Society

Thursday

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

How to hack your summer holiday

Since it’s June, here is your cut-out-and-keep guide to hacking your summer holiday. One possibility. Don’t bother. Unless you have school-age children, why book your main overseas holiday in what is the nicest part of the year at home? As my late father often reminded me: ‘The three worst things about living in Britain are January, February and March.’ If you head south in these three months, almost anywhere will be an improvement. When flying in July, you risk sitting on the tarmac at Gatwick on a perfect summer’s day destined for a place where your shoes will catch fire. And you miss out on the long, light evenings, too.

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: how can I safeguard my feminist principles at dinner?

Q. My husband and I will shortly be having some South American friends to stay. They come most years and it’s always enjoyable to see them. Our problem is that they never divulge when they will be leaving – possibly because back home it doesn’t matter to them what time guests come and go; they lead a very different life to us, with maids and kitchen staff. For me, if they are here for an extra day it means a dash to Waitrose etc. My husband is always keen I don’t ask them outright in case it looks unwelcoming. How should I handle this? – C.N., Uppingham, Rutland A. Subcontract

Cheesecracker

2659: Splitting the atom

The twelve unclued lights comprise six symmetrically placed ‘split atoms’. Across 5    Fruit devastation, not the first linked to difficulties (8) 10    Disregard Italian bloke, shunning introduction (6) 11    Adherent of government line disheartened only celebs (8) 12    Tea offered by curt Cromwellian? (4) 14    White metal club 37 holds (6) 18    Cunning son, extremely lazy (3) 20    Earlier, chilled poodle played around sports field? (9) 21    Imagined force in heroic exploit (7) 24    Area in county gripped by Sunak’s vision (8)  28    Prince overlooked checks, lacking means to absorb shock (8) 31    Domineer over male, pressure to go in front? (7) 35    One shortens naughty poem about sex first

Bruce Anderson

A lunch good enough to lift Tory spirits 

Things could have been worse. My host was determined to lunch al fresco, and after all it was late June. Yet this is England and as everyone knows, even D-Day had to be postponed for 24 hours. In the event, we were fine. The elements were kindly. The temperature did not fall below 60, the rain held off, we more or less managed to forget about politics and it would have been hard to improve on the setting. Saint Jacques, a restaurant which I have often praised, always deservedly, has a courtyard and is next to Berry Bros: so this is a sophisticatedly bacchanalian quartier. The rain held off, we

The Spectator

2656: A la carte – solution

The unclued lights formed a map of France, with nine cities in roughly appropriate places. First prize Clive Rose, Henley on Thames, Oxon Runners-up Tim Locke, Ainsdale, Southport; Belinda Bridgen, London NW8

Dot Wordsworth

Who came up with the analogy of carrying a Ming vase?

‘Evelyn Waugh,’ said my husband when I asked who came up with the analogy of carrying a Ming vase. He was, in a way, right, but wrong too. Every political commentator, it seems, has been talking of Sir Keir Starmer’s Ming vase strategy in approaching the election. In April 2021 Decca Aitkenhead was reminded of Roy Jenkins’s observation that before the 1997 election: ‘Tony Blair took such care not to make any mistakes, he resembled “a man carrying a priceless Ming vase across a highly polished floor”.’ Indeed, Ben Macintyre had cited Jenkins on 4 July 1996 – 28 years exactly before Keir Day. Every month we’ve heard the same

Philip Hensher

The art of talking to strangers

About halfway round the park, by the last spindly remnants of the Festival of Britain, I bumped into my Scandinavian acquaintance. ‘Beautiful day,’ I said. ‘I thought you’d be in Sweden by now.’ ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not quite. My daughter’s going for midsummer – it’s her first time on her own. We’re going a little later but I thought she’d like a treat for having finished her GCSEs.’ ‘How gorgeous!’ I said. Around our feet our dogs greeted each other in a stately way – two schnauzers, hers a beautifully groomed gentleman called Prince with a gravity-defying moustache like a Wilhelmine Feldmarschall; mine a plump and rumpled small person, like

Melissa Kite

Have I finally found the most incongruous leftie?

As the disappointingly unmacho South African toddled off after giving us a lecture about hedgehogs, I declared the contest over. ‘You win,’ I told the builder boyfriend. We have been having a competition all week to see who can find the most incongruous leftie. The liberals flock to West Cork from all over the world to get away from whatever it is they can’t cope with, and then stick out like sore thumbs in the farming landscape, totally at odds with the earthiness of the Irish. The builder boyfriend had been working in the yard when this particular fellow walked by our gate dressed in full safari outfit, as though

Susanna Gross

Bridge | 22 June 2024

‘It’s a sad day when I don’t get to re-double anyone,’ the England international Mike Bell said to me the other day, after I’d complimented him on how often – and effectively – he pulls out the red card. Most players are far more trepidatious when it comes to making penalty doubles and redoubles. Mike is fearless – he ups the stakes whenever he feels it’s odds-on to do so. It helps, of course, to have excellent judgment. This hand comes from last month’s World Bridge Tour teams in Bodo, Sweden. Mike was South. His Partner was Michael Byrne. His opponents were the top German pair Roy Welland and Sabine

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week: Supermajorities, falling inflation and rammed cows

Home The electorate mulled over the words of Grant Shapps, the Defence Secretary: ‘You don’t want to have somebody receive a supermajority.’ A question that lodged in the election campaign was put by Beth Rigby of Sky News to Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, asking whether he had meant it when he said his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, would make a great prime minister; he replied: ‘I was certain we would lose the 2019 election.’ A few days later, Sir Keir told a phone-in questioner that serving in a Corbyn administration ‘didn’t cross my mind because I didn’t think we would win’. He evaded questions on council tax, taxing pensions

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Ukraine’s greatest, yet least publicised success

Odessa Our conference here is about Black Sea security, where I am the guest of UK Friends of Ukraine. Its subject reflects one of Ukraine’s greatest, yet least publicised successes. Almost a third of the Russian fleet has been destroyed, mostly by sea drones. The rest is trapped in ports much further east. As a result, almost normal amounts of grain and other goods flow to the wider world. It says something not good about third-world politics that all 11 recipients of WFP relief in the form of Ukrainian grain, including Nigeria, Yemen, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Gaza, support Russia in international forums. Tony Abbott, the former prime

Ed Husain

Don’t outlaw ‘Islamophobia’

‘One of the things that’s coming up over and over again is Islamophobia,’ says Keir Starmer in a campaign video, talking to Sadiq Khan. ‘We need to say over and over again that Islamophobia is intolerable… and I think there’s more we can do in government. There’s certainly stuff online that needs tackling much more robustly than it is at the moment.’ The video shows the London mayor nodding in agreement. He tells Starmer: ‘Your experience as a prosecutor means you’ll be thinking about the strategy we can use.’ But it’s not the strategy they should be worrying about so much as the unintended consequences. Outlawing ‘Islamophobia’ – as Starmer,

Wednesday

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: Just Stop Oil deface Stonehenge

Now they’ve gone and done it. The juvenile antics of the eternally brain dead Just Stop Oil will be familiar to readers by now – with the group recently diversifying from road blockages to defacing objects of cultural or historical significance in their misguided attempt to protect the climate. Still, the group may have outdone itself his time. Just Stop Oil have just released a video of members of the group spraying Stonehenge with orange paint, as part of the trust-fund fight against climate change. To their immense credit, members of the public can be seen trying to protect the monoliths, which are over 4,000 years old, from this pig-headed historical

David Abulafia

Why won’t this museum let women see its Igbo mask?

The Pitt-Rivers Museum in Oxford has won a reputation for its energetic programme of ‘decolonisation’. Its director, Laura van Broekhoven, is an expert on the Amazon. Nonetheless, on the museum website she actually begins her account of her academic work with the words ‘Laura’s current research interests include repatriation and redress, with a focus on the importance of collaboration, inclusivity and reflexive inquiry.’ She is keen on titles. Not only is she grandly described on the museum website as ‘Professor Dr Laura van Broekhoven’, she is also ‘Professor of Museum Studies, Ethics and Material Culture’ at the University of Oxford. That is quite a combination. Her approach to ‘ethics’ appears to

Tuesday

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

What’s wrong with calling a female walker ‘sweetheart’?

So, another place where men have to mind their language: on mountains. In an article in Scottish Mountaineer magazine by one Dr Richard Tiplady, he advises male walkers never to call women ‘sweetheart’ or ‘darling’. They should not assume that women can’t read a map. ‘If they ask for advice about kit or their route, be polite without being condescending – but don’t offer advice if you’re not asked for it’.  If we carry on at this rate, the human race is going to die out A brief chat about hills, the weather and the man’s intended route is fine, but ‘don’t ask what route they are taking’. If a male

Monday

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

England are displaying all their usual flaws under Gareth Southgate

Afterwards, Gary’s team of expert pundits crawled into their Hey Jude comfort blankets. Isn’t he great! Maybe the greatest! Well, sure. He’s a very good player. And England did win. But nothing could disguise the fact that for 65 minutes they displayed all the flaws that affected previous performances against Iceland, Belgium, Brazil, Australia, North Macedonia… a suffocating languor, a witlessness, a confused midfield and a dodgy defence. And Southgate was unable to press the correct buttons to alter that. Okay, he made the right substitutions (as usual, a little too late). But the chief problem – in midfield – has not been sorted. Did you know Phil Foden was

Sam Leith Sam Leith

The terrible consequences of the Hay Festival grandstanding

Just three weeks ago, I wrote about Hay Festival sacking their main sponsor Baillie Gifford after pressure from the campaign group Fossil Free Books, which claimed the investment fund was profiting from the destruction of the planet and ‘genocide’ in Gaza. Whatever their merits of these charges (not much, as it happens), I argued, the sacking of a literary festival’s sponsor would do great harm to the festival and make no impact whatsoever on the fossil fuel industry or the lives of people in Gaza. Worse, I worried, would be if the campaigners scented blood and others followed suit. This could be a disaster for the arts in this country. In

Jawad Iqbal

It’s hard to feel confident after England’s underwhelming win over Serbia

Football hooliganism made an ugly return to the Euros just hours before England‘s opening Group C match against Serbia. There were violent clashes in the west German city of Gelsenkirchen between rival fans in shameful scenes. Riot police moved in quickly to restore order: a number of arrests were made and investigations are ongoing. The violence made for a tense atmosphere ahead of the game. On the pitch, England made a bright and confident start, moving the ball quickly and dominating possession. The breakthrough came in the 13th minute: a wonderful Bellingham header from a Saka cross. It was a false dawn and things went downhill pretty quickly after the

Sunday

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Euro 2024: Scotland are following their usual trail of tears

Poland’s manager, Michael Probierz, wore a shapeless tweed-ish suit with bulging waistcoat and, when the Dutch scored their winner, had about him the demeanour of a dispossessed country squire who has just seen Angela Rayner walking up the drive with her canvassing team. He had a right to be disappointed. The Poles have been written off by everybody, as they usually are, but perhaps deserved a point from a Dutch side which combined the familiar flair going forward with the familiar frailties in defence. Poland took the lead, conceded, but for much of the second half ran the Dutch ragged, until Wout Weghorst found space inside the Free Polish Corridor

Mark Piggott

Inside the world’s first museum of homelessness

I’m sitting in a small, cramped room with 20 other people staring at a stick. Not just any stick, mind: it’s been customised with gaffer tape and paint so it looks like a punk shillelagh. The stick has a range of purposes, says the young black woman giving the presentation: comfort, protection, and its primary purpose, support. She recounts how, disembarking from a bus one night she forgot her crutches, and plucked the stick from a garden. It’s been a source of support ever since. ‘I can’t tell you that. We just call him Man with a Stick’ I’m confused. The young woman doesn’t seem in need of a crutch,