Society

Thursday

Robin Oakley

Frankie’s back

Nothing has been lost since William Powell Frith painted his Derby Day panorama in 1858: today, instead of the carriages and corseted courtesans, the acrobats and pickpockets, he could cram his canvas with scarlet-lipped ladies in shades posing for selfies; with men in impeccable morning dress coping no better with greasy hamburgers than Ed Miliband did with his bacon sandwich; and with strolling musicians, from a moustached one-man band to the smartly co-ordinated Dukebox Singers, a sextet of ladies bravely striking up their acapella harmonies against the racing hubbub. But this year it really was all about the racing. Only two men in horse-racing history have been instantly recognisable to

Alexander Chancellor

Long life | 11 June 2015

It’s June, and the country-house summer opera festivals are now in full swing. Glyndebourne, which opened the season last month, has now been joined by its leading emulators — Garsington in Oxfordshire, The Grange in Hampshire and Longborough in Gloucestershire; and next month a newcomer, Winslow Hall Opera in Buckinghamshire, will be putting on La Traviata with much the same cast that shone last year in its greatly admired production of Lucia di Lammermoor. The gentry in dinner jackets and long dresses are already flouncing about on lawns throughout England. It’s always seemed odd to me that people should wear evening dress for the opera in the countryside in the

The Spectator

Letters | 11 June 2015

The long arm of the FBI Sir: The White House may be less willing than it was to play the role of the world’s policeman in international affairs, but the FBI seems eager to be the world’s cop. No doubt, as Martin Vander Weyer has noted (Any other business, 6 May), the US Attorney General has been ‘careful to assert that many of the allegedly corrupt schemes of the Fifa officials so far arrested were planned in the US, and that US banking and “wire” services were used.’ Still, we are told that the FBI is also investigating matters such as the award of the next two world cups to

Peter Jones

The game of survival

Apparently Fifa emperor Sepp Blatter received a ten-minute standing ovation from his 400 staff when he addressed them after his resignation. But why? Were they expressing sorrow at his departure? Relief? Or prudently watching their backs? Life was never easy around the Roman emperor either, whether he was among the people or in the imperial court. When the shamelessly dissolute Nero performed on-stage, his claqueurs made sure the applause went on and on. The historian Tacitus tells us that people from out of town or the provinces, ‘shocked at the outrageous spectacle, found that their unpractised hands were not up to the degrading task’ and consequently disrupted the professional applauders.

Raymond Keene

Triple tie

This week I conclude my coverage of the Fidé (World Chess Federation) Grand Prix which finished last month in Khanty-Mansiysk. Three shared first place: Dmitri Jakovenko, Fabiano Caruana and Hikaru Nakamura. Although Jakovenko emerged in pole position on tie-break, it was Caruana and Nakamura who qualified for next year’s Candidates tournament to determine a challenger to world champion Magnus Carlsen by virtue of their superior scores in the overall series.   Here are some of the decisive moments from this important event.   Caruana-Tomashevsky: Khanty-Mansiysk 2015 (see diagram 1)   White’s king is safer than Black’s and he has powerful central play. Caruana quickly converted these advantages. 31 e6 Re7

Raymond Keene

No. 366

Black to play. This is from Rodriguez-Xiong, California 2012. How does Black finish off? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 16 June or via email to victoria@spectator.co.uk or by fax on 020 7681 3773. The winner will be the first correct answer out of a hat, and each week I am offering a prize of £20. Please include a postal address and allow six weeks for prize delivery. Last week’s solution 1 … h5+ Last week’s winner Jonathan Tymms, Wilstone, Herts

Toby Young Toby Young

The Canadian Ed Miliband

I’ve been reading Fire and Ashes, Michael Ignatieff’s account of his disastrous foray into politics, in an attempt to understand where it all went wrong for Ed Miliband. In combination with the election postmortems and interviews with the people in Miliband’s inner circle, it’s extremely illuminating. For those unfamiliar with his story, Ignatieff is a left-wing Harvard professor who in 2004 received a surprise visit by three ‘men in black’ — high-ups in the Liberal party of Canada who sounded him out about making a run for the leadership. Beyond working on Pierre Trudeau’s campaign as a student in 1968, Ignatieff was a political virgin, but the three fixers thought

Mary Killen

Your problems solved | 11 June 2015

Q. My parents brought me up to write only my name in a visitors’ book. However, following a recent long weekend in the house of a friend’s father, I was last to sign and found the other guests had all written lengthy gushing tributes to our host. If I didn’t follow suit, my own entry would seem unenthusiastic. The upshot was that I compromised and wrote my name and ‘thank you so much’. What should I have done? —N.M., Fonthill, Wilts A. You should have stuck to your guns and signed only your name. You could have explained to the others that since your predecessors had far exceeded your own

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

Grills just want to have fun

The Beaumont Hotel is a bright white cake in the silent part of Mayfair, where the only sound is Patek Philippe watches, tick-tocking. We are in the eye of the storm, where it should be quiet; of the cacophony of Selfridges, just to the north, we hear nothing. It is the first hotel from Chris Corbin and Jeremy King, creators of the Delaunay, the Wolseley, Brasserie Zédel and Fischer’s. The façade is so languid, pristine and self-satisfied that it could — no, should — be Swiss, even if it was once an Avis garage wrought in Art Deco. It reminds me of the Beau-Rivage Palace on Lake Geneva, a hotel

Dot Wordsworth

Trigger

A notion is going about that, just as readers of film reviews receive spoiler alerts, so readers of anything should get a trigger warning. Otherwise something nasty in the woodshed might trigger post-traumatic stress disorder or worse. ‘I use the phrase trigger warning myself,’ wrote Kate Maltby in a Spectator blog the other day, ‘to warn Facebook friends that they may not wish to click on a link because it is likely to automatically “trigger” flashbacks for survivors of trauma.’ That’s kind, and luckily I am not triggered by split infinitives. But she and fellow admirers of the classics are shocked by a demand from four students at Columbia University

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 11 June 2015

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said of the EU referendum: ‘If you want to be part of the government, you have to take the view that we are engaged in an exercise of renegotiation to have a referendum and that will lead to a successful outcome.’ This caused a certain amount of uproar, with newspaper headlines saying things like ‘PM: Back me or I will sack you.’ Mr Cameron the next day said: ‘It’s clear to me that what I said yesterday was misinterpreted.’ His remarks followed the launch of a grouping called Conservatives for Britain (run by Steve Baker, the MP for Wycombe), which boasted the support of

Jan Moir

Diary – 11 June 2015

Down here in west Cornwall, the days are long and summer is on the wing. Like the Tories in Scotland, the tiny population of Cornish choughs continue to defy extinction, clinging on like crazy with their little red feet, simply refusing to die out. Six nests with chicks have been monitored this year, while the birds themselves enjoy a higher level of security and protection than a Russian mafioso. I am dying to see one, forever scanning the cliffs with my binoculars, trying and failing not to be a holiday cliché. Middle-aged woman in Breton top, bakes her own bread and stares at the sea for hours on end. Chough

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s notes | 11 June 2015

Two beautiful volumes in a cloth-bound case reach me. They are Speeches and Articles by HRH The Prince of Wales 1968-2012, published by University of Wales Press. The explanatory list of abbreviations and acronyms alone gives a charming sense of the range of subjects covered — ‘Foot and Mouth Disease, Foreign Press Association, Forest Stewardship Council … Myalgic Encephalopathy, Member of Parliament … Non-Commissioned Officer … Not In My Back Yard! … Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil’. Among the many speeches on the environment, however, I cannot find his speech in Rio de Janeiro in March 2009, entitled ‘Less Than 100 Months To Act’. There Prince Charles warned that if

Doc

2215: IVOs

The unclued lights (one hyphened and another a novel which is listed in Chambers Crossword Dictionary) display a similar feature — a few of the clued solutions do so too, though to a lesser extent. Elsewhere, ignore an apostrophe.   Across 1    Slim, young, lithe person – hot! Just tops! (5) 6    Hosting is problematic as soon as possible (7, two words) 11    Boastful coward showing Cliff a sponge (10) 15    Accumulate stakes (4) 17    Letter about smell of savoury snacks (7) 18    Some shirker twisted marginal reading (3) 19    Dictator books shrubs for TVs (10, two words) 21    Performance by dancing

Doc

To 2212: : Plus Ça Change

The unclued Across lights (15, 23/21, 38 and 39) are LITERAL anagrams of the unclued Down lights (3, 19, 32/37, 2) First prize Anthony Harker, Oxford Runners-up E.A. Wright, Fleetwood, Lancs; K.J. Williams, Kings Worthy, Hants

Douglas Murray

Rape culture, Rotherham and double standards

Freddy’s blog on the so-called ‘rape culture’ that we in Western democracies are all meant to be struggling under reminds me of an unwittingly important moment on BBC3 last year.  It was provided by our colleague James Delingpole when he appeared on something called ‘Free Speech.’  This is an almost comically appalling ‘yoof’ programme which I did once from an ice rink in Doncaster alongside a Page 3 model and Owen Jones. Anyway, on the occasion that poor James appeared one of the subjects that came up was ‘rape culture’.  James – displaying a form which any sane viewer couldn’t have helped but watch with noises of admiration like ‘coo’

Jonathan Portes

Right to reply – Jonathan Portes on Niall Ferguson

Two weeks ago I was too ‘obscure to bother with‘ for Professor Niall Ferguson. He’s changed his mind, dedicating an entire article in The Spectator to me. In particular, he is very upset that, after I complained, the FT was obliged to correct his recent article about the UK economy. Professor Ferguson’s article contained one undisputed factual error (about UK business confidence) and one statement which the FT’s independent complaints commissioner found to be misleading, but which Professor Ferguson argues is composed of two ‘true statements’. This was: ‘Weekly earnings are up by more than 8 per cent; in the private sector, the figure is above 10 per cent. Inflation is

Lara Prendergast Lara Prendergast

We really are screwed if we believe that social media can curse us

More bad news for Malaysia, I’m afraid, where a group of tourists have apparently managed to trigger an earthquake simply by taking their clothes off. Last Friday, a 6.0 magnitude earthquake struck Sabah, Malaysia’s easternmost state, triggering landslides on Mount Kinabalu which killed 18 people. Tragic, and quite clearly the blame must fall on the ten tourists who reportedly posed naked for a photograph on the mountain, which is considered by locals to be a sacred site. Malaysian officials have arrested the tourists for indecent exposure and have also suggested that they angered the mountain spirits. Now it’s easy to scoff at the voodoo mindset of these funny foreigners. In the enlightened

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

We don’t have a rape culture, we have a victim culture

It takes courage to tell a bunch of Canadian feminists marching against ‘rape culture’ that they are talking rubbish. And courage is something Lauren Southern, a reporter for The Rebel, has in spades. She had the guts to go to a ‘SlutWalk’ in Vancouver holding a sign that said: ‘There is no rape culture in the west’. You can see her video above. Lauren makes a good point. Canada is hardly a rapist’s paradise. ‘Rapists go to prison here,’ she says. ‘Rapists are actually hated here. Rapists are fired from their jobs. Men who make rape jokes are fired from their jobs.’ But it is lost on the SlutWalkers, who are so

Niall Ferguson

Pedant’s revolt

It used to be that the most annoying thing in academic life was political correctness. But a new irritant now threatens to supplant it: the scourge of correct politicalness. The essence of correct politicalness is to seek to undermine an irrefutable argument by claiming loudly and repetitively to have found an error in it. As with political correctness, which seeks to undermine arguments by declaring the person making them a bigot, correct politicalness originated in the US. But it now has its exponents here, too. Foremost among them is Jonathan Portes. Portes’s career recalls that of the character Kenneth Widmerpool in Anthony Powell’s Dance to the Music of Time. Widmerpool