Society

Thursday

Francis Young

Does King Charles’ Green Man make him a pagan?

On 4 April the Royal Household revealed the design for invitations to the Coronation, the work of heraldic artist Andrew Jamieson. While the design is a riot of flora and garden fauna, heraldic and otherwise, one feature of the invitation has above all invited comment – the presence of an anthropomorphic green ‘foliate head’, wearing a crown of oak and hawthorn, with leaves of daffodils curling up almost like a pair of horns. Within minutes, the decorative face had been named. He was the ‘Green Man’, a vaguely defined figure found on plaques in gardens around the nation, who is in turn indelibly associated with another concept: paganism. The Green

Toby Young Toby Young

Are Queens Park Rangers cursed?

A dark cloud has descended over Queens Park Rangers, my beloved football club. On 22 October last year, when we beat Wigan Athletic 2-1 at home, we were top of the Championship table. Under our new manager, Michael Beale, we had won nine of our first 16 games, drawn three and lost four. Since then, it’s all gone Pete Tong – and not just a bit pear-shaped, but disastrously, catastrophically wrong. In the 23 games that followed, we have won twice, drawn six and lost 15, meaning we’ve only chalked up 12 points, the lowest tally in the division. We’re now just three points off the bottom three and look

Bruce Anderson

In praise of Bellamy’s

Of all London districts, there is no more charming name than Mayfair. It makes one think of pretty shepherdesses, giggling and blushing as swains serenade them with garlands of spring flowers. But that would have been some time ago, even before the last nightingale sang in Berkeley Square. These days, the serenading would be courtesy of powerful sports cars, revving through the traffic to cock a snook at the cops. Yet there are survivals from a gentler era. Behind Berkeley Square in Bruton Place, you will find the Guinea Grill, which sounds cheerful and lives up to its name. Virtually next door is Bellamy’s, with more gastronomic ambition, but equally

Ysenda Maxtone Graham

Help! I’m trapped in a 15-minute city

It’s a nasty moment when you receive a letter informing you that a fortnight ago, at a specific number of minutes past an hour, your car was photographed turning into a side road which, at the time, you had no idea you weren’t allowed to turn into.   You vaguely recall the junction. There was no ‘No entry’ sign: just a torrent of words (‘except’, ‘through’, ‘motor vehicles’, ‘access’) that you didn’t have time to read. That outing will now be forever sullied in your memory by the £65 fine. Protesting ‘but the sat-nav told me to do it!’ is as ineffectual, legally speaking, as Adam bleating to God that ‘the

Wednesday

Alexander Larman

When will Prince Harry break his Coronation silence?

Two thousand among the great and the good from around the world will soon receive a letter from King Charles III and Queen Camilla. The invitation to the coronation on 6 May, which has been unveiled today, is not what people might have expected. Elizabeth II’s coronation invitation was formal, and, even by the standards of 1953, old-fashioned: it looked like the sort of thing that Victoria would have issued for her eventful, near-disastrous ceremony over a century before. The implication was clear, namely that her reign would be a formal, decorous one, firmly in keeping with the high ideals of her predecessors, and it proved an apt portent for

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

The Guardian has wrecked itself 

It’s so strange now to think that I spent several happy years as a Guardian columnist, the only billet from which I’ve ever garnered a stand-alone anthology – The Guardian Columns 1998 – 2000:  There is no other commentator who can turn received wisdom on its head like Burchill… no other journalist who can combine such relentless insight, malice and warmth to deserving causes. She is one of the best columnists around – an antidote to the glut of confession columns that saturate the weekend papers.  Huzzah!  Admittedly we fell out when I asked for a raise and they offered me a sofa instead – is it ‘cos I is a chav? –

Tuesday

Damian Reilly Damian Reilly

Who could replace Gary Lineker on Match of the Day?

Just when you thought you couldn’t handle any more depressing news, Gary Lineker has started dropping hints that his days in the Match of the Day presenter’s chair may be drawing to an end. I know. It really puts things into perspective. ‘I’m ancient,’ Lineker said, Aslan-like, on the latest Match of the Day podcast, ‘my time is nearly up.’ The most powerful man at the BBC – and football’s most famous Gary – then seemed to anoint his successor by giving the nod to the endlessly anodyne former Tottenham and Newcastle midfielder Jermaine Jenas. ‘He’s probably drifting toward my role,’ Lineker told presumably astonished co-hosts Alan Shearer and Micah

Winston Marshall

Posie Parker: New Zealand, Let Women Speak and standing against Labour

45 min listen

Posie Parker, aka Kellie-Jay Keen, is back from her Let Women Speak tour of Australia and New Zealand, where she was mobbed and hounded by radical trans activists. She tells me what happened, why she went in the first place, the state of the gender wars down under and her plans to run against Keir Starmer at the next election. We also look back into her own history and how it is she became the lightning rod of the feminist movement today.

Dan Hitchens

The third great crisis in Christianity

After he anoints the King next month, Justin Welby’s thoughts will perhaps turn to his own future. If Anglican gossip is to believed, Welby plans to step down to make way for a new Archbishop of Canterbury once the new Supreme Governor has been crowned. You could hardly blame him for wanting a quiet life: the divisions within the Church of England are more acute now than at any time since he was enthroned ten years ago. Ever since February, when the C of E’s parliament, the General Synod, voted to introduce blessing services for same-sex couples, conservatives have been up in arms. The Church of England Evangelical Council, an umbrella

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Delays in Dover, decline in house prices and Donald Trump in the dock

Home Britain joined Australia, Japan and nine other countries in the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, or the CPTPP. Kemi Badenoch, Business and Trade Secretary, said that projections of its contribution to the growth of the UK economy, of 0.08 per cent over a decade, didn’t tell the whole story. Teachers voted for more strikes; the Passport Office began five weeks of strikes. The Food Standards Agency investigated allegations that a meat supplier falsely labelled foreign pork as British and mixed rotting and fresh meat. In March, house prices were 3.1 per cent less than a year before, according to the Nationwide – the largest annual decline since

Rowan Williams

What St Augustine could teach Donald Trump

Two attacks in local villages, leaving 17 dead in one and eight in another, says my teacher friend from Kaduna State in Nigeria in one of his latest letters. He writes regularly about the threats that he and his family and students face from Islamist militias. But what stays in my mind, apart from the horror of the details, is his steadfast refusal to demonise his Muslim neighbours and his eagerness to find resources to think (and pray) through what he needs to do and to communicate. He wants to learn what it is that stops cycles of retribution; he wants to break out of the mentality which assumes that

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Why Tony Blair was a Christian

Easter Monday marks the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. One of the most interesting things ever written by its most famous architect, Tony Blair, appeared (in the Sunday Telegraph) at Easter 1996, two years earlier. The piece, largely devoid of his vague boosterism, suggested he had thought about his subject. Under the title, ‘Why I am a Christian’, Blair wrote of Pontius Pilate: ‘The intriguing thing… is the degree to which he tried to do the good thing rather than the bad. He commands our moral attention not because he was a bad man but because he was so nearly a good man. One can imagine him agonising,

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

Paul O’Grady represented a bygone era of TV

The tragically early death of the magnificent Paul O’Grady struck a blow at the national heart that’s unusual for a celebrity death. After all, this is, for most of us, the death of a stranger.  This was a man who spent much of his professional life portraying a markedly waspish and unsentimental character, and even when he became more of what we used to call a ‘family entertainer’ he was never either sugary or oily. He reflected the British, or how we’d like to see ourselves, very well – unshowy, animal-loving, regularly quite angry, but most of all not fake.  This rewriting of even the very recent past is symptomatic of a wider

Dot Wordsworth

The problem with ‘lived experience’

The Chinese emporium where I buy balloons for my husband thinks I am a laughing-gas addict, I buy so many. My husband blows a few up and pops one each time he hears a chosen phrase on the radio. This week it is lived experience. From the kitchen, his explosions sound like a shooting party. He thinks it’s funny. I am his only audience. I’ve found a written source to draw on without any balloon popping. It is from Inclusive Minds, which is credited with helping the publishers of Roald Dahl, who have been rewriting his children’s books. It has a ‘network of Inclusion Ambassadors’ – ‘young people with many

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: How do I find a girlfriend who loves grouse shooting?

Q. We have been introduced to some fellow parents at our children’s school. They are not quite on our wavelength – very status conscious and money obsessed – but we want to stay on good terms because our children are friends. Like us, they have moved to the country from London and bought an old property which needed extensive remodelling. We are ahead of the game, having come here a year before they did, and so they have asked if they can come and look at the work we’ve had done. They are the kind of people who will want to know what everything cost. I can’t very well say

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

What the British could learn from the French

If I ran the British government, to promote more heterodox thinking I would employ a small cadre of French people as an alternative sounding board. I know it may seem ridiculous to seek advice from a country which makes tea with lukewarm water and thinks Johnny Hallyday was better than Elvis but, if only by the law of averages, they can’t be wrong about everything. And on the subject of pensions and retirement, they may have a point. The reaction to pension reform in France is a lesson in how two adjacent countries can frame the same problem in completely different ways. When the retirement age is raised in Britain,

Jonathan Ray Jonathan Ray

Wine Club: six pale, pale pink rosés from FromVineyardsDirect

If you don’t like fine, well-priced Provencal rosé – crisp, clean, lively, refreshing and perfect for spring – then look away now. If, however, you’re an out ’n’ proud pink-drink lover like me then what are you waiting for? Get stuck in! Rosé has never been more popular, and with reason: the best are very tasty indeed. I’m not talking about so-called ‘lady petrol’, the grim, off-dry to sweet, neon-coloured, bubblegum-like California Blush Zinfandel, designed for chugging back over ice from a goldfish bowl in the beer garden of the Dog and Vomit on a Sunday afternoon. No, I’m talking about beautifully crafted, pale, pale pink wines made with the

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

My messiah complex

In June 1999, I described on this page jameitos, tiny, blind, albino crabs on the sea bottom in a cave in Lanzarote, occasionally caught in a shaft of sunlight they couldn’t see. ‘Might there be searchlights moving across the surface of our world, too,’ I wrote, ‘catching [us] within their purview, and we the objects of this silent inspection, all unknowing?’ It was a long overnight flight from South America last month. Though comfortable, I couldn’t sleep, so I accessed the in-flight entertainment menu, selected ‘Comedy’ and decided to try The Truman Show, a 1998 American movie, not really a comedy, with (I later learnt) something of a cult following.

Lara Prendergast Lara Prendergast

The beauty of the Easter lily

The Easter lily, or Lilium longiflorum, grows from a bulb buried underground to bear white, trumpeting flowers which face outwards and smell divine. One doesn’t need to be an expert in semiotics to see why it came to be associated with the resurrection. In Christian tradition, lilies were said to have grown in the garden of Gethsemane at the spot where Jesus prayed on the eve of his crucifixion. The Easter lily is sometimes known as ‘the white-robed apostle of hope’.  A few stems of lilies tied with ribbon are  always a lovely present whatever the occasion, but it is true that some associate these flowers more with death than