Society

Thursday

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

Picture perfect: Locatelli at the National Gallery reviewed

I feel for Locatelli, the new Italian restaurant inside the National Gallery, whose opening coincides with the 200th anniversary of the gallery and a rehang which I can’t see the point of because I want to watch Van Eyck in the dark. Locatelli must compete with the Caravaggio chicken, which is really called ‘Supper at Emmaus’ if you are an art historian or an adult. In the publicity photographs the chef Giorgio Locatelli is actually standing in front of the Caravaggio chicken. It looks as if Jesus is waving at Giorgio Locatelli but the chicken is unmoved. It stole all the gravitas. ‘Locatelli is the National Gallery’s new Italian master

Luke McShane

No. 859

White to play. Gukesh-Firouzja, SuperUnited Rapid, Zagreb 2025. Firouzja has just walked into a trap. Which move allowed Gukesh to reach an easily winning position? Email answers to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 21 July. There is a prize of a £20 John Lewis voucher for the first correct answer out of a hat. Please include a postal address and allow six weeks for prize delivery. Last week’s solution 1 Bf6! Kxf6 2 h7 a1=Q 3 h8=Q+ wins with a skewer Last week’s winner Richard Burrow, Cheshire

Dot Wordsworth

Where did ‘husband’ come from?

‘Am I housebound?’ asked my husband as I was discussing with him the complicated history of the name for his role in life. ‘No, darling,’ I said. ‘You’re the one in the house who just is or lives there.’ Only later did I tell him that the word bond, behind the -band of husband, sank in worth with the years, following the same path as boor, churl and peasant. Whereas I as a housewife enjoy a comparatively transparent label, any husband’s title is obscure. It is simply a house-bond, but the first element of husband, hus-, no longer seems like house, and the -bond element is often mistaken for a

Victoria Lane

Spectator Competition: Some like it hot

For Competition 3408 you were invited to write poems about heatwaves. This comp was inspired by the weather! In the face of lethargy, rage, sleeplessness etc lots of you still managed to put fingers to keyboard with good results. It was almost too hot to choose, but the £25 vouchers go to the following. Long drag the days of lop, of laze,Of no precipitation,Bar slathered factor fifty glazeOn perspiration. And long the nights; too hot, still light,Fans faintly stirring stifleWhile outside, drunks ferment a fightOf some mere trifle. Long seems the spell, Heaven or Hell,When England’s tropic.Waters run short, tempers as well,Heat’s misanthropic. The wave will break; cloudburst, rain slake.Upon

Catriona Olding

I’ve rekindled my love affair with England

Late spring. Sitting in the armchair in the living room, I was chilly and disconsolate. My middle daughter was seven-and-a-half months pregnant and unwell. The pregnancy had triggered two serious autoimmune disorders. She’d been successfully treated for thyroid cancer a few years before, but this new disease was attacking her lower spine; she was exhausted and in almost constant pain. At times she couldn’t pick up her two-year-old daughter. I could barely afford to fill up the car, never mind pay for parking and a flight back to England, and every night lay awake worrying. Beside the chair to the left, a live rock wall, and in front, a wood-burner.

Melissa Kite

How to spot a troublesome Airbnb review

The guest who thought our farm was in the town centre was very cross indeed. She got out of her car by the old fountain and stood hands on hips surveying the meadows sloping from the big old house towards the rugged mountains beyond. She was wearing knee-length khaki safari shorts, so you’d have thought she’d be pleased to pitch up in the middle of nowhere. But she looked askance at the rolling hills and affected to be shocked by the reality of what was clearly pictured and described on the booking site. She asked how she and her husband were supposed to walk to their drinks party in town

Robin Oakley

Labour is risking the future of racing

The only political party with a serious chance of winning office I will ever vote for again is the one which acknowledges that in all probability and at least for a while it will increase taxes. Every party piles up promises that they will be the ones to get Britain working again. But building power stations, reservoirs and schools costs money. So does hiring doctors and nurses, filling potholes and getting trains to run on time. Some claim they will finance their plans by creating growth, some by taxing the rich. Then voters discover that the growth fairy remains elusive and the rich have been re-defined to include them: public

Doc

2712: Revisions

When paired the unclued lights, one hyphened and one French geographical name, and another which is a combination of 18 & 33, are somehow related. Across 1    Freight making vehicle move (5) 6    The architect’s malign intentions? (7) 13    Legal term about wills in US and Spain – late revision (4-5) 15    House-builders’ workplace isn’t pleasant to see, we’re told (4) 16    Belgian crime writer, if not in France, entertains me (7) 17    Strips and barely moves? (7) 21    Rail operatives picked up in major station (5) 24    Pacific root-crop mirrored in protectorate (4) 27    Disclose head has left for Harrow’s rival (4) 35    Lover and friend breaking Laura’s heart

Janet de Botton

Bridge

The newly launched Zimmermann team, relocated from Monaco to Switzerland, were victorious at the European Transnational Championships in Poland in June. The tarnish has been rather rubbed off their many European and World titles when one of his previous pairs, Fulvio Fantoni and Claudio Nunes, were banned for alleged cheating. Pierre is now surrounding himself with the top Dutch pair Brink–Drijver, as well as three of the best Polish players around: Kalita, Nowosadzki and Klukowski. Here’s Michal Klukowski – youngest ever World Champion in the World Open Pairs, and in the same year winning the Polish Junior Championships – in the quarter-final against Bulgaria. ‘Kluk’ was sitting South, having arrived

The Spectator

2709: Our set – solution

The unclued lights are the names of the principal members of the Spectator crossword compiling team since its inception in July 1981. 7 Across reveals JAC and DOC, while Mass appears in the red squares. The yellow squares can be arranged to spell La Jerazana. First prize Tim and Cathy Knox, London WC1N Runners-up Julian Hammond, Manchester; John and Di Lee, Axminster, Devon

Joan Collins

Save us from the Lime bike invasion

I’m a Londoner born and bred, and I love this city, even though it’s slowly being destroyed by the insidious antics of Sadiq Khan. Do his repeated failures explain why his hair is going prematurely white? Why are the roads closed all the time, for no apparent reason? Why are there endless roadworks, yet no men working on them? Why do we have filthy streets and graffiti everywhere? Visiting Majorca, I was impressed by the pristine streets and pavements of Palma. ‘How come you have no litter or graffiti?’ I asked the driver. ‘Everyone is very proud of our city, and we respect it,’ he replied. ‘No one is allowed

Andrew Watts

Woke coke: would you drink Gaza Cola?

Andy Warhol believed that the greatness of America lay in how the richest consumers bought exactly the same things as the poorest. ‘You can know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and, just think, you can drink Coke too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking.’ The Spectator’s Rory Sutherland says that it’s the only drink that if a retailer doesn’t sell it, from an African beach shack to a Michelin-starred restaurant, it’s their fault, not yours. Some places do choose not to serve it, though. There is

Peter Jones

What Aristotle would have made of Gregg Wallace

The BBC chef Gregg Wallace has been sacked for his objectionable behaviour over many years, but has blamed the BBC for not taking the action which, he claims, would have saved him from himself. Aristotle (d. 322 bc) would have doubted that. Let us assume, says Aristotle, that it is possible for any human to wish to do what is good. But a mere wish counts for nothing. Goodness will find its expression only in the way a man deals with the means he adopts to bring about the wished-for result. But what if he is just not the sort of man to take the trouble? That is surely a

The Spectator

Are heatwaves becoming more common?

Grand unions The BMA – or British Medical Association – called a five-day strike of junior doctors (which it now calls resident doctors). Some other grandly named trade unions: — Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen (or Aslef) — Confederation of British Surgery — First Division Association (senior civil servants) — Royal College of Nursing — Royal College of Midwives — Society of Authors — Society of Radiographers Heat up Are heatwaves becoming more commonplace across Britain? Average number of days per year in which each county experiences a temperature in excess of 32°C (90°F): 1931-1960 0.17 1961-1990 0.25 1991-2020 0.40 2015-2024 0.91 (Note that the latter period is

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Down with the middle class

I suppose this magazine is probably not the best forum to launch a movement to sweep away the British middle class, much along the lines of Pol Pot’s adventure in Kampuchea in the late 1970s, but one can only play with the cards one has been dealt. The more one reads the newspapers, the more inescapable becomes the conclusion that these are the people who are responsible for almost all that is bad, verging on wicked, in our society. Not the lower-middle class, incidentally (the petit bourgeoisie so despised by Marx they were denied even agency), but the comfortable tranche above them. The middle-middle. The professions, by and large. And,

The Spectator

The Afghan asylum leak cover-up saved lives

The United Kingdom’s immigration system is broken. Tens of thousands have entered the country who should not, and the bureaucracy which processes asylum cases is a creaking wreck. Those who do deserve a safe welcome are left in legal limbo for months, if not years. And yet the Home Office, which is responsible for this chaos, is not even the department in government with the most inefficient and unaccountable bureaucracy. That hard-fought distinction belongs to the Ministry of Defence, which combines profligacy in procurement with an inability to give armed forces families homes that meet even the most basic standards of decency. So when we learned this week that ministers

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Inflation up, hosepipes off and grants for electric cars

Home Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, agreed with President Emmanuel Macron of France that Britain could return perhaps 50 asylum seekers a week to France and accept in their place the same number of applicants through a regulated system. To celebrate, 573 people arrived that day in England in small boats, bringing the total for the week ending 14 July to 1,387. Moygashel Bonfire Committee in Co. Tyrone defended the placing of an effigy of a small boat with 12 migrants on a bonfire to usher in 12 July. Britain had, it was revealed, offered asylum to thousands of Afghan soldiers and their families caught by the accidental publication

Charles Moore Charles Moore

What I’ll miss about Norman Tebbit

This column comes to you from Auckland Castle, former palace and hunting lodge of the Prince Bishops of Durham. We, the Rectory Society, are here by kind permission of its saviour, Jonathan Ruffer, celebrating our 20th anniversary. Jonathan rescued the castle not from the heathen but from the Church of England. The last Anglican bishop to inhabit it was Justin Welby, in his brief year at Durham before being translated to Canterbury, but it had been run down for many years before that. Bishop Auckland is in one of the poorest parts of England but it did not occur to the Church authorities to use the heritage of this astonishing

Wednesday

Jonathan Sacerdoti

What’s happening in southern Syria – and why Israel is involved

Over the last 24 hours, southern Syria has seen a sharp escalation in violence involving Syrian government forces, local Druze militias, and Israeli airpower. The developments centre on the city of As-Suwayda and the surrounding region, home to much of Syria’s Druze population, and have drawn renewed attention to the complex relationship between the Druze community, the Syrian regime, and Israel. Prospects for normalising relations between Israel and Syria have significantly worsened The Syrian army has begun heavily shelling areas in and around As-Suwayda. Israeli aircraft launched strikes against regime positions in Suwayda and Daraa, and reportedly targeted a military convoy belonging to Abu Amsha, a Turkish-backed militia commander. Then,

Eliot Wilson

Are we sure the Afghan data debacle won’t happen again?

‘Afghanistan’ was the heading of Defence Secretary John Healey’s statement to the House of Commons on Tuesday – a word that hardly does justice to a three-year saga involving a catastrophic security breach and loss of data by the Ministry of Defence, a superinjunction and billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money. Ministers and civil servants cannot be allowed to make policy and spend taxpayers’ money without any kind of oversight. That is not how a democracy works The bare bones of the story are these. In February 2022, the details of nearly 20,000 Afghans who had applied to come to the UK after the Taliban had seized power, as well