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
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
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
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
Tony Blair would have had less of a presence in today’s Commons debate on Syria if he’d actually turned up to it. The former Prime Minister was threaded throughout the speeches, and no more so than in David Cameron’s address to MPs. Cameron was keen to emphasise at every opportunity the difference between the government’s response to the current situation and the Blair government’s handling of the Iraq war. He was quick to refer to it, saying ‘I am deeply mindful of the lessons of previous conflicts’, and later said that Iraq ‘poisoned the well’ of public trust on military intervention. Though as James pointed out as the debate was
Professor turned campaigner Brian Cathcart, executive director of Hacked Off, wrote a comment piece for the Guardian this week where he asked: ‘Does it show double standards to condemn David Miranda’s detention without criticising the arrest of journalists suspected of illegal phone hacking and bribery? There are news organisations that want us to believe it does.’ Brian, I’m afraid they are right. I remember bringing up this exact issue with Brian when I was still working at Hacked Off. I asked him if we should not react to the fact the MSC (Management Standards Committee set up by Rupert Murdoch to hand over evidence to the Met Police) might have
Good news today for the OBR (who want a constant flow of more than 140,000 immigrants a year to support Britain’s debt burden and ageing population) and bad news for David Cameron (who thinks immigrants are a drain on Britain’s welfare state). Statistics show that in the year ending December 2012, net migration to the UK was 176,000, up from 153,000 in the year ending September 2012.The latest figure is equivalent to 482 more people a day entering the country than leaving it. Net migration is the figure that Cameron wants to be down ‘in the tens of thousands’ by the end of the parliament. It’s been heading down since June 2011. The drop
There has been lots of debate about our impending intervention in the Syrian conflict today. Many of my Coffee House colleagues have counselled against intervention, arguing against Danny Finkelstein’s piece in the Times yesterday. I’m in broad agreement with the general sentiment of the piece, but some of its subtexts need greater illumination. Leave aside Finkelstein’s argument about omission bias. For a moment, forget the ‘complexities’ of the conflict, imbibed as it is with sectarian differences, confessional rivalries, and great power posturing. Even the discussion of what should happen next in Syria can wait for another day. The use of chemical weapons against civilians is an affront to the very
You’re at home, enjoying a summery Saturday afternoon with the bees and nasturtiums on the patio, when the doorbell intrudes. You’re greeted by an impeccably courteous, fresh-faced police officer from the Norfolk Constabulary – ‘Dedicated to this neighbourhood’, according to their website – and he’s come to speak to you because there’s been a complaint. Not, you understand, about the troubling number of burglaries, rising car thefts, incidences of property vandalism or madhouse music accompanying balmy barbeques. No, someone has reported you for sending them two gospel tracts by email, one entitled ‘Christ Can Cure – Good News for Gays’; and the other ‘Jesus Christ – the Saviour we all
Four wines, four different countries, four different grapes. All these come from Adnams of Southwold, the -admirable brewers, who also ship superb wines from around the world. Their selection is a joy, and if you visit one of their shops, you will also find a range of attractive kitchen implements, many designed to perform tasks you didn’t know needed performing. I’m rather proud of these wines, since although I didn’t discover them I did choose them, and every one is delicious in its own distinctive way. They are all discounted. For example, with a £10 case reduction, the white Rioja 2011 (1) from the Riojanas winery costs only £7.17 a
It is impossible to think about any Italian region without wondering ‘What if?’ Sardinia lacks the glamour, grandeur and menace of Sicily, but it is still a fascinating exemplar of Mediterranean culture: the different historical strata stretching back to pre-history. So: what if the mediaeval rulers of Aragon had been more enduring? What if the Catholic kings had never married? There is no reason why Barcelona should have been ruled from Madrid: still less for the Sardinians to be governed by Turin. A sea-girt Aragonese kingdom, including the Languedoc, Sardinia and Sicily — that would have been a glorious flowering of civilisation and romance: Venus emerging from a scallop shell.
Ayan Mahamoud, one of the organisers of Hargeysa’s International Book Fair, has all the girly vulnerability of a factory-tested steel girder. So it was disconcerting when, having called to the stage the western writers attending in the teeth of strict travel warnings, she burst into tears. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just so hard when the whole world is against you,’ she sobbed. The word ‘beleaguered’ constantly comes to mind when visiting Somaliland, a country that doesn’t officially exist. For the past 22 years, this former British protectorate has waited for the world to notice that, in contrast to its unstable southern neighbour — the Somalia of warlords, Black Hawk Down and Al-Shabaab
The Proms season of Wagner operas — pity they didn’t do them all; Die Meistersinger would have been specially welcome, since no one else is doing it either — concluded appropriately with Parsifal, conducted by Sir Mark Elder. The conducting at all these performances has been remarkably good, but in some respects Elder was the most striking of all. Working with his orchestra, the Hallé, he produced an account of this miraculous score which, for a combination of passion and precision, surpassed any other that I have ever heard. Without for a moment stinting on climaxes, Elder and the Hallé explored and expounded the refinements and economies of Wagner’s subtle
In Competition No. 2812 you were invited to provide a poem celebrating bookshops. Space is tight, which leaves room only for a congratulatory slap on the back all-round but especially to unlucky losers Max Ross, who submitted a clever acrostic, Gerard Benson, James Leslie-Melville, Lydia Shaxberd, Alison Zucker and Annette Field. The prizewinners below earn £25 each. W.J. Webster takes the bonus fiver. Let’s all now give a big and grateful hand To firms whose livelihood is print, retail: Each member of this much beleaguered band Plays its own part in keeping books for sale. Not always loved, the large emporial stores (Where volumes are the measure of their trade),
Lente, lente currite noctis equi. It only seems five minutes ago that I was devoting this column to the most important intellectual problem in the western canon — the oenophile’s equivalent of the Matterhorn — which red wine to drink with grouse. But the immortal gods are relentless; Phoebus Apollo has spurred on the seasons and, once again, a shy young grouse graces my plate. To eat one so soon after the Twelfth — is this not culinary paedophilia? Should I not be on a register? Well, gentle reader, I overcame my inhibitions, especially as the succulent infant, compensating in sweetness for the grosser tastes of hanging, was accompanied by
A friend of mine insists that when Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho first opened in Britain, the emotional impact of the most famous murder in cinematic history was slightly diminished. As Norman Bates’s knife came into frame, British audiences of 1960 were still recovering from the shock of a scene they had witnessed a few minutes earlier when they were shown a hotel room that had its own shower. I can still just remember a time when it was normal to walk along a hotel corridor to take a bath or use the loo. And the folk memory of these regional variations still lingers. I don’t think anyone in Britain still packs
In Competition No. 2761 you were invited to provide an example of critics debating a trivial point in an absurd way. This challenge was inspired by the parody, at the end of N.F. Simpson’s A Resounding Tinkle, of critics solemnly discussing whether the play they have just seen is a ‘hotchpotch’ or a ‘gallimaufry’. I liked Chris O’Carroll’s dissection of the nuances of ‘myriad’ and ‘plethora’, and both Basil Ransome-Davies and G.M. Davis neatly captured the childish, foot-stomping undercurrent that sometimes characterises the exchanges between squabbling critics. The entries that most impressed though, in a smallish postbag, are printed below and earn their authors £30 apiece. Adrian Fry wins the
Will my friend, the writer and historian Tom Holland, get his head chopped off for the things he is saying on Islam: The Untold Story (Channel 4)? My guess is not. If I’d said them, I’m sure I would have done because I have the kind of manner which makes people want to punch my lights out even if all I’ve said is that their mum makes a really lovely apple crumble and by the way is it OK if I help with the dishes? Holland, on the other hand, has such a fey, wispy, slightly geeky, quintessential English niceness about him that I’ll bet if he stood outside the
Justine Greening is unlucky to have been passed the transport chalice so early in her cabinet career, and her tenure will surely be even shorter than the already short average for the post. On the issue of a third Heathrow runway, opposition to which was a theme of her campaign for her Putney seat in 2010, she seems at a loss to respond to a surge of Tory opinion led by former minister Tim Yeo in favour of the runway project as a symbol of newly assertive, globally connected, growth-seeking post-Olympic -Britain. I feel obliged, in a chivalrous way, to help her marshal her arguments before she’s forced to depart.
Ever since the Arab Spring sprang its bright new dawn, the old regimes of the Middle East — along with their economies — have fallen like dominoes. But one authoritarian regime, at least, stands taller than ever: Saudi Arabia. Its shimmery skyline, its modern minarets, all testify to the infallibility of petroleum-rich power. Yet there’s one enormous sign that Saudi may be headed for the skids. This year, the Saudis started construction of the Kingdom Tower, a 200-floor skyscraper which is due to be completed in 2017. This citadel has the backing of Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, and will be built by the Bin Laden family (the late Osama was