Society

Thursday

Raymond Keene

Dark lord

A new book, Opening Repertoire: The Nimzo-Indian and Bogo-Indian by Christof Seilecki (Everyman Chess), focuses on the ever popular Nimzo-Indian and Bogo-Indian Defences. The former arises after 1 d4 Nf6 2 c4 e6 3 Nc3 Bb4 while the latter commences 1 d4 Nf6 2 c4 e6 3 Nf3 Bb4+. The possibilities for transposition are legion.   The Nimzo-Indian is named after the subtle chessboard strategist and author of My System Aron Nimzowitsch, victor of the great international tournaments at Dresden 1926, London 1927 and Carlsbad 1929. Its close relative is named after Efim Bogolyubov who won the equally impressive tournaments at Moscow 1925 and Bad Kissingen 1928 and also challenged,

Martin Gayford

Fairground attraction | 18 June 2015

Gianlorenzo Bernini stressed the difficulty of making a sculpture of a person out of a white material such as marble. Imagine, he said, that someone we knew well whitened his hair, his beard, his lips and his eyebrows, and, were it possible, his eyes. Would we recognise him? This is not a problem encountered by the 20th-century American artist Duane Hanson, whose work is on show at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery in Kensington Gardens. Hanson (1925–96) took every possible step to make his figures mimic reality in skin, hair, clothes, accessories and surroundings. In comparison, the resemblance of waxworks to their models is much less convincing. Hanson’s creations can engender

Raymond Keene

No. 367

Black to play. This is from Spassky-Fischer, World Championship, Reykjavik (Game 5) 1972. This is probably the most famous ‘dark-square’ Nimzo-Indian game of all-time. How did Fischer finish off? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 23 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 … Rh1+ Last week’s winner Tim Leeney, Hartfield, East Sussex

Taki

High life | 18 June 2015

When I founded the American Conservative 13 years ago — the purpose being to shine a light on the neocon shenanigans that led to the greatest American foreign policy disaster ever — Pat Buchanan and I held a press conference in the Washington DC Press Club to herald the event. There were reporters galore, and I could tell from their expressions that it wasn’t going to be a friendly session. Buchanan went first and held his own. Then came my turn. A hatchet-faced female hack in the first row asked me if Saudi money was behind me. ‘I wouldn’t accept Saudi blood money if it meant bedding Romola Garai,’ answered

Mary Killen

Your problems solved | 18 June 2015

Q. I was at the theatre recently and bumped into a well-known Liverpudlian crooner coming out of the disabled lavatory. She said ‘Don’t worry, luv, it’s fine to use them if no disabled people are waiting.’ Often theatre interval queues are long and in some of London’s better restaurants the ‘disabled toilet’ is closer, cleaner and more convenient. Is there a ruling on this or was Cilla correct? — N.C., Stanton St Bernard, Wilts A. Common sense tells us Cilla is right — but it is only correct to use disabled lavatories if you can be certain you will not thereby stymie the – possibly more urgent — need of

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 18 June 2015

Before delivering his sermon, the vicar said we must offer one another the sign of peace. He struck the first blow by stepping forward and thrusting a stiff karate hand at the nearest inert parishioner and demanding that peace be with her. I hoped to get away with shaking hands with just the pair of female deaf mutes in my row or, if the spirit moved, with the very elderly woman in front of me, subject to her having the agility and the ambition to turn around. But the giving of the sign of peace in this church, I now learned, meant getting up off one’s arsebones and trotting about,

Melissa Kite

Real life | 18 June 2015

Aren’t the police getting younger nowadays — and ruder, and scruffier and more intolerant of middle-class women? In other words, why am I always getting pulled over for no apparent reason? If I were a member of any other minority group I would be complaining to my community leaders of terrible bias and of hideously unfair ‘stop and search’ policies. As it is, whatever minority I do belong to in my Volvo with a Countryside Alliance sticker on the back window and my gundog in a travel cage in the boot, it has absolutely no recourse to complain to anyone. So they help themselves. The other day, I was driving

Alexander Chancellor

Long life | 18 June 2015

My friend Alan Rusbridger has just given up editing the Guardian after a distinguished 20-year reign that has climaxed, as befits an accomplished musician and former chair of Britain’s National Youth Orchestra, with a magnificent crescendo of earthshaking scoops. He has now, at 61, ascended to more serene heights as chairman of the Scott Trust, the company that owns the Guardian, and also as principal of an Oxford college, Lady Margaret Hall. His departure from the Guardian after one of the most outstanding, if also rocky, periods in its long history has been appropriately marked by articles, interviews, speeches and other celebrations in which he has reflected with shrewdness and

Susanna Gross

Bridge | 18 June 2015

Captaining a bridge team in a knock-out competition can be a thankless task. Sometimes, the hardest thing of all is simply finding a date when everyone can play. Several years ago, for instance, I managed to get my dream teammates for the Hubert Phillips Bowl: David Gold, Andrew Robson and Alexander Allfrey. Trying to arrange our very first match nearly gave me a nervous breakdown: our opponents offered five possible evenings over a four-week period (which was all they were required to do). After hundreds of emails to and fro, it became clear that there was simply no evening we could all do — and we were forced to concede

Elisa Segrave

Diary – 18 June 2015

Off to prison to visit a writer friend, first jailed led some years ago for trying to find a hit man to kill his mother’s toy boy. My friend had no objection to his mother having boyfriends per se, but what irked him was that she’d left the toy boy her house. After good behaviour, my friend was released on the condition that he would not leave the UK. But he did, phoning every so often from unexpected places such as Lake Geneva and Chartres. A court meanwhile had awarded him the house, so the hit man had been unnecessary. Last year, re-entering the UK by plane, my friend was met

The Spectator

Let Greece go

The campaign to keep Greece in the euro has resulted in five years of groundhog days. The unfortunate country seems to be forever approaching a day of repayments it cannot afford. Ministers and diplomats assemble to thrash out a deal. Meetings collapse in bad temper, and markets sink. Then, at the eleventh hour, a deal is somehow forged. Greece agrees to reforms which seek to cut spending and balance the books in return for billions of pounds of bailout cash. Markets rebound. The money is paid, the debt repayments met. And then all starts to go wrong again. A few months later we are back where we began. Anyone who

Dot Wordsworth

Speak human

The next Labour leader will have to be able to speak human, said a piece in the Observer. This, it argued, is because Ed Miliband was taunted for always speaking like a policy wonk. What short memories members of the commentariat have. In 2010 Ed Miliband was being praised by supporters on the grounds that he did ‘speak human’, unlike his technocratic brother. ‘Let us be clear: Ed M is not JFK,’ wrote Mehdi Hasan in the New Statesman in that year. ‘But he does have the all-important ability to connect with ordinary people.’ He quoted Neil Kinnock, of all people to prove it. Lord Kinnock said Ed had the

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 18 June 2015

Home Talha Asmal, aged 17, from Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, died in a suicide bomb attack on forces near an oil refinery near Baiji in Iraq, having assumed the name Abu Yusuf al-Britani. A man from High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, Thomas Evans, 25, who had changed his name to Abdul Hakim, was killed in Kenya while fighting for al-Shabab. Three sisters from Bradford were thought to have travelled to Syria with their nine children after going on a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia. Britain had had to move intelligence agents, the Sunday Times reported, because Russia and China had deciphered documents made public by Edward Snowden, the CIA employee who has taken refuge in

Columba

2216: Riddle

Two clues are without definitions; their answers form the name of a person with a leading part in four works whose titles read clockwise round the perimeter. The title of another work involving the person, concealed in one row, must be highlighted. Letters in corner squares and those adjacent to them could make A FAB FIERY FAD. Two titles consist of three words each, and two consist of two words each; ignore an apostrophe.   Across 11    Season wrong without jay (5) 12    Maximum droop (4) 13    Run in country, missing a lemur (5) 14    Book of parallel texts necessary to concoct a plan (7) 15

Columba

To 2213: Surprising

The unclued Down lights are books, entered in reverse as indicated by the phrase TURN-UP FOR THE BOOKS (1A 27 28 43). First prize Daniel Angel, Twickenham, Middlesex Runners-up Rhidian Llewellyn, Minchinhampton, Glos; Jacqui Sohn, Great Yarmouth, Norfolk

Sebastian Payne

Podcast: Greece and the lessons of Black Wednesday, plus the latest on the Labour leadership contest

As the situation in Greece becomes more serious by the day, is a default or Grexit on the horizon? In this week’s View from 22 podcast, Channel 4’s Paul Mason discusses this week’s Spectator leading article with Ambrose Evans-Prichard from the Daily Telegraph. Which side is being more unreasonable in this stand off, the European Central Bank or Syriza? Is anything drastic likely to happen over the next few weeks? Are the Greek people feeling resentful towards to the rest of the EU? And what effect is the crisis having on the whole European project? The Spectator’s James Forsyth and Stephen Bush from the New Statesman also discuss the ongoing contests for Labour leader and deputy leader. Given that he remains the favourite to win, what does Andy Burnham need to do over the next

Nicholas Farrell

The invasion of Italy

Let us suppose that along the coast of Normandy up to one million non-EU migrants are waiting to be packed like sardines in small unseaworthy vessels and to cross the English Channel. Let us suppose that first the Royal Navy, then the navies of a dozen other EU countries, start to search for all such vessels in the Channel right up to the French coast, out into the North Sea and the Atlantic even, and then ferry all the passengers on board to Dover, Folkestone, Hastings, Eastbourne and Brighton in a surreal modern-day never-ending version of the Dunkirk evacuation of 1940. Would the British government agree to take them all?

The Spectator

Birdsong

From ‘Literature and Soldiers’, The Spectator, 19 June 1915: In this war some of the most moving poetry has been written by young soldiers. The most vivid accounts of fighting have been extracted from soldiers’ letters. These were certainly not written without a close companionship with letters. We wonder how many torn and thumbed copies of Shakespeare, Milton, Homer, or Virgil are in trenches and dug-outs at this moment. We wonder how many officers have added an entirely non-military zest to their movements by studying domestic Gothic architecture, or the buildings bearing the more grandiose imprint of Louis XIV’s days, as they passed through the interesting towns of Flanders. We wonder

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

Censoring Jews

You might think that Jews, faced with a relentless campaign to ban their culture, would think once, twice, a hundred times, about instituting bans themselves. After they had thought about it, they would decide that, no, absolutely not, prudence as much as principle directs that they of all people must insist that art should be open to all. A good liberal idea, you might think. So good and so obvious there’s no need to say more. If you still require an explanation, allow me to help. You don’t try to silence others if you believe in artistic and intellectual freedom. You keep your mind open and the conversation going. Every

Bruce Anderson

The claret of the gods

I cannot remember a jollier lunch. There are two brothers, Sebastian and Nicholas Payne, both practical epicureans. They have made a profession out of their pleasures. For many years, Sebastian was the chief buyer for the Wine Society. As he has a superb palate and is relentless in the search for good value, he is entitled to undying gratitude from tens of thousands of British wine drinkers. Nicholas has spent his career running opera companies. Sebastian knows a lot about opera, Nicholas about wine: the brothers share a cellar. We had assembled to taste some 2001 clarets, which required concentration, and rewarded it. But there was also time for opera