Society

Thursday

Taki

Taki: RIP John Jay, my brave friend who refused to take part in vulture capitalism

I suppose the secret of death is to choose not to expire the same day as famous people. I read in Lapham’s Quarterly that JFK, C.S. Lewis and Aldous Huxley all met with the man in the white suit on 22 November 1963. John Jay Mortimer, a friend of very long standing, died last week and I attended his funeral in Tuxedo Park, the seat of his very old and fine family. After his daughter Minnie gave the reading, Lewis Lapham, the renowned editor of Harper’s and now Lapham’s Quarterly, spoke in a quiet, unemotional tone about his old friend. It seems that at the height of the Cold War,

The Spectator

Letters | 7 November 2013

Counting on the country Sir: I spent many hours helping to canvas for local Conservative candidates before the last two elections (‘The countryside revolts’, 2 November). I was motivated to do so because of the Labour government’s prejudice against the rural community. The Conservative party offered a chance to redress this prejudice through repealing or amending legislation on small employers, hunting, communication, transport, fuel, immigration and the EU. But progress on these issues has been negligible. We see no action on the Hunting Act, and no action to stop the harassment of country people by vigilante pressure groups, despite managing a more robust reaction to anti-fracking campaigners. Huge effort has

Jeremy Clarke

Jeremy Clarke: Can’t we even manage a proper hurricane?

In the Spar shop I overheard someone talking anxiously to the woman on the till about an approaching ‘hurricane’. I had thought the fast forwarding sky was looking a bit apocalyptic, so we hurried back to the caravan and put the radio on and waited for the news. The most important thing to have happened in the world in the past 24 hours, apparently, was the death of the ‘influential’ former Velvet Underground member Lou Reed, the man who characterised his style of musicianship as: ‘One chord is fine, two chords is pushing it, three chords and you’re into jazz.’ The gathering storm was the second item. Hurricane-force winds were

Melissa Kite

Melissa Kite: aliens have landed in Warwickshire — I’ve seen their spaceship

Like the heroine in Stephen King’s The Tommyknockers, I stood in front of it with my mouth open in awe. It was a ship in the earth. I was looking at the tip of a flying saucer protruding from a field where it had become wedged thousands of years before after crash-landing. I had been walking across the farmland at the back of my parents’ house with the builder boyfriend and Cydney the spaniel when we came across it. Let me paint the picture: mile upon mile of rugged countryside stretched in every direction. Stubble fields were lit by a magical golden light. Cows ambled around grassy meadows. Perhaps it

Alexander Chancellor

Alexander Chancellor: Do you think you should read this piece for free?

I was in Nottingham last Sunday to address university students about journalism. The occasion was a one-day ‘media conference’ organised by the Nottingham University students’ magazine, Impact, for the purpose of encouraging students to embark on journalistic careers. The conference, it promised, would give them a ‘kick start’ in this direction. I hadn’t realised until I got there that this was the intention, for I had planned to say how it was now almost as bad an idea for a young person to try to go into journalism as it had been, in Noël Coward’s song, for Mrs Worthington to put her daughter on the stage. I decided to tone

The Spectator

Barometer: Who eats dogs?

Dog’s dinner A Canadian hiker rescued in Quebec was reported to have killed and eaten his German shepherd dog in spite of it having saved him from a bear. Who else, outside Southeast Asia, has survived on dog? — Ernest Shackleton and his party in the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914-17 were forced to eat their dogs after their ship Endurance was crushed by ice. — It was a deliberate tactic of Roald Amundsen gradually to reduce the size of his dog pack by killing them one at a time and feeding them to the rest of the pack. The men, too, ate the odd ‘delicate filet’. — Douglas Mawson

Robin Oakley

How the slowest horse won — and caused the biggest upset in Grand National history

On a grey October morning, along a Berkshire lane leading up to the Ridgeway amid fields stuffed with pheasant, 30 of us joined a mini-pilgrimage. The former champion jockeys Graham Thorner and Stan Mellor had made it along with Marcus Armytage, who won the Grand National on Mr Frisk. There, too, were a cluster of racing historians including Chris Pitt and John Pinfold. More importantly, the former trainer John Kempton and the former jockey John Buckingham were present with the author David Owen for the unveiling of a plaque to a horse whose name will never be forgotten in jump racing: Foinavon was the 100–1 winner of the 1967 Grand

Susanna Gross

Bridge | 7 November 2013

Bridge is a great leveller: at some point, it makes fools of us all. As a result, it’s probably best to steer clear of any definitive pronouncements — ‘I couldn’t make the hand’, or ‘there was no way to beat it’ — as there’s almost always someone who can prove you wrong. Even experts end up being out-thought on a regular basis. The one really safe way of avoiding embarrassment is to be like Socrates, who declared: ‘All I know is that I know nothing.’ Of course, it’s impossible advice to follow: I’m forever blurting things out which turn out to be rubbish. Just the other week, I was watching

Raymond Keene

Next generation

Magnus Carlsen’s world title challenge to Vishy Anand commences on Saturday 9 November and continues to the end of this month. The age gap between the young challenger and the veteran champion is 21 years; such an age disparity has not been seen since the 1981 clash between Karpov and Korchnoi (a 20-year age gap) and Tal v. Botvinnik in 1961 (a 25-year gap). Curiously, reversing the customary narrative of the rising fresh talent, in both of those instances the older man was the challenger.   This week, the game which clinched the title for 50-year-old challenger Mikhail Botvinnik in 1961, and a puzzle showing 50-year-old Korchnoi succumbing to 30-year-old Karpov.  

Raymond Keene

No. 291

White to play. This position is from Karpov v. Korchnoi, Merano 1981. White’s next destroyed the black position. What did he play? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 12 November 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 Rxd7 Last week’s winner Stephen Harley, Kabul

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 7 November 2013

Home Three Police Federation representatives accused of giving misleading accounts of a meeting with Andrew Mitchell over the Plebgate scandal are to undergo a second investigation by the Independent Police Complaints Commission. Mohammed Ahmed Mohamed, 27, whose movements are restricted under a Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measure (known as a T-Pim) went missing after changing into a burka at a mosque in Acton, west London. Paul Gambaccini, the BBC broadcaster, was arrested on suspicion of historical sexual offences unconnected with Jimmy Savile’s crimes. An eight-year-old boy shot and wounded a five-year-old at Wickford, Essex. London Gateway, a container port capable of taking the biggest ships, opened just west of Canvey

Toby Young Toby Young

Fighting dirty

Why is local politics so much dirtier than national politics? Is it because the players are fighting over relatively trivial matters, like Oxbridge dons competing for college posts? As Henry Kissinger said, ‘University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.’ Or is it because local politicians are less likely to be exposed to the disinfectant of publicity? Well, I intend to remedy that. Last week, a Conservative councillor in Hounslow drew my attention to an election leaflet distributed by three prospective Labour councillors that contained the following misrepresentation under the headline ‘Chiswick School loses out to Free School’: ‘Chiswick School was on the list for Hounslow’s Building

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: How do I empty a chamberpot without my hosts noticing?

Q. One of our daughter’s godmothers has given very generous presents but never with any regularity. She was unable to attend the recent 18th birthday party but said on the telephone she hoped our daughter would like the present she was sending. No present has arrived. What is the protocol re thanking for something which has not turned up but may have been lost in the proverbial post? Or indeed, the absent-minded godmother may have forgotten to buy or post? — Name and address withheld A. Ring the godmother up shrieking with excitement. ‘The most marvellous bracelet has arrived in the post but with no card attached. Is it from

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Charles Moore: Teaching qualifications must include a stint in business — or the army

The most extraordinary thing about the scandal of Unite at Grangemouth and in Falkirk is how long it took the outside world to notice. Partly, this is an effect of devolution: almost nothing Scottish is now considered news in London, even if it is of kingdom-wide importance. Partly, it results from the loss of media and political attention to trade union affairs. So successful was Mrs Thatcher in taming union political power that newspapers laid off the labour correspondents who, in the 1970s and early 1980s, had been the aristocrats of the news room. As for the Tories, they have forgotten the Cold War arts of keeping dossiers on subversion.

Dot Wordsworth

Collagen

I saw an advertisement for Active Gold Collagen, and I realised I didn’t know what collagen means. My husband just laughed and said, ‘Horse hides,’ but this seemed unfair since the small print on the website of Boots (which sells it) said: ‘Does not contain porcine, bovine or other animal sources.’ I thought that odd, because the Oxford English Dictionary definition of collagen is: ‘A protein which is present in the form of fibres as a major constituent of bone, tendons, and other connective tissue and which yields gelatin on boiling and leather on tanning.’ So where did the makers get the collagen? Further down in the Boots small print

Gyles Brandreth

Gyles Brandeth’s diary: The pub where the Queen came in by the fire escape

Hard on the heels of the 90th birthday of Nicholas Parsons (10 October) comes the 65th birthday of the Prince of Wales (14 November). Neither is due for retirement any day soon. Indeed, I suspect retirement would be the death of the long-serving host of Radio 4’s Just A Minute. The Duchess of Cornwall listens to his programme, I know. Perhaps her husband does too. Either way, Parsons is a perfect role model for Prince Charles. Nicholas is young at heart, unfailingly charming and wholly committed to the strange lot that fate has accorded him. He has been hosting Just A Minute for 46 years and not missed a single recording.

The Spectator

We are not ‘tired of war’. We are tired of lack of leadership to win one

One remarkable fact of recent years is that even as the veterans of the first world war have died and as those who served in the second world war have headed through their eighties and beyond, the memory of the 20th century’s two most devastating wars has continued to be honoured with thoughtfulness and devotion. The idea of commemorating those who defended and saved this country has lost none of its potency. This year, as we head towards the 100th anniversary of the start of what was meant to be the war to end all wars, there are more British poppies in evidence than ever. Our part in the Allied

Doc

2138: Hundred centimes

The unclued lights, across and down respectively, are of a kind, all verifiable in Chambers.   Across   4 Single instruction on small firm’s photo visible to the naked eye (11) 11 Accidental but obvious choice (7) 12 Hard-hitting county fellow (6) 13 Following out, disturbed – get angry about it (9) 14 Drain away from church next to grass (5) 16 Speech from Republican lacking colour outwardly (5) 19 Impolite relative cut out 1/6 (7) 23 Crime writer’s good classification (7) 24 Crazy about knock out (4) 25 Cover could be coat. Yes! (7, two words) 31 Wait till offer finally came (4) 32 Pining entellus monkey embraces love