Society

Monday

Charles Moore Charles Moore

What Ladybird Books taught me about history

Visiting my family’s house, now inhabited by my sister, the other day, I dug out the heart of my childhood library, my Ladybird Books. They were the only books I bought with my pocket money when I was a small boy. Each short, well-produced hardback cost half a crown (12.5p). I got one old penny for each year of my age. So when I stopped buying Ladybirds at the age of 12, I was laying out two and a half weeks’ earnings on them. Rereading them now, I see how much they excited my imagination. Perhaps because of their link with childhood, they read well at Christmas. There were many

Boris Johnson

The joys of a career change

One of the joys of a recent career change is taking a slightly longer run in the mornings. I get up in the dark and hammer my way round the park with the Protforce detectives strolling behind (and breaking into a theatrical jog when I turn round). There is nothing more beautiful than watching the sun come up over a frosty London, and seeing the light begin to gleam on the tops of those high-rises – tastefully located – that I helped to greenlight, with Eddie Lister and Simon Milton, when we were running City Hall. As I trundle along, I brood on my next moves. I think I have

The Spectator

Portrait of the year: Russia invades Ukraine, the Queen dies and Britain gets through three prime ministers

January The first day of the year reached 16.3°C in St James’s Park, London. In France, 874 cars were set alight for the new year. Southern Railway suspended services because of staff absence through Covid. The legal obligation to wear face coverings in England ended. Sue Gray delivered her report into Downing Street parties. Together Energy became the 28th energy supplier to go bust as wholesale gas prices rose. Inflation reached 5.4 per cent. Some 1,339 migrants crossed the Channel in small craft. Around 100,000 Russian troops massed on the Ukraine border. Novak Djokovic was deported from Australia because he was not vaccinated against Covid. February The obligation to self-isolate

The Spectator

A Christmas hope for Ukraine – and the world

This year, for the first time, millions of Ukrainians will celebrate Christmas on 25 December. The Orthodox Church had used the Julian calendar and marked the nativity on 7 January – but parishes are moving to a new ecclesiastical hierarchy, dropping ties with Moscow. The invasion has accelerated the forging of a distinct Ukrainian identity: a people united by spending winter without power or running water due to the Russian strategy of firing missiles at power stations and using the cold as a weapon against the general population. Moscow’s aim is to erode morale – and the will to fight. Like much of Vladimir Putin’s strategy, though, this isn’t working.

Sophie Winkleman

The uncomplaining bravery of the senior royals

I had my first in-person audition since the Covid era began last week. What a thrill finally to be in a room with the casting director, director and producer rather than the lockdown-triggered misery of self-taping. Actors generally fall into two categories: those who rather like watching themselves and those who would rather be boiled in oil. For the latter category, the self-tape is a unique form of torture. From quickly finding someone, anyone, to read the other lines (most recently a well-meaning neighbour who put so much into her off-camera performance that she needed a gin and a therapy session afterwards) to trawling through the takes while trying not

Owen Matthews

Voices in the wilderness: Russia’s exiled media

Before Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, there was a narrow but clearly defined space for Russia’s opposition media. The fearlessly anti-Kremlin Novaya Gazeta – whose editor-in-chief Dmitry Muratov was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last year – was not only tolerated but funded by a regime-friendly oligarch at the behest of the deputy head of Putin’s presidential administration Sergei Kiriyenko. Radio station Ekho Moskvy was owned by Gazprom media but regularly aired scathing criticisms of the regime. And the independent Dozhd TV (‘TV Rain’, motto: The Optimistic Channel) continued to broadcast online from increasingly cramped Moscow offices as advertisers and landlords were pressured to pull their support. Even as the

Lavatch

Birthday Boy

Two unclued lights are a title (three words) and its creator (two words). Remaining unclued lights are four names and eight titles (either singly or paired, including two each of two, three and four words and one of five words), each name being associated with two of the titles. The theme word connecting them all must be highlighted in the grid.         Across 11    Skill securing character hard food (5) 16    Bishop leaves drunkenly with flowing movement (6) 17    Gently affected superiority in card game (5) 19    Husband loves wrong clothes? It’s a cert (4-2) 20    I hear it reformed Athletic Club once (8) 21    Decorative material put round tree

Christopher Howse

Handel’s Messiah is as much a Christmas tradition as pantomime

It was 9.45 p.m. and yellow light beamed from the church windows into the rainy night. As I opened the door the last bars of the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ reverberated from the chancel. This was a rehearsal by the London Docklands Singers. ‘Everyone knows the “Hallelujah Chorus”,’ said the conductor, Andrew Campling. ‘It’s in the DNA of the public.’ In his 33 years’ conducting he has put on Handel’s Messiah ten or 12 times.  He can’t help laughing at the judgment of the librettist of Messiah, Charles Jennens, who in 1743 wrote of Handel in a letter: ‘His Messiah has disappointed me, being set in great haste, tho’ he said he

Tom Holland and Robert Harris

Tom Holland and Robert Harris on eco-radicals and why monarchy matters

TOM HOLLAND: Here’s something I always wonder when I read one of your books. You’ve written novels set in the present, you’ve even written a novel set in the future, but overwhelmingly your fiction is set in past periods, spanning ancient Rome up to the second world war. What is it about the past that appeals most to you as a novelist? The mirror that it holds up to the present or the sense of difference from the way we see the world? ROBERT HARRIS: I’ve always been very interested in history. Really, but for the accident of having an English teacher who pushed me towards studying English, I would

The Spectator

2583: Out of place – solution

The unclued Across lights are British place-names beginning with P, L, A, C and E and the unclued Down lights are anagrams (i.e. they are ‘out of place’) of these place-names. First prize John Bartlett, Shirley, Solihull, West Midlands Runners-up Sue Topham, Elston, Newark; Nicholas Grogan, Purley, Surrey

Lucy Vickery

Spectator competition winners: contemporary reimaginings of A Christmas Carol

In Competition No. 3279, you were invited to submit an extract from a contemporary reimagining of Charles Dickens’s A ChristmasCarol. In 2018, the former children’s laureate Michael Rosen updated the novella – my ‘Ghostly little book’ as Dickens called it – for a 21st-century age of austerity; fast forward a few years and its themes and moral message strike more of a chord than ever. But it’s not all doom and gloom. This week’s brace of entries was a spirit-lifting pleasure to judge, as were all your submissions over the course of the year. Thank you to veteran competitors and newbies alike. The festive winnings of £30 each are awarded

Luke McShane

No. 732

Black to play. Babula-Kovacevic, Bundesliga 2022. Black faces a fierce attack, but an extraordinary move won him the game. What did he play? Answers should be emailed to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 2 January. 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 Qa2!, e.g. 1…Qxc3 2 Nf5# or 1…Kxc3 2 Be5#, or 1…Nxc3 2 Qd2#

Bari Weiss

My new life as a boss – and a mother

A few weeks ago I was 40,000ft in the air with Nellie, my wife, and our newborn daughter on our first cross-country flight when the latter decided to test the technological limits of her Pampers Pure Protection Size 2. I was bent over in the aisle, blocking traffic, sweating, wrangling her out of her soiled onesie, when I realised that in our attempt to pack for several weeks on the opposite coast we had made the rookie mistake of forgetting to put a change of clothes in our nappy bag. So there we were, having woken up at 3 a.m. for this flight. We had a half-dozen hats and tiny

Douglas Murray

How to save the BBC

Towards the end of his life the art critic Hilton Kramer was overheard leaving a cinema with his wife. One of them said to the other: ‘Darling, from now on could we only see films that we’ve seen?’ I know the feeling. I find it almost impossible to watch most of the films that now come out, and have spent quite enough hours with serial killers on Netflix. In the same way that there comes a time when it is a greater pleasure to reread than to always read a new book, so perhaps it is the same with film and television. Yet I soon realised that there is a

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

Quentin Blake’s long history with The Spectator

The Christmas present that comes with this article is an original artwork by Britain’s greatest living illustrator, Quentin Blake. By happy chance, this Friday – 16 December – is also his 90th birthday. Hip hip hooray! It is not the first illustration he has drawn for this magazine, which is why it’s very apt that he depicts an old Quentin speaking to a younger version of himself. From 1959, when he created one of the first illustrated Spectator front pages, through the 1960s, and occasionally after that, he has produced enticing Spectator covers to illustrate either the content or the season, including eight Christmas issues. His first Spectator cover was

Zoe Strimpel

Why I’m finished with football

I have spent many, many years dutifully squeezing into pubs full of rapt, drinking men giving excessively loud voice to their feelings of either atavistic triumphalism or atavistic rage – all accompanied by the odd rattle of broken glass and flare-ups of intra-man hostility. But last weekend, as I dutifully prepared to leave my warm flat and make my way in the sub-zero night to the pub for the World Cup quarter-final of England versus France, I realised that I am done. Done with football – and done with England. Well, that’s not entirely accurate. The Women’s Euros final, which saw the Lionesses romp to victory – something their male

Lionel Shriver Lionel Shriver

Xi, Covid and seasonal schadenfreude

’Tis indeed the season to be jolly.  Over the holidays, we can all put our feet up to view a cracking remake of David and Goliath, ‘The Microscopic Nullity vs Winnie-the-Pooh’, in which a giant bear-like bully has been pushing around 1.4 billion people but cannot prevail against an opponent too tiny to be seen by the naked eye. Inverting the customary balance of power, the narrative arc is classically satisfying: a would-be omnipotent despot is driven to crazed distraction by the sneaky afflictions of the infinitesimal. I’m reminded of a favourite newspaper clipping: ‘Drunk tries to kill spider, sets house ablaze.’ Because you cannot lock up a coronavirus. You can’t

Sarah Vine

Why an air fryer is the ideal Christmas gift

Christmas has an annoying tendency to kick off far too early these days, but I can never give into it until after my son’s birthday on 23 November. This year he turned 18, which feels like a milestone for both of us. He can now legally be served in a pub and go to prison, and I theoretically have a man about the house again. Even though, unfortunately, he seems to have taken after his father in his complete inability to perform any of the traditional male roles, such as assembling flat-packed furniture or not setting fire to the toaster. Still, I feel a sense of achievement at having managed to

Alexander Larman

Harry and Meghan have stepped up their war on the Windsors

The first part of the Harry and Meghan show on Netflix was something of a let down. Over three tedious hours, there was a lot of sentiment and half-veiled digs at the Royal Family, as well as some philosophising about racism and Brexit, but millions of viewers got to the end of the third hour and sighed as one: ‘Is that it?’  Expectations were not high that the second instalment, coming to Netflix this Thursday, was going to live up to the advance hype. But it appears a nasty surprise is in store, at least for the Royal Family. Much of the explosive material that has been teased to viewers

Peter Jones

The Romans knew the dangers of December overindulgence

Christmas is a time of feasting. So too was the Roman festival of Saturnalia, held in honour of the god Saturn, which took place between 17 and 23 December, when even a poor peasant might kill a pig fattened up for the occasion or, if not, hope to join the company of someone who had. Drinking and riot too were all part of the festivities. Such self-indulgence was fair – or fare – enough once a year, but throughout the year? That was what made Roman moralists reflect sadly on the corruption of that frugal and simple life which they judged to have been the key to Roman greatness. Romans