Society

Thursday

Raymond Keene

Opposite bishops

No, not the Church of England and its troubles with the question of whether women should be allowed to be bishops, but chess endgames, with rival bishops moving respectively on black and white squares. Traditionally, the fact that the bishops can play, as it were, past each other increases the possibility of a draw, as indeed do the enhanced possibilities of mutual blockades.   Nevertheless, great masters such as Nimzowitsch, Capablanca, Botvinnik, Smyslov and Karpov have been able to demonstrate that skilful handling of such situations may in fact lead to one side having, in effect, an extra piece if the enemy opposite bishop can be sidelined.   At the

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 31 January 2013

Q. Having recently relocated to my company’s Russian office, I now report to an uncouth Homo sovieticus. Knowing he’s the product of a society that had no time for so-called ‘bourgeois niceties’, I try not to judge when he slurps or speaks with his mouth full or places his knife and fork away from himself and against his plate in the 12 o’clock position at the end of a meal. I can even steel myself to bear his obsessive tooth-picking both at table and in the office. But much harder is his habitual nose-picking and bizarre tendency to rest thumb and forefinger inside his nostrils when talking to me. I

Dot Wordsworth

Onesie

The onesie has brought Britain one step nearer fainéant infantilism than the slanket. The slanket, a portmanteau of sleeved and blanket, reached a height of popularity in 2009. It looked like a monk’s habit, except it fastened at the back, like a hospital gown. The slanket’s purpose was cosiness while watching television, which people in Britain, apart from us, dear reader, do for more than four hours a day. I admit that during the recent wintry weather I put on my tweed overcoat one evening at home. Unlike the overcoat, the slanket was not intended to be worn in the street. The onesie has been worn in public by some

Raymond Keene

Puzzle no. 251

Black to play. This position is a variation from Caruana-Nakamura, Wijk aan Zee 2013. Black is two pawns down but White is badly tied up. How can Black continue? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 5 February 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 … Rd2 (2 Qxd2 Bxe4+ 3 Qg2 Rh3) Last week’s winner Aaron Milne, Northwich, Cheshire

Taki

High life | 31 January 2013

Good for you, Clive, as in James, on your television criticism for the Telegraph. Not many people nowadays know how good a painter Gerald Murphy was. Richard E. Grant pointed this out in his programme The Riviera: A History in Pictures, and Clive praised him for it. Clive James is weak on health but very strong on intellect, and it’s good to read him and his pithy remarks in a paper of value. Gerald Murphy was the model for Dick Diver in Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night. He was the owner of Mark Cross, a luxury goods store on 5th Avenue, back when luxury goods were beautiful and owned by

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 31 January 2013

A superstitious Devon woman who lived and died in the residential home run by my parents, used to reckon that, if her first glimpse of a new moon was through a window or in a mirror, she was in for a month of rotten luck. If she first saw the new moon when she was out of doors, however, she was pleased, because that meant she was in for a month of good luck. If she glimpsed the new moon first over her right shoulder, she said, that would be very lucky indeed. It had happened to her mother once in her lifetime, but never to her. She’d lived all

Melissa Kite

Real life | 31 January 2013

When it is too painful to go forward any more, it is time to go back. And so it was that I found myself in the Oxfam bookshop down a little cobbled street, buying second-hand vinyl records. I had not gone into the Oxfam bookshop to buy vinyl records. I had gone in to see whether they stocked such a thing as a desk diary. I have been having an awful time since 1 January searching in vain for this most obsolete of items — an A4, one-page-to-a-day, wide-ruled desk diary. ‘Why don’t you just put all your appointments in your BlackBerry like a normal person?’ said a girlfriend snootily.

Alexander Chancellor

Long life | 31 January 2013

I went to a funeral last Saturday, a depressingly frequent occurrence at my age. But it was an exceptional funeral, not only because of its gloriously peaceful rural setting amid the still snow-flecked hills of north-west Hampshire, or because of the beauty of the service that took place in the tiny village of Tangley’s charming Victorian church. It was exceptional because the person there being laid to rest in a wicker coffin was himself exceptional, one Peter Thomas Staheyeff Carson. I became a good friend of Peter’s more than 50 years ago, when we were both undergraduates at Cambridge — he at Trinity College and I at Trinity Hall next

Robin Oakley

Sporting greats

I don’t just love jumping horses — I love the folk who train them and ride them and those who watch them doing it, too. Open the sports pages on Sunday or Monday and what do you get in the acres of newsprint devoted to football? A scowling Sir Alex Ferguson ranting that Manchester United have been cheated by a linesman, a petulant Arsène Wenger whingeing that Arsenal have been robbed by a referee, a glum Rafael Benitez blaming the pitch or the weather or a new brand of boot wax for Chelsea’s latest setback. The so-called supporters are even worse. There isn’t even a tribal loyalty any more. A

Susanna Gross

Bridge | 31 January 2013

Once you’ve made a fool of yourself in public often enough, you pretty much stop minding. At least, that’s my experience of playing bridge on Vugraph (which is broadcast online, for all to watch). These days, all major national and international tournaments are shown online, so there’s no getting away from it; but you quickly learn that every player — even the best — makes blunders under pressure. That’s my excuse, anyway — in case you saw any of the action from the England women’s bridge trials last weekend. I was lucky enough to be partnering Sally Brock, so despite some egregious mistakes we finished second (Jane Moore and Gillian

The Spectator

Letters | 31 January 2013

Reforming criminal justice Sir: Crime continues to fall under this government and is now at its lowest level since the crime survey began in 1982. But we can’t be complacent. We still see too many of the same faces going round and round the criminal justice system, as Theodore Dalrymple notes in his article ‘The rehabilitation game’ (26 January). We are already addressing the problems Dalrymple describes. We are changing the law so every community sentence will include punishment and introducing satellite tagging to keep a much closer eye on persistent and high-risk offenders. I am looking at the use of cautions. We shouldn’t remove the right for the police

Toby Young Toby Young

Kenyan highways

Before setting off for Kenya, where I’m spending six weeks helping The Spectator’s ‘Wild life’ columnist, Aidan Hartley, set up a school, I worried about the safety of my family. Would I be exposing my wife and four children to danger? I’d heard a lot of horror stories about violent crimes committed against the white population, up to and including murder. No, it was too irresponsible. I simply couldn’t leave them in Acton. OK, I’m exaggerating. The murder rate in Nairobbery is higher than London. But the house we’ve rented on the Ridgemount Estate in the Rift Valley feels a lot safer than our house in west London. Not only

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 31 January 2013

Home Britain decided to send 40 ‘military advisers’ to Mali, 70 more with an RAF Sentinel surveillance aircraft and 20 with a C17 transport plane, and 200 to neighbouring states in a training role; Britain was ‘keen’, according to Downing Street, to aid France there. David Cameron, the Prime Minister, visited Algeria. The British economy shrank by 0.3 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2012, according to the Office for National Statistics, meaning that there was no growth at all last year. The FTSE 100 share index went above the 6,300 mark for the first time since May 2008. Qatari Diar, the property arm of the emirate of Qatar,

The Spectator

Bad care

When the letters ‘NHS’ appeared to the world above the dancing nurses at the Olympic opening ceremony, many in Britain will have imagined two darker words hovering alongside: ‘Mid Staffs’. Few of those affected will have been able to forget what now seems to be one of the greatest scandals in the history of British health care. Its horrific details will be laid out in full next week when Robert Francis QC publishes his report into Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust. What we already know about the level of care at the Trust is shocking — and goes far beyond patients left in soiled bedclothes. There was the case of the

Dumpynose

2098: Song IX

Four unclued lights might justly sing ‘4D/18/13’ (five words in total). A relevant pair of clued lights must be shaded.   Across 10    European secretes strange smeary enzyme (10) 11    Botanical description half recorded by child (6) 12    Big browser nibbled wood sorrel for pudding (7) 14    Welshman that is backing Nauru (5) 15     Fruit from classy old bush, bishop plucked (4) 16    Simple creature almost in a frenzy with English scholar (6) 23    Ancient inhabitant’s aim to be active (7) 24    An abrupt farewell from 6? (4) 25    Animals, pen in Peebles repelled (4) 27    Vessel rocks with man in (7) 29    Lumpy daughter emitted awful loud sound

Dumpynose

2095: Getting around | 31 January 2013

The unclued lights are alcoholic drinks, and thus might be included, if one was getting a round in. First prize David Heath, Elston, Newark Runners-up Mrs J. Vernalls, Thame, Oxfordshire; David Jenkinson, Matlock, Derbyshire

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Shapps aide delivers next blow in BBC cuts row

Eric Pickles has been at war with the BBC over the way it reports council cuts for a while now. But today the battle took on a new front following the corporation’s reporting of a report on council tax benefit cuts. This morning the Beeb picked up on a report from the Resolution Foundation which warned council tax bills for the poorest families could rise by as much as £600. The way the story, which you can read online here, was reported has angered Jake Berry, PPS to Grant Shapps, sufficiently to fire off an angry letter to BBC director of News Helen Boaden. The letter, which I’ve seen this

The Spectator

Has the RSPCA become a different species?

Is the RSPCA morphing from animal welfare charity into an animal rights group? In this week’s Spectator, Melissa Kite writes that following the charity’s successful prosecution of the Heythrop hunt, its chief executive Gavin Grant now has his sights set on the racing industry: Buoyed by the success of his prosecution of the Heythrop hunt, I am reliably informed, he has set his sights on the racing industry next. ‘His modus operandi for these big campaigns is to target high-profile events and people,’ a well-placed veterinary expert told me. ‘So you won’t see him having a go at Badminton, where horses also get injured, because it’s not a household event.