34 min listen
Polly Morgan is an artist whose trade is taxidermy. She recently won the First Plinth Award, and in her time has sold to celebrity clients including Kate Moss and Courtney Love. On the podcast, she tells Katy about her unusual childhood growing up on a farm with ostriches, goats and llamas; why she got fired by Prue Leith; and the ins and outs of taxidermy.
39 min listen
Experts are saying we are now officially in a third wave but how concerned should we be? (00:56) Also on the podcast: What will the mood be like when Boris meets Biden (14:33)? And are UFOs no longer a laughing matter?(23:00) With Scientist Simon Clarke, mathematician Philip Thomas, spokesperson for Republicans Overseas UK Sarah Elliot, Spectator World editor Freddy Gray, astrophysicist Tim O’Brian & author Lawrence Osborne Presented by Lara Prendergast. Produced by Cindy Yu, Max Jeffery and Sam Russell.
At her employment tribunal, two years ago, Maya Forstater was told that her views ‘were not worthy of respect in a democratic society.’ That was after Forstater had been cancelled by the Centre for Global Development think tank, an institute that had employed her, when she was caught preaching the gospel of science and reason on the internet. Some of her colleagues grumbled about her gender critical beliefs, and Forstater’s contract was not renewed. Today, after an appeal, last year’s judgment was cancelled. The significance of this case cannot be overstated. In the current ideological battle between fact and fantasy, only one side comes to the table with cogent beliefs.
Dorian Lynskey recently wrote a piece celebrating Bob Dylan’s 80th birthday entitled ‘Bob Dylan doesn’t like you‘. The article highlighted the disdain Dylan has for fans, critics, journalists, and even the Nobel Prize Committee. Feted as the voice of a generation, and often acting like it, he still has nothing but scorn for those who acclaim him as such. Another ‘voice of a generation’, some three generations removed, Greta Thunberg has been acclaimed by many politicians for her climate activism. But there is little sign that Thunberg has anything but scorn for them in return. It would be fair to say to most world leaders ‘Greta Thunberg doesn’t like you’. The most
My diary has been filled with dental appointments, reflecting a truism that American dentists pray for British teeth. The tally in this past month is one root canal, three extractions and two bone grafts, which more or less equals the cost of putting one dentist’s child through a year of college. The epic began almost a year ago with a mild toothache, which my usually excellent dentist in Charleston, South Carolina, insisted needed the attention of a specialist. I rejected her advice with the confident assurance that I was getting old, the pain was mild, and it was a race between the tooth and death, a race that death would
Trust us Sir: I refute Charles Moore’s assertions (‘Broken Trust’, 5 June) that the National Trust frowns on local expertise, ignores its members and is prone to ideological zealotry. National Trust houses are historic treasures of national importance and we are very proud to care for them. Before the pandemic, the Trust was spending three times more on its houses than on coast and countryside. Covid has caused regrettable staff reductions, but we still have more curatorial posts than we did several years ago. This is hardly an organisation ‘attacking the very idea of country houses’. The report looking at links with slavery and colonialism was not driven by ideology,
This week, world leaders are doing what countless Brits do every summer: unpacking their bags in a charming corner of Cornwall. The G7 summit — Joe Biden’s first, and Angela Merkel’s last — is taking place in the resort town of Carbis Bay, a stone’s throw from St Ives. Between the speeches and the roundtables, will the world leaders find time to tuck into Cornwall’s proudest and most popular export, the Cornish pasty? Boris Johnson talked about the region’s industrial history in the run-up to the event: ‘Two hundred years ago Cornwall’s tin and copper mines were at the heart of the UK’s industrial revolution and this summer Cornwall will
Compared with Anastasia’s mate, or an epaulette mate, the humble back-rank mate is named without imagination or whimsy. It is the Ronseal of mating patterns, administered by a rook or queen to a hapless king stuck on the rank behind its own pawns. But there is a rich variety of tactical motifs which culminate in this simple pattern, as shown by two of Magnus Carlsen’s recent games. Dubov–Carlsen FTX Crypto Cup Prelims, May 2021 (see left diagram) Carlsen has just grabbed a pawn on e4, so the knight on d5 lacks support. The simple 21 Nc3 looks roughly equal, but Dubov launched a volley of tactics with 21 Qxe5. His
Companies should willingly pay tax wherever they generate profits — this column has long argued — because it’s fair they should contribute to the cost of the public services on which all business ultimately relies, and because the reputation of capitalism as a whole is tainted when corporate tax bills are reduced to absurdly low levels by the use of offshore domiciles and spurious royalty payments that most governments lack the willpower to challenge. So I welcome at least one half of the G7 finance ministers’ agreement last weekend on a new global corporate tax regime. The half I’m ready to praise is the proposal that all countries should have
Twelve symmetrically disposed unclued entries comprise three distinct interlinked quartets. Across 1 Precise conjecture about coin-flip, oddly (8) 6 Peter out back, eating square meal (6) 10 Hit round ring – rim of upper drum (6) 11 Tiny baby consumed by gas (7) 12 Pedestrian holds back directions to Wick (5) 14 Advert I tweaked late in development (7) 15 We animate Ferris wheels (6) 18 Legal excuses persist regularly, certainly on detaining leader (8) 22 No time for anointing abstract artist (8) 24 Petition Henry for backing Greek musician (7) 29 Opening cut by old, extremely delicate round swords (7) 30 Honk grim old lady – look ahead
The unclued lights are characters and places associated with King Arthur. First prize Belinda Bridgen, London NW8 Runners-up John Samson, Edinburgh; Danuta Rosendorff, Coogee, NSW, Australia
Black to play. Vodopyanov–Kantsyn, 1974. Two bishops up, White appears to have everything covered. Which move allows Black to force a quick win? Answers should be emailed to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 14 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…g3! 2 Kxg3 Rb3. White resigned in view of 3 Kg2 Rxe3 4 Bxe3 Kxe3 5 Kf1 Kd2. Last week’s winner Jeff Aronson, Oxford
We all know it takes courage to win races over jumps, along with athleticism, stamina and speed. But you need courage to win on the Flat too and Adayar showed that in abundance winning this year’s Derby. The aerial shots show vividly the moment, two furlongs from the finish, when early leader Gear Up moved fractionally away from the rail. Jockey Adam Kirby, who had been tracking him all the way, saw his opportunity and asked Adayar to forge through the narrow gap. His brave mount responded and suddenly they were clear, going on to win by four lengths in a success that was truly popular with the racing community.
Q. We have moved house from north to south London. For me one of the chief pluses is that we no longer need to employ the same cleaner who has blighted my life for years by being useless. My wife, who is a soft touch, could never bring herself to sack the woman for fear of ‘hurting her feelings’. How can we avoid repeating the mistake (with going rates as much as £15 an hour)? We don’t know any of our new neighbours to ask for recommendations. — B.B., London SW17 A. Advertise in a newsagent’s window. It is important to mention the hourly rate you are prepared to pay
Rare Lili Other than the new royal baby, is there anyone in the world formally called Lilibet? — There are 141 Lilibets in the US. None have been born since 1999 — when 8 were born, according to the US Social Security Administration. — Lilibet Foster, born in the US Virgin Islands in 1965, is a documentary-maker whose film Speaking in Strings, about the violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, was nominated in the 72nd Academy Awards. — In answer to a freedom of information request in 2017, the Office for National Statistics refused to provide a full breakdown of the first names of people living in Britain. But it does publish a
Noble Rot sits in Greek Street, Soho, on the site of the old Gay Hussar, which squatted here from 1953 like a rebuke. Some people loved this Hungarian ‘left-wing’ restaurant, with its terrible food, its library of Labour-themed political biographies, its raging cartoons and fond memories of Harold Wilson. But you can’t eat political biographies — not if you have taste. An attempt to save it by a ‘Goulash Collective’ failed, because the Gay Hussar was a themed restaurant whose theme — a sort of politicised London Dungeon — ran out. In an exquisite metaphor, it closed in 2018, at the height of Jeremy Corbyn’s self-hating — and self-thwarted —
I spent last weekend in south Devon at Dartington, the former estate of Dorothy and Leonard Elmhirst, and now a charitable trust. I know the place quite well because my father was more or less adopted by the Elmhirsts when he was 14 and I spent four years there as a teenager while he was writing Dorothy and Leonard’s biography. He described it as his best book and I was pleased to see it on display behind the reception area at Dartington Hall, a Grade I listed building that is now a hotel, among other things. I’ve always thought the story of Dartington would make a good parable about the
Where have all the GPs gone? Doctors were among the first to be double-jabbed, ahead of teachers in the queue precisely so they could resume seeing patients in the flesh. But while schools have long been back, GPs have retreated behind their laptops never to be seen again (at least not in the flesh). The stethoscope has been replaced by a headset — to the despair of patients with ailments that are hard to diagnose over the phone or via a laptop. In theory, GPs can claim normal service has resumed. In the pandemic the number of appointments almost halved to just over three million a week — in spite
Now that the government has kindly allowed us to go out again, I wonder if anyone has discovered the same social challenge I have encountered? Which is that almost nobody agrees on anything. I should pre-empt a possible line of attack here and acknowledge that I am aware of the case study I am basing this on. Still I fancy the problem is wider than myself. Of course we never did agree on everything. But, after a year of seclusion, it seems that as we de-bubble, the divergences are far greater than before. Not least regarding what we have just been through. It forks off at the very beginning. For
One of the more egregious innovations of Chairman Mao’s cultural revolution was something called the ‘struggle sessions’. This involved the ritual public humiliation of anybody the local bigwigs had turned against — often in sports stadiums. The elderly Yangtze swimmer would have smiled approvingly at what has happened to Ollie Robinson, the England fast bowler who was forced to read out an apology on the eve of his first Test match for some daft and obnoxious remarks he made eight years ago on Twitter. He has now been banned, and something with the sinister title of the ‘integrity unit’ is poised to investigate further. But investigate what exactly? Had Robinson