Society

Wednesday

Luke McShane

No. 736

White to play. Bibisara Assaubayeva-Rakshitta Ravi, Delhi 2019. Assaubayeva is down a bishop for two pawns, but she had aimed for this position, foreseeing a knockout blow. Which move did she play? Email answers to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 30 January. 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 Rxf7! Qxc4 2 Ne7 mate. Or 1…Qxf7 2 Rxf7 Nxf7 3 Ne5 wins, or 1…Qe3+ 2 Kh1 wins quickly Last week’s winner James Maxwell, Farnham, Surrey

Luke McShane

The next world championship

Fide’s clock was ticking, and their position looked difficult. But at last they have made their move, announcing that the next world championship match will take place in Astana, Kazakhstan with a €2 million prize fund, beginning on 7 April. Two factors explain the delay. One was Magnus Carlsen’s abdication, announced in July last year. Ding Liren and Ian Nepomniachtchi, who qualified to contest the match, are first-rate players, but obviously less marketable than the Norwegian. The second snag was that Nepomniachtchi is Russian. Notwithstanding his explicit opposition to the war in Ukraine, his nationality narrows the field of potential sponsors, especially since Fide renounced sponsorship agreements with sanctioned or state-controlled Russian companies

The Spectator

How did ‘mummies’ get their name?

Preserve us The British Museum said it would stop referring to ‘mummies’ and call them ‘mummified persons’ instead, out of respect to their dignity. How did they come to be called mummies in the first place? – The term has been traced back to 1615, and derived from the Latin Mumia, and the Arabic Mumiya, referring either to an embalmed body or the bituminous substance in which they were embalmed. The terms ‘mummified’ and ‘mummification’ did not come into use until the 19th century. Spent Has the Conservative government cut health and social care funding? NHS and social care funding in England at 2022/23 prices: 2008/09   £121.5 bn 09/10   £129.7 bn10/11  

Theo Hobson Theo Hobson

The C of E is right to prevaricate on gay marriage

On Tuesday morning it was theology hour in the House of Commons. The Labour MP Ben Bradshaw had requested an urgent question on the Church of England’s latest prevarication on homosexuality. Ahead of next month’s synod, the bishops have decided that gay marriage will not be up for discussion, even though a full debate was expected after six years of consultation. Can the established Church continue to be out of kilter with the law of the land? Can MPs legitimately put pressure on it to reform its teaching? Bradshaw and others, including Penny Mordaunt, are muttering threats of disestablishment. Their case is weakened by the fact that parliament promised, ten

Julius Strauss

My Transylvanian horror

My first taste of proper street violence came in a Transylvanian town square 30 years ago. Ethnic Romanian and Hungarian villagers were going at each other with pitchforks, knives and strips of wood they had ripped from park benches. In an attempt to separate the two sides, the Romanian army had driven half a dozen armoured vehicles into the middle of the square. Just as things seemed to calm down, a group of villagers came running out of a hotel, pursued by fired-up Hungarians. As I ran to avoid the melee, a man appeared holding a chunk of wood and hit me over the head. For a second I was

Douglas Murray

Pride comes before a fall

Hockey is one of those games, like lacrosse, that alters as it crosses the Atlantic. In Britain, if a man says he is a passionate hockey or lacrosse player, he may get a certain ‘Fnar fnar’ response. In North America by contrast, it would be most unwise to ‘Fnar fnar’ at your average hockey player. A good example comes in the form of Ivan Provorov. He is a big Russian-born ice-hockey player who currently plays for the Philadelphia Flyers in the National Hockey League. Not all readers will be following the NHL carefully, and I admit that I am teetering at the very edge of my knowledge as I type

Peter Jones

Where do the Elgin marbles belong? 

Where should the Elgin marbles be on show? Their display in the Duveen gallery of the British Museum is not impressive. To put it crudely, a Greek temple consisted of a sturdy shoe box surrounded by columns. The purpose of the shoe box (cella) was two-fold: to support the massive weight of the roof, and to provide a secure house for the god, represented by a statue, to live in. People did enter to venerate the statue, but the focus of worship was the altar outside. The external view of the temple, then, was crucial. Visitors walking round the Parthenon saw 46 columns, around 34ft high, supporting a sequence of

Lionel Shriver Lionel Shriver

The war against words

The University of Washington technology department has banned the word ‘housekeeping’. Not because the ‘problematic’ noun is overtly ist (ableist, sexist, racist, ageist…; by now, you must know the ist list). No, because it ‘feels gendered’. Would that they’d simply banned housekeeping. I hate scrubbing the shower. This month, the University of Southern California’s School of Social Work proscribed the word ‘field’. ‘Field work’ might have unpleasant connotations for the descendants of slaves. (Sorry! Descendants of ‘enslaved people’. Nouns that reference persons – like, you know, ‘doctor’ – are reductive and dehumanising.) A ‘field of study’ is henceforth a ‘practicum’. Presumably we’ll now protect corn crops from ‘pasture mice’ and

The Spectator

Letters: Scotland’s gender law doesn’t add up

Scottish muddle Sir: The Scottish Sentencing Council guidelines, introduced last year, affirm research as showing that young people, defined in the guidelines as those up to 25 years of age, ‘are not fully developed and may not have attained full maturity’ (‘Gender wars’, 21 January). As a result they are seen as less able to exercise good judgment; are more vulnerable to external influences; may be less able to assess the implications of their decisions; and may take more risks. However, Scottish people nine years younger than that, faced with the complex experience of perceiving their bodily habitus to be at odds with their sense of their gender, are judged

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Where Britishvolt went wrong

As a scattering of snow settles on the desolate site at Blyth in Northumberland that might have become the £3.8 billion Britishvolt battery factory, differences of opinion over the failure of this would-be flagship of the UK’s electric vehicle revolution become clearer. For Andrew Orlowski in the Daily Telegraph, it’s ‘a surprising success’, ministers having rightly declined to inject public funds into a venture with no market-ready technology, no customers and an executive team with a taste for private jets: at least ‘we know we won’t have another DeLorean to rue’. For the Observer, by contrast, it’s ‘a new low for ministers… to boast about cash they saved by not investing

Nigel Jones

Is sloppiness our new national vice?

The Germans have a word for it. When they wish to criticise their Austrian cousins’ alleged tendency towards carelessness and inefficiency they call it schlamperei. The rough equivalent in English is ‘sloppiness’ – and a flurry of current cases suggests that it may be Britain’s new national vice, too. How many times in recent years and months have we witnessed some public service official go before the cameras to express doubtless heartfelt – but utterly futile – apologies for failing to carry out their basic elementary duties? Failings that, all too often, have cost a human life. The latest example of sloppiness in public service is the tragic case of Zara Aleena, the young

Janet de Botton

Bridge | 28 January 2023

Susanna and I are very pleased to announce we have a Fan! His name is Tony Graham and he edits the newsletter for the Oban Bridge Club. In his email he says: ‘Of all the bridge columns I read weekly [insert all the top names], yours are the ones I enjoy the most and find most useful.’ As Susanna said: ‘Who is this marvellous man??’ Thank you, Tony. I hope you like today’s hand played by England International Ben Norton in TGR’s Superleague, which has just begun its new season: North’s 5♠ was a good, practical slam invitation, and Ben had an easy raise with both a control in the

Robin Oakley

A new star in the saddle

I can always tell when Mrs Oakley has walked our flatcoat retriever. On our next outing Damson nudges my pocket every 200 yards having been encouraged to consider completion of that distance sufficient accomplishment to be rewarded with a treat (although, truth be told, it is Mrs O. who deserves the treat for three-mile dog walks just two months after breaking her hip). Rewards were much harder-earned at Lingfield Park’s Winter Million meeting last Saturday on the all-weather polytrack surface. To my shame I had travelled there grudgingly: plan A had been to watch the mighty Energumene at Ascot, plan B to see if Bristol De Mai could do it

Melissa Kite

The rise of the johnny-come-lately anti-vaxxer

‘No way am I having it now,’ said a friend, as she insisted on discussing the latest scare stories. And she shook her head so violently that her long blonde hair was flung sideways across her face, and the resemblance to an anti-vaxxer in the throes of hysteria was extremely convincing. But then she regained her composure and said: ‘No. I’ve had my two jabs. That’s enough.’ ‘Hang on,’ I said, ‘so you are vaccinated?’ ‘Oh yes, but I’ve only had two. I’m not having any more.’ And she emphasised the ‘I’m’ with a smug look that said she was no fool, unlike others unspecified. This is what is happening

Jeremy Clarke

The joy of French hospital food

I woke up in the wake-up room (salle de réveil). The clock on the wall said half past ten. I’d been out for a couple of hours. What lifted me to the surface was the sound of the wake-up team persuading someone to wake up who was absolutely refusing to do so. The entreaties increased in volume and urgency. Then I heard a male voice say, in English: ‘Wake up please, Mr Clarke.’ I nodded my sleepy head to show him that I was already there. The voice then asked me in French whether I was in pain and I answered in French that I was not. After that I

Taki

My sweet, generous friend Norman Mailer

Norman Mailer was born on 31 January 1923, and as his 100th birthday approaches there is a major revival of interest among those who can still read. Norman died in 2007, aged 84, and his first-born son Michael, a talented film director who has since become my closest friend, came over to my house in a slightly shocked state. I was his father’s friend and admirer, so we sat down and drank the day and night away. A review of the most recent Mailer biography – a hatchet job by a Brit, Richard Bradford – states that Norman could not walk his dog without getting into a fight. Funny what

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Mental health care is the next big scandal brewing in the NHS

Beth Matthews saved lives with her brutally honest, often shockingly graphic, posts about surviving a suicide attempt. She was an extraordinary young woman, whose blogs and social media threads often reached other unwell people at the darkest moments in their lives. She met the police officer who had held her hand after her own suicide attempt, shared X-rays of her shattered pelvis and told her followers that suicide was not the answer. Yet that was how Beth died in March 2022. An inquest this week concluded that neglect by the Priory Hospital Cheadle Royal contributed to her suicide. Beth had ordered poison from Russia, which she had opened near staff,

Alexander Larman

Why does Princess Eugenie want her son to be an activist?

The furore surrounding Prince Harry and Meghan Markle has made it easy to forget about the other younger members of the Royal Family. Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson’s daughters, Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie, have been relatively peripheral presences on the world stage until now. Damned by association with their disgraced father, the pair have kept a relatively low profile. It’s something of a surprise then to see Eugenie not only appear at the World Economic Form in Davos, but give an interview there in which she offers trenchant views on the climate crisis. Her son August, she declares, ‘is going to be an activist from two years old.’ Some

Steven Heydemann

Erdogan’s plan for war, and peace

There are ‘global issues that we both have on our plates’, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said, mysteriously, when he met with his Turkish counterpart last week. Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, standing by Blinken’s side, thought the same. ‘We will focus on areas of partnership in bilateral and regional issues.’ Diplomacy as usual, then. Behind the boring platitudes lies a serious rift between Turkey and the United States. In late December, Syrian and Turkish defence ministers met in Moscow in the first proper meeting between the two governments in a decade. There are plans for another meeting between foreign ministers that could lead to a direct meeting between Turkey’s

Steerpike Steerpike

Is it time for Nadhim Zahawi to come clean?

It’s a new day and once again the news is dominated by Nadhim Zahawi’s tax affairs. Rishi Sunak has asked his independent ethics advisor (all politicians need outside advice when it comes to ethics, after all) to launch an investigation into Zahawi after the Tory chairman admitted making a ‘careless and not deliberate’ tax error. That ethics probe doesn’t appear to have stopped the awkward questions, however. Crime minister Chris Philp appeared on the Today programme this morning; after being grilled about Zahawi’s conduct, he told presenter Mishal Husain: ‘I don’t know precisely what form that carelessness took – neither do you’. The Tory chairman has released a rather paltry