Society

Friday

The Spectator

The Spectator at war: Military timetables

From News of the Week, The Spectator, 5 December 1914: Friday’s Times contains extracts from an interview with Lord Kitchener, published in the Saturday Evening Post— a weekly newspaper with a large circulation in all parts of the United States. Nothing could be better than the passage in which Lord Kitchener dealt with the action of the Germans in Belgium :— “War has its ethics; but if ever a soldier is to become judge of the behaviour of the civil population of a hostile country, if he is to be not only judge and jury, but the inflicter of punishment, why, then, to my conception, he loses his proper ordained functions as

Thursday

Taki

Another New York institution bites the dust

Except for sickness in one’s family or the loss of a life, is there anything sadder than to see a bookstore shut its doors? I used to live on a street that had three bookstores within 50 yards of each other. All three are now boutiques selling expensive bric-à-brac, or whatever the junk that tarts wear is called. Browsing in a bookstore has to be every bibliophile’s wet dream, a perfect way to stand upright, in a correct posture, and lose weight while reading blurbs. Excelsior! It is every frustrated or unsuccessful writer’s dream to own and operate a bookstore, but nowadays it’s like selling sunlamps to Australians: there are

Jeremy Clarke

The best thing about travel-writing gigs is meeting other hacks

The thing I enjoy most about travel-writing gigs is meeting other hacks. Hacks are almost invariably fun, funny, gossipy, irreverent, and they like a drink. They are well read and intelligent, but like to conceal it. They know and understand the lineaments of power as well as politicians, only they think it’s funny. On multi-hack travel gigs you can tell whether there is a drain or a nutcase in the squad during the introductions in the Heathrow departures lounge. In this case we could safely sound the ‘all-clear’. The line-up consisted of a man from the Daily Mail, a woman from the Daily Telegraph, a woman from the Sunday Times

Melissa Kite

How I lost my hat (and my dignity) in a field of maize

After our spectacular season opener, the spaniel and I were on probation. Cydney, you may recall, retrieved a hen bird stuck in a stream but then ran off on a freelance flushing mission between drives. I thought it was rather a success, on balance. But the rest of the shoot begged to differ and judged her performance a net disaster. That said, we decided to give it another try and turned up at 9 a.m. the next week at the barn where all the pickers-up, beaters and guns were having coffee. We were not exactly welcomed with open arms. No one wanted to take us in their 4×4 to the

Alexander Chancellor

Will anyone admit to being in the establishment? (No, not you, David Mellor)

This is a tremendous time for ‘ordinary’ people. The elitists, the members of the ‘establishment’, are all on the run. Except, of course, that everybody is ordinary now. Or at least nobody admits to being an insider, a member of the Westminster bubble, of the establishment, or of any such posh outfit. There is no ‘them’, only ‘us’, united in conflict with an arrogant, out-of-touch, privileged class that doesn’t apparently exist. Those who don’t recognise their ordinariness, but persist in believing in their superiority, are instantly cut down. David Mellor is the latest example, exposed for boasting to a London taxi driver that he had been in the cabinet, was

Susanna Gross

Bridge | 4 December 2014

I witnessed utter carnage at the bridge table the other week. I was watching the European Champions Cup online when a brilliantly imaginative bid by one of France’s top players, Philippe Cronier, backfired horribly (always fun to see disaster befall a professional). When the dust had settled, Cronier had gone for one of the largest penalties I’ve ever seen — 4300. The problem came with a misunderstanding of what a ‘redouble’ by Cronier meant. He intended it to be an ‘SOS’, asking his partner to rescue him from the spot he was in. His partner — who will remain anonymous — saw it as a display of confidence. It’s a

The Spectator

Spectator letters: All Things Bright and Beautiful, oligarchs and school fees, and Songs of Praise

Times past Sir: ‘Imagine,’ says Hugo Rifkind in his excellent piece on the power of Google (29 November), ‘that there was one newspaper that got all the scoops. Literally all of them.’ We don’t have to imagine: such a newspaper existed, a couple of centuries ago, and Hugo works for its descendent. The Times of the early 19th century had a foreign intelligence service that regularly outperformed Whitehall’s, and a circulation several times that of all its rivals combined. It thundered as confidently on royal scandal as it did on the details of parliamentary reform. Its editor dictated the membership of at least one cabinet. Regulation just entrenched this state of

Raymond Keene

Classic

London chess fans are about to enjoy a great treat. The London Chess Classic will run from the 10-14 December with a tremendous line-up: Viswanathan Anand, fresh from his title challenge against Magnus Carlsen in Sochi; former world champion Vladimir Kramnik; world no. 2 Fabiano Caruana; as well as grandmasters Anish Giri, Hikaru Nakamura and Britain’s no. 1, Michael Adams. The venue, as usual, is London’s Olympia (www.londonchessclassic.com). London has been the scene of outstanding chess ever since the celebrated André Danican Philidor moved here during the late 18th century and dazzled London audiences with his displays of blindfold chess. Another frequent visitor to London was the Danish grandmaster Bent Larsen who

The Spectator

When a cricket ball cost Britain an heir to the throne

A fatal shot The sad death of Australian batsman Philip Hughes was a reminder that a cricket ball can kill. A blow on the cricket field may even have cost us an heir to the throne. — One of the earliest suspected victims was Frederick, Prince of Wales, the son of George II, who is first recorded as having played cricket in 1733 when he put up a team against Sir William Gage, in a match played on Mouley Hurst, Surrey. — In 1751, a few weeks after his 44th birthday, he was said to be suffering from an abscess in the chest caused by a blow by a cricket

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: How do you stop someone wearing leather trousers to work?

Q. My husband employs an ageing rocker in his shop. She is highly efficient, and is an extremely nice woman. Our problem is that she will insist on wearing leather trousers to work and the noise is driving my husband mad. She is not the type to complain of harassment but how do you suggest he approach this delicate issue? — Name and address withheld A. In the early days of rock, it was thought that there was no better vehicle with which to display a good figure than leather trousers. The modern alternative — as worn by photographer Lady Brocket — are leather-look trousers, often with a waxed ingredient.

Toby Young Toby Young

Don’t want paternity leave? Soon, you may not have a choice

Earlier this week, the law changed to enable men to share the leave that women are currently entitled to after the birth of a child. From 5 April next year, men can take up to 50 weeks of paternity leave, while their partners can go straight back to work. The prospect of shared parental leave hasn’t gone down well with British men, according to a survey in the Daily Mail. Seventy-five per cent of men are opposed to the new law, rising to 80 per cent for the over-45s. Only 10 per cent said they’d like to take full advantage of this new entitlement. I can’t say I’m surprised. It’s

Dot Wordsworth

Control

In his speech on immigration last week, David Cameron said a couple of funny things. I’m not talking about the politics. Heaven forbid. I mean the language. Why did he call the City of London ‘the financial epicentre of the world’? Epicentre means ‘the point over the centre’, and in seismology it is the place on the Earth’s surface above the subterranean seat of an earthquake. So, unless he believes in an army of immigrant Morlocks slaving away beneath the City, I’d imagine Mr Cameron just meant centre. Epicentre sounds classier. Then he spoke of worries about ‘the scale of people coming into the country’. I doubt that he thinks

Stig Abell

Stig Abell’s diary: My days in court with the Sun

Soon after I joined the Sun as managing editor (among other things, I used to review novels for The Spectator), I read an interview with Keir Starmer, the outgoing head of the Crown Prosecution Service. What an unhealthy thing it would be, he said, if journalists had to consult with lawyers every time they pursued a story or asked a question. He was right — yet this is precisely what it is now like for most people in the business of trying to break stories in Britain. More journalists are on trial or facing prosecution here than in many banana republics around the world — as my newspaper knows to

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 4 December 2014

Home The government spent days announcing how the Autumn Statement would allocate funds. ‘Frontline’ parts of the National Health Service would get an extra £2 billion for the time being, £750 million of it diverted from elsewhere in the Department of Health budget. Another £1.1 billion from bankers’ fines would go to support GPs. Labour said it would give the NHS twice as much. Out of the £15 billion already set aside by the government for roads, a tunnel would be built for the A303 past Stonehenge. Of £2.3 billion (over six years) earmarked for flood prevention, only £4.3 million was set aside for the Somerset Levels, but £196 million for the

Mr Magoo

2191: Bunk

The other unclued entries, in pairs around 3D, provide the key words in a definition of 11D.   Across   1    Nouns hidden in secret and manuscript sentences (8) 10    Sea beast who I’ll tape somehow (10, two words) 13    Goat starts to gnaw at one fish (8) 16    ‘Nameless’ ‘noodle’ could be ‘oodle’? (5) 17    Put into Debrett’s, having been no Lord to begin with sadly (7) 18    Where nun is to occupy (7) 20    Neat cube, square down under (8, two words) 25    Brazil won regularly here? (3) 26    I propose nothing for holding referee back (7) 28    Upset how big-headed someone is? (7) 29    Head teachers (3)

Mr Magoo

To 2188: Pieces of eight

The eight unclued lights are anagrams of eight clued solutions: 2/12, 3/13, 8/35, 16/40, 18/28, 19/30, 24/27 and 26/38. First prize Eileen Robinson, Sheffield Runners-up John Bartlett, Shirley, Solihull; M. Taylor, Eskbank, Midlothian

Sebastian Payne

Podcast: Autumn Statement, Russia’s information wars and life inside Tatler

George Osborne appears to have delivered a successful Autumn Statement, but are there some dark secrets in the details? In this week’s View from 22 podcast, Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth discuss the Chancellor’s last major economic speech of this Parliament, the political consequences of the new measures announced and what it means for the outcome of the next election. Anne Applebaum also discusses this week’s Spectator cover features on the quandary of Russia. Will the country put up with economic hardship in return for this experiment in rebelling against the West? How much chance is there for Russia to come back ‘on-side’ with the rest of the international community? And how successful has Russia Today been in promoting Vladimir

The Spectator

The Spectator at war: Good taste and good breeding

From The King at the Front, The Spectator, 5 December 1914: It is impossible for the ordinary Englishman not to be delighted with the good taste and good breeding as well as the sincerity with which the King has acted throughout the war. Burke bade us so to be patriots as not to forget we are gentlemen. That, again, is an easy thing to say and not always an easy thing to do, for undoubtedly there are many men who in the excitement of a great crisis cannot help showing a vein of coarseness in their fibre which no one had perceived before. Great events bring out great and good qualities,

James Delingpole James Delingpole

Why tackle someone’s argument when you can just pick a word and take offence at it?

Michael Gove was on BBC Question Time the other night, fielding questions about such contentious subjects as education, immigration and benefits. But when he browsed the internet afterwards to see what, if anything, was exercising the web about his performance, he was surprised to discover that his greatest crime had been an innocuous turn of phrase in response to a jibe from David Dimbleby. Dimbleby had idly wondered why Gove was so disliked by the teaching profession, to which Gove replied that this was a loaded question on the lines of ‘When did you stop beating your wife?’ This elicited a huge outpouring of internet hatred from the usual online