Society

Thursday

Melissa Kite

Come back, doggers, all is forgiven

Bring back the men having sex in the undergrowth. This was the thought that occurred to me and my friend simultaneously in a magical joint epiphany as we rode out over the misty heathland the other day. Wistfully, we beheld the sandy tracks of Ockham and Wisley from atop our mounts as we suddenly realised what was missing. They used to frequent this heathland most religiously and many is the time I’ve whinged about them, including once in a family newspaper where I posed for pictures with the spaniel Cydney, looking disgusted. My harrumphing face made it clear: I don’t approve of married men pulling off the A3 in their

Janet de Botton

Bridge | 19 December 2020

Goodbye 2020 and don’t come back. Worst part for bridge players? All the matches and tournaments have been moved online, which is not ideal as it is too easy to cheat. But for me the worst thing about it is the absence of that indefinable thing called table presence, easily the best part of my game. Here is a hand from a sneaky rubber bridge game, where I did rather well. Artur Malinowski, my professional partner for about 15 years and my primary teacher, was sitting West in a fairly high-stake rubber game and led the ♥5 to the 6, Queen and Ace. I noticed that when I leapt confidently

Luke McShane

A puzzling dozen

This Christmas, government guidance says that board games are out and quizzes are in. Thus, 12 questions for Christmas. Answers here. 1. The Candidates tournament decides a challenger for the World Championship. Seven rounds were played in Yekaterinburg in March, but scheduling the second half is proving difficult. Which player declared ‘I’m ready to play, so to speak, in a garage, basement, zoo or train station.’ 2. The Queen’s Gambit was watched by 62 million households in its first 28 days, according to Netflix. ‘I thought nothing would beat THE TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO SEVEN but this does’. Which American author tweeted that? 3: The final episode of The Queen’s

Luke McShane

No. 634

White to play and mate in five moves. Composed by Kohtz & Kockelkorn, 1875. Be careful — four moves isn’t enough! What is White’s key first move? Answers should be emailed to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 4 January. 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 (a) 1 f8=B Kf6 2 Qf5# (b) 1 f8=R Kd6 2 Rf6# (c) 1 f8=Q Kb5 2 Qfc5# (d) 1 f8=N Kd6 2 Qc5#

Andrew Sullivan

The joy of a cancelled Christmas

Among the greatest bores right now are those friends who insist on telling you, usually as if it’s some kind of state secret, that Covid lockdown hasn’t changed their lives very much. They work from home, anyway, you see. They were practising social distancing before it was cool! They’re not terribly social at the best of times. How lovely not to have to endure another dinner seated next to some tedious stranger or, worse, a drunken office party at this time of year. And I have to confess that I am one of those bores. Yes, I miss people a bit, or at least being around lots of people. But

Peter Jones

The Greeks wouldn’t have accepted Cambridge’s ‘respect’ policy either

Professor Toope, the vice-chancellor of Cambridge university, had proposed a motion ordering all members of the university to ‘respect’ each other, or else. But significant numbers of members argued strongly against it, and rightly so: ‘respect’ is an emotional term implying deferential regard or special concern or solicitude for someone, a response more in line with the world of counselling and social welfare than with rigorous academic debate. Further, if ‘respect’ became justiciable because an academic appealed against dismissal from his job on that account, where would that end? Thankfully Professor Toope failed, as history suggests he should have. On the ancients’ intellectual agenda, respect had to be earned. Rival

The Spectator

Do divorces really increase after Christmas?

Now and then Were households allowed to mix at Christmas during the plague? Samuel Pepys’s diary entry for 25 December 1665: ‘To church in the morning, and there saw a wedding… which I have not seen many a day; and the young people so merry one with another, and strange to see what delight we married people have to see these poor fools decoyed into our condition… thence to my Lord Bruncker’s by invitation and dined there…’ Festive fights Do divorces really increase thanks to Christmas? Divorce lawyers often say they’re especially busy after Christmas, as couples seek to untie the knot after a fractious time. But since the HM

The Spectator

Letters: The case for immunity passports

Joy Sir: Alexandra Coghlan identifies the coincidence between the rise of recording and broadcast technology and the flourishing of the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge (‘Going for a song’, 5 December). Just as the publication of A Christmas Carol in 1843 coincided with cheaper books and a growing readership to forge the modern Christmas, so recent improvements in musical technology have just as firmly established its soundtrack. If Dickens created our modern Christmas, then its musical accompaniment should be accredited to Sir Stephen Cleobury, who served as Director of Music at King’s for 37 years until his retirement in September 2019. He died two months later, but I hope that

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Darvell marvel has brought joy to a Covid Christmas

Many ingenious ways of evading Covid-19 have been devised to assist commerce, fewer to assist worship. In our next-door village, however, is Darvell, a large, longstanding Bruderhof community, part of a worldwide Anabaptist movement. Always welcoming to neighbours, they normally hold a carol concert in Advent. This year, such a thing is forbidden. Instead, the brotherhood devised a ‘Christmas Drive Through Darvell’. I slightly feared a gigantesque version of the dropsical Father Christmases and reindeer which people stick on their roofs, but I was wrong. At dusk on Saturday, we arrived with three generations of our family. The drive stretches well over a mile before exiting into another lane. It

Toby Young Toby Young

The unlikely Schindler who saved my wife’s family

As I gaze at my four children on Christmas morning, clambering on to the bed with their stockings, I will think of one particular person to whom, in a roundabout way, they owe their lives. He was a colonel in the first world war and, had it not been for his generosity, my children, their mother, her brothers and sisters, their children, their aunts, uncles and cousins — the entire Bondy clan, in fact — would not exist. The story begins in 1918, as the conflict was nearing its end. Karel Bondy, my wife’s paternal grandfather, was a young Czech officer in the Austro-Hungarian army who had miraculously survived heavy

Dot Wordsworth

The word of the year (whether we like it or not)

In 2015 smombie became the Youth Word of the Year in Germany. In January 2016 a survey found that 92 per cent of the young people asked did not know the meaning of smombie. Smombie is a portmanteau word composed from smartphone and zombie, used for those people who stumble about the street looking at their phones. Like many nonce formations it did not catch on. What, you may ask, was a putatively English word doing as the German youth choice? Certainly there is quite a bit of English vocabulary thrown lightly about by young people in Germany. The word of the year for 2020 is lost, but it was

The Spectator

Portrait of the year: Coronavirus, falling statues, banned Easter eggs and compulsory Scotch eggs

January Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, signed the EU withdrawal agreement, sent from Brussels by train. Sajid Javid, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, promised ‘an infrastructure revolution’ in the Budget. An American drone killed Qassem Soleimani, an Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard commander, near Baghdad airport. Iran carelessly shot down a Ukrainian airliner taking off from Tehran, killing 176. Bush fires raged in New South Wales. Cases of acute viral pneumonia were noticed in Wuhan in central China. February Eighty-three British evacuees from Wuhan were quarantined on the Wirral. The Department of Health classified Covid-19 as a ‘serious and imminent threat’. In Hubei 68 million people were made to stay at

Taki

It’s been a tough year for socialites

New York Here we go again, the annual holiest of holies is upon us, although to this oldie last Christmas feels as though it was only yesterday. Funny how time never seemed to pass quickly during those lazy days of long ago, but now rolls off like a movie calendar showing the days, months, years flashing by. I wrote my first Christmas column for this magazine 43 years ago, sitting in my dad’s office on Albemarle Street. I remember it well because I used every cliché known to man and then some (patter of little feet… children’s noses pressed against snowy windows). The then editor, Alexander Chancellor, said nothing to

Doc

Spectator Christmas party

At the Spectator Christmas PARTY(90) the TREE (42D) has a FAIRY (22), a STAR (78) and TINSEL strewn around (41, 42A, 50). The STARTER (or 81) is followed by 30 and 75 {3,3}. The TURKEY has come from France (67D), the GOOSE is accompanied by 20 and 31D, and the 102’s are followed by 15, 62, 104 and 109. The PUDDING has 3d’s in it (84). DRINKS (49, 58 {5-4} and 106) are then mixed at 91, 1A and 70, respectively. The table’s centrepiece is an ANGEL (114) and three items (54, 56 and 57) are placed in front of the STABLE. Entertainment by the DAMES (29/94 and 37A {5,4})

Mary Killen

Dear Mary, from Joanna Lumley: what should I do with my excess Christmas cards?

From Joanna Lumley Q. We receive a huge number of Christmas cards every year. When I take them all down on 6 January I feel so guilty about throwing them away that I hoard them in carrier bags. Some I make into tags for next year’s presents, but hundreds of lovely and cheerful pictures seem destined for destruction. My small study is almost overflowing, as unfortunately I save birthday cards as well. Is there any way they could be re-used or made into something charming? Who should I contact, dear Mary? Do I need counselling? With festive but anxious greetings. A. Don’t even think of throwing them away. Stack them

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

Food to absorb alcohol: Christmas hampers reviewed

There is straw inside the Fortnum & Mason Christmas Treat Hamper (£100). As the straw drifts through the house, it begins to resemble a stable. I like this. Hampers are dependent on plants for their mystery: without them they would be just a carrier bag full of food. Restaurants are closed to those who live apart, unless you are in Cornwall or the Isle of Wight. So, this is the Christmas of hampers; of alcohol, sugar and baked and dried goods. There are gin hampers and beer hampers and vegan hampers. There are hampers for dogs (‘woofly good’) and hampers for cats (‘the hampurr’). There is a Branston Pickle hamper,

The Spectator

Ring out, wild bells: 2021 will be a year of renewal

Save for those old enough to have lived through the second world war and its immediate austere aftermath, it would be hard to remember a Christmas which felt less festive. Or a new year that brings such foreboding. In spite of the severe restraints on our lives, which have been in place for months now, it seems likely that we will see some sort of third coronavirus wave with a third lockdown also on the cards. And at the same time, Britain will be embarking on a Brexit adventure that many people still see as reckless and unwanted. Yet if we look a little beyond the immediate future, things begin

Petronella Wyatt

Petronella Wyatt: I’m not surprised Michael Gove is a lockdown fanatic

What this government needs is a good dose of the London mob, which at its height in the 18th century would express its displeasure in no uncertain terms. In those days, the political system, as I once observed to Boris when he believed in rights, was one of aristocracy tempered by rioting. The mob, whose members ran from tinkers to duchesses, acted as a curative to despotic politicians, whose carriages would be waylaid and their occupants turned upside down. The word ‘liberty’ was then chalked on their shoes. A bystander in 1770 described an apparently good-humoured riot of ‘half-naked men and women, children, chimney-sweepers, tinkers, Moors and men of letters,

Lucy Vickery

Christmas hits rewritten as sonnets

In Competition No. 3179 you were invited to submit a Christmas hit single rewritten as a sonnet. This seasonal challenge was embraced with gusto, and highlights, in a magnificent entry, ranged from Ian Barker’s version of Jona Lewie’s catchy and affecting ‘Stop the Cavalry’ to Basil Ransome-Davies’s reworking of the peerless Eartha Kitt’s innuendo-laden ‘Santa Baby’. Commendations also go to Matthew Wright, Ross McAlpine, Mary McLean, Sarah Hill, David Silverman and Richard Spencer, but the festive winnings of £20 apiece are awarded to the authors of the sonnets printed below. The trials of the year have done nothing to diminish your wit and skill; thank you for all your submissions,