Society

Tuesday

The Spectator

Wanted: a podcast producer for The Spectator

The Spectator is the world’s oldest (and Europe’s fastest-growing) magazine and is read by more people than ever. But our podcasts now get over 1.5 million downloads a month: demand is pretty big and we need a podcast producer to help the expansion. We currently have a one-person podcast team, Cindy Yu, who produces nine regular podcasts covering everything from Brexit and Trump to the latest releases in the literary and culinary world. We need someone who, at 8am, can have a decent idea for what to discuss on a Coffee House Shots; who can look at a copy of the magazine and suggests not just three topics for our

Monday

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

The deranged rage against the Brexit 50p coin

Remoaners are having the mother of all meltdowns. What’s rankled them this time? The Brexit 50p, of course. Yes, they’re now raging against a coin. I’m genuinely starting to worry about these people. To clarify, I’m not talking about Remain voters. There were 16.1m of those and the vast majority of them are perfectly normal people who understand how democracy works. They aren’t having sleepless nights about the new 50p, released to mark the UK’s departure from the EU. No, I mean hardcore Remainers, the FBPE people, the folks who think Brexit is literally the worst thing that’s ever happened to Blightly. I mean the kind of people who think

Ross Clark Ross Clark

HS2 does nothing for the new Tory heartlands in the North

If there is one thing that could yet save HS2 it is the ‘letting down the North’ argument. Didn’t Boris make a speech in the early hours of 13 December promising the party’s new-found voters in the north that he would never take their votes for granted and never forget them? How, then, would he escape the onslaught that would be launched against him if he decided to dump a high-speed rail line to the north? We’ve had endless open letters from council leaders, business people and so on in recent months begging the government to go ahead with the scheme. Boris is likely to be especially receptive to the

Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

What it means to be descended from Holocaust survivors

This is a short piece on Holocaust Memorial Day, and what it means to be descended from Holocaust survivors. Many, many people could write a story like this, but this one is mine. All parts of my family lost people in the war. My grandfather, though, lost pretty much his whole family. They were in Krakow, in Poland, and only he and one brother survived. His first wife, his baby daughter, his parents, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews all died. To understand the immediacy, that’s my mum’s half-sister, grandparents, her whole extended family. All gone before she was even born. Recently, I’ve been trying to find out about them. It’s really

Sunday

Andrew Doyle

Laurence Fox and the curdling of rational minds

I start the week by going through my iPhone to delete the numbers of former friends. It sounds depressing, but it’s actually quite cathartic. I suppose it all started with Brexit. I’m not a confrontational person, so it was surprising to find so many friends turning against me over their newfound devotion to a neoliberal trading bloc. Since then, I’ve watched the ongoing curdling of rational minds with a growing sense of incomprehension. So many on the left appear to have surrendered to a collective fantasy in which the slightest point of political disagreement is interpreted as evidence of fascism. Someone I’ve known for more than a decade went all

Saturday

The Spectator

Britain’s misguided approach to asylum is threatening lives

The news this week could easily have led with the deaths of 14 Afghan and Iraqi migrants in the English Channel, drowned as they attempted to reach Britain. In the event this didn’t happen, but only because their boat proved to be so unseaworthy that it capsized before they made it out of sight of the Belgian coast. All were able to swim back to the beach. This is the reality of people-trafficking: it is a callous industry whose operators care little for the lives of the migrants to whom they charge large sums for the promise of a new life. It is only three months since 39 Vietnamese migrants

The Spectator

How much public income does the royal family receive?

Parliamentary motions The government floated the idea of moving the House of Lords permanently to York. Until it was found a home in the Palace of Westminster in Henry VIII’s reign, parliaments were regularly held all over the country. A few of them: 1266 Parliament convened at Kenilworth, Warwickshire, while Henry III besieged Simon de Montfort’s followers in the castle. 1283 Parliament met at Shrewsbury so that members could watch the execution of Welsh rebel Dafydd. 1414 ‘Fire and Faggot Parliament’ met at Leicester and passed the Suppression of Heresy Act, allowing Lollards to be burned with bundles of sticks. 1459 ‘Parliament of Devils’ met in Coventry to try Yorkists

Peter Jones

What would the ancient Greeks have made of Megxit?

There are as many explanations for Harry and Meghan’s problems with the royal family as there are commentators. May as well let the ancient Greeks have their say. Greeks placed enormous importance on philoi, those with whom one made common cause: and one’s prime philoi were one’s family. So when an Athenian citizen put himself forward for any official position, he underwent a public scrutiny to ascertain that he had fulfilled a number of familial, state and religious obligations: in the case of the family, had they treated their parents with proper respect? To that question Harry and Meghan might well have found it difficult to respond. The central importance

The Spectator

Letters: Slimming down the monarchy will only hasten its decline

Royal travails Sir: The travails of the royal family outlined by Penny Junor (‘In check’, 18 January) may be public theatre but that does not make the suggestion to ‘slim down’ the monarchy any less dangerous. It might be farce now but it could turn to tragedy. Remember King Lear, where Goneril and Regan use Lear’s rowdy night in the castle as a pretext to begin robbing him of his knights and independence, leaving him destitute and mad. ‘What need you five and 20, or ten, or five, to follow in a house where twice so many have a command to tend you? What need one?’ An embarrassing time for

Charles Moore Charles Moore

I won’t be applying to be director-general of the BBC

Despite huge public pressure, I shall not be applying to be director-general of the BBC. It was kind of Tony Hall to stand down early, forgoing next year’s centenary plaudits, so that I could rise on the wave of post-Brexit fervour. But no: I am not a woman and have no plans to become one and, under the BBC’s diversity rules, uniformity of gender is required. If I did, per impossibile, get the job, I would ensure that Nick Robinson, who has such a feel for excluded northerners, would relocate to Manchester, thus counteracting the London bias of the political coverage, but even that would not be enough. The truth

Jeremy Clarke

Whisky and striptease: stories from an old people’s home

For the last four years of her long life, this upstairs room and this magnificent sea view belonged to Mrs Lock. Mrs Lock never fully understood why she was living here and I’m not certain she knew who she was either. She had thick, strong legs and was prone to delightful auditory hallucinations, including pealing church bells, heavenly choirs and gentle rain. ‘Is it raining?’ she would ask with incredulity on clear days. After a long, hard-working life, Mrs Lock could never accept that she no longer had responsibilities. ‘Any duties?’ she’d enquire anxiously a dozen times a day. Evenings, I might glimpse her through her open door in her

Toby Young Toby Young

George Orwell would have been a Brexiteer

I’ve been reading a new biography of George Orwell that’s been published to coincide with the 70th anniversary of his death. Many books have been written about him, including at least six biographies, so there isn’t much new to say. Instead, author Richard Bradford focuses on what Orwell would have thought about the contemporary world and which aspects of it he would have disliked. Some of the items on Bradford’s list are predictable: China’s surveillance state, Donald Trump’s ‘-alternative facts’, Islamo-fascism. But the thing that would have really got Orwell’s goat, apparently, is our departure from the EU. The world ‘Brexit’ occurs 35 times in Bradford’s book, while there are

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: How can I stop my mother-in-law sitting on newspaper whenever she comes to my house?

Q. When my mother-in-law visits, she puts newspaper on a dining chair before sitting down. I’m so speechless that someone could behave in this way that I don’t say anything. What comment could I could make to discourage this? Or, given she only visits three times a year, should I just chalk it up to ‘crazy in-laws’? By way of detail, I’m Australian and my mother-in-law is a Scotswoman. — Name and address withheld A. This seems a fairly harmless eccentricity. However if you wish to establish the thinking behind it, use the following method. Next time she comes, show her to a chair preloaded with newspapers. Smile pleasantly in

Dot Wordsworth

Rebecca Long-Bailey is right: hyphens come and go

When Francis Hurt inherited the Renishaw estate in 1777, he changed his surname to Sitwell. His eight-year-old son and heir Sitwell Hurt thus grew up to be Sir Sitwell Sitwell. ‘Perhaps his hypersensitive descendant should resume the patronymic and call himself Sir Hurt Hurt,’ Evelyn Waugh once remarked of his contemporary Osbert Sitwell. I was reminded of this by a declaration from Rebecca Long-Bailey that her name now bears a hyphen. Ms Long-Bailey’s father Jimmy Long was a trade unionist and she is married to Stephen Bailey, but she did not want to be the last in a long line of Longs. Failing to keep a firm control on hyphens

Taki

Why do monsters make such good writers?

Did any of you know that most of the 20th-century monsters — Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Ceausescu, Duvalier, and even the Ethiopian mini-Napoleon Mengistu — were rather good writers who could form better than average sentences that said that power grows out of the barrel of a gun? I read this in a Big Bagel weekly that was once known for its wit, but is now so blinded by hatred for the Donald that it has turned into a rag, surpassed in venom only by the New York Times and CNN. I knew that Mussolini was a scribbler of note because he wrote the editorials of his newspaper Il Popolo d’Italia

Andrew Doyle

Andrew Doyle: I may have to kill off Titania McGrath

I start the week by going through my iPhone to delete the numbers of former friends. It sounds depressing, but it’s actually quite cathartic. I suppose it all started with Brexit. I’m not a confrontational person, so it was surprising to find so many friends turning against me over their newfound devotion to a neoliberal trading bloc. Since then, I’ve watched the ongoing curdling of rational minds with a growing sense of incomprehension. So many on the left appear to have surrendered to a collective fantasy in which the slightest point of political disagreement is interpreted as evidence of fascism. Someone I’ve known for more than a decade went all

Melissa Kite

What has Mr Benn got to do with horse insurance?

‘Time to begin your adventure with Mr Benn!’ said the letter that came through my door, in a big loopy red font, beneath a picture of a smiling, waving, bowler-hatted Mr Benn. And this would have been fine had I been a five-year-old whose mother had sent off for a box-set of classic Mr Benn, or tickets to Mr Benn World of Adventures. As it was, I stared at the letter trying to work out how this could be my new horse insurance policy. Quite aside from it mistakenly addressing me as if I was a toddler, what had the 1970s children’s TV character to do with horses? I couldn’t

Deborah Ross

Fun and likeable and forgettable: The Personal History of David Copperfield reviewed

Armando Iannucci’s adaptation of Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield is a romp told at a lick, and while it’s fun and likeable with fantastic casting — Hugh Laurie as Mr Dick is especially sublime — it is not particularly immersive or memorable. It’s 600 pages squashed into just under two hours so it’s bound to feel more like CliffsNotes (or SparkNotes or York Notes, depending on your era), rather than the real deal. I have nothing against CliffsNotes (or similar), by the way — I loved its synopsis of The Mayor of Casterbridge so much at A-level that I never bothered with the actual book; I did OK — but you

Robin Oakley

The trainer who gives the big boys a run for their money

Racing’s New Year began well with the award of OBEs to both Nicky Henderson and Paul Nicholls, showing that they do get some things right at No. 10 and the palace. It would have been monstrous for either of our two best jumps trainers to have been left out when the other was honoured. We owe them both a lot, not just because of the great horses such as Kauto Star and Sprinter Sacre whose careers they have handled so adeptly but because of the impressive training talent they have nurtured. Nicky’s assistants have included Tom Symonds, Charlie Longsdon, Jamie Snowden and Ben Pauling while Paul has launched the careers