Society

Thursday

Gary Bell Qc

Season’s beatings

My colleagues at the commercial and chancery bar are all at their chalets in Gstaad, funded by the endless fees from Jarndyce and Jarndyce, and the family bar are out en famille in Mustique, awaiting the festive fallout — there’s something about turkey, port and the Queen’s Speech that pulls marriages apart like a pound-shop cracker, and divorce doesn’t come cheap. But for we poor criminal hacks, it’s business as usual: crime never sleeps, and never less so than when Santa Claus is coming to town. As a junior barrister I made out like a bandit. Booze flows, blood follows; office parties are a magnet to drug dealers keen to

Mark Forsyth

The invention of Santa

Santa Claus ate Father Christmas. It happened quite suddenly. Well, it took about a decade, but that’s suddenly in cultural terms. Over the course of the 1870s the venerable British figure of Father Christmas was consumed by an American interloper. Father Christmas (first recorded in the 14th century) was the English personification of Christmas. Just as Jack Frost is a personification of the cold and the Easter Bunny is a rabbitification of Easter, so Father Christmas stood for Christmas. He was an old man (because Christmas was ancient) and he was plump (because Christmas was a feast). But Father Christmas did not give presents, did not come down the chimney,

Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

How to put a positive spin on the bizarre events of this year

This is going to be a positive, optimistic column. I promise. Because, look, let’s be honest, I’ve been a bit moany this year, haven’t I? Which may, I suspect, have been a bit misleading. Read me here, or indeed anywhere, and I suspect you could come away thinking I’ve spent the last 12 months, or at least the last six, lying awake, staring at my expensive north London Farrow & Ball ceiling, weeping sad, shuddering, self-indulgent tears at a world moving beyond my ken. I know, I know. I do go on. Whereas actually, it hasn’t really been like that. For one thing, the bedroom ceiling is just white, so

James Delingpole James Delingpole

Don’t try to be liked, and buy your steak at Aldi – the lessons I’ve learned in 2016

Merry Christmas everyone. Here are some things I learned — or relearned — in 2016.   1. That which does not kill you makes you still alive. It’s weird to think that less than 12 months ago I was in hospital, dosed up with morphine, battered and bruised with a broken clavicle, numerous cracked ribs and a pulmonary embolism which can actually kill you, don’t you know. And now it’s as if the whole thing never happened. Well, apart from the hideous titanium plate, like a giant centipede, which I can still feel all stiff across my collar bone. And the bastard hunting ban my family has imposed on me…

The Spectator

Faith in the trenches

From a letter published under the heading ‘The religion of the ordinary soldier’, The Spectator, 23 December 1916: During a discharge of gas at the beginning of July along our front, one of the cylinders was displaced by the near bursting of an enemy shell. It turned the nozzle round, and the gas began to pour into our own trench. One of my lads, who was acting as orderly, heard from the communication trench that something was happening and ran into the front line… He ran forward unprotected, tugged at the cylinder, and pointed its nozzle outwards again before he fell unconscious. He died a few minutes afterwards. Those who saw

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

The one thing that really gets better with age

On the London Underground last week the carriage was crowded. No seat. No problem. I’m only 67 and content to stand. But a younger man offered his seat, and, having some way to travel and a book to read, I accepted with the appropriate grunt and nod of gratitude. Later, approaching my station, I noticed he was still there. Should I thank him properly before alighting? But he was in another part of the carriage. It might look silly to elbow my way over. Let it pass. Then a voice in my head spoke, a voice that over the decades has become so familiar. Don’t misunderstand me: this was not

The Spectator

Have you ever had a prayer answered?

Justin Welby Archbishop of Canterbury There have been lots of wonderful answers to prayer over many years, including recently. One I remember was as a 15-year-old sitting in chapel with the prospect of three frightening tests that day, for which I had done no preparation, and praying that if I got through it then I would do anything for God. I did get through and did nothing about it, except forget about God. Another was praying about whether I should ask my future wife to marry me: I was sitting alone by a canal in Holland. I felt I should, did, and she said yes. It was a wonderful decision.

Ben Schott

Traveller’s Notebook

I was drinking in the bar of Manhattan’s Nomad Hotel when in snuck The Most Seen Human Ever To Have Lived. This is an old puzzle: who is the most ‘observed in the flesh’ individual in history? Since we’re discounting depictions (paintings, photographs, films), it has to be someone alive in the jet age with a sustained international career and multi-generational appeal. John Paul II — who visited 129 countries — is a contender as, to a lesser extent, are Billy Graham, the Queen, Hitler, Stalin and Mao. But, for my money, there’s only one candidate: someone who’s still zigzagging the globe after five decades, appearing regularly in front of

Richard Madeley

From goth to Chancellor

If only I’d known. If only I’d foreseen that the teenage classmate who strode through our school gates every morning, rolled-up Daily Telegraph tucked incongruously (and insouciantly) under one arm, dark leather trench-coat flapping rhythmically in sympathy with the long, swaying black crows-wings of shoulder-length hair, square-heeled boots clicking and clacking their way into morning assembly… if I’d somehow intuited, as I say, that this lanky 15-year-old with the questing, beaky nose and rimless glasses, this proto-goth, would one day be Chancellor of the Exchequer… Well, actually, I wouldn’t have been remotely surprised. I don’t think any of us who knew Philip Hammond back in 1971 at Shenfield School in

The Spectator

Puzzles from GCHQ

Solving serious puzzles — to catch criminals and thwart terrorist plots — is what the men and women who work at GCHQ do round the clock. It’s hardly surprising that many of them enjoy setting and solving them in their own time, too, pitting their wits against each other. This selection is from The GCHQ Puzzle Book (Penguin), put together by GCHQ’s spies, containing a Christmas puzzle challenge, too, and raising money for the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s Heads Together mental health campaign. 1.  A round of drinks What could follow Mojito, Eggnog, Riesling, Lemonade, Ouzo… ? 2. Composing a sequence What is the final entry in this sequence?

Deborah Ross

Question time | 8 December 2016

If you were to see one film about American whistle-blower Edward Snowden — there is no law saying you have to, but if you were — then the film you want is probably Laura Poitras’s 2014 documentary Citizenfour rather than this biopic from Oliver Stone. It’s being sold as a ‘pulse-pounding thriller’ but oh, if only it were. Instead, it’s psychologically thin, tiresomely hagiographic and doesn’t answer any of the questions you’d like it to answer. Certainly, my pulse failed to oblige and if yours doesn’t behave similarly, I’d be most surprised. Poitras’s film, which was a proper pulse-pounder, followed Snowden in real time as he was actually in the

Alexandra Coghlan

Lessons from the front

Christmas, for many people, begins at exactly 3 p.m. on Christmas Eve. It’s the moment when everything stops, frantic present-wrapping, mince-pie making and tree-decorating ceases and calm briefly takes hold. The reason? A single boy treble whose voice, clear and fragile as glass, pierces through the chaos with those familiar words: ‘Once in Royal David’s city/ Stood a lowly cattle shed…’. The service of Nine Lessons and Carols from King’s College, Cambridge, and its annual broadcast on BBC Radio 4 is as essential a part of contemporary Christmas folklore as stockings and Santa Claus, plum pudding and presents. Ageless and timeless, it seems as though there must always have been

Jonathan Ray Jonathan Ray

Wine Club 10 December

Tricky time of year this, with the festivities hoving into view. Never easy for anyone, least of all those of us who suffer from Christmas Affected Doom, Depression and Despondency (CADDAD), a ghastly affliction about which I’ve written at length elsewhere so won’t bore you with now. Suffice to say that it is a dreadful burden, often hereditary (invariably passing down the male line with females rarely affected), often undiagnosed and rarely properly treated. Symptoms include a rise in blood pressure caused by the sight of supermarket Christmas puddings and mince pies in early September, a throbbing in the ears upon being invited to have a ‘Cool Yule’, a lurch

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Hangovers

Although drinking excessive levels of alcohol is up there with Olympic cycling and democracy as things the British excel at, the same cannot be said for dealing with the aftermath. Over the festive season we splash more than £2 billion on trips to the pub as punters take exhortations to have a merry Christmas a bit too literally. But our subsequent hangovers cost the economy almost £260 million through sick days and a lack of productivity. A night on the tiles tends to leave people feeling a little defenceless the next day. However, for those of us who have no option but to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in the morning,

Roger Alton Roger Alton

Ten questions of sport

1. Can anyone explain why England wore dark blue, not white, for the autumn international against Argentina, just as they did against Fiji? Is there anybody in the whole country, other than the marketing department at the Rugby Football Union, who thinks it is a good idea to change England shirts for no other reason than to fleece the public whose children might want to wear one? Why don’t England stick to their proper colours: would the Springboks change, or Australia, or would the All Blacks become the All Purples? Seven different shirts in two years! Come off it.   2. Is the ongoing spat between Ben Stokes and Virat

Aidan Hartley

Wild life | 8 December 2016

 Kenya I realised I had fallen from grace when we were dropped from the Queen’s birthday party guest list at the British High Commission in Nairobi. I wondered what offence I had caused to the recently arrived plenipotentiary. I worried that it was because one evening, while jogging in the diplomatic suburb of Muthaiga, I had passed him going at a slack pace and barked, ‘Giddy up!’ I have always been so fond of our British HCs. I picture them to be like Waugh’s ambassador to Azania, Sir Samson, less engrossed with unfolding revolutions outside than with playing with his rubber dinosaur at bath time, which he sat on ‘and

Christopher Howse

Christmas Quiz | 8 December 2016

Say so In 2016, who said: 1. ‘Brexit means Brexit.’ 2. ‘We’ve got some leaders of some fantastically corrupt countries coming to Britain. Nigeria and Afghanistan, possibly the two most corrupt countries in the world.’ 3. ‘The Prime Minister — I should be pleased about this I suppose — seems to think he should be in Chippenham, paying homage to the town where I was born.’ 4. (On discontinuing his Twitter account for six months): ‘Too many people have peed in the pool.’ 5. ‘The UK is going to be in the back of the queue.’ 6. ‘Son of a whore, I will curse you in that forum.’ 7. ‘Watching

Bruce Anderson

Wines of the times

The other day, I had lunch with the grandest person I know. Forget 1066: Adrian Ziani de Ferranti can trace his Venetian ancestors to the time when St Theodore was the city’s patron saint and St Mark’s corpse still reposed in Alexandria. Ziani Doges were buried under the crypt of San Zaccaria centuries before Bellini painted that church’s sublime altarpiece. John Julius Norwich believes that it is the finest painting in Venice. Were I entitled to an opinion, it might go in favour of the Titian Assumption in the Frari, but we are talking about works which transcend mere admiration: works of mastery, glory and joy. Anyway, the Zianis were

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

The rich aren’t so different any more

The traditional orange at the bottom of a Christmas stocking dates to a time when this was the only orange a child might receive all year. Earlier, in the 17th century, a single pineapple might cost the equivalent of £5,000 today; like pepper in the Middle Ages, pineapple ownership was confined to royalty and the super-rich. Yet last week I spoke to someone who had worked in a food-waste processing plant. She said their worst nightmare was when one of the supermarket chains offered two-for-one on pineapples; so many people would throw away their unwanted second pineapple that the extra acidity played havoc with the chemical workings of the plant.

Christopher Howse

The answers | 8 December 2016

Say so 1. Theresa May 2. David Cameron (overheard on air, speaking to the Queen) 3. Jeremy Corbyn 4. Stephen Fry 5. President Barack Obama of the United States, warning against Brexit 6. President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines about President Barack Obama at an Asean summit 7. Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein politician 8. Hillary Clinton 9. President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, arriving at Harare airport from Dubai, countering rumours of his death 10. Lord Heseltine, of his mother’s dog. Beastliness 1. Beavers 2. Lynxes 3. Eagles 4. Cod 5. Sperm whales 6. A gorilla 7. Yorkshire terriers 8. Tomatoes 9. Donkeys 10. Jeremy. Odd 1. Japan 2. President Hassan