Society

Thursday

Andrew Marr

Andrew Marr’s notebook: Rescued by Jonathan Ross

We live by simple stories. X has a stroke. X recovers; or doesn’t. But we live inside more complicated stories. Recovering from a stroke is a long haul; I still have an almost useless left arm and walk like a wildly intoxicated sailor. In my mid-fifties, my stroke has been a special excursion ticket into old age — socks and toenails a bewildering distance away, walking sticks with minds of their own — that kind of thing. But here’s the odd bit. This is an old age whose effects (if you do the physio) lessen as the months pass. I’m living backwards — what a rare privilege! I am getting

Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

Hugo Rifkind: Why did I agree to appear on University Challenge?

The worst thing about going on University Challenge, I now know, is when you interrupt a question and get the answer wrong. This is bad, not only because you lose five points, but also because it can mess up the general filming of everything, somehow, which means they make you do it again. And sometimes again. And while it’s one thing to say something quite stupid in the white panic of contest, with Jeremy Paxman glaring at you over his cue cards, it’s quite another to have to say it repeatedly, like an actor playing the imbecile you’ve just been. With Paxman repeating the same question, and you repeating the

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

Matthew Parris: Logically, bitcoin fans should love the euro. Why don’t they?

Bitcoins have been in the news, after a story about an unfortunate fellow who jettisoned his computer’s hard drive that contained (apparently) the code he needed to access his stash of this electronic currency — its value more than £4 million. I don’t even pretend to have an opinion on bitcoins. I only just, and most imperfectly, understand what this electronically traded currency is and why it appeals to people. But it has got me thinking. A bitcoin is a single currency, a global currency, a currency beyond the reach or control of national governments around the world. In theory (unless governments try to ban the bitcoin) it would be

Emma Cowing

Five years ago, I was pronounced dead in Afghanistan. This is what I’ve learned since

Just over five years ago, I was pronounced dead on the front line in Afghanistan. I had collapsed with acute heatstroke in temperatures of 52°C during a military foot patrol. I am a reporter not a soldier, but for four minutes, as a medic attempted to restart my stopped heart, I was a category A. That’s Army speak for ‘goner’. Six days later, as much to my own surprise as to that of the incredible soldiers who saved my life, I walked out of Selly Oak Hospital in Birmingham on my father’s arm and into the cool of an English late summer’s evening. It was starting to rain. Cars were

Quentin Letts

Quentin Letts: Why hymns are the true voice of England

When all seems too gloomy to endure, I take myself up to the British Camp in the Malverns, there among the windblown tufts and Iron Age ditches. With the rain lashing and my trousers flap-flapping like two Spithead flags, I lean on the gale and claim my birthright: to hum hymns of England and think of our forefathers. The Camp, by legend the fort of gallant Caractacus, is this kingdom’s greatest hill. At 1,110 feet it is not the tallest. It is not the broadest, sharpest, steepest or most remote. But from that ridged summit (a wedding cake, say some, though from boyhood I’ve thought of it as an enormous

Simon Hoggart

Christmas Mixed Case

This is our positively final offer of the year, and the famed old St James merchants, Berry Bros. & Rudd, have come up with a stunning mixed case which would see you through a deliciously bibulous Christmas. Together we have selected five table wines (there are two bottles each in the case) plus single bottles of a fine, fizzing champagne and an excellent port. The good news is that this brilliant dozen has been reduced to under £200, a saving on list prices of £66, give or take a few pence. But the less exhilarating news is that to snap up this bargain you need to act fast. BBR cannot

William Boyd

Christmas Short Story: The Road Not Travelled

Today Meredith Swann is driving in her new car under the M40 flyover checking on her GPS system to see if she’s following the flowing arrows correctly. She has switched off the woman’s voice — ‘Turn left in 200 yards’ — because it reminds her uncannily of her mother, all calm, quiet advice with a subtext of disapproval. She turns and turns again. Now she is on a road of towering glass office blocks. Is she lost? No, there it is — Sainsbury’s Homebase. She parks, steps out of her car and pulls down her T-shirt to cover the neat dome of her pregnant belly. The car magically locks itself

Pd James

P.D. James: Who killed the golden age of crime?

In 1934, in her preface to an anthology of short detective stories, Dorothy L. Sayers wrote, ‘Death in particular seems to provide the minds of the Anglo-Saxon race with a greater fund of innocent amusement than any other single subject.’ And, to judge by the worldwide popularity of this essentially innocent genre, it is not only the Anglo-Saxon race who are addicted to murder and mystery. It was in the so-called Golden Age between the two world wars that the genre flourished so imaginatively and successfully that it seemed that everyone who could put together a coherent narrative was tempted to join this fascinating and lucrative game. The Oxford academics

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Martin Vander Weyer: How many times must we save the City?

Top of my Christmas reading pile is Saving the City by Richard Roberts, a new account of the largely forgotten crisis which afflicted global markets at the outbreak of the first world war, forcing the London Stock Exchange to close on Friday 31 July 1914 and stay dark for six months. It’s a reminder of how often in modern times the City has had to be ‘saved’ — including May 1866 when Overend & Gurney collapsed, November 1890 when ‘Nemesis overtook Croesus’ in the first Baring crisis, and of course the bailouts of October 2008. It’s also a reminder of another book on my shelf, subtitled The Night the City

Christopher Howse

The Christmas Quiz answers

Says who? 1. David Cameron. 2. The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Revd Justin Welby. 3. Nick Clegg. 4. Prince Harry. 5. Eddie Mair (to Boris Johnson). 6. Nigel Farage, the leader of Ukip, after its good showing in council elections. 7. Vladimir Putin, at the G8 summit, on the Syrian opposition. 8. Lord Howell of Guildford, talking of fracking. 9. Ed Miliband, in his Labour conference speech. 10. Bonnie Tyler, in Britain’s Eurovision song entry, ‘Believe in me’. Creature comforts 1. A squirrel. 2. Nawaz Sharif. 3. A walrus. 4. The camel. 5. Rabbit. 6. Phnom Penh. 7. Ecuador and Colombia. 8. A cow. 9. Noble false widow spiders.

Lucy Vickery

Dear Santa

In Competition 2827 you were invited to submit a Christmas list, in verse, in the style of the poet of your choice.   This challenge called on you not only to pull off a convincing pastiche of a particular poet but also to come up with a plausible Christmas wish list for them.   There were neat references to Dorothy Parker’s ‘One Perfect Rose’ from Noel Petty and Martin Parker, and I liked Basil Ransome-Davies’s riff on MacNeice’s ‘Bagpipe Music’. Melanie Branton’s Shakespeare almost made the cut: ‘Hoping I get a keg of sack or pouch of snuff,/ A statement earring, in-your-face and blinging,/ Desiring Marlowe’s codpiece, Jonson’s ruff,/ But

Bruce Anderson

Bruce Anderson: Bordeaux’s negociants deserve to suffer – and they will

Our sweet enemy, France, is not always that sweet. It is tempting to respond to France’s current degringolade with cynicism and indeed schadenfreude. For a start, it should keep down prices: even claret prices. There are reports that £80 million worth of serious claret is on the high seas, returning from China. Ordered, it was never paid for. The négociants of Bordeaux were already coping with two disappointing vintages — 2011 and 2012 — plus one unspeakable one. 2013 is by all accounts the worst year since at least 1973. Various houses will not declare a vintage. Only the boldest or most foolhardy will be buying en primeur. That said, a

Roger Alton Roger Alton

Roger Alton: 2013 was even better for sport than 2012

British sport used to be dead. You only have to look down the list of past winners of the Sports Personality of the Year award to see that. In 1994 Damon Hill won it for not quite winning the Formula 1 drivers’ champion-ship; three years later Greg Rusedski won it for not quite winning the US Open. David Steele won it for making four fifties in an Ashes series. Ryan Giggs once won it just for still being around. But now things have changed. Last night three spirits came visiting. The Ghost of Sports Past poured a generous tumbler of Laphroaig, put on a DVD of 2012 and said, ‘We’ll

Christopher Howse

The Spectator’s Christmas Quiz

Says who? In 2013, who said: 1. ‘To me it’s not a marriage, it is, if you like, a Ronseal deal.’ 2. ‘Marriage is abolished, redefined and recreated, being different and unequal for different categories.’ 3. ‘It is the Conservatives who have decided to completely reinvent the wheel and tie the country up in knots.’ 4. ‘If there’s people trying to do bad stuff to our guys, then we’ll take them out of the game.’ 5. ‘You’re a nasty piece of work, aren’t you?’ 6. ‘Send in the clowns.’ 7. ‘People who not only kill their enemies, but open up their bodies, eat their entrails in public before the cameras.

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

Rory Sutherland: If there’s no answer, the question’s probably wrong

Until the late 1960s, the advertising agency J. Walter Thompson ran something called a ‘copy test’. It was a series of questions designed to uncover people with the kind of perverse imaginative talent necessary to work in their creative department. One question, for instance, was ‘Describe, using no more than 50 words, a piece of toast to a Martian.’ Hundreds of people would write lyrical or technical descriptions in English. One person famously secured a job by writing ‘Floop, floop! Gribble ptáng chiz’nit greep floopiwop.’ Another question was the following: ‘Write, in as few words as possible, a notice for a country club to be placed at the entrance to

Aidan Hartley

Aidan Hartley: If Santa Claus tried to make a delivery, he’d be shot before he reached the chimney

Laikipia In the cattle rustlers’ camp, I know as I write this that the warriors are sharpening their blades, staring down the dirty barrels of their rifles, and loading their clips with bullets. Before full moon on the 17th of this month they will set out in their war paint, glistening with rancid butter and ochre. There will be four of them, young men not much more than teenagers. One will carry a bucket of sheep’s fat, and on this disgusting ration they will survive while lurking in the thorn scrub for days, never making a fire, leaving no tracks, sleeping cold on the rocks — and watching us. They

Mike Shaw

How to get your child hooked on theatre (hint: don’t rule out Peppa Pig)

I remember my first trip to the theatre. I was about eight, and I got hit in the face by a finger of fudge thrown from the stage by a particularly overzealous am-dram Widow Twankey. It was an inauspicious start to what would become a lifelong passion. Despite the confectionary-based assault, I’m now a theatre writer; and, fortunately, my wife is a theatre lover, too. When we had our son, we agreed that it was important he should experience the theatre from early on, and I began mentally planning his first visit, determined for it to be more enjoyable than mine. But when would be the right time to take

Wednesday

Elizabeth Truss

Ignore Margaret Hodge and the BBC – free schools are working

Today’s NAO report on free schools has recognised the ‘clear progress’ we have made opening 174 schools in three years with significantly lower costs than Labour’s school programmes. But, as Isabel Hardman, Toby Young and Policy Exchange’s Jonathan Simons have pointed out, instead of reading the report the BBC and PAC Chairwoman Margaret Hodge have chosen to ignore the facts. The BBC’s headline claims ‘free school costs budget trebled to £1.5bn, says report.’ But the NAO report states that ‘many new schools have been established quickly and at relatively low cost’. At £6.6 million per school, free schools are being delivered at a fraction of the costs of Labour’s Building Schools for the Future scheme

Peter Riddell

Whitehall needs reform – and the Prime Minister needs to lead it

James Forsyth is right. Whitehall does need reforming. But he is wrong to present this in stark terms of ministers versus mandarins. The real position is more complicated, and not nearly as negative. First, the positives. The Civil Service has delivered an unprecedented scale of cuts in the spending reviews, and in staff numbers with reductions of a quarter to a third in administrative costs in many departments. Francis Maude has pushed through big savings in procurement and, though we remain concerned about the pace of reform in public service markets, he has initiated welcome changes in the handling of big projects and commissioning. He is also working to achieve

David Ruffley

Carney may call for the end of Help to Buy sooner than you think

Mark Carney’s speech to the Economics Club of New York yesterday made clear that very low interest rates now ‘put a premium on macroprudential policies’. Translation: he’s not going to hike interest rates soon, but he wants us to know that there are other levers he can pull to keep the UK economy on track. What are those levers? First, Funding for Lending. Two weeks ago Mark Carney announced that the scheme – which offers banks cheap funding if they increase lending to the real economy – would no longer be available for mortgage lending. It will only be open for loans to companies. That’s a lot more than just