Society

Friday

Nick Hilton Nick Hilton

Leicester were right to sack Ranieri

‘Inexplicable, unforgivable and gut-wrenchingly sad’, ‘nobody can delete the history you wrote’, ‘Shocked after last night’s display!’. No, these aren’t reactions to Paul Nuttall losing in Stoke, they’re the commiserations of Gary Lineker, Jose Mourinho and Rio Ferdinand after Claudio Ranieri, the title-winning Leicester manager, was sacked yesterday evening. Having led his team to the Premiership trophy last season, Ranieri leaves the King Power stadium with the Foxes a point above the drop. There was a sense among football pundits that Ranieri would be given time, even allowed to take Leicester down to the Championship, as a reward for his stellar first season at the club. Instead, the club acted decisively, and

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Why are universities so scared of new rivals offering two-year degrees?

When you hear of universities rewarding their vice-chancellors fat salaries – they averaged £277,000 last year, up 5 per cent on the previous year – it would be easy to think that they have evolved into businesses, driven by a great spirit of enterprise. When universities minister Jo Johnson made the proposal for two year degrees, however, it didn’t take long for the nation’s academics to retreat beneath the comfort blanket of wanting universities to be a monolithic state provider of education. ‘Accelerated degrees risk undermining the well-rounded education upon which our universities’ reputation is based’, complained Sally Hunt, general secretary of the Universities and College Union. ‘As well as

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

The Queen is a true Christian leader. But what about Prince Charles, who seems more interested in worshipping himself?

Every time I suggest on social media that the Queen is Britain’s most inspiring Christian leader, there’s a chorus of agreement – with Catholic voices among the loudest, interestingly. Churchgoers in this country have noticed that Her Majesty is quietly uncompromising about her beliefs; her Christmas message doesn’t skate over the teaching that the infant Jesus is God incarnate: typically, it affirms it without qualification. But, as of this month, the Queen has been reigning for 65 years. Attention is inevitably focussing on the next Supreme Governor of the Church of England, presumably Prince Charles. And here the same people who recognise his mother as a Christian exemplar tend to

Helen Nugent

RBS, John Lewis, housing and motorists

Royal Bank of Scotland dominates the business news this morning following its announcement of a £7 billion annual loss. According to the BBC, the deficit is more than treble 2015’s loss of £2 billion. It is the ninth year in a row RBS has failed to make a profit. Over the next four years, the taxpayer-backed bank plans to slash costs by £2 billion – this will inevitably mean job losses and more branch closures. Chief executive Ross McEwan told the Today programme that he would not be stepping down and was committed to seeing through the bank’s turnaround. ‘I do a bit of cycling and when you’re out there with the wind

Thursday

Raymond Keene

Blazing Sadler

Matthew Sadler’s retirement from full-time international chess is one of the great losses to the British game. Occasionally, the one-time prodigy emerges, usually to make a massive score in a rapid or blitz event in the vicinity of Holland, where he now works and lives. It is also fortunate that he still competes in the Four Nations Chess League.   This week’s game is a Sadler victory against a former two-times World Championship candidate, Jon Speelman.   Sadler-Speelman: 4NCL 2017; French Defence   1 e4 e6 2 d4 d5 3 Nc3 Bb4 4 e5 Qd7 The usual move here is 4 … c5 with an immediate challenge to the white

Raymond Keene

no. 445

Black to play. This position is from Morozevich-Sadler, Reykjavik 1999, a game from Sadler’s heydey, when he was regularly beating the best players in the world. How did he finish off? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 28 February 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 Rh8+. Last week’s winner R.F. Tindall, Great Shelford, Cambridgeshire.

Taki

High life | 23 February 2017

From my chalet high up above the village, I look up at the immense, glistening mountain range of the Alps, and my spirit soars. Even youthful memories receding into sepia cannot bring me down from the high. Mountains, more than seas, can be exhilarating for the soul. Then I open the newspapers and the downer is as swift as the onset of an Alpine blizzard. Television is even more of a bummer. Last week I saw Piers Morgan tell an American TV personality — a big-time Trump hater — whose face looks exactly like a penis how strange he found it that two people like Bush and Blair, who lied

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 23 February 2017

I stepped off the train in Barcelona at 7.30 in the evening and followed directions to the hostel. The February night air felt almost balmy. I found the street easily enough — a busy thoroughfare of bars and independent shops. The hostel entrance was an ancient door in the wall. Next to it was a button to press before speaking. The door swung open to reveal a glorious marbled and tiled entrance hall with an old-fashioned cage elevator that had ceased going up and down a long time ago. Marble and tile continued all the way to the top. The hostel manager and his girlfriend were leaning over the stairwell

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 23 February 2017

Home Theresa May, the Prime Minister, sat on the steps of the throne, as a privy counsellor, watching the Lords debate the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill. The Supreme Court upheld the rule that Britons must earn more than £18,600 before their husband or wife from outside the European Economic Area can settle in Britain. Rebecca Steinfeld and Charles Keidan failed (on the grounds that they are of different sexes) in their Court of Appeal application to be allowed to enter into a civil partnership. The BBC said that in 28 out of 44 areas in England subject to NHS ‘sustainability and transformation plans’, hospital services would be reduced.

Susanna Gross

Bridge | 23 February 2017

If there’s one tournament I’d really like to play in, it’s the Cavendish in Monaco, the largest money bridge tournament in the world. Last Sunday, the winners of the main auction pairs, the Bulgarians Diyan Danailov and Jerry Stamatov, scooped the players prize of €16,000, and whoever bought them for €12,000 won €100,000. But it’s not just the money: what really sets this tournament apart is the thrillingly high standard. Even great players sometimes err — at this level, though, the smallest slip-ups are pounced on without mercy. This deal grabbed my attention while I was watching online — the same contract at three tables, a defensive mistake at each:

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

Diary – 23 February 2017

More than 20 years ago, I left my fast life in London for a rather more relaxed one in Brighton and Hove. I never dreamt I could enjoy it more till all the business with the trains started up a few years back. The chaos at Southern Railway — which has seen commuters lose their livelihoods and property prices all along the London–Brighton line plunge, and culminated last summer in the resignation of the rail minister Claire Perry — has effectively put an end to the one thing I disliked about my seaside city. Namely, that it’s too close to That London. I never minded mates coming down to visit —

The Spectator

Barometer | 23 February 2017

Big league Lincoln City became the first non-league club since Queens Park Rangers in 1914 to win a place in the FA Cup quarter-finals. But what happened in 1914? — There were only 40 league clubs and QPR won a bye through the early rounds. — They drew 2-2 with Bristol City before winning 2-0 in a replay. — They beat Swansea and Birmingham (2-1 each) to reach the quarter-finals, where Liverpool beat them 2-1. — Liverpool lost the final 1-0 to Burnley, the team Lincoln beat last weekend. — That final was the last held at the Crystal Palace, which had been its venue since 1895. Mega mergers Unilever

Dot Wordsworth

Curry favour

The number of things I don’t know is infinite — or infinite minus one, if such as number exists, since I discovered something the other day: the most unlikely origin for a common phrase. I could hardly believe it at first. A perfectly current idiom in English is to talk of people currying favour, in the sense of ‘ingratiating themselves’. I knew that currying here had nothing to do with the kind of curry we eat with rice, the name of which we borrowed from Tamil in the 17th century. I supposed, right enough, that the currying of favour was the sort done with a curry-comb when rubbing down a horse.

Toby Young Toby Young

Will my inner party animal roar back to life?

According to a front-page story in the Times earlier this week, your personality does change over the course of your lifetime. A study carried out by Edinburgh University found that the personalities of a group of people in their seventies had changed significantly since they were schoolchildren in the 1950s. Traits like perseverance, self-confidence and originality changed ‘beyond recognition’, according to the study’s leader Dr Mathew Harris. He was surprised, because the conventional wisdom among social psychologists is that these characteristics remain stable over a person’s lifetime. At first glance, my own personality would appear to bear out these findings. Between the ages of 14 and 40 I was something

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 23 February 2017

Q. I’ve listened to the radio to deal with insomnia for years (Dear Mary, 18 February) and your suggestion of single earphones does not work well. They hurt your ear — when they haven’t fallen out of it. The answer is either a Roberts Radio Pillow Talk speaker (flat, sits under pillow, clearly audible through pillow) or a Sound Asleep Speaker Pillow (haven’t tried myself but has 49 good reviews on sleepypeople.com). Both cost £14.99.—F.C., Newbury. A. Thank you for sharing your findings. Q. Our 15-year-old daughter has, on paper, nothing to complain about. We both love her passionately and have only her best interests at heart. Moreover, we live

Melissa Kite

Real life | 23 February 2017

Unexpectedly re-available is a very good phrase. I have often seen it applied to house advertisements and thought how fabulously impertinent it sounds, so I am asking the agents to attach it to the description of my flat now that it is back on the market after a right old hoo-ha with the buyer from hell. Unexpectedly re-available is a grammatical tongue-twister, and a euphemism that manages to be both enigmatic and facetious at the same time. I also like it because it speaks to me on a personal level. I have been unexpectedly re-available countless times and I wish I had thought of saying so whenever I went on

Fieldfare

2298: NOᴎ

The unclued lights (one of two words), correctly paired, are of a kind and are defective in the same way. Elsewhere, ignore an accent.   Across 1    Indecision of poet shortly to tour America (8) 5    A band restrains it likewise (6, two words) 14    Judge half a fool (3) 16    Shrewd to capture rook in tight opening (6) 18    Fold in applicant’s heart (5) 20    Accumulate leave, by the way (7) 24    To put it another way, some drank, but the … (7) 25    Slip at intervals in fear or worry (5) 26    Increase cost at first by an arm or a leg (5) 28    A priest at home

Christopher De Bellaigue

Islam’s lost Enlightenment

I am quite used to people smirking into their sleeves when they hear that I’ve just written a book called The Islamic Enlightenment. The really helpful wags say they expect something along the lines of The Wit and Wisdom of Spiro Agnew, which was billed as a collection of all the memorable aphorisms of the former US vice-president, and contained only blank pages. So, the Islamic Enlightenment — good for a laugh. But we’re all familiar with the serious argument that lies behind the jests; that Islam has not been through an Enlightenment, a Reformation, or any of the other rites of passage that have formed our modernity, and that,