Society

By the 1980s, after decades of immense popularity, the great British holiday camp was in terminal decline. The huge camps founded by Billy Butlin and Fred Pontin — the chalets, the dining hall, the redcoats (Butlin’s) and bluecoats (Pontins) — were becoming passé. Now the few that remain have been rebranded as holiday villages. But why not bring them back? Surely old-fashioned camps had exactly what we need today: simplicity, gentle fun and a sense of community. They were about team effort, not atomised nuclear families. Above all perhaps, they had a sense of identity. And they were a life-changer for me. I recently came across an online video of

Radio 4 recently ran an adaptation of Albert Camus’s The Plague in which the protagonist, Dr Bernard Rieux, was transformed into a woman. A woman who was enjoying a lesbian ‘marriage’. Of course they did, you will be muttering to yourself. If the BBC can transgender a rabbit in Watership Down they can certainly put a lesbian in The Plague. The boss of BBC audio drama, Alison Hindell, explained that the masterpiece had been altered to provide ‘contemporary resonance’. Does it resonate with you? Drama invites us to suspend our sense of disbelief for a while but needs to have at least a slender connection to reality. The original story

The current resurgence of debate about racism shows that we still need the concept of sin. Seriously, sin? Yes. Without this concept, we can’t really understand the BLM movement. In the past, moral campaigns were tied to concrete demands for changes in legislation, or government policy. Ban the bomb, legalise homosexuality, overthrow capitalism, and so on. The BLM movement is rooted in frustration: it knows that laws already exist outlawing discrimination, but feels that such laws are hugely inadequate. For such laws cannot uproot systematic racism, which is built into the mindset of the majority. It declares that liberalism is too vague, too non-judgemental, too laissez-faire. In some ways, such

Does Bear Grylls play chess? If he does, I’m sure he would favour the King’s Gambit. As chess openings go, it is primitive and hazardous. Playing it well demands a kind of reckless, wholehearted optimism that few can muster. Ostensibly, you sacrifice just a pawn (1 e4 e5 2 f4), but really, you’re already in deeper, since the aspiring gambiteer mustn’t flinch from chucking a piece or more on the bonfire. Most players find it more agreeable to watch others sacrifice their pieces. Indeed, sacrificial classics such as the ‘Immortal Game’ (Anderssen–Kieseritzky, London 1851) have a timeless appeal. But for those with the requisite swagger, nothing stokes the imagination like