Society

Thursday

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

Jamie in chains

Jamie’s Italian is squeezed into the Devonshire Arms on Denman Street, Soho, borne on the duplicitous winds of TV shows and book deals. It’s an odd fit, like a Flump meeting Dante. The Devonshire was a pub at the end of the world, a Victorian dystopia made of violence and despair. Now Jamie Oliver — an aghast teenager running to fat even as he declares war on the Turkey Twizzler and the civilisation that wrought it — has sucked it into his empire of Jamie’s Italians (there are 41, from Aberdeen to Gatwick), installed a roof terrace and written ‘Established 2014’ over the door. At first glance, Jamie has done

Janet de Botton

Bridge | 20 August 2015

I have great respect for top French bridge players but I think it’s fair to say they don’t go in for dazzling displays of bravado and brilliance; neither do they crash in disaster. They are great card players and great, straightforward bidders. Calmly and steadily they do their best on every hand and it really pays off. In the last two months Philippe Cronier and Sylvie Willard took gold in the European Mixed Pairs in Tromso, Thomas Bessis and Frederic Volcker won the Open Pairs in the same event and Jean-Christophe Quantin and Cedric Lorenzini have just won the hugely prestigious Life Master Pairs in the Chicago Summer National. They

Dot Wordsworth

Asexual

There was a time when my husband, who often addresses the television, would habitually react to Edward Heath’s appearance on the screen with the greeting ‘Hello, sailor.’ Last week, though, the man who was Sir Edward’s principal private secretary during his time as prime minister, Robert Armstrong, now Lord Armstrong, commented on the posthumous accusations against him. ‘You usually detect some sense of sexuality when you are friends or work closely with them,’ he said of political colleagues. ‘I think he was completely asexual.’ Asexual is an anomalous word, combining a Greek prefix, signifying negation or privation, with an adjective derived from Latin. The word, when it came into use

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 20 August 2015

Home Andrew Burnham described calls from Yvette Cooper, a rival candidate for the Labour leadership, for him to withdraw from the contest as ‘quite strange’. The problem was how to prevent Jeremy Corbyn, a left-winger, from being elected by the alternative vote system by 610,000 party members and registered supporters. Gordon Brown, the former disastrous Labour prime minister, contributed by making a 50-minute speech in a small room at the Royal Festival Hall, during which he paced up and down continuously for an estimated 1 mile 1 furlong 5 chains and did not mention Mr Corbyn’s name. Kezia Dugdale, a Member of the Scottish Parliament, was elected leader of the

The Spectator

Barometer | 20 August 2015

No sex, please Several friends of the late Sir Edward Heath asserted that he could not be guilty of sexually assaulting children because he was asexual. How many adults do not experience sexual attraction? — A 2004 study by Anthony F. Bogaert, of Brock University, Ontario, Canada, analysed responses to a British questionnaire ten years earlier. Of 18,000 respondents, 195, or just over 1%, had agreed with the statement ‘I have never felt sexually attracted to anyone at all’. — A 1983 study by a student at the University of Michigan classified 5% of males and 10% of females as asexual. Unaccountable spending The EU declined to offer a breakdown

Columba

2225: Category

Four unclued lights (two of which consist of two words each) belong in the same category; one unclued light defines them. Remaining unclued lights are the surnames of their creators. Each of twenty-seven clues comprises a definition part and a hidden consecutive jumble of the answer including one extra letter; the extras are the unchecked letters of all nine unclued lights. Elsewhere ignore an accent.   Across   1    Defeat leader in every way (5) 9    Untidy tapestry one turned, enthralled by colour with depth (10) 11    Load knocking arch over (5) 14    Learned man, no villain (5) 15    Peculiar ghost of depression (5) 16

Columba

To 2222: Exquisite

TOO-TOO is a HOMOPHONE (38) of TUTU (defined by 1A and 8, and the surname of 17, the former 11 of 25). The highlighted words, both starting at 22, combine to form a homophonous representation of the puzzle’s number. First prize Michael Grocott, Loughborough, Leics Runners-up Brenda Widger, Altrincham, Cheshire; F. Khaya, New South Wales, Australia

Pádraig Belton

Remembering Khaled al-Asaad, the Syrian archaeologist who dared to stand up to Isis

Erudite and bespectacled, he was the sort of Arab the Islamic State loathed. Khaled al-Asaad, an 81-year old archaeologist, was for the past four decades inseparable from Palmyra’s ancient ruins. Beheaded in part for his role shielding them from the militants, they strung his headless body up on Graeco-Roman columns he once restored. His remains dangle there still. On the coat-tails of a pornography of violence which saw the immolation of a captured pilot and the sexual enslavement of a captured aid worker before her murder, Isis still found, somehow, a way to shock. Four army lorries left Palmyra for Damascus the night before the town fell, evacuating as many objects as possible from

Sebastian Payne

Podcast: the clean eating fad and what happens if Corbyn wins

Is ‘clean eating’ a trendy new fad or something more dangerous? On the View from 22 podcast, nutritionist Ian Marber discusses this week’s cover feature with Isabel Hardman and Lara Prendergast. How is the advice to eat healthier given out by these self-made personalities actually detrimental to your health? How much of the #eatclean movement is about celebrity? And do these gurus have any qualifications for doling out nutritional advice? Isabel Hardman and George Eaton also discuss what happens if Jeremy Corbyn wins the Labour leadership contest. How long will be last in the job? Could he be removed by Labour MPs in the near future or next year? Will the new leader be able to hold the Parliamentary

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

Mirror, mirror

Body dysmorphia, the unfortunate medical condition whereby a perfectly pleasant/slender person believes themselves to be ugly/fat, is a strange and sad thing. I’d always presumed it to be (like anorexia and bulimia) a primarily female problem, so much more importance being placed on the appearance of women than men. Respectable medical surveys indicate otherwise. Nevertheless, women tend to see themselves as less attractive than they are. A sizeable number of men, on the other hand, suffer from the opposite delusion. I call them Magic Mirror men, because they seem to possess an inner looking-glass which tells them that they are, indeed, the fairest of them all. Why else do ugly

Jonathan Ray Jonathan Ray

August Wine Vaults

James Franklin of Corney & Barrow presented a very strong selection for this offer, any bottle of which I would have been happy to recommend. We did finally narrow it down to four wines, though, and a tip-top quartet it is too. Readers will be delighted to hear that all prices are discounted, and the celebrated Brett-Smith Indulgence (£6 off per case) will apply to purchases of one or more cases. For ease, the cheaper prices shown below include both the discount and the BSI. The 2014 Moscato d’Asti Fratelli Antonio e Raimondo (1) is charm incarnate; if you know of a better mid-morning reviver, lead me to it. It’s

Roger Alton Roger Alton

Captain Cook proves good guys can triumph

The roar of the Premier League is beginning to drown out everything else in sport (there’s even Friday night football now: another blissful resting place occupied. Shouldn’t we ring-fence some time — greenbelt-style — that football can’t colonise, say 2 a.m. on a Monday, that’s preserved from football’s endless development?) But while there’s a chance, let’s not lose sight of a great Englishman and a great English achievement. This Ashes series has not been a good contest; they often aren’t. But with his modesty, determination and resilience, it has been a personal triumph for the captain Alastair Cook. Not long ago, a chorus of self-appointed cricket ‘legends’ in the media

The Spectator

Field studies

From ‘Education and the War’, The Spectator, 21 August 1915: War is a time in which a shortage of labourers can least be borne with. The land must not go untilled, the seed must not remain unsown, or the crops unharvested. Many of these services can be rendered by children whose schooling is not yet over. Care must be taken that the teachers do not lose sight of them, and that days, or parts of days, shall still be spent in the old way. But if this is secured, the child of twelve will not be wholly a loser by the change. He will gain in health by being more in

Tony Sewell

Don’t act white, act migrant

A black head teacher told me a story of his early days at a failing inner-city school. The job was a thankless one and everybody was waiting anxiously for the arrival of the new ‘super-head’ (the school had gone through three leaders in two years). In the playground it was leaked that the new head was an old-school type from Jamaica. During his first encounter with the students, they asked him how many children he had. He told them he had one and that she lived with him and his wife. ‘No sir, how many do you have in Jamaica?’ they asked. He replied: ‘None.’ They jeered, ‘Oh sir you’re

John Steinbeck

‘With Your Wings’

He knew most of all that he wanted to go home — that there was something at home he had to get, and he didn’t even know what it was. During the long, hard training, there had not been time to think of himself nor to want anything. The ceremony at the end was unreal. He stood with sixteen others — all of them rigid as cypress logs, and the silver wings were pinned to his blouse over his heart. There was a speech by the Colonel, and half of his mind heard it… the other half was going home. He walked to his Model-A Ford, got in, and slammed the door.

William Astor

Peer review

When I took my seat in the Lords as a very nervous 21-year-old, Manny Shinwell, the redoubtable Labour peer, welcomed me with the words ‘I knew your grandmother Nancy. She was a rebel like me. Enjoy yourself. You won’t be here long before they chuck you out.’ Forty-two years later I am still here — perhaps past my sell-by date. The House of Lords is bursting at the seams. The numbers must come down. And yet David Cameron must appoint more peers in the forthcoming honours list. Every Prime Minister in history, from Harold Wilson with his ‘lavender list’ to Tony Blair with his cronies, has caused controversy when creating

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

The welcome return of the valedictory dispatch

‘All I ever tried to do was hold a mirror up and show you how beautiful you really are. Shine on, you crazy diamond.’ I have just read one of the finest ambassadors’ ‘valedictory’ dispatches ever composed, except it isn’t one: it had to be posted on the internet, and was, last month. What was essentially a sometimes-exasperated love letter to Lebanon will never see the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s printers. The valedictory died in 2006. So Tom Fletcher, who after four years as ambassador in Beirut had come to the end of his posting (‘Unlike your politicians,’ he tells Lebanon, ‘I can’t extend my own term’) had to write

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Come on, prime minister: a peerage for our peerless folding bike designer

Asked to name Britain’s greatest living industrial designer, most people might cite Sir Jony Ive of Apple or Sir James Dyson of the bagless vacuum cleaner. I’d certainly shortlist Ive, but I traded in my unreliable Dyson for a brutally efficient German machine called a Sebo and I’ve always thought Sir James was overhyped. I might also mention Dumfries-born Ian Callum, the director of design for Jaguar cars responsible for the sleek F-Type. But surely the top prize must go to Andrew Ritchie, the former landscape gardener whose one perfect product, the Brompton folding bicycle, first sketched in his South Kensington flat 40 years ago, has never been bettered or

Lucy Vickery

Triple thrill | 20 August 2015

In Competition No. 2911 you were invited to submit a thriller in three text messages. This one seemed straightforward enough but it turned out to be a tough assignment that stretched veterans and newcomers alike. As in all forms of micro-fiction — the mini-masterpiece attributed to Hemingway, ‘For sale: baby shoes, never worn’, springs to mind — it’s all about the reader filling in the gaps. Many entrants went for the mistaken-identity trope, which became rather monotonous after a time. But while I applauded those who attempted a more original twist, most of these didn’t quite come off. The standard was somewhat disappointing, then, but there were some creditable exceptions,

Wednesday

Sebastian Payne

Our railways are better than ever. They don’t need renationalising

Andy Burnham and Jeremy Corbyn have both pledged to bring back British Rail. Why? In a speech yesterday, Corbyn justified his position: ‘I think the public mood is there, absolutely there, saying, “Bring our railways back into public ownership.” And we’ll all get a better and much more integrated system as a result’. Headline figures from recent polls suggest he may have a point: a YouGov survey from early August said 58 per cent supported ‘bringing the railways, water companies and other utilities back into public ownership through renationalisation’. But this could be classified as a ‘would you like a pony’ polling question; it offers no explanation of what renationalisation would entail, only hinting