2627: Chronicled lives – solution
The eight unclued answers are names which appear in Anthony Trollope’s Chronicles of Barsetshire. First prize Pam Bealby, Stockton-on-Tees Runners-up Bill Ellison, Caversham, Reading; Peter Moody, Fareham, Hants
Society
Wednesday
2630: Souvenir
The 37 and 38 evoke 16D 22A/26, once 19 26, the 19 being 6 at the 41 5, 41 26 and 41 13. Across 1 Language school opened by Republican state (8) 11 Repeatedly check bones in historical operation (10) 14 Sweet red Dutch headwear (8) 16 US city king boxes to unwind (5) 17 Blotto man does spirits (7) 18 Animal in vehicle, one about to get skinned (7) 23 Hangs from small steep rocks (6) 24 American English crudely translated☺? (6) 31 Linked quartet of women in Italy chasing opera conductor (9) 33 Portent consuming regularly at-risk crew (7) 34 Bug base following plot (7)
Spectator competition: autumnal nonsense poems
In Competition No. 3324 you were in-vited to submit nonsense verse on an autumnal theme. W.J. Webster confessed that ‘sense kept breaking in’ to his entry, but the line between sense and nonsense is not always clear. As Anthony Burgess observed, in a review of Geoffrey Grigson’s Faber Anthology of Nonsense Verse, Mr Grigson ‘wisely evades, in his preface, anything like a definition of nonsense. He knows that we will only know what nonsense is when we know the nature of sense. Nonsense is something we think we can recognise, just as we think we can recognise poetry, but there has to be an overlap with what we think we
No. 777
Black to play. Donchenko-Mishra, Fide Grand Swiss 2023. Abhimanyu Mishra, 14, was one of the youngest players in the field. Which move allowed him to capitalise on his passed b-pawn? Email answers to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 13 November 2023. 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 Qe5! For example, 1…Bxe5 2 Ra5# or 1…Bb6 2 Qb8# or 1…Bd6 2 Qa1#. Last week’s winner Ben Hale, Flimwell East Sussex
Grand Swiss Gambit
Large chess tournaments are usually played according to the ‘Swiss’ pairing system. In each round, players are grouped according to their total points amassed so far, and match-ups for the next round take place between players in the same score-group. Even in a large field of diverse abilities, the potential winners tend to encounter their toughest competitors, and the lower seeded players are not forever overwhelmed by the strength of their opposition. The ‘Swiss Gambit’, an obscure piece of chess lingo, refers to the idea that a savvy competitor might ‘gambit’ a draw or loss in an early round, so as to face easier games in the middle of the
Keeping the peace: the politics of policing protest
Armistice Day is meant to be a moment of solemn national unity. Yet this year it is expected to coincide with the rather less harmonious ‘Million March for Palestine’, as hundreds of thousands gather in central London on Saturday to protest against Israel’s war on Gaza. Are these events compatible? Should the protest be banned? The Prime Minister says holding the protest on Armistice Day is ‘disrespectful’ but insists that only Sir Mark Rowley, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, can act to stop it. So Rishi Sunak is, in effect, saying his government cannot be blamed if there’s trouble at what Suella Braverman, his Home Secretary, calls a ‘hate
Portrait of the week: Met in a muddle, King’s Speech and a wine production slump
Home Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, said of pro-Palestinian demonstrations: ‘To plan protests on Armistice Day is provocative and disrespectful, and there is a clear and present risk that the Cenotaph and other war memorials could be desecrated.’ The Metropolitan Police urged organisers of a pro-Palestinian march on 11 November to postpone it, but they refused. The Prime Minister then said he would hold the Metropolitan Police Commissioner ‘accountable’ for his decision to greenlight the ‘disrespectful’ demonstration. Imran Hussain MP left the Labour front bench over Sir Keir Starmer’s opposition to a ceasefire in Gaza, and Afrasiab Anwar, the leader of Burnley council, and ten councillors left the Labour party.
Britain has led the way on migration
Human trafficking is a multi-billion-pound global industry. It is fuelled by the desperation of migrants seeking a better life and the cynicism of those who are now adept at identifying and exploiting loopholes in western border controls. One of Germany’s proposals is to explore copying the British model and process asylum applicants elsewhere As ever larger waves of migrants cross the Mediterranean, Rishi Sunak has told European leaders that their efforts at policing illegal migration are ‘not working’ – because there is no shortage of poor people willing to pay smugglers for their ‘barbaric enterprise’. He has raised difficult questions about how the rich discharge their duty to the poor
How I tried to buy The Spectator
The Victoria and Albert Museum kindly threw me a leaving party after eight years as chair, plus a particularly apt present: a specially commissioned illuminated V&A logo made from powder-coated steel by the designer Toby Albrow. The logo is a reference to my megalomaniacal taste for giant logos atop museum buildings. We have placed a huge one on the roof of the Young V&A in Bethnal Green, and an even bigger one – 20 feet high – on the new V&A East in Stratford, visible from three miles away in Canary Wharf. What an exhilarating and happy gig the V&A has been. I’m going to miss it and the people.
What is the loneliest life form?
I want to be alone An animal described as ‘Britain’s loneliest sheep’ was ‘rescued’ from the bottom of a cliff in Easter Ross where it had been living for the past two years, presumably after clambering down the steep coastal slope and finding it impossible to climb back up. Some other lonely life forms: – All albatrosses live in the southern hemisphere – except one. ‘Albie’, or ‘Albert’, is believed to have made a navigational error in around 2014 and has since been living in Europe, dividing his time between Germany, the Yorkshire coast and the east coast of Scotland, where he tends to hang out with gannets. – The
How useful is precarity?
‘There’s no such word,’ said my husband. Well, he has been wrong before. For him precarity doesn’t exist; he admits precariousness. Yet precarity is now in vogue among campaigners. Precariousness is used by non-specialists. It is laughable to see how precarity has become grist for the academic mill. Among recent books on precarity are: Contesting Precarity in Japan (2020); Queer Precarities in and out of Higher Education (2020); In Pursuit of Revolutionary Love: Precarity, Power, Communities, (2022); Migrant Academics’ Narratives of Precarity and Resilience (2023); and last month Precarity in European Film. I like the niche appeal (‘in Japan’, ‘migrant academics’) combined with a universal application (‘in and out of
Dear Mary: how do I stop my wife from sleeping naked?
Q. Wealthy ex-pat friends came to stay and, despite being attended to assiduously by our major domo, they left without leaving him a tip. I concealed their faux pas by palming him €50 and pretending that they had given it to me to give to him. But I am annoyed at their lack of consideration, which I suspect is due to ignorance rather than forgetfulness. How do I inform them that it is customary for guests to leave a tip for their host’s staff? – Name and address withheld A. Not only may these people be unfamiliar with the convention of tipping, they may also need to be alerted to
English cricket doesn’t travel well
It’s a tricky old time for cricket. The collapse of England’s World Cup white-ballers – and how they have managed to run up the white flag with quite such aplomb – is one of the great sporting mysteries of our time. One day they are the best in the world and hot favourites; the next they have soured overnight, like a pint of milk left out for too long. Answers on a postcard please, as Ben Stokes admitted. English cricket has never travelled particularly well, which may have something to do with the conditions here being very different from those in nearly all the other top cricketing nations. England breeds
What do sugar and cocaine have in common?
Stephen Fry is a national treasure whom half the nation can’t stand. He drops his façade of loveability mid-chortle as soon as Brexit is mentioned. He threw a spectacularly pompous Remainer wobbly a few weeks ago and I remember thinking: is he determined to make the people he disdains actively hate him? If so, it’s working. Last weekend Fry was on John Cleese’s GB News chat show, talking about his former cocaine habit and its connection to his adolescent consumption of sugar. He mentioned the sweets in the shape of cigarettes that were sold at his school tuck shop. As he put it: ‘When I was a teenager, I had
Why I’m optimistic about multiculturalism
Many of my conservative friends are beginning to catastrophise about the future of Britain in light of the pro-Palestinian protests that have erupted in our major cities over the past month. ‘I think you’re screwed,’ an American philosopher told me on Monday. ‘You should have raised the alarm about immigration from Muslim countries 25 years ago and now it’s too late. The fox is in the hen house.’ Such pessimism is coming to a head this weekend, with tens of thousands of protestors threatening to disrupt the Remembrance ceremonies which are taking place over two days owing to 11 November falling on a Saturday. If the two-minute silence is interrupted
The Battle for Britain | 11 November 2023
Are smartphones making us care less about humanity?
Generation Z were the first to grow up attached to smartphones. They spent their adolescence bathed in screen-light and now they’re depressed and anxious. Should we have seen it coming? Until very recently my parent friends were in determined denial. Z is the best generation that has ever lived, they said, free from prejudice and determined to recycle. I remember a piece by Caitlin Moran in which she insisted that her children were far more noble and caring than her contemporaries. No one picks up their iPhone to grapple with complex ideological truths Well, those optimistic days are over. The stats are now too stark. We daren’t take the kids’
Be prepared to wait: how to make French onion soup like the French
Let me be clear: this week’s recipe is not a speedy little number. You can’t knock up a French onion soup for a quick supper. It’s not a 15-minute meal, or a roasting tray phenomenon that won’t require your input during its cooking. Just softening onions, despite what a lot of recipes tell you, takes up to 20 minutes in a pan. Caramelising them – really, truly caramelising them, bringing out their sweetness and complexity – takes literally hours. French onion soup is a labour of love. But if I lowball the cooking time, one of two things will happen: you won’t end up with the soup you signed up
In defence of foie gras
Apoll shows that nine out of ten Brits want to ban the import of foie gras. Crumbs! Haven’t they got anything more important to worry about? The Times says about 200 tons are imported from Europe every year. I only wish some would come my way. Though the same article says Waitrose stocks this greatest of all delicacies, I can’t remember seeing it in our local branch. The trouble is that the campaign against these large, buttery duck livers (goose liver is rare) is based on Yahoo-worthy ignorance and antique disinformation, such as the fading photographs that used to circulate of webbed feet nailed to the shed floor. While I
How to speak London
Cockney is dead, but so is the King’s English. Long live Standard Southern British English. The Cockney Barbara Windsor yelling ‘Ge’ aah-a my pub’ is as fossilised as Eliza Doolittle. And what a shock it is today to hear the late Queen, aged 21, declare: ‘My whole life whether it be long or short shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family.’ She seems to say devated, sairvice and end (for ‘and’). Now a study from the University of Essex has put the accents of London and the south-east into the laboratory and shown that three are dominant: Estuary English (replacing Cockney), Standard Southern
