Society

Thursday

Olivia Potts Olivia Potts

Whatever happened to chicken à la king?

As sure as eggs is eggs, what was once comfort food will be reinvented as fine dining. Lancashire hotpots will be turned fancy, served with teapots of lamb jus. Fish and chips will become canapés, spritzed with atomisers filled with malt vinegar. French onion soup will be served in teeny-tiny shots; Scotch eggs gussied beyond recognition. I once ate a (large and unwieldy) single bite of shepherd’s pie from a Chinese soup spoon at a posh party. Chefs just can’t resist the joke. Chicken à la king – chicken braised in a cream sauce with onions, mushroom and peppers – has gone in the opposite direction, from fine dining to

Luke McShane

To move the monarch

Patience is the companion of wisdom, declared St Augustine. That wisdom was manifest in Wesley So’s victory at the Sinquefield Cup last month, one of the strongest classical events in the calendar, with a $350,000 prize fund. So grabbed his first win as late as round seven, against world champion Gukesh; going into the last round he trailed the leaders by half a point. The outstanding feature of his final-round win was the farsighted decision to evacuate his king before launching the final assault. That victory put him into a playoff with Caruana and Praggnanandhaa. So said that he joked about sharing the title, with a nod to the 2024

Luke McShane

No. 866

Black to play. Cervantes Landeiro-M. Muzychuk, Women’s World Cup 2025. Black, down rook for knight, retreated Ne4-g5 and went on to lose. How could she have salvaged a draw? Email answers to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 8 September. 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…Qxg6! 2 fxg6 Bxg5+ wins back White’s queen, with decisive material gains. Last week’s winner Derek Shakespeare, Lymington, Hampshire

Lucy Vickery

Spectator Competition: Seeing the light

For Competition 3415 you were invited to submit a lost poem by a well-known poet which makes us see him or her in a new light. There is space only to commiserate with unlucky losers Elizabeth Kay, Alex Steelsmith, Sophie Hannah, Ralph Goldswain and D.A. Prince. The winners below take the £25 John Lewis vouchers. I am an atheistic chap. I like to trash the psalter, And lay some tins of Spam across each silly harvest altar. On every reredos I carve graffiti with my Stanley. God is dead and anyhow the Devil is more manly. The architecture of a church is frankly rather fussy, But in I go, because

Madrigal

2719: What’s in a name?

The unclued lights (including one pair) form three groups, each linked to thematic keywords in different ways. Across 3 With audit team, I’ve reassessed weariness of life (7,5) 10    French studio had remainer? (7) 13    Admitted Church pupil initially played outside (8) 16    Bait ram that is held inside (5) 18    Dutch island, an impediment to America (5) 22    Young boy lurking in Portadown (3) 24    Bits of Whitechapel ham salad sandwiches (7) 26    Detective force surround ‘Blinder’? (7) 28    Worm damaging air-sacs (7) 30    Scottish ball with soul is something sweet (4) 32    Poor Muse ruined poetic lights (7) 33    Shipping order with special appeal (3) 35    Energy company

John Power

Revealed: the sinister tactics of Hope Not Hate

Simone Collins remembers the moment her guard came down. She was speaking to a polite, slightly self-effacing British man who had introduced himself, over email, as Christopher Morton, a wealthy philanthropist who was interested in donating to her charity, which promotes pronatalism. Pronatalism can be a controversial political cause, so Simone was understandably cautious that he might be too good to be true. To allay her fears, he sent her a photograph of a passport in that name. For Collins, it was proof that Morton was who he claimed to be. Months later, she realised that ‘Christopher Morton’ was in fact Harry Shukman, a British journalist who had been working

The Spectator

2716: Cluelessness – solution

Eight entries possess ‘titular properties’ in two ways. First, they are unclued! Second, they, as per the title CLUE.LESS.NESS, can all be divided into three-word charades: COMP.UTERI.SING, TRIST.RAMS.HANDY, SCRUB.BING.BOARD, ENIGMA.TIC.ALLY, BLESS.THIS.HOUSE, SEVER.ALF.OLD, GRAVE.YARD.SHIFT and DISC.OUR.SING. First prize Leslie Verth, Newton Mearns, Glasgow Runners-up J.E. Green, St Albans, Herts; Sue Pounder, Ashton under Lyne, Greater Manchester

Sebastian Faulks

Bring back the book launch!

It’s that time of year when the local librairie-papeterie in your French holiday village is full of signs for la rentrée and English newspapers carry ads for gel pens and shoes with Velcro fastenings. I used to love this season as a schoolboy – discovering if I’d made the under-13 football training squad. For the past 40 years, though, September has been for me a different season: the time of the publishers’ launch party. These used to be lavish affairs, held in a hotel or gallery with themed drinks and food, the whole thing fizzing with romantic possibilities. In 2001 we had a memorable do for my American novel On

The Spectator

What percentage of hotel rooms in Britain are occupied by migrants?

Flagged up The Finnish air force announced that it is to remove the swastika from its flag (which was designed in 1918) to avoid awkward encounters with foreign dignitaries. Some other unlikely places you can – or could – see a swastika without any links to Nazism: – Christian catacombs in Rome. – Above the doorway to Chelmsford town hall (built 1928-39). – Above a doorway at the Foreign Office. – On a plaque at India House. – On the floor at Upminster Bridge Tube station (opened early 1930s). – On the floor at the former NatWest branch in Derby Street, Bolton. – On early editions by Rudyard Kipling. A

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Keir Starmer’s reshuffle, Graham Linehan’s arrest and get ready for Storm Wubbo

Home Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, told the Commons that new applications for refugee family reunion visas would be suspended. She later said in a radio interview: ‘I have St George’s bunting. I also have Union Jack bunting.’ An injunction stopping the Bell Hotel, Epping, from housing asylum seekers was overturned by the Court of Appeal. Ahmad Mulakhil, 23, and Mohammad Kabir, 23, reported to be Afghan asylum seekers, pleaded not guilty to charges in connection with the rape of a 12-year-old girl in Nuneaton on 22 July. Only 56 migrants arrived in England in small boats in the seven days to 1 September. Tommy Robinson, the right-wing agitator, faced

Tim Shipman

Robert Jenrick: ‘Asylum seekers should be detained in camps’

On a table in Robert Jenrick’s parliamentary office lies the first part of Ronald Hutton’s biography of Oliver Cromwell, a conventional MP who became radicalised by events and usurped a monarch. The shadow justice secretary is very on message when it comes to the prospect of regicide in the Conservative party (‘I’m just doing my job. Kemi is the leader’). But as one who recently travelled to Calais to berate the French authorities for facilitating Channel small boat crossings, Jenrick has found unlikely inspiration in another bloody-minded leader. ‘I’ve been reading biographies of de Gaulle over the summer and he had a line that “Treaties are like roses, they last

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Leave the countryside alone

I used to volunteer at a wildlife sanctuary, counting sheep and goats on an agreeable patch of chalk downland in Kent. On hot days the goats would hide in the dense, cool woodland and it could take a long time to find them. Occasionally they broke out of the reserve because our gates were of poor quality, so I was delighted to see one morning that new gates had been installed, shiny metal ones. When I got up close, though, there was a surprise in store. All of the new gates were adorned with a picture of a woman in a burka and an injunction to abide by the Countryside

Wednesday

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

In Our Time won’t be the same without Melvyn Bragg

The education system may produce ignoramuses (my daughter finished school in June, never having been taught a thing about Napoleon, the French Revolution, Julius Caesar, the Industrial Revolution, or any basic geography), but there was solace out there for the unlearned and undereducated: they could always listen to In Our Time, Melvyn Bragg’s radio exploration of fabulously random assorted subjects with three (formerly two) specialists in the field. Bragg has announced today he is stepping down from the show, which he has hosted since it was created in 1998. In Our Time might nowadays be considered highbrow, but it’s not really; it’s just a civilised discussion on the subjects that

Joanna Williams

Why has the University of London put a trigger warning on ‘Twilight’?

Kneeling for Black Lives Matter, making pronoun declarations, and taking children to drag queen story hours: some things will be forever associated with ‘peak woke’. With any luck, these actions will soon become so unfashionable that no one will ever own up to having dabbled. Sadly, however, not all relics from this past mania are so easily discarded. Trigger warnings – those few words that promise safety from emotional distress by giving away the endings of novels and plays – continue to proliferate. In recent months, theatres have proved to be the most fertile breeding ground for these pesky plot spoilers. Back in December, Bromley Little Theatre warned those attending

Sam Olsen

British shipbuilding is booming again

‘Pigeons, beaten to a fine lead by hunger, flickered amongst the rusted girders of the railway bridge… rubble was being trucked from busted gable ends, and demolishers worked in a fume of dust and smoke. You would’ve thought that the Ruskies had finally lobbed over one of their big megaton jobs.’ Jeff Torrington’s brutal poetry in Swing Hammer Swing! captured the death of Glasgow shipbuilding, when the Clyde’s cranes fell silent and the yards were written off as relics. Half a century on, the noise is back. The clang of cranes, the hiss of welders, the shuffle of apprentices in overalls: the Clyde is stirring again. Shipbuilding jobs in Scotland

Tuesday

Graham Linehan

I was arrested for insulting the trans mob

Something odd happened before I even boarded the flight in Arizona. When I handed over my passport at the gate, the official told me I didn’t have a seat and had to be re-ticketed. At the time, I thought it was just the sort of innocent snafu that makes air travel such a joy. But in hindsight, it was clear I’d been flagged. Someone, somewhere, probably wearing unconvincing make-up and his sister/wife’s/mum’s underwear, had made a phone call. The moment I stepped off the plane at Heathrow, five armed police officers were waiting. Not one, not two – five. They escorted me to a private area and told me I

Stephen Pollard

Graham Linehan’s arrest is a turning point

The hoo-ha over free speech being trampled on has always seemed exaggerated. I earn my living through voicing my opinions, and not once have I ever felt unable to say exactly what I think – especially when that’s controversial or offends large numbers of people. It is terrible that Linehan should have had to go through this. But if it wakes more of us up, his arrest will have served our country well I am, of course, well aware that some people have had a very different experience – such as the comedy writer Graham Linehan, creator of Father Ted, who has robustly pointed out that biology means that men

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

Why must the English respect every flag other than their own?

It’s strange to think that the British people were once addressed as adults by those who governed them. In theory, this shouldn’t have been the case; in previous times, there was more social rigidity and more class deference. But everyone from weather forecasters to prime ministers somehow resisted the temptation, until relatively recently, to speak to us as if we were wayward school kids – or ‘half devil and half child’ as Rudyard Kipling had it in The White Man’s Burden. If Winston Churchill was giving one of his wartime broadcasts today, he’d have to end it: ‘And wrap up warm/Take a brolly/Stay hydrated!’ When did this ruling-class obsession with

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Keir Starmer must not ban Eric Zemmour from Britain

Eric Zemmour will be in London on 13 September at the invitation of Tommy Robinson. In a message posted on X, the leader of France’s Reconquest Party said he will ‘stand alongside the hundreds of thousands of Britons demonstrating against the submergence of our countries.’ Zemmour is an advocate of the ‘Great Replacement’ theory Robinson is the organiser of what is being billed as a ‘Free Speech Festival’ in central London. It aims to bring together three movements: UTK (Unite the Kingdom), MEGA (Make Europe Great Again) and MAGA (Make America Great Again). Various left-wing groups, among them Socialist Worker and Stand Up to Racism, are encouraging their members to

Monday

Nick Boles

Starmer must embrace the Thatcher paradox

Most of the people I deal with outside government agree that Darren Jones, whom Keir Starmer has just appointed as his chief secretary, is one of the most effective ministers in it. And both Tim Allan and Minouche Shafik bring to their new jobs as director of communications and chief economic adviser the authority and judgment that come from long experience in communications and economic policymaking. So Keir Starmer’s reorganisation of his No. 10 team has a good chance of improving his grip on the government machine. But nobody in the Labour party should be under the illusion that the government’s woes are simply a result of dysfunction in Downing