Society

Thursday

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

Calm fire: the consolation of listening to Bruckner

31 min listen

Here’s an episode of Holy Smoke to mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of Anton Bruckner later this year. This embarrassingly eccentric genius was, perhaps, the most devoutly Catholic of all the major composers – but you don’t have to be religious to appreciate the unique consolation offered by his gigantic symphonies. On the other hand, it’s hard to appreciate the unique flavour of Bruckner without taking into account the influence of the liturgy on his sublime slow movements and what the (atheist) composer and Bruckner scholar Robert Simpson called the ‘calm fire’ of his blazing finales. If you make it through to the end of this episode, you’ll hear exactly

Matthew Lynn

Will Nvidia stock keep going up?

It more than doubled its sales. It unveiled a new line of microchips. It promised to keep rolling out new products for the next few years. In the end, Nvidia, the chip manufacturer, delivered the kind of blockbuster results that traders and investors had been waiting for. Yesterday’s ‘Nvidia Day’ (as the company’s quarterly results days are now known on Wall Street) turned out to be better than even the most bullish investor could have hoped for. There is just one snag. The company is now powering the bull market. If anything goes wrong with its turbo-charged expansion, it will bring equities down with it. It’s great for the moment

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Don’t blame climate change for the crummy weather

It was climate change wot gave us such a wet and stormy winter – or so you may have gathered from various reports this week. ‘Never ending UK rain made ten times more likely by climate change,’ declared a Guardian headline. ‘Climate change is a major reason why the UK suffered such a waterlogged winter, scientists have confirmed,’ asserted the BBC. There have also been numerous references to a ‘record stormy winter’ – based on it having the highest number of named storms in, er, the nine years since the Met Office started naming storms. We hear endlessly about the costs of flooding, but not at all about the savings from the

Owen Matthews

The shadow fleet helping Russia to evade sanctions

Economic sanctions were meant to be the West’s secret weapon against Russia, a way of crippling Vladimir Putin’s war machine and bringing his invasion of Ukraine to a halt without Nato firing a shot. Instead, Russia’s economy and military remain in rude health. After recent heavy attacks north of Kharkiv, Putin’s troops have seized more than 38 square miles of territory and stretched Kyiv’s already thinly deployed defences as they grind forward in Donbas. Putin has demoted his long-serving defence minister Sergei Shoigu, replacing him with the little-known economist Andrei Belousov. Appointing a finance specialist as military chief was a reminder that armies march on money. In Russia’s case, oil

Michael Simmons Michael Simmons

The unbeatable glory of a doner kebab

Ionce shared a bed with a doner kebab. I’d hungrily joined a 3 a.m. queue for much needed post-pub sustenance, only to pass out as soon as I sat down on my bed to eat it. It was a vinegary and leathery bedfellow to wake up to, but I’ve felt ever since that spending a full night with a doner qualifies me as an expert. I can tell you that any major city’s kebab purveyors can be ranked by the number of pints you need to have drunk before you feel like tucking in. Think of this number like the zones on the London Tube map. At the smart end

Douglas Murray

My message for Columbia’s protesting students

There are several frustrating things about American college campuses, just one of which is the sheer volume of column inches they take up. Whenever an American campus has an ‘occupation’ because the students want veto powers over foreign wars, the world media study their actions with great interest. Whenever a group of farmers or truckers complain about the loss of their livelihoods, whatever media attention does arrive comes from people eager to dismiss the protestors as know-nothings who are on to nothing. I told them that while they may know something, the chances are that people older than them know more Still, in recent months Columbia University in New York

Philip Womack

Why is the government making it harder to get an au pair?

You will have heard, I am sure, of the Conservatives’ recent largesse towards working parents, as their ‘free’ childcare policy has been much publicised. Fifteen hours a week for your kid, from nine months old to the grand age of four. You may not, however, have seen the new rules governing au pairs, which came into effect last month. Our dear, wise governors, while giving with one hand, have taken away with another; they have placed more obstacles in the way of those who need help with looking after their children. They’ve made it even harder to have an au pair. Children, of course, have a tendency to grow past the

Luke McShane

European Seniors

England teams brought home an Aladdin’s cave of medals from the European Senior Team Championship, which concluded in Slovenia last week. Their victory in the over-65 section was particularly convincing. The team of John Nunn (reigning world senior champion 65+), Tony Kosten, Peter Large, Chris Baker and Nigel Povah lost just two games out of 36, and picked up four individual board medals, including gold for Chris Baker. Peter Large demolished a Finnish grandmaster in the following game. Peter Large-Heikki WesterinenEuropean Sr Team Championship, 65+, 2024(see left diagram) 1 e4 e6 2 d4 d5 3 Nc3 dxe4 4 Nxe4 Bd7 5 Nf3 Bc6 6 Bd3 Nd7 7 O-O Ngf6 8 Neg5 Bxf3 9 Qxf3

The Spectator

How dangerous is it to fly by helicopter?

Crime without borders How many nations are signed up to the International Criminal Court? – 124 signed the Rome Statute in 1998 and ratified it. – 31 have signed it but never ratified it (includes Iran, Thailand, Ukraine). – 2 (Philippines, Burundi) ratified it but have subsequently withdrawn. – 4 signed the statute, never ratified it and have since withdrawn (US, Russia, Israel and Sudan). – 41 have never signed (including China, India, Turkey).  Chopper cropper How dangerous is it to fly by helicopter as opposed to fixed-wing aircraft? It is hard to find comparable global statistics, but the National Transport Safety Board keeps figures for the US: – In

Luke McShane

No. 802

Black to play. Rocco-Ghasi, 4NCL, May 2024. White’s last move Rd1-a1 was a mistake, and with his next move Ghasi provoked instant resignation. What did he play? Email answers to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 27 May. There is a prize of £20 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…Qf2+!! 2 Rxf2 Rb1+ 3 Rf1 Bd4+ 4 Kh1 Rxf1# Last week’s winner Richard Booth, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire

Lionel Shriver Lionel Shriver

What will Europe look like in the future?

This year, several articles in mainstream papers have sounded the alarm that the global human fertility rate will soon cross below the point needed to keep the population constant. Anxiety that our species is about to die out seems a bit premature, given that we’re still predicted to add another three billion to the world population before levelling off. Furthermore, these reports always gloss over a key outlier because it undermines the case for our imminent extinction: Africa. In middle Africa, three-quarters of the population endures moderate to severe food insecurity A leading reason that continental Europe is shifting to the political right is popular concern about mass immigration. So

Victoria Lane

Spectator Competition: Beg to differ

In Comp. 3350 you were invited to write a refutation of a well-known line from literature. Ian Jack once imagined quibbling with Jane Austen over ‘a truth universally acknowledged…’: ‘“Universally”, Miss Austen, even among pederasts with good fortunes, or among the heathen races?’ Poetry dominated, which is reflected in the winning entries (£25 to each). Pats on backs to Tracy Davidson, D.A. Prince, Nicholas Lee, Sylvia Fairley and others. The unexamined life is most worth living:I implore you, feel the gusto in the Now.There’s so much to do, and Time is unforgiving,You’ll never figure why we’re here, or how.Leave experiences quite unmediated,Surf that sense-data as if it were a wave;There’s

Bernard-Henri Lévy

Anti-Semitism has returned to French politics

New Caledonia is an archipelago in the South Pacific not far from Australia. James Cook discovered it in 1774, but, after concluding that too many languages were spoken there, he declined to annex it to the British Empire. France, not as cautious, made it a distant colony under Napoleon III. Today, riots are convulsing the territory. Supposedly ‘decolonial’ in aim, they are most certainly violent and fuelled by the anti-white racism that, from London to Brussels and Paris, has become the trademark of the new radical left. The strangest thing is that among the flags of the Kanak independence movement, one also sees Azeri flags. Why Azeri? Because Azerbaijan, which

The Spectator

Letters: save our churches!

Free the C of E Sir: Patrick Kidd’s article on the shortcomings of today’s Church of England maintains the importance of the ‘volunteers in the pews’ who bind the church together (‘Miracle workers’, 18 May). He warns that these people ‘can so easily run away’. This is exactly what happened to the Church of Scotland in 1843 when the hierarchy got things badly wrong. The Great Disruption was caused by a disagreement over patronage: should a patron be the sole arbiter in hiring and firing ministers or did this undermine the spiritual independence of the congregation? The exit of more than 400 ministers from the Kirk’s General Assembly and the formation of

Doc

2655: Primacy

The unclued lights (one of two words) are of a recent kind. Across 10    Late bishop, terribly welcoming (10) 13    Farah off with English – that’s dull (8) 16    Confiscate trawler catching small fish (5) 17    Nick caught with grass in school (7) 18    Could be Turkish transport (7) 20    Poirot found by small transport plane (8) 25    John’s game (3) 26    Attachment to Hutton’s Test award (4,3) 28    Cavalrymen capture amateur looters (7) 29    He’s in jail again (3) 31    Ashes score shows adjustment on TV screen (4,4) 34    Main variation of Tchaikovsky work in Wales (7) 36    Monster’s toll on artist (7) 40    Overdue train is damaged completely

Peter Jones

Olive oil was the key to Roman excellence

Owing to a rise in temperature in southern Europe and a reduction in rainfall, the production of olive oil this year may drop by nearly 40 per cent. For the Romans, who ensured that the olive spread all around the Mediterranean, it would have been disastrous. Olives were a food, and in its liquid form as oil it was used to light lamps, form a base for medicines and cosmetics, and as a skin moisturiser, cleansing agent, lubricant and contraceptive (Marie Stopes used it in trials and found it 100 per cent successful, whether virgin or extra virgin is not recorded). As an evergreen, it had great spiritual importance as

Toby Young Toby Young

The real reason Ofcom has gone after GB News

I don’t envy the people who run Ofcom. On the one hand, they’re under enormous political pressure to sanction GB News, which, in the eyes of its establishment critics, is a contaminated river of far-right propaganda that’s polluting the ‘delicate and important broadcast ecology of this country’ (Adam Boulton). But on the other, they want to preserve their status as the keepers of the ring and cannot be seen to be holding GB News to a higher standard than other broadcasters. That makes their lives complicated because, in reality, the channel’s politics are far closer to the Telegraph than they are to Fox News, and it’s no more partisan than

The Spectator

2652: A and M – solution

The unclued Across lights are makes of AUSTIN (in yellow) cars and the unclued Down lights are MORRIS (in red) cars, hence A and M in the title. First prize Chris Taylor, Helensburgh, Dunbartonshire Runners-up Sara MacIntosh, Darlington; Stephen Smith, Messing, Essex

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

Harris Tweed, the miracle fabric

To understand the development of technology, you may be better off studying evolutionary biology rather than, say, computer science. A grasp of evolutionary theory, with the facility for reasoning backwards which it brings, is a better model for understanding the haphazard nature of progress than any attempt to explain the world by assuming conscious and deliberate intent. One useful concept from evolutionary thinking is the idea of the ‘adjacent possible’. As the science writer Olivia Judson explains: ‘Evolution by natural selection only works if each mutational step itself is advantageous. There’s no such thing as advantageous in a general sense. It’s advantageous in the circumstances you’re living in.’ In the