Society

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Harry and Meghan’s interview, Piers Morgan’s resignation and Biden’s pets in the doghouse

Home The world was agog, some in tears, some in synchronised toe-curling, as the Duchess of Sussex and her husband shared their sufferings with Oprah Winfrey. In America 17 million watched; in Britain 11 million. The Duchess spoke of Disney’s Little Mermaid; seeing it, she had exclaimed: ‘Oh my God she falls in love with the prince and because of that she loses her voice.’ She said that three days before her wedding at Windsor, she had been married ‘in our backyard’, with just three of them, including the Archbishop of Canterbury. She said she had considered suicide and that the royal family had taken her passport, keys and driving

Toby Young Toby Young

How I learned to love audio books

According to a charity called Fight For Sight, 38 per cent of people who’ve been using screens more during lockdown believe their eyesight has deteriorated. I am definitely in that category. This time last year, I didn’t need reading glasses; now I do. When I’m working at my desk this doesn’t much matter, but it has made reading in bed more difficult because I was in the habit of doing this on an iPad under the covers so as not to wake Caroline. Keeping my glasses in place while lying on my side, with one hand clutching my iPad and the other pulling the duvet tight over my head to

Aidan Hartley

The healing power of sweat

Laikipia In one of Kenya farmer Karen Blixen’s short stories, a character says: ‘I know of a cure for everything: salt water… Sweat, or tears, or the salt sea’. After two months on the Indian Ocean shore since Mum left us, I set off on the two-day drive back to the farm. At dawn in Tsavo I had breakfast watching a young leopard, and passed a herd of 400 buffalo, many elephant, kudu, giraffe and buck. In four hours on the back roads I saw just one car. I reached the Nairobi highway, overtook scores of juggernauts and then diverted along the track following the Selengei river, where Ernest Hemingway

Taki

Tales from my private jet

Gstaad I was very sad to read of Rupert Hambro’s death. I didn’t know him well, but first met him long ago, along with his younger brother Rick, also gone. They were both quintessential English gentlemen: handsome, kind and with a great sense of humour. Rupert invited me to lunch quite a few times, but because of circumstance I was never able to reciprocate. The last one was at Wiltons, which he owned, I believe, but he never gave any indication that all was not well. In an age of crybabies and professional victims, Rupert stood out like a saint in hell. He leaves his lovely wife Robin, a Philadelphia-born

The Spectator

2494: Back to front – solution

Unclued lights are from the ‘Looking Glass’ poem Jabberwocky. First prize Alison Peck, Mathry, PembrokeshireRunners-up Patricia Gibbs, Barrow upon Soar, Leics; Stephen Charman, Shoreham-by-Sea, West Sussex

Smurf

2497: Scramble

Six unclued lights (three of two words) are of a kind, associated with the 16’s 11s, and overseen by 28. Elsewhere, ignore a grave accent.   Across 10 Some money held back for bananas (4) 12 16’s members who may face hostility, even crimes, perhaps? (10) 14 Use leverage to get private information (3) 17 Newly demilitarised losing demerits is epic (5) 18 Index of sad ladies, distraught with two sons shot down (7) 22 Quick to admit each trouncing of 16’s enemy? (6) 24 Fleet assembly point in Gaul is described by Racine (5) 26 Boldness has attendant making important appearance (9, two words) 27 Manoeuvring, get nearer outsider

Lucy Vickery

Spectator competition winners: poems about favourite smells

In Competition No. 3189 you were invited to submit a poem about a favourite smell. This challenge certainly seemed to strike a chord — not surprising, perhaps, given the looming threat of Covid-induced anosmia. As Brian Murdoch puts it: Be ever grateful for your sense of smell!Treat no aroma with the least disdain,In case some virus makes you so unwellThat you can never smell a thing again… Other star turns, in an entry that was a delight to judge, were Adrian Fry (‘Most of all, I crave the pong/ of a layabed, copperhead girl gone wrong…’), Chris Ramsey’s Wordsworthian tribute to the smell of frying bacon and Paul Brown’s clever

Luke McShane

No. 644

White to play and mate in two moves. Composed by Philip Hamilton Williams, Birmingham Post, 1890. Answers should be emailed to chess@-spectator.co.uk by Monday 15 March. There is a prize of £20 for the first correct answer out of a hat. Please include a postal address. Last week’s solution : 1 Qd5! Nc5+ 2 Ka2 and the threat Qd5-g8 is decisive. 1 Bxe6? Qa3+! soon led to a draw, because it’s stalemate if the queen is captured: 2 Kc4 Qb4+ 3 Kd5 Qd6+ etc. Or 1 Qe3? Nd4+ 2 Qxd4 Qa3+ is similar.Last week’s winner Yue Wu, Bishops Stortford, Herts

Luke McShane

Armenian champions

In the 21st century, which country has won more international chess Olympiads than any other? Russia? USA? China? None of the above — it’s Armenia, which won gold three times (2006, 2008 and 2012). Despite a population of just 3 million, the country has a healthy number of top flight grandmasters, and Levon Aronian (the current world no. 5, and former world no. 2) has been its pre-eminent player for many years. So Aronian’s announcement that he will switch federations, representing the USA in future events, is significant. He will relocate to St Louis, which has become a major chess centre in recent years, with the backing of the American

Janet de Botton

Bridge | 13 March 2021

One benefit of lockdown is that there is much more time for reading. My personal favourite bridge book is Play These Hands With Me by Terence Reese. Reese was the first author to introduce the ‘over the shoulder’ approach when explaining a hand — meaning the reader can follow the thought processes behind the bidding and play of many of his great hands. First published in 1960, it is now back in print after being unavailable for many years and if you haven’t already got it I can’t recommend it highly enough. Reese said: ‘You don’t have to be able to see the endplays that may crop up — all

Wednesday

James Kirkup James Kirkup

The case of Sarah Everard should make us all stop and think

At the time of writing, we don’t know what happened to Sarah Everard. However this story ends, it should be an important national moment of reflection, because the way it has made a lot of people feel deserves serious attention. When I say ‘people’, I largely mean ‘women’. And that reflection should come from men. Men need to learn some lessons about the way this case makes women feel. Perhaps there is something jarring about me, a man, writing a column about women’s feelings and thoughts. Should I even be trying to describe and report the experience of a group to which I do not belong? There’s a lot of

Julie Bindel

Why are London police telling women to stay at home?

The disappearance of Sarah Everard in south London has once again led to women being advised by police to stay at home and be extra vigilant, according to a report in the Sun. Such warnings perpetuate damaging myths about danger, for example that only men can protect women and, ergo, women can’t protect themselves; that women are somehow complicit if they are outside and alone at night; and that night-time is dangerous and not the men responsible. Regardless of what happened to Ms Everard, and like all those following this story I’m hoping that she is found safe and as soon as possible, there is a troubling theme in the

Tom Slater Tom Slater

The troubling treatment of Piers Morgan

It is the duty of journalists and broadcasters to be sceptical, particularly to claims made by the rich and powerful. Before yesterday that wasn’t a controversial point. But the pushing out of Piers Morgan from Good Morning Britain, purely because he says he doesn’t believe a word that comes out of Meghan Markle’s mouth, suggests we are in a brave new world. When certain claims are made, even by the most privileged, it is apparently now our duty to swallow them or to shut up. In the wake of that explosive Oprah interview, in which the Sussexes said they were hounded out of the royal family by racism and Markle

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

Is Jordan Peterson about to move from Jung to Jesus?

44 min listen

Is Dr Jordan Peterson about to convert to Christianity? If so, it’s a big deal. The earnest but sardonic Canadian psychologist is already the most effective advocate for the moral precepts of Christianity in the English-speaking media. But, until now, his penetrating exposition of the Bible has been inspired more by Jungian symbolism than by actual religious belief. That may be about to change, albeit not in the happiest of circumstances. In recent months Peterson has suffered from a combination of medical conditions that have left him in wretched pain, both physical and psychological. This has left him wondering whether it’s time to submit to the dogmatic assertions of orthodox

James Kirkup James Kirkup

Revealed: the secret trans-rights lobbying operation in parliament

This is a story about politics and influence and openness. It’s also about the drive for trans rights and some of the people involved in that push, but in a way, that’s secondary. Because the issues involved here and the questions raised are bigger even than sex, gender and the rest. This is, in the end, about how rules and laws and policies are made, and who gets a say on that. A lot of this story is about something called an All Party Parliamentary Group. APPGs are, as the name says, groups of MPs and peers who work together to investigate, report and campaign on a particular issue. They

Alec Marsh

You’ll miss Piers Morgan when he’s gone

Why is anybody offended by Piers Morgan? That’s the point. It’s his job to be offensive. It’s his job to say out loud what many in society are thinking but lack either the courage or the platform to voice. He is the Wat Tyler of the Whatsapp age. Now of course you won’t always agree with him — perish the thought — but the fact of his existence within the mainstream media ensures the expression of opinions that polite society might find distasteful. There is something almost dialectic about Morgan’s performances. His job is to provoke, and in their response the viewer better knows his or her own mind. But

Debbie Hayton

Why the census sex question needs to be protected

Since 1801 the decennial census has asked us to state our sex. But never before has such a simple question generated such controversy. Yesterday, it ended up before a high court judge. With the 2021 census less than two weeks away, Mr Justice Swift ruled that the guidance accompanying the question should be changed. The legal action, brought by the campaigning group Fair Play for Women (FPFW), arose after the Office of National Statistics (ONS) backtracked on a promise made by Sir Ian Diamond – the UK’s National Statistician. In January, Diamond was very clear on the Today programme, when he said, ‘The question on sex is very simply your

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

Can Harry and Meghan back up their incendiary allegations?

Well! On the bright side, Oprah Winfrey got her money’s worth. Also on the bright side, Prince Harry is sixth in line to the throne so bear in mind folks last night’s interview by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex does not, really, matter in the great scheme of things. On the final bright note, Meghan makes Wallis Simpson, the last American divorcee to marry into the Royal Family, look relatively good. And that’s about the limit of the positive aspects of last night’s self-revelations, of which I should say I’ve heard only extracts. They tell us a great deal about Meghan’s perspective but not an awful lot in the

Ian Acheson Ian Acheson

No, jail staff shouldn’t call prisoners ‘residents’

What do you call someone in prison? An inmate? Prisoner? How about a ‘resident’? That’s how those locked up in Britain’s jails are now described by the Ministry of Justice and the Prison Service. Apart from the cringing absurdity of labelling people whom the state has detained as if they had voluntarily checked into the care home from hell, what does this tell us about the culture of the Prison Service? And why does it matter? The Ministry of Justice has form for assaults on the English language. Recent guidance on offenders, still under a prison sentence but being supervised in the community, has cancelled this apparently dangerously oppressive label