Society

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 31 August 2017

Campus censoriousness Sir: I am so grateful to Madeleine Kearns for having the courage to speak out about her experiences at university when others, including myself, remain silent (‘Unsafe spaces’, 26 August) . I have done the reverse of Madeleine in that I, a young American woman, moved from New York City to the UK for graduate school. One of the main factors in this decision to continue my education here is because I feel I have more academic and intellectual freedom. The idea of a balanced argument at my undergraduate university was ‘neoliberal’ versus ‘radically liberal’. We spoke of the importance of diversity, but political diversity was never considered. I

Peter Jones

Reading Latin doesn’t require a trigger warning

Last week, Brendan O’Neill described in this magazine how students regulate ‘unacceptable’ political views with ‘no platform’ policies, safe spaces and trigger warnings. Two weeks ago a student Latin course (Reading Latin, P. Jones and K. Sidwell) was ‘outed’ by an American PhD student, because the text featured three goddesses, each confidently stripping off, determined to win the golden apple from Paris, and two rapes. Such ‘offensive’ choices, she said, did not help the cause of Latin, ‘or make the historically racist and classist discipline of classics any more accessible’. Both rapes featured in a foundation myth of early Roman history. The most important was that of Lucretia by Sextus, son

Taki

High life | 31 August 2017

I was appalled. She had asked Lord John Somerset to ask me to join her, and I rose rather unsteadily to do so. This was during a Jimmy Goldsmith ball, and I was writing the Atticus column in the Sunday Times, as well as High life. A German girlfriend of mine at the time warned me about going over. ‘If you go to her, that’s it,’ she told me. ‘Auf Wiedersehen,’ I answered. The princess signalled for me to sit, and that’s where the appalling part comes in. I missed the chair and ended up under the table. Without missing a beat, she stuck her head underneath and asked me:

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 31 August 2017

I arrived for lunch a bit late and was led to the dining table. Our hostess disappeared back into the house to bring out the food, leaving me to acquaint myself with the other guests, an Englishwoman and an American. The Englishwoman said that yesterday she had fallen off the wagon after eight weeks and today she was terribly hung over. She didn’t feel guilty, however, because she had enjoyed herself very much. The American man’s eyes were hidden behind sunglasses but he had a warm smile and great teeth and an easy, open manner. He introduced himself by saying that this was his first time in France, and that

Melissa Kite

Real life | 31 August 2017

My friendly neighbourhood Lib Dems have put some campaign literature through my door. In a covering note, they intimate that they don’t understand why I can’t understand why everyone votes for them round here. The leaflet features a dozen pictures of our Lib Dem parish councillor doing good works in a variety of settings. Here, he poses in a green field with the Lib Dem parliamentary candidate — a persistent young chap I’ve had to ask to leave my front step on more than one occasion. There, he poses on the high street at a traffic black spot where he has discovered there are secret plans to install a roundabout.

The Spectator

Barometer | 31 August 2017

Ethnic ethics Actor Ed Skrein withdrew from a cartoon film after protests that he had the wrong ethnic background to play a Japanese-American. Some famous performances which, on the same principle, could be regarded as unacceptable: — Laurence Olivier blacked up to play the lead role in the 1965 film of Othello. — Andrew Sachs, son of a German Jew, played Manuel the Spanish waiter in Fawlty Towers in 1975 and 1979. — Eddie Redmayne, who is not disabled, played Stephen Hawking in the 2014 film The Theory of Everything. — Lin-Manuel Miranda, who is of Puerto Rican descent, played founding father Alexander Hamilton in the Broadway musical Hamilton, which he

Robin Oakley

The turf | 31 August 2017

I guess his mother may have called him Patrick, or even, when he was in trouble, ‘Patrick Joseph’, but in the racing world, like the great McCoy, the Yorkshire-based jockey P.J. McDonald is known simply by his initials. It is proving to be a very good year for ‘P.J.’ and those initials are becoming steadily more familiar to southern as well as northern racegoers. He won the National Stakes at Sandown and the Molecomb Stakes at Glorious Goodwood on Karl Burke’s Havana Grey, and as I write he is firmly ensconced in the top ten riders’ table with nearly 80 winners. ‘I’d love to get the hundred up this season,’

Janet de Botton

Bridge | 31 August 2017

The 43rd World Bridge Championships held in Lyon has just ended after two intense weeks and hundreds of boards. The first week saw 22 teams from around the world play a complete round robin, the top eight qualifying for the play-off. The USA entered two teams, both of whom made the quarter-final, but only one made it the whole way. USA2 had an extraordinary success, particularly in the semi-final playing against Bulgaria. About halfway through they were 46 imps down, with their prospects looking bleaker by the minute. Marty Fleisher was playing with the great Chip Martel, who won his first world title in 1985. Marty decided a big swing

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 31 August 2017

Home Sir Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, announced a change in Labour’s policy by saying that he wanted Britain to stay in the single market and customs union during a transition period after Brexit, which could be ‘as short as possible but as long as necessary’. The French government denied that senior French diplomats had said they wanted to see Brexit talks make progress by proceeding to questions of trade. ‘We need you to take positions on all separation issues,’ said Michel Barnier, the European Union’s chief negotiator. British sources denounced M. Barnier’s ‘inconsistent, ill- judged and ill-considered comments’. Then Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, joined

Dot Wordsworth

Bacteria

It’s like whipping cream. All of a sudden it goes stiff and you can turn the bowl upside down without it falling out. In the same way, a common mistake in speech solidifies and becomes firmly attached to the language. I don’t think bacteria has quite been whipped into a singular shape yet, even though one is always reading thing like ‘bacteria’s ability to evolve its way around antibiotics’. Such mistakes often occur in newspapers, where rush preserves erroneous forms that in oral speech bubble up and burst, to be lost to any record. A word just on the turn is media. The first example of it found by the

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

A perfect feast with Roger Allam

J Sheekey is one of Richard Caring’s older, and better, restaurants. Since he has dowsed the suburbs of London in multiple outposts of the Ivy (there is one in Wimbledon, another in Richmond and presumably one pending in Penge), J Sheekey increasingly feels like an island in a sea of pointlessly aspirational green. The rise of the Ivy — the original celebrity brasserie, which is code for an indifferent restaurant full of awful people eating shepherd’s pie — is an inevitable consequence of the rise of celebrity culture. This is anti–culture, and the Ivy is, therefore, an anti–restaurant. So many celebrities, and now so many Ivys to put them in.

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 31 August 2017

Q. Our best friends own a house in Morocco which sleeps about ten. They rent it out but go two or three times a year themselves and always invite as many people as they can cram in. They have much more social stamina than we have, so whenever they invite us, we beg that it can be just the four of us. They agree but always renege at the last minute and invite others on the grounds that it will be ‘much jollier’. We just want time alone with them in their undiluted company and we find big house parties mentally exhausting. But it’s not our house so we can’t

Fieldfare

2325: Hard task

Clockwise round the grid run six of a kind (one of three words and one three-word pair). Other unclued lights show where you might find others of their kind. Unchecked corner letters could give PLAY-DEN PLANK.   Across 11    With everyone away, call hourly for singers (6) 13    Old bird biting end off confectionery (3) 16    Group of people, just the first section (5) 17    Left in the rain, following ordinary bird (5) 18    Power to clear out stretch of land (6) 19    Joke about family breaking up (6) 20    Develop strong emotion, turning against English (6) 21    Bills from old masters (5) 22    New mentor works in vacation (7,

Katherine Forster

I never met Princess Diana – but this is why I loved her

Last week, I took my two youngest sons to the Diana Memorial Fountain in Hyde Park. It is quite unlike other memorials or fountains. It forms a circular river which changes every couple of metres: shallow to deep, rushing to calm, springs to waves. Dozens of children were playing in the water; bare feet clambering, little limbs lying down in the pools, small voices raised in laughter and excitement.  A fitting tribute to an extraordinary human being. Today, 20 years after her death, Diana continues to divide the country. A great many people still cannot work out what the fuss was, and still is, about. Yes, she was a good

Sandeep Mander

Too Indian to adopt

I am not surprised that the mother of a white Christian girl should be upset that her daughter was placed by Tower Hamlets council in London with a foster family reported to adhere to a strict form of Islam. But my experience is very different — one in which cultural sensibilities were taken into account, but to an extreme and absurd degree. Our story is about adoption, not fostering, but one assumes that similar decision-making guidelines govern the placement of vulnerable children. My wife and I are British Sikhs, but not practising ones. We have open minds — we like to think there is something out there but we are

The Spectator

to 2322: In memoriam

The event was THE GLORIOUS TWELFTH (1D/29) (12 August, opening day of the grouse-shooting season). Remaining unclued lights bring to mind ‘grouse’: LAGOPUS LAGOPUS SCOTICUS (43/19: scientific name); RUGOSE and ROGUES (11 and 3: anagrams); GRIPE and BLEAT (39 and 25: synonyms).   First prize Robert Burgon, North Berwick, East Lothian Runners-up Jack Shonfield, Child Okeford, Dorset; Caroline Arms, Ithaca, New York

Nick Hilton Nick Hilton

2017: The year football went from a beautiful game to a caricature of its worst excesses

Football is theatre, that much has always been obvious; but it’s also business. And though the rules of the game haven’t changed much on-field since 16th century Etonians codified the random kicking of an inflated pigskin, off the field the game has been in constant evolution. This summer has demonstrated, once again, that football is as much about ritual performances of capitalist peacocking as it is about twenty-two men going head to head. As the transfer window creaks closed today, it is worth reflecting on an historic summer. Neymar’s £200m transfer from Barcelona to Paris Saint-Germain more than doubled the world transfer record and created a domino of wildly inflated transfers – including

Matthew Lynn

Macron’s biggest enemy is himself – not the unions

The labour market would be revolutionised. France would start growing rapidly again, leading the way in Europe. Tech entrepreneurs would flock to Paris, along with the bankers fleeing the City, while companies from around the world would be relocating to newly invigorated industrial hubs in Lyon and Toulouse. That anyway was the script when the centrist reformer Emmanuel Macron was elected to the French Presidency. Today we saw what the Macron revolution would actually amount to as his government finally unveiled his major set of labour market reforms. Predictably enough the major trade unions have already said they will oppose it, and the riot police will no doubt be standing

Nick Hilton Nick Hilton

The Spectator Podcast: Can you forgive her?

On this week’s Spectator Podcast, we ask whether Theresa May can be absolved by her party and the public. We’ll also be looking at the controversial practice of trail hunting, and considering how we might enjoy better lunches at our desks. First up, since blowing her party’s majority with an unnecessary snap election, Theresa May has appeared to be on borrowed time. But with tricky Brexit negotiations ongoing, could she offer the stability the Tories so desperately crave? And can her colleagues forgive her for a calamitous campaign? Isabel Hardman asks these questions in the magazine this week, and she joins the podcast along with Fraser Nelson. As Isabel writes: “Refreshed from walking in the Alps,