Society

Friday

Clarissa Tan

Do politicians know what they’re doing with the Royal Charter?

I witnessed my first-ever PMQs last week. It was, as my friend and Spectator colleague Isabel Hardman told me, not a raucous a PMQs as can usually be. Yet for me, it seemed a pretty lively parliamentary debate and — at the risk of sounding hopelessly naive — a bit of a treat to actually see important things being debated for all to see. I wonder if UK politicians know that the Royal Charter they have drawn up may one day come back and bite their butts? For what they’re proposing finally influences an entire nation’s conversation. If they have their way, the UK is headed for press regulation, the

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 21 March 2013

Joining the club Sir: As Robert Hardman notes (Royal notebook, 16 March), not only is the C back in FCO but these days there is a waiting list of countries interested in joining, or being more closely associated with, the Commonwealth. I have a list of at least half a dozen, and even some strong signals from Dublin that they, too, are now thinking about joining the club. How can this be so when we were told so firmly by foreign policy experts in the past century that we should break our ties with the Commonwealth and that our future prosperity and destiny lay in Europe? One reason is certainly

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

Tanya Gold reviews Attendant, London

I love metaphor, and now metaphor has led me to a toilet near Goodge Street, in that thankless patch of London idiots call No-Ho. Because this is not a toilet any more; it’s an espresso bar that used to be a toilet, and it is called Attendant, and it was in the Daily Mail, because the Daily Mail, while seemingly robust, is easily frightened by things that seem strange, and crack the curve of its happy universe. I am here with an architectural historian, which is good, because I can now imagine him six inches high, and declaiming, like Nikolaus Pevsner, from the toilet bowl — by far the best

Dot Wordsworth

Enthronisation

They were worrying in Canterbury about a clash between the inauguration of the Pope and the enthronisation of the Archbishop of Canterbury. It was a near miss. You might think the word enthronisation sounds like something that George Bush had coined. Yet it has been in use longer than enthronement, which is not known until 1685. Two centuries earlier, Malory was writing of intronyscacyon in the Morte d’Arthur. In the succeeding centuries the word was applied to Archbishops of Canterbury, to the King, the Great Sophi of Persia, the Pope, the Ark of the Covenant and to Satan. Enthronisation is not just a word from distant centuries. ‘The enthronisation of

Raymond Keene

Candidates

The Candidates tournament to decide the challenger to world champion Anand is the strongest tournament ever to have graced the capital. As I write, three rounds of fighting chess have produced the following scores: Aronian 2½, Carlsen and Svidler 2, Kramnik Grischuk and Radjabov 1½, Gelfand and Ivanchuk ½. The tournament continues at the IET building, No. 2 Savoy Place, London until early next month (www.worldchess.com/candidates). This week, some dramatic positions from the early rounds. Ivanchuk-Aronian: Fidé Candidates London 2013 (see diagram 1) In this position Black finds an extraordinary move to keep his chances alive. Ivanchuk was in awful time trouble, racing against the clock to complete 40 moves. 31

Raymond Keene

No. 258

White to play. This position is a variation from Radjabov-Ivanchuk, London Candidates 2013. White has only one move to win here. Can you see it? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 26 March 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 Rf6 Last week’s winner  Phillip Gardner, Letchworth Garden City, Hertfordshire

Trevor Kavanagh

Diary – 21 March 2013

I learned on Wednesday that a row is exploding over freedom of the press … in Australia. Surely some mistake. Australia is refreshingly open and its newspapers are free to say, often rudely, whatever they like. In fact, they are among the world’s the most tightly regulated, standing 26th and 29th respectively in the Reporters Without Borders censorship index — way behind Jamaica, Costa Rica and Namibia. Where, I wonder, will Britain stand after the events of this week? Much has changed in Oz since I spent my first day there as a Ten Pound Pom, looking comical in a grey suit on Bondi beach in midsummer, almost half a century

The Spectator

Barometer | 21 March 2013

Big ask Birmingham Council asked residents, in a survey on wheelie bins, whether they were gay or bisexual. Some more nosey questions asked by councils: — Is your gender identity the same as the gender you were assigned with at birth? (Consultation into relief road near Manchester Airport) — Which of the following describes your religion? (Lambeth council consultation on road humps) — Which of the following describes how you think of yourself? Male? Female? In another way? (Consultation on super fast broadband for Isle of Wight council) — What do you think caused your heterosexuality? (Staff questionnaire at Buckinghamshire County Council) On the way David Nicholson, chief executive of

Taki

High life | 21 March 2013

He was a member of a charmed circle of Hellene and Philhellene intellectuals just before and after the second world war, experiencing modern Greece and seeing it as a place rich in beauty and a stimulus to artistic creation. Patrick Leigh Fermor, whose biography by Artemis Cooper I just put away almost in tears — like a magical night with the girl of one’s dreams, I didn’t want it to end, but end it did — was a second Byron in Greek eyes. I found the book unputdownable, as they say in Boise, Idaho, especially the rich descriptions of rambunctious jaunts to tavernas and places I had spent my youth

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 21 March 2013

The final few passengers straggled aboard and a sulky, petulant-looking BA steward, his orange face creased with sleep, passed through economy slamming up the overhead lockers. Though trained to be cheerful, democratic and polite, tonight, at least, none of these crowd-pleasing attributes came naturally to him. The rictus grin said: Economy, I despise you all. I had a row of seats to myself and fervently hoped this state of affairs would prevail. The last to board was a young couple burdened with hand luggage and a sleepy child each. Mum and the kids arranged themselves in the row in front of me, while Dad, a huge blond-haired man, squeezed himself

Melissa Kite

Real life | 21 March 2013

My nerves were already shot to pieces when my phone rang and a faint little voice said, ‘Hallo, this is Vodafone, we’re just ringing to let you know we’ve got some offers for you.’ I was about to hang up when I remembered, in some sunken recess of the shrivelled left-hand side of my brain, that my phone contract is up for renewal soon and if I didn’t speak to the little voice I might soon have to visit the Vodafone shop (a direct replica of the underworld and God’s way of showing us what hell will be like if we don’t behave) and negotiate a deal involving unlimited gigabytes

Alexander Chancellor

At last! A tango-dancing pope

Just a year ago on this page I was writing about Pope Benedict XVI’s elder brother Georg and how, while ostensibly discreet and loyal to his celebrated sibling, he contrived at the same time to make him look too old and bumbling for the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church. In a book, My Brother, the Pope, this old priest from Bavaria said that his younger brother had never wanted the job, was too physically frail for it, and found it a tremendous strain. Georg Ratzinger must now be feeling somewhat vindicated, but at the time he was ‘off message’, for the Vatican was insistent that the pope was on

Janet de Botton

Bridge | 21 March 2013

The London Metropolitan Bridge Association’s annual Swiss Teams’ Tournament, which attracted 35 teams, was won in style by Roger O’Shea, ably assisted by most of the Hackett family. There are a number of situations in bridge where we can’t afford to hesitate, or we’d give the game away. The only thing to rely on in these circumstances is the experience we have gained over the years. Multiple World Champion Paul Hackett has more experience than most of us put together, and here he made use of a good rule of thumb: if you’re offered a chance to over-ruff, it’s often right to refuse. The fireworks started early (see diagram). This

Toby Young Toby Young

What is this word?

‘What are you writing?’ I asked my nine-year-old daughter as she sat at the kitchen table doing her homework. ‘A recount,’ she said. ‘What’s a recount?’ She looked at me with utter disdain. ‘Duh! A recount.’ I calmly explained that you could recount an event in a piece of writing, but that didn’t make what you’d written a ‘recount’. The only sense in which you can use ‘recount’ as a noun is when referring to the act of recounting something. ‘What’s this then?’ she said, waving a piece of paper in my face. Sure enough, the exercise she’d been given by her teacher was to write a ‘recount’ of something

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 21 March 2013

Q. I am the organist at a leading public school. We work hard to ensure that the boys are quiet and respectful in Chapel, which they attend every day. The behaviour of their parents, however, when they come for confirmation and carol services is appalling. They talk through the hymns, they talk through the anthem, they whisper through the sermon and prayers, and shout over the organ music: all of these seem to be impediments to their main aim, which is to chat. How can we get them to set a better example to their sons, and treat the event with the respect which I am sure, if asked, they

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 21 March 2013

Home In what he called a ‘fiscally neutral’ Budget, George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, confronted a reduced forecast of gross domestic product for 2013 from 1.2 per cent to 0.6 per cent and a further delay until 2017-18 in reducing the burden of public sector debt, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility. Most government departments would have to cut a further 2 per cent of their spending over the next two years, saving about £2.5 billion. Changes in state pensions, introduced a year earlier than expected, would save the Treasury almost £6 billion a year by 2016-17, some of it to be used for infrastructure spending. The

Doc

2102: full circle

Each of the four paired lights (at 1A/4, 13/14, 30/31 and 32/33) forms a RIGHT ANGLE which is the solution in each case. Four right angles equal THREE SIXTY DEGREES (the solutions at 23/40/15), thus making the FULL CIRCLE of the title. First prize R.R. Alford, Oundle, Peterborough Runners-up Jenny Atkinson, Little Chalfont, Bucks; Lewis Corner, South Fremantle, Western Australia

Doc

2105: Idle

A trio of unclued lights (four words, one with an apostrophe) gave rise to another trio found in four further unclued lights (eight words in total), all of which featured the two remaining unclued lights.   Across 1 Suspect fine spray having corrosion (8) 9 Assessment of arrangement of a tune and a viol (10) 14 Flower that’s popular with Nationalist (3) 16 Firm fish penned? (6) 17 Ethiopian king’s drink (5) 18 Chap welcome to retch (5) 20 Soup – broth’s mixed with bit of cabbage (7) 22 Two dramas – one cut – failure (7, hyphened) 24 Not very much of article by violinist, Tasmin (7, two words)