Society

Thursday

Luke McShane

Steinitz Memorial

I like a memorial tournament. It’s true that the champions they celebrate may be less skilled than their modern counterparts. That’s to be expected, as players of today stand upon the shoulders of their predecessors. So I tend to picture the world champions as squabbling gods of myth, made vital by their flaws, and memorial tournaments as temples in their honour. Some characters, like the urbane Capablanca or the charismatic Tal, capture the imagination more readily, but they all have a place, as do the demigods such as Chigorin, Keres or Korchnoi, who never reached the summit but are revered in turn. Usually a memorial event bears a national significance

Luke McShane

No. 605

White mates in two moves against any defence (composed by Walter Pulitzer). Steinitz admitted he could not crack this within 15 minutes. What is White’s key first move? Answers should be emailed to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 25 May. 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 Bb2! entombs the Bc2. The a-pawn decides the game. After 1… h5 2 g5 h4 3 a4 Black was completely lost. Last week’s winner Roger Davies, Witney, Oxon

Doc

2458: Bardicarum

The unclued Across lights are of a kind, as are the associated Down ones. Across 1 Friendship revealed by American Dream endlessly renewed (11)7/40 Chubby girl’s crime? (6)13 Harem guards regularly return fuchsias, as if gone astray (7)15 Banker in Berlin spending a lot? (5)16 Strips off for spa treatments (5)18 Cove finding home to rent (5)22 Old boat in Cambridge — one with a prickly pear (7)27 Bloater cooked for Melbourne’s university (7, two words)29 Skipper Joe’s ancestry (5)30 Sets up small 12 in French art (6)32 Lazar-house discharges tense old scout (5)34 Impassioned male getting date wrong (6)36 ITV’s political editor’s not finished the sauce (5)37 Could be

Melvyn Bragg

My lockdown achievement? Getting shingles

The choir of Notre Dame made a recording of Howard Goodall’s beautiful version of Psalm 23. Unlike cathedral choirs here they are wholly adult. It is so well done. The hands of the pianist in the middle of the screen are surrounded by the faces of the performers singing the incomparable King James text in impeccable English. The four-minute piece is intercut with shots of Notre Dame before the great fire. I found it tremendously moving — tears to the eyes. A gift to the British from Paris. Who says the Entente Cordiale is dead? I’ve been in isolation and lockdown since the middle of March. I agree with Lord

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Cambridge University is kowtowing to China

Last month, writing elsewhere, I quoted the website of the China Centre at Jesus College, Cambridge: ‘Under the leadership of the Communist party of China since 1978, [China] has experienced an extraordinary transformation… China’s national rejuvenation is returning the country to the position within the global political economy that it occupied before the 19th century.’ The tone sounded propagandist not academic. This month, all mention of the Chinese Communist party disappeared from the China Centre home page. Now the Centre says it concentrates on ‘mutual understanding between China and the West’, contributing to ‘harmonious global governance’, which should be ‘non-ideological and pragmatic’. We must meet ‘global challenges’ together, says Jesus

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

The horror of socially distanced restaurants

What does a critic do when her genre collapses? Mostly I panic. I speak to restaurateurs who believe that without government help into 2022, many British restaurants will close. Most restaurants rent their premises; even if landlords defer collection, the debt will be unpayable. Most restaurants operate on slender margins; they cannot secure finance even in happy times. It is a scandal that the government has excluded monies from the service charge ‘tronc fund’ from the 80 per cent calculations in the Job Retention Scheme, even though it has received National Insurance contributions on it for years, and many restaurant staff are getting only 40 per cent of their earnings.

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: What Zoom background will impress my boss?

Q. My goddaughter was getting married in July but due to Covid-19 this has been postponed. I had already chosen the couple four cashmere blankets from their wedding present list. Now I hear the first date they can re-book the venue is September 2021. Is it reasonable of me not to want to have to wait until then to be thanked? (I understand most couples nowadays thank for presents with a photograph from the actual wedding day.)— H.R., London SW1 A. It is reasonable. Covid or no Covid, brides should be able to rise above current trends and see that they should write immediately to thank for a wedding present.

The Spectator

Which football teams have welcomed the strangest fake crowds?

Unusual crowd FC Seoul apologised after using sex dolls to try to create some atmosphere as games went ahead behind closed doors because of coronavirus. It is not the first time a football club has got into trouble over a fake crowd. In 1992 Arsenal covered up works at the north end of its Highbury stadium with a large mural of spectators — but was forced to repaint it after complaints that it did not contain enough women or ethnic minorities. The Italian Serie C side Triestina also experimented in 2010 with a fake crowd of 10,000 virtual fans printed on vinyl sheeting. Covid worldwide Cases and deaths from Covid-19

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Unemployment up, bathers banned and Corbyn’s brother arrested

Home The United Kingdom seemed reluctant to come out of its lockdown. ‘We are likely to face a severe recession, the likes of which we haven’t seen,’ said Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Unemployment rose by 856,500 in April to 2.1 million. More than two million claims had been made for the grant scheme for self-employed people. The government was estimated to be paying ten million of the UK’s 27.5 million private-sector workers. At quiet railway stations, wardens supposedly trained in crowd control stood around talking to each other. Police in England and Wales issued 14,444 fixed penalty notices for breach of the coronavirus regulations up to 11

Peter Jones

Plato knew that home-schooling can have benefits

Education is cumulative. The idea that it will be lost on a generation because, for one out of 42 terms of schooling, pupils will have to take more responsibility for their own learning, is obvious tosh. Indeed that term may yield considerable benefits for all, especially older, pupils, whatever their future plans. Let Plato explain. Plato’s Seventh Letter (its authenticity has been doubted) deals with his failed efforts to turn Sicily into a Platonic state. Greeks had settled there from about 750 bc, and in the 4th century bc Plato was invited to help turn the apparently willing tyrant Dionysius II into a philosopher king. Plato went over there, but

Jeremy Clarke

Rules for a deconfinement dinner party

The most visible local landmark is a solitary two-headed Jurassic mountain called Le Bessillon, six miles long and 800 metres tall at the highest peak. These are unimpressive vital statistics for a mountain perhaps, but the Bessillon exerts a tremendous, almost uncanny presence on us all. The foreign correspondent and his wife have bought an 800-tree olive farm on a nearby hillside. From their outside dining table this great primeval slab and its forested sides can be seen in profile, like a finely drawn illustration in a Victorian encyclopedia. Between the dining table and the mountain is nothing but oak forest and pylons, and beyond it more oak forest until

Melissa Kite

What no one tells you about owning a horse

When people ask me what I did during lockdown, I would like to give an inspiring answer, apart from growing vegetables. I thought I would write The Real Life Guide to Keeping a Horse, with all the stuff other books won’t tell you. Chapter One, ‘You Will Need’, will give the most realistic list ever published of the items you should assemble before bringing home your new equine friend. Number one item: gaffer tape. I know you’re thinking the farrier comes every six weeks. But in practice most farriers are harder to get hold of than O. J. Simpson on the San Diego Freeway. Thoroughbreds reign supreme in the art

The Spectator

It’s time for ministers to stop hiding behind unpublished ‘scientific advice’

From the outset of the Covid-19 crisis, the government was determined that scientists would play a central and highly visible role. The Prime Minister set the tone in his first daily press briefing, when he addressed the nation flanked by the chief medical officer and the chief scientific adviser. The message was clear: this was a government that cherished, not rejected, experts. They were not going to be kept in a back room, but would be there to explain the reasoning behind all policy-making. But this new relationship between government and scientific establishment risks going sour. Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College advised the government that Covid-19, if left unconfronted,

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

Are you a lockdown eel or a pygmy goat?

I identify strongly with the garden eels in the Tokyo aquarium. Pre-corona, they were perfectly sociable. Come opening hour, when visitors’ faces began to squash against their glass, they’d happily stare back. Every week that goes by without visitors, the eels become more fearful and these days, the aquarium reports, when the keeper arrives to check on them, the eels vanish into the sand. Me too. Much as I long to get out and about, at the same time I can feel myself losing the knack of sociability. I jump when the man from Amazon knocks; slither quickly back into my basement kitchen after the daily outing. There are psychologists

David Gower

Bats don’t deserve all this bad publicity

‘You’d like me to write about bats? I’ve not held one in earnest for years,’ I said, although I did break what I reckoned was about 24 years of cricket abstinence by opening the innings for the Lord’s Taverners in Cape Town shortly before lockdown. For the record, I was just getting the hang of it again when I dragged one back on to my stumps for 5, confirming that it is indeed a cruel game and that giving up had been the right thing. Anyway, it transpires that the topic was actually the other bats: little flying things, sometimes big flying things (I’m always amazed at the sight and

Tom James

Why is the WHO so worried about Tanzania?

Dar es Salaam The World Health Organisation has drawn up a shortlist of countries it’s most concerned about during the pandemic. Tanzania is at the top. The government’s lack of transparency during the crisis is a big part of the problem. In recent years the country has imposed increasingly repressive laws to muffle the media — newspapers fined and journalists arrested. Or worse. For the purposes of this piece I am ‘Tom James’; I’m either more circumspect or less courageous than my fellow journos here. When the international media — fed by stringers whose identities are disguised — try to report on the pandemic, they are accused of scaremongering, their

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Rico Back’s departure is a first-class opportunity for Royal Mail

The Royal Mail worker who rang my bell to deliver an Amazon package on Friday was wearing a glittery ball gown because she and her colleagues were fundraising for local hospitals: ‘Two thousand quid so far,’ she said cheerily as she accepted my donation and thanks. But if I had asked her what she thought of the performance of her ultimate boss Rico Back — chief executive of Royal Mail until his sudden departure after less than two years in the job — I suspect she might not even have recognised his name, so remote has this German-born, Swiss-resident big shot been from the front line of his organisation’s role

Andrew Watts

Britain’s strange aversion to seafood

Last week’s Brexit negotiations, conducted by video conference, failed to come to an agreement on fisheries. Michel Barnier, the EU negotiator (and former French fisheries minister), insisted that continued European access to British territorial waters was a prerequisite of any deal, and David Frost, his British counterpart, replied that this was ‘incompatible with our status as an independent coastal state’. If there is going to be no deal as a result of fishing, as seems increasingly probable, we are going to have a lot more fish to eat, but we’re also going to have to eat a lot more fish. For an island surrounded by fish, Britain has never really

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

Did the behavioural scientists have a point?

For all the abuse heaped on the Behavioural Insights Team early in the crisis, let’s not forget that the only three immediate solutions proposed by the combined ranks of the scientific establishment were, um, behavioural. People were encouraged to wash their hands with soap for 20 seconds, to stay home where possible and to keep two metres away from those outside their household. And we adopted this advice in our millions, long before any mandate had been issued. It would be wrong, when modelling the spread of this disease, to overlook the effect of voluntary preemptive action. My last visit to London was on 12 March, 11 days before we