Society

Thursday

Tom Slater Tom Slater

Free speech is for scumbags, too

It doesn’t take much to get you censored these days. You don’t even need to be that controversial. Believing in biological sex is usually enough. Gender-critical feminists have not only been sacked from jobs and cancelled on campus, but also arrested and dragged through the courts. Sticking up for free speech these days often means defending the rights of eminently reasonable people to air utterly mainstream views. But now and again we free-speech warriors are still confronted with some genuinely difficult cases involving unsavoury individuals. Manchester United fan James White is one such individual. Earlier this month, the 33-year-old from Warwickshire showed up at the FA Cup final at Wembley

Ed West Ed West

The Windrush myth

Seventy-five years ago today perhaps the most famous ship in British history arrived at this island. A new nation was born, and with it, a new founding myth. The story begins in the last few weeks of the second world war, when British troops advancing on Kiel in the very north of Germany captured a ship called the Monte Rosa. Built in Hamburg in 1930, after the Nazi takeover in 1933 the Monte Rosa had been used in the ‘Strength Through Joy’ workers’ holiday programme; later it became a troopship for the invasion of Norway, where it remained until 1945, when the vessel was transferred to help with the tragic rescue of Germans

Hannah Gal

What Avi Shlaim gets wrong about the persecution of Jews in Iraq

In his Spectator review of Avi Shlaim’s memoir Three Worlds, Justin Marozzi refers to the author’s claims about the 1950-51 terrorist bombings of Jewish targets in Baghdad: ‘Shlaim’s bombshell is to uncover what he terms “undeniable proof of Zionist involvement in the terrorist attacks”, which helped terminate the millennial presence of Jews in Babylon’. Marozzi calls these claims ‘controversial’ but he doesn’t delve into just how controversial. The charge is that Zionists attacked Iraqi Jews in order to encourage them to flee to Israel.  There are several problems with this theory. As the investigative journalist David Collier has argued, ‘these explosions did not cause the exodus…the Iraqi Jews were persecuted, were offered a window to leave, and despite the fact they had to

Matthew Lynn

Labour must resist jumping on the mortgage bail-out bandwagon

Millions of potential voters in marginal constituencies face punishing rises in their mortgage repayments over the coming months and years. The government is in disarray on the issue and is largely to blame for the mess. Labour has spied an opportunity to hammer the Conservatives: it is talking about a ‘Tory mortgage penalty’ and shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves is jumping on the bandwagon clamouring for mortgage payers to get help. But, if Labour goes too far in its demands, it could pay a heavy price. With inflation stubbornly high, and the Bank of England rapidly losing credibility, mortgage rates are soaring. A two-year fixed rate that cost less than 2

Theo Hobson Theo Hobson

What was it really like for the Windrush generation?

This article is not about me. It’s about a woman in her late eighties called Ethel who goes to my local church; she came to this country in the Windrush era, which began 75 years ago today when 500 passengers arrived at Tilbury in Essex on 22 June, 1948. But this paragraph is about me. For most of my life I’ve felt a bit at odds with church, despite trying to join various parishes. In recent years I’ve been going, on and off, to a church in Harlesden whose congregation is mostly black (Caribbean), maybe eighty per cent. I have often felt a bit of an outsider, for obvious reasons.

Olivia Potts Olivia Potts

Cobb salad: a bright idea for summer suppers

They do salads differently in America. Caesar salad, Waldorf salad, even their egg salads and potato salads: they’re big, they’re gutsy and often they’re the main event, not an afterthought shoved to one side. This is never more true than when it comes to the Cobb salad: a riot of colour and instantly recognisable thanks to its various components being plated in tidy rows. The dish was invented at the Hollywood Brown Derby restaurant, probably in the 1930s, and is named after the owner, Robert Howard Cobb. Stories abound as to who exactly at the restaurant was responsible for the creation: was it Robert Kreis, the executive chef; Paul J.

Zoe Strimpel

Boozy lunches are back

The financial crash of 2008 didn’t kill the boozy lunch outright, but it took the wind out of its sails. Ever more Americanised work styles further deflated the tradition, before Covid stamped on it. But the boozy lunch is back. It’s certainly surprising. After all, we are in the middle of a cost-of-living squeeze and a hospitality staffing crisis so severe that it has driven many restaurants to bankruptcy. But try meeting a friend for lunch in Farringdon, Soho or Mayfair and you wouldn’t know it. You must elbow your way in, wait for a harried but upbeat maître’d and thank your lucky stars you have a booking – if

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

As good as pub food gets: The Red Lion, East Chisenbury, reviewed

The Red Lion, East Chisenbury, is in the Pewsey Vale on the edge of Salisbury Plain. Wiltshire’s strangeness surpasses even Cornwall and its menhirs: it has the greater volume of ghosts. I once spent an eerie day in Imber, the deserted village on the plain – the inhabitants were given 47 days’ notice to leave in November 1943, so American soldiers could shoot up Imber in preparation for invading Normandy. Its church of St Giles, perfectly maintained, is open one day a year in September. Its pub, the Bell Inn, was sold to the Ministry of Defence, and is not a fine restaurant with rooms but a red-brick ruin, with

Roger Alton Roger Alton

Why we all need an Ollie Robinson

It’s a long way from Edgbaston to Karachi, but that’s where my thoughts were turning after Australia’s last-gasp victory in an unbearably tense, always thrilling, wonderful Ashes Test on Tuesday. Ominously for England, Australia’s three best batsmen, and the three best in the world, misfired simultaneously over five days. But they still managed to win. Oh well… Anyway, we were at the Sind Club ground on a cricket tour to Pakistan. It hadn’t been that long since the Sri Lankans had been shot up in Lahore so there was still a bristling police presence at our game, reassuringly unsmiling blokes wielding very large submachine guns. Pakistan being a country where

Wednesday

Doc

2610: 700

This is Doc’s 700th crossword in the weekly series. The unrelated unclued lights (including one pair and two proper nouns) display this number.         Across 4      Old nonsense played on the violin by earl by river (6-2-3) 11    White spirit which Travis Head initially put on part of dartboard (7) 12    A French girl returns first to old shallow lake (6) 14    Small cigar without a shell (5) 16    Black market trader’s location (5) 19    Lots of books (7) 21    Fruit – or two, we hear (4) 23    Local hawker having time with loudmouth (7) 24    Article detailed Thailand and its location (4) 25    Creche facilities ready to be deployed

Lucy Vickery

Spectator competition winners: Shakespeare on vaping

In Competition No. 3304, you were invited to submit Shakespeare’s reflections on a pressing issue of your choice. In BBC Radio Four’s Taking Issue With Shakespeare, which prompted this task, Michael Gove discusses levelling up with reference to King Lear, Will Self reflects on toxic masculinity in Hamlet, and Gordon Brown draws parallels between a rabble-rousing Marc Antony and Donald Trump. Many of your entries addressed our robot overlords. Here’s David Shields: AI or not AI: that is the question; Whether it is safer in the end to limit The capabilities of such artifice Or to take arms against a sea of robots And by opposing end them?… Hon menshes

Kate Andrews Kate Andrews

Home truths: the crushing reality of the mortgage crisis

In December Jeremy Hunt hosted a mortgage summit, attended by lenders and the Financial Conduct Authority, to discuss rate woes. At the time, the numbers were at least moving in the right direction. During Liz Truss’s 49-day premiership, the FCA expected interest rates to rise to 5.5 per cent, an increase which was forecast to put 570,000 people into mortgage payment difficulty. Once Rishi Sunak and Hunt undid Truss’s mini-Budget, things looked calmer: a 4.5 per cent peak was expected, and 356,000 people were due to be in difficulty. Hunt was still struck by the figure. Horribly high, he thought. The Chancellor used the meeting to lay the foundation for

Luke McShane

No. 757

White to play and mate in 4 moves, composed by Theodore Herlin, 1845, Le Palamède, 1845. The solution has just a single line of play. Answers should be emailed to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 26 June. 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 axb4! Qxa1+ 2 Kd2! Qxh1 3 Qxc6+ bxc6 4 Ba6# Last week’s winner William Jolliffe, Oxford

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

It’s becoming ever clearer that climate change is a class issue

It’s not news that we live in a New Medieval age of Magical Thinking, when the Enlightenment is seen as the start of hate-speech, feelings must always overrule facts and ‘transubstantiation’ has taken on a whole new meaning. Men can become women simply by wishing it so, the BBC instructs its staff that there are 150 genders and teachers call students ‘despicable’ and ‘homophobic’ when they understandably ask a fellow classmate ‘How can you identify as a cat, when you are a girl?’ Deranged posh girls who would have happily been curtseying to a cake a few generations back now throw excrement and soup around in order to get attention Those who identify as young while having one

Luke McShane

Great discoveries

David Hodge is the 2023 British Chess Solving champion, after winning the Winton British Chess Solving Championship in Nottingham last month. Hodge is now a two-time champion, having first won the event in 2019. Above left is a position which caught my eye, taken from the Category B event, which is aimed at less experienced solvers. The problems are slightly less formidable than those in the main event, though still replete with beautiful ideas. This is White to play and mate in 4, composed by Chimedtseren (Probleemblad, 1973). If you don’t want to see the answer, skip forward a couple of paragraphs. One approach is to arrange a mating pattern

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Boris locked out, mortgage misery and Titanic submarine search

Home Boris Johnson, the former prime minister, was ritually buried by the House of Commons voting by 354 to seven to approve the Privileges Committee report that found he had lied to parliament about observing coronavirus regulations. He would have been suspended for 90 days had he not left parliament; as it was, his pass to enter the Houses of Parliament was withdrawn. Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, having remembered an important long-standing engagement, was among 225 MPs who were absent or abstained. David Warburton, an MP who sat as a Conservative until last year, said he was leaving the House. In the King’s birthday honours, Sir John Bell, Ian

The Spectator

Why Europe’s shift to the right may cost the Tories

On her recent visit to Washington, shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves presented herself as the perfect candidate to be the next chancellor in the modern mould: an environmentalist, interventionist and protectionist similar to Joe Biden and Olaf Scholz. Reeves champions what she calls ‘securonomics’, a sister of Bidenomonics with an environmental twist. But the trouble with Reeves’s approach is that just as she makes plain her direction, much of Europe is heading the other way. Take Finland. Until recently the country was led by Sanna Marin who, with New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern, became the face of the international centre-left. Marin was voted out in April’s general election and as of this

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

The trouble with teachers

A teacher once told me that he couldn’t stand Pakistanis ‘because of the smell’. I was 13 at the time and it was during a classroom debate about immigration: he was very much agin, I was for. It struck me, suddenly, that he was very stupid – an astonishing realisation, as I was accustomed to believing teachers to be full of wisdom, a delusion inculcated in me by my parents. This all took place in a very large comprehensive school in the north-east of England – a good school by and large, but almost entirely white. Of the 1,800 pupils only one was not: a quiet lad of Chinese Malay

Jonathan Ray Jonathan Ray

Wine Club: a delectable summer selection from FromVineyardsDirect

I confess to feeling a trifle delicate when tasting the dozen or so wines from FromVineyardsDirect for this offer. A late night at the Academy Club had turned into early morning at the Experimental Cocktail Club and neither Mrs Ray nor I were at our best. Indeed, Mrs R decided it was all too much and retired to bed blaming me for everything while also inquiring as to when I might be planning to grow up. It was a strange question that I refused to dignify with an answer. Anyway, the point is that I was not in the best of health when I first sampled the wines, yet I

Tom Holland

How to plan the ultimate English road trip

Huge excitement last week, as archaeologists announced the discovery in Southwark of the best preserved Roman mausoleum ever found in Britain. I heard the news on the radio while driving with a friend, and both of us – living as we do south of the river – cheered. Shortly afterwards, I was invited on to the World Service to talk about Roman London. No sooner had the presenter introduced me than he was demanding to know about the mausoleum. I felt a lurch of horror. I realised I knew nothing, absolutely nothing about the mausoleum beyond what I had heard on the radio. ‘What did it look like?’ the presenter