Society

Monday

Sam Leith Sam Leith

How Meghan Markle can shake off the bullying allegations

She must be fit to be tied, the Duchess of Sussex. I know I would be. It was reported yesterday that a Palace investigation into allegations that she bullied junior members of staff during her early unhappy years in the Royal Family is to be ‘buried’. We’re told that the results of the investigation will lead to ‘changes to the royal household’s HR policies’ – but that these changes will also not be either acknowledged or specified. Well.    Damaging accusations that the little princess behaved like a right little princess have been seeping into the public domain since 2020. Two personal assistants, it was reported, left the Palace in a

Sunday

Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: Grant Shapps slams railway strikers

The political focus this morning was centred around the three days’ worth of railway disruption due to begin on Tuesday. Transport Secretary Grant Shapps joined Sophy Ridge to make the case against strike action, taking aim at the leadership of the RMT union: Union calls for government meeting are ‘a stunt’ Sophie Raworth also interviewed Shapps, and asked him about last week’s call from the RMT to get around the negotiating table with government: Mick Lynch – ‘We’re facing a crisis’ RMT leader Mick Lynch also joined Ridge to put forward the case for industrial action. Lynch took issue with Shapps, raising possible job cuts as a particular bone of

Frank Young

Parenting matters. It’s about time we were brave enough to say so

The Duchess of Cambridge has been out and about hosting roundtables with very important people, discussing what can be done to support the nation’s pre-school children. Royal aides tell us she consulted ‘the sector’ to find out what should be done about the children who turn up for the first day of school barely able to speak or hold a pencil. What ‘the sector’ inevitably wants is more funding.  Kate Middleton has become the first royal to set up a think-tank, the Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood. This week she summoned ministers, civil servants and academics to discuss the findings of a poll: it seems most Britons want a

Stephen Wigmore

Why the West still needs the Bible

If you look to our schools and universities, you will not see a serious engagement with the Bible as part of the study of politics, of philosophy, or even of literature and culture more generally, despite the huge influence of Biblical ideas on the development of British, American and European politics – and so also across the Commonwealth and the world. University courses on political philosophy take a fundamentally ahistorical position of focusing on purely secular philosophers, rather than facing the reality of the Bible’s impact on the actual development of modern politics.  From Bristol to Warwick to Glasgow, the works of Hobbes and Rousseau, Mill and Rawls, are compulsory

Sam Ashworth-Hayes Sam Ashworth-Hayes

The uncomfortable truth about Oxford University

Oxford is a city that makes you proud to be British: its beautiful dreaming spires attract tourists and the cleverest students from across the world. But is there something darker lurking beneath the glorious architecture? Some Oxford students think so.  ‘Uncomfortable Oxford’ is a student-run company which, for £13, takes you on a tour of the city centre. It promised to raise difficult questions about the university and society. ‘Through unique walking tours, we generate discussions about racial inequality, gender and class discrimination, and legacies of empire,’ its website says. The group met outside Carfax Tower, the last remnant of a church standing at the centre of Oxford. The day’s party consisted

Friday

Ross Clark Ross Clark

The truth about Britain’s ‘record-breaking’ heatwave

Will temperature records be broken today? You bet they will. By the end of the day you can be sure we’ll be bombarded with headlines along the lines of ‘Records tumble as Britain wilts’ – or, in the case of the Guardian, ‘Record-breaking heat heightens fears of climate crisis’. But don’t get too excited. Read on a little and you will find that the records which have been broken will seem just a little less dramatic than they at first appeared. The reason we keep having ‘record-breaking’ heat is not so much because of climate change – although rising global temperatures are slightly increasing the chances of records being broken

Debbie Hayton

‘What is a woman?’: the trans film that makes for harrowing viewing

What is a woman? A question like this might seem like a strange premise for a 90-minute documentary. But we live in unusual times when primary school children can answer a question our leading politicians struggle to get to grips with. Matt Walsh’s film shows that ordinary people are often baffled too. His interviewees responded with confusion, obfuscation and prevarication when asked to define the word ‘woman’. A professor of women, gender and sexuality studies at the University of Tennessee was stunned into silence by the slightly harder task: ‘Can you define the word woman without using the word woman?’. Walsh’s wife at least knew the correct answer. ‘An adult human female’, she

Thursday

Michael Simmons Michael Simmons

NHS waiting list rises above worst-case scenario

The NHS crisis continues, with a set of data today showing that the extra cash invested by the Tories is not translating into progress. Those waiting 52 weeks for an operation climbed 5 per cent to 323,000. This is worse than the NHS worst-case scenario leaked to The Spectator and published on our NHS data hub. Here are some of the main points from today’s data release. 1. Those waiting more than a year for NHS hospital treatment rose by a further 17,000 to 323,000 – 5 per cent of all patients. This is already 50,000 above what had been expected had Omicron turned out to be mild (as was

Ed Husain

The Lady of Heaven protestors don’t represent British Muslims

The protests against the film The Lady of Heaven reminded me of a demonstration I attended as a child. My father had taken me to Hyde Park to stand with thousands of other British Muslims to oppose Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses. Ban the book, the cries went up. Some began to burn copies. Others started to chant ‘Death to Rushdie’. My father quickly grabbed my hand and turned away. ‘We are not a people who burn books or kill authors,’ he said later. He never joined a protest again. Last week, angry young Muslim men surrounded shopping malls and cinemas in Leeds, Bolton, Sheffield, Birmingham and London to demand

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

The reason Glastonbury is so white

The former comedian Sir Lenny Henry has questioned why there seem to be so few black people at rock festivals such as Glastonbury. He might equally have asked why there are so few young people. Or just concluded that the festival was a convocation of smug airheaded middle-aged white liberal kidults and that black people were, by and large, well advised to steer clear of it. Sir Lenny and I are engaged in the same sort of research work at the moment. Lenny’s job is to look at various British institutions and to point out that there are too few black people present; mine is to look at British institutions

Flora Watkins

The mystery and delight of English elderflower

There’s an old saying that English summertime begins when the frothy heads of elderflowers appear in hedgerows – and ends when the black elderberries have ripened. People have been picking these great white ‘plates’, as the flower heads are known, to make drinks since at least Tudor times. In Hannah Glasse’s The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy (1747) there’s a recipe for elderflower wine. But only in the past 20 years or so have elderflower cordial and pressé become ubiquitous as soft drinks. That expansion has largely been brought about by Peverel Manners of Belvoir Fruit Farms in Leicestershire. ‘Pev’, a cousin of the Duke of Rutland, still

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

How Michael O’Leary can stop the flying blame game

Stock markets are tumbling, but given the tide of economic news, that’s hardly surprising. The S&P 500 index dived into bear market territory – 20 per cent down since January – after a rise in US inflation for May. Our own FTSE indices reacted badly to an unexpected 0.3 per cent drop in UK GDP for April. Interest rate rises predicted on both sides of the pond this week will make investors jumpier still. So expect further falls in markets that have been driven by weight of cheap money to stay unnaturally high despite an increasingly bleak backdrop. And wait for the turn. When might that be? When investors think

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

If only Tom Cruise would ditch his cult

I keep reading that Tom Cruise is the Last Great Movie Star, as if he’s some noble but endangered animal. I think his people must be putting it about as part of the PR for Top Gun 2, though Lord knows what his peers make of it. Think of Tom Hanks, Jodie Foster, Meryl Streep, De Niro… all of them Oscar winners (unlike Cruise) and all with a better claim to being the Last Great Star. Tom Cruise himself seems comfortable with the idea. He walks and talks like the L.G.M.S. – controlled, confident, impeccably dressed with just a hint of a helpful Cuban heel. But the higher his star

The Spectator

Letters: Boris Johnson might be the leader we need

The leader we need? Sir: Matthew Parris excoriates Boris Johnson for administrative incompetence, mendacity, personal immorality and utter lack of political vision (‘I told you so’, 11 June). Mr Johnson may have multiple personal failings, but surely it is obvious that we live in times which call not for a leader with lofty political vision, but for one who can react instinctively and reasonably competently to exogenous events. Johnson’s refusal to be battered down by successive crises, his cocksure ebullience, and his ability to turn patent negatives into positives clearly irritate his former journalistic colleagues – and infuriate his political opponents. But is it possible that these features of the

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week: Knighthoods, Northern Ireland and Mick Jagger

Home The British economy contracted by 0.3 per cent in April after shrinking by 0.1 per cent in March, according to the Office for National Statistics. Wages by April were 2.2 per cent lower in real terms than a year before, and economic inactivity fell by only a smidgen (0.1 per cent) to 21.3 per cent. Kwasi Kwarteng, the Business Secretary, urged the Competition and Markets Authority to see whether a 5p cut in fuel duty, from 58p to 53p a litre, was being passed on quickly enough to drivers. VAT at 20 per cent is charged on the price including duty. The Duke of York, on family advice, took

Pabulum

2560: Obit VI

Clockwise round the grid from 7 run the names (8,5,3,3,8,3,8,7,7) of six members of a winning set, the other three members forming the unclued lights (including two of two words). Solvers must shade the two clued lights giving further relevant names. Across 8 Seaweed aged sheep gobbled (5) 9 One’s advanced banking system backing Eastern art (7) 10 Love of French poetry (3) 11 Spiritual father a pub ruined (4) 13 Plant right in marshland (4) 15 Porcelain lid in the White House? (5) 16 One thousand and eight lumps of sugar? (5) 17 Beastly battle royal boa lost of late (8) 20 Girlfriend caught in flagrante finally colouring (3-3)

Lucy Vickery

Spectator competition winners: What was Edgar Allen Poe created for?

In Competition No. 3253, you were invited to write a poem entitled ‘Song of Myself’ in the style of the poet of your choice. High fives all round for a terrific entry, and an honourable mention to Martin Parker/Ogden Nash: From spermery to wormery  via germery and infirmery.   Looking back,  life has been mostly alas and alack. The winners pocket £30 each. live and let unlive my   country – ’tis of me i sing:   a poet no cap fits as i   make love my everflowing spring     i am, ergo (i think) i feel   no need of why, no deadmen’s rules;   a calculated life

The Spectator

2557: Heroes – Solution

The perimetric knights are MO FARAH, JASON KENNY, STEVE REDGRAVE and CHRIS HOY, all OLYMPIC WINNERS. Together they have amassed TWENTY-TWO (44) GOLDS (35). The DATE (17) linking them all is 23 March, indicated by 23 (DAY) and 3 (MONTH), which is the birthday of all four. First prize George Walker, Stockport Runners-up James Dowson, Throwley, Kent; Sarah Drury, Devizes, Wiltshire

Luke McShane

No. 707

White to play. Trent-Carlstedt, Hamburg 2022. Lawrence Trent spotted a way to deliver a quick mate. Which move did he play? Answers should be emailed to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 20 June. 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 Rc1! with the idea 1…Kb8 2 Kxb6 Ka8 3 Rc8# After 1…b5 or 1…Ka8 White plays 2 Kc7! and 3 Ra1# Last week’s winner Vivien Fowler, Saffron Walden, Essex

Luke McShane

Have they spotted it?

Returning to the board, Mamedyarov looks at Anand’s outstretched hand with bemusement. It can’t be a draw offer – that would be a rude way to do it, and besides, the tournament rules prohibit an early peace treaty. No, Anand is resigning! He looks crestfallen, like a child whose ice cream has fallen to the ground. Mamedyarov pauses before taking his hand, and now Anand looks puzzled by his opponent’s hesitation. Here is the position: Vishy Anand-Shakhriyar Mamedyarov Norway Chess, June 2022 (See left diagram) Anand had just played 22 Qd3-b5, which pressures e8 and b7. No sooner had he played it than he spotted the flaw – Black can