Society

Thursday

G.V. Chappell

What I learned from my father’s life of crime

I was on my way home from sixth-form college when I heard about Dad’s arrest for his alleged involvement in what, at the time, was the biggest heist in history. Three tonnes of bullion, along with platinum, jewellery and traveller’s cheques, had been taken from the Brink’s-Mat warehouse at Heathrow in the early hours of 26 November 1983. Fifty police officers raided our house. Mum, pragmatic as ever, put the kettle on and even made a bacon sandwich for a WPC who complained that she’d missed her breakfast due to the early start. Dad’s subsequent trial and conviction at the Old Bailey made worldwide headlines. He was jailed for ten

Peter Jones

Have actors always been self-indulgent?

Golden Globes, Baftas, Emmies – here we go again with the annual rituals of self-worship to which actors are so addicted. The ancient Greeks are to blame: they staged plays in competition, with awards for best plays, producers and actors. Their worldwide luvvies’ Guild, formed in the 3rd century bc, was called ‘Artists of Dionysus’ – some replaced ‘Artists’ with ‘Parasites’ – and lasted hundreds of years. Its last recorded title (under the emperor Aurelian) was suitably modest: ‘The Sacred Musical Travelling Aurelian Great World Guild of the Artists of Dionysus.’ They were very popular. One festival at Delphi attracted 251 Artists, including 40 from Corinth, 29 from Athens, 57 from

Luke McShane

Young contenders

Popular wisdom has it that the smartphone has shrivelled teenagers’ attention spans. But they are getting better at chess, and there is no doubt that technology is the main driver. Chess knowledge is more widely accessible than ever before, with any number of sparring partners, courses and coaches (like me!) available online. Chess engines, such as the famous ‘Stockfish’ program, are far more useful as training tools than they were 20 years ago, when they were tactically unbeatable but strategically patchy. These days their suggestions are invariably sound, and can harnessed for post-game feedback after playing human opponents. For promising young players, with the right guidance, there is no end

Luke McShane

No. 788

White to play and mate in two moves. Composed by V. Antipov, Kudesnik, 1998. Email answers to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 19 February. 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 Qg5+! Kf7 (1…Kh7 is similar) 2 Qf5+ Qxf5 3 Kxf5 wins, e.g. 3…Kg7 4 Kg5! Kh7 5 Kf6 etc Last week’s winner Jon Boyle, East Horsley, Surrey

Lucy Vickery

Spectator competition winners: stories behind the composition of famous poems

In Competition No. 3336 you were invited to supply the story behind the composition of a famous poem. This challenge drew a smart and diverse entry that proved tricky to whittle down to a prizewinning half-dozen. But after lengthy consideration, D.A. Prince, Brian Murdoch and Paul Voogt are awarded commendations and those printed below earn their authors £25 each. Dear Marlowe, so, you want to write poems to impress the London girls. Well, sonnets are still hot with the nobility, but let me tell you, Kit, rural idylls are all the rage! Think cheeping birds, pastoral imagery, sexy allusions to hills and valleys. Passionate, liberal shepherds go down a treat. The

Mr Magoo

2641: Mastermind

Two of the unclued entries combine to form a name (three words) responsible for the other unclued entries (one of three words, two of two words, and two of which combine to form a two-word name). Across 11    Custom I outlaw, hiding books for islander (7) 12    They must cool down the crowd (4) 14    Cast spell over snake in Paradise Lost? (6) 15    Natal piece, that is ejected somehow (8) 17    Fruit is cut back (5) 19    Things a man hates terribly (9) 21    The wrong tribe ultimately settled in Nevada desert (5) 23    I was a boss and had nothing to do (5) 25    Songbird’s attempt to conceal guano

The Spectator

2638: Capital fellow – solution

The key word is Berliner: 37D/26D said ‘9D Berliner’; 13A, 3D, and 20D are newspaper formats; 26A, 40A and 28D are doughnuts. First prize  Sam Snell, London SE10 Runners-up  Mike Morrison, London N20; Guy Taylor, London EC1

The Spectator

The Tories are too weak to capitalise on Labour’s failings

The polls suggest that Labour is in line for a general election victory later this year which could match or even exceed Tony Blair’s landslide of 1997. Yet the party exudes none of the confidence and maintains none of the self-discipline which it did 27 years ago. On the contrary, were the Conservatives not in an even worse state themselves, Keir Starmer’s party could well be in deep trouble. For Labour to contrive to lose a safe seat in the current circumstances is remarkable. But that is exactly what the party has done with its failure to vet properly Azhar Ali, the candidate chosen to fight the Rochdale by-election following

Wednesday

Alexander Larman

Why is Meghan launching another podcast?

In one of the many quotations spuriously attributed to Winston Churchill, the former prime minister was supposed to have said ‘success is the ability to go from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.’ It is a piece of advice – regardless of its origin – that the Duchess of Sussex seems to have absorbed wholesale, given the announcement that, after her short-lived and largely unloved podcast series Archetypes came to an end with Spotify, she is to return to the fray once again, this time in association with the independent company Lemonada Media. Meghan has thrown herself into business with an organisation that describes itself as an ‘award-winning, independent,

Laurie Wastell

The problem with the ‘paraglider girls’ ruling

Yesterday at Westminster Magistrates’ Court, three women were convicted of terror offences for wearing clothes or carrying signs that appeared to glorify Hamas – and they were let off virtually scot-free. The leniency of this ruling raises yet more questions about judicial impartiality in this country At a central London pro-Palestine march the week after the October 7 attack in Israel last year, Heba Alhayek, 29, and Pauline Ankunda, 26, had attached images of paragliders to their backs, while Noimutu Olayinka Taiwo, 27, had attached one to a sign. Paragliders, as had been reported widely in the media, were how Hamas terrorists crossed the Gaza-Israel border to carry out their barbaric pogrom

Tuesday

Michael Simmons Michael Simmons

Too many people in Britain aren’t working

Britain’s worklessness crisis is getting worse. This morning the ONS released figures showing that 1.3 million are on unemployment. But that figure masks a welfare crisis that politicians are doing little to address. Unemployment only covers those actually looking for a job – the real problem is how few are. The true benefits figure goes unpublished and is buried in a password protected DWP database. Every three months the database is updated and we track the results on The Spectator data hub. It was updated this morning and shows the number claiming out-of-work benefits has hit some 5.6 million people. The increase is being driven by those in the Universal Credit (workless) category

Monday

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

The sinister transformation of Greta Thunberg

Greta Thunberg spent her weekend in France supporting two environmental campaigns. On Sunday she appeared at a rally in Bordeaux against an oil drilling project; 24 hours earlier the 21-year-old Swede was further east, adding her voice to those activists opposed to the construction of a new stretch of motorway between Toulouse and Castres. ‘We are here in solidarity with those who are resisting this project and this madness’, said Thunberg in English, her now familiar keffiyeh round her neck. Some French media described Thunberg as an ‘anti-global warming icon’ and the ‘figurehead in the fight to protect the planet’. She might have been once. Now, however, in her ubiquitous keffiyeh, appearing to chant ‘Crush

Greta Thunberg
Niall Gooch

The problem with Kneecap – and the arts blob

When I was about 14 or 15, someone sent me a birthday card with the words: ‘Teenagers – tired of being harassed by your stupid parents? Act now! Move out, get a job, pay your own bills, while you still know everything.’ I don’t think it was personal, not least because I was fairly strait-laced, and I enjoyed the joke. I have never had much time for the idea of the teenager as heroic nonconformist, engaged in idealistic rebellion against the stultifying bourgeois conformity of suburbia. Even when I was in my teens – an alarmingly long time ago now – I found it all a bit self-aggrandising. That birthday

Sunday

Robin Ashenden

Russia’s ‘Red Ripper’ Andrei Chikatilo was a uniquely Soviet serial killer

In the wake of Vladimir Putin’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, as atrocities like the killings at Bucha and Irpin came to light, there were repeated internet posts comparing Russia’s president to another figure from the country’s history. This wasn’t some expansionist empire-builder of the past, but Andrei Chikatilo, the mass-murderer and cannibal from Russia’s Rostov region. He was convicted of 52 murders in 1992 (most of them children or minors) and executed a couple of years later. I first caught sight of Chikatilo in 1992 in a British TV news report on his crimes. Caged in a Rostov-on-Don courtroom, the accused, shaven-headed and crazed-looking, was a figure from a nightmare;

Friday

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

Canterbury Cathedral’s ‘rave in the nave’ is indefensible

It’s too late to get tickets for Canterbury Cathedral’s silent disco tonight – as with last night’s event, they sold out long ago – but you can still join the orderly prayer vigil against this caricature of the contemporary Church of England. Some 750 clubbers are expected to attend each of the four events over two days, to dance in the nave to hits from Britney Spears, the Spice Girls and Eminem. They’ll party the night away not far away from where Thomas a Becket was murdered in 1170 as he clung to a pillar; his brains and blood mixed on the floor. His shrine is somewhere nearby. Oh, and

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

How liberal bishops are squeezing the life out of the Church of England

28 min listen

Can the Church of England escape from the deadly grip of bishops and bureaucrats who spend their entire time genuflecting to the metropolitan Left? Why does Archbishop Justin Welby wade obsessively into secular political battles when his churches are emptying? And do worshippers realise that eye-watering sums of money are being siphoned off from their parishes in order to fund worthless exercises in social engineering? In this episode of Holy Smoke, the Rev Marcus Walker, Rector of St Bartholomew the Great in the City of London, reveals the scale of the crisis facing the Established Church. His analysis is devastating. Among the subjects he addresses is the cultural cringe that

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

Prince William should say no to a Royal reconciliation with Prince Harry

Might the King’s cancer diagnosis lead the Royals to put aside the squabbles that have torn the family apart and come together, having seen the bigger picture of life and death? It is quite touching that the prodigal son, Prince Harry, rocked up, however briefly, in London to visit his dad, though it’s hoped he’s not ‘wired for sound’ and that the heartfelt expressions from the King on how much he’s missed his ‘darling boy’ don’t turn up on any future Netflix documentaries. After all, Harry has ‘previous’ when it comes to spilling the beans; his hiss-and-tell memoir includes details of a supremely solemn event, the funeral of Prince Philip:

Thursday

William Atkinson

Rory Stewart is the wrong man to revive Oxford’s fortunes

Rory Stewart is a successful podcast host, but would he make a good Oxford University chancellor? The former Tory MP is in the running to replace Chris Patten, who is retiring. Stewart is the bookies’ front runner in the race: ‘This is a very interesting idea and an amazing role,’ he said, ‘but I would naturally have to think hard about whether I am the right candidate’. Stewart shouldn’t have to spend too long thinking: he’s the wrong man for the job. In his brief Tory leadership campaign in 2019, Stewart’s limitations became clear. His support amongst Tory MPs soon fizzled out as he failed to make a significant impression in

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Brianna Ghey’s murder is being weaponised – but not by Sunak

We really have seen the worst of politics over the past 24 hours. I’m not referring to Rishi Sunak’s dig at Keir Starmer for not knowing what a woman is – a swipe made while Esther Ghey, mother of the murdered trans teenager Brianna, was in Parliament. I’m referring to the cynical milking of this Commons spat by those who are desperate to get one over on the Prime Minister. They’re calling Sunak ‘crass’, but that insult suits them far better. It isn’t the PM who has lost his moral bearings – it’s his noisy, fuming critics. All Sunak did during Prime Minister’s Questions was mock his opposite number for

Debbie Hayton

Starmer should listen to Sunak on gender

The transgender row isn’t going away. Prime Minister’s Questions this week was dominated by a jibe Rishi Sunak made about Keir Starmer’s stance on gender. The Labour leader then lashed out at Sunak for criticising him on the topic while the mother of murdered trans teenager Brianna Ghey was in the Commons. It’s clear that both sides in this debate are doubling down: Sir Keir has previously said ‘99.9 per cent of women haven’t got a penis’; while Sunak has said that ‘a man is a man and a woman is a woman’ – that’s just common sense’. As well as a Spectator writer, I am a science teacher. The