Society

Wednesday

Lucy Vickery

Spectator competition winners: Samuel Pepys on Liz Truss

In Competition No. 3272, you were invited to imagine a well-known diarist, real or fictitious, commenting on contemporary events. This month marks the 40th anniversary of the debut of adolescent diarist Adrian Mole, and several competitors imagined what he would have made of these turbulent times. Here’s Janine Beacham: ‘I have tested positive for Covid, worse luck! All that hand-washing, social distancing and mask-wearing was for nothing. This is what comes of living in a cul-de-sac.’ Hats off to Sylvia Fairley’s Bridget Jones for her ability to find a silver lining: ‘Perpetua at her most obnoxious. Excellent news, mortgage on her millionaire home cancelled, thanks to fiscal catastrophe. Bought more

The Spectator

2576: After Eleven – solution

The unclued lights are names of the men who followed Armstrong and Aldrin (Apollo 11) in walking on the moon First prize Glynn Downton, Maidstone, Kent Runners-up D.V. Jones, Llanfair Caereinion, Powys; John Kitchen, Breachwood Green, Herts

Mr Magoo

2579: Destructive plot

One unclued entry (three words) gives the theme, and five others give two-word names directly connected with it. Remaining unclued entries give two examples of the theme phrase, one of two words and one of three. Across 1 US underdogs willingly bring moggies under control? (4,4) 7 I’m sorry, love, to get info about daughter (2,4) 12 Deciphered name in pastry (2,5) 13 Man on board captures a wild ass (5) 14 Money-changing involves plunder, to be expected in studying growth (14) 19 Society protected arch in Edinburgh (4) 20 With DA, this youth would be old-fashioned (3) 22 One who sails along with fabled reindeer (6) 23 Frugal, not

Luke McShane

No. 726

White to play. Salov-Horvath, Groningen 1983. In this treacherous rook and pawn endgame, White found the only winning move. What did he play? Answers should be emailed to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 31 October. 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 Nd5! Qxd2 2 Nc7#. But not 1 Nb5 Qb6! Last week’s winner John Boyd, Ashtead, Surrey

Susanna Gross

Bridge | 29 October 2022

I get very tense, not to say cranky, if I’m interrupted while playing bridge. But last week I decided it was time to chill out – as I’m sure anyone else would if they too had witnessed Gitte Hecht-Johansen’s extraordinary feat of multi-tasking. Gitte is originally from Denmark but has long been a fixture – an unusually elegant one – on London’s bridge scene, both as a player and a tournament director. Last Monday evening she was at TGR’s in Paddington, directing the weekly duplicate held there by the West London Gay Bridge Club. I was also at TGR’s for a league match. But one of our opponents was running

Robin Oakley

Lesson to self: don’t put a bet on in autumn

When things went wrong in his days running the Daily Mirror, the scoundrel Robert Maxwell used to shout: ‘Which effing idiot thought of doing that?’ Told once by a bolder-than-average subordinate that what proved to have been a disaster had been his own idea, he responded: ‘In that case what effing idiot let me do it?’ Thanks partly to generous layers who pay up to six places in Heritage handicaps, it has been a prosperous punting season for me but at Newbury last Saturday it was bookmakers 7 – Oakley nil and I have nobody to blame but myself. Every year I counsel myself to hold back as the autumn

Jeremy Clarke

O frabjous day! My new tumour is just my old prostate friend

The day British media commentators were christening Rishi’s coronation as Britain’s ‘Obama moment’, French ones were calling the particularly horrible murder of a 12- year-old French girl by an Algerian woman staying in the country illegally as France’s ‘Floyd moment’. Gilles turned his phone to ‘landscape’ and we watched the TV coverage as we sped down the motorway. Lola’s funeral, live, was shown on one half of the screen and various sonorous old geezers in dark suits queued up in the other to say that the psyche of France had been so grievously wounded by the horrific details of the case that she would never be the same again. I

Monday

Winston Marshall

Helen Joyce: the truth about trans and why sex matters

63 min listen

Author and journalist Helen Joyce speaks to Winston about the most contentious issue of the age: the transgender debate. They discussed Mermaids, Tavistock, the Scottish Gender Bill and her new book; perhaps the most authoritative on the subject. Is the growing phenomenon what Jung called a ‘psychic endemic’? Listen to find out…

Alexander Larman

Just Stop Oil is wrong to target King Charles

After Just Stop Oil’s recent attack on Van Gogh’s Sunflowers at the National Gallery, the group has become emboldened by the international publicity their actions have earned. This is clearly the explanation for today’s field trip to Madame Tussauds where, after buying tickets like good little anti-capitalists, two of its activists covered a waxwork model of King Charles III with chocolate cake. In a statement released by Just Stop Oil, the vandalism was justified by the protestors, who said: ‘We are here because we seek to protect our freedoms and rights, because we seek to protect this green and pleasant land which is the inheritance of us all.’  After buying tickets

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Is Britain heading for a painful recession?

Given how inflation has taken off and sent real incomes into steep decline it is remarkable that Britain is not already in recession. It seemed that we were heading that way – until the Office for National Statistics revised upwards economic growth in the second quarter of this year from minus 0.1 per cent to plus 0.2 per cent. The economy then shrank by 0.3 per cent in August. But the definition of a recession is two quarters of negative growth – so Britain cannot be classed as being in one until growth figures for the fourth quarter are published in January. But the S&P Global Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI)

Sunday

Jonathan Miller Jonathan Miller

Cancelling air shows won’t save the planet

To have ‘slipped the surly bonds of Earth and danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings… and touched the face of God’ is amongst the most ancient dreams of humanity. Never better expressed than in the sonnet of pilot-poet John Gillespie Magee. Yet inevitably, the green blob has discovered a new target for cancelation: the air show. The magnificent men in their flying machines are being grounded on the altar of net zero. The most recent cancelation is in Sunderland, which has attracted more than one million visitors each year to see the Red Arrows, the Battle of Britain Memorial flight and aircraft from all over the world. Council Labour leader Graeme

Helen Joyce

Has Cambridge abandoned debate?

My views on gender identity are well known. I believe that biology, rather than a person’s feelings, determines whether they count as a man or woman. My arguments support what many instinctively believe to be true. However, in academic circles, the idea that biology informs gender is far more contentious. So contentious that respected academics have denounced me as ‘offensive, insulting and hateful’. I am due to speak at an event next week. The philosophy professor Arif Ahmed invited me to talk about my work on gender identity. The discussion is due to be held at Gonville and Caius College in Cambridge, although it is not an official event put

Thursday

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

​​France is now more dangerous than Mexico

France is in shock after the brutal killing of a 12-year-old girl in Paris last Friday. The details of how young Lola met her death are too gruesome to describe, but the news that a 24-year-old woman has been charged with the crime has deepened the disbelief. The fact that the woman is an Algerian national, living in France illegally after her student visa expired, has caused uproar. While Emmanuel Macron received Lola’s parents at the l’Élysée on Tuesday, his political opponents blamed his government for the death of the child. ‘Lola lost her life because you did not proceed with the expulsion of this national,’ said centre-right Republican MP

Wednesday

Christopher Howse

What your signature says about you

I have a photograph of Queen Elizabeth II and her parents on the wall of my bathroom, not out of any lack of respect but because the gloom there prevents it fading. It is signed Albert, with an odd droop forward of the bar of the T to join a single flourish beneath, and Elizabeth in a familiar hand. This is not the late Queen’s signature, though, for it was made in 1927, when Princess Elizabeth was hardly into talking, let alone signing. Queen Elizabeth, whom we still think of as the Queen Mother, was a simple royal duchess then. Yet one can’t help thinking that in choosing her style

Lucy Vickery

Spectator competition winners: poems about the Oxford comma

In Competition No. 3271, you were invited to submit a poem about the Oxford comma. Thérèse Coffey’s much-maligned edict about this divisive piece of punctuation seems a long time ago now, but your entries – tremendous; well done – brought it all back. Though my head was turned by Frank McDonald’s villanelle, John O’Byrne’s haiku and Janine Beacham’s double dactyl, it’s the winners below who scoop £30. A memo arrived in the Coffey break for departmental circulation: ‘Whatever else may be at stake, the priority’s good punctuation.   ‘The NHS will have to wait, I fear this task has proved more pressing, I’ll set aside affairs of state, the Oxford

The Spectator

Has the pandemic made us appreciate nature more?

Out to grass If Liz Truss is forced out of office (and doesn’t also resign her parliamentary seat as Tony Blair did on resigning as prime minister), there will be three ex-PMs sitting on the backbenches of the Commons. When was the last time this happened? — Between Jim Callaghan’s defeat in the 1979 general election and Harold Wilson’s retirement from the Commons four years later, Callaghan, Wilson and Edward Heath were all still in parliament. As for the number of living ex-PMs, we are already at a modern record, with Boris Johnson, Theresa May, David Cameron, Gordon Brown, Tony Blair and John Major. Prior to Johnson’s departure from office,

Neil Macgregor

Inside the Booker Prize

It’s been a great week for the powerful fantasies of fiction (see more below), but over the weekend no novel anywhere in the world could compete with the fantasy of British politics. Continental Europe watched spellbound as the Prime Minister and her Chancellor humiliated themselves and the standing of the UK. The reactions of the different nations were predictable, but none the less excruciating for that. In Germany, where journalists have disconcertingly deep knowledge of British constitutional history, the reaction was dismay, as a distracted friend inflicts yet further damage on themselves. As for France: King Lear is playing at the Comédie-Française for the first time in its history, so

Roger Alton Roger Alton

Rugby union needs its own Richard Thompson

Dear oh dear, as exasperated kings are known to murmur – just look at the state of rugby union. But if our monarch had to pass judgment on the catastrophe enveloping the game in England, you imagine his language would be stronger than that. Mind you, a decent king is just what rugby needs: heads have to be seriously knocked together – off the field – if the game is to survive in anything like its current form. This column feels no shame in returning to this theme; after all, it’s not often that a major sport finds itself looking down the barrel. It’s clear that the current organisational structures

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

Echoes of John Lewis: Piazza at Royal Opera House reviewed

The Piazza is not a piazza – a realisation which is always irritating – but a restaurant in the eaves of the Royal Opera House, now restyled and open to those without tickets to the opera or ballet. If it were honest, Piazza would name itself Attic or Eaves, but the Garden, as idiotscall it, has long been a slave to delusions of the most boring kind. (It is no longer a garden in the wreckage of Inigo Jones’s square. I wish it were.) I would be happy to dine in a restaurant called Eaves – my favourite hotel is a hole in a wall by the Jaffa Gate in

Noel Malcolm

Will The Parthenon Project seize the Elgin Marbles?

Thirty-five years ago, the late Christopher Hitchens published a book about the Elgin Marbles. Unsurprisingly, it was a polemical work; he was passionately campaigning for the return of the sculptures to Athens. But that was not the reason why I wrote a scathing review of it for The Spectator. Parts of it were plagiarised, as I showed, from the classic book by William St Clair; and in some places Hitchens dealt with the awkward fact that the evidence did not fit his claims by abbreviating the quotations, filtering out the unwanted bits. Hitchens replied with a thunderously disdainful attack on me in the letters page. I said to the then