Society

Wednesday

Alexander Armstrong

Christmas Notebook | 12 December 2012

I used to spend a small part of every Christmas season worrying that perhaps that year, the particular year in which I was worrying, wasn’t quite as Christmassy as all the others. Generally speaking, I can take all the cinnamon and cloves and ching-chingy shop music you can throw at me, even the colossal seasonal uplift in general wassail-ment, without so much as a prickle of Nowell-feeling making itself known in my breast. Don’t for a minute think that I’m any kind of non-Christmas person — nothing could be further from the truth. The season of roaring fires, mince pies, seeing your breath, carols, frost, shooting, presents, booze, decent telly,

Mark Greaves

‘We rot. Don’t we?’

Joanna Lumley and Sister Elizabeth Obbard are seated at the front of the church. Lumley is perched elegantly on the edge of her chair; Sister Elizabeth settles deep into hers, submerged under folds of habit. They are talking in front of an audience at the Carmelite church in Kensington, west London, about life as a nun. And Sister Elizabeth is being wonderfully honest. ‘The first six months were dreadful,’ she says. This was in the 1960s, when religious sisters did hard, physical work that was ‘supposed to make you humble’. Did it make her humble, asks Lumley. ‘No,’ says Sister Elizabeth, who is meek but steely. ‘It made me angry.’

Brian Sewell

Screen burn

In mid-November an Indian chauffeur taking me to Broadcasting House made a detour to show me the Christmas lights in Regent Street. He wished to share the pleasure that they gave him and it was with glee that of the shops he used the terms ‘top class’ and ‘posh’, when to me the street seems almost as tawdry as the ghastly trek from Marble Arch to Oxford Circus. Dissembling, I went through the motions of agreement, thanked him for the treat, and fell into deep melancholy at the thought of yet another Christmas and all that it no longer means to me. The real Christmas — the Christmas of a

Tara Isabella Burton

Tbilisi: The Edge of the Real

The electricity will be on in one hour, says my landlady. She tells me that it is dark out all over town (ignoring the glittering chrome bridge over the Mtkvari River, ignoring the casino that casts neon shadows on the banks at night). She calls me ‘daughter’ and evades specifics. Won’t I come upstairs for dinner at eight, or perhaps nine? (She is so busy; she works so hard; she’ll ring when dinner is ready.) The call never comes. So I eat out, in restaurants, but often I cannot seem to leave my neighbourhood. Whenever I think I’ve found the way, I am turned back on myself again. A street

James Delingpole James Delingpole

We must act now to save our country from the scourge of wind turbines

The place I love more than anywhere on earth is the Edw Valley in mid-Wales. We’ve been going there every summer for more than a decade now and the kids think of it as their second home. When I die — as I nearly did once, you’ll remember, when I was carried off down the River Edw in full spate only to be rescued by an overhanging branch — you’ll find engraved in my heart the name of the hamlet where we stay. Cregrina. It’s our garden of Eden. In the evenings, long after the valley has descended into shadow, the moors on the humpbacked hills are still bathed in

Michael Heath

The Making of Snow White

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (or ‘Seven Little Men’, as Walt Disney called them — he didn’t want to ‘disrespect’ dwarfs) first previewed in 1937 at the Carthay Circle Theater in Hollywood. Stars of stage, screen and radio turned up, including Douglas Fairbanks Jr, Marlene Dietrich and Frank Capra. Most were sceptical about an animated feature film lasting more than three minutes, and no one was more worried than Walt. If it failed he would be on skid row. Luckily, the audience went berserk, laughing and crying at the same time. The film was a hit; it even made Chaplin laugh. The animators who helped bring this fairytale to

Henrietta Leyser

In the cold light of dawn

In The English Cathedral Peter Marlow of Royal Mail fame (his photographs of eight world heritage sites were used on stamps in 2005 and in 2008 of six British cathedrals) has given us a complete set of photographs of England’s 42 Anglican cathedrals. Anyone who can name all 42 surely deserves an extra Christmas present, but those looking for a luscious coffee-table book to give away should be warned that this volume, despite appearances — it is very large and all text appears discreetly at the back — is not it. The English Cathedral is a remarkably austere book. The photographs are nearly all taken from west to east, just

Nicholas Gormanston

The most decorative honey pot in Ireland

Luggala Lodge was built in Ireland’s Wicklow mountains near the end of the 18th century by Peter La Touche, the son of a French Huguenot banking family. It was only ten miles from his house, Bellevue, and abundant game made it an ideal place to indulge a love of field sports. The late Desmond FitzGerald, Knight of Glin, who for years was head of the Irish Georgian Society, wrote of it: ‘Somehow, this whitewashed toy pavilion fits into its green-grey setting of old twisted oak trees, beeches, mossy rocks and mountains in the most unnaturally natural way. It carries off its very unlikelihood with a vivid panache.’ Robert O’Byrne is

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

A Christmas Carol for the Chancellor

‘“You will be haunted,” resumed the Ghost, “by Three Spirits, without their visits you cannot hope to shun the path I tread…”’ ‘“I am the Ghost of Christmas Past,” said the Apparition. “Come with me,” and Scrooge followed.’ The scene was as familiar to Ebenezer Scrooge as to any Spectator reader. Returning to the past, the now-reformed former miser saw himself as Charles Dickens had described him in the last chapter of his famous short story… ‘“I don’t know what to do!” cried Scrooge, laughing and crying in the same breath; and making a perfect Laocoon of himself with his stockings. “I am as light as a feather, I am

Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

A chance to look backwards, and forwards, and see where you are

To Edinburgh for Christmas this year, and I can’t wait. We’ll be leaving any day now, in our pathetic London squib of a car. You know the sort — it’s got a fuel tank the size of a milk carton and on the motorway it sounds like a bee. It never feels pathetic in London, because we use it once a fortnight and drive at 15mph. Up north, though, you can feel people looking at you askance. I mean, they never say anything, but you know what they’re thinking. ‘You’re professional, grown-up people,’ say their eyes, ‘and you have a family car with an engine smaller than that of my

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

There may be troubles ahead, but here’s my Christmas recipe for keeping the pecker up

I tried, I really did, right to the bitter end. No column has made more effort than Any Other Business to spot pinpoints of light on this year’s dark economic horizon. If there was a Spectator Optimist of the Year award, I’d walk it. But with the Chancellor and the Governor drowning out the carol singers with what has become a dirge-duet about the long, hard and winding road to recovery — and with evidence even I can’t deny of an autumn setback after the late summer bounce — my self-appointed role in the national conversation has begun to look more eccentric than ever. All I can do at this

Robert Gorelangton

Going for a song | 12 December 2012

I once asked Donald Sutherland what it was like filming the famous naked love scene with Julie Christie in Don’t Look Now. He said, ‘It was just so horrible.’ I was telling this anecdote over a bacon sandwich to the freckled actor Eddie Redmayne, who, if he is hit by a bus tomorrow, will be remembered for the very rude sex scene he did in the telly adaptation of the novel Birdsong. He had to make love to the radiant French actress Clémence Poésy. What can that have been like? ‘The only thing I can say is: imagine if you had to do it. Her nipples had tape on while

Christopher Howse

The answers

Weird world 1 Mark Rothko’s 2 George Washington 3 Nadine Dorries 4 The Duchess of Cornwall 5 Sakhalin 6 The 158th Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race 7 Harry Redknapp, when manager of Tottenham Hotspur 8 Hungary 9 David Cameron 10 Hitler   Tip of the tongue 1 Nadine Dorries 2 Boris Johnson 3 David Cameron 4 Dame Vivienne Westwood 5 Silvio Berlusconi 6 The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams 7 Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister 8 Rebekah Brooks 9 Boris Berezovsky: 10 Conrad, Lord Black of Crossharbour   Screen break 1 Skyfall 2 Martin Freeman 3 The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! 4 Madagascar 3 5 Dr

Bruce Anderson

A cellar in Mayfair

There is mixed news. It must be a long time since the nightingales sang in Berkeley Square. The traffic drowned them out long ago. There are still relics of grace and piquancy, most notably in Maggs Bros bookshop. But the old Mayfair, where the nouveaux riches learned to wear the fauns’ garlands of refinement, had been driven deeper into Georgian houses in quieter streets — until now. There has been a counter-attack. -Earlier this week, even though there were still no nightingales, I heard the music of the spheres. There was talk of a new wine merchants called Hedonism with an interesting Russian owner; I had meant to obtain further

Christopher Howse

Christmas Quiz

It’s time for the immemorial Christmas custom in which the family gathers round the iPad, cracks another walnut, and sharpens its competitive claws on the Spectator’s traditional challenge to suppressed memories of unlikely events, political gaffes, terrible films, old books and the Olympic opening ceremony. Weird world In 2012: 1 On whose painting, ‘Black on Maroon’, in the Tate, did a man scrawl ‘A potential piece of Yellowism’? 2 A three-year-old chicken nugget from McDonald’s, Dakota City, Nebraska, said to resemble which US president, sold for $8,100? 3 Name the MP who consented to 3,000 cockroaches and 5,000 crickets being poured on to her in an underground crate. 4 Which

Aidan Hartley

Wild life | 12 December 2012

Gilgil, Kenya Pembroke House, our children’s school, is a little slice of England set in Kenya’s Rift Valley. In the shadow of extinct volcanoes they play cricket on extensive grounds. They learn Latin within miles of soda lakes swarming with pink flamingos. The pioneering, resourceful spirit of Pembroke is symbolised in the school’s Christina chapel, with owls in the bell tower, built entirely by a former generation of under-13s. Our son Rider and daughter Eve are enjoying a privileged, magical upbringing. This week children from a rather different, impoverished background joined them for carol singing and mince pies out under the tropical night sky. These are the kids from the

Lucy Vickery

What the donkey saw

In Competition No. 2776 you were invited to supply a poem reflecting on the Nativity written from the point of view of the donkey or the ox who (according to artists’ portrayals of the event, at least) bore witness to it. From the mid-1970s, the poet U.A. Fanthorpe wrote poems as Christmas greetings to her friends in which she reworked various aspects of the Christmas story. One of these, ‘What the Donkey Saw’, gives an ass’s-eye view on proceedings that fateful night in the poet’s typically wry and witty style. An enjoyable one to judge, this. The extra fiver goes to G.M. Davis. The rest take £25. Happy Christmas! We

Roger Alton Roger Alton

A glorious embarrassment of riches

So those really were the days of miracle and wonder, the time of times, or any other lyric you might care to think of. 2012 — never has a year of sport provided so many thrills and tears, so many shivers of disbelief, so much joy. From Manchester City winning the Premiership with the last kick of the season, to England’s demolition of the mighty All Blacks; from the first British winner in the history of the Tour de France to the first British men’s Grand Slam tennis champion since the war; from the Ryder Cup’s Miracle in Medinah — beating the Yanks from 10-4 down thanks to the spirit

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

In praise of inventors – and visionaries too

The award for the most hideous TV moment of 2012 goes to NBC — and their coverage of the opening ceremony of the London Olympics. ‘Apparently there’s going to be a tribute to someone called Tim Berners-Lee.’ ‘If you haven’t heard of him, we haven’t either,’ giggles co-anchor Meredith Vieira. Then, with no evident irony, ‘We could look him up on the web.’ The recognition given to inventors is a strange thing. It isn’t helped by the fact that, with rare exceptions, they are not the most telegenic of people, putting their efforts into inventing things rather than explaining them. (George Stephenson, inventor of the steam locomotive, had an additional