The four works were Waverley (anagram of 12/21), Kenilworth (15/8), The Talisman (29/2) and Ivanhoe (38/37) by SIR WALTER SCOTT (diagonally NW to SE) which was to be shaded. Title: anagram of Redgauntlet. First prize Roy Robinson, Sheffield Runners-up Sebastian Robinson, Glasgow; M.F. O’Brien, London N12
I saw MPs Peter Hain and Andrew Mitchell agreeing with each other on Newsnight about the need, now, to talk to President Assad, so that we might better combat the Islamic savages running amok in Syria and Iraq. Yee-haw. If I could see, two years back, that Assad was infinitely preferable to the majority of those people who took arms against him, then why couldn’t our politicians? Do they really still cleave to the idiotic view that the Arab people are ‘just like us’ and are ready and waiting for a pluralistic, representational democracy, perhaps with the alternative vote in place for local council elections, and maybe Baroness Ashton and
Do the Tories think they’ve already lost the election? Their behaviour is certainly beginning to suggest so. In this week’s issue, James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman discuss the civil war that is raging in the Conservative party. A party that should be readying itself for victory is now preparing to tear itself apart in opposition. But can Cameron do anything about this? Isabel, James and Fraser Nelson weigh up his options in this week’s podcast. It’s a different story up in Scotland. The referendum debate has ignited politics, and galvanized both sides of the political spectrum. The Yes campaign has been impressive, and to its credit, has brought back conviction
From The Spectator, 5 September 1914: THE general public is quite excusably befogged by the repeated references in the Press to the financial difficulties which are blocking the way to a general resumption of international trade. The sea has been opened by the power of our Navy, but commerce still hesitates to resume its normal course. At the same time, our Stock Exchange remains rigidly closed, and the mora- torium has been extended for another month. These two facts alone suffice to prove that there must be some very grave interruption to the ordinary machinery of finance and commerce. Yet it is known that the Government have taken the unprecedented
Most of our independent schools in Great Britain have a religious origin and the campuses of many are dominated by school chapels. The earliest surviving foundations, including Eton and Winchester, contain vestiges of their religious inspiration in their statutes and constitutions. Some of the older grammar schools began life as training places for developing Protestantism, while the older Catholic schools were staffed by the religious orders notably Jesuits and Benedictines. Many of today’s schools have, however, lost their overtly religious character and followed Oxford and Cambridge into a world where academic success and ‘excellence’ are the dominant ideals. Religious elements remain in music and drama, but a strong ethical foundation
For a centre-right political party, the Conservatives are oddly obsessed with where people went to school. Michael Gove and Lady Warsi both lamented the number of Old Etonians in influential positions earlier this year. It may not have been coincidence that, within five months, both had moved posts: there remains a potent undercurrent of class tension in today’s Conservative party. The charge sheet is simple. David Cameron has stacked the corridors of power with those who share his black-and-turquoise old school tie. How can it be that British politics has regressed into the chumocracy days of Harold Macmillan? Yet the prominence of Old Etonians today is not a throwback to
The two great regrets of middle age are: ‘I never learnt a language’ and ‘I never learnt an instrument’. One of my regrets is that, because I was a happy-go-lucky sort of chap at school, my music teachers kept giving me heavier and heavier cases to carry. They started me on the trumpet. That was fine; I could hide away in the brass section and camouflage my errors among the better players. But then they moved me to the euphonium. ‘We need one of those, Newton. Get practising.’ I could just about cope with the euphonium. But then came the final call. Your school needs you. The orchestra expects. ‘We
When the late, great Ronald Searle and Geoffrey Willans conspired to create St Trinian’s and Nigel Molesworth, the archetypal English prep school boy, they wanted to evoke an air of -austere, post-war gloom. Molesworth’s school, St Custard’s, was, in his own words, ‘built by a madman in 1836’. For both St Custard’s and St Trinian’s, Searle plumped for a grim, early Gothic Revival style, all inky, glowering crockets and pinnacles. His choice of Gothic was inspired by his wartime service when he was stationed in Kirkcudbright in 1940. There he met two schoolgirls, evacuated from a school called St Trinnean’s, Edinburgh, an OTT exercise in high Scottish Gothic. ‘I prefer
Earlier this year I attended my first Independent Schools Bursars Association conference. Perhaps it was because it was in Harrogate, Herriot Country — but I couldn’t help noticing a severe case of ‘All Creatures Great and Small’. Bursars certainly come in a bewildering variety of breeds — some are preened, some are plumped and some are rather more unkempt; some are starting to creak a little around the edges and some are spring chickens, while sizes vary from Chihuahua to Saint Bernard (complete with flask of brandy). I even spotted one fellow who was the spitting image of Mrs Pumphrey’s pampered Pekinese, Tricki-Woo. Yet, despite the enormous diversity, we most
The problem with going green, I’m told, is that it often means spending a great deal of money on lots of equipment that could at any moment be rendered obsolete. When it comes to renewable energy, scepticism abounds. But the outcome of this cynicism is that our efforts to be greener have been incremental at best, and symbolic at worst. Just before I left school seven years ago we were told that all bedrooms were to be fitted with low-energy light bulbs. The school would reduce its carbon footprint a trifle, while also saving a bit of money (or vice versa). I remember thinking at the time that this was
When I think back to history lessons at school, the predominant focus was always on war. From the Battle of Hastings to the Battle of Agincourt, the Crusades to Nazi Germany, the curriculum seemed jammed full of stories about aggressive military affairs. Fascinating, but it was a relief to reach sixth form and discover another way to study the past — through a cultural lens, via the history of art. History of art is often viewed derisively in the UK. It’s almost ignored by the state system, yet is offered by many independent schools. Because of this, it’s seen as a ‘posh’ choice, in much the same way classics is. A–level
Frankly, I wasn’t a great success at school — although I like to think it was more a case of peaking at prep school, where I was captain of football, a prefect and even managed to pass Common Entrance, thank you very much. And then it all went downhill. No excuses (plenty actually), but one reason for failing to dazzle at Eton was because my classical tutor cast such a long, dark shadow over me that by the age of 16 all my energies went into disliking him as much as he clearly disliked me. His name was Fred How and he was a bachelor so set in his creaking
South Korea’s education system puts us to shame. Last year the BBC tested a group of 15- and 16-year-olds with some questions from a GCSE maths paper; they all finished in half the time allowed, four scored 100 per cent and the other two dropped one mark. It’s the kind of performance most British teachers and parents can only dream of, so at first it’s surprising that a London girls’ school has opened up a branch in South Korea. The North London Collegiate (NLCS) is one of Britain’s top schools, but it still looked like they were going to have a lot of competition on their hands when they chose
My first memory of a computer is of a hulking Acorn PC that dominated a corner of my primary school classroom. I remember crafting a story about ghosts on the beige keyboard before saving it to a floppy disk, which was filed away by the teacher for safekeeping. That was in 1995, and washing machines now easily outpower that Acorn. Yet it’s not only the gadgets in our schools and colleges that have advanced as tablets, interactive whiteboards and internal mail systems make relics of blackboards and personal planners. From September, Information and Communications Technology classes (ICT) will be replaced with Computing as part of an initiative to teach children
Want your sprog to be toughened up on the playing fields of Eton but can’t afford the fees? From September there is an intriguing alternative. You can send him instead to Holyport College, a free school which is opening in the shell of an old special school six miles away. Though the chairman of governors, Simon Dudley, insists his new school is not ‘Eton Lite’, the website offers more than a hint that here is an opportunity to obtain an Eton-standard education for a third of the price, if your child boards, or nothing at all if he doesn’t. ‘Eton College is our sole educational sponsor,’ reads the blurb, ‘and
• In practice most of the changes are designed to make exams tougher. From a student’s perspective, the most challenging reform is the abolition of modular examining. All exams will be done at the end of the course, and retaking bits of the exam to improve overall grades just won’t be possible. • AS exams will continue but will not count towards A-level marks. Some schools will continue to use the exam as a useful target for students (in the ‘old days’ when A-level was ‘linear’ — that is, with exams at the end, rather than ‘modular’ with tests at regular intervals — students often took it pretty easy in
GCSEs have already begun to change, and the A-level revolution comes next year. Sophia Martelli considers who benefits from the new rules – and who doesn’t A year from now, the new A-level curriculum will hit sixth-form classrooms; changes to GSCE have already been partly implemented. The exam reforms initiated by Michael Gove are hailed either as ‘much-needed’ or ‘carnage’ depending on who you talk to. Although controversial, most teaching professionals agree that a good sort out of exams is overdue, including Paul Redhead, a former head teacher who now works with the Council for Independent Education. Public exams have been ‘systematically devalued since the 1980s’, according to Dominic Cummings, Gove’s
Our latest Wine Vaults offer comes from the ever-dependable Yapp Bros, absolute masters at unearthing small, top-quality independent producers whose output is too small or too niche for the supermarkets. And this week, bearing in mind that we’re all now back from our summer hols, Yapp have come up with four tried and tested French classics that will taste every bit as good here as they did over there. For, as Jason Yapp points out, it’s a sad fact that wines quaffed on holiday in France invariably lack that certain je ne sais quoi once back home in rainy Basingstoke. Very generously, Jason has lopped a quid off every bottle,
Nato is taken more seriously in Russia than in the West. Here, Nato is largely seen as yet another international bureaucracy, as useless as the rest of them. But to a former KGB officer like Vladimir Putin, the Cold War has never really ended, and Nato is an exceptionally dangerous and perfidious enemy. You may not criticise corruption in Russia, he says, as that would play into Nato’s hands. Putin had no choice but to invade Ukraine — in the Ukrainians’ own interests, to protect them against a Natotakeover. Putin’s case against Nato is that it has deceived Mikhail Gorbachev. Gorbachev says he agreed to withdraw from Soviet central Europe
[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_4_Sept_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Isabel Hardman, Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth discuss the Tory civil war” startat=60] Listen [/audioplayer]Justine Greening wants to talk about social mobility. If it is not immediately obvious why the Secretary of State for International Development wants to talk about this issue, it becomes clear. Growing up the daughter of a steel worker gave her an insight into what it’s like to struggle, she tells me, when we meet in a conference room overlooking Parliament Square. She says she feels that the Tories are not pushing as hard on social mobility as they ought to be. Ms Greening thinks the issue needs a champion. She never says so
