Society

Not since the befuddled twilight of George III has a monarch been confined to Windsor Castle for such a duration. Unlike her great-great-great-great grandfather, however, the Queen has been in full command of everything. Now Balmoral beckons. Last year’s Deeside retreat was interrupted by the great prorogation crisis (how swiftly that episode has been relegated from constitutional apocalypse to half-remembered footnote). Since then, the implosion of the Duke of York, the flight of the Sussexes and Covid have made for a bleak royal winter and spring. The prospect of the Highlands should have the Queen’s spirits soaring. Except the Union has never been in graver danger, as James Forsyth spelled

Watching the BBC drama Mrs America about the 1970s fight for the Equal Rights Amendment is a reminder that progress is rarely permanent and that feminist battles for women’s liberation always attract backlash, as well as open hatred and disdain. In the show, the right-wing Republican and anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly does battle with second-wave feminists such as Gloria Steinem, Shirley Chisholm and Betty Friedan. Whatever your views on feminism, I would implore you to watch it. It is incredible television. But something occurred to me right in the middle of the first episode. The Schlafly character reminded me of some of the so-called feminists of today. In the current climate of trans activists demanding total capitulation, like

Dame Vivienne Westwood took part in an unusual protest on Tuesday, to try and prevent the extradition of the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. To raise awareness for Assange’s plight, the 79-year-old fashion designer spent part of the day suspended in a cage outside the Old Bailey, dressed in a yellow suit to symbolise the canary in the coalmine. Westwood told reporters that ‘If the canary died they all got out. Julian Assange is in a cage and he needs to get out. Don’t extradite to America.’ Assange is currently being held in HMP Belmarsh. But if you thought the protest was based on a slightly confused mixed-metaphor, that did not

How excited should we be about the latest news of the Oxford vaccine? At least this time – in contrast to previous updates, which have tended to come via Downing Street briefings – we have a paper in a scientific journal, the Lancet, to go by. The paper reports that 1,077 people took part in the trial and that 90 per cent developed antibodies to the SARS-CoV-2 virus after a single dose of the vaccine. All developed antibodies after a second dose. The trial also tested for adverse side-effects – which were widespread, but all of which were described as ‘mild’ or ‘moderate’. Some patients were given paracetamol along with

In 1739 a London attorney called John Theobald fell into a dispute with a man called John Drinkwater, widely regarded as ‘the most litigious Fellow in London’. Theobald met with Drinkwater’s enemies in a Holbourn tavern, and they decided ‘the Way to perplex Drinkwater and bring him to Terms, was to indict him for Barretry – the offence of bringing vexatious lawsuits. On Theobald’s complaint Drinkwater was indicted and taken to a debtors’ prison. But the jury acquitted him on every count. Drinkwater then in turn indicted Theobald on 15 counts of barratry, with the same result: Theobald was acquitted, with the jury, not for the last time in legal

It is startling to see the Court of Appeal take over the Home Secretary’s responsibility in deciding who should be allowed to enter the UK – judging for itself the relative importance of national security considerations. But this is what the Court did in its judgment today, by opening the door for Shamima Begum to return to Britain. In doing so, it is undermining the statutory powers that Parliament enacted to enable the government to protect the public from the risk of terrorism. In February last year, the Home Secretary Sajid Javid, stripped Begum of her British citizenship, barring her return to Britain. Begum had travelled to Syria four years earlier, aged