Society

Thursday

Raymond Keene

Master class

While researching some early games in the Bf4 version of the Queen’s Pawn openings favoured by world champion Magnus Carlsen, I came across an epic publication which called to mind that fine, seminal and instructive writer, Polish grandmaster Savielly Tartakower. His 500 Master Games of Chess, co-written with J. Dumont, contains readable annotations to virtually ever game of importance played from the days of Philidor in the 18th century, up to the period immediately pre-dating the second world war. Apart from an excellent eye for selection of the best games, thus providing an effective tour d’horizon of the development of chess strategy and tactics over one and a half centuries, the

Raymond Keene

no. 482

White to play. This position is from Rasmussen-Nyback, Crete 2017. How can White win at once? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 14 November or via email to victoria@spectator.co.uk. There is a p rize of £20 for the first correct answer out of a hat. Please include a postal address and allow six weeks for prize delivery.   Last week’s solution 1 Rg7+ (1 … Kh6 2 Nf5 is mate) Last week’s winner Richard Craven, Montpelier, Bristol

Taki

High life | 9 November 2017

A dinner in honour of Arki Busson hosted by Michael Mailer in his brilliant Brooklyn flat on the banks of the East River and overlooking the Statue of Liberty a quarter of a mile away. His father, Norman, had some pretty brainy people living it up in these premises, and Michael has continued the custom of feeding pretty women, bitchy columnists, talented cinematographers and brainy tycoons like Arki, who is one of the few I know who combine looks and the ability to seduce beautiful women with making lotsa moolah for clients. Needless to say, everyone got very drunk — three beautiful ladies and five horny men, including the actor

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 9 November 2017

We had a hyperbole competition, the taxi driver and I, over the climbing full moon, clearer and brighter than either of us had seen it for as long as we could remember. Did I know, he said, that the gravitational power of the moon on the Earth was just enough to stabilise the Earth’s wobble? It might have been put there, and its mass finely calibrated, just for the task. No, I said, I didn’t know that, but it just goes to show. ‘Show what?’ he said. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. But after thinking about it I said that maybe it goes to show that the physicists and astronomers

Melissa Kite

Real life | 9 November 2017

When it comes to horses, troubles come in multitudes. Multitudes of lame legs. Gracie, the hunter pony, kicked things off by deciding she didn’t want to be caught. A pony who is running at full pelt round a seven-acre field at the sight of you with a headcollar hidden in a feed bucket is a tricky thing. You can walk away and be philosophical about it or you can do the full Monty Roberts. This involves standing your ground, refusing to go away, following the pony relentlessly around the field, breaking its will to defy you. Gracie has an iron will. When she decides that I’m an inconvenience to be

Robin Oakley

The turf | 9 November 2017

Imagine Ryan Moore getting caught on the line by a rival’s late spurt at the end of a Newmarket race and being so upset that he goes to bed without supper, crying like a baby. Then imagine him offering to recompense the owner personally for his lost bets. That is how the popular George Fordham, champion jockey 14 times between 1855 and 1871, behaved after losing that way in 1962. Famed for his scrupulous honesty in the days when racing was riddled with corruption, Fordham has attracted less attention than his younger rival Fred Archer, known as ‘the Tin Man’ for his relentless pursuit of money. But when the two

Janet de Botton

Bridge | 9 November 2017

The third and final weekend of England’s Premier League took place in Solihull and was a very jolly affair. All three divisions played at the same venue, which meant lots of bridge chat between sessions and lots of speculation about who was likely to get promoted or relegated. In division one, the eight teams were competing for the top two positions, earning those teams an invitation to play for England in the Camrose (home countries) Trophy. My team was in contention right up to the final board, but sadly we clung grimly to third place so no England cap for moi. That privilege goes to the Allfrey and Hinden teams.

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

Half-baked Hollywood

Knead is the first of Paul Hollywood’s new strain of bakeries that sell coffee, and which will encircle capitalism. This one is outside Euston station and I think the name — Knead, meaning squashed under fists, specifically Paul Hollywood’s fists — is designed solely to make you think of his big hands. Lots of people who watch The Great British Bake Off like Paul Hollywood’s big hands, and his PR team know it. He could knead Europe away; he could make Britain anything you want it to be. He and Mary Berry (now transformed into Prue Leith after the move from BBC1 to Channel 4) bridge the abyss in the

Dot Wordsworth

Unacceptable

‘When is physical contact “unacceptable”?’ asked Charles Moore in the Daily Telegraph. He may well ask. Sir Michael Fallon said after his resignation that some things were acceptable ten or 15 years ago that weren’t today. But the panel of Any Questions? last week were invited to say whether inappropriate behaviour wasn’t always unacceptable. It’s not just Westminster. Marseille football fans’ subjection of Patrice Evra to ‘hateful attacks’ was ‘unacceptable behaviour’, the club said, but his response in aiming a kick at a fan’s head was ‘inappropriate’. In the lost spirit of ‘Brexit means Brexit’, theatre management back in London declared: ‘Inappropriate behaviour by anyone working at the Old Vic

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 9 November 2017

Q. We have a family friend we don’t see nearly as much as we’d like. This is because he’s so near perfect — clever, funny, civilised, and also single with an interesting job — that he’s in great demand as a guest. When we do bag him before somebody else does we adore his company and he clearly enjoys ours. My gripe is that I’ve realised he’s been coming to stay with us for 30 years, either in houses we’ve rented abroad, in Scotland or just as a weekend guest at home, yet has never invited us to lunch, the cinema or even for a walk. This is nothing to

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 9 November 2017

Home An air of crisis hung over the government. Priti Patel, the International Development Secretary, was told to fly back immediately from Africa after a series of secret meetings with Israeli political figures was revealed. Sir Michael Fallon had already gone as Defence Secretary, to be replaced by someone called Gavin Williamson, an MP since 2010 and Chief Whip since last year. Sir Michael’s departure followed a complaint that Andrea Leadsom, the Leader of the House, was said to have made to the Prime Minister about a remark some years ago — when she had said she had cold hands, he said: ‘I know where you can put them to

Toby Young Toby Young

People in glass houses…

Stories about members of the establishment using offshore tax shelters — ooh er missus! — come along about once a year, thanks to the efforts of the liberal media. Cue a chorus of disapproval from Jeremy Corbyn, Vince Cable, Margaret Hodge and other left-wing panjandrums who demand that the government ‘seize’ Britain’s overseas territories and ‘clamp down’ on tax loopholes. Then, as night follows day, it emerges on the Guido Fawkes website that a large number of these sanctimonious prigs are themselves direct beneficiaries of offshore tax arrangements — and the kerfuffle over the Paradise Papers is no different, as I will shortly make clear. It’s like an annual festival

Tina Brown

Diary – 9 November 2017

It’s remarkable how fast the unthinkable becomes the expected. It felt almost routine to pick up the New York Post last Sunday morning and see the front page mocked up as a wanted poster for Harvey Weinstein and the news that the NYPD is preparing to arrest him for alleged rape. Between the daily barrage of Trump’s lies and excesses and the sexual harassment tsunami, America has outrage overload. The result is that all the predations, political or sexual or both, come close to drowning each other out. Already Weinstein’s legal advocates are test-driving the theory that the Harvey ‘pile-on’ is really about Trump — that thwarted feminist fury at

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 9 November 2017

Let us assume — which we shouldn’t — that it is automatically wrong for the Queen to benefit financially from funds invested offshore. Let us agree — though we shouldn’t — to declare ourselves shocked that the Duchy of Lancaster put money on her behalf into funds in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands, and later, Guernsey. Let us forget — though it is difficult — that she is the Queen of all those places, and therefore that it is almost as strange to complain about her money being in them as it would be to complain about it being invested in Britain. Let us accept — though no evidence has

Doc

2235: Chippy

The unclued lights (one of two words — ignore its accent) are of a kind.   Across 1    I’m the proctor, circulating and turning away from the heat (12) 10    Stone, almost black, with one diamond inside (4) 12    Moonlight escape around river turning into a brief liaison (10) 14    Leader of Indians accepting thanks for miriti palm (3) 17    Architectural style representative of its time chapter omitted (5) 18    Macbeth’s query about his status, it would seem, is a gas (7) 19    Classify love-boat reflected in painting (6) 24    Office work nowadays managed at first at home (5) 26    Party with star prize (9) … 29    … New star, a Jamaican? (5)

Justin Urquhart Stewart

We need to stop pretending that personal finance is hard

Whilst planning no career change of my own beyond my regular, if fleeting trips to secondary schools to talk about money, I’ve been enjoying reading Lucy Kellaway’s FT updates on her first half term as a maths teacher. Kellaway is well known for her short shrift for maths illiteracy: ‘It is not cute. It is stupid, shameful and, if you have any position of responsibility at all, it is dangerous.’ Ouch! Similarly, I came across a mathematics teaching blog by Tony Cotton this week. Cotton complained about the stories we tell about maths ­– that it’s a hard subject, thereby somehow elevating those who do well to an almost unobtainable,

Morgan Meaker

We are the people! How the German right repackaged unification

‘Wir sind das Volk’ – ‘We are the people’ – has become the slogan of Germany’s disaffected. The phrase is the rallying cry of Pegida, the country’s anti-Islam protest movement. At one of the group’s first rallies in Dresden, back in 2014, it was taken up as a popular protest chant. In the disenfranchised east, it is a phrase which has gained currency since then, with Pegida and Alternative for Germany (AFD) keen to use it to exploit the widespread feeling of dislocation from central government and ‘Wessis’ (west Germans), who continue to be richer than their eastern neighbours. A recent government report found that, in the east, GDP proportionally was 66 per cent that in

The Spectator

to 2332: glad all over

The unclued lights are preceded by HAPPY to yield phrases listed in Brewer.   First prize Tony Hankey, London W4 Runners-up C. Elengorn, Enfield, Middlesex; John Harcourt, Maidstone, Kent;

Nick Hilton Nick Hilton

The Spectator Podcast: Desert storm

On this week’s episode, we turn our attention to the Middle East and the unlikely alliance of Saudi Arabia and Israel as they stare down a common enemy. We also consider whether the old adage ‘the night is always darkest just before the dawn’ holds for Theresa May, and wondering why there hasn’t been a great musical about British history. Last week saw a massive anti-corruption push in Saudi Arabia oust a number of princes. The putsch was initiated by Crown Prince Muhammed Bin Salman, and in this week’s magazine cover story John R. Bradley looks at how the young prince has attempted to align his country with Israeli interests