Society

Thursday

The Spectator

Spectator letters: The best ‘never’ ever is in the Declaration of Arbroath Plus: BST for England, the problem for social workers, and C.P. Snow was not cold

Never say never Sir: Dot Wordsworth (Mind your language, 20 September) quotes various telling usages of ‘never’ for rhetorical or theatrical effect. But she missed one of the earliest and spine-chilling best: the Declaration of Arbroath of 1320. Quite apart from including the first-known written statement of the old Scottish principle that kingship is essentially a contractual appointment, and can be terminated if the people feel let down, the translation ends with: ‘For as long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never shall we on any conditions be brought under English rule.’ Even Scots like me, who would have voted ‘No’ last week if we had been able,

Tom Bower

Tom Bower’s Diary: Resuming hostilities with Richard Branson

This week marks another milestone in my 15-year battle with Richard Branson. Ever since he unsuccessfully sued me in 1999 to prevent the publication of my first damning biography, we have exchanged shots. His anointment on Sunday as Britain’s most admired businessman coincides with my appearances to promote Branson: Behind the Mask, my second book. Inevitably, the book sparked his fury, summarised in a 29-page letter of complaint. Our war is now focused on whether Virgin Galactic, his Heath Robinson rocket, will ever carry him 62 miles into the border of space. For ten years his regular predictions of imminent take-off have proven wrong. Last Christmas he announced he would

Taki

My ghosts of Athens; a shooting and a royal wedding

Athens This grimy semi-Levantine ancient city has its beauty spots, with childhood memories indelibly attached. There is a turn-of-the-century apartment building across the street from my house where in 1942 or ’43 I watched a daughter and wife scream in horror from their balcony as three nondescript assassins executed a man as he bent over to get into his chauffeur-driven car. His name was Kalyvas and he was a minister in the Vichy-like Greek government of the time. He was bald and from my vantage point I saw the three red spots as the bullets entered his skull. His wife and daughter wore black from that day onwards. The daughter

Jeremy Clarke

A visit to a drugs den above a fishmongers with Miss South America

‘Stand outside the fishmongers in 20 minutes and call this number,’ she said, ‘and I can arrange it.’ On Saturday evening I was scrubbed up for a big night out. I was wearing a black jacket and black jeans, which is overdressed for a night out in this seaside town. But Jupiter, said Shelley von Strunckel, was making a spectacular conjunction with Uranus, my ruler, lending me enormous powers of attraction. So I thought I might as well dress up for the occasion. After 20 minutes, I stood outside the fishmongers and called the number. Half a minute later an anonymous-looking door next to the shop opened inwards, and she

Melissa Kite

Melissa Kite: a crazy woman is living inside my head.

A crazy woman is living inside my head. It’s not just the normal crazy woman who camps out there from time to time and argues about parking tickets. It’s a new crazy woman who thinks she can avoid parking tickets by fighting men in the street. Physically, with her bare hands. Is this what they mean by ‘empowerment’? You will feel wonderfully empowered, they keep telling me. They being women who have been through the change of life before me. Well, all I can say is, if I go on getting any more empowered I am going to wind up in jail. In my latest adventure, I picked a fight

Toby Young Toby Young

My hormones are all over the place. It must be the manopause

Women spend ten days a year in a grumpy mood, according to the Daily Mail. The top triggers include being overweight, feeling undervalued, having a bad hair day, breaking a nail and the wrong time of the month. The standard reaction to this among the men I know was to question the number of days. More like 100, surely? My reaction was slightly different. I’m not convinced there’s any such thing as a ‘grumpy day’ for most women, any more than there is a ‘happy day’. Rather, all days contain peaks and troughs and the variation isn’t between good days and bad days so much as days on which their

Alexander Chancellor

Winslow Hall shows you don’t need fancy sets to make opera enjoyable

Winslow Hall is a large and handsome country house in Buckinghamshire, built in 1700 by Sir Christopher Wren, which Tony Blair nearly bought in 2007 when he was looking for an imposing residence appropriate to his station in life as a retired prime minister.  The people of Winslow, the small town near Buckingham in which it stands, were understandably alarmed by the prospect of having the Blair family in their midst; but fortunately for them, Tony eventually decided not to buy the house, possibly because its unusual location on a street in the town would have made security a problem. Instead, it was bought four years ago by Christopher Gilmour,

Susanna Gross

Bridge | 25 September 2014

There aren’t many instantly recognisable stars in the bridge world, but Andrew Robson is definitely one — as he was made only too aware on a flight to Tangier recently when a group of Club Med passengers in the surrounding seats got very excited and made him discuss bridge for hours. Andrew goes to Tangier every year for Stuart Wheeler’s Bridge Week, to which I’m also lucky enough to be invited. The Wheelers’ house has stunning views and Tangier itself is teeming with exotic life —  but to be honest, none of us has much desire to step outside when non-stop bridge is on offer. The guests are mainly Portland

Dot Wordsworth

Dot Wordsworth on language: Why do we call it ‘Islamic State’?

I’m puzzled by the dropping of the one part of the name of the Islamic State that seems certain. That it is Islamic, many dispute. That it is a state is just as unclear. But calling it the does not bestow honour upon it, any more than referring to the Third Reich meant agreement with its behaviour. But there’s all the difference between the Queen and Queen. The Islamic State is grammatically like the Irish Free State, the Orange Free State or the Bluegrass State (Kentucky). And yet the BBC commonly speaks of ‘Islamic State’ without the definite article, like Sinn Fein or Sheffield Wednesday. In June I wrote here

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Cameron visits UN HQ, Scotland checks its bruises, and a Swede sells his submarine

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, visited New York for talks at the United Nations; he said Britain supported the American air strikes on the Islamic State. ‘These people want to kill us,’ Mr Cameron said on NBC news. Mr Cameron met President Hassan Rouhani of Iran in New York, the first such meeting since the Iranian revolution in 1979. Mr Cameron was caught by cameras in New York saying to Michael Bloomberg, its former mayor, that when he rang the Queen with the Scottish referendum result, ‘She purred down the line.’ Alex Salmond resigned as First Minister of Scotland and leader of the Scottish National Party, with effect from November. This

The Spectator

The good fight

It is a mark of the uncertainty of our policy in the Middle East that just over a year ago Parliament was recalled to debate whether to launch military strikes in aid of rebels in Syria. This year, it has been recalled to discuss whether the RAF should join the strikes against the rebels in Syria — or, at least, the section of them that now call themselves ‘the Islamic State’. It is a sobering thought that, had last year’s vote succeeded, Damascus might have joined Raqqa, Mosul and Tikrit among the cities now being run by this pitiless band of barbarians. Michael Fallon, the Defence Secretary, tells James Forsyth

Dumpynose

2181: Obit II

The 19 of a great 1A of 6 and for the 1D occurred in 37 25 years ago this month. He was born in 21 and was a friend of 26 and an enemy of 41. Two clued lights together form his name and must be shaded. Elsewhere, ignore an accent.   Across   10    French town having points the Spanish must take in (7) 12    Morag’s liking chain as ornament (6) 13    Plants from Austria in animal park therein (6) 14    Drug mountebank checked twice before fighting duel (8) 17    Swimming beasts near cold water (10, two words) 18    Firm frost rolling over American states (8) 22    Cross erk

Dumpynose

To 2178: Saint and playwright

In Vanity Fair (18/2), George Osborne is associated with 6/30 and 10/31. As Chancellor, he was preceded by 8, 26 and 29. First prize Stephen Gore, Seer Green, Bucks Runners-up Brian Midgley, Ettington, Warwickshire; Nicola Fletcher, Horsmonden, Kent

Mark McGinness

Deborah Devonshire: JFK’s friend, Hitler’s antagonist, The Spectator’s columnist

The lives of the Mitford Sisters have riveted, and repelled, anglophiles since the thirties. Diana Mitford once wrote, ‘I must admit “the Mitfords” would madden ME if I didn’t chance to be one’. Their hold on the public imagination can be attributed to a mixture of aristocratic eccentricity, romance, rebellion, devotion, betrayal, estrangement, tragedy, and loss; and through it all, a uniquely irrepressible wit. And although much of it will survive in the memoirs, biographies, novels, and collected letters they and others have written, the last living link has been lost with the death of Deborah, the youngest of that astonishing sextet. Between 1904 and 1920, Lord and Lady Redesdale

Mark Mason

Good riddance to rhetoric

Autumn is here, and so the political classes celebrate the return of Any Questions and Question Time. (The Dimbleby is the only species that hibernates during the summer.) This year, though, listen out for the one thing missing from both programmes: rhetoric. Over recent series politicians and pundits have shrugged off the oratory. Instead they talk normally, like normal people in a normal setting. And thank God for that. In the bad old days, discussion programmes were full of panellists giving it the full Winston. Contributions started ‘I’m very glad to have the opportunity of addressing this vital, and, if I might say so, crucial issue,’ then meander, via countless

Matthew Elliott

The UK needs a referendum on the EU, or we won’t get a better deal

In this morning’s Independent, a collection of Establishment names have broken cover and lobbied David Cameron to abandon his pledge to hold an EU referendum by the end of 2017. In a letter, whose signatories include former Tory Ministers, the CBI and Peter Mandelson, they bizarrely claim that the lesson from the Scottish referendum is that people should not be given a vote on the EU, for fear of creating ‘uncertainty’. The motivation of many of the signatories’ opposition to a referendum should not come as a surprise. Many are either former employees of the European Union or have in the past urged the UK to join the Euro –

The Spectator

The Spectator at war: Feet first

From The Spectator, 26 September 1914: There is nothing that a soldier needs more than good footwear; he can fight if need be on an empty stomach, but he cannot march on bare feet. Still, the means of supplying his needs are circumscribed. A commanding officer can make arrangements for accepting cartloads of goods at a depot; but a general in the field has to think of his transport with his supply, and though he might be grateful for the stock of a dozen drapers’ shops, he has to move his troops besides clothing them, and he cannot pull unlimited quantities of flannel across a continent.

Douglas Murray

Why are we paying more benefits to Islamist preachers than our own soldiers?

‘We need new laws’ is a phrase most often heard from people who haven’t much bothered to investigate whether laws which are already on the books can be used. For some time I have suggested that it is inexplicable that laws like those which can be used against people for membership of a proscribed organisation were being almost totally ignored. So the arrest of Anjem Choudary and others for precisely this is doubly pleasing. The banning of the various manifestations of the radical group Al-Muhajiroun was always vaguely farcical. The Home Office would ban one offshoot of the organisation and A-M would respond by starting something of exactly the same

The Spectator

Podcast: Cameron the radical, animal welfare and student sex

How will Cameron be remembered in years to come? As a steady-as-she-goes pragmatist or a radical reformer? In actual fact, he’s both. No modern Tory leader has been so good at looking calm under fire, yet there is a more radical Cameron. The insouciance is partly an act. In this week’s podcast, Freddy Gray, Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth examine these two sides of Cameron. With the party conference looming, and the election just eight months away, Cameron needs to make the case for Tory radicalism. The Manchester dogs’ home fire has revealed our strange attitude to animal suffering. There is a glaring double standard in our adoration for our pets