Society

Tuesday

Jawad Iqbal

Gareth Southgate’s knighthood is a reward for failure

Some of football’s greatest names have been knighted for their achievements in the game. Sir Alf Ramsey received his gong for leading England to World Cup victory in 1966, an achievement unrivalled to this day. Sir Alex Ferguson became a footballing knight for turning Manchester United into serial winners of the Premier League. This exclusive group also includes some of the game’s greatest legends on the pitch, including Sir Stanley Matthews, Sir Geoff Hurst and Sir Bobby Charlton. And now, joining these illustrious ranks is Gareth Southgate, the former England manager, who has been awarded a knighthood in the New Year Honours list. Arise, Sir Gareth. Why though? What has

Debbie Hayton

How some atheists fell for the new religion of gender identity

The Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) is probably not on the radar of most people in the UK. It’s a US-based non-profit organisation that campaigns for the separation of church and state. Some years ago, the Telegraph reported on its campaign to remove Christianity from Christmas celebrations in American state schools. But it seems that this association of ‘atheists, agnostics and skeptics of any pedigree’ has fallen hook line and sinker for gender identity ideology. Yesterday, it was reported that Richard Dawkins had quit the FFRF Board over its ‘imposition’ of a new religion His departure followed two other scientists – Jerry Coyne and Steven Pinker – after the FFRF retracted a paper Coyne had written to counter an

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

How abuse scandals shattered the Church of England but were hidden by the Vatican

13 min listen

In this end-of-year episode of Holy Smoke, Damian Thompson discusses the abuse scandals that have forced the current Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, to resign his post, his predecessor Lord Carey to resign his ministry as a priest, and now threaten the survival of the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cotterill.  These developments are an unprecedented disaster for the Church of England – but how many Roman Catholics realise that Pope Francis would also be facing demands for his resignation if the details of various horrifying scandals were not being allegedly concealed by the Vatican and its media allies? 

Theo Hobson Theo Hobson

Are Christians allowed to judge the promiscuous?

I was planning to give my mother-in-law the new biography of Ronald Blythe this Christmas. Then I read a review and had second thoughts.  I was aware the late chronicler of rural parish life had a bohemian side, but it seems that it was more extensive than I had guessed. Reviewing the book in the Guardian, Patrick Barkham says that his adventurous early sex-life is related; his adventures continued in later life, when ‘unlikely opportunities arose, including a dalliance with the stand-in postman.’ Barkham writes: ‘In another’s hands, this promiscuity might be sensationalist or spark prurient judgments, but it is sensitively treated by Ian Collins, a biographer who was also a close

Katja Hoyer Katja Hoyer

Why Germans love Dinner for One

On his first state visit to Germany as monarch last year, King Charles III cracked a joke only Germans would find funny. Speaking in front of President Frank-Walter Steinmeier at a banquet in Berlin, he said in German: ‘It is nice of you that you have all come and didn’t leave me alone with a Dinner for One.’ Raucous laughter filled the room. Back home, the same sentence would have earned the King nothing but blank stares. He was referring to a British comedy TV sketch so popular in Germany that many people can recite its most popular lines by heart. Yet in the UK, few people have ever heard

Monday

Janet de Botton

Bridge | 4 January 2025

I hope you had a better (bridge) Christmas than I did. I didn’t play or watch a single hand. But I did do some long-avoided work on suit combinations – the equivalent in boredom of going to the gym. The ping of my phone alerted me to a new email but any distraction would have had me abandoning my tedious homework and running for fun. It was from my pal Saucepan (Szczepan Smoczynski), who was playing a Pairs tournament in Poland. ‘I’ve got a funny hand for you,’ it said. ‘Two board rounds with barometer scoring [meaning everyone plays the same boards at the same time]. So much for bloody

The Spectator

The growing wealth gap between Britain and the US

New year predictions are always rash, but it feels as though one aspect of the story of 2025 can already be written. The gap between the economic fortunes of the US and Europe will continue to widen – and Britain will be trapped very much on the European side of the divide. In three weeks’ time the US will have a new leader, one who will unashamedly put the interests of US business first. Donald Trump’s threat of punitive tariffs may or may not be realised (as in his first term, it could prove to be a negotiating tool to press for the removal of restrictions on US exports and

Robin Oakley

Hurrah for Constitution Hill

Hallelujah, he’s back. What we needed to take racing’s attention off the miseries of inadequate prize money, shrinking attendances and structural problems was a genuine superstar, and when Constitution Hill galloped elegantly and professionally to Boxing Day victory in Kempton Park’s Christmas Hurdle, over the formidable Irish mare Lossiemouth, that was precisely what we saw. In the social-media age, every saloon bar grump’s six-pint mutterings seemingly qualify as expert opinion Lossiemouth is trained by the legendary Willie Mullins. Her sex allowance gave her a 7lb advantage in the weights and she had already had a race to sharpen her up, while Nicky Henderson’s charge hadn’t run since he won the

Melissa Kite

My run-in with the GP receptionist

‘We don’t have an appointment for you!’ yelled the woman sitting behind the reception hatch. My 87-year-old father stared back at her. He had made this appointment at his local GP surgery in the Midlands and I had flown from Ireland to be with him and my mother when they attended it. We had the right day and time and he had the confirmation text to prove it. But the receptionist couldn’t find it on her system. ‘You need to move!’ she shouted at my father. ‘I’ve come a long way…’ I tried, to which she shouted back ‘Who are you!’ and didn’t wait for the answer. It wasn’t a

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Reform’s rising membership, peerages and an 11lb puffball

Home Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK, said that the party now had more members than the Conservatives. On Christmas Day, 451 migrants crossed the Channel; another 1,000 arrived in the next three days but three died off Sangatte. Lord Mandelson, having failed to be elected Chancellor of Oxford University, was appointed ambassador to the United States. Sue Gray, the Prime Minister’s former chief of staff, was made a peer with 29 other Labour nominations; among the six Conservative nominations were Nigel Biggar, a retired Oxford professor who has identified some good aspects of the British Empire, and Toby Young, founder of the Free Speech Union and an associate

Rachel Johnson

The hell of bra shopping

It’s probably haram to quote Cecil Rhodes these days, but he was bang on when he said: ‘Remember that you are an Englishman, and have subsequently drawn the greatest prize in the lottery of life.’ We’ve had peak property, peak journalism, peak publishing, peak medicine, peak travel, peak coffee Even as a mere Englishwoman, I’ve had the best of everything (hence this unapologetically smug column). A childhood free-ranging across three countries; the best education money could buy (almost as good as a boy’s); Oxford; first job at the FT… I won’t continue to tweet out my CV, but as my cohort should concur: we’ve had peak property (our houses have

James MacMillan

I’m not the only football-obsessed composer

I was in Sweden a few weeks ago, where my music was presented in Stockholm in the most recent International Composer Festival. One of the orchestral works performed was my football-themed ‘Eleven’ (11 players, melodies of 11 notes, chords of 11 pitches and various football chants woven into the fabric of the score). I’m not the first composer obsessed with the beautiful game. Bohuslav Martinu’s ‘Half-time’, written in 1924, was inspired by the supporters of his team, Sparta Prague. And more recently there have been bold examples by English composers Mark-Anthony Turnage (who worked chants for his beloved Arsenal into his orchestral piece ‘Momentum’) and Benedict Mason, in whose opera

The Spectator

2682: Exchanges – solution

The pairs of unclued lights (1 and 13; 15 and 11; 20 and 34; 25 and 39; 26 and 31/16 reversed) are literal anagrams of each other. First prize Justin Hughes, Petersfield, Hants Runners-up Jacqui Sohn, Gorleston, Norfolk; John Bennett, Havant, Hants

Fieldfare

2684: Romans 5

Five three-word phrases (in both Brewer and Chambers) have something in common. The unclued lights, correctly paired, form the second and third words of these. The first five words are hidden in the grid (across or down) and should be shaded. Across 1               Material two monarchs contribute to law suit (8) 5               Over-decorated cook eats badly (6) 9               Undecided originally to cross a certain part of Norfolk (2,3,5) 14            A sort of card for donation (3) 16            Back injuries firm in plaster (6) 17            Passage for all: shame it’s rejected (5) 18            Fragrant substance laurel emits when cut down (5) 22            Withdraws from clubs? Entirely wrong (5,2) 24            Ruin travel

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

The nightmare of ‘maladaptive daydreaming’

At the beginning of the spring term of my second year at university, a French boy called Xavier looked up from where he was sitting, on the floor of my friend’s flat, and announced that his new year’s resolution was to give up fantasising. Xav was deep in unrequited love with my friend so we assumed at first that he was simply through with pining, but that was not quite what he meant. He wasn’t taking a break from romantic fantasies, Xav said, so much as all the pointless wallowing in imaginary scenarios in which he came out top. Wishful thinking, you might call it. He was spending too much

Victoria Lane

Spectator Competition: We go again

In Competition 3380 you were invited to send in your predictions for 2025 in verse form. The entries suggested that not everyone is enchanted at the prospect of what the year may have in store. But absurdity flourished too, as in Ralph Goldswain’s fantasy that Keir Starmer will enter Eurovision in a glittery suit, while Hamish Wilson offered a set of unlikely scenarios: ‘Putin bangs the drum for peace,/ Pearson joins the woke police.’ Hats off also to Jasmine Jones, Joseph Houlihan, Frank McDonald, Brians Murdoch and Allgar, Tracy Davidson and others. I wish you all a happy new year, and let it be one in which WW3 and Antipodean

Mary Killen

The unwritten rules of visitors books

Two things come to mind when I think about visitors books. The first is the memory of leaving the home of a low-profile and secretive single man whose company is widely craved. I had been revelling in a sense of self-importance as I had good reason to suspect that the previous occupant of my guest bed had been none other than the late Queen Elizabeth II. Surely this proximity elevated my own moral and social status in some osmotic way? But when I suggested I sign his visitors book my host became querulous. He declared that he didn’t have a visitors book for the precise reason that he didn’t like

Amy Wilentz

The Vodou kingpin behind Haiti’s latest massacre

For a politician known for his ability to shock, Donald Trump managed to outdo himself with his baseless claim during last year’s presidential debate that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were stealing, butchering and eating household pets. Regardless of this racist lie – new Haitian immigrants to Ohio do not eat people’s pets and are in the main perfectly respectable – Haiti itself is a mess and a good place to flee. The country’s extreme problems can’t be denied, although the US is doing a good job of ignoring them. Dictators assume guilt by association: if one old person is against you, they may all be killed Since the devastating

Luke McShane

No. 831

White to play. Composed by František Dedrle, Deutsches Wochenschach, 1921. Black plans to draw by eliminating the last pawn on b5. What is White’s only winning move? Email answers to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 6 January. There is a prize of a £20 John Lewis voucher for the first correct answer out of a hat. Please include a postal address. Last week’s solution 1 Kf4! cuts off the g6-f5 escape, threatening Re8-h8 and Rb8-g8 mate. If 1…Rh5 then 2 Rg8+, 3 Rh8+ & 4 Rbg8# Last week’s winner Ruby Mishka Davis, York

Dot Wordsworth

From Balfour to Zola: the many faces of ‘naturalism’

My husband said ‘A.J. Balfour played the concertina’, which is perfectly true, though he did other things, even as prime minister. The concertina was inessential to what I thought was a neat way of sorting out the meanings of naturalism. The word is used quite a bit these days, with four main meanings. My mnemonic for the meanings are Balfour, Bolingbroke, Zola and Caravaggio. When ‘The Hay Wain’ went on show in 1824, the Telegraph explained, ‘its naturalism and heroic scale were hailed as a revelation’. That naturalism may be labelled Caravaggio after an observation in 1950 by E.H. Gombrich in The Story of Art about ‘Caravaggio’s “naturalism”, that is,