Society

Sunday

The Spectator

In memory of Richard West, 1930-2015

Dick West, a foreign correspondent and longtime contributor to The Spectator, has died. Here’s a profile we ran about him in 1989.  One side of Richard West’s character is his contrariness. At a time when others fear salmonella he refuses to have his breakfast eggs kept in the refrigerator. At the height of the Band Aid fundraising success, Bob Geldof was added to his list of pet hates. More recently he has criticised the blandness of the Independent (‘for Guardian readers with money’) and praised the Sun (‘a fine newspaper’). His resistance to received opinions lends originality to his writing. He is by no means a simple apologist for the Right.

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

The passing of a magnificent contrarian

I see my Spectator colleagues have beaten me to it and republished a 1989 profile of Richard West, one of the finest foreign correspondents of the 20th century, who has died aged 84. Never mind. I’m determined to write about him. Annoyingly, I couldn’t find a single picture of him on Google (I borrowed the one above from his Telegraph obit). That wouldn’t have bothered him in the least. Dick, almost uniquely among Fleet Street legends, wasn’t an egomaniac. He waded into war zones out of intense curiosity, not for byline glory. He once told me that he was about to be shot to pieces in Vietnam and it occurred to him

Molly Guinness

It’s more important than ever for conservatives to appeal to hearts as well as minds

The Conservatives always do a lot worse than Labour in polls that ask about how proud voters feel of their party. They’re hoping that ‘shy Tories’ might still win them the election, but it’s pretty pathetic that more than 20 years since the phenomenon was first identified, Conservatives still haven’t found a way to remove the stigma and convince the electorate that right-wing politics is about making people’s lives better. Social justice, compassion and coolness are now strictly the domain of the Left in the public consciousness, which makes it all the more baffling that the Tories decided to leave principle and passion out of this election campaign to fight

The Spectator

The Spectator at war: Stuck in Holland

In 1914 some 1,500 men from ‘Churchill’s Little Army’, the First Royal Naval Brigade, retreated from the defence of Antwerp to the Netherlands. As a neutral country the Netherlands was obliged to intern any soliders from warring armies that crossed its borders to stop them re-joining the fight. The men were put in the ‘English Camp’ (or ‘HMS Timbertown’) in Groningen, where they were based until the war ended. From ‘With the interned sailors in Holland’, The Spectator, 24 April 1915: Sir—Réveille sounding at 6.30 every morning rouses us from our bunks, ready to face another day in Holland. We have little to do before breakfast at 7.30, so washing is a leisurely job,

Saturday

The Spectator

The Spectator at war: Gallipoli

Today is the 100th anniversary of the first landings of the Gallipoli campaign by Anzac troops. The battle to take control of the Dardanelles and Bosphorous to open a supply route to Russia and force the Ottoman Empire out of the war would, in its eight months, leave 130,000 dead. The Spectator was to report the first news of the landings in its 1 May 1915 issue. Here, from ‘News of the Week’ in the 24 April 1915 issue, The Spectator speculates about the course of action in the Dardanelles: The other important event of the week has been the landing of a British force at Enos, the most westerly point

Friday

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

Children shouldn’t be expected to receive sponsorship for child’s play

Can there be anyone curmudgeonly enough to take against Save the Children’s Den Day, a heartwarming event? – actually, make that an entire week, 29 May to 6th June – in which little children are ‘being sponsored to transform their sofa, school desk or even a boring cardboard box into magical super dens. And the money they raise will help to save lives around the world.’ What could be nicer and more harmless than to inculcate philanthropy in the young? Especially to help children like little Annie Mae in the Philippines, on the Save the Children website, made homeless in a typhoon and presumably obliged to make a den of her own,

Steerpike Steerpike

Paul Dacre: The free press is the last genuinely free aspect of modern Britain

Northcliffe House was host to a Fleet Street reunion last night, for the launch of Mail executive Robin Esser’s memoir ‘Crusaders in Chains’. After sixty years a newspaper man, Esser’s tome takes us from the glory days to the ‘chilling’ Leveson Inquiry. With inky old-timers Les Hinton, Dame Ann Leslie, Richard Kay and Eve Pollard all tucking into the white wine, Mail editor Paul Dacre took to the microphone for some rare public speaking. He did not disappoint, giving a searing defence of a free press and raging against the ‘authoritarian’ British state: ‘The book’s title could not be more apt. All newspapers, from the so called ‘qualities’, to the

Steerpike Steerpike

Joan Collins celebrates her damehood with an old frenemy

With the Queen’s birthday honours fast approaching, future awardees can take inspiration from Joan Collins on the suitable number of events required to celebrate one’s damehood. Writing in this week’s issue of The Spectator, Collins reveals that she attended not one but seven events in total. However, things got off to a questionable start when her husband Percy forgot his photo ID, which was required to get past palace security for her investiture ceremony: ‘We averted a potential disaster when, at the gates, Percy confessed to having left his photo ID behind. ‘Will you vouch for this gentleman?’ the helmeted bobby inquired. ‘Well, I’m not sure if I’d go that far, but he is

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 23 April 2015

Enemies within Sir: I thought Matthew Parris was typically incisive in his last column, but perhaps not quite as much as the person who wrote its online headline, ‘Scotland knows the power of a common enemy. We English don’t’ (18 April). It is true that ‘the wish to be the underdog’ is a defining urge of our age, even in relatively prosperous polities such as Scotland and Catalonia. But Parris is wrong when he claims that the closest the English come to the ‘Braveheart feeling’ is in their collective memory of the second world war. If only that were true. Would any other country make so little of its crucial

Raymond Keene

So there

Hikaru Nakamura has won the US Championship in convincing style with 8/11, ahead of Ray Robson and Wesley So. Things might have turned out differently had So not been disqualified after just six moves of his game against Akobian. These moves were: 1 d4 e6 2 c4 d5 3 Nc3 c5 4 cxd5 exd5 5 Nf3 Nc6 6 dxc5. Apparently, Akobian complained to the arbiters that Wesley So, the most promising grandmaster ever to emerge from the Philippines and currently ranked no. 8 in the world, had been scribbling notes to himself during the opening phase of the game. Since the opening is well known these notes could have had nothing to

Raymond Keene

No. 359

Black to play. This position is a variation from Troff-Nakamura, US Championship 2015. How can Black conclude his kingside attack with a standard tactic? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 28 April 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 Qxf7+ Last week’s winner Sergio Petro, Croydon, Surrey

Taki

High life | 23 April 2015

A recent column in the FT made me mad as hell. The writer, Simon Kuper, calls Vienna a backwater, which is a bit like calling the Queen a busted flush because of her age. Sure, he writes how great Vienna was back when the Habsburgs ruled the roost, attracting people from all over, ‘some of them nuts’. He includes Freud, Hitler, Stalin and Trotsky. Not the nicest bunch I can think of, but then the paper is a pink one. He fears London might go the way of Vienna, and price itself out of the reach of everyone but a few Chinese, Russian and Indian billionaires. He’s right about London

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 23 April 2015

I’m such a constitutional lightweight lately that I’ve started looking on the website What’s On in South Devon for things to do of an evening that don’t involve total annihilation. What’s On in South Devon is surely one of those ‘shortest book in the world’ contenders. Weeknights it’s mainly the same local musicians playing the same deserted pubs; or some functioning psychotic preaching new-age nonsense in a church hall to folk whose gullibility gives one a rough idea of the infinite; or bingo. Listening to functioning psychotics in church halls is fun at first, but soon palls. I’d go to bingo if I didn’t already own a life-sized ceramic cheetah.

Melissa Kite

Real life | 23 April 2015

As a wise person once said (or if they didn’t, they should have), there is only one thing worse than being wrong and that is being right. I always get peevish when I win. After being told I had triumphed in my three-year phantom car crash battle, I started to feel survivor guilt. It was all very well for me, embroiling myself in a gargantuan struggle for justice following a low-velocity car prang. I factor time into my schedule to wage war on the world. I complain about life for a living, so far as anyone can. But what about all those other poor motorists who are well adjusted people

Alexander Chancellor

Long life | 23 April 2015

There are already people camping outside St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington, to await the birth shortly of another royal baby, the second child of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. It is hardly a very exciting event. Babies are born all the time, and there are already quite enough descendants of the Queen to ensure the survival of the Windsor dynasty on the throne of the United Kingdom for a long time to come. Yet there are many people in this country for whom this commonplace event will be more thrilling than the forthcoming general election, even though it could presage the dismemberment of the country itself. The British monarchy continues

Susanna Gross

Bridge | 23 April 2015

Congratulations to the Welsh women’s team, who staged one of the most spectacular comebacks I’ve ever seen at last weekend’s Lady Milne (the women’s home internationals). They were languishing in bottom place on Sunday morning, but managed to claw all the way to the top by the end of the day. You can imagine the celebrations: the last time Wales won was 27 years ago. Which just goes to show the importance of keeping your nerve. During the recent Yeh Bros Cup in Beijing, another team kept its nerve under even greater pressure. There are very few bridge events offering big cash prizes, but Yeh Bros is an exception: the

Toby Young Toby Young

The hazards of being a good sport

Not a day passes when I don’t look on my father’s record with shock and awe. I’m not talking about his authorship of Labour’s 1945 manifesto, his invention of the word ‘meritocracy’ or his creation of the Open University. I’m talking about the fact that he fathered a child at the age of 80. How on earth did he cope? My eldest was born when I was 40, with three more following in quick succession, and I already think of myself as an old dad. The problem is, they want to play with me all the time — rough, competitive, physical games — and it’s completely debilitating. The boys, aged

Justin Marozzi

Diary – 23 April 2015

Lunch with the man who hanged Saddam. My irrepressible old Baghdad friend Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Ealing neurologist turned Iraqi national security adviser, is on top form. This may not be unrelated to the news that the noose with which he hanged Saddam is up for auction. Interested buyers are said to include Kuwaiti businessmen, an Israeli family, a bank and an Iranian religious organisation. Mischievous tales are circulating about an offer of $7 million being rejected. Hearing Rubaie relive Saddam’s execution reminded me of the late Sir Wilfred Thesiger recalling how he shot up a tent full of sleeping Germans during the Allied campaigns in North Africa. ‘It felt like murder,’

Mary Killen

Your problems solved | 23 April 2015

Q. I socialise in Shropshire every weekend and regularly give dinners which end at 2 a.m., but it’s a different matter in London, where I have to leave the house by six every morning. My problem is that I owe dinner to a lot of people, but I now baulk at how late they will stay, since no matter how heavily I hint, people seem to stay beyond midnight every time. Even if I invite them to come for an ‘early dinner’ at 7 p.m, they are still there at midnight. These are mainly neighbours or fellow parents from my son’s school, i.e. not lifelong buddies of the sort you could just

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 23 April 2015

Home The prospect of a parliamentary alliance between Labour and the Scottish National Party injected an element of fear into the election campaign. The SNP manifesto promised to increase spending and to find a way to stop the renewal of the Trident nuclear deterrent. Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP leader, said she wanted to make Labour in government ‘bolder and better’. Lord Forsyth, a former Conservative Scottish secretary, said that the building up of the SNP, to take seats in Scotland, was a ‘dangerous view which threatens the integrity of our country’. Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, said the Tories should not be ‘talking up’ the SNP. Even the Democratic Unionists