American elections are always wonderful horse-races, and this Democratic contest is shaping up as one of the best – not a six-furlong sprint but, just maybe, a political Grand National of the sort America has not seen in years.. And do not forget Senator Joe Lieberman, Al Gore’s running mate in 2000, who may yet prosper when the primary season shifts to more conservative parts of the country. Rarely does a party boast five candidates any one of whom you could easily imagine in the Oval Office.This said, Mr Bush remains favourite to be re-elected. A year ago, Mr Kerry, with his gravitas, his heroic military service in Vietnam and his knowledge of national security issues, was considered the Democratic candidate best equipped to win the nomination and beat Mr Bush. Instead his campaign bumbled as the candidate failed to connect.

But the Kerry act has finally come together, and a wheel may be coming full circle.Equally important, Mr Dean may have now served his purpose. His rivals have watched him electrify the Democratic base with his pummelling of the President, his argument that the party must be true to itself, his insistence that Mr Bush cannot be beaten by “Bush-lite” Now they are taking pages from the Dean script. To their Washington-bred expertise with the issues, Messrs Kerry and Edwards have added passion – while avoiding the overheated language, the brittleness and ill-temper that may be the undoing of Mr Dean.One way and another, this is bad news for the White House. Try as they might, Mr Bush’s handlers could never conceal their belief that Dean would be the easiest Democrat to beat – for the reasons listed above. But Iowans have now voted with their heads, not their hearts, picking not the most outspoken anti-war candidate, but the ones they deem to have the best chance of beating Mr Bush.Polls suggest that Mr Kerry’s contorted stance on Iraq – voting for war against Iraq in October 2002 yet bitterly criticising its preparation and aftermath – reflects a wider confusion among the Democratic faithful, a growing sense that the country was duped into war. Naess assigned the strongest Sherpas to the first summit team, and only went to the top himself in the third, weakest, team – a generous gesture, considering that he had underwritten the expedition from his own finances.Shortly before the Everest expedition, Naess had met Diana Ross on a Barbados beach, where he was on holiday with his children from his first marriage to Filippa Kumlin D’Orey. He married Ross the following year, 1986, taking her to his private island near Tahiti for the honeymoon.

Although the two of them visited Nepal and other mountainous regions together, it seems that she preferred to maintain the kind of glitzy life style befitting her star status. She once described their relationship as “a series of sexy honeymoons”, but for much of the time they lived apart – she in Connecticut and he mainly in London – and in 1999 they separated, divorcing the following year.In 1995 Naess had returned to Nepal with his Everest team for a 10th anniversary celebration and, prompted by Chris Bonington, got permission to attempt an unclimbed mountain called Dragnag Ri. Although Naess himself did not reach the top, the team succeeded in making the first ascent of this beautiful and spectacular peak.As with any climber, it was often the impromptu outings, snatched during travels around the world, which were the most satisfying for Naess. It was on one such outing last week, whilst visiting a friend’s vineyard in Franschhoek, to the north of Cape Town, that Naess died. He set out to try a new rock climb, was turned back by doubtful weather, and was seen falling while abseiling back down.Stephen Venables.

Jack Cady was one of a generation of American writers who accomplished much, but who were lucky if their reputations extended past small circles of admirers. Some of them – such as Richard Brautigan or Thomas Pynchon or Donald Barthelme or John Updike – did become famous, at least for a while. Others, such as Rick De Marinis or Donald Harington, or Cady himself, found their commercial careers difficult to keep afloat. Jack Andrew Cady, writer: born Columbus, Ohio 20 March 1932; twice married (four children); died Port Townsend, Washington 14 January 2004. Cady’s problem may have been no more complicated than a deep indifference to genre. He seemed hardly to notice that his stories ranged from Steinbeckian affirmations of the American way to Lovecraftian evocations of vast malignities beneath the surface of reality.