The unclued lights and COMPOSERS (35A) are RIBBONS/Gibbons (1A), MAILER/Mahler (7), RAMEAN/Rameau (25), WANTON/Walton (26A), DELICES/Delibes (46), RAVENER/Tavener (1D), BELLING/Bellini (4), RAMPION/Campion (12), WRITTEN/Britten (26D). Title: cf. Charles-Marie WIDOR. First prize Peter Moody, Portchester, Hampshire Runners-up Alexander Caldin, Salford, Oxfordshire; Toby West-Taylor, Bristol
41 (four words) suggests the other unclued lights – which are individual examples (not group names) of a kind – and how they must be entered in the grid. All answers are in Chambers. Across 8 American twice rejected West African (4) 11 Like some plants you’d set in cold ground without oxygen (14) 12 One’s fired head dismissed from private school (5) 14 Insect-eating rodent moving lightly (7) 16 On the job, one way or another (4, two words) 21 No good place for putting ditch (4) 22 Noble king left to appear later (4) 23 Titans of business, one admitting defeat (7) 25 Kind of acid –
In Competition No. 3238, you were invited to submit a poem about a literary feud. Wallace Stevens’s 1936 fisticuffs with Ernest Hemingway cropped up several times in what was a modestly sized but entertaining entry. The insurance executive-poet broke his hand, in two places, in the course of an unedifying punch-up in Key West (‘Stevens hit me flush on the jaw with his Sunday punch bam like that…’). Norman Mailer headbutting Gore Vidal backstage at the Dick Cavett talk show also loomed large, but it was a war of words between two female writers that caught the imagination of Sylvia Fairley. She heads the winning line-up below with a verse
White to play and win. A gem discovered by the Ukrainian composer Vladislav Tarasiuk with Israeli composer Amatzia Avni. How does White avoid stalemate and secure the win? Answers should be sent to ‘Chess’ at The Spectator by 7 March or via email to victoria@spectator.co.uk. 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…Rb3! Then 2 Rxa5 Rxb1+ leads to mate, while 2 Qd1 Rxb1 3 Qxb1 Qxf5 leaves Black a rook up. Last week’s winner Gary Senior, London NW11
The Champions League final has been moved from St Petersburg to Paris and the Russian Grand Prix in Sochi cancelled. It was obvious that the Chess Olympiad, to take place in Moscow in July and August, could not continue as planned. Last week, this was confirmed by Fide, the international federation, and it is reported that the Indian federation has put forward a bid worth $10 million to host the event. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has repercussions for chess that go well beyond the Olympiad. Fide Council released a significant statement at the weekend expressing condemnation of Russian military action and resolving to terminate sponsorship agreements with ‘any Belarusian and
Few things in life compare to the joy of playing bridge, but if I rack my brain I can think of one: watching other people playing bridge. Tuning in to BBO’s Vugraph is not just fun, but a great way of improving our own game. And it can be quite an ego-boost. It’s easy, looking at all four hands, to see how a contract should be played – how often have we all tut-tutted when someone goes wrong, convinced that we would have found the right line? Kibitzing world-class players, however, the opposite is true – when they take a different line to the one we envisage, it shines a
Even when the authorities were refusing Milton Harris the right to renew his training licence after he got his finances in a tangle and went bankrupt in 2011, they acknowledged that nobody questioned his ability to train racehorses. Nor can they. On Saturday, in Kempton’s Adonis Hurdle, Milton’s Knight Salute, purchased for just £14,000, took his unbeaten record over hurdles to five. His trainer has had 42 winners this season at a strike rate of 21 per cent and is one of the few British handlers ready to take on the Irish at Cheltenham this month. Knight Salute is a 10-1 shot for the Triumph Hurdle and no British victory
‘We’re at war!’ said the taxi man as I installed myself for the long drive to Marseille. I put a fist to my mouth and tooted my imaginary bugle. But world war three – as he saw it – was no joking matter. My tootling bugle irritated him and his voice rose by a querulous octave. Didn’t I realise? Everything has changed since this morning! European politics had changed! French politics had changed! Who was now going to vote for a political novice like Zemmour, for example? Horizontal in its dashboard holder, his smartphone was showing a three-cornered TV debate on a rolling news channel. He turned up the volume.
St Moritz Once upon a time, not that long ago, St Moritz was the world’s greatest resort, an exclusive winter wonderland for royalty, aristocrats and shipping tycoons. I’d say the place reached its peak between the 1940s and the late 1960s; like the rest of the great old resorts around the world, it’s been downhill ever since. The reason for this is obvious: the newly rich barbarians outnumber the old guard, and resorts rely on big spenders. The big spenders live in hotels, eat every meal out, attend nightclubs, and enrich the boutiques that line the streets and sell only expensive bling. In St Moritz Dorf, down by the lake,
BP will offload the 20 per cent stake in Rosneft, the Kremlin-controlled energy giant, that is the residue of 25 years’ effort to teach true capitalism in Russia. Shell is ditching a deal with Gazprom, the other state oil and gas major, that includes participation in the stalled Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Europe and an LNG project at Sakhalin in the Russian far east. Western companies in many other sectors will abandon their footholds in Putin’s empire in the coming days. Russia’s one-generation dalliance with the western way of business – as opposed to lawless homegrown kleptocracy – is over. But just because Rosneft pays handsome dividends, let’s
A foreboding air of déjà vu surrounds the suspension of a teacher from a Bedfordshire school this week. A pupil at All Saints Academy complained that an image of Osama bin Laden had been labelled as the prophet Muhammad in a religious studies class and the teacher responsible has now been suspended until an investigation is completed. The school said in a statement that ‘All Saints Academy recognises the deep hurt and distress that has been caused to the Muslim community’ and called the images that were used ‘totally inappropriate’ and ‘offensive’. Was the image of bin Laden shown in jest, to start a discussion or did the teacher simply
When I was a little girl, my mum told me that I shouldn’t use the word ‘woman’ – but rather ‘lady.’ ‘Woman’ was just too visceral to her, whereas a ‘lady’ might well be a doll. But by adolescence my shoplifted copy of The Female Eunuch and Helen Reddy bawling ‘I am strong, I am invincible, I am woman!’ had reinforced by belief that my mother was wrong. I never dreamt that the w-word would be taboo again. How could the word woman become so contentious that the stating of the dictionary definition – ‘Adult Human Female’ – could become a matter for the police? It started with Posie Parker,
In times of war and strife it’s only natural to feel anxious and worried. It’s a normal, primal reaction. What’s not normal, however, is to conspicuously advertise that fact, and to use a calamity to let the world know what a deeply concerned and conspicuously compassionate person you are. Not for the first time in living memory a serious global issue has been reduced to the self, refracted through the prism of me. This week the war in Ukraine has provided a pretext for celebrities, social media users and newspaper columnists to talk about how they feel and how scared they are. Such narcissistic behaviour has long been normalised in
Tom Ford, the stratospherically successful fashion designer has recently released lipstick shades called ‘Age of Consent’ and ‘First Time’. He also produced a perfume called ‘Lost Cherry’. There has been a bit of an uproar by some feminists who think it appalling to make references to sex with underage girls as a marketing ploy. Known for coming up with the idea of logos shaved into pubic hair and regularly using nude models, Ford, a gay man, is branded fashion’s King of Sex. He denies sexism, claiming to be an ‘equal opportunity objectifier’ because he also features nude male models, insisting there is ‘nothing wrong with using people’s bodies as a selling tool.’ Fine,
In August 2015, Tom Hayes, then aged 34, was sentenced to 14 years’ imprisonment after being found guilty on eight charges of conspiracy to commit fraud when working as a yen derivatives trader in Tokyo. Hayes was alleged by the Serious Fraud Office to be the grand ‘ringmaster’ of a group of traders who sought to enrich their banks and themselves by rigging Libor, the rate charged for interbank loans. His sentence was reduced to 11 years on appeal but it is still one of the longest–ever jail sentences handed out by a British court for a white-collar crime. A subsequent court hearing ordered the seizure of assets worth more
Langan’s, a brasserie off Piccadilly with curling orange neon signage calling its name, is under new management after it fell into administration in 2020. It is a famous brasserie — London’s version of La Coupole — once owned by Michael Caine, a famous actor, and Peter Langan, a famous drunk, who would crawl across the floor and bite customers’ ankles and who once put out a kitchen fire with champagne. It opened in 1976 on the site of Le Coq d’Or and was treated by the diary columns as a person in itself, as famous as Annabel’s, Peppermint Park and the Ritz Hotel. Lucian Freud and David Hockney and Princess
The price of Brent Crude oil was hovering at $100 a barrel as Germany halted approval of the controversial Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia in response to Putin’s latest aggression. The oil price is five times its low point in 2020 — and the name itself, from the now-defunct Brent field in the North Sea, is a reminder of the UK’s energy vulnerability. ‘But only 3 per cent of our gas comes from Russia’ is irrelevant because we pay world prices for oil and gas from Norway, the US and the Gulf — prices driven both by physical constraints and global market sentiment. A cut-off of Russian gas
Was it Socrates who said that chaos was the natural state of mankind, and tyranny the usual remedy? Actually it was Santayana, and boy, did he ever get it right. My friend Christopher Mills has given me a terrific book, The Wages of Destruction by Adam Tooze, about the making and breaking of the Nazi economy. I thought I knew everything there is to know about that period, but I hadn’t thought of global economic realities, the ones that actually won the war. Germany’s limited territory and lack of natural resources led to war. Germans had been starving since the end of the Great War, and needed the corn of
Q. Three weeks ago I banged my head on the lower branch of our near neighbours’ tree, which I couldn’t see from under my peaked cap. I delivered a polite and non-threatening letter explaining that I wasn’t badly hurt and that the branch of their tree overhanging the pavement was a danger they should kindly arrange to remove. Although they were in residence, I received no acknowledgement of my letter, but this morning their entire tree came crashing down in the storm. Mary, please advise how I should write to thank them for their courtesy in arranging this divine intervention? — T.L. (86), London NW11 A. For all sorts of