Society

Thursday

Robin Oakley

Praise indeed

Shortly after he became champion apprentice, when he was launching the next stage of his career from Mick Channon’s stables back in 2001, the lads nicknamed Chris Catlin the ‘Cat’. His surname helped but so did the fact that the pale-faced, dark-eyed jockey moves quietly about the place. His unobtrusive style hasn’t changed. You simply couldn’t imagine Chris Catlin doing a Frankie Dettori flying dismount. But two significant things have happened this season to one of the best-liked middle-rank jockeys. Back in May his colleagues applauded him back into the weighing room for riding his 1,000th winner, and the highly particular Sir Mark Prescott has begun regularly putting Catlin, along

Janet de Botton

Bridge | 29 August 2013

Two weeks of watching the 2nd World Mind Sports have come to an end and I feel rather like I did after the last episode of The Killing. Bereft. The English Ladies proved that, with the help of a drop of lavender oil, they are the undisputed Queens of the World, taking both European and World Gold Medals within two months of each other. Sweden won the Open title and, for me, pair of the tournament goes to Peter Bertheau and Per-Ola Cullin. In the quarter final Sweden played USA and they doubled the mighty Meckwell in 4NT, taking it SEVEN off and knocking them out of the tournament. But

Raymond Keene

Gligoric

The great Svetozar Gligoric passed away last week at the age of 89. Gligoric represented Yugoslavia at a time when that nation was second only to the USSR in terms of chess strength. Three times a world title candidate, Gligoric was able to defeat such champions as Fischer, Botvinnik, Tal and Petrosian. Petrosian seemed to bring out the best in him. Petrosian-Gligoric: Rovinj/Zagreb 1970; King’s Indian Defence 1 d4 Nf6 2 c4 g6 3 Nc3 Bg7 4 e4 d6 5 Be2 0-0 6 Nf3 e5 7 0-0 Petrosian avoided his favourite 7 d5 Nbd7 8 Bg5, because his opponent was very confident in his handling of the variation 8 …

Raymond Keene

Puzzle no. 233

White to play. This position is from Gligoric-Petrosian, Belgrade 1954. How did White blast his way through to the black king in fine style? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 4 September 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 Ng5+ Last week’s winner Malcolm Friend, Edgbaston, Birmingham

Toby Young Toby Young

Don’t pardon the French

I’m on holiday in France for the first time in nine years and I’d forgotten how lovely it is. The food, the architecture, the scenery — it’s all exquisite. Indeed, I’d be tempted to move here permanently in spite of the 75 per cent tax rate were it not for the country’s single flaw: it’s full of French people. Oh my, but they’re ghastly. Not all of them, obviously. No doubt there are some nice French people in France. I just haven’t met any on this holiday. Our first bad experience was on the Paris Métro. We’d been led to believe we could change trains in Paris within a 50-minute

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 29 August 2013

Q.  I have organised a city break to Florence with a particularly easygoing bunch of friends. We have one spare room in the flat that we have hired and a friend of a friend has come forward to suggest himself. Everyone else going is very unqueeny and unfussy but I suspect this man may be a bit of a bore of the sort who complains that wine is corked or that queues are too long. How can I find out before it is too late and he is already on board and spoiling the fun for the rest of us with his quibbling ways? On the other hand, he is very intelligent

Dot Wordsworth

Para

Even my husband is not old enough to recall the wheelchair archery competition at Stoke Mandeville on the day the 1948 Olympics opened in London. Such games came to be organised by the British Paraplegic Sports Society and so were called the Paralympic Games. It was a true portmanteau word, packing together paraplegic and Olympic. But the International Paralympic Committee declares what it must know to be untrue: ‘The word Paralympic derives from the Greek preposition para (beside or alongside) and the word Olympic. Its meaning is that Paralympics are the parallel Games to the Olympics.’ They may well be parallel but that is not the historical origin of the

Raymond Keene

Hedgehog fund

The Hedgehog is a respected chess formation, usually adopted as Black, where the defender crouches behind a wall of pawns on the third rank, spines abristle, fending off any hostile aggression until the time comes to unfurl and deploy the fretful porpentine’s armoury in earnest. Since the Hedgehog is essentially a defensive ploy, it is hardly seen as White, but in the elite Dortmund tournament last month former world champion Vladimir Kramnik demonstrated that it can also be adapted for a White offensive. In the following game White’s 22nd move constitutes one of the most astounding coups I have ever seen on the chessboard. It certainly had the effect of

Raymond Keene

Puzzle no. 281

Black to play. This is from Caruana-Adams, Dortmund 2013. Despite play being in an endgame Adams sacrificed a piece. His adventurous play was rewarded when he reached the following position and won quickly with a tactic. What did he play? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 3 September 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 am offering a prize of £20. Please include a postal address and allow six weeks for prize delivery.   Last week’s solution 1 Rxf8+ Last week’s winner John Thackray, Rochester, Kent

The Spectator

Letters: Peter Hitchens vs Nick Cohen, and the case against the middle class

Piggies in the middle Sir: Your feature ‘The strange death of the middle class’ (24 August) assumes that young people who do not attend fee-paying schools cannot have access to the same opportunities as those who do. I attended my local comprehensive in the first decade of this century. Despite the variable teaching quality, I did well in exams, went on to a good university, and now work for an aerospace company. I can afford to rent a flat, go on holiday and save a little, all on an income not much higher than the average starting salary for a graduate. I have not inherited any money, nor did I

Dot Wordsworth

Vikings

‘What’s he saying now?’ asked my husband in a provoking manner when an actor read out a bit of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle on one of those excellent television programmes by Michael Wood about King Alfred. Very good the Old English sounded — a little like the Danish in The Killing. There were subtitles for those whose focus went further than their whisky glass. Despite a good deal of Viking smiting, the word Viking was not heard. It is a historian’s word, not used in English until as late as 1840. In Alfred’s day they might be called Danish and in The Battle of Maldon (about an encounter we lost in

Peter Jones

Varro on The Apprentice

Budding businesswoman Luisa Zissman, with her A in A-level English, has enquired whether ‘Bakers Toolkit’ or ‘Baker’s Toolkit’ is correct. As usual, the ancients are to blame. Ancient Greeks were fascinated by language and invented much of the terminology in which we still talk about it: parts of speech, e.g. nouns (which included adjectives), pronouns, verbs, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions; case, number, gender, tense, voice, mood and so on — all words translated by Romans from the Greek into Latin. Greeks also argued intensely about right and wrong usage. Apollonius Dyscolus (2nd century AD) pointed out that, if you examined traditional orthography, you could see that there were historical reasons behind word-formation

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: How can I stop this bore reading his novel aloud?

Q. Is there a polite way of halting a wannabe novelist from reading his oeuvre aloud to an unwilling audience? A neighbour on the residents’ committee happened to be leaving as friends were arriving for drinks and I felt I should invite him to join us. It was all going swimmingly until he told someone he was writing a novel, and she made the mistake of pretending she would be interested in reading it. No one had reckoned on this (very insensitive) man having a copy of the wretched thing on his iPhone and he read aloud at length, pausing only to laugh at his own genius. It killed the

Dumpynose

2128: Carbon copy

This puzzle marks a 42/27 by 11 in 17/19. Five other unclued lights (one twice hyphened) together suggest another form of 42/47: solvers must shade the pair. Elsewhere, ignore an accent.   Across   12    Description of diseases in German, prosy Noah revised (10) 14    Necklace from coastal region shortened by earl (7) 15    Not quite excellent distinctive dresses for balls (10) 16    Piano queen behind very good singers (7) 20    Tent constantly capsizing, lecturer dumped (4) 22    Amateur has put up platform … (7, two words) 23    … torn apart by gale (4) 24    Release of gang without charge (7, two words) 26    Lass in dress beginning to tan

Dumpynose

Solution to 2075: an outstanding idea?

The quotation is inappropriate for the CHAMELEON and the PTARMIGAN (shown in red), both of which survive by blending in to the background. Appropriately, they were hidden in the final grid and were revealed by entering the correct words at 24A, 26A, 35A, 5D and 29D. First prize M.F. O’Brien, London N12 Runners-up Gerry Fairweather, Layer Marney, Essex; R.J. Green, Llangynidr, Crickhowell

Dumpynose

Solution to 2125: Nil desperandum

The part quotation was ‘BUT WESTWARD, LOOK, THE LAND’ (1/5/28) from Say not the struggle naught availeth by Arthur Hugh Clough. Remaining unclued lights, read from right to left (‘westward’), each contain a ‘land’: Libya (4), Oman (23), Iran (30), Cuba (35) and Italy (41). CLOUGH (in the fourth column) was to be shaded.   First prize Mr P. Taylor-Mansfield, Worcester Runners-up John Light, Addlestone, Surrey; G.H.Willetts, London SW19

Dumpynose

2078: Nonet

After thematic 32 a 5 of 12 form the other unclued lights of which only one is a real word. Across 10 Less than colossal choir seize Worms (10, hyphened) 14 Death of Grendel (3) 16 Sewer trimmed outer garment roughly (6) 17 Destroy with top armour (5) 20 Decamping sons bounding along (7) 22 Convoluted legal document Scots challenge (7) 24 Several coaches plus royal coach (7) 25 A broken round metal plate (5) 26 Expectant pastor slips in glamour girl (5, two words) 28 Be quiet having extreme problem talking (7) 31 Otto (maybe) and restless Chris (almost) like Texas (7, hyphened) 33 One trapping fish in Turkey

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Ed Miliband’s problem is he’s trying to keep his options open on Syria

Ed Miliband’s scepticism about striking Syria puts him more in line with public opinion than David Cameron. On top of this, he’s had the better of the political manoeuvrings these past few days — forcing the Prime Minister to pull back from a straight parliamentary vote on military action. So, why then did his speech today fall so flat? Part of the problem is the nature of the Commons chamber. Tory MPs heckled and intervened on him effectively, rather throwing him off his stride. But the more fundamental problem is that Miliband is trying to keep his options open. Miliband’s opening was a strong argument against any British intervention in