Society

Friday

Camilla Swift Camilla Swift

Spectator Play: what’s worth watching, listening to or going to this weekend | 5 July 2013

The BBC’s Proms kick off today, with the First Night of the Proms from the Royal Albert Hall delivering what they describe as ‘a surge of natural energy in sea-inspired works by Britten and Vaughan Williams’. In this week’s magazine, Kate Chisholm speaks to the director of the event, Roger Wright, about the challenges of what sounds like ‘a dream job’, but is in fact ‘more like 26-dimensional chess’. Is the next generation being messed up by our celebrity-obsessed culture? That’s the question Sofia Coppola raises with her latest film, The Bling Ring, a film that Deborah Ross thinks ‘might be worth watching just to see Paris’s shoe room’. There’s plenty of

Thursday

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

Why I’m hiring graduates with thirds this year

Whenever I return to my old university, I am always struck by how incredibly focused, purposeful and studious everyone seems to be. It fills me with despair. It’s hard to tell the difference between a university and a business school nowadays. Where are all the hippies, the potheads and the commies? And why is everyone so intently serious and sober all the time? ‘Oh, it’s simple,’ a friend explained. ‘If you don’t get a 2:1 or a first nowadays, employers won’t look at your CV.’ So, as a keen game-theorist, I struck on an idea. Recruiting next year’s graduate intake for Ogilvy would be easy. We could simply place ads

Toby Young Toby Young

Our house was burgled as we watched The Fall

Caroline and I were watching The Fall in our front room when the intruder entered our house. Not great timing on his part, considering The Fall is a BBC drama series about a serial killer who breaks into people’s homes, then tortures and murders them. Thankfully, we never actually set eyes on him. We only discovered we’d been burgled when we returned to the kitchen to load the dishwasher and found various items missing. But still. Caroline was probably more upset than she would have been if we’d been watching Eat, Pray, Love — which we wouldn’t have been, obviously, because it’s complete drek. I was up most of the

Robin Oakley

Royal Ascot triumph: Johnny Murtagh is the best trainer riding

Ginger Rogers, clever girl, did everything that Fred Astaire did — but she did it backwards. I am looking backwards in this Turf column and doing so without apologies because it was such a wonderful Ascot. The sheer delight on the Queen’s face when Estimate made her the first reigning monarch to have a winner of the Gold Cup would have made the meeting on its own. But emotions were high, too, when we had two winners from the late Sir Henry Cecil’s yard, now presided over by Lady Cecil, although triumph became tragedy when one of them,  Thomas Chippendale, collapsed and died after the finishing post. We had the

Melissa Kite

Real life: My handsome builder ex-boyfriend shows me how to buy a car

The sometime builder boyfriend spotted the Volvo on his way to a roofing job in Dorking. He rang me greatly excited. It had a few bumps and scratches but the pertinent facts were these: one owner. Never towed. A bike rack on the back. Haribo wrappers all over the seats. Oh, and the mark from an auction sticker still visible in the windscreen. ‘So it’s a mess,’ I said. ‘No,’ said the builder, who used to be a car dealer. ‘It’s a genuine family car that you can probably get cheap because it’s a bit dinged up. Trust me.’ The thing is, despite everything, all our stops and starts and

Jeremy Clarke

Jeremy Clarke: ‘Can you part your cheeks a bit?’ I did so. There was a stunned silence

Sir Francis Drake died of dysentery while attacking the town of San Juan in Puerto Rico. He was buried at sea in a lead coffin. Henry V succumbed to it at 35. Accounts of the African missionary explorer David Livingstone’s lingering death from dysentery make grim reading. Near the end he was too weak to hold a pencil. He was found dead on his knees in prayer. Tough guy Ernest Hemingway had so many bowel movements in a short time he suffered a prolapse and afterwards went into a physical and mental decline. In Africa it is said to kill hundreds of thousands of children under five annually. The first

Taki

Taki: why would anyone want 72 virgins? They’re useless in bed

The long lazy summer is upon us, and as I walk the Swiss hills below the mountain ranges my thoughts are always of the past, the long hot summers of long ago, girls in their pretty dresses, my father in his whites sailing around the Saronic Bay with a ball-and-chain standard flying from his main mast. It meant ‘Wife on board’, which really meant: when I drop anchor in some nearby port, local talent should stay away. Dad was famous, infamous rather, for flying that ensign, because he loved partying with loose women on his boat, and, during the rare occasions my mother would come on board, he didn’t want

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

The world is better off without Marc Rich – but his heirs still control the price of almost everything

Marc Rich, the godfather of global commodity trading who died last week, ‘deserves credit as one of the greatest creators and sharers of wealth in business history’, wrote James Breiding in the Financial Times in a counterblast to obituarists who had painted the secretive Swiss-based billionaire and former fugitive from US justice as ‘a flamboyant, tax-evading crook’. Bill Clinton certainly saw the better angel in Rich’s nature, granting a presidential pardon for his embargo-busting dealings with Iran against all precedent and advice. But leaving aside the unpatriotic oil trades and the unpaid taxes (not to mention the former Mrs Rich’s timely donation to the Clinton Library), is Breiding right to

Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

I’ll tell you what really devalues marriage: patronising, preachy little tax breaks

The Conservative party is trying to redefine marriage. I can’t believe they think they’re going to get away with this. Throughout human history it has been one thing, which is a loving commitment between two people who want to share a life. Now they’re trying to turn it into something completely different. A tax break. It wouldn’t benefit me, even though I am married. Although I swear that isn’t the root of my objection. Honest. My wife and I are in the same tax bracket, you see, so sharing our allowance wouldn’t make much difference. What it amounts to, really, is an incentive for one of us to stop working

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

Philip Bobbitt on Machiavelli, Obama and David Cameron

It may be pushing it to compare Philip Bobbitt with Indiana Jones, on the basis that a constitutional lawyer will never have the exotic and uncommercial appeal of an archaeologist adventurer, even if he does look remarkably similar. Then again, a profile of him in the New York Observer called him the James Bond of the Columbia Law School, which also suggests impossible glamour. But you can see why his students and reviewers come over star-struck. He’s a courteous, urbane, well-connected (nephew of Lyndon B. Johnson) literary academic, adviser of presidents but way above the party fray, possibly the last Wasp standing in the academic elite, certainly the last cigar-smoker,

Rian Malan

The world’s media are waiting for Mandela to die. Here’s why he’s disappointing them

 Johannesburg It was day 19 of the Nelson Mandela death watch, and my char, Mrs Gladys Dhladhla, had brought her grandson to work with her. Mlungisi is a stout little chap, 14 years old and bent on becoming a professional rugby player. His granny was counting on me to broaden his mind so Mlungisi and I drove to Mandela’s home in the suburb of Houghton and spent an hour or so chatting to the international TV crews camped on the sidewalk outside. One technician told us he’d been there since 8 June, the day the old man was admitted to hospital with a lung infection that was expected to be

Peter Jones

Common enemies

One assumes that it will eventually dawn on those so deeply committed to slaughtering each other in Syria that, whatever interest they represent, diplomacy is the only way they will ever reach some sort of settlement that will allow some sort of normality to return. Ancients knew all about treaties, and ancient Greeks had a particularly interesting condition which they always imposed. The Latin for ‘peace’ is pax, which derives from a verb meaning ‘agree to a price, reach a settlement, make an arrangement’ and even ‘engage oneself to marry’. The Latin for ‘treaty’ is foedus (cf. our ‘federation’), associated with a word meaning ‘trust, good faith’. In the end

The Spectator

Barometer | 4 July 2013

A place of greater safety CIA whistleblower Edward Snowden has claimed asylum in 21 countries. How do whistleblowers fare in some of them? China: 5 journalists killed since 1992. One was beaten by traffic police whose corrupt practices he was investigating, another found with his throat cut after probing links between politicians and gangs Venezuela: 9 journalists killed since 1992, including one murdered by a former police sergeant after investigating drugs gangs Ecuador: 3 journalists killed since 1992, including one who was a witness in a police corruption case Nicaragua: 2 journalists killed since 1992, including one killed after investigating electoral malpractice Russia: 79 journalists killed since 1992 — ten

The Spectator

Letters: Sir Peter Lampl replies to Charles Moore, and the memories of a wasteful GP

Medical waste Sir: Susan Hill’s article (‘Patient, heal thyself’, 29 June) dealt only with the unnecessary visits to GPs for minor ailments. In Wales we have an extra incentive to waste GPs’ time — all prescriptions are free. There are many people who are prepared to make a GP appointment just to get routine medicines for free, and GPs are powerless to resist. Tim Johnson Aberystwyth, Ceredigion   Sir: Susan Hill’s article revived pleasant memories of my stint as a locum general practitioner in the early 1970s in Goring-by-Sea. As the registered patient number of the solo practice was the maximum allowable by the NHS at the time, I was

Raymond Keene

Anand’s crisis

A disturbing pattern has emerged in the games of world champion Viswanathan Anand. As White in the Ruy Lopez he has begun to disregard in serial fashion the precept that ownership of the bishop pair, against two opposing knights or knight and bishop, tends to confer a major advantage. Not only do the bishops act together as a scything weapon, they also permit the player in possession to decide if and when to trade for an opposing minor piece. The power of the bishops has been known since the days of Steinitz. It was Dr Tarrasch, I believe, the great Praeceptor Germaniae, who opined that the player with the bishop

Raymond Keene

no. 273

Black to play. This position is from the game Nimzowitsch-Tarrasch, St Petersburg 1914. With both bishops trained on White’s king, what is the best way of ploughing up White’s defences? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 9 July 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 … Ng4 Last week’s winner Keith McDermott, Allerton, Bradford, W. Yorks

Dot Wordsworth

Swathe

Swathe is a popular word at the moment, and ignorance of its meaning, spelling and pronunciation deters no one. It is in the papers every day (swathes of empty seats at Wimbledon), and I was interested to hear it on the wireless the other evening pronounced to rhyme with moth. Can that be right? The army of Amurath, so Longfellow wrote in his tale of Scanderbeg, was ‘Mown down in the bloody swath/ Of the battle’s aftermath.’ That’s definitely wrong. An aftermath was the second growth of grass, after its first mowing, which is what math means. Mowing or math is what you do in a meadow. Math rhymes with

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: How can I stop my friends giving me Christmas presents?

Q. Over the years my close friends locally have been giving each other birthday and Christmas presents. Now, as I reach 60, it seems ridiculous to worry about choosing and buying all these presents for Christmases ad infinitum, as well as remembering each of their birthdays. Some of them have new daughters-in-law or sons-in-law and grandchildren on the scene, and more presents to buy, so they might welcome a truce. On my part, I am overwhelmed with stuff and don’t need any more. How do I stop the present giving/receiving without hurting their feelings? — Name withheld, Hampshire A. No doubt most of your friends are also overwhelmed with stuff,

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 4 July 2013

Home Business confidence in Britain was at its highest level since 2007, according to a survey by the British Chambers of Commerce, which said it expected gross domestic product to have grown by 0.6 per cent in the second quarter of the year.Ofgem, the energy regulator, warned that spare electricity capacity could fall to 2 per cent by 2015, increasing the risk of blackouts. The regulator urged companies to deal with theft of electricity, a third of it said to power cannabis farms. Butterflies and bees were found to have suffered badly from the cold May. Channel 4 is to broadcast the dawn call to prayer each day during Ramadan.

Susanna Gross

Bridge | 4 July 2013

Zia Mahmood has never been the most punctual man — but I wonder whether he’ll ever be late for a bridge tournament again? He and his partner Jan Jansma were favourites to win the European Open Pairs in Ostend last week. In the final, they were neck-and-neck with the German player Sabine Auken and her partner (in life as well as bridge) Roy Welland. In the end, Auken-Welland won by just 0.9 per cent — or 3.35 IMPS (international match points). Only later did I find out that Zia had been fined 4 IMPS for turning up a few minutes late that morning. When I rang to commiserate, he said