoke, wasted because there was
no ready economic market for it. The forest was seen to have more value as agricultural
land than as standing forests to be harvested.

Just how bad the situation is can be revealed by satellite photograph. Such a photograph
of the Amazon basin will reveal hundreds of points of light stretching from Bolivia to the
Atlantic. Each point of light indicates a man-made forest fire at least half a mile wide. In
8
1988 and 1989, there were at least 15,000 such fires which meant that Brazil sent half as
much carbon into the atmosphere as Japan.

The head of Brazil's environment institute points out: "It's a problem of awareness.
Farmers just don't think of anything but making money, and some regional
administrations support them because they think this is development. In one state,
farmers are killing the rubber tappers. In another, they think only of profits from cattle
ranching. They set fire to nature reserves. They could all think about the environment a
little more." The head of the satellite agency which analyzes the problem on a daily basis
is more blunt. He says: "We know that burning in the Amazon is gigantic. It's time they
showed us a wealthy farmer in handcuffs."

If you want to know what happens when the rain forests are destroyed, the place to go is
Vietnam. During the Vietnam war, the American air force sprayed more than 72 million
litres of herbicides and defoliants over the country, dropping bombs and napalm over
much of the rest. Almost half of Vietnam's landscape is derelict. Since the end of the war
things have got worse: the country's 60 million people, like most inhabitants of the
tropics, are dependent upon wood for fuel and construction. Demand for fuel and the
clearance of land for agriculture has also destroyed thousands of acres. What the
Vietnamese have discovered is that when the tropical forests go, they go for ever. The soil
is poor. Once the cover is gone, tropical rainstorms wash out the nutrients. In the dry
season, the grass catches fire and saplings are killed. Then more top soil is washed away.
Tropical trees flower unpredictably, and their seeds are difficult to collect and germinate.

The Americans, given a choice between being green and fighting the Peruvian drug
barons, have chosen, as one would expect, to fight. The weapon to hand is Spike, a close
relative of Agent Orange, the herbicide used in Vietnam. Spike would have carried
deforestation into the densely forested eastern slopes of the Andes. However, the
President of Peru, having made a helicopter flight over the area, called for a scientific
study. He said: "An international scientific team should determine if the proposal is
positive or negative for the environment." He might have added that the Peruvian
peasants and the coca barons can manage their own deforestation quite well without any
help from American herbicides, thank you very much.

It is not only the tropical trees that should fear man's depredations. Even the cactus in the
desert is being uprooted. It seems that the inhabitants of the palatial desert homes of Las
Vegas and Palm Springs require a large cactus as a status symbol, just like a stretch
limousine. The finest of the cacti of Arizona, despite being in protected tourist amenity
areas, are being ripped out of the ground by organised gangs of cactus rustlers. These
Saguaro cacti grow as high as five or six metres and weigh up to four tonnes. Larry
Richards works full time as a cactus cop. He says:

"I grew up on this land. I can tell you, in the last 10 years the Saguaros here have been
thinned out by, oh, maybe half. In the next 10 years another half or more of the rest will
go. These are prime, saleable specimens. It's just a matter of time. There are 120 crooked
dealers active in Arizona. They use lifting equipment and large trucks to transport the
giants instantly to California, about 400 miles away, where black market prices are
highest, about $40 for every foot of stem, and up to $100 for every arm which survives
the move. A fairly ordinary sample can fetch $800. A big one, $15,000. A whole
9
generation, covering 60 years of growing, is being wiped out." In one case, the cactus
fought back. It fell on top of a young man who was taking pot shots at it with his rifle,
and killed him.

Answers:
01. B
02. D
O3. F
04. B
05. D
06. F
07. B
08/09. C, F
10. E
11. A
12. A

2. Which child liked a doll because of

its realism? 01. .............

her ability to wear it? 02. ............
the fashionable colour of its clothing? 03. .............
its hair? 04. .............
its ability to travel as a passenger? 05. .............
the way it performs exercises? 06. .............

A. Alice
B. Rebecca
C. Emily
D. David
E. William
F. Adam

Which toy:
is politically correct? 07. .............
was designed in Britain? 08. .............
has some illogical accessories? 09. .............
acts like a naughty baby? 10. .............
attracted adults more than children? 11. .............
was considered likely to be played with longest? 12. .............
is a symbol of the way of life of an affluent society? 13. .............
was likely to catch cold? 14. .............
was least popular? 15. .............

A.

10
BARBIE WITH SHELLY SHOPPING FUN £20

Getting two dolls in one packet was the ultimate value-for-money principle applied by
our young testers to this "Shoppin' Fun" ensemble, which features buxom Barbie and her
baby sister Shelly in a supermarket setting. A mechanism causes Shelly to bounce up and
down on the seat of her supermarket trolley as it is pushed and, in a nice twist, a magnet
on Shelly's hand enables her to pick up tiny cereal and cookie packets. The irony was lost
on Alice, who declared Shelly's behaviour to be "just like a real baby" . All in all, this
perfect image of consumerism in miniature was a major hit with the girls, who also
heaped praise on Barbie's short skirt, cooed over Shelly's bottle and dummy and "took a
great deal of interest in her nappy." They voted it the winner - even though their parents
felt "Workin' Out" Barbie was better value in terms of cost versus hours of distraction.

B.

WORKIN' OUT BARBIE £12

Not yet in the shops but bound to be popular, "Workin' Out" Barbie was the favourite
with Rebecca, mostly due to her trendy outfit in sickly pink and super-long blonde hair.
On the plastic accessories front, she also has a matching personal stereo, dumbbells and
water bottle. Barbie is fully articulated, has suction pads on her feet and comes with a
full-size music tape, so little girls can hold her hands and dance with her. Rebecca
quickly disappeared into another room with the Barbie and tape to do some serious
exercising. She loved the fact that the doll can do the splits and her arms bend and
stretch.

C.

PET DOCTOR BARBIE £20

In a puzzling, but too frequent demonstration of the generation gap, "Pet Doctor Barbie" -
this year s hot new launch which benefits the RSPCA , appealed greatly to the testers
parents, but not especially to the children. The package includes plastic dog bones, pet
bowls, pet basket stethoscope, medical clipboard, bandages, grooming brush, doctor's bag
and, most importantly, dog and cat. Her leggings even have paw prints on them. Alice
thought it was pretty silly having a brush for the animals when they were made of hard
plastic. Barbie's arms were thought to have too little movement. As usual, Emily liked
Barbie's hair, which is long and silky, if not ethnically correct in the black version
sampled. Meanwhile, the adults laughed themselves silly over the miaowing mouse and
barking bone buttons in the pet basket.

D.

KEN AND BROTHER TOMMY £15

"Hair is a very important factor when choosing dolls - part of the lasting appeal of
glamour dolls is the ability to do their hair and dress them up after the gimmicks have lost
their novelty," mused Rebecca Jones's mother in her report about Barbie's male friend,
now produced in tandem with his baby brother, Tommy. The New Man caring and
11
sharing theme made no impact on the testers, it seemed; they were appalled by Ken's hair,
since it felt as if it had gel on it. The accessories in this packet include a "special baby
carrier pack" which takes Tommy, his bottle, rattle, dummy, nappy and baby lotion on
Ken s back. The testers thought Tommy was rather "cute", but were concerned that he
was only wearing dungarees with no shirt underneath and that his dummy was too large,
covering half of his face. The fact that Tommy can wave did not impress the testers.

E.

SINDY SKATER £4.90

Alas, Britain's answer to Barbie did not score well in our trial. Evidently more cheaply
produced, "Sindy Skater" has the obligatory long hair, but is adorned only in a pink,
sparkly tutu. "Her bodice is painted on!" said Rebecca. They soon discovered that her
hair and boots could not be removed either. "She's no good", was the unanimous verdict.

F.

BASEBALL CAP CINDY £3.50

Emily Buckett immediately fell in love with the "Baseball Cap Sindy", which Rebecca
and Alice attributed to her age. For once, the doll itself is the accessory, capable, with the
help of ankle straps, of assuming several acrobatic positions on the cap wearer's head.
Rebecca and Alice "wouldn t be seen dead wearing it." Emily wouldn t take it off. The
older two lost interest altogether when they discovered Sindy was made of foam and
therefore not a real doll. The mothers declared this Sindy to be more of a clothing item
than a toy and wondered how long any child would want to wear a doll on their head?

G.

ACTION MAN SPORT EXTREME £10.99

Action Man, parents will be glad to know, has been updated. His jaw is now squarer, his
cheekbones more sculpted and his flock hair has metamorphosed into a sleek, painted,
plastic style with two locks falling over one eyebrow, "as they would do whenever he
does something heroic," a spokesman from the manufacturer said firmly. His new
character is sport oriented, which is why he has "super active limbs~, according to the
packaging. Our testers were not taken in. "He's a toy man who fights," David said. "He
has bendy legs and arms for kicking and punching." He also comes equipped with
designer shades, a 9mm automatic pistol and suction pad for climbing rocky terrain. He
does not come with a shirt, presumably this is intended to allow the consumer to
appreciate his very muscular torso. In response to the politically leading question, "Would
he still be a good Action Man without a proper gun?" the boys answered (somewhat
uneasily) "Yes." William was impressed with the way his sun-glasses stayed on. Only
later did the children notice a scar on Action Man s cheek. "Brilliant," said David. Adam
voted Action Man the winner, even though Batman "is just as good, but Action Man is
bigger."

H.
12
ROCKETPAK BATMAN AND AIR STRIKE ROBIN £6.99 each

Never mind the Batmobile - Batman and Robin now come with any number of more
complex, bellicose accessories. In our samples, Batman "flies" about with the aid of a
rocket backpack, while Robin has an airship and peg-on bomb. At first, Batman s "lovely
velvet" cape was thought a great accessory, but it was soon discarded for the better
performance of his rocket engines. Our testers also took pleasure in holding the backpack
themselves "for shooting . Robin's accessories were more difficult to assemble, and
David Jones s mother said: "The rocket engines took a bit of manipulating for a six year
old - they re afraid of breaking them if they re too forceful." The boys were not the least
bit interested in Robin's windswept hair. The packaging of Air Strike Robin enticingly
shows how he can be joined up with Turbo Surge Batman to form "a high-tech team with
double the powerful capacity to conquer Gotham City's most diabolical villains!" But the
fact that this device wasn't in the pack was noticed immediately by the children. Only
later, when David discovered that Batman has holes in his feet and that he could hitch a
ride on Robin's airship, was all forgiven.

Answers:
01. D or A
02. C
03. B
04. C
05. D
06. B
07. D
08. E
09. C
10. A
11. C
12. B
13. A
14. D
15. E

3. Where did a scientist...

01. ... make muscles out of silicon? ...............
02. ... formulate a hypothesis about the number of stars with planets? ...............
03. ...develop a miniature microphone? ...............
04. ... classify numerous stars ...............
05. ... invent a more accurate means of measuring gravitational pull? ...............
06. ... make machinery so small it can hardly be seen? ............
07. ... divide stars according to their spectrum? ..........
13
08. ... find a new use for high-tech metals? ...............
09. ... explain that detecting planets was very difficult? ....
10. ... prove that some distant planets are far bigger than those in the solar
system? ...............

A. Australia
B. Italy
C. Harvard
D. Canada
E. Switzerland
F. California
G. New England
H. Britain

BIG SCIENCE AND SMALL

The solar system is not unique. Of course, one did not expect it to be. The sun could
hardly be the only star with planets circling round it. Until a couple of years ago, the
problem was that planets were very difficult to detect. The stars shine big and bright, but
the planets are small and dark. One Australian astronomer explained: "Looking for
planets outside the solar system is like looking for a speck of dust a foot way from a
1000-watt light bulb from the back of a big conference room." Even with the largest of
optical telescopes, it is impossible to see a planet as large as Jupiter against the
background of a nearby star.

A star can be analysed by reference to the light it emits, and the spectra of stars have been
classified since 1864 when the Italian astronomer, Secchi divided the spectra of stars into
four broad classes which more or less operated according to the colour of the star. This
classification by spectra was developed and refined at the Harvard observatory, where
more than 250,000 stellar spectra have been classified.

But when there is no light, the astronomer depends on the analysis of movement, so in
order to detect the planets what scientists do is look for stars that have a wobble. A star
with a planet does not stay still in space because the gravitational pull of the planet will
swing it around, although only by a very small amount. By monitoring the star's
movement in space over many years, astronomers can pick up the wobble superimposed
on the star's straight-line track.

A new technique has been developed by Dr Bruce Campbell, an astronomer working at

Victoria University in British Columbia, Canada. He has fed the light from the stars
through a container of hydrogen fluoride gas, which acts as a ruler. By this means he has
been able to detect wobbles 100 times smaller than so far seen. Such wobbles correspond
to the pull that might be expected from planets similar in size to Jupiter - ten times the
size of the earth - in this solar system.

Dr Campbell draws the conclusion that as many as half the 200 billion stars in the Milky
Way will have planets in orbit round them. The question then has to be asked, if there are
billions of planets, might there then not be billions of different forms of life existing upon
14
them? The astronomers treat such a question with extreme caution, but one of them did
say: "At least this encourages us to speculate more." Another team of astronomers in
Switzerland has found evidence that some of these planets may be 100 to 200 times the
size of the Earth.

If the mind boggles when it looks at the galaxy, it is stunned when it contemplates the
silicon chip. Microtechnology is the name of the game. The chip is no longer a matter of
information and processing power. Professor Richard Muller of the Sensor and Actuator
Centre of the University of California at Berkeley says: "You can't get much done with
just a brain. Just like a human brain a computer needs information, and a means of acting
on it. So we've developed silicon noses, eyes and ears - and we're on the way to
developing silicon muscle."

Professor Muller's team has made working gear slides and spiral springs from silicon. His
experiments demonstrate the possibility of constructing working machinery smaller than
a speck of dust. The sensors and activators are cut in three dimensions by depositing the
silicon in layers in a matrix of silicon dioxide. Acid is then used to dissolve the dioxide
from around the minute mechanisms, so that they can then move freely. At these minute
sizes, silicon has the hardness of quartz and the resilience of stainless steel. Bell
laboratories in New England have already produced a 600 micron microturbine with eight
blades that spin at 24,000 rpm. A research project to develop a micromotor-powered
microsaw for eye surgery is already under way. There is eventually the possibility of
microrobots - self-propelled and combining tools, brain and motor in one chip. Tiny
robots could chug along the blood stream to unclog arteries, perform microsurgery on
individual cells. Berkeley has developed a microphone on a chip which picks up all the
ranges of the human voice. Clearly, this would make, not only the ultimate bug, but also
the ultimate implanted hearing aid.

Alloys research for new and faster chips for the computer industry has has led to a major
new development in aesthetics. Professor Colin Humphreys in Britain has plunged into
the brassiere industry. Old-fashioned brassieres were underwired and had to be hand-
washed because they would be distorted if machine washed. The latest brassieres are to
be made of shape-memory alloys. These alloys retain a memory of their original shape
which they recover when heated. The professor waxed enthusiastic: "You can fling them
into the washing machine. They will snap back into shape after you put them on, when
they reach body temperature."

Answers:
01. F
02. D
03. F
04. C
05. D
06. F or G
07. B
08. H
09. A
10. E

15
4. Which source of power...
01. ... is volatile when warmed? ..........................
02. ... is the dominant source of energy in some countries? ..........................
03. ... could help clean up the English environment? ..........................
04. ... was thought to be in short supply? ..........................
05. ... is a direct cause of illness? ..........................
06. ... is easy to extract? ..........................
07. ... is the most economical? ..........................
08. ... produces enormous heat? ..........................
09/10. ... depends on high technology? .......................... ..........................
11. ... is a bad investment? ..........................
12. ... is abundant? ..........................

A. nuclear power
B. nuclear fusion
C. methane hydrate
D. fossil fuels
E. natural gas
F. solar energy
G. wave and tidal power

SOURCES OF POWER

Nuclear power has lost its popularity since 1986, and the Chernobyl catastrophe. More
recently, privatisation of the British electrical industry has demonstrated that nuclear
power is hopelessly uncommercial, at least in Britain. No one wanted to buy shares in the
nuclear power stations, so the government had to keep them. The taxpayer can now look
forward to the high cost of decommissioning them. Lastly, the nuclear industry has begun
to pay out large sums of money to some of the people claiming compensation for
radiation-related diseases and deaths. Thus, for a number of reasons - danger, money,
health - nuclear power looks bad, but yet some countries are dependent upon it. Sixty-five
per cent of French electricity is produced by nuclear power. In Germany, 30%, and in
Britain and Spain, about 20%. Because of that dependence, a great deal of vastly
expensive research is being conducted into nuclear fusion. Possibly that may be where
the future lies, but it is a long way off because of the complex technology required to
create the magnetic fields needed to contain the fusion, which occurs at temperatures of
100 million degrees Centigrade.

Fossil fuels have also had a bad press because of their pre-eminent contribution to the
greenhouse effect. Their advantage lies in their versatility and their availability. With
fossil fuels things go wrong slowly, unlike a nuclear catastrophe where it all happens at
once. As to their availability, until a few years ago, scientists thought the world would run
out of natural gas within 50 years. Now it seems that there may be enough of the stuff to
last for as long as 5,000 years. It exists in the form of solid methane hydrate, a chemically
16
bound mixture of methane gas and water that occurs as vast sheets or lenses. It looks like
water ice, and is quite stable as long as it is kept very cold. When it warms it quickly
decomposes to give methane gas and water. The amount of gas inside the solid is
considerable: a cubic metre of hydrate yields about 1.5 thousand cubic metres of natural
gas.

Geologists have found the hydrate at more than 80 sites in the Canadian and Siberian
Arctic. The deposits are vast: one exploration drilled nine successive holes off the coast
of Guatemala and found the same four-metre thick hydrate zone. Off California, another
deposit covers several hundred square miles and is 300 metres thick at the centre.
Hydrate will form anywhere where the temperature is low enough or the pressure high
enough. Russian geologists estimate that at least 85 per cent of the deep ocean floor is
suitable territory. Some American sources say that the total gas available could be as high
as 500 billion million cubic feet, enough for 5,000 years. Surface sea water at 20 degrees
centigrade would be warm enough to melt the hydrate if it was pumped down to the sea
bed. Even in the Arctic, one would only have to burn seven per cent of the gas evolving
to heat enough air to keep up a steady flow of gas. Development of the hydrate will
become commercially viable when the other conventional gas deposits - easier to extract
- have been exhausted. By then, of course, the results of burning fossil fuels may have
become so obnoxious, that the stuff will simply be left where it is.

As the extraction of fossil fuels becomes increasingly expensive, so the development of

alternative, renewable energy sources makes steady, although slow, progress. Principal
among them are solar energy, and wave and tidal power. Solar energy cells are now
approaching 29 per cent efficiency, which compares with the 31 per cent efficiency of a
coal-fired power station. At Stanford University in California, engineers have achieved
these high efficiencies by modifying the design of the solar cell. They have roughened the
surface to trap light, which bounces about within the silicon, dislodging electrons and
setting up electrical currents. The cell is built on a silicon chip which is 80 micrometres
thick and is three by five millimetres in size. It is expected that the new chip will halve
the cost of today's solar energy.

In 1985, near Bergen, in Norway, the world's first wave power station was opened. The
energy of the waves was captured, converted into electricity and delivered as light and
heat into the homes of people living miles from the sea. Tidal power has been in use to
generate electricity for over 20 years: although it provides only 240 megawatts of
electricity, the station at Rance, in Brittany, has the distinction of producing the cheapest
electricity in the world. When it first came into operation, it was considered a white
elephant, but that was when oil cost less than a fistful of dollars.

Britain is ideally placed to take advantage of wave and tidal power. In theory, wave
energy could provide the country with more electricity than is at present available from
all existing power stations. It would also remove most of the acid rain that pollutes
England and its neighbours. Development of such resources was not one of the success
stories of the Thatcher years but, sooner or later, the investment, probably about £10
billion, will have to be made.

Exercise Answers:
17
01. C
02. A
03. G
04. E
05. A
06. E
07. G
08. B
09/10. B, F
11. A
12. C

Part 2

Complete the passage with the correct paragraphs. There is one more paragraph than you
need.

COMPUTERS: FROM HACKING TO CRIME

Known by the name of Bug Hunter, the hacker said he broke into the files for the
pleasure of seeing the welcome, "Good afternoon, HRH Duke of Edinburgh."
01. ..............................
He typed 1234, which turned out to be a testing file with access to all the Prestel code
numbers.
02. ..............................

Hacking started as an intellectual game among fanatical American computer enthusiasts.

They enjoyed cracking the private codes of large business computers and creating more
or less harmless chaos in their files. But now the practice has spread to computer fraud,
and to the reading of confidential information.
03. ..............................

Once a hacker has a genuine user s network identity, he can run up bills for electronic
mail and telexes, and read all the user s private mail. It is almost impossible to detect the
unauthorised use of the service.
04. ..............................

Much more serious than amateur hacking is the professional computer fraud. Millions of
pounds have been stolen from financial institutions through computer fraud, usually by
the illegal transfer of funds to foreign bank accounts.
05. ..............................

Only a fraction of such crimes are reported because companies fear the publicity would
damage customer confidence. And the publicity would be harmful.
06. ..............................

Each computer terminal is the equivalent of a cheque book. Instead of signing the cheque,
with a terminal you authorise it, and the money goes.
18
A.

Cases of large-scale mischief caused by hackers are rare. In one case, a hacker succeeded
in entering a word processor used by the Israeli Foreign Minister, and added humorous
sentences to a speech prepared for him. The changes were spotted as he was about to
deliver the speech. In another case, a credit agency with confidential details on 90 million
people discovered that hackers had broken its security codes, and had been exchanging
the passwords on electronic bulletin boards.

B.

Computers have become commonplace. Soon, every home will have one. They will be
easy to use and allow people to shop and study and work at home. We live in
revolutionary times but this is a bloodless revolution.

C.

An accountant explains: "Computer technology makes large scale financial dealing

possible. It is all tied in with buying, selling, making deals and transferring the money.
But security systems have not kept up with the computing systems. Everywhere, there is
the opportunity, if somebody has the urge, to misuse the system. The crimes are
discovered, but the problem is that they are not discovered quickly enough. Even if it is
detected within a few hours, it is too late. The person who has committed the crime has
already left the building and caught a plane."

D.

The hacker made his way into British Telecom's huge Prestel system by using a home
computer. He typed out an experimental line of numbers, all twos, when the computer
asked for a 10-digit identity code. It worked, and the computer asked for a four-digit
password.

E.

Bug Hunter was eventually tracked down and arrested. He was very bitter about being
treated as a criminal. He said: "They should be employing people like me to plug gaps in
the system. I'm disgusted." He was fined £600. A spokesman said: "Security has been
tightened considerably."

F.

There are a number of cases where more than a million has been stolen. These crimes are
easy to carry out because large companies and financial institutions are connected to the
network used by the clearing banks for transfer funds around the world.

G.

19
All a hacker needs is a cheap home computer, a modem to link it to the telephone
network, and a basic knowledge of how computers talk to each other. The hacker then
telephones mainframe computer services, such as electronic mail networks, and attempts
to break the security code. Callers have three chances to type in the correct code before
the call is cut off. By typing in a series of educated guesses time after time, hackers can
find their way into a system. They may be helped by people choosing obvious code-
words, such as first names or addresses

Answers:
01. C
02. D
03. D
04. B
05. B
06. B

2. THE BUSINESS OF SPORT

Sport in the market place has been taken to its limits by what is politely called "Corporate
Hospitality". It is also called, rather less politely, the "Company Binge". In its more
extreme forms it demonstrates at least three of the seven deadly sins, Pride, Sloth and
Gluttony.
01. ........................................

The freeloaders are primarily interested in a day out of the office, in being able to say
they have been to a "prestige event", and in being able to booze at their shareholders'
expense. They are not really interested in the sport itself. There they are, about a hundred
of them, at an important race meeting, stuck in a tent about 20 metres away from the
track, their salmon lunch digested, and launched upon their tenth case of champagne.
Three uniformed girls go round collecting their bets so that the corporate guests, having
spent a morning fighting their way through traffic jams, can now watch the race on
television monitor screens.
02. ........................................

Of all the money-men in sport, the best-known and the richest is Mark McCormack. Mr
McCormack launched himself on his career when he signed up Arnold Palmer back in
1959. That year, aged 30, Palmer earned $60,000. Two years later, McCormack had
raised Palmer's annual income to $500,000. By then there were Arnold Palmer tearooms
in Tokyo. McCormack did not sit on his hands. Every year he travelled 10 times the
circumference of the globe. He signed up the top players in every sport to be represented
by his IMG, International Management Group. He created events such as the World
Match Play golf championship. More importantly, he raised the income of tennis and golf
championships, events much sought after by television world-wide.
03. ........................................

20
Not everyone likes the activities of Mr McCormack, just as real racegoers and tennis fans
are not too keen on the company tents in which the champagne flows like water. The
Office of Fair Trading has been concerned about the question of monopoly, that IMG
handles both ends of the market, the event and the competitor. One critic has remarked:
"Sport at the top is almost completely show business - the cult of the individual, more
money and less sportsmanship, more emphasis on winning."
04. ........................................

When it comes to appearance money, who gets what is usually a well-kept secret, but a
women's 3,000 metre race held in England in 1985 shows what happens. The race was
staged very late in the evening so that it could be shown live on American prime-time
television. The highest-paid runner, Zola Budd, was a white South African whose
participation was likely to cause a minor riot in view of the world-wide ban on South
African participation in international sport. For her publicity value, Miss Budd was paid
£90,000. In the race, she came in fourth.
05. ........................................

Mark McCormack defends himself. He points out his effect on the game of golf, saying:
"We've improved the game. We've take the British Open live to Australia and Japan and
helped put up the prize money, I wouldn't be presumptive enough to say I'm a saviour, but
I've contributed." He goes on: "I'm accused of multiple interests, but if I didn't take the
risks, for example with the world matchplay golf, there would be no event. I've not been
secretive. I don't pretend we don't own certain aspects of golf." He protests that he is
accused of being ruthless, but he says that he is much more up-front than most. From his
point of view, international federations don't care about sport, they care about control.
06. ........................................

The point has to be that McCormack sees sport as a marketable commodity first,
foremost and last. Commercial efficiency is what matters. He is quite clear what that
means for the Olympic Games. He says that the Olympics should be open.
07. ........................................

Whatever McCormack says, the truth of the matter may be that money in sport creates
more money, not better sport. For example, an Italian football club is reputed to be ready
to pay £18 million for a British player. Will that make its matches any better to watch?
08. ........................................

A. Thus, it may be said, athletes who take drugs in order to enhance their performance do
so simply in order to boost their "appearance money", their value to the organisation, not
in order to get their names in the record books.

B. The question ought to be what is good for the public. Some people want control for its
own sake, and seek their own goals under the guise of being pure.

C. Even more absurd is the company marquee at Wimbledon: the company may have
only ten Centre Court tickets, but they invite 50 to lunch. Guests are shepherded to and
from the court in shifts so that they can each see a few minutes of play. Such an event

21
may please those who like to stuff strawberries, cream and champagne, but it is not too
satisfying for the person who only came for the tennis.

D. In 1973, Wimbledon's profit on the open championship was under £60,000, with
television rights producing 15 per cent. Ten years later, the surplus was £4.5 million on a
turnover of just under ten million.

E. They should include professionals. There's nothing wrong with that. The Olympic
problem is its sham.

F. Not only that, but athletes both amateur and professional have been accused of taking
performance-enhancing drugs. It does not matter whether they are paid or not. It still
brings sport into disrepute.

G. At the Wimbledon tennis championships, for example, corporate guests will get
through 15 tons of strawberries. When you reckon that the caterers sell about 100gm of
strawberries, with cream, for £2, you get some idea of the money involved. Overall,
corporate entertainment in Britain is now a £50 million industry.

H. Wouldn't it be more interesting, more real, more fun to go and stand in the mud at the
side of the pitch in your local park and watch a couple of amateur teams battle it out?

I. The winner was an American, Mary Slaney, represented by IMG, who was
paid £54,000. The second and third in the race, Cornelia Burki of Switzerland
and Ingrid Kristiansen of Norway, received £2,000 between them.

Answers:
01. G
02. C
03. D
04. A
05. I
06. B
07. E
08. H

3. JOGGER S PAW AND THE CRITTER CAR

In the United States, among the yuppies, as they sit over their lunchtime Perrier, the main
topics of conversation are money and the strain of jogging, especially upon their pet dogs.
01.............................................

Doggie joggers are done in from pounding the burning pavements. All summer long, the
95 degree days make the sidewalk searing hot. As pet owners insist their pets accompany
them, hot spells result in burnt paws and seared foot-pads. But, although there is no cure,
jogger s paw can be prevented. Davia Gallup knows the dog-jog scene.
02.............................................
22
Ms Gallup is particularly strong on jogging with a dog in a fog, and on dealing with any
skunks or porcupines one may jog across. She says that owners must keep their pet's feet
away from the hot concrete and the burning asphalt, especially in Texas. And pets should
start gradually. They might, for example, begin with three 20-minute runs a week. She
says that statistics show that today many dogs are overweight, just like people...
03. .............................................

In Houston, things may be tough, but in New York, man s best friend can take it easy. He
doesn t even rave to go out for his walkies. He can take the critter car. The critter car is
the brainchild of Ms Barbara Meyers. She was a suffering pet owner. She had been ill
herself and was unable to drive her dog, Duke, a German shepherd, from her home in
Brooklyn for frequent visits to an animal hospital in Manhattan. Ms Meyers said the she
had a very difficult time when Duke was ill.
04. .............................................

She invested $50,000 and now operates two critter cars, Chevrolet station wagons, which
take pets to vets, groomers, hotels, parks and anywhere else they want to go. The driver
of one of the critter cars is John Feyko. He explains how he came to take the job, saying
that he used to be a straight taxi driver. He was stabbed and beaten up three times - all for
$160. Then one night he was waiting at a traffic light and made the mistake of leaving his
cab window open. Someone grabbed his hair and stabbed him in the arm. They did not
get any money.
05. .............................................

You see, most cab drivers won't stop for people with animals. They don't want the smell
in the car, they re afraid of being bitten, and if it is raining, animals can make the seats
muddy. The next passenger gets his pants dirty - and sues the driver. There's too much
risk.
06. .............................................

New York is a city where you can buy mink-lined coats for dogs, silver engraved plates
for their dining pleasure, and little shovels called "pooper scoopers" for clearing up their
mess.
07. .............................................

One owner explained: "Old bones on the carpet don't look nice, so we buy rawhide
chewy treats in familiar food shapes. They don't make the place look a mess. We
sometimes also buy a pizza made specially for the dogs. If the family is having pizza, it s
nice for the dog to have something that looks the same."

A. She started the world s largest race for dogs and their owners. It brings together 1000
six-legged duos in Houston, Texas, for a two-mile test of obedience and training. Now
she has written a book, Running with Man s Best Friend.

B. Being pampered is probably as bad for animals as it is for people. Your pet could
become irritable and bad-tempered, constantly demanding more delicacies and making
your life a misery. Better a working dog than a lap-dog.

23
C. Still, he knew then that he should look for calmer waters. He answered an ad, driver
wanted, must love animals. Now he drove the critter car.

D. As far as their pets are concerned, the money is unimportant. What matters to the
jogging doggy is the heat of the sidewalk.

E. People treat their animals well in New York, but I have seen some who are very over-
pampered. Their owners buy them expensive food and clothing.

F. Owners can also take their pets to the Doggie Deli in Manhattan s fashionable Sutton
Place. Here the pampered pooch can munch on chewy rawhide treats shaved like
doughnuts, hamburgers, meat balls and fried chicken pieces.

G. Eventually she recovered and was able to drive him herself. But after he died she
started the critter car service because she did not want other pet owners to go through the
transport difficulties that she had experienced.

H. Dog owners can help create the total animal, equipped to cope with the dog-eat-dog
stresses of modern life. Serious behaviour problems result from modern dogs having too
little to do.

Answers:
01. D
02. A
03. H
04. G
05. C
06. E
07. F

4. FOOD AND HEALTH

After the cigarette manufacturers, it has become the turn of the food processors to suffer
the attacks of those who would have us lead a healthy life. Sometimes you have the
feeling that almost everything you eat is liable to damage your brain, clog your arteries,
ulcerate your stomach, or impact your intestine.
01. .....................................................

One dietician writes that people wouldn't buy a pork pie if chemicals had not been
designed into them. A pork pie can contain as much as 50 per cent of highly saturated fat
which is bad for the heart and arteries.
02. .....................................................

The additives in the pie do little harm in themselves. The fat is made acceptable by a
perfectly safe emulsifier. Added colour, which makes the fat look like meat, might cause
a few people to have allergic reactions. The anti-oxidant, put in the pie to prevent the fat
going rancid, may be a natural one. And sodium glutamate, used as a flavour enhancer,
may be all right in limited quantities.
24
03. .....................................................

Since a study by Johns Hopkins Medical Centre, Baltimore, in the mid-eighties, coffee
has been on everyone's blacklist. According to the study, regardless of the measure of
coffee consumption used, analyses found that heavy coffee drinkers were almost three
times more likely to have coronary disease than were non-drinkers. Even one or two cups
of coffee a day appear to be associated with a small extra risk of heart disease - a one-
third increase over non-drinkers. Coffee drinkers are more likely to suffer form angina,
heart attacks or sudden death caused by a coronary.
04. .....................................................

Few arguments create greater passion among medical experts than the postulated link
between diet and heart disease. Throughout the seventies, the link seemed to be
irrefutable. The work of Ancel Keys in America showed that heart disease correlated in
different countries with dairy food consumption. His work was supported by studies of
Japanese migrants to the United States who developed the heart disease pattern of their
adopted country. By the end of the eighties, however, a reaction had set in. Some doctors
refused to accept any connection between diet and heart disease. They have argued that
diets which cut back on dairy produce, although unlikely to cause physical harm, could
lead to malnutrition, particularly among children.
05. .....................................................

The nutritionists have fought back. They remain convinced that sugary, fatty foods lead to
preventable ill health. One doctor argues that a fibre-rich diet is only of use to those who
suffer from diabetes. Rubbish, say the nutritionists, and go on to point out that "over one
third of British adults are constipated. At least one in seven takes laxatives. And dietary
fibre is of proven value in the treatment of constipation."
06. .....................................................

What we do know is that nutrition does affect health. Too little food and too much food
are both bad for you. In Britain, poor boys tend to be two inches shorter on average than
rich boys. Anecdotal evidence is not really convincing, on the basis that one swallow
does not make a summer. Still, I do remember as a dreadful warning the landlord of the
lodgings I stayed in for a while. At breakfast in the morning, he would drink half a cup of
warm bacon fat taken from the frying pan, slap his belly, and say: "Bacon fat. That's good
for you." His skin was tight and glistening. He could have understudied Jaws. Anyway, a
month or so after I left I heard that he had died, suddenly, of a heart attack. Of course,
one swallow doesn't make a heart attack: you have to take quite a few of them.

A. The study did not look into the risks of tea or cola drinks, but as these drinks also
contain caffeine, their heavy consumption would be expected to carry similar risks. The
one piece of good news appears to be that the risk decreases rapidly once a person stops
drinking coffee.

B. A perfectly good pork pie could be made from reasonable ingredients but it is cheaper
to make it with additives because less meat is then needed.

25
C. They are appalled that breakfast, that traditional British meal, should be under attack
by the spectre of disease. Come between some doctors and their bacon and eggs and
feelings will run high.

D. It is possible that bad health is more a matter of genetic make-up than dietary habits.
Healthy parents, with an active way of life, tended to have active healthy children.
Parents who were themselves weakly, or who led excessively passive television-bound
lives, tended to breed couch potatoes.

E. There may be a wholemeal crust, but the additives in it deceive out senses and
persuade us to eat too much fat. Even if the additives themselves are considered to be
relatively safe, the nutritional consequences are appalling.

F. Yet another doctor argues that dental decay should really be seen as a disease which
results from a lack of fluoride. What we need to do is clean our teeth like crazy, have
them coated with sealants, and take fluorides daily. The nutritionist blasts back by
pointing out that you might as well say that headaches are caused by a lack of aspirin.

G. On the other hand, it is certainly true that there is nothing like reading the list of
ingredients on the back of a cereal packet or a pot of jam to put you off your breakfast. As
for sausages and pork pies - they might have been concocted by the Borgias.

Answers:
13. G
14. B
15. E
16. A
17. C
18. F

Part 3

1. THE ECONOMY: SHADES OF GREY

The London Times reports that a Spanish tax inspector boarded a Mediterranean cruise
ship incognito. He sought to check whether the returns made by the cruise company, in
respect of food and drink consumed, tallied with reality. He put on his brightest holiday
clothes and went aboard. Two things followed quickly. First, his disguise was found to be
inadequate; he was discovered immediately. Secondly, it happened that the ship had a
large number of British holiday-makers aboard. These merry jokers forced him to walk
the plank. While he was swimming around in the water, some of the merrier girls dived in
after him and merrily removed his shorts. We may feel sorry for the poor fellow, who was
only doing his job, but the story does show that tax collectors are as unpopular now as
they were in the days of Robin Hood or George Washington.

26
Tax inspectors are universally unpopular, not simply because they collect money, but
because they are the greatest of all bureaucrats. They put their little restrictions upon
every aspect of ordinary life. In Britain, if you drive a friend to the station, babysit for the
neighbours, fix a car engine in exchange for a bottle of whisky, or make a pot of jam for
charity, then technically, you have become a part of the shadow economy. The estimates
of the size of the shadow economy vary greatly, from two per cent to 15 per cent of the
national income, the difference in Britain of between four and 54 billion pounds. The best
estimate puts it at around five per cent. One of the reasons for the difference is the
definition which is used. The black economy is only the darkest side of the picture. For
example, the shadow economy runs from voluntary work for charities, to barter between
neighbours, to housework. But it also takes in handling stolen goods, tax evasion, and
working while drawing welfare payments.

One area of growth of the shadow economy in Britain has been household employment,
and services to help the working mother. Clearly, no one pays their window-cleaner by
cheque, not if they want to see him again. But, more importantly, in the last 25 years, as
married women flooded out to work, they have begun again to do what their
grandmothers did, to pay others to look after their homes and children. This area of home
help has become a deep grey as far as the tax authorities are concerned. In general, the
shadow economy becomes pitch black once money changes hands, in used notes: for
example, when we pay each other for child-minding rather than taking it in turns to run a
playgroup.

While the tax authorities have their beady eye on payment in kind, there may be another
distinction, between regular work on the one hand, and occasional, irregular favours on
the other. Even so, it would seem that moonlighting, the second job, the odd extra
evening work, is what makes up most of the shadow economy. A more useful distinction
lies between the trivial and the substantial. There is a lot of difference between giving
someone a regular lift to the station in the mornings, perhaps in exchange for some help
with the petrol bill, and loaning him a company car which is not declared on his tax
returns.

A large proportion of the shadow economy might not be liable to tax anyway. Small
traders, for example, prefer cash as much to avoid office work as to cut their sales tax.
But, at the bottom end of the scale, even very small cash earnings can cause trouble to the
unemployed. The reason lies in the speed with which unemployment support benefits are
withdrawn if even small amounts of money are earned. Conservative politicians are
always saying that a large proportion of Britain s unemployed are earning a healthy living
in the shadow economy. With three million officially, and four million unofficially, out of
work, they are more likely to be picking at bones rather then living off the fat of the land.

The shadow economy may be essential to the health of the country. Of course, tax
enforcement is necessary, but snooping is not and that is where one loses sympathy with
the Spanish tax inspector. There needs to be a balance which can possibly be achieved by
limiting the state s legal interest in small sums, the taxation of which is more expensive
than the revenue collected.

27
Select the answer most likely to be correct.

01. Why did the Spanish tax inspector end up in the Mediterranean? .......................

A. He was travelling incognito.

B. The passengers were British.

C. His disguise was penetrated.

D. He was disliked.

02. Why did the passengers force him to walk the plank? ..............................

A. They were playing at being pirates.

B. The ship was under construction.

C. To prove he was sober.

D. Because he was a tax inspector.

03. Why are tax inspectors so unpopular? .............................

A. They persecute people.

B. They have no sense of humour.

C. They send us forms to fill in.

D. They are petty-minded.

04. When does the grey economy become black? ..............................

A. When people exchange services.

B. When cash changes hands.

C. When people barter goods.

D. When a person handles stolen goods.

28
05. When a person moonlights, what does he do? .............................

A. Works at night, in the dark.

B. Has a second job, apart from his main work.

C. Works for himself, as self-employed.

D. Runs a nightclub or disco or other entertainment.

06. What are Britain's unemployed most likely to be doing? .............................

A. Earning a good living in the shadow economy.

B. Eking out a bare living.

C. Being investigated by bureaucrats.

D. Living off the fat of the land.

Answers:
01. D
02. E
03. G
04. A
05. F/C
06. C/F

2. PRIVATE SCHOOLS

Most countries have had, and some still have, educational systems that are, in one way or
another, social disasters. The English educational system is unique, however, in the
degree to which it has created educational institutions which perpetuate privilege and
social division. Most countries have some private schools for the children of the wealthy;
the English have dozens of them. In fact, about 3,000. Some nine million children are
educated at state schools; just under half a million are educated at private schools.

What is the result of such a system? The facts seem to speak for themselves. In the state
system, about eight per cent make it to university; in the private system, almost half the
students go on to university. But those statistics are deceptive: middle class children do
better at examinations than working class, and most of them stay on at school after 16.
Private schools are entirely middle class, and so this positive attitude creates an
environment of success.

29
Private schools are enormously expensive, as much as £18,000 a year for a boarder at
somewhere like Eton or Harrow to at least £8,000 a year almost everywhere. Why are
parents, many of whom are not wealthy or even comfortably off, willing to sacrifice so
much in the cause of their children's schooling? One father replied to this question by
saying: "Everything is on the margin. If my son gets a five per cent better chance of going
to university, that may be the difference between success and failure." You can believe
him if you like, but £50,000 minimum is a lot to pay for a five per cent better chance.
Most children, given the choice, would take the money. The real reason parents fork out
the cash is prejudice: they don't want little Henry mixing with the workers, or getting his
accent wrong. And anyway, at your next dinner party it won't sound too good if all the
guests are sending their kids to St Swotting-by-the-Sea, and you say your kid is going to
the state school down the road even if, as a result, you are able to serve Chateau Margaux
with the filet steak.

Of course, at many of the best private schools, your money buys you something. One
school, with 500 pupils, has 11 science laboratories; another, with 800, has 30 music
practice rooms; another has 16 squash courts, and yet another has its own beach. On
investment in buildings and facilities, the private schools spend £300 per pupil; the state
system spends less than £50. On books, the ratio is £150 to £50. One of the things that
your money buys which is difficult to quantify is the appearance of the school, the way it
looks. Most private schools are established in beautiful, well-kept country houses, with
extensive grounds and gardens. They look good in contrast with the state schools, the
worst of which, like public lavatories, are tiled or covered in graffiti, and the best of
which have architectural design on the level of an industrial shed.

Leaving aside the question of money, the attitudes generally to be found in the private
schools are repellent. In a book published in 1988, some former Etonians were invited to
talk about themselves and their old school. One of them said: "At school you could point
out the freaks very easily. Freaks were spotty or ugly, freaks were scholars, basically
people who had too many brains, and were looked down upon because they didn't pay."
Yet another talked of the hunger marchers of the thirties who came through Windsor like
"some sort of cloth-capped cavalcade", and went on "one was more aware of George V
dying, because you were part of the same village." Another said that saving up to send a
son to Eton was "the wrong thing... you're bred in terms of privilege and education to be a
racehorse, and you end up having to toil in some office block somewhere in the City...,
it's a waste of an expensive training. You don't go and run a donkey in the Derby, do
you?"

One old Etonian tells how he was received by the printers when he went to work on a
provincial newspaper. Printers were well-known as belonging to the most left-wing of all
unions, and yet: "They loved me, they adored me... because I was nice and jolly with
them, I was little Lord Fauntleroy, and they used to say, `Isn't it marvellous, he was at
Eton and he still talks to us, and he jokes and laughs and he's really quite a nice guy.'"

Some, perhaps many, private school pupils find life there unpleasant in the extreme. Such
a one was Graham Greene. Yet he still sent his own son to the same school. In another
case, an Old Etonian admitted the school was "a ghastly hideous place, it was a
nightmare" and yet he too wishes the school upon his son: "I found it was a reflex that, as

30
soon as Alexander was born, within three weeks I went and registered him." Rather, when
one thinks about it, as one might register a pedigree dog with the Kennel Club.

One has to ask the question if such privileges and attitudes are relevant to a country in
which there is almost as great a chance of an individual attending psychiatric hospital as
of going to university.

01. The English educational system is different from any other because

A. has a balance between state and private education

B. has more private schools than anywhere else
C. contributes to creating a class system
D. has so many things wrong with it

02. More private school children go to university because

A. they are better taught

B. their parents are middle class
C. the schools create success
D. they stay at school longer

03. Parents most often send their children to private school

A. for social reasons

B. for a margin of success
C. to show how much money they have
D. to pass university entrance examinations

04. Children at private schools

A. work very hard all the time

B. are conformist and prejudiced
C. are very clever and highly educated
D. are well-bred and cultivated

05. Former students of private schools

A. automatically send their children there

B. are inclined to think it is not worth the money
C. are worried that they might end up in psychiatric hospital
D. think carefully and then enrol their child in the best school

Answers:
01. C 5. A
02. B
03. A
04. B

31
3. SAFETY AT SEA

Catastrophes at sea and in the air make grim headlines: they represent a great deal of
sorrow for the families of the dead and injured. Why do they occur? Terrorists plant
bombs, as in the case of the destruction of the American airliner over Lockerbie in
Scotland. Pyromaniacs light fires, as in the case of the ferry, Scandinavian Star, sailing
from Norway to Denmark. In the week following that tragedy, there were two other cases
of fires on board ferries: on one plying between Wales and Ireland, and on another
between Portsmouth and Cherbourg. In both of them, a man died.

Clearly, fire is a commonplace hazard, and a very dangerous one, at sea. Talking after the
Scandinavian Star had been towed into the small port of Lysekil, a Swedish police
spokesman made it clear how awful if had been. He said: "The toll from the blaze that
engulfed the ferry south of Oslo fjord is still officially 75 dead and 60 missing but about
100 bodies have already been taken off the ship and as many as 50 to 100 could still be
on board. People tried to save themselves in the cabins and they are lying in big piles and
it's difficult to figure out how many there are. There are a lot of children."

In the immediate aftermath of such catastrophes reports of inadequate safety measures

circulate. On board the Scandinavian Star, a fireman said the ferry had only one system to
pump and spray water on to the flames and that pumping and spraying had to be done
alternately. On a wider scale, newspapers reported once again on the world-wide system
of "flagging-out" which means that ships are not registered in the countries where they
operate, and where the regulations are strict and expensive, but in places like Panama and
Cyprus and the Bahamas, where they are lax and cheap. The Scandinavian Star, although
Danish-owned, was registered in the Bahamas.

One of the more outrageous cases came to light in October 1989. A general cargo ship
named the Bosun set sail from Hamburg under the flag of the small central American
state of Belize. West German police arrested and charged two men, the ship's British
master and its German owner. They were charged with flying a false flag, and forgery of
Belize government documents. A police officer said: "Belize was not the latest entrant in
the cheap flag stakes; they in fact operate no shipping whatsoever. When we contacted
the Belize High Commission in London, they were astonished to learn that a ship was
pretending to be registered in their country."

Rules are laid down for ship safety by United Nations organisations. The rules are strict,
and specify that a ship must be built with heat and fire resistant bulkheads, fire doors to
passenger and crew areas, sealed cable and air conditioning trunking to block smoke,
non-combustible materials and/or sprinkler systems, smoke detectors and alarms, and
signposted emergency exits. But all these rules of ship design are meaningless according
to an expert from the Nautical Institute. He explains: "The big loophole is the lack of
power to test whether these rules are being enforced. The port state is entitled to carry out
spot checks on ships to make sure their safety certificates are in order; the lifeboats are all
there and don't have holes in them; and that there are the necessary charts, life-jackets in
the racks, and fire hoses in their reels. But they don't have the power to test whether they
all work, or the crews know how to use them. I think the public has a right to be
worried." He goes on to point out that the Scandinavian Star would have been built to a
very high design standard. However, it is likely that neither her crew nor her safety
32
equipment could have been checked in the Bahamas before she began carrying
passengers.

Why do the shipowners do it? According to the Secretary of the National Union of
Seamen, the answer is cost. He says: "The Danish owners of the ill-fated Scandinavian
Star could have registered her in Denmark and employed ratings belonging to the
appropriate union. These would have been properly trained in fire-fighting and lifeboat
drills and been able to communicate with their officers and the passengers in the event of
an emergency. The ship would have come under the rigorous scrutiny of the Danish port
inspectorate.

"But the inspectors might have insisted on potentially costly modifications and the ratings
would have asked for Danish wages and accompanying social benefits. Much simpler
(not to mention cheaper) to register her in the Bahamas and at a stroke free the owners
from such irksome restrictions. Among the survivors of this horrific tragedy there may be
some ideologues who share this free-market philosophy, but I doubt it."

01. Fires sometimes occur on board ships

A. because someone deliberately lights them

B. when there are inadequate safety measures
C. when the crew has not been trained
D. because the safety measures are inadequate ...............

02. Flagging-out

A. is common all over the world

B. means that ships must register
C. is a matter of flying the national flag
D. helps poor nations export ...............

03. The Belize High commission was surprised to have a ship registered in the country
because

A. they had only just started registering shipping

B. it is a land-locked country, like Switzerland
C. no ships operate under the Belize flag
D. it was the first time forged Belize documents had been used ...............

04 When are the strict rules of shipbuilding ineffective?

A. When the crew is untrained.

B. When the safety equipment does not work.
C. If regulations are not enforced.
D. If there are not enough lifeboats. ...............

05. Being involved in a serious accident at sea is likely to make people sceptical of

33
A. free-market economics
B. ship builders
C. ship owners
D. government restrictions ...............

Answers:
01. A
02. A
03. C
04. C
05. A

4. INDUSTRIAL WASTE

Domestic waste is one thing; industrial waste is another. Industrial waste may contain
such nasty things as compounds of heavy metals and dioxins and PCBs. Nobody, but
nobody, wants that cancerous stuff in their own backyard. So what do you do? According
to one man in the business: "It's simple - you go to Senegal, Djibouti or somewhere like
Mauritania, all poor and semi-desert countries. You contact the local authorities and they
take you somewhere really crazy, out in the middle of nowhere, just scorpions and
snakes. You pay well, and then you start to dig your pit, some 30 metres down, all water-
proof and according to US, Swiss and EC regulations. Finally, you can start your
shipments."

In Europe it costs about $500 a ton to dispose of hazardous waste; in Africa, it can cost as
little as $2.50 a ton. Like the drugs rackets or the armaments business, the trade in toxic
waste frequently involves a man, a telephone and a small office, registered in a country
where owners do not have to be named. Payments made to African companies and
individuals are sometimes bigger than the entire GNP of those countries. But those
payments are not revealed. The business goes on in a sort of twilight zone between the
legal and the illegal. The director of the United Nations Register of Toxic Chemicals
explains: "What we have seen is the formation of middlemen, a telephone and a company
registered in Liechtenstein or the Isle of Man. They know nothing of who is generating
the waste, or possibly even what the waste is, but they get import permits in African
countries and then go to companies in Europe who have waste to dispose of." The sums
of money involved in the business are astronomical: according to a report in The
Independent, an African diplomat in London said he was offered £3 million by a
company dealing in toxic waste for an introduction to his country's president. A proverb
from northern England says: "Where there is muck, there is money." How true!

A typical case is that of Benin. Benin signed a ten-year deal with a Gibraltar-based
company to store up to one million tons of industrial waste a year from several European
countries. The price was $2.50 a ton, plus local investment. When one considers that the
customer will be charged one hundred times as much - $250 a ton - it is quite clear a lot
of money is being made by someone, especially over ten years. In this case the company
concerned was given a monopoly on waste shipments. It is perhaps worth noting that the
average income per capita in Benin is $300 a year and that the country's annual trading
deficit is $125 million. A properly organized waste disposal trade could easily wipe out
34
the country's national debt. One must suppose, possibly, that the failure of Benin to take a
"proper" commercial attitude to the toxic waste business lies in the country's Marxist-
Leninist political system or then, perhaps not. Also from Benin comes the story of the
shipment of two shiploads of radioactive waste from France. Reports that it has been
buried in an area known for its opposition to the government have been denied by Benin's
president, Matthieu Kerekou.

An interesting case is that of Guinea-Bissau, a place with a population of about a million,

a literacy rate of nine per cent, a GNP of $150 million, and a per capita annual income of
$170. Guinea-Bissau dropped plans to double its GNP by taking 15 million tons of toxic
waste form western countries. The deal was worth $600 million to the country over five
years. The price was $40 a ton. However, it has gone ahead with a deal with a Swiss
company to take 50,000 tons of toxic waste annually for 10 years.

One of the more publicised scandals occurred in Nigeria. It was deal arranged between
government departments and an import-export company. The company was registered to
"import residues of several industrial processes". Taking advantage of this broad and
imprecise definition, several Italian companies started importing the waste quite legally.
As a result, several Italians were arrested in Lagos. The waste was disposed of at Koko, a
small port, well away from Lagos and inspection. However, the waste stank. Drums of it
became so hot that dockers could not handle them. The smell of the waste affected the
whole area. It turned out that the drums contained PCB (polychlorobiphenyl).

The waste which worries people most of all is nuclear, both low-level and high-level
waste. You do not have to go to Africa to find it. England has large amounts, and has been
dumping low level waste into open pits for more than thirty years, on the coast beside one
of the country's beauty spots, the Lake District. The stuff was tipped loose into trenches
dug in the clay soil. When the trench was full, the eight-metre deep trenches were then
covered with soil. The water accumulating in them was allowed to run into the local
stream, and then into the Irish Sea, a great place to swim, and a great place for shellfish.
Now things have been tightened up: all the waste has to be in metal containers, and the
pits are lined with concrete.

The comments of the local Member of Parliament apply as much to Africa as they do to
the British nuclear industry. He said: "The scandalous length of time it has taken to put
this low-level waste site in order does not bode well for progress to the disposal of high-
level radioactive wastes. No wonder the not-in-my-backyard attitude persists..."

Well-run or not, would you want a toxic waste dump anywhere near your backyard?

01. The business of disposing of toxic waste requires

A. a large organisation
B. contacts in third world countries
C. licensing
D. a remote site

02. The organisers of the business prefer

35
A. limited investment
B. to work on their own
C. to deal with individuals rather then companies
D. anonymity

03. For some countries, the amount of money involved would

A. create a positive balance of trade
B. provide development capital
C. allow them to limit opposition to the government
D. encourage communism

04. The Nigerian company was able to import PCB toxic waste because

A. it had bribed senior politicians

B. the registration agreement was too vague
C. an import licence had been issued
D. the waste was low-level

05. The problem in England was that

A. a beauty spot was polluted
B. the waste dump was not lined with concrete
C. the waste had been left exposed for too long
D. the low-level waste escaped into the sea

Answers:
01. B
02. D
03. A
04. B
05. D

4. PART 4: ANGLO-INDIAN VOCABULARY

Answer from the paragraphs A to I.

Which "Indian" word(s)

is more likely to be Portuguese than Indian in origin? 01 . .......................
refers to coloured cloth? 02. ........................ 03. ........................
is in origin more north-western European than Indian? 04. ........................
derive from the name of a place in India? 05. ........................ 06. ........................
refers to something which is not, strictly speaking, properly Indian? 07. ....................
has been confused with a French equivalent? 08. .......................
came from Tamil? 09. ........................ 10. ........................
referred to a covering for the legs? 11. ........................
came into English from French? 12. ........................
became more precise in its meaning? 13. ........................

36
ANGLO-INDIAN ETYMOLOGY

A. Gingham

This is a kind of stuff, defined in the Draper's Dictionary as being made from cotton yarn
dyed before being woven. The origin of this word is obscure, but it is likely that it
originated in the Indian trade. Still, a Javanese dictionary gives ginggang, a sort of striped
East Indian cotton. The verb ginggang in Javanese means "to separate, to go away" but
this throws no light on the matter, nor can we connect the cloth with that of the name of a
place on the northern coast of Sumatra. On the other hand, the Eastern derivation of the
name has been entirely rejected. The right explanation is simply that gingham is an old
English spelling of a town in Brittany, Guingamp, where linen was once manufactured.

B. Bungalow

The most usual class of house that was occupied by Europeans in the interior of India,
being on one storey, and covered by a pyramidal roof, which in the normal bungalow is
of thatch, but may be of tiles without impairing its title to be called a bungalow. In
reference to the style of house, bungalow is sometimes used in contradistinction to the
(usually more pretentious) pucka house; by which latter term is implied a masonry house
with a terraced roof. A bungalow may be a small building of the type which we have
described, but of temporary material, in a garden. The term has been adopted by
Europeans generally in Ceylon and China. The word derives from bangla, which is
probably from the place Banga in Bengal. It is to be remembered that in Hindustan proper
the adjective, of or belonging to Bengal, is constantly pronounced as bangala or bangla.
The probability is that when Europeans started to build houses of this character in Behar
and Upper India, these were called Bangla or "Bengal-fashion" houses.

C. Calico

This cotton cloth, of a reasonably fine texture, occurs in the 17th century in the form
calicut. The word may have come into English through the French calicot, which in turn
comes from Calicut, which in the Middle Ages was the chief city and one of the ports of
Malabar. The fine cotton material of the Malabar coast was mentioned by Marco Polo.
The cotton itself seems to have been brought from the hinterland as Malabar cotton,
ripening during the rains, is not usable.

D. Pyjamas

This word derives from the Hindi pae-jama, literally translated as "leg-clothing", a pair of
loose drawers, tied round the waist. Such a garment was worn by Sikh men and by
Moslems of both sexes. It was adopted by Europeans as comfortable casual clothing and
as night attire. It is probable that the clothing and the word came into English usage from
the Portuguese. Originally, pyjamas sometimes had feet sewn into them and when a
Jermyn St tailor was asked why, he replied, "I believe, sir, it is because of the white ants."
And as a traveller remarked in 1881, "The rest of our attire consisted of that particularly
light and airy white flannel garment, known throughout India as a pyjama suit."
37
E. Chintz

This, a printed or spotted cotton cloth, is called chint in Hindi, but appears to stem from
the Sanskrit, chitra, meaning variegated or speckled. The French form of the word is
chite, which has suggested the English sheet being of the same origin. But chite is
apparently of Indian origin, whilst sheet is much older than the Portuguese
communication with India. The manufacture and export of chintzes from India to Europe
has now ceased. However, in Java and Sumatra, chintzes of a very peculiar kind of
marbled pattern are still manufactured under the name of batik.

F. Veranda

This, referring to an open pillared gallery round a house, is one of the very perplexing
words for which at least two origins may be maintained, both with equal plausibility. One
group consider it to be of Sanskrit origin, barandah, meaning a portico. However, others
point out that verandah with the meaning in question does not belong to the older
Sanskrit, but is found only in comparatively modern works. That the word as used in
England and France was brought by the English from India need not be doubted. But
either in the same sense, or in one closely analogous, it seems to have existed quite
independently in both Spanish and Portuguese. The suspicion must be that the word was
taken to India by the Portuguese and thence re-exported by the English to northern
Europe.

G. Cheroot

This is a cigar, but the term has been appropriated especially to cigars truncated at both
ends, as Indian cigars always were in the old days. The word is Tamil, shuruttu, translated
as a roll of tobacco. In the south, cheroots were chiefly made at Trichinopoly and were
consequently known as Trichies. Grose, in around 1760, speaking of Bombay, whilst
describing the cheroot does not use that word, but another, buncus, which is now entirely
obsolete.

H. Thug

The word is found in Sanskrit and in Hindi where it means a cheat and a swindler, but
during the 19th century is acquired a more specific meaning, referring to robbers of a
particular type who formed a gang and pretended to be travellers, perhaps on business or
on a pilgrimage. They would join other travellers on the road, befriend them and then,
given a suitable opportunity, would strangle them, plunder them and bury their bodies.
The proper name for such people was phansigar, from the word phansi, meaning "a
noose", because they would throw a slip-knot around the necks of their victims.

I. Curry

Curry consists of meat, fish, fruit or vegetables, cooked with a quantity of bruised spices
and turmeric. A little of this gives flavour to a large mess of rice. The word is Tamil in
origin, kari, meaning "sauce". It is possible, however, that the kind of curry found in
restaurants is not of purely Indian origin, but has come down to us from the spiced
cookery of medieval Europe and Western Asia. There is, indeed, no room for doubt that
38
the capsicum or red pepper was introduced into India by the Portuguese. The Sanskrit
books of cookery, which cannot be of any considerable antiquity, contain many recipes
for curry without this ingredient. [definitions from Hobson-Jobson]

Answers;
01. F
02/03. A, E
04. A
05/06. B, C
07. I
08. E
09/10. G, I
11. D
12. C
13. H

2. Which city/cities:
.. were not founded by the Romans? 01. ................. 02. .................
03. ................. 04. .................
... exhibits antiquities in a bedroom? 05. .................
... Is not situated on a river? 06. .................
... Is named after a local food? 07. .................
... owes its existence entirely to the Church? 08. .................
... has musical sculptures in its cathedral? 09. .................
... has a cathedral that made money out of the royal family? 10. .................
... has made good use of its penal institutions? 11. .................
... was in the wool business? 12. .................
... has some well-trained birds? 13. .................
... has a cathedral with beautiful windows? 14. .................

ENGLISH CATHEDRAL CITIES

A.

Gloucester

is a former Roman city on the River Severn. The ground-plan of the original Roman
settlement is still preserved in the four main streets which meet at right-angles in the
centre of the town and are named after the four points of the compass: Northgate,
Southgate and so on. The fine cathedral is Norman to early Perpendicular with a notable
14th century east window. The tomb of the murdered King Edward II is to be found here.
The possession of the body of this unfortunate monarch proved a source of great wealth
to the cathedral, and the pulpit where the priest stood to receive the contributions of the
pilgrims still exists. Also of special interest are the crypt, the choir stalls and the noble
central tower. The Cathedral Close is entered by two old gateways. A Cross stands to the
memory of Bishop Hooper who was martyred here in 1555. Bishop Hooper's house is
now a museum of English Rural Life. The famous Gloucester bell-foundry of Abraham
Rudhall cast over 4,500 bells. The Three Choirs Music Festival takes place every third

39
year in Gloucester. Near the city is Matson House which was the headquarters of Charles
I during the siege of Gloucester during the Civil War.

B.

Wells

is a beautiful little medieval cathedral city, situated at the foot of the Mendip Hills. Wells
was never a royal dwelling-place; it was never of commercial importance; it was never a
place of military strength. The whole interest of the city is ecclesiastical. The Cathedral,
mainly 13th century, is famous for the west front with its statuary. Also outstanding are
the three towers, the north porch and the astronomical clock. The moated Bishop's House
retains a 13th century chapel, and the swans in the lake are famous for their habit of
ringing a bell for their meal. In the East and North Liberties are a number of interesting
old houses, including the Cathedral School and the Organist's House. Near the town, Tor
Hill, which belongs to the National Trust, is a good viewpoint.

C.

Durham

lies on the River Wear which is crossed here by three fine old bridges. The Cathedral, on
a splendid site overlooking the river, has very notable Norman work, including the
remarkable Galilee porch which contains the tomb of the Venerable Bede. The 13th
century Chapel of the Nine Altars contains the tomb of St Cuthbert. The well-known
sculptures portraying the Dun Cow and the Milkmaids are set in the north-west turret of a
gable on the north front. There are remains of the monastic buildings and the Chapter
Library was formerly the monks' dormitory. It now contains Roman remains and Anglo-
Saxon crosses.

D.

York

was known to the Romans as Eboracum. It is situated on the River Ouse and retains its
impressive medieval walls, three miles in extent, together with four fine gateways. The
splendid Minster, Early English to Perpendicular, is famous for the west front and the
towers, and for its wonderful old stained glass, particularly the 12th century Five Sisters
window in the north transept. The octagonal chapter house is 14th century while the
oldest part of the structure are the walls of the crypt which may date from the 8th century.
York is second only to Norwich in the number of its fine old churches. On a small hill in
the city stands Clifford's Tower, all that remains of the old York Castle. A former women's
prison, dating from 1780, now houses the very interesting Castle Museum of Crafts and
old social life. The adjacent Old Debtors' Prison (1705) is also a museum, featuring toys
and costumes. Near the station is the well-known Railway Museum, including many
actual engines and coaches.

E.

40
Ely

stands on a hill on the west bank of the Ouse, rising above the surrounding fenland. The
cathedral, towering above the town, is a landmark for miles around. It is mainly of
Norman construction, and the great western tower and the transept were completed in the
12th century. There are some fine tombs inside the cathedral, such as that of Bishop
Redman (1505) and the two chapels in the Perpendicular style of Bishop Alcock and
Bishop West. The town, according to early records, is supposed to derive its name from
the abundance of eels found in the local rivers.

F.

Exeter

is a former Roman city standing on the River Exe. The beautiful cathedral is mainly
Decorated in style but has two remarkable twin Norman towers. A minstrels' gallery with
angels carrying the musical instruments projects over the nave. The wood carvings and
the 14th century clock are all worth seeing. Elsewhere in the town, part of the Norman
castle has survived, and there are stretches of the original city walls. Much has been
preserved, and a rare half-timbered 14th century merchant's house was removed from its
original site to a new location near the river.

G.

Canterbury

a former Roman military camp, standing on the Stour, is famous for its historical and
ecclesiastical associations. The beautiful cathedral was build between the 11th and the
15th centuries. It was the scene of the murder of its Archbishop, Thomas a Becket in
1170, supposedly on the orders of the King, Henry II. Of outstanding interest in the
cathedral are the Norman crypt and the lovely 12th century choir. The site was built upon
long before the Norman period, as early as 200 BC, when there was a heavily stockaded
and ditched settlement. The Romans built a wall and fortified the place in 200 AD, and
archaeologists have unearthed the foundations of a large Roman theatre. Near the
cathedral has been found the remains of a Saxon abbey church, and tombs of Saxon kings
have been discovered. Also nearby is the oldest used church in England, St Martin's,
which was standing before St Augustine came to England. He was the first archbishop of
Canterbury, 597-604. There are ancient fortifications, the ruins of a castle and the Roman
city wall still standing.

H.

Norwich,

standing on the River Wensum, depended for its early prosperity upon the trade in
worsted cloth. Its recorded history begins in 924 when it became a royal borough, and
had a mint. The cathedral, largely Norman, has a spire of the Decorated period which
rises to a height of 315 feet. The 15th century choir stalls and the cloisters are of interest.
Little remains of the Norman castle and city walls, which were four miles in
41
circumference, although the inner keep of the castle continued to be used as a prison until
1880 when it was acquired by the city corporation and converted into a museum and art
gallery.

Answers:
01. B
02. C
03. E
04. H
05. C
06. B
07. E
08. B
09. F
10. A
12. D
13. H
14. B
15. D

3. Which crime writer

... was influenced by a non-English author? 01. .................
... made a lot of money in Hollywood? 02. .................
... was a successful playwright? 03. .................
... wrote books which were the essence of the heyday of crime fiction? 04. ............
... had a good grip of the details of everyday living? 05. .................
... created the typical style of the American crime story? 06. .................
... was influenced by her career as a thespian?` 07. .................
... features an upper-class hero? 08. ................. 09. .................
... features a European detective? 10. ................. 11. .................
... wished his hero was dead? 12. .................
... gave up detective fiction for more serious pursuits? 13. ............ 14. ..............
... had a hero with a code of honour? 15. ................
... moved from reason to mysticism? 16. .................

DETECTIVE STORY WRITERS

A.

Agatha Christie (1890-1976) was born in South-West England. She enjoyed a quiet,
middle-class childhood that set the keynote for her adult life and personality. There was
no encouragement for biographers to link her life with her work. The more than 80 books
she produced made her beyond doubt the most famous detective novelist of the century.
Her very first novel in 1920 introduced the Belgian private detective, Hercule Poirot. In
1930, she introduced the shrewd and gentle Miss Marple, whose fictional career rivalled
Poirot's in length and popularity. Her books epitomise the so-called Golden Age of
detective fiction of the 1920s and 1930s. The novels have little in the way of setting or

42
characterisation, but centre exclusively on ingenuity of plot. Of the several short stories
she adapted for the stage, The Mousetrap, first produced in 1952, was hugely successful.

B.

Ngaio Marsh (1899-1982) was born and brought up in Christchurch, New Zealand. After
leaving university, she worked in the theatre, first as an actress and then as a producer.
Her first novel in 1934 introduced Superintendent Roderick Alleyn of Scotland Yard. The
settings of her novels are often theatrical and her plots show a tight dramatic
construction. She wrote more than 30 novels. She also wrote travel books and two books
on play production. Her autobiography is mainly about her life in the theatre.

C.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh and was brought up as a Catholic.
However, by the time he had finished his medical studies at Edinburgh University he had
given up Catholicism. Much of his writing reflects the scientific rationalism he adopted
until his later conversion to spiritualism. He practised as a doctor at the seaside resort of
Southsea where the lack of patients gave him plenty of opportunity to write. The first of
the Sherlock Holmes stories was published in 1887, but his real popularity did not begin
until the publication of a collection of the stories in 1992. Doyle resented being identified
solely as the creator of Sherlock Holmes. His life reflected many interests and he was a
versatile writer who dealt also with historical and science fiction. In fact, he disliked his
hero so much, he made a desperate attempt to kill him off. The last years of his life were
spent in an indefatigable defence of spiritualism.

D.

Raymond Chandler (1888-1959) was born in Chicago but brought up in England. The
first part of his life was taken up with journalism and business until he started to write
fiction at the age of 45. The Big Sleep, published in 1939, introduced his most famous
character, the disillusioned but chivalric detective, Philip Marlowe. Chandler is perhaps
the best-known and most read of the American hard-boiled school of detective story
writers.

E.

Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961) was born in Maryland and served in the United States
army during World War I. Afterwards he went to work for the Pinkerton Agency in San
Francisco as a private detective. His experiences served him well when he turned to
writing. A first book of collected short stories was published in 1944. His most famous
book, The Maltese Falcon, was made into a successful movie, as were the rest of his
novels. He made and spent several fortunes as a movie scriptwriter. His writing is spare
and realistic and suited his material perfectly, the underworld of American gangsterism.
Hammett invented what has been called the hard-boiled school of crime fiction. His
heroes are not merely tough; they confront violence with full knowledge of its corrupting
potential.

43
F.

Dorothy Sayers (1893-1957) was born in Oxford and brought up in East Anglia. After
studying at Oxford, she worked variously as a schoolteacher, publisher's reader and
copywriter at an advertising agency, she became a full-time writer in 1931. By this time
she had begun her series of detective novels about the elegant and apparently light-
hearted Lord Peter Wimsey which was to make her one of the most popular writers of the
day. The later novels in the series introduce a new note of seriousness. She also wrote 11
short stories with the commercial traveller Montague Egg as the detective, and
contributed introductions to two collections of detective stories. Although she served as
president of the Detection Club from 1949 until her death, she had by then abandoned
detective fiction for a sequence of radio plays about the life of Christ and for translations
of Dante into English.

G.

Margery Allingham (1904-66) was born in London and educated at Cambridge. She made
her reputation with a series of detective stories beginning with The Crime at Black
Dudley in 1930 and ending with The Fashion in Shrouds in 1938. Her hero, Albert
Campion, is a light-hearted aristocrat, but from the start Margery Allingham showed an
unusually strong grasp of characterisation and a Dickensian eye for the idiosyncrasies of
London life.

H.

Nicholas Freeling, born in 1927, worked throughout Europe as a hotel and restaurant chef
before becoming a full-time writer in 1960. His immersion in European rather than
British culture gives his work not just its characteristic locations but its wry prose style.
Love in Amsterdam (1962) began a series of novels featuring the Dutch detective Van der
Valk. His work is modelled on the example of the French novelist, Simenon, and he
shared Simenon's sharp sense of place. The Long Silence in 1972 killed off Van der Valk,
although Freeling revived him in 1989. Later novels featured a French detective.

Answers:
01. H
02. E
03. A
04. A
05. G
06. E
07. B
08/09. F, G
10/11. A, H
12. C
13/14. C, F
15. D
16. C

44
4. Who
... took unusual still-life photographs? 01. ................
... trained as a teacher? 02. ...............
... worked as a journalist? 03. ................ 04. ...............
... used photography as an aid? 05. ................ 06. ...............
... took carefully composed pictures? 07. ................ 08. ...............
... was interested in outsiders? 09. ................ 10. ...............
... followed his own advice too closely? 11. ...............
.. was torn between painting and photography? 12. ..............
.. was a serious social reformer? 13. ..............
.. won prizes? 14. ..............
... made his photographs socio-political? 15. .............. 16. ..............
... was fashionable? 17. ..............

PHOTOGRAPHERS

A. Lewis W Hine was the outstanding exponent of social documentary photography in

America. He dabbled in various fields before enrolling at the University of Chicago and
then in New York where at Columbia University he studied social work. Hine began to
take photographs in 1904. He realised that the camera was an important instrument, both
for his investigations as well as for the evaluation of the finds of those investigations.
After concluding his pedagogical studies in 1905, he taught at a photographic club, which
he also managed. Working for the National Child Labour Committee, he photographed
children working in coal mines and factories throughout the USA, and his photographs
were used in a campaign against child labour. During further travels throughout the USA,
Hine documented the social conditions of children, and he also gave lectures on behalf of
the National Child Labour Committee. In 1918 Hine joined the Red Cross, which
despatched him to France. From there, he travelled to Italy and Greece. Returning to New
York, he changed his emphasis from an objective, clear documentation without emotion
to a more interpretative style of photography. With his photographs of workers he sought
to demonstrate that it was not the machine but man who created affluence. In 1930, he
was given the job of documenting the gigantic construction project of the Empire State
Building. The resulting photographs, which Hine regarded as "industrial interpretation",
are probably the most famous of his images.

B. Florence Henri, born in New York, was a trend-setting photographer of the twenties
and thirties. She studied painting in Berlin and Munich and then in Paris. She was then a
student at the Bauhaus where she began to take an interest in photography, and began
experimenting with the possibilities of the medium, such as unconventional perspectives,
multiple exposures and montages. By the time she returned to Paris in 1929, her work
had already been exhibited and she had gained broad recognition. Photography caused
her painting to recede more and more into the background. She began to specialise in
portraiture. Her models were mostly celebrities from the artistic and intellectual circles of
Paris. Another important category in her work consists of dense arrangements of fruit,
plates, reels of thread, perfume bottles or purely geometric objects that were thought out
to the last detail. By the use of mirrors she succeeded in upsetting the familiar central
perspective spatial arrangement of photography. In this, Florence Henri reverted to the
45
cubist form elements of her early abstract paintings. After she retired in 1963 to a small
village in Picardy, she gave up photography altogether and devoted herself entirely to her
original vocation of abstract painting.

C. Kyoichi Sawada became known as a press photographer who worked for United Press
International during the Vietnam War. Sawada's interest in photography began early in
life. At the age of 20 he became a newspaper editor in Tokyo. In 1965 he had himself
transferred to Vietnam in order to experience the reality of war with his own eyes. He
received several international awards, such as the Pulitzer Prize in 1966 for his picture
Flight to Freedom. The human drama of grief and terror, expressed by the distorted faces
of the four children and their mother who were able to flee an attack on their village by
swimming for their lives, tells of the reality of the Vietnam War. Sawada's pictures
document the suffering of civilians under the rule of soldiers, as well as wounding and
pain on both sides. Sawada risked his life many times on his assignments to isolated
theatres of war. He was killed while on a photographic assignment to Cambodia in 1970.

D. Ed van der Elsken completed his art studies in Amsterdam before moving to Paris to
work as freelance photographer. He also became a correspondent for a Dutch newspaper.
Many of this politically active photographer's socio-critical pictures and films were made
during a trip round the world. At first he worked only in black and white, taking up
colour alter on. In a photographic series about jazz, he did not use flash illumination
because he considered it important to preserve the atmosphere and the emotions of the
moment in natural light conditions. Elsken published numerous photographic books
about Amsterdam, Japan and China. He expressed the drama of social injustice in a
pictorially concentrated manner with photographs of China and South Africa. He
expressed his interest in people on the margins of society, who are never shown in
representative reports about a country.

E. David Octavius Hill, a pioneer of photography born in Scotland, who entered history
as one of the most important early portrait photographers, was actually a landscape
painter and lithographer. He resorted to photography only as an aid for executing an
unusual assignment he was given in 1843. He was commissioned to paint a group portrait
of the 457 men and women who participated in the founding convention of the Free
Church of Scotland in Edinburgh. At the suggestion of a friend, Hill decided first to
photograph all the delegates individually, and then to use the resulting picture as guides
for rendering their facial features correctly in the painting of the group. He was fortunate
in securing the cooperation of a competent photographer, Robert Adamson, who had
opened a photographic studio in Edinburgh. The two men did not concentrate exclusively
on the facial features, but created elaborate and well-composed portraits in the style of
painted portraits of the times. Some are reminiscent of Dutch painting of the 17th century.
Nearly all the portraits were made outdoors, with exposure times of several minutes. Hill
and Adamson worked as a team. Hill was regarded as the project leader and as the one
who set the artistic tone. Yet Adamson's role appears to have been greater than that of a
mere craftsman. Be that as it may, Hill gave up his photographic activities for a time
when Adamson died prematurely in 1848. Photographs that Hill made later with a new
partner did not reach the quality of earlier photographs made with Adamson's creative
input.

46
F. Robert Capa, born in Budapest in 1913, studied political science in Berlin, and then
taught himself photography. In 1933 he emigrated to Paris, where he began working as a
freelance photographer. His photographs of the Spanish Civil War won him a reputation
in Paris, particularly his picture entitled Death of a Spanish Loyalist. From then on he
concentrated on being a photographic war correspondent. His motto was, "If your
picturers aren't good enough, you're not close enough." His talent for sharply conveying
the feelings and suffering of people in civil wars or rebellions in single pictures earned
him great admiration. He travelled to China and Israel. In 1954 he was fatally injured in
Tai-Binh, Vietnam. The quality of Capa's pictures lies in the fine line they portray
between the will to live and the urge to self-destruction.

Answers:
01. B
02. A
03/04. C, D
05/06. A, E
07/08. B, E
09/10. A, D
11. F
12. B
13. A
14. C
15. A
16. D
17. B

47