Society

Friday

6 Oct 2017

The Protestant passions of Queen Victoria: her biographer A.N. Wilson reveals all

Our guest on today’s Holy Smoke podcast is A.N. Wilson, author of a hugely admired biography of Queen Victoria and – as you’ll hear – the most mischievous intellectual in the land. Cristina Odone and I started out by asking about Victoria’s vigorous (and possibly whisky-fuelled) persecution of Anglo-Catholics in the Church of England: the Queen lobbied hard for the legislation that sent several of them to jail for popish “ritualism”. But that was the just the beginning of Wilson’s hilarious whistlestop tour of the passions and prejudices of Queen Victoria. Topics discussed: Victoria’s surprising liberalism (and indulgence towards actual Roman Catholics), the quasi-Victorian moralising of virtue-signalling students, the gentle but

Steerpike

Listen: Baroness Warsi tells Grant Shapps to shut up

Grant Shapps’ attempt to topple Theresa May is not going quite to plan. Tory MPs are busy tweeting their support for the Prime Minister. While others are turning their fire on Shapps himself. Nadine Dorries said the plot was ‘pathetic’ – and Baroness Warsi was even more outspoken on the subject of Shapps’ bungled bid to oust the PM. On the World at One this afternoon, she was asked for her message to the former Tory party chairman: ‘My message to Grant Shapps is really shut up.’ But Warsi did, however, admit that some good had come from Shapps’ intervention: ‘If there’s one thing that Grant has done, if there’s

Thursday

5 Oct 2017

Raymond Keene

Historic

Congratulations to the organisational team of the Isle of Man Masters, which concluded last weekend. They assembled what must have been the strongest ever field for an open tournament in the history of international chess. Magnus Carlsen showed the kind of dominance he can achieve when he moves into overdrive. Leading results were: Carlsen 7½/9, Viswanathan Anand and Hikaru Nakamura both 7, with Michael Adams, Fabiano Caruana and the former world champion Vladimir Kramnik sharing 4th prize. Perelshteyn-Carlsen: chess.com Masters Isle of Man 2017 (see diagram 1) Although Black is a pawn down, his compact pawn structure and active play give him the advantage. 36 … Rh4 37

Raymond Keene

no. 477

White to play. This is from Anand-Esserman, Isle of Man 2017. White now killed off the exposed black king. What was the key move? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 10 October or via email to victoria@spectator.co.uk. There is a prize 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 Qxc8 Last week’s winner Alan Norman, Impington, Cambridge

The Spectator

Letters | 5 October 2017

What do the Tories offer? Sir: I have been hoping that someone more eloquent than me would respond to your contributors’ rants about Jeremy Corbyn, but as they have not, I thought I’d chip in (‘Corbyn’s big chance’, 30 September). As someone who is reasonably financially secure, the Tories would probably consider me a shoo-in voter. But what do they offer? Tax cuts, while paying for them by cutting services and benefits to those less fortunate, and in effect, pulling up the ladder behind me. ‘Capitalism’ to many in this country is really only a description of how Thatcher sold, or destroyed, the country’s wealth-creation industries, and a few years

Taki

High life | 5 October 2017

The death of the richest woman on this planet, as the tabloids dubbed Liliane Bettencourt, brought back some vivid memories, mainly of the gigolos I’ve known and their disgraceful pursuit of the fairer sex. Although my great friend Porfirio Rubirosa acted the gigolo at times — he married three of the world’s richest women, and two of the most beautiful for love — he was also a man’s man, a pistolero, an ambassador, a racing driver, boxer and polo player, and a great seducer of beautiful women. He died on 6 July 1965 at the wheel of his Ferrari. After Rubi, the whole business took a nosedive. Thierry Roussel, French,

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 5 October 2017

The temperature gauge needle heeled hard over into the red. ‘Not again,’ I said to Oscar, sitting beside me on his booster seat. Sunday evening, and I was returning him to his mother after having him to stay for the weekend. The distance door to door is around 20 miles: about 40 minutes along country roads. After ten miles, a steep uphill climb proved disastrous. Steam was pouring in through the heater vents and fogging up the inside of the windscreen. I tried the demist blower on maximum heat but only cold air came out. So I drove the car with one hand and wiped the steam from the glass

Melissa Kite

Real life | 5 October 2017

How reassuringly like old times it is, going to a God-forsaken retail park with Stefano. We mooch about the DIY store together like an old couple, me with a face like thunder, he quietly pointing out boring things that we need like door handles, whispering the price, knowing exactly when I am liable to blow up. It doesn’t seem five minutes since he was a brave young adventurer from the wilds of Albania making his way in London, colliding with me one day while painting the outside of my neighbour’s house. I pounced on him and got him to paint the outside of my house as well, then made him

Susanna Gross

Bridge | 5 October 2017

Twenty-five years ago, Zia Mahmood offered a £1 million bet that no team of his choosing could ever be beaten by computers. A mere four years later, he withdrew the bet: robots were already exceeding expectations, and who knew how rapidly things would progress? In fact, computer bridge still hasn’t reached world-class levels (unlike computer chess). But it’s not that far off. For the past two decades, robots have even competed in their own world championship, which runs alongside the human one, and although it gets next to no coverage, it’s well worth watching. Robots may lack a certain flair and imagination, but you can be sure that every move

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 5 October 2017

Q. We have moved from London into a rural area where we are preparing for the first visit of a lifelong friend who has become a self-invented countryman. I know that he will insist on foraging for mushrooms, but none of my family wants to go on kidney dialysis machines as a result of being forced to eat them. None of us (including him) are mushroom experts. Much as we love our friend, he is something of a bully. What should we do Mary? — Name and address withheld A. Buy in a store cupboard supply of dried chanterelles, ceps etc, and rehydrate them prior to his visit. Feign enthusiasm

Toby Young

Boris, the conviction politician

I’m writing this from the Conservative party conference where I can report that Boris Johnson, who has just wowed the blue rinses with a barn-storming speech, isn’t preparing a leadership bid. At least, that’s the line from all those closest to him. Without exception, they say if he was planning something they’d know about it and they don’t. It’s a media concoction. He’s a man without a plan. I know, I know. That’s exactly what Boris’s team would say if they had just press-ganged the last of 48 MPs to sign a letter to the chairman of the 1922 Committee, which is the magic number needed to trigger a leadership

The Spectator

Barometer | 5 October 2017

Bunny beginnings Hugh Hefner, creator of Playboy, died. How did he get the idea for bunny girls? — Hefner said he had been inspired by Bunny’s Tavern, a bar in Urbana, Illinois, named after its owner Bernard ‘Bunny’ Fitzsimmons, who opened it in 1936. — A closer match for Hefner’s clubs was the Gaslight Club opened in Chicago in 1953, where customers were served by ‘gaslight girls’ dressed in corsets and fishnets. — Originally, Hefner proposed dressing up his hostesses as baby dolls, then toyed with the idea of ‘stag girls’ wearing antlers, to match the name he wanted to give Playboy magazine, Stag Party. He had to drop that

Dot Wordsworth

Tube

When George Eliot wrote ‘The tube-journey can never lend much to picture and narrative,’ she was not making an observant remark about commuting on the Underground. She was developing a thought she’d had of travellers of the future being ‘shot, like a bullet through a tube, by atmospheric pressure from Winchester to Newcastle’. She was writing in 1861, and the world’s first Underground, the Metropolitan Railway, opened in 1863. Two years before her musings (in her introduction to Felix Holt, the Radical), the London Pneumatic Despatch Company was founded to send packages and mailbags from Holborn to Gresham Street. The Central London Railway, from Bank to Shepherd’s Bush opened in

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 5 October 2017

Home Theresa May, the Prime Minister, told her audience at the Conservative party conference that she wanted to continue, like them, to ‘do our duty by Britain’. She said the government planned to make it easier for local authorities to build council houses. On the eve of the conference, Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, in an interview with the Sun sketched out four ‘red lines’ that he said should apply to Brexit. These included a transition period that must not last ‘a second more’ than two years. His stipulations went beyond anything agreed by the government, but Mrs May sidestepped questions about whether he was ‘unsackable’. Later she said: ‘I

Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 5 October 2017

However much we try — and lots of us don’t — we fall for the power of the photo-image. So the news, as reported in Britain, was simple: Spanish police brutal; Catalan democracy assailed. I am not in a position to know the real facts about the violence, so I simply note that the estimates for those injured in Catalonia on Sunday vary from 844 to two in hospital. But so much was left out by the dominant account. First, the referendum was illegal under the constitutional law of Spain (reinforced by the Catalan Supreme Court). Serious votes normally need legal form, for good reason. Otherwise, they are more open

Mr Magoo

2330: Image

10 5/9/34/30D/7/35/4/1D is a poem quoted in full in ODQ. The author’s surname (and indeed first name) appears at 26. Across 1 Portable furniture affected county (8, hyphened) 8 It’s only fair (4) 12 Get ready to improve shepherd’s delight left in champagne? (10) 13 Some twin sisters are demanding (6) 14 Book wrapping was double Scotch? (7) 15 Chemical engineer rejects classical dry measures (8) 18 Awfully insecure time for those lacking control? (9) 19 Spenser’s bound to study in plant (9) 20 Genuinely caught the criminal (4) 21 Votes against heartless bills in US (4) 24 In Monaco I break a contract, lacking hearts and diamonds? (6)

The Spectator

to 2327: Exhibition

Five unclued lights (1D, 14, 21, 24 and 41) are titles of paintings by EDWARD HOPPER (5 39). First prize J.P. Carrington, Denchworth, Oxfordshire Runners-up Jenny Mitchell, Croscombe, Somerset; F.A. Scott, Enfield, Middlesex

Nick Hilton

The Spectator Podcast: Fear and loathing

On this week’s episode, we discuss the tragic events in Las Vegas and wonder if there’s anything we can do, or should be doing, to stop it happening again. We also be look at the contentious Catalan referendum, and ponder what makes the perfect pub quiz. First up: This week, a deranged gunman opened fire on a country music festival in Las Vegas, killing 58 and injuring more than 500. This has reopened age old debates about American gun control, but are we in danger of doing more harm than good with this gawping? That’s what Lionel Shriver writes in this week’s magazine and she joins the podcast along with

Camilla Swift

The White Cliffs of Dover, the National Trust, and a very public appeal

The White Cliffs of Dover are, arguably, one of Britain’s most famous sights – immortalised of course by Dame Vera Lynn. So no wonder, then, that when the National Trust decided to launch a fundraising campaign to help them raise £1 million to secure a 700,000 square metre area of land on top of the cliffs, Dame Vera was chosen as the person to front the campaign. The National Trust already owns just under a mile of the White Cliffs of Dover, between the South Foreland lighthouse and Langdon Cliffs, which they bought in 2012. But at the beginning of September, after learning that the landowner of the area directly

David Butterfield

The Spectator’s support for free trade is nothing new

Free trade hasn’t always been a British tradition. When the first issue of The Spectator hit the newsstands in July 1828, the country was firmly under the thumb of the Corn Laws. Introduced in 1815 to protect the vested interests of the land-owning classes, these measures propped up the price of British grain, artificially high since the disturbance of the Napoleonic Wars. Protectionism was proving profitable: in June that year, the palatial London Corn Exchange was opened; in July, Parliament readily approved the Duke of Wellington’s Corn Bill, which introduced a sliding scale of duties that continued to prohibit free access to foreign grain. As an organ of Radical politics