Society

Thursday

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

My campaign to bring back real life

A new book by an American writer, Christine Rosen, details the way in which we are losing touch with the real world: the one we evolved in, as opposed to the virtual one. All the scrolling and texting means we’re forgetting the look and feel of life unmediated by screens. The book is called The Extinction of Experience, and if we get more anxious year by year, then it’s not just wars or the cost of living, Rosen suggests, but because we’re grieving for the real world, whether we know it or not. I definitely know it. I’m Gen X, so I grew up without the internet, yet like other

Peter Jones

What Seneca would have made of the assisted dying bill

Kim Leadbeater’s assisted dying bill has generated much talk about the ethics of suicide. As far as the ancients were concerned, it was only in life that you could make your mark. The Christian passion for embracing, even rejoicing at, death made no sense to them. Ancient thinkers generally did not fear an afterlife. Although there were no received views on the matter (unless you were a member of a cult of some sort), many ancients reckoned that, if the gods were displeased with you, they would demonstrate their hostility in this life rather than the next. But when death was inevitable, they wanted to be in control, because the

John Power

The right rape gang inquiry

Another inquiry into child sexual abuse, another minister insisting that this time it will be different. Yvette Cooper promises arrests, reviews, a new statutory commission and the largest ever national operation against grooming gangs. But for the victims there is only one question that matters: what will this new inquiry do that the last one didn’t? The last one, of course, was IICSA: the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, led by Professor Alexis Jay. It took seven years, £180 million and 15 separate investigations to complete. And yet for survivors and campaigners, the abiding feeling at the end of it all was futility. IICSA had all the grandeur of

Toby Young Toby Young

Has Trump been taking inspiration from the royals?

One of the objections to the military parade in Washington, DC last Saturday – supposedly to mark the 250th birthday of the US Army – is that it was a breach of democratic norms. The real reason it took place, say Donald Trump’s critics, was because he wanted to celebrate his 79th birthday with a display of military might – which is ‘what dictators do’, according to a general who advised him against it. Trump’s opponents gleefully pointed out that the number of attendees – around 200,000 – was dwarfed by the millions who took part in simultaneous ‘No Kings’ protests in dozens of American cities, a reference to his

Andrew Watts

Heaven is Angel Delight

I once heard an American complain that, being married to an Englishwoman, he was regularly baffled by the contents of his kitchen cupboards – salad cream, Ambrosia custard and Robinsons barley water. It was ‘like industrial processed food but from the Shire’. It is probably this quality of baffling foreigners that allegedly enabled drug runners to use sachets of Angel Delight – the ultimate English ultra-processed food, surely to be found on many a table in Hobbiton, if only for second dinner – to smuggle cocaine into Indonesia. What could be more natural than an Englishman carrying real artificial flavours in his luggage so he didn’t have to make do

Roger Alton Roger Alton

The (nearly) lost art of the Test match

If you can bear to turn away from the Fifa Club World Cup, take a moment to ponder cricket and work out how the Bazball top brass have ended up with a team that lacks a proper no. 3 and has a woefully limited pace attack. And that’s after stating that their sole aim was to build a side for the imminent series against India, and then the Ashes this winter. But first things first. The ripples from South Africa’s victory in the World Test Championship will be felt for some time. It was also an outstanding game, which contained a wonderful example of the (nearly) lost art of the

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: How do I ditch my slow-walking friend?

Q. I recently attended an opera on a friend’s estate in Kent. It was a multi-generational, non-ticketed, invitation-only event. The setting was idyllic, but as night drew in and my party looked around for some sort of food van, we realised we hadn’t read the small print on the invitation: ‘Bring your own picnic.’ It was at least a 20-minute drive to the nearest village, which would mean us missing the opening aria, and we looked on in dismay as the older generation produced checked tablecloths, platters of barbecued chicken, sausages, artisan bread and hummus. I hovered near a platter of chicken thighs and stared longingly at it. Its procurer,

Luke McShane

World Rapid and Blitz Teams

It was a treat to see so many of the world’s top players in London for the World Rapid and Blitz Team Championships last week. Now in its third edition, the event has an unusual format, in which teams of six must include one female player and one rated below 2000 (roughly, a strong club player). That drew a sociable mix of teams, including traditional clubs, both from the UK and abroad, some national teams, and some teams with corporate sponsorship. My team, Malcolm’s Mates (Malcolm Pein is the federation’s international director), had a considerable overlap with the English national team, with additional strong players from abroad. But we were

Luke McShane

No. 855

White to play. Grischuk-Firouzja, World Blitz Team Championship, London 2025. A bishop up, Firouzja seems to have everything covered. Which move allowed Grischuk to save the draw? Email answers to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 23 June. There is a prize of a £20 John Lewis voucher for the first correct answer out of a hat. Please include a postal address. Last week’s solution 1 Kb8! wins, e.g. 1…Nd7+ 2 Kc8 Nb6+ 3 Kd8 or 1…Nc6+ 2 Kc7 Nb4 3 Kb6 Nd5+ 4 Kb5. Last week’s winner Mark Jenkins, Cardiff

Victoria Lane

Spectator Competition: Wild time

For Competition 3404 you were invited to design your own Midsummer rites. There were fewer entries than usual, all of them very good. I was sorry not to have room for Mark Ambrose’s ritual involving a small white ball (‘Eighteen is the sacred number. We assemble before dawn and climb the hill to a wooded glade’). Other runners-up: Tracy Davidson, Paul Freeman, Sue Pickard, George Simmers, Bill Greenwell and Joseph Houlihan. The £25 vouchers go to the following. Midsummer Saturday at Frizinghall begins early with the ritual of Waking the Sleepers, in which locals salute the rising sun with power tools, mowers, car alarms and pressure washers. Next comes the

La Jerezana

2708: On the shelf

Two of the eight unclued entries, appropriately placed, were likened to two others by a name hidden in the grid. The other four unclued entries are thematic. Unchecked letters could be arranged to spell ‘NO VAIN OAP MISBELIEVER, HIM’. Across 1 Treated ATMs etc like cash cows (4,7) 7 Tailless parasite twitching (3) 13   In France you rent by day, as instructed (7) 15   Shy cat leaving second small rodent (5) 17   Deliver German plough (6) 18   Absolute maniacs shedding clothes (5) 20   Reportedly conceal girl in hotels (6) 21   Tiny creature, part of agamid genus (5) 22   Cleanse thoroughly and prevent case of gangrene (7) 27   Finish work corralling

Catriona Olding

My first ever blind date

Four of us go for lunch once a month. My hippy ceramist neighbour, Geoffrey, is a foodie and one of the best cooks I know. He was born a few years after the second world war and, along with his brother, who went on to become a Michelin-starred chef, developed an interest in food from his English, Belgian and Italian grandparents and Swiss mother. I couldn’t afford to heat the little painting studio downstairs this winter and have only sold one work since November, so our choice of restaurants has been necessarily modest. The menus include dishes made with items from the end of the butcher’s counter that I, vegetarian

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

A man’s restaurant: Victor Garvey at the Midland Grand reviewed

The Midland Grand Hotel at St Pancras Station is George Gilbert Scott’s masterpiece: his Albert Memorial in Hyde Park (a big dead prince under a big gold cross) has just too much sex to it. Late Victorian architecture seethes with erotica. The facetious will say imperialism was really just penetration, and there’s something in that. It is now the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel, London – oh, the fretted imaginings of marketing departments – and, on a more conscious level, the closest you will get to the great age of rail, though spliced with plastic now. The modern station is ugly and translucent and sells face cream to tourists, and buns.

Melissa Kite

Why must B&B guests give us advice?

‘You could mow all this lawn here and it would look a treat,’ said the arborist, returning from a stroll around the grounds, which were looking resplendent in the sunshine. ‘Yes, yes, mow the grass. Good idea,’ I said, for the builder boyfriend has told me I have to agree with the customers. No matter what they say, no matter how obvious their suggestions, just smile and say ‘Good idea.’ Old houses are like horses. Passing strangers feel ownership of them. Once they encounter them, they proclaim how they would care for them, because they decide from their soulful look that the owners must be neglecting them – when the

Dot Wordsworth

The politics of ‘rocket boosters’

Sir Keir Starmer said the other day that he wanted to put rocket boosters under AI. It’s not the only thing he wants to put rocket boosters under. In September he said that ‘new planning passports will put rocket boosters under housebuilding’. He wasn’t the only one. When it was his turn to be prime minister, Rishi Sunak promised to ‘put rocket boosters’ under construction in areas that were already built up. Usually rocket boosters are put under things, but Sir Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, was more anatomical in his thoughts, praising a youth mobility scheme that would ‘put rocket boosters up businesses in London’. Even so, in

Robin Oakley

Is racing becoming too predictable?

An inquest into the Derby in the Oakley household was to be expected. Mrs Oakley, who bets about as often as you will hear Liz Truss say ‘I’m sorry: I got it wrong’, called me at Epsom this year asking for a fiver each way on Lambourn. Since the ten-time Derby winning trainer Aidan O’Brien had two more favoured candidates in Dela-croix and The Lion In Winter, I persuaded her to think otherwise and had some explaining to do after his Lambourn came home a comfortable 13-2 winner in the hands of the veteran jockey Wayne Lordan. What has also surprised me is the downbeat tone of reactions elsewhere to

Janet de Botton

Bridge | 21 June 2025

A few years ago I went to Dallas with my team to play in the Summer National, the main event being the Spingold, a knockout tournament which attracts some of the best teams in the world. We did rather well and found ourselves in the quarter finals, and our opponents were Marty Fleisher’s team of world champs. Marty plays with Chip Martel, and before we started he announced that he thinks for a few minutes when dummy goes down, even if it’s a simple hand, to work out his plan. What a good idea, I thought. The next thing I knew, I went 4 off vul in an unusual NT

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: War in the Middle East, drought in Yorkshire and a knighthood for Beckham

Home Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, announced a full national statutory inquiry into grooming gangs (which he had previously opposed) on the recommendation of Baroness Casey of Blackstock, who had been asked to audit the matter. His announcement came after four men born in Pakistan and three Rochdale-born taxi drivers of Asian descent were convicted of offences against two teenage girls who were repeatedly raped and assaulted in Rochdale from 2001 to 2006. The Casey report said that Greater Manchester, South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire had ‘disproportionate numbers of men from Asian ethnic backgrounds amongst suspects for group-based child sexual exploitation’. At the G7 summit in Canada, Sir Keir