Society

Thursday

12 Jun 2014

Something wild – well, wild for Claridge’s – in Gordon Ramsay’s old cave

Fera is in Gordon Ramsay’s old cave at Claridge’s. His red and yellow room, like a ripped-off arm, has been annihilated; here now is ‘restful’ green, and food by Simon Rogan. His cooking apparently ‘never stands still’. (I am quoting a website.) Fera means ‘wild’. In Latin. I am not sure a restaurant can be wild, but it can be needy. I request a table online. Fera says no. I telephone. Fera says yes. I give my credit card details because love is always conditional. I am then invited to confirm, reconfirm, and re-reconfirm, in the manner of a restaurant impersonating a woman requiring reassurance from a green lover. It

Janet de Botton

Bridge | 12 June 2014

The final match in the second division of Young Chelsea’s London Super League was as exciting as it gets. Two teams (out of ten) were going to be promoted, and four teams were within a gnat’s whisker of each other. We were narrowly leading and were playing McGuire, lying second. We needed to secure a 16–4 victory to be sure of going up to Div One. When you are under pressure, it’s time to wheel out The Great Malinowski, part illusionist, part con man and part downright genius. Here he is on the very first board of the match, unfazed by the obvious bidding screw-up: First the bidding: Artur thought

Dot Wordsworth

Why would a Danish queen say ‘basta’?

My husband heard me in the kitchen exclaim: ‘What would I do without you?’ He curiously imagined I was referring to him. But it was of you, dear readers, that I spoke, and in particular Elizabeth Maynard from Oxford, who wrote explaining the use of the Italian word basta by Danes. Well, how was I to know? I’d supposed that Queen Alexandra, who used the word in 1901 (Mind your language, 24 May), had picked it up from the Italian opera. Not at all, Mrs Maynard tells me, since her own Danish mother’s elder sister — born in 1893 — used it too. She would rap the table, to end

Toby Young

Yes, I compared Theresa May to an Israeli tank commander. Why is everyone so upset?

I expect all of us have said something we regret at one time or another, but not everyone does so in front of 1.5 million people. That was my misfortune when I was caught off guard by an interviewer for ITN on my way out of a television studio in Westminster on Sunday. I’d just done a review of the morning’s papers on Murnaghan and was feeling rather chipper on account of the exchange I’d just had with Diane Abbott about Labour’s electoral chances. Live on air, I offered to bet her £100 that Ed Miliband wouldn’t win the election and, to my delight, she refused to take it. ‘I

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: What’s the best way to turn down charity requests?

Q. I am the co-owner of a chocolate business which regularly receives requests for donations of goody bags and raffle prizes. I take a dim view when these come addressed to ‘Dear Sir or Madam’. It seems that the larger the charity the less likely that anyone can be bothered. How can I, without being pompous, politely explain to people that if they only write a round robin-type impersonal letter, we are unlikely to support their cause? — N.C., London SW1 A. You have enough on your plate already, so take a passive approach and let the results of these slapdash applications speak for themselves. Q. I am wheelchair-bound, and

Robert Harris

Robert Harris’s diary: My accidental war with Tony Blair

To Paris, for the launch of the French edition of my novel about the Dreyfus affair. As we land, I isolate three anxieties out of my general sense of unease. First is the natural nervousness of any Englishman contemplating telling the French anything about their own country. Second is the French law which allows the descendants of actual historical figures — of whom there are dozens in my novel — to sue for defamation: the heirs of the Marquis de Sade even objected to an unflattering portrayal of the inventor of sadism. Third, I am required to make a speech in French, and while my grasp of that language is not as

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 12 June 2014

Home After an Ofsted inspection of 21 schools in Birmingham (none of them faith schools), against the background of allegations of attempts of a Muslim takeover in a so-called Operation Trojan Horse, David Cameron, the Prime Minister, joined Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, in seizing upon an observation by Sir Michael Wilshaw, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector, that ‘all maintained schools and academies, including faith and non-faith schools, must promote the values of wider British society’. Five of the schools were put under ‘special measures’. In his advice note, Sir Michael said that ‘some head teachers reported that there has been an organised campaign to target certain schools in Birmingham in

The Spectator

The new Iraq war

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_12_June_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Former solider Tom Tugendhat and Fraser Nelson discuss ISIS in Iraq” startat=1758] Listen [/audioplayer]Seven weeks ago, Barack Obama proclaimed that ‘it’s time to turn the page on more than a decade of war’. The people of Iraq do not have this option. They’ve seen, in Basra, Iran-backed militias take on and defeat the British military. They’ve seen highly effective jihadis, disowned by al-Qa’eda for their brutality, take control of a major city, Fallujah, just 40 miles from Baghdad. This week they have seen their second city, Mosul, fall to that same band of psychopaths. If Syria is anything to go by, religious cleansing, beheadings and even crucifixions will

Dumpynose

2166: Somewhere X

Somewhere next to 34 and 12, 33 is 25, the highest mountain is 1D (two words), and the principal 3 and 39 are alongside each other in 19. Solvers must shade the clued light that is an anagram of the place’s name. Elsewhere, ignore two accents. Across 1 Jittery Jonah hides Sonia and Sam’s stuff (11) 7 Writer of humourless English (3) 11 Plastic covering most of spout in extractor (6) 13 State name applied to murdered sheep-master (retired) (7) 15 Poet takes drug — Charlie? (5) 16 Flower beginning to grow in hollow (5) 17 Suit clothing good successful examinee (6) 18 Unit in grand hotel starts

The Spectator

Books and arts – 12 June 2014

Dumpynose

to 2163: Muscle

The LITERAL QUINTET (13/22) was TERSE (37). 7A suggests ‘reest’, 40 steer, 5 stere, 6 ester, 19 trees and 26 reset. TERSE was to be shaded. The title suggests ‘teres’. First prize Gordon Fowler, Whitefield, Manchester Runners-up Richard Doye, Tuddenham, Suffolk; P.J.W. Gregson, Amersham, Bucks

Freddy Gray

As Mosul burned, William Hague discussed rape with a beautiful actress

How will history remember this week? Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, was seized by ISIS, an army of fanatics who like crucifying people, among other activities, and who reportedly have British Muslims among their ranks. This was more evidence that Iraq — far from flowering into a beautiful democracy after the allied invasion of 2003 — has descended into bedlam. Again. Well done us. And what was the British Foreign Secretary doing as the black flags went up across Mosul? He was in London, at the Excel centre, hosting a three-day conference with Angelina Jolie and a gang of other luvvies about sexual violence. Hague and Jolie agreed that rape

Sebastian Payne

Podcast: the betrayal of British Muslims and the new Iraq war

Do we need to take more action to tackle the Islamist threat in British schools? On this week’s View from 22 podcast, The Spectator’s Douglas Murray and Matthew Parris debate this week’s cover feature on whether the Birmingham ‘Trojan Horse plot’ is the results of years of weak policy and inaction. Should we wait until there is more concrete proof before taking drastic actions? Is the promotion of British values the right solution, and how can the government go about defining and teaching these values? James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman also discuss how the West Lothian Question will be addressed at the next election. Where do all of the parties

Fraser Nelson

We’re hiring at The Spectator: arts editor and blogs editor wanted

Those of you who read The Spectator mainly for its peerless arts coverage have Liz Anderson to thank for keeping up a formula of quality, variety, heft and zest. We’re all very sad that she is retiring this summer, after many successful years at the top of her game. She’ll be a tough act to follow: we’d need someone as brilliant and well-informed about the arts as she is; with the skill and energy to promote and project our wonderful arts coverage online and in our digital editions. The candidate must show an ability to commission brilliant writers for striking, original lead stories, as well as proof-reading and sub-editing, etc. Experience

Innes Bowen

Who runs our mosques?

The introduction of a madrassa curriculum at a secular state school in Birmingham and talk of Christian pupils at risk of ‘cultural isolation’ seem to have come as a revelation to non-Muslim Britain. They should not have. Islam in Britain is dominated by a very specific, and rather illiberal, version of the faith — one that, if anything, seems to be becoming more conservative over time. As the Muslim population became more established, one might have assumed that a westernised form of Islam would have come to dominate Britain’s mosques. According to a database of British Islam, however, only two out of 1,700 mosques in Britain follow modernist interpretations of

William Cook

Salzburg – more than just a ridiculously pretty place

Salzburg is so ridiculously pretty, it’s sometimes hard to take it seriously. Standing on the ramparts of its knights-in-armour castle, surrounded by snowcapped mountains, admiring the delicate cluster of domes and spires and turrets below, you can’t help thinking, ‘Is this for real?’ Well, yes and no. Salzburg is absurdly beautiful — the baroque architecture, the Alpine scenery — but what’s most intriguing is its sense of theatre, the way it’s adapted to fit the fantasies of millions of foreign visitors like me. Salzburg’s biggest draw is Mozart — a wunderkind who personifies the city’s clever blend of fact and fiction. Yes, he grew up here and left his footprints all over town

Roger Alton

The real England team is playing for Stuart Lancaster

A revealing handwritten letter emerged at the weekend from the England scrum half Danny Care, who wasn’t playing in the first Test against New Zealand, to his Harlequins and England colleague Joe Marler, who very much was. And how! ‘Joe, Just wanted to wish you all the best when you step on the battlefield tonight,’ wrote Care. ‘Go hard my friend, I wish I could be out there in the trenches alongside you.’ Say what you like about the military metaphor — and I think it’s bang-on for a match against the All Blacks — that note says as much about Stuart Lancaster’s England as a whole forest of commentary.

Jonathan Ray

June Wine Club I

A lovely, summery offer this, with some great wines chosen especially for outdoor drinking; for barbecues, picnics, lazy afternoons and long evenings idling in the garden and for stashing in the Glyndebourne or Garsington hamper. And just to be fair, the wines — which took an age to whittle down — will also suit perfectly those armchair sportsmen likely to be unavoidably detained indoors by the World Cup, Wimbledon or the Test Matches. Best of all, every bottle, bar the fizz, comes in under a tenner. And the fizz — Champagne Delamotte Brut NV (1) — really is rather fabulous. Delamotte is one of the oldest of all champagne producers

Hugo Rifkind

Don’t blame the Guardian if criminals are getting better at hiding online. Blame iTunes and Netflix

I wouldn’t wish to deny that all drug dealers and crime lords read the Guardian. Indeed, check the circulation figures, and you’d be forgiven for thinking that only drug dealers and crime lords read the Guardian. So, when I read last week about the trouble that GCHQ is now having tracking online criminality, and the way that GCHQ considers recent revelations about state surveillance via the Guardian to be the cause, I did not for a moment think that GCHQ was entirely wrong. I genuinely wonder, though, if the rogue National Security Agency IT boffin Edward Snowden, whom we hear so much about, has damaged national security as much as

Matthew Parris

The Birmingham ‘Trojan Horse plot’ is — like WMD — a neocon fantasy

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_12_June_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Matthew Parris vs Douglas Murray on the Birmingham Trojan Horse plot” startat=55] Listen [/audioplayer]I can remember where I was when Colin Powell presented to the United Nations his evidence for the existence of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction. I was taking a friend to an emergency medical consultation at Victoria station in London and while she saw the doctor I settled down in the waiting room to watch the presentation on TV. I found it compelling. Trusting the then US Secretary of State and believing him to be a good man — as Michael Gove is a good man — I felt confident Mr Powell himself believed what he was