Society

James O’Brien’s apology isn’t enough

When the story of how the British media responded to the October 7 atrocities is told, there will be a number of villains. High up on the list will be James O’Brien. The LBC host is smugness personified most of the time, but gets even higher on his horse whenever Israel is the topic, which it is frequently. Obviously. James O’Brien is smugness personified, but gets even higher on his horse whenever Israel is the topic Things reached a new low this week. On Tuesday, O’Brien read out a text from someone called ‘Chris’. This person said his Jewish wife had, as a child, attended something called ‘Shabbat School’. There

The secrets of the Palm House at Kew

The news that the Palm House at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, will begin a £60 million, five-year renovation in 2027 brought back to me a slew of memories from 1978, when I worked there for several months. The extraordinary fame and innovative nature of this unique Victorian building, with its curvilinear, cruciform shape, designed by Decimus Burton and constructed by Richard Turner, seemed to confer a kind of grandeur and significance on an otherwise pretty lowly and scruffy horticultural student. The special treat was the periodic ‘weekend duty’ when, after turning the enormous iron key in the door at eight o’clock on a weekend morning, for two blissful hours

How ‘cosmopolitan’ is Lord Hermer? 

The Telegraph reports that Attorney General Lord Hermer has ‘been accused of asserting the primacy of human rights law over British government and politics’. Is he then a latter-day Diogenes (4th century bc), who saw himself as a ‘cosmopolitan’, i.e. a citizen of no one place, but rather of the whole world (kosmos, ‘the ordered world’ + polites ‘citizen’)? At one level, obviously not. Diogenes, we are told, travelled from place to place, rejected all conventional values, often lived in a large stone wine jar and performed all natural functions in public, like a dog – kunikos in Greek, whence our ‘cynic’. Self-sufficiency, freedom of speech, indifference to hardship and

Letters: Don’t blame Andrew Bailey

The Bank’s breakdown Sir: Your cover story with its attack on Andrew Bailey (‘Broke Britain’, 19 July) tells only half of the grisly story. All the major central banks had a sort of collective nervous breakdown during the Covid crisis, but none of the others lost its mind quite like the Bank of England. The banks printed money by buying in their country’s sovereign debt, at high prices. Most concentrated on short-dated stocks, where the potential capital loss from rising interest rates was smallest. The Bank bought in long-dated debt at prices which looked like madness to some of us at the time. These stocks are now being sold back

Lionel Shriver

The High Court’s war on truth

In Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, Humpty-Dumpty tells Alice: ‘When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.’ The assertion is intentionally absurd. If every-one adopted their own idiosyncratic lexical definitions, language wouldn’t function, and we’d all blither unintelligibly in a Tower of Babel. But then, Humpty missed his calling as a British High Court judge. Sitting on the bench rather than a wall, the big egghead might never have had that great fall. Contorting once-standard vocabulary whose meaning we recently all agreed upon is commonplace on the left During this Afghanistan data leak scandal, we’ve learned that Afghans deemed

How happy are private renters?

Coined terms Liz Williams, a Reform UK council candidate in May’s local elections, began a High Court action trying to overturn the result after she lost on the toss of a coin, having tied with the Green candidate Hannah Robson. The toss of a coin has been used several times to decide local elections. Has chance favoured a particular party? 1987  Labour candidate Bob Blizzard defeated the Conservative May Reader in Pakefield Ward of Waveney District Council after the toss of a coin. 2000  Labour defeated the Conservatives on the toss of a coin in the Worksop North East ward of Bassetlaw District Council. 2007  The Tory Christopher Underwood-Frost defeated

Our seven chickens are ruling the roost

Dante’s Beach, Ravenna All seven chickens we recently acquired are now laying eggs – except the one called Giovanna, which is walking with a limp thanks to our youngest child Giuseppe, who is ten. The other day, Giuseppe somehow shut Giovanna’s right foot in the back door as he shooed her out of the house. These chickens are proving portentous. I am convinced they are the catalyst, if not the reason, for why our middle daughter, Magdalena, 17, has just split up with her boyfriend Simone after three years together. Simone, a truly brilliant pianist, is terrified of chickens, a fairly common phobia apparently, though that is not why we

Toby Young

The lanyard class is imploding – and it can’t blame Musk

I was surprised to read a report by Sunder Katwala’s thinktank British Future saying the UK is a ‘powder keg’ of community tensions and warning of further unrest this summer. In a foreword by Sajid Javid and Jon Cruddas, who are co-chairing a commission looking into last year’s riots, Britain is described as ‘fragmented’ and ‘fragile’, seemingly only one newspaper headline away from descending into civil war. Aren’t these the same public intellectuals and politicians who, until ten minutes ago, were cheerleaders for multiculturalism? I thought the arrivalof hundreds of thousands of immigrants a year was enriching our street life, improving our cuisine and revitalising our art and literature? Isn’t

Lefties on a Plane: my real-life horror movie

Trapped in the middle seat next to a Dublin businessman in the window seat, I was subjected to a monologue on the ‘far right’. ‘It’s not Islamic extremism we need to be worried about,’ he said. I wanted very badly to say it absolutely is Islamic extremism we need to be worried about, but I kept my mouth shut. If it had kicked off between us, the pilot might have decided to turn around and do an emergency landing. Snakes on a Plane was a silly movie, completely unrealistic. I have an idea for a much more convincing sequel about being trapped on an aircraft with a terrifying menace, and

Dear Mary: Help! My neighbour keeps getting me drunk

Q. We have a neighbour who always overfills my glass. I beg her not to. Even if I commit the solecism of holding my hand over the glass to stop her, she will wait and then sneak up behind me and pour more in. I like her but I always reel away from her house pie-eyed, and wake with a hangover. What do I do? – D.S., Delhi, Catskills, USA A. Punish your neighbour by stocking up on silicone stretch lids, as used by the fastidious to cover the likes of yoghurt pots in the fridge. Having extracted a promise from her that she will not sneak up to refill

Olivia Potts

The magic of Danish dream cake

I am, for the most part, a rule follower and a people pleaser. It’s one of the reasons I love baking, which essentially amounts to a set of instructions designed to make something to be shared and bring joy. But if someone recommends something to me, I can be resistant to it for ages. The farcical element is that once I capitulate and try out the novel, TV show, restaurant or biscuit recipe, I inevitably discover that my tastes are extremely mainstream, and I love whatever it is. It took me years to listen to Taylor Swift before immediately accepting her greatness and becoming her no. 1 fan. There’s no

Freestyle Grand Slam

Levon Aronian took the $200,000 first prize at the latest leg of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam, held in Las Vegas earlier this month. The fifth event of the tour’s debut year, scheduled for Delhi in September, has been cancelled due to a lack of sponsors, but Carlsen tops the leaderboard ahead of the final, which remains scheduled for December in Cape Town. The game below was played in the semi-final, and had as a start position: Ra1, Nb1, Kc1, Nd1, Be1, Qf1, Rg1, Bh1. Black’s setup mirrors that: Ra8, Nb8, etc. Arjun Erigaisi-Levon Aronian Freestyle Chess Grand Slam, Las Vegas, July 2025 1 a4 d5 2 g4 c6 3 f4

What’s the score on ‘score’?

The courtship rituals of the Treasury and the Office for Budget Responsibility last ten weeks. The consummation is a fiscal event, such as the Budget coming in the autumn, if we survive. Eligible young ladies used to have dance cards on which to enter the names of their suitors. The Treasury has a scorecard on which its proposed measures are drawn up for the OBR to score. The analogy is with the cricket field rather than the ballroom. The OBR score indicates its forecast for spending, receipts and public debt. It also takes into account knock-on effects of a policy change. This is called dynamic scoring. I had to ask

No. 860

Black to play. So-Keymer, Freestyle Chess Grand Slam, Las Vegas 2025. Keymer’s next move forced So to resign. What did he play? Email answers to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 28 July. 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 Bf1! trapped the queen.  Firouzja tried 1…Rb5 but 2 Qxb5 Qxe3+ 3 Rxe3 axb5 4 Bxb5 was easily winning for Gukesh. Last week’s winner Ray Fisher, Shepley, W. Yorks

Spectator Competition: Family matters

For Competition 3409 you were invited to submit parental advice courtesy of famous writers. Kurt Vonnegut’s father’s advice to his son gave me the idea for this challenge: ‘Never take liquor into the bedroom. Don’t stick anything in your ears. Be anything but an architect.’ Your entries were witty and imaginative and there were many more potential winners than we have space for. Congratulations all round, and a special mention to George Simmers’s Georges Perec, Joe Houlihan’s Truman Capote, David Silverman’s Shakespeare and Max Ross’s Wordsworth. The following take the £25 John Lewis vouchers. We assume today that an adult’s duty is to keep children entertained. This assumption can only

2713: Outdressed

Clockwise round the grid from the square between 6 and 7 runs a quotation which could have referred to the three unclued lights, and its source (7,2,3,3,5,3,3,7,4,3,2,5,5). Across 9 Top part is the place to go in ships (5) 10   Wild party girl cycling (4) 11   Ex-president twice cut back tropical plants (5) 12   Unbounded profusion bewildered lunatic (7) 13   Article on devilish debonair Michael Gove? (10) 15   Microstate near heart of Burundi hoards gold (5) 18   He might steal object inside present (8) 19   But for squaddies we may serve mocktails (6) 21   Rebecca’s boy, second in hunt after sea snakes

2710: The clash – solution

The four anagrams were 1A TROUNCES (defined by 7 BEATS), 12 COUNTERS (27 PARRIES), 21 CONSTRUE (10 INTERPRET) and 25 RECOUNTS (13 RELATES) First prize Lisa Bramley, Shaldon, Devon Runners-up Nick Huntley, Darlington; Lewis Osborne, Newton Mearns, Glasgow