The Battle for Britain | 7 August 2021
Society
Thursday
2518: Make a run for it?
11 Across (three words) is a phrase suggested by the puzzle’s title explaining how to arrive at the other unclued lights, which are anagrams of words of a kind, all confirmed in Chambers (including two less common spellings). Across 1 Beaten up coin is showing heraldic beast (8) 8 Some stuff is crammed in purse once (4) 14 Troublemaker in prison on remand to start with (7) 17 Tests principles initially found wanting (5) 18 Earl ripped up least military decorations (8) 21 Person’s tailless bird of legend (4) 22 Horse in rain gets incitement (4) 23 Amerindians holding figure back in tropical flora (7) 25 Queen Mary University, in
No. 665
White to play. Adhiban–Delgado Ramirez, Sochi 2021. White has more than one good move, but Adhiban found a spectacular way to force mate in four. What did he play?Answers should be emailed to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 9 August. 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 Nc6+ Nxc6 2 Qe8 mate. Not 1 Bd5 Bd6!Last week’s winner Shaun Gregory, Cragg Vale, Halifax
A word of warning for Brits flocking to France
So as of Sunday Britons will flock to France in their ‘tens of thousands’. That is what is being reported this morning after the government’s announcement that double-jabbed tourists returning from France will no longer have to quarantine. The Daily Mail, playing the party pooper, tempered the good news with a warning that Brits may have trouble finding accommodation with ‘a particular shortage of gîtes and hotel rooms in the south of the country’. Having visited the Pyrenees and Lake Annecy in recent weeks I can confirm that the popular destinations are chock-a-block with French, Germans, Dutch, Scandinavians and Belgians. Imagine how I felt, watching the final of the European Championships,
Why I gave up writing fiction
When, three years ago, I announced my retirement from writing fiction, the only thing that surprised me was the surprise it generated. I had long come to the somewhat un-arty view that writing was a job like any other (well, almost) and that nudging 80 was a good time to step back and consider a senescence involving only serious decisions like which claret to choose. No need to rabbit on and on. Apart from the lengthening shadows, there was a very practical reason. The stuff I used to write involved the unlovely side of life with some unlovely places and people. The search for authenticity required travel to find and
My failed attempts to be a good Samaritan
I’ve been trying to be a good Samaritan for some time now and failing. But this week I discovered that even well-trained, experienced good Samaritans — who work for the Samaritans — can fail too. Reports have surfaced revealing the ‘abuse’ of vulnerable callers by a small number of the charity’s phone volunteers. It’s a sad state of affairs when even the Samaritans are subject to scandal. They do excellent work and have always been the Eton of Britain’s volunteer sector. Two years ago, I tried to get in and failed, which was a bit of a shock. I’d assumed that my listening skills would make me the ideal volunteer.
The path to re-enchantment
Most social occasions now seem to kick off with a wasted hour or two. The time is spent discussing Covid: who’s had it and who hasn’t, who’s had the most nightmarish encounter with a mask fanatic and who the worst lockdown. After that there can be a second course, discussing things like international travel. Remember when we used to be able to book a ticket, put up with the indignities of the budget airlines but still arrive in any place we wanted? Now everybody has stories of friends and relatives they haven’t seen, places they can’t go, and experiences they’ve had to miss. The world has become a little smaller.
Should Simone Biles listen to Novak Djokovic?
I’ve always been a Spectator reader, so I’m delighted to be writing a diary about the Olympics from Tokyo. My first experience of an Olympic Games was probably the most political of them all — Moscow 1980. I wasn’t sure that I would be competing until a few weeks before the opening ceremony. The build-up was fraught with geopolitical tensions — the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the US-led boycott of the Games. Thatcher’s government fell in line with Uncle Sam — a little too eagerly — only to then lose its fight with the British Olympic Association. So we ended up going. I lost the first of my finals
Chris Packham’s suggestions to save the world
On Monday 2 August, the BBC Today programme offered its ‘Countdown to COP26’. For the rest of the month, Amol Rajan announced, Chris Packham would give us ‘a different suggestion’ about climate change EVERY DAY. I make that 26 Packham slots — Sunday being Today-free — on the main national news magazine programme. Chris’s Day One suggestion to address the ‘colossal, planet-threatening mess that we find ourselves in’ was that everyone should buy an alarm clock (second-hand if possible to save on emissions), set it to wake up 15 minutes earlier and devote that quarter of an hour to doing something helpful, rather as we did, he said, when we
Simone Biles, Plutarch and an Olympic trial
The outstanding gymnast Simone Biles has pulled out of several Olympic events, saying: ‘I just don’t trust myself as much any more.’ Many took the view that this was a fashionable ‘mental health’ issue. Ancient Greeks might have come up with a rather different analysis. Plutarch (c. ad 100) is said to have been the author of a letter of condolence to one Apollonius whose son had just died. In it he considered how best one should react to loss in the context of the whole field of human suffering, which Greeks regarded as the common lot of all mankind. For example, Achilles in the Iliad claimed that Zeus possessed
The dirty truth about ‘wash-up’
‘They asked me if I wanted to wash up before we even went in to dinner,’ my husband recalled with mock horror of a visit to America some years ago. He doesn’t get out much. It is true that Americans use wash up differently from us, to mean washing your hands (and perhaps face while you’re at it) rather than the plates after a meal. Of course washing your hands might be a euphemism for that other euphemism of going to the lavatory. Now there is an outbreak of wash-up in management lingo. We must learn to live with it. Annoyingly, management-speak turns perfectly good phrases into weapons of time-wasting
Bridge | 7 August 2021
To be a killer bridge player, you need to be aggressive. Many of us are hampered by timidity, especially when it comes to making penalty doubles. All too often, we ignore our instinct to reach for the red card: we dwell on how foolish we’ll look if we’re wrong, and how cross our partner will be. But as Zia Mahmood says: ‘If every contract you double goes down, you’re not doubling enough.’ Zia routinely doubles auctions where the opponents have bid hesitatingly to game. As he sees it, if they’ve both limited their hands, you’re in with a good chance. Moreover, by upping the ante, the added pressure on declarer
Proper racing is back at last
At last proper racing is back. Through the long days of lockdown horses and jockeys have still given their all on the track. But racing is an emotive, instinctive sport which needs the oohs and aahs of sizeable involved and vocal crowds to impart its magic. With Ascot’s King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes, followed by Glorious Goodwood, at last it felt again like the real thing. In 2020, when the great Enable won the King George VI for the third time, it was behind closed doors in heavy rain. When Derby winner Adayar this year walked into the parade ring with the arrogance of a finely tuned athlete,
The art of losing your hair
Although fatigued to the point of catatonia, and sitting there like a 19th-century Fang funeral mask, I am glad to contribute to the gaiety of a dinner party by being a good listener. But to be a good listener, even a catatonic requires acting skills. I am learning to lift my glass to my mouth and absentmindedly sip while politely maintaining eye contact. I am learning to leave a dignified or at least sane interval between each visit to the glass and to vary that interval. I am learning to appear interested long after interest has waned or petered out. These skills need polish and I am not yet the
The lost dogs of Surrey
The woman pulled up in her flashy 4×4 which was meandering along the farm track in that way people have when they have ‘questions’. People in Surrey often have questions as they drive past a farm. For example, I had a gentleman query why the horses were wearing ‘blindfolds’ recently, and I had to explain that owners often put their horses in fly masks during the summer, if that was all right by him? And he said it wasn’t. Because people who know diddly squat about rural matters have the strongest opinions, especially about horses. This lady was meandering and looking out of the window into the stable yard as
An elegy on yachting
Patmos A very long time ago I wrote in these here pages that spending a summer on the Riviera or the Greek isles without a boat was as useless as a eunuch in a cathouse. That was then and this, alas, is now. The French and Greek seas are the same, if a little bit more crowded, but the people with boats are very, very different. Back then one knew almost everyone worth knowing — that is, everyone with a smart sailing boat, and a few with gin palaces that were graceful. These modern horrors that look like refrigerators on steroids, with top-heavy superstructures from bow to stern, helicopters, jet
Wednesday
High on the hog: The Pig at Bridge Place reviewed
The Pig at Bridge Place is not a pig in possession of a country house, but I would be for it. You cannot have enough pigs, or any edible fauna. It is, rather, a hotel inside a Jacobean mansion — or, rather, part of a Jacobean mansion, the rest burnt down, and is all the better for it — in a pleasingly unkempt part of Kent, just beyond Canterbury. There are ten Pigs, dotted across the south coast as if in homage to Armada beacons. They are the successor to the Soho House brand, which is looking increasingly dusty, and in velvet. My main objection to Babington House is that
Why are politicians reluctant to condemn sex-selective abortion?
Women have faced increasing attacks on their rights in recent years. Moves to accommodate gender ideology have resulted in women-only spaces being opened to male-bodied individuals. In the medical sphere, dystopian terms like ‘menstruators’, and ‘birth parents’ have even been coined to appease activists. These kinds of stories hit the headlines and often receive a wide backlash. But an even more acute threat to women receives comparably little attention. Gendercide – the abortion of preborn babies based on sex – continues to occur in countries across the globe, with girls overwhelmingly the target. Sex-selective abortion is often against the wishes of mothers, who are coerced into termination by family members
New York’s vaccine passport scheme could have a nasty side effect
The latest French export to the United States is a requirement that people show proof of vaccination to visit indoor bars, concert venues, restaurants and gyms. But will it work? On Tuesday, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that New York City will be the first American metropolis to import the French health pass. Marketed like an upscale perk, the ‘Key to NYC Pass’ program will begin on 16 August and become mandatory on 13 September. De Blasio is doing his best to sell the pass as a carrot, rather than the stick it really is. But his rhetoric is still ominous. He said: ‘It is so important to make clear that
‘I’m plagued by worries of disaster’: Dominic Cummings interviewed
I’ve been waiting over a year to meet Dominic Cummings. Any time Mary Wakefield asked me to interview someone for The Spectator, I said: ‘I’d rather interview your husband.’ And she promised he would do it, one day. I began to lose faith, but at last the day dawns. On the way to see him I run into Mary and their son Ceddy outside their home in north London and she takes me to the kitchen to meet Dom. He is friendly, hospitable, takes me to sit in the garden to talk, and gently shoos Ceddy indoors. The one thing everyone, friend and enemy alike, agrees about Dominic Cummings is
