Society

Thursday

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

The Fable would do better as an American Psycho theme bar

The Fable is three floors high and two days old, a monster newly hatched on the Holborn Viaduct; deep below is the valley of the River Fleet, which is genuinely fabulous, but absent from sight. The Fable has the following interesting schtick — fairytales. The question, of course, is whose? Here, cries the PR nonsense, lie the breadstick fairies, who I thought were all dead and lying at the bottom of the Thames, poisoned or just killed by ennui. ‘Inspired by the wit and wisdom of Aesop, the fantasy world of fairytales and our spellbinding adventures around the globe, the Fable is a dynamic all-day bar and restaurant,’ it babbles. Really?

Dot Wordsworth

When Scotland goes, will England return?

Who, my husband asked, expects every man will do his duty? He was responding to the interesting and important question that Charles Moore raised last week about the name of the country if Scotland leaves. My husband, naturally, is all for calling it England. Even the Oxford English Dictionary defines England as ‘The inhabitants of England (sometimes also Britain) regarded collectively.’ The Welsh would certainly be aggrieved, and the Northern Irish up in arms. But we can’t include everyone in the national name. Even now, some of the Cornish are cutting up rough. As someone wrote in the Church Times not so long ago: ‘Our villages — Ingleby, Irby, Saxton,

Peter Jones

Hadrian on the Somerset levels

Since the Somerset Levels are a flood plain, nature will flood it. Romans had no problems with that. Much of Rome was low-lying and pretty marshy. The main drain — the cloaca maxima, only incidentally a sewer as well — was constructed early in Rome’s history to make the forum inhabitable. The 250-mile-long Tiber flooded every four or five years, with a big one every 25 years or so, not helped if water backed up from the sea. Flood plains like the Campus Martius were often deep in water. Julius Caesar would have diverted the Tiber away from Rome, behind the Vatican. After a nasty inundation of the city in ad 15,

Raymond Keene

Triumvirate

Three important tournaments concluded this month, for two of which (Gibraltar and Bunratty) I attended the awards ceremonies. I have already given the results of Zurich. The most impressive game, the concluding phase of which provided last week’s puzzle, was Magnus Carlsen’s victory against Fabiano Caruana. We join the game just before Carlsen sacrifices rook for bishop to cause a fatal breach in the black defences.   Carlsen-Caruana: Zurich Chess Challenge 2014   22 Rxf7 Bxf7 23 Rxf7 Rd7 24 Rxd7 Kxd7 25 exd5 g6 26 Qg4+ Kc7 27 Qe6 Kb7 28 Qe7+ Qc7 29 Qe4 Qd7 30 d6+ Ka6 31 Bf4 Rc8 32 Kh2 Rc4 33 Bg3 Rc8 34 Qd3+

Raymond Keene

no. 302

White to play. This position is from Keogh-Chevannes, Bunratty 2014. How did White’s massive central build-up transform into a winning breakthrough? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 25 February or via email to victoria@spectator.co.uk or by fax on 020 7681 3773. The winner will be the first correct answer out of a hat, and each week I shall be offering a prize of £20. Please include a postal address and allow six weeks for prize delivery.   Last week’s solution 1 Qc8+ Last week’s winner Malcolm Burn, Tuffley, Gloucester

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: How do you escape from a stranger’s childhood trauma story?

Q. Recently a cousin and I gave a small drinks party in the USA. She had invited a very elegant older Hispanic woman. At the end of the party, my cousin was in a tête-à-tête with this woman on the sofa and I was left with two other (American) women at the table, one of whom was telling amusing anecdotes. I deliberately didn’t interrupt my cousin as I thought she wanted to be alone with her new friend. However later my cousin said that the woman, without any prompting, had started a long story of how she’d been abused by her stepfather as a child. My cousin was longing to

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 20 February 2014

Home It would be ‘extremely difficult, if not impossible’ for an independent Scotland to join the European Union, José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, said on British television. Alex Salmond, the leader of the Scottish National Party, said that if an independent Scotland was not allowed to use the pound, it would cost the rest of the United Kingdom £500 million in transaction costs per year, and Scotland would refuse its share of the national debt. Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England, warned that uncertainty produced by a referendum on EU membership would mean that businesses held off from making investment. The Unite union called off a

Janet de Botton

Bridge | 20 February 2014

Bridge players are a generous bunch — both with their expertise and their time. There are many charity events to which they contribute willingly, but the one that has become the most successful is Terry Hewett’s Night of the Stars. This year it is being held on 27 February at the Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability and the indomitable Terry has auctioned 53 ‘stars’ to play with their sponsors, the proceeds going to four different charities. Last year Italian superstar Fulvio Fantoni came over — at his own expense— and was snapped up by my friend Jonathan Harris. How do great players always seem to put the defence to a guess

Columba

2150: Content

Each of thirteen clues contains a superfluous word. Initial letters of these words spell the first four words of a quotation (in ODQ), the rest of which is supplied by two unclued lights (one of which consists of two words); another unclued light is the author’s surname. Clues in italics consist of cryptic indications of partial answers; in each case, the indicated part is to do as stated by the start of the quotation to create the full answer to be entered in the grid. Definitions of resulting entries are supplied by the remaining unclued lights.   Across   1 Interesting stone in river (5) 9 Can treatment yet help

Columba

Solution to 2147: Amazing Performance

Taking one unchecked letter from each across solution gives EXTRAORDINARY RENDITION, whose victims, according to Chambers 2011, include TERRORIST SUSPECTs. The initial letters of unclued entries were S,T,R,R,T,I,E,R,O.   First prize Michael Debenham, Shrewsbury Runners-up Mrs Jane Smith, King’s Lynn; Jamie Staveley, London SW15

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

What shall we do about Neknominate?

I wonder if we should start our own Spectator Blog NekNominations? Open to bloggers and readers. I nominate Daniel Maris to drink a small glass of Pinot Noir while watching the early evening news. And Alex Massie to drink a flagon of Teachers while standing on the up line somewhere between Edinburgh and Alnmouth. Maybe on that big bridge over the Tweed. No need to post any photos or film. I’ve written about this latest internet craze for the mag this week: it is the usual carefully and copiously researched investigation, devoid of bigotry and offensiveness. At least five people have died so far taking part in Neknominations and there

Willard Foxton

How legal aid reforms are clogging up the courts

Litigants in person – individuals representing themselves, rather than relying on a lawyer – have always been a feature in courts, and are the source of the aphorism ‘a lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client’. While the profusion of courts means there are no easily available statistics as to their numbers, as late as 2011, about one fifth of cases featured litigants in person. Since the government slashed legal aid in April of last year, the number of them has exploded. While the funding for these cases has vanished, the right to go to court has not. The most recent set of figures is for autumn 2013 –

Steerpike Steerpike

Business as usual at the Red Lion

Lamentations spread across Westminster when rumour had it that the Red Lion on Whitehall was to be reborn as trendy metropolitan wine bar. The old boozer was the scene of many a knifing (of the political variety) and much happy plotting, being a regular haunt for the bag carrying and spinning classes. Well, Mr S has some good news. After closing for refurbishment, the Red Lion has reopened and looks exactly the same. Nothing seems to have changed at all. Trebles all round. Picture via Political Pictures.

Igor Toronyi-Lalic

Welcome to Culture House Daily

From today, The Spectator’s gift for online enlightenment and trouble-making will now extend into the world of culture. Our aim is take the insurgent spirit of Toby Young’s Modern Review, and apply it to the digital world — that is, to provide low culture for highbrows, and high culture for lowbrows  Culture House Daily will be a deference-free, one-stop shop for the latest news and sharpest views on the arts. Unveiling a steady stream of fresh content each day, Culture House Daily will present a mixture of news, overnight reviews and opinion, alongside plenty of lovely images. It will be the perfect space to help you navigate the shifting sands of

Owen Matthews

Vladimir Putin’s new plan for world domination

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/Untitled_2_AAC_audio.mp3″ title=”Anne Applebaum and Matthew Parris discuss how far we should let Putin go”] Listen [/audioplayer]It’s been a generation or so since Russians were in the business of shaping the destiny of the world, and most of us have forgotten how good they used to be at it. For much of the last century Moscow fuelled — and often won — the West’s ideological and culture wars. In the 1930s, brilliant operatives like Willi Muenzenberg convinced ‘useful idiots’ to join anti-fascist organisations that were in reality fronts for the Soviet-backed Communist International. Even in the twilight years of the Soviet Union the KGB was highly successful at orchestrating nuclear

Melissa Kite

The Environment Agency cares more about wildlife than people

What do voles, beetles, mussels, trout and the golden plover have in common? Believe it or not, they have all been used as excuses by the Environment Agency not to improve flood defences. Travelling around the worst of the flooded areas last week, I met family after family who said their local rivers had been left to clog with debris — and always because of some critter or other. Somerset farmer David Gillard, for example, repeatedly begged the Environment Agency to dredge the River Parrett, which runs near his sheep farm just outside Burrowbridge. And last summer they did come and give it a go. But while they were at

Lucy Vickery

Lonely hearts

In Competition 2835 you were invited to submit a profile for an online dating website for a well-known politician, living or dead. Unlucky loser John Samson’s Oliver Cromwell might, I suppose, appeal to those who like the masterful type: ‘That ye should seek matrimonial harmony by reading such vainglorious publications doth render thee unworthy of espousing this Puritan. Speak thus of me to thy more God-fearing sisters…’ Commiserations, too, to Carolyn Thomas-Coxhead and Hugh King. The winners take £25 each. W.J. Webster pockets the bonus fiver. Hi, my name is John. I’m from Yorkshire. We all know Yorkshiremen can be bluff and let me tell you straight out I’m 100

Andrew M Brown

Investment trusts – the way the City saves

After years in the doldrums, investment trusts — those venerable pooled funds with names like Foreign and Colonial and City of London — are in danger of becoming fashionable. There are good reasons why they should be better known. They offer the possibility of high returns at low cost, as well as access to exotic asset classes that would otherwise be out of reach. They can be a way of spreading risk, if you do not have the time or the inclination to pick individual stocks for yourself. And they are generally cheaper than other vehicles for collective investment, such as unit trusts; the idea is that as little of

Wednesday

Ruth Porter

The Church should be employing its moral outrage to greater effect

Part of the role of the Church is to give the poorest in society a voice. It should be front and centre of the public debate about welfare reform, but the most recent intervention by Archbishop Nichols seems directed at the wrong target. The current disincentive for work in the welfare system is indefensible. It is telling that no voice has been heard in the debate on any side suggesting that it is a good idea to have a situation where people can earn more than the average wage on benefits or that moving to Universal Credit (a simpler system with a reduced disincentive to work) isn’t, at least in