Society

Thursday

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,

The Spectator

The highlights of history: a Spectator Christmas survey

Emily Maitlis Six years ago I took my son, Milo, to Bucharest for his birthday. In the baking July sun, seeking shade, we crouched on the kerb in front of the presidential palace. And I played him the footage of the crowds on that bitter December morning of 1989 as Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena emerged on to the balcony. The speech Ceausescu gave, or tried to give, on 21 December was his last. And it was extraordinary. Ceausescu used his balcony address to reassure, cajole, bribe the crowd. But it turned against him as he stood there. This footage — state TV rolling live at the time —

Katy Balls and Fraser Nelson

‘It’s not morally right to keep borrowing at these levels’: Rishi Sunak’s plan to fix the UK economy

After ten months as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak has finally decided that it’s safe to settle into 11 Downing Street. When we meet, there’s a modern work of art depicting currency signs — €, $, £, Y — being hung in the sitting room, and a portrait of Disraeli being moved to another room. He never had much time to get comfortable, thrust into his job after the surprise resignation of Sajid Javid in February and expected to deliver a Budget the following month. ‘I thought my most difficult professional thing would be to put a Budget together in three and a half weeks,’ Sunak says now. ‘But

Sinclair McKay

City of gold: Peter Ackroyd on the undimmed spirit of London

The silenced city has been, for some, uncanny. Deserted evening streets, darkened pubs, shut shops and the absence of fellow footsteps might suggest that some essential spirit has fled. Yet this is exactly the wrong way to look at it, says the novelist, historian and biographer Peter Ackroyd. For him, both lockdown and winter provide opportunities to see London in a different light. ‘The silence and the empty streets are very appealing,’ he says. ‘This is the time when Londoners get to hear distant church bells,’ he adds. ‘The identity of the city changes enormously in the winter and loses some of its majesty — but it retains its life

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

My fateful appearance at the Bank of England’s Christmas drinks

Tidings of comfort as the vaccination programme advances, but shortage of joy. That’s my summary of a season in which there’s no Spectator Christmas bash for the first time in my 29 years on the magazine; in which my panto-dame ball gown hangs forlornly as a decoration in the foyer of the theatre where social distancing has made it impossible for us to mount a show; and in which I can’t even offer my customary restaurant tips, because there have been so few opportunities to eat out anywhere and, apart from a brief French escape in July, no chance at all to travel abroad. Nevertheless I count my blessings, the

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

This has been the year of epic derangement

I wonder if British universities will follow Cornell’s innovative approach to ensuring students are protected from wretched viruses? The American institution has received plaudits for its rigorous regime. Students who refuse to have the flu vaccine will be barred from the Cornell libraries and other campus buildings — or, at least, they will if they are white. ‘Students of colour’ can decline to receive the vaccine. Why? Cornell explains: ‘Students who identify as Black, Indigenous, or as a Person of Color (BIPOC) may have personal concerns about fulfilling the Compact requirements based on historical injustices and current events.’ The university authorities give a little more detail about what those concerns

Theresa May

Theresa May’s recipe for Christmas cake

This recipe was given to me years ago by an old friend — hence the imperial measurements — and I have been making it ever since. Sadly, since my diabetes, I can’t really eat it any longer although I still make it for my husband and for friends (although not this year, I’m afraid, due to the limit on how many people we can see). While the recipe is for the cake itself, I recommend covering with marzipan and icing. What you’ll need 3lb mixed dried fruit4oz glace cherries8fl oz rum8oz butter8oz plain flour8oz soft brown sugar5 medium eggs, separated5fl oz clear honey What to do 1. Soak dried fruit

Mervyn King

The ideological bankruptcy of modern monetary theory

If you can’t explain something, try an abbreviation. The latest in economics is MMT — Modern Monetary Theory or, in other words, a magic money tree. It’s a simple idea. It costs almost nothing to print money: the cost of printing banknotes is negligible compared with their face value, and even lower when the Bank of England creates money electronically through its so-called ‘quantitative easing’ programme (QE). That money could be given to the public — either directly or indirectly via the government — to enable people to spend more, so raising output and employment. We are all better off. Why didn’t we think of this before? Well, of course

Justin Welby

How to find hope in a year filled with despair

This year we might sing the words ‘Tidings of comfort and joy’ to one another with poignancy. ‘God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen’ differs from many other well-loved Christmas carols in one respect: despite being a hopeful song, it’s written in a minor key. There is a sense of melancholy, perhaps a touch of darkness; a feeling that not all is sweetness and light. It holds together the tension of joy and sorrow. How do we explain the comfort and joy of Jesus Christ in a year when things aren’t comfortable and they definitely haven’t been joyful? We have an image of Christmas — idyllic, pretty, like the front of a

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

Is it time to reopen technology’s cold cases?

One of the staples of crime drama is the ‘cold-case squad’. This allows programme-makers to add period detail to the scenes set in the past, while the present-day scenes can show implausibly attractive forensic scientists hunting for clues in a creepy location such as a long-abandoned children’s home (an activity obviously best performed during the hours of darkness by two people who separate in mid-search for no apparent reason). I have often wondered whether it is worth establishing a cold-case squad for technology and science, to investigate those lines of inquiry that went cold 50 years ago but would now repay further investigation; or inventions that suffered from a miscarriage

Bruce Anderson

The beauty and tragedy of Lebanon

I was thinking about tragedy. Could one use the term ‘chronically tragic’? My first instinct is against. Tragedy is the soul-ravaging final scene of Othello or King Lear, when hope is overpowered by implacable despair. In Kent’s words: ‘Break, heart; I prithee, break.’ Flesh and blood could not withstand such emotional intensity in chronic form. Then again, how else can we describe the modern history of Lebanon? I have just heard of the passing of a splendid old girl. Yvonne Sursock was caught up in the terrible explosion which shattered Beirut at the start of August. Being a tough old bird, she lived for more than two weeks. Being 98,

Roger Alton Roger Alton

Why 2021 could be sport’s greatest year yet

The best thing about sport in 2020 was that any happened at all. And how good much of it was. The worst thing was that hardly anyone got to see it live. Trophies being lifted was a triumph. Trophies being lifted in front of rows and rows of empty seats was just tragic. Let’s replay the year again. This time, though, we transpose the front and back pages of our newspapers. What a year it would have been if we had awoken each day to stories about the excellence of Jürgen Klopp’s Liverpool; the continual brilliance of Lewis Hamilton; the coronation of the Gypsy King Tyson Fury and his admirable

Aidan Hartley

The many good things to come out of lockdown

Laikipia I was drinking in the fresh air on the high earth wall of my farm dam last week, when I saw a low white cloud coming straight at me from the northwest. The distances you can see up here are immense, across tawny savannah towards blue hills on the horizon, an unfenced land stretching for days and days of travel to the Ethiopian frontier. As I was standing there, filling my lungs and feeling free and happy, the white mist got ever closer and began to resemble confetti. The low, fluttering cloud was entirely silent. And then I saw it was a multitude of white butterflies, all flying on

Lara Prendergast Lara Prendergast

Why charity begins in shops

When everything re-opened after the first lockdown, I didn’t immediately head to a restaurant, bar or hairdresser. I went to the Second Chance charity shop on Blackstock Road in north London. It wasn’t that I was feeling particularly charitable. If anything, my visit came from a place of selfishness. I wanted to rootle around, alone, and find something unexpected — and probably pointless — in the piles of bric-à-brac. Out I came with a milk jug (£2.50) and a book titled Cool Names for Babies (50p) written by two women called Pamela Redmond Satran and Linda Rosenkrantz. I instantly felt better, as though the past few months had been a

Lionel Shriver Lionel Shriver

It’s completely rational for girls to want to be boys

I’ve always been perplexed why anyone lucky enough to be born male would want to swap sexes. But it seems completely rational to me that girls might rather be boys. The UK’s recent High Court judgment that under-16s aren’t mature enough to give informed consent to puberty blockers highlighted the extraordinary switcheroo that has recently taken place in transgender clinics. Not only have diagnoses of gender dysphoria gone through the roof, but who wants to be what has reversed. A few years ago, nearly three-quarters of patients unhappy with their sex were male; now it’s almost exactly the other way around. So in this season of goodwill, I’d like to

David Abulafia

The many uses of frankincense and myrrh

‘And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh.’ About 15 years ago, a colleague at Cambridge was returning from a visit to Yemen. The British customs officers asked him what he had bought, and he declared that his luggage contained frankincense and myrrh. ‘And gold as well, I suppose!’ came the ironic reply, and he was let through without further ado. Later, he gave me a brown paper bag filled with nuggets of myrrh, which I used to

Wallace Arnold

Wallace Arnold: Pity the hard-pressed Snuff Community

Could it really be 40 years since one was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature? Borne up the stairs on the shoulders of John Julius Norwich and Sir Roy Strong, I was inducted by Lady Antonia Fraser and the late Paddy Leigh Fermor, resplendent in their ceremonial robes. Meanwhile, I myself was clad in the society’s prestigious tweed ‘posing pouch’, passed down from generation to generation, unscrubbed. The Society has long been a sanctuary of civilisation, allowing a wide range of authors, from James Lees-Milne to Debo Devonshire, to mix and mingle in a spirit of inky camaraderie. So imagine my horror upon hearing that the RSL

Cressida Bonas

Cressida Bonas: My perfectly imperfect lockdown wedding

I had a lockdown wedding. A 30-person, socially-distanced, sanitised church service was organised in under two weeks. Restrictions meant no hymns, no wind instruments and no speaking too loudly. A disappointment for a musical family. Not what we’d envisaged, but a more intimate and special day than we could ever have imagined. Imperfect yet perfect — a day we will never forget. Four days before the big day, I marched up and down Oxford Street on the hunt for a wedding dress. Finding nothing, I remembered an old Whistles dress I once wore for a James Arthur music video. I went home and found the dusty frock at the back