Spectator - The Magazine

What makes them tick?

, 18 Nov 2009 15:45:00 GMT

Luxury travel company Abercrombie & Kent annually moves nearly a quarter of a million people around the globe. So for president and chief operating officer Joss Kent, being organised is a given.

With 62 offices in 33 countries, A&K is unique in having such a global on-the-ground network. ‘We are the only global company that is still in control of your experience, right down to the nitty-gritty of the detail,’ says Kent. ‘If I walked into a restaurant like Le Caprice in London and saw that, instead of a kitchen, there was a line of motorbikes that were going out]]>

Mind your language

, 18 Nov 2009 15:00:00 GMT

The man who brought us The Meaning of Tingo is at it again, closer to home. Adam Jacot de Boinod’s previous excursion among unlikely foreign words turned at times into a wild Boojum chase because the meanings claimed for some words softly and silently vanished away once confronted. That was the case with tingo itself, the supposed definition of which was more like a short essay on circumstances in which it might be used.

His latest amuse-bouche, The Wonder of Whiffling (Particular Books, £12.99), is a sort of reverse Call My Bluff, which groups the true meaning of English words]]>

Competition

, 18 Nov 2009 14:45:00 GMT

In Competition No. 2622 you were invited to submit a rhymed curse penned by a motorist on a cyclist, a cyclist on a pedestrian or a pedestrian on either.

Reading the entry brought to mind a question once posed by Matthew Parris: ‘Does cycling turn you into an insolent jerk?’ ‘You bet it does!’ came the semi-unanimous chorus. A bracing stream of vitriol was directed mostly at cyclists, especially those who wear Lycra, though I no doubt let motorists off lightly by not giving the cycling brigade the opportunity to respond in kind to their fellow road-users.

While Brian Murdoch,]]>

Crossword

, 18 Nov 2009 14:00:00 GMT

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Bridge

, 18 Nov 2009 14:00:00 GMT

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Ancient & modern

, 18 Nov 2009 14:00:00 GMT

A new Telegraph survey on ‘dating’ (the romantic rather than temporal kind), reveals that 91 per cent of women and 86 per cent of men would not marry someone ‘who had everything you looked for in a partner, but whom you were not in love with’. But what, an ancient would ask, has marriage to do with love?

Greek and Roman upper-class males — for they composed the literature, and it is their views of the matter that we have — did not regard love as a crucial component of marriage. To put it crudely, marriage was primarily business: the]]>

Chess

, 18 Nov 2009 14:00:00 GMT

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The peace to end all peace

, 18 Nov 2009 13:00:00 GMT

The first world war was the last major conflict to be brought to an end in the traditional fashion, with a formal treaty of peace. Or, rather, several treaties of peace, one for each of the defeated belligerents. They were all negotiated in Paris, but named after the various royal palaces in which the signing ceremonies were held: Versailles, the Trianon, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Neuilly, Sèvres. These great buildings, arranged like pearls in a necklace around Paris across the hunting grounds of the former kings, were built to impress. But the treaties signed in them were arguably the most prodigious acts of]]>

Universal truth

, 18 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Bartok’s only opera, Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, shouldn’t be a difficult work to stage, to sing and to play, yet most of my worthwhile experiences of it have been listening to recordings — where it has done notably well. Though the plotline is as simple as can be, and the music matches it in urgency and directness, or rather because of these facts, it is a piece that invites and certainly receives the attentions of meddling producers who ignore what it is about and invent more or less elaborate dramatic situations which it could have been about. Daniel Kramer, who produced]]>