Society

Wednesday

2 Aug 2023

In praise of Barbie

For the last time, on Saturday, I stuck the head of the late Queen, without a barcode, on an envelope and posted it. I have kept the two remaining stamps of my sheet as souvenirs. Stamps survive, of course, under the new King, but they are gradually becoming like cash – marginal and out of date. The letter is no longer a primary means of communication, just as notes and coin are no longer the primary means of purchase. I wonder how these changes will affect our view of monarchy. The head of the monarch, unnamed, has been the daily sight of virtually every citizen since the Penny Black arrived in

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week: Trump’s indictment, Costa’s PR fail and Niger’s new leader

Home Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, announced the granting of 100 new North Sea oil and gas licences. In Aberdeen he confirmed funding for two new carbon capture projects. Thangam Debbonaire, the shadow leader of the House, said: ‘We are not going to grant any more. It is not OK. The world is on fire.’ Sir Bob Neill, the chairman of the Commons justice committee, called for a change in rules that deduct the cost of board and lodging in jail from compensation of those unjustly imprisoned. He was responding to the case of Andrew Malkinson, 57, cleared after 17 years in prison of a rape he did not commit.

Nick Robinson

My run-in with Nigel Farage

To think I once thought cricket dull. For more than 40 days and 40 nights, I have been gripped by the Ashes. I still couldn’t tell you where short third man ends and deep backward point begins, but I have fallen in love with the rollercoaster ride that Ben Stokes and his team have taken us on. So much so that I covertly watched every ball of the final hour of the final day while on a family outing to Come and Sing: Abba. I could stand the tension no longer when the ninth wicket fell so made my excuses and left to watch the final act outside with a

The Spectator

How much do students drink?

Union booze Several universities have renamed freshers’ week ‘welcome week’ in an attempt to dissociate it from heavy drinking. How much do students drink? – A survey last year by the group Students Organising for Sustainability found that 81% regard drinking and getting drunk as part of university culture. – 53% reported drinking more than once a week. – 61% said they drink in their rooms or with other students before going out for the night to a pub or club. – 51% said that they thought getting drunk would ensure they had a good night out. – 13% said they took illegal drugs. Round the houses Councils are to

Robert Tombs

The rise of conspiracy history

Readers would doubtless find it hard to believe that the late Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh kidnapped and killed indigenous children while on a state visit to Canada in 1964. Yet this story circulated for years in Canada along with other horror stories of the rape, torture and murder of indigenous children at the hands of depraved priests and nuns. The bodies, it was said, were thrown into furnaces or secretly buried at dead of night. These accusations were linked to boarding schools run by various religious bodies first established in the 19th century and finally closed in the 1990s. A Truth and Reconciliation Commission was set up in

Rod Liddle

You think British trains are bad? Try German ones

I found Jean-Pierre standing at a half-open window gulping down lungfuls of stale Dutch air as our night train chuntered, unseeing, through an expectoration of towns: Zutphen, Eefde, Gorssell. He was 79 years old, he told me, and returning to Berlin for the first time in 61 years for a meeting with an old friend. Our steward made it absolutely clear he couldn’t give a stuff that there was no buffet car Back in 1962, Jean-Pierre had been a very young Belgian Jesuit employed in smuggling hard currency from West to East Berlin, which he did by stuffing the notes inside a plaster cast which covered his right leg. There

Jake Wallis Simons

A Saudi-Israel peace deal would be a game-changer

It emerged this week that the head of the Mossad, David Barnea, slipped quietly over to Washington in July to hold secret talks about the prospect of an Israel-Saudi peace deal. This was part of a drip-drip of stories suggesting that an agreement may be back on the cards after an Iran-Saudi deal brokered by China complicated things in March. Israel is far from finished as a beacon of hope in the Middle East In another significant development, the respected Saudi newspaper Arab News published an editorial this week selling a possible deal to its readers. This followed a study finding that Saudi Arabia has scrubbed ‘practically all’ antisemitism and

Jonathan Ray

Wine Club: a super summer sale to beat the alcohol duty increase

Hey you there on your sun lounger! Take a gander at this summer sale, courtesy of our chums at FromVineyardsDirect. These are extremely toothsome bin-ends and overstocks at pre-duty increase prices. I’ve tasted them, rejected the also-rans and beaten FVD down on price as much as I can. There are some cracking mystery cases included too. First the whites. 2020 Rive Droite, Rive Gauche (1) has often featured in these pages – a creamy, peachy Viognier-based white Côtes du Rhône that never fails to please. £10.95 down from £12.75. The 2022 Racine Picpoul de Pinet (2) is another crowd-pleaser and as decent a Picpoul as you’ll find. Fresh, creamy and

Dot Wordsworth

Is Nigel Farage really a grifter?

That Coutts dossier on Nigel Farage said in passing: ‘He is considered by many to be a disingenuous grifter.’ I didn’t quite know what grifter here meant. According to the Telegraph, a podcast host at Spotify called the Duke and Duchess of Sussex ‘grifters’. That does not limit the semantic field. It feels to me like a synonym for chancer, which in an 1889 dictionary of slang was defined as ‘one who attempts anything and is incompetent’. Stephen Frears’s film The Grifters (1990), not to be recommended to anyone of a nervous disposition, deals with fixing racecourse odds, running confidence tricks, and even faking one’s own death. Get the Grift

Tanya Gold

‘Thinks of the diner, not the chef’: Claridge’s Restaurant, reviewed

The BBC made a very odd documentary about the renovation of Claridge’s: The Mayfair Hotel Megabuild. They filmed, agog, as the hotel grew eight new storeys – three above, and five below – between 2014 and 2021 while staying open: guests slept and ate, unaware of ‘Narnia doors’ to the building site. (That Narnia is where guests aren’t indicates what Claridge’s employees cannot put into words without spontaneously combusting.) Labourers dug the basement by hand and impersonated the Artful Dodger when management toured. The BBC described the new penthouse at length without mentioning that it is gross, with a grand piano in a glass box on a terrace like a

Olivia Potts

Pavlova: the crumble of summer

Whenever I tell someone that I’m making a pavlova the response is the same: sheer joy. Even the most fervent pudding-denier struggles to resist a slice of pav. It makes sense – fragile, crisp meringue with a tender, mallowy centre, soft waves of cream and some kind of fruit is such a brilliant combination. You can turn whatever you have to hand into a glorious, celebratory pav You don’t often see pavlovas on restaurant menus. There’s a good reason for that. A little like a trifle, part of the joy of a pavlova is that it arrives at the table looking unruffled: fruit perched perkily on clouds of cream atop

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: should I ever pay for dinner on a date with a feminist?

Q. I took a girl out for dinner last week to a rather expensive restaurant. At first we got on well but then the conversation went on to politics and I spent the next 45 minutes listening to a fourth-wave man-hating feminist. Despite her stance that women should share every opportunity that men have (which I agree with incidentally), when the bill came she didn’t even gesture to put her hand in her pocket. Was I right to be so annoyed? – N.F., London SW7 A. I ran this past another fourth-wave feminist. Her view was that the girl’s ideology was not incompatible with your paying for her dinner on

Roger Alton

Stuart Broad would make a great politician

And they said Test cricket was in its death throes! This epic, attention-grabbing, emotion-wringing Ashes series ended in the last minutes of the last hour of the last session of the last day of the last match: who could ask for more? England have had a number of very good captains since Mike Brearley took voluntary redundancy from the job (for the second time) in 1981, but Ben Stokes has really measured up to his illustrious predecessor over the past six weeks of mesmerising sport. They are cut from very different cloth: Stokes is more intuitive than Brearley, who was perhaps more cerebrally attuned to the needs of leadership. Broad

Michael Heath

The Battle for Britain | 5 August 2023

Toby Young

What does a supercomputer say about QPR’s chances?

The football season gets under way again on Saturday – or at least it does if your team isn’t in the Premier League, which starts a week later. My beloved Queens Park Rangers are off to Vicarage Road to take on Watford and I’ll be there with my three sons to cheer them on. We ‘did the double’ over the Hornets last season – the only team we beat home and away – so there’s a smidgen of hope. But there are also plenty of reasons to be pessimistic, and not just about the opening game. Last season we conceded 71 goals, the second worst defensive record in the league

The Spectator

2613: Way off – solution

The unclued lights are STREETS or a phrase including STREET (34A). ST had to be highlighted four times in the grid. First prize Tom Rollinson, Borehamwood, Herts Runners-up Anna Jones, Manton, Wilts; James Bench-Capon, Cambridge

Doc

2616: Atomic scorers

The thirteen thematic unclued lights form the first half of an alphabetical list. Ignore all accents. Across 10 Cut-throat chap’s birds (10) 13 Behavioural stimulus affected Earl 8 (8) 16 Girl in chains? (5) 17 Skilfully handled – after a stroke? (7) 18 White van going across Indian territory first (7) 20 Revised asking price a German rejected for US travelling bag (8) 25 Jack starts to play up rudely (3) 26 Gold mace is a good omen (7) 28 22-0 rout. So divine! (7) 29 Little boy at Orkney creek (3) 31 Ace pilot crashed – of lyrical bent (8) 34 Almost finally having Midwest displayed in these? (7)

Lucy Vickery

Spectator competition winners: who’s afraid of AI?

In Competition No. 3310, you were invited to submit a horror story on the theme of artificial intelligence. None of your entries, creditable though they were, matched the horror of Harlan Ellison’s gruesome short story from 1967, ‘I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream’, which was at the back of my mind when I set this challenge. A sadistic supercomputer AM – Allied Mastercomputer – has wiped out all humanity except five unfortunate survivors, whom it can keep alive and take pleasure in torturing in perpetuity: ‘We were his belly slaves. We were all he had to do with his forever time…’. I queried Russell Chamberlain’s use of ‘light years’

Luke McShane

No. 763

White to play. Edward Jackson-John Merriman, British Championships, 2023. Black has just captured a rook on e2 with a pawn on f3, presumably expecting imminent resignation. Which move allowed White to turn the tables? Email answers to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 7 August. There is a prize of £20 for the first correct answer out of a hat. Please include a postal address. Last week’s solution 1 Ne4! Qxe1+ 2 Qxe1 Bxe1 3 Nc5 threatens mate on d7. 3…bxc6 4 Ba6! and mate is inevitable. Last week’s winner Revd Neil Fairlamb, Bromley, Kent

Luke McShane

British champions

Three protagonists shaped the action at the British Championships, held at De Montfort University in Leicester last month, with sharply different stories to tell. ‘Business as usual’ was a fair description of the top seed Michael Adams’s performance, who was undefeated on 7.5/9 and secured his eighth championship title by a comfortable margin. His closest pursuer for much of the event was Daniel Fernandez, whose energetic play earned him six wins in the first seven games. But his tournament unravelled in the penultimate round when he succumbed to a mating attack from a tense middlegame. In the final round, Fernandez was a heavy favourite, at least on paper. But his