Society

Sunday

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Last summer, feminists defended the burkini. Will they now defend the bikini?

If there was a buzzword from last summer then it was surely ‘burkini’. The media got its swimsuit in a twist over France’s decision to ban the Islamic garment from its beaches. Slow-witted Anglophone columnists – many of whom have a curious predilection for insulting the French – lapped it up and enthusiastically portrayed Islam as the victim of Gallic oppression. Those trusty custodians of liberal values, the Guardian and the New York Times, got particularly worked up, the former declaring in an editorial that ‘women’s right to dress as they feel comfortable and fitting should be defended against those coercing them into either covering or uncovering.’ The New York Times quoted Marwan Muhammad,

Saturday

Michael Gove

Embarrassing photos are a speciality of mine

As pictures go, it could be career death. An amazing young talent caught in a compromising position with two older men. And it’s on my computer. The talent in question is Jack Whitehall, the brilliant actor/comedian, star of Decline and Fall and Bad Education, who was appearing at the Hammersmith Apollo last week. I went with my children to see the show and, afterwards, thanks to the kindness of an old friend, we were invited backstage to hobnob with Jack. My son and daughter posed for pictures with their idol and then their place by his side was taken by two less innocent characters. Jack’s father Michael is one of the greatest film

Friday

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

The knives are out for Christian faith schools

Today’s Holy Smoke podcast responds to rumours that the Government is planning to betray parents who want to send their children to faith schools. As The Sunday Times reported: Ministers are expected to drop plans to allow Christian, Jewish and Muslim state schools to admit all their pupils from one faith after warnings that the move could heighten community divisions in Britain. A U-turn would jeopardise dozens of new free schools planned by faith groups, some to cope with the influx of Catholic families from Poland and other east European countries. Catholics said this weekend they would not open new state schools if they had to reserve half their places for children of

Thursday

The Spectator

Barometer | 27 July 2017

But me no butts Boris Johnson, being taught a Maori head-to-head greeting, joked that it might be ‘misinterpreted in a pub in Glasgow’. But did he offend the wrong city? In 2007 the OED appealed for details on the origin of ‘Glasgow kiss’, meaning a headbutt. Then, its earliest known first use was in the Financial Times in 1987, whereas ‘Liverpool kiss’ (meaning the same thing) was traced back to 1944. The appeal pushed back the Glasgow first use, but only by five years to 1982, when the Daily Mirror said: ‘Glasgow has its own way of welcoming people… there is a broken bottle gripped in the first of greeting.

The Spectator

Letters | 27 July 2017

Bugs bite back Sir: Matthew Parris is quite right to say that we Leavers would prefer independence in reduced circumstances to affluent federalism (‘Dear Leavebugs, it’s time to admit your mistake’, 22 July). But he is wrong to suggest that our preference is a guilty secret, or that it should be. Many of us despaired at the narrowness of both referendum campaigns, which made no attempt at addressing our ‘spiritual’ concerns about EU membership, or indeed the equally spiritual hopes of the Remainers. Spiritual, moral and cultural questions are at the root of all politics and economics, and any debate which leaves them out is empty. What should have been

Peter Jones

Health and personal choice

Public health specialist Sir Michael Marmot has blamed ‘the cuts’ for the rise in dementia among the elderly, resulting in a decline in the rising rate of life expectancy. But parroting ‘the cuts’ does nothing to treat the cause. If Sir Michael wants to tackle that problem, the ancients can tell him how. It has to do with lifestyle. Ancient medicine, like ancient Gaul, was divided into three parts: drugs, surgery and lifestyle. This last part permeated every aspect of life. Food and exercise were taken to be the most important, but sleep, sex, bathing, massage, mental activity, and so on — even clothing — could all come into the

Raymond Keene

British championship

This year’s British Championship starts on Saturday and is endowed with an outstanding prize fund supplied by Capital Developments Waterloo Ltd. The first prize alone is £10,000 and this has attracted a field which includes many of the UK’s leading grandmasters. This week, a game and a puzzle by two of the leading contenders. Gawain Jones won the championship in 2012 and this week’s game is taken from that event. The puzzle position is by Luke McShane, a hugely talented player who has been somewhat distracted from his vocation as a chess grandmaster by his day job in finance.   Jones-Turner: British Championship, North Shields 2012; Petroff Defence   1 e4

Raymond Keene

no. 467

White to play. This position is from McShane-Istratescu, London 2013. How did White conclude his kingside attack with a fine flourish? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 1 August 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 Rxh8+ Last week’s winner Jim Ward, Coldstream, Berwickshire

Taki

High Life | 27 July 2017

Greece   I am surfing along the Cycladic islands on Puritan, a 125ft classic that was launched in 1929 by John Alden and has remained among the most beautiful sailing boats ever. Everything on board is original, including the MoMC, my two grandchildren and my son. I boarded her at Porto Heli, where the granddaughter of Aleko Goulandris was married last week in a two-night bash I shall not soon forget. It was a mixture of young and old, Marietta Chandris being in her very early thirties, the groom the same age. I was among the oldest people there, a repeat performance that is getting me down sooner rather than

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 27 July 2017

‘We are always waiting for somebody,’ observed a vexed British journalist. Usually it was me they were waiting for, but this morning I had boarded the tour bus on time and I tutted along with the righteous. While we waited I picked up the driver’s copy of that day’s edition of El Pais. On the front page was an arresting photograph of President Trump going head to head with President Macron, in Paris, their forearms joined and their hands clasped in the arm-wrestling start position. At their first public handshake in Brussels, Macron had crushed Trump’s hand until the Donald’s eyes nearly popped out of his head. Here was the

Melissa Kite

Real life | 27 July 2017

Quite stoically, I was mountaineering on my hands and knees over a sea of rubble to get to the temporary loo in the basement until I impaled my foot on a nail sticking out of a chunk of wood. It was partly my fault for wearing flip-flops, of course. But the builder boyfriend grudgingly agreed I had to be mollycoddled, and allowed me the luxury of a scaffolding plank over the sea of rubble. I was delighted with the new arrangement of walking the plank to the loo. But then one day I stepped onto the staircase to descend to the basement and the entire thing moved. It bounced up

Toby Young Toby Young

Now I get it – Corbyn is the new Murdoch

For our 16th wedding anniversary, Caroline and I went to the Almeida Theatre to see Ink, a new play about Rupert Murdoch’s purchase of the Sun in 1969 and the subsequent circulation war with the Daily Mirror. It is terrifically funny, brimming with comic characters and acerbic one-liners, as you would expect from writer James Graham, perhaps best known for This House, his play about the five-year duel between the Labour and Conservative whips during the period 1974-79. Ink is due to transfer to the Duke of York’s Theatre on 9 September and I cannot recommend it highly enough. One of the things that struck me as the Murdoch character

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 27 July 2017

Q. My children are very lucky in that we have bought them all flats. However, they are now renting out these properties with Airbnb, then coming to stay with us at home, just when we thought they had flown the nest. They are more than welcome at weekends but during the week my ancient husband and I like to have a quiet time. How can we put a stop to this without our much-loved children (all in their thirties) feeling that they are unwelcome in their ‘own’ home? — Name and address withheld A. Their entitlement syndrome is certainly a tribute to your parenting, but for their sake you must

Susanna Gross

Bridge | 27 July 2017

This is a great time to be a bridge professional — not just for the world’s top players, who have their pick of super-rich sponsors, but also for those a good few notches below them. In London, there seems to be an ever-growing list of clients willing to spend £100 or more for a game at their local club. I’ve never given much thought to what it’s like to be a professional, but recently I came across a fascinating article by the bridge pro August Boehm which made me realise how approaches differ vastly. Some clients don’t particularly want to improve; they don’t even want their mistakes pointed out. They

Dot Wordsworth

Epiphanic

‘I love the pumping station,’ said my husband, waving a copy of the Docklands and East London Advertiser which reported the architectural listing of the Isle of Dogs storm water pumping station. ‘I’d been looking for that,’ I said patiently (I thought). ‘The listing is not the point.’ A reader had sent the paper to me because of the strange language used by John Outram, the architect of the Grade II* building, put up between 1986 and 1988: ‘Decoration is the origin and essence of architecture. It can mediate, in the theatre of a built room or a big city, the epiphany of a meaning. I aimed to invent that

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 27 July 2017

The pre-commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales is already in full swing. She is a subject on which it is hard to get the balance right. Her impact was remarkable and her death tragic. On the other hand, the picture of the loving, giving saint which has been getting a new lick of paint these last weeks is hard to recognise. I remember being in the Daily Telegraph newsroom on the frantic night before the funeral. We had a special supplement to get out and a demented press conference by Mohamed Al Fayed to report. Suddenly someone on the picture desk looked up

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 27 July 2017

Home Theresa May, the Prime Minister, invited the media to take a photograph of her beginning a holiday with her husband Philip at Lake Garda before pressing on to Switzerland for some walking. David Davis, the Brexit Secretary, resisted demands by Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament Brexit negotiator, that the European Court of Justice should retain jurisdiction over EU migrants in Britain. BMW said a fully electric Mini is to be built at Cowley in Oxford, with motors made in Germany and shipped over for assembly. The government announced plans to ban new diesel and petrol cars and vans from 2040. The number of people over 90 with a driving

Michael Gove

Diary – 27 July 2017

As pictures go, it could be career death. An amazing young talent caught in a compromising position with two older men. And it’s on my computer. The talent in question is Jack Whitehall, the brilliant actor/comedian, star of Decline and Fall and Bad Education, who was appearing at the Hammersmith Apollo last week. I went with my children to see the show and, afterwards, thanks to the kindness of an old friend, we were invited backstage to hobnob with Jack. My son and daughter posed for pictures with their idol and then their place by his side was taken by two less innocent characters. Jack’s father Michael is one of

Doc

2320: Crossings out

The unclued Across lights become thematic when a suffix is appended. The individual unclued Down lights (one a proper noun) also become thematic when a different suffix is appended; 1 Down consists of three further words which individually become thematic in the same way as the unclued Down ones do. The unchecked letters of all these unclued lights reveal HADDOCKS’ HERB GARDEN LTD. Elsewhere, ignore an apostrophe.   Across 1    Call for dismissal (5) 4    17s very bold pieces (9) 9    Badly undernourished — not used to school break (10, two words) 11    Geographical feature’s picture surround (5) 12    First to arrive on time, injured

James Delingpole James Delingpole

No true Tory can support this gender idiocy

I’ve had it with the Conservatives. For me, and I know I’m not the only one, the final straw was the announcement at the weekend that the Equalities Minister Justine Greening wants to change the law so that people are free to specify their gender on their birth certificate regardless of medical opinion. What were they thinking, Greening and the various senior party bods who supported this decision, including, apparently, the Prime Minister? Actually, I think we can guess. They were thinking: ‘Oh, Jeremy Corbyn. His young followers seem to like this LBGBLT — how do the initials go again? — malarkey so perhaps we’d better get with it too.’