Society

Thursday

Raymond Keene

Just So

Last week in a perceptive piece for the Times, Will Pavia animadverted upon the fact that the USA appears to be actively recruiting top chess grandmasters. Pavia focused on attempts to persuade world-ranked no. 2 Fabiano Caruana to defect from representing Italy, and switch allegiance to the USA. Even more indicative has been the effort made to entice the former Philippine grandmaster Wesley So to adopt the stars and stripes. As far as I can see, this enterprise has been successful, and it is not hard to detect the hand of the eminence grise of American chess Rex Sinquefield, behind a prima facie attempt to reconquer the Olympiad gold medal

The Spectator

Spectator letters: John Major on James Goldsmith

The Goldsmith effect Sir: Much as I admire filial loyalty, I cannot allow Zac Goldsmith’s article about his father to go uncorrected (‘My dad saved the pound’, 28 February). Sir James Goldsmith was a formidable campaigner against the European Union and the euro currency, but at no point did he alter government policy. Zac Goldsmith suggests that I did not offer a referendum on membership of the euro currency out of conviction. This is wrong. I believed that any decision to abandon sterling — which I myself did not favour — was so fundamental that it would need national endorsement. On constitutional grounds some Cabinet members dissented, but many will

Raymond Keene

No. 354

White to play. This is from Pillsbury-Tarrasch, Hastings 1895. White has only one move to bring his kingside attack to a successful conclusion before Black lands on the other wing. Can you see it? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 24 March 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 … Bc8+ Last week’s winner William Chapman, London E5

Peter Jones

Allah, Zeus and the Church of England

A ‘prominent liberal cleric’ in London has held an Islamic prayer service in his church, St John’s Waterloo. ‘We all share these traditions,’ he announced, ‘so let us celebrate our shared traditions, by giving thanks to the God that we love, Allah.’ How deliciously pagan of him. One way ancient Greeks tried to make sense of the bewildering array of gods they came across was to make links between them, both in name and function. For example, the ‘father of history’ Herodotus tells us that Scythians worshipped Zeus, Apollo and Aphrodite under the names Papaeus, Oetosyrus and Argimpasa. All very St John’s. But does this mean that ancient gods shared traditions?

Jeremy Clarke

My afternoon in a Gallic version of Betfred

For the Cheltenham Festival I received the customary tipster circular from my pal Soapy Joe. Soapy’s most convincing credential as a horse-racing tipster is that he is banned from every high street bookmaker in the land because he takes too much money off the poor souls. I slept with him once. I woke up in an upstairs bedroom of a Gloucestershire stately home on the second morning of our week-long Cheltenham Festival house party, pieced together where I was, and why, and saw, sitting up in the next bed, Soapy in his stripy pyjamas listening to the commentary of a horse race in Dubai or somewhere on a pocket radio.

Melissa Kite

I held my breath ready for the explosion. But no explosion came

Darcy was obviously listening to every word I said. After we got back from the ride from hell, in which she threw the mother of all tantrums, she was very subdued. She stood in her box all afternoon looking sheepish, according to the groom. ‘We haven’t had a peep out of her,’ she said, when I arrived the next day. ‘She looked like she was in a state of shock.’ She was in a state of shock? Holy Moses. What about us? My friend Karl, as I explained last week, had agreed to swap horses with me mid-hack when Darcy starting playing up. I’m not easily scared but instead of

Alexander Chancellor

An Episcopalian vicar made me warm to the principle of women joining gentlemen’s clubs

In 1993, when I was living in Manhattan working for the New Yorker magazine, I was chosen as ‘distinguished visitor’ to be a temporary member of the Century Club: there were two of us in this category, me and the Tanzanian ambassador to the United Nations. The Century, in midtown Manhattan on West 43rd Street, is one of the grandest clubs in New York, most of which were opened in the 19th century in imitation of the gentlemen’s clubs of London. The Century was founded in 1846, only 15 years later than the Garrick Club, of which I have long been a member. It was originally planned as ‘an association

Robin Oakley

Disneyland comes to the Cheltenham Festival

Irish racing guru Ted Walsh was asked at the start of Gold Cup day if retiring champion jockey Tony McCoy could win his last Cheltenham Festival race. ‘No,’ came the unsentimental reply. ‘This is Cheltenham, not Disneyland.’ But within three hours, racing’s raucous pilgrims cheered home a fairytale winner: the novice Coneygree ran his rivals ragged from the front in the hands of the young jockey Nico de Boinville and collected the Betfred Gold Cup for the ten-horse stable of Mark and Sara Bradstock, recently profiled here. Said former trainer Charlie Brooks, ‘That was the best victory ever in the history of horse-racing,’ and his opinion had plenty of takers.

Toby Young Toby Young

I’m working to make education fairer. But I’m still not sure what ‘fairer’ means

Civitas has just published an interesting book called The Ins and Outs of Selective Secondary Schools. Edited by Anastasia de Waal, it’s a collection of essays by the usual suspects in the never-ending argument about grammar schools. De Waal points out that the two sides have more in common than you’d think. In particular, they share a common goal, which is to sever the link between a child’s socio-economic status and attainment. In 2009, according to the OECD, the variance in the scores of British children in the Pisa international tests in maths, reading and science that could be explained by their backgrounds was 13.8 per cent. By this measure,

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

Kitty Fisher’s: proof that the PM has good taste in restaurants, if not in friends

David Cameron is too cowardly, or too cynical, to debate with Ed ‘Two or Possibly Three Kitchens’ Miliband — which depends entirely on the breath of your own cynicism — or is he perhaps just too busy eating? (Here I address Sarah Vine, or Mrs Michael Gove, the Daily Mail columnist who analysed the smaller of the so-far-discovered Miliband kitchens and decided that Labour is, on the basis of its contents alone, moribund. Sarah, you’re an idiot, an anti-journalist, a pox.) The Prime Minister’s adventures in restaurant-land are a moveable feast, and changeable; he has, in his years of power, visited ‘Jewish’ Oslo Court, like a wasp drowning in a

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: What can I do to make couples split the bill fairly?

Q. I’m a single bloke now and for various reasons don’t foresee any change to that status. I have moved to Australia and found several convivial people of similar backgrounds who are couples. From time to time we meet up in restaurants but I find there is an expectation that the bill be settled either by dividing it in two or that I should pay in full every other meal. No one ever suggests splitting it three ways. These are people with means. I dislike broaching the subject of money so the consequence is that I meet up with these friends less often than I would like to. —Name withheld

Dot Wordsworth

The lost words of John Aubrey, from apricate to scobberlotcher

Hilary Spurling found a certain blunting of the irregularities of John Aubrey’s language in Ruth Scurr’s vicarious autobiography of the amiable man (Books, 14 March). It is true that his vocabulary was adventurous, though I’m not convinced that his age (that of Thomas Browne too) was more neologistical than Chaucer’s, Shakespeare’s, Thackeray’s or our own. Reading Aubrey (1626–97), we can overlook the Latinate words that have survived, and notice only those that did not catch on. One regrettable casualty was Aubrey’s apricate, ‘to bask in the sun’, from Latin apricari. This is not, as it happens, where we get the name apricot, which arrived in an etymological pass-the-parcel from Spanish

Janet de Botton

Bridge | 19 March 2015

You either love rubber bridge or you hate it. Personally I love it: I love the freedom it gives you to play when it suits you. I love the fact that you play with and against different players, which certainly keeps you alert and hones your ‘table presence’. I love the fact that it gives you the opportunity to play with world stars who are passing through (Bob Hamman, for example) and I love the frisson that playing for money brings to the game. Believe me, after you’ve gone for a telephone number a couple of times and written out the cheque, you learn pretty quickly. It’s the best training

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 19 March 2015

Home In a Budget intended to have ‘no gimmicks, no giveaways’, George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, offered pensioners with annuities the chance to cash them in and blow the lot. Borrowing in the coming year would be a fraction of a billion less than feared and the annual deficit was to be eliminated by 2019. The income tax personal allowance was raised. Business rates were to be reviewed. Duty on beer, cider and spirits came down a touch, but not on wine. A higher bank levy was predicted to raise £900 million. North Sea oil and gas producers were offered tax reductions. About 15 million people would have to

Doc

2203: Peeping Toms

The unclued lights are of a kind; the ones Across are one theme, and those Down (one of two words) on another related theme. Solvers must highlight another ‘Down’ theme-word hidden diagonally in the final grid.   Across   1    Patching tatty topper for bed (8) 12    Triumphant delight returning pie to roofless depot (10) 14    Mad sex rejected in country out East (7) 15    Make tactical plans of restoration of great sites (10) 16    Burrowing creature and friends of Mr Toad? (7, two words) 20    Month from a calendar’s final three (4) 22    Oppressive individual’s awake, endlessly (7) 23    Fast or slow, endlessly (4) 24    Ambassadors restricted

Doc

To 2200

The unclued Down lights can be abbreviated as MM, and the unclued Across lights as CC. Together as MMCC, they confirm puzzle number 2200. First prize David J. Carpenter, Sutton Coldfield Runners-up J. Anson, London SE5; Paul Machin, London N11

Steerpike Steerpike

The Guardian sponsors white tie ball at Cambridge University’s oldest college

Last week the Green Party was forced to cancel a planned black tie fundraiser after their members complained that the champagne-fuelled event was at odds with what Natalie Bennett’s party was supposed to stand for. So Mr S was surprised to see that the Guardian has gone one step further and sponsored a white tie ball. The left-leaning paper, which never misses an opportunity to remind David Cameron of his Bullingdon Club past, is listed as a proud sponsor for the 2015 Peterhouse May Ball. The event, which is one of Cambridge University’s two white tie balls (the other is held by Magdalene College), has tickets for two starting at £350, not including the

Douglas Murray

Is London’s ‘diversity’ to blame for its ‘unprogressive’ views on homosexuality?

I have been most interested in recent posts here by Alex Massie and Matthew Parris.  Here is a poll which might interest them both. YouGov recently carried out a survey in the UK which sought primarily to judge public opinions on the issue of posthumous pardons to people convicted of homosexuality. So far so hip, cool and with the beat. But the poll also asked respondents whether they think in general that homosexuality is ‘morally acceptable’ or ‘morally wrong’.  What do you think the figures were?  Well in most regions of the UK those people who thought homosexuality ‘morally wrong’ sat at around 15 per cent.  About what one might

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

IFS: Osborne should come clean on his welfare cuts

George Osborne this morning said that people should judge him on his track record, as he refused to set out the detail of welfare cuts planned in the next parliament. The IFS’s Paul Johnson didn’t seem to think this was good enough when he gave his verdict on the Budget today. He said: ‘It is now almost two years since he announced his intention of cutting welfare spending by £12bn. Since then the main announcement has been the plan not to cut anything from the main pensioner benefits. We have been told about no more than £2bn of the planned cuts to working age benefits. And remember apparently the “plan”