Corrections of misprints in clues give STEP ON THE GAS, indicating the unclued lights in each of four columns in the grid. First prize Virginia Porter, Gwaelod-y-Garth, Cardiff Runners-up Richard Poole, Harlech, Gwynedd; John M. Brown, Rolleston-on-Dove, Staffordshire
Commentators have complained about this referendum — its ‘lies’, bad manners, bitterness. Without exactly disagreeing, I would nevertheless argue that it has performed at least one of the roles intended, which is to encourage people to consider the issue. If you are actively engaged in political debate, as candidate, activist, journalist etc, you believe (often erroneously) that you have thought through the big questions. If you are an unpolitical voter, you often haven’t. This is particularly true of the European question because, for 40 years, enormous efforts have been made by all the political parties to discourage you. David Cameron only finally conceded to us the right to have our
Tom Hiddleston and Taylor Swift’s romance is hot news in China, where online stores have been offering ‘break-up insurance’. People, especially Hiddleston’s adoring female fans, have been paying up to 400 yuan, about £41, to predict how long the relationship will last. They hoped to double or even triple their cash. Now Chinese authorities have ordered the stores to withdraw the schemes sharpish. Individuals can’t sell insurance in China, and in any case this is really betting – something also outlawed unless sanctioned by the state. But then isn’t all insurance really betting, a bet against yourself that you will lose, that your house will burn down, your dog will need
Good grief, I’ve just been well and truly seduced! Back in April, attentive readers might recall, I led a heavily oversubscribed Spectator visit to Chapel Down winery in Kent for a bit of a tasting and one heck of a lunch. We ate and drank like kings and lingered far longer over lunch than was planned with coffee skipped in favour of a mad sprint for the train. As I dashed down the stairs two at a time the Chapel Down MD, Mark Harvey, yelled after me that since there wasn’t time now he was going to send me a little something in the post. It arrived the other week
So here I am, just arrived in Toronto. And it strikes me that we Brits uncertain about the vote on Thursday and unnerved by immigration in particular could learn much from this quietly confident city. It’s the fourth largest in North America (which I did not know), after New York, LA, Mexico City and just before Chicago. It boasts 2.9m inhabitants (6m in the larger metropolitan area) and is about as multicultural as it can get. 100,000 immigrants arrive each year and over half the city’s population was born outside Canada. My Serbian cabbie tells me that 130 different languages are spoken here and that the City of Toronto publishes
In Notting Hill Gate, in west London, the division was obvious. On the east side of the street was a row of privately owned Victorian terraced houses painted in pastel colours like different flavoured ice creams. These houses, worth £4 million to £6 million each, were dotted with Remain posters. On the west side was a sad-looking inter-war council block, Nottingwood House, which had dirty bricks and outside staircases and corridors. No posters there. But that is where my fellow campaigners and I headed — down to the basement entrances with their heavy steel gates. We looked up the names on the canvassing sheets and rang the bell of one flat after
‘I am grateful to the gaffer for the opportunity and to God for letting me score,’ said Daniel Sturridge after his last-minute winner for England against Wales in Euro 2016 last week, a goal that certainly made me seriously question the Man Upstairs: I had invested quite heavily in the draw. What an enviable feast of attacking options Roy Hodgson has available at his fingertips for that tricky meeting in the round of 16 on Monday: Harry Kane, Raheem Sterling, Jamie Vardy, Marcus Rashford, Sturridge himself, of course, and God. Not to mention Wayne Rooney, who is better used in a deeper role, but could be pressed into service up
On a recent sodden weekend walk, I tried to cheer myself up by thinking: it’s not so bad. Not the slugs or the sky or the rain making its way down a gap between neck and waterproof. But I couldn’t do it. Losing heart, I turned back. Glump, glump, glump through the puddles. It rained through breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner. Same the next day. And the day after. I wore grey and sighed at the window. But I am aberrant. Melancholy is against the rules nowadays. I should have put on my yellow wellies, twirled my spotty umbrella, photographed myself in the garden and put it online with the hashtag
Big game hunt Wales beat Russia 3–0 to finish above England in their group at the European Football Championships. Which is bigger in Wales, football or rugby? — The Football Association of Wales was founded in 1876, five years earlier than the Welsh Rugby Union. However, rugby then took off rapidly in south Wales while football remained stronger in the north. — Wales lost their first matches to England in both football (2–1) and rugby (8–0). — Rugby and football matches have both filled Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium (capacity 76,000), though in a recent Wales Online poll, rugby was still reckoned more important, by 56% to 44%. Tall poppies A group
Local hero Shakhriyar Mamedyarov won the Vugar Gashimov Memorial in Shamkir, Azerbaijan by virtue of three consecutive victories at the last minute. Two of these wins came against the leaders Fabiano Caruana and Anish Giri. That catapulted Mamedyarov into a tie for first prize with Caruana, and then he went on to win the tie-break. This was a colossal performance by the Azeri frontrunner and it must have thrilled the home crowds. Full scores in the main tournament were as follows: Mamedyarov and Caruana 6 (out of 9); Giri 5½; Karjakin 5; Mamedov 4½; Harikrishna, Safarli and Radjabov 4; Eljanov 3½ and Hou Yifan 2½. Mamedyarov then went on to
Black to play. This is from Caruana-Mamedyarov, Gashimov Memorial Play-off 2016. Black played 1 … Kg8 here, missing a clever winning move. What should he have played instead? (This is a tough puzzle.) Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 28 June 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 Nxh7 Last week’s winner Jeremy Hart, Yatton, North Somerset
Cafe Monico, as if named by an illiterate playboy, is on Shaftesbury Avenue between The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time and Les Mis, so if you want to be in an Asperger’s syndrome/-singing French revolutionary restaurant sandwich it is the café for you, and only for you. It is from Soho House, whose quest to make the whole of Britain a crèche-restaurant with table-tennis tables and photo booths for moronic remembrance goes on. There are more Soho House franchises now than Ivy franchises; even Chiswick has one. It is confusing, but if it upsets the media executive class, who must find new ponds to preen and fight
The 53rd European Teams Championship started last week in Budapest, 37 countries competing in an 11-day complete round robin. The Open Teams kicked off the event slightly earlier than the Women’s and Senior’s, and England has excellent chances of medals in all three categories. The teams are competing for two different prizes: the first to win a European medal and the second to qualify for the next Bermuda Bowl (world championship). Only the top six go through, but if today’s hand is anything to go on, England will romp home. In their match against Ireland, Andrew Robson put his considerable analytical powers to work, and found a layout and a
Forced to depart Ascot earlier than usual to fulfil a cruise lecture booking on the fjords, I hadn’t reckoned with June in Norway. It turned out to require anoraks and sweaters rather than shorts and suntan oil, although Mrs Oakley and I were better prepared than one lady passenger: having travelled without a scarf, she confessed that it was indeed her deftly folded nightie she had wrapped around her neck for warmth. At least a bit of book-signing went without a hitch, better than the time a young lady asked me to write ‘To Bubbles with love and kisses’ and then, when asked to pay for the signed volume, demurred,
I was humiliated in trying to make out the meaning of eight hard words. See how you do: claustration, edulcoration, eidolic, idoneous, infraction, straticulate, tergiversation, velleity. The little list was included in his edition of Fowler’s Modern English Usage by the late R.W. Burchfield in 1996. He made the point that the first four of these Latinate words did not appear in the Concise Oxford Dictionary. Yet one man’s hard word is another man’s fodder for daily discourse. I wouldn’t count infraction as hard. But I failed on idoneous, which the Oxford English Dictionary (in 1899) called ‘now rare’. It means ‘fit, suitable’, as for public office, though Robert Boyle, the
One of my first outings while recovering from a little stroke has been to the New London Theatre in Drury Lane to see the splendid revival of Show Boat, the 1927 musical of Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II. Show Boat not only contains some of Kern’s finest songs (‘Ol’ Man River’ and ‘Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man’, for example), but is remarkable as the first American musical to combine light entertainment with a dramatic story and to deal with serious themes — gambling, alcoholism and racism. It was based on a novel about life on one of the floating theatres (‘show boats’) that travelled along the Mississippi in the
The cottage in Surrey has fallen through, for the time being at least. Maybe I am going to be a country girl again at some point, but for now it’s looking like I will have to remain a while longer in Bal-ham, gazing longingly towards the south. The owners of the cottage in Ripley pulled out, after I failed to sell my flat quickly enough. To be fair, I had promised I would be under offer within days, because that is how it has always been before. I have had the place on the market twice in the past two years, and both times it was snapped up in a
Before dashing out of the door and driving to Nice airport, I gave my eyebrows a quick trim with the electric grooming razor Father Christmas gave me. In my tearing haste, however, I forgot to clip on the length regulator and in two sweeps shaved them right off, leaving two bald white strips. I was last to board the plane. While everyone else queued in the stifling airbridge while the plane was prepared, I had remained in my comfortable seat in the sunny departure lounge reading Sir Michael Holroyd’s hilarious life of Augustus John. Seat 9F was the aisle seat of a row of three, and the pair of chaps
I always thought the Freuds a pretty sordid bunch, and after the latest revelations it seems I wasn’t far off. I first met Clement Freud when John Aspinall employed him as an adviser for food and wine. He was lugubrious and aggressive, and none of us punters liked him one bit. He was not a gambler but talked as if he were a big one. While crossing the Atlantic on board the QE2 back in 1974, he tried to pRlay the tough guy with me over — yes, you guessed it — a lady, but it didn’t work. But there’s no use giving him the business now that he’s dead,
Q. A friend’s daughter is marrying soon. She and her husband-to-be, both art-lovers, have dispensed with a wedding list, instead asking that each of the 200 guests give something they have made. My husband and I are loath to add to the mountain of garbage the young couple will feel honour-bound to find roomspace for. Would it be kinder to come empty-handed? — M.D., Wiltshire A. The request may be less naive than you think. It would be well worth storing 198 pieces of grot if, for example, David Hockney and Bridget Riley were to be among the guests and delivering something handmade. Meanwhile you could compromise by knocking up