Society

Saturday evening in Durham. My in-laws and I had just begun our usual postprandial shout about Donald Trump when my niece appeared at the door, pale and serious. ‘There’s been another terrorist attack in London,’ she said. ‘I’m scared.’ The veins of the men in my husband’s family run with a sort of event-activated coolant. No one asked what had happened or how many were dead. My father-in-law said: ‘Don’t be daft. What’s there to be scared of?’ His brother added: ‘You’re more likely to be killed by cows.’ This, though not strictly true, is less ludicrous than you might imagine. Some 90 Brits were killed by terrorist attacks in

This week, Israel is marking the 50th anniversary of its improbable victory over Arab assassins. Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser saw annihilation of the Jewish state as a uniting mission for his project of pan-Arab nationalism and had declared: ‘Our path to Palestine will be covered with blood.’ In June 1967, he enlisted Syria and Jordan in his plans for invasion and few thought Israel, then a meagre strip of land nine miles wide at its narrowest point, could withstand the onslaught. Herzl’s dream in the desert was about to be unwilled.  In a stroke of tactical cunning, though at the time it looked to be an act of suicide, Israel

On Sunday, in the hours after the London Bridge attack, Christians celebrated Pentecost – recalling when the Holy Spirit inspired the Apostles to come out of hiding and proclaim the Good News. In light of the terrorist atrocity, my parish priest spoke on the fruits of this Spirit – love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control – as the correct response to such horror. It struck me that while we have become used to proclamations of Islam as the ‘religion of peace’, it’s this message which sets Christianity apart in the face of persecution, and many of us forget the impact that the peaceful philosophy of Christianity has had on the

It is not enough for Muslims to say ‘We condemn terrorism’. Sure – we believe you. But something more is needed. What? It’s easy to get bogged down in the slightly wrong issue of violence and war. We should not expect Muslims to condemn all violence that claims a religious justification – for most war does tend to claim such justification, and an element of this lingers in the West, and few of us are complete pacifists. What we need to hear from British Muslims is that they reject the vision from which terrorism comes. It is a vision of society unified by one political and religious ideology. It is

Just after 10pm on Saturday night, I was in an Uber minicab with my wife, heading south over London Bridge. We’d been out for a tapas dinner and were on our way home. It had been a lovely evening. Suddenly I noticed something odd on the pavement on our side of the road. It looked like a woman had collapsed. There were a few people around her and they had draped their coats over her. It was troubling, but at least she was being looked after. Then a shock. On the right-hand side of the bridge, a few yards on, we saw a man, also prostrate on the ground, with

When you’ve been writing about money for a while, a few key phrases crop up again and again. But of all the useful words employed in the world of consumer finance, ‘shop around’ is by far the most popular. ‘Make sure to shop around’ never goes out of fashion, and for good reason. It applies to pretty much every financial product there is, from bank accounts, saving plans and life cover to car insurance, ISAs and mortgages. It’s that last one I want to concentrate on today. New research from Trussle, an online mortgage broker, has found that the UK’s six biggest mortgage lenders are penalising customers who slip onto their Standard

To the best of my knowledge, Michael Basman is the first officially titled chess master to ever stand in a UK parliamentary election. Marmaduke Wyvill, MP for Richmond Yorkshire, was an accomplished player who took second prize in the great London tournament of 1851, but he could not have been described as a chess professional. Basman will be standing as an independent in Kingston-upon-Thames, and his manifesto is a curious blend of selective support for Jeremy Corbyn-style intervention combined with extreme libertarianism. (The manifesto can be found at endtaxsploitation.co.uk.) This week’s game and puzzle are an excursion into Basmanland. Keene-Basman: Bognor 1967; King’s Indian Attack 1 e4 e6 2 d3 b5 3 Nf3