Society

Thursday

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

Why I’m bored of National Treasures

Here they come, see them run, twinkling away like a bunch of irritatingly flashing fairy lights, the milk of human kindness curdling on their breath and dollar signs in their beady little eyes. I’m referring to the National Treasures, wheeled out every Christmas as we huddle around the television. A quick list of those who come immediately to mind – though other NTs are available, if the price is right – are Ant, Attenborough, Balding, Beard (Mary), Carr (Alan), Coles (Richard), Colman (Olivia), Church, Dec, Dench, French, Fry, Izzard, Lineker, Margolyes, Norton, Oliver (Jamie), Osman, Peake, Perry (Grayson), Robinson (Tony), Rosen (Michael), Sayle, Staunton, Thompson (Emma), Toksvig.  Sometimes it seems

Fieldfare

Christmas crossword: Double celebration

Unclued lights have something in common, nine of two words, five pairs, and one singleton.        Across 10  Always hard to keep a maid (4) 13  Only covering one’s losing bid (6) 15  Put down women’s medieval instrument (5) 16  Follow the game secretly from chimney (5) 21  Indian wasting minutes in queue (4) 22  In recess, they are on the phone to reporters (4) 24  Yank pokes right inside basket (4) 25  Sort of breakfast originally eaten day after day (5) 27  Observe baseball player striking woman (3-7) 28  Not altogether keen about lecturer’s lectern (5) 37  Helps receive salmon, about a stone (2-5) 38  Alastair’s extended half of

The Spectator

Has there ever been a better time to be alive?

The recent United Nations climate summit in Dubai ended up becoming a carnival of gloom. Speakers competed to paint the bleakest outlook for the world. But while it’s right to focus on the challenges that lie ahead, the doomsday narrative risks obscuring all the progress we have made. ‘Records are now being broken so often that we are perhaps becoming immune to what they are really telling us,’ said King Charles in his address to COP28. The King makes a fair point, one that it is worth elaborating on as the year draws to a close. A few weeks ago, for example, it emerged that Britain has become the first

Leila Sansour

This Christmas in Bethlehem will be the saddest yet

I am on my way to Bethlehem, which is where I come from and where I tend to spend Christmas. When I visit from London, I am given strict instructions to bring with me a generous amount of cheddar cheese, a good whisky and, as unlikely as it sounds, Yorkshire tea. I have made it into a local tradition and there is no one else but me to supply the tea in the quantities required. Normally, my biggest concern is trying to find enough space in my suitcase for all these supplies. I so wish this was my main concern this time round. Since the start of Israel’s bombing campaign

Lee Child

‘Many happy returns’: an exclusive Jack Reacher story by Lee Child

Tony Jackson had worked 30 years for MI5. He was a grammar-school boy recruited straight out of his redbrick university, after sitting a fast-track civil service exam. His results had not impressed the civil service itself, but clearly something in his psychometric paper had caught someone’s eye. Two weeks after his formal rejection he received a plain and enigmatic letter inviting him to an appointment at a hotel near Regent Street. Just after his arrival he had been required to sign the Official Secrets Act. Just before his departure he had become a government agent. Thirty years later he still was, now an Assistant Director, in charge of all his

Robin Oakley

The best books about horse racing to buy now

‘There are just not enough horses’ heads looking out of the boxes,’ said William Jarvis as he ended a 140-year-old family dynasty training in Newmarket. We are losing too many like him. But racing has surmounted previous downturns as a remarkable new book reminds us. George Stubbs is credited as the first great equestrian artist to present galloping horses correctly, with all four feet off the ground rather than splayed out like rocking horses, but James Seymour – to my eye an equally talented artist – had at least experimented with the idea. After a decade of painstaking research, Richard Wills has produced in the sumptuously illustrated James Seymour (Pallas

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

‘The culture of complaint disgusts me’: Werner Herzog on walking without a backpack and the kindness of strangers

When the American director Errol Morris saw Werner Herzog’s film Fata Morgana for the first time, he was heard to mutter: ‘I didn’t know anyone was allowed to write things like this.’ I didn’t know anyone was allowed to live like this. Herzog’s new memoir Every Man For Himself and God Against All is astonishing and – whether you know his films or not – potentially life-changing, at least for me. I made a list as I went along of all the situations in which Herzog has nearly died: in a crevasse on K2; under the hooves of a bull in Guanajuato, Mexico; in a giant wave in Peru; shortly

The Spectator

Letters: pantomime dames are here to stay

The leasehold scam Sir: In June 2018, Rishi Sunak told me in a Bethnal Green living room that leasehold is ‘a scam’ (‘Flat broke’, 9 December). At party conference, Sunak portrayed himself as a truth-teller who would take on the vested interests who have held back this country for so long. I am therefore baffled why his government’s signature homeownership policy, the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill, is such a modest package after six years of government and Law Commission work that has cost millions and which concluded that leasehold was fundamentally flawed. England and Wales are outliers in the world for persisting with this rip-off system. Ending leasehold is

Luke McShane

Twelve questions for Christmas

1 One top player, besides admiring his trainer’s creativity, noted that they had a shared appreciation of 1980s music. Who was the player and his trainer? 2 How to Win at Chess is a new book for novice players, which became a New York Times bestseller. Which popular YouTuber wrote it? 3 One episode of the TV spy drama series Slow Horses made reference to a chess game played in 1851. Who were the original players? 4 ‘In chess, like tennis, you get lost for a moment and the game has already turned. In this aspect they are two quite similar disciplines.’ Which tennis player described how chess helps him train? 5

The Spectator

How much do we spend at Christmas? 

Brief Labour 22 January 2024 marks the 100th anniversary of the first Labour government, something the party might want to celebrate, even see as a good omen. Except that Ramsay MacDonald’s minority administration lasted only nine months. – If Rishi Sunak wanted to be mischievous, he could choose 31 October as election day – the closest Thursday to 29 October, the date the Conservatives, under Stanley Baldwin, regained power with a thumping majority of 209. Labour had been brought down by a vote of confidence after the government withdrew a prosecution under the Incitement to Mutiny Act against John Ross Campbell, editor of the communist Workers’ Weekly. Campbell had written

Howard Jacobson

The moment I realised the study of literature was over

I’ve run away. I’m not saying where I’ve run to because then they’d be able to find me. I’m not saying who ‘they’ are either. So far no one has noticed I’m missing. I shuffle along with my head down, my old-geezer Woody Allen bucket hat sheltering my face, my hands shoved deep into the pockets of my shorts. Damn! The mention of ‘shorts’ gives away that I’m somewhere hot. You have to be careful writing a clandestine piece. Fearing I’ve been spotted, I veer off the path, clamber over rocks and find myself on a black volcanic beach. It’s like walking on a fire that everyone hopes has gone

Aidan Hartley

How Hannes took on a buffalo – and nearly paid the price

Kenya Hannes became a professional hunter because, as he says in his fine book Strange Tales from the African Bush, he missed ‘the smell of cordite… the clatter of the helicopters and the memory of the blood brotherhood that few, other than soldiers under fire, are lucky enough to know’. He’s a 14th generation white African and a veteran of the famous Rhodesian Light Infantry that fought valiantly in that country’s civil war. He still loves Africa and lives in the Western Cape. When he visited our beach house on the Kenya coast, I managed to persuade him to tell me a few stories, fuelled with bottles of Tusker –

Rebekah Vardy

Christmas as a Jehovah’s Witness

When I was growing up, there was no Christmas – at least, not one that was recognised in our household. As Jehovah’s Witnesses, we were taught that it was a dressed-up pagan festival that had nothing to do with the Bible and should be avoided. At school, I’d even be hauled out of any Christmas assemblies and made to feel alienated from the other kids. When the big day came, my family just went out knocking on doors as usual, looking for souls to save. I’d skulk behind them, praying that none of my schoolfriends were on the other side of those doors. To Jehovah’s Witnesses, Christmas is ‘worldly’. That

Ed West Ed West

The New Theists

One of Professor Richard Dawkins’s most influential ideas was the concept of the ‘meme’, which he coined in The Selfish Gene. A meme is an idea or form of behaviour that spreads by imitation from person to person. Memes can be beneficial or harmful to the individual and the wider community. The most successful have some great psychological appeal. Memes are a form of contagion, and with 21st-century technology, the power of that contagion has grown. Yet people are not merely passive recipients of ideas. Indeed, one aspect of human psychology clearly visible on social media is the willingness of people to meme themselves into belief. Being around a community

Niall Ferguson

Students annoyed their elders in the 1930s, too

Astriking generation gap in the western world has been revealed by the responses to the 7 October atrocities in Israel. Noting in these pages the surge in pro-Palestinian sentiment among young people on both sides of the Atlantic, my old friend Douglas Murray worries that ‘When it comes to Palestine, the kids aren’t all right’. Murray is correct to say that something has changed. He is also correct that it is mainly a phenomenon in the English-speaking world. In the UK and the US, young people are far less well-disposed towards Israel than a decade ago. The Daily Express condemned ‘the woozy-minded communists and sexual indeterminates of Oxford’ According to

David Hare

Just how much lower can the Conservatives sink?

This is the year in which Michael Gambon died, so by definition a grim one for theatre. Of all the tributes, one of the most acute was by Tom Hollander, who recalled how expressive Gambon’s voice was after 30 years on stage. He could reach hundreds of people while seeming to address only one or two. That’s essential theatre acting. When Gambon turned to cinema, his voice had become supple and mellow. It set me to thinking of other great cinema voices. Simone Signoret came first to mind. Then Jeanne Moreau, James Mason, and above all, Henry Fonda. These actors have you at hello. I would have added Marlene Dietrich,

Olivia Potts Olivia Potts

‘Truly spicy and a delight to eat’: how to make Christmas gingerbread

The flavours of Christmas have changed a bit lately, haven’t they? If you wander around supermarkets right now, you’ll find peach bellini panettone, tiramisu mince pies, turkey gravy-flavoured crisps and Black Forest stollen. Even the classic Terry’s Chocolate Orange comes in a mint version this year. You could argue that Walkers crisps are standing up for tradition by selling a Christmas pudding flavour, but that might be pushing it. I’m all for innovation, but it does rather make me long for the traditional tastes of Christmas. I love peach bellini, tiramisu, and Black Forest gâteau – but I can enjoy these flavours at any time. The spice and warmth and

Douglas Murray

In search of deep England

I am wary of mentioning General de Gaulle in these pages, if for no other reason than remembering Auberon Waugh many years ago arguing against a statue of the leader of the Free French being erected in London. Waugh’s objections were based firstly on the fact that statues only worked with togas because statuary did not favour the trouser leg. His second objection was that this country had fought a long and costly war to get General de Gaulle and his friends out of London. That notwithstanding, I dare to mention de Gaulle here because he has been on my mind. Or at least one aspect of him has been

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

Cornwall’s fishermen are being drowned by bureaucracy 

Bill Johnson is the assistant harbour master in Mousehole and skipper of the pilot Jen, a small boat of the inshore fleet. I know him because in summer, when tourists fill the tiny harbour with pleasure craft, he stands on the wharf offering conversation and advice. He is, of course, regarding the wreckage of Mousehole as a centre of the pilchard industry and home to Cornish people. A century ago, the harbour was a forest of masts: now just six fishing boats sail out of here. The rest are kayaks and paddleboards. But Bill is a kindly man, and he smiles on them. Fishermen were poster boys for Brexit, much