Society

Thursday

Raymond Keene

Double fianchetto

In my pantheon of heroes a particular place of honour is occupied by the hypermodern grandmaster Richard Réti, the first to adopt the double fianchetto since the days of Howard Staunton.   Réti-Yates: New York 1924; Réti Opening (See diagram 1)   12 Rc2 This manoeuvre connected with this rook move must have struck onlookers as nothing short of revolutionary. Réti is planning to place his queen, the most powerful piece, on the extreme flank at a1. This is consistent with his theory that occupying the centre with pawns in classical style, as Black has chosen to do, exposes the pawns to pressure from the wings. 12 … Bd7 13 Qa1 Ng6

Raymond Keene

no. 573

White to play. This position is from Van Foreest-Bortnyk, St Louis 2019. How did White break through on the kingside with a fine blow? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 1 October or via email to victoria@spectator.co.uk. 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 Qxe8+ Last week’s winner Reginald Chaplin, Woodford Green, Essex

Janet de Botton

Bridge | 26 September 2019

The World Championships, held in Wuhan, China, came to the end of a gruelling eight days of qualification (eight teams out of 24 go through to the knockout stage) and England made it in all four events: Open, Seniors, Women and Mixed. The Open team was not clear until the very last match when a dramatic board appeared earning them 16 badly needed IMPs. In one room Artur Malinowski made two spades doubled (+670) while at the other table Andrew Robson and Tony Forrester beat four spades doubled by three tricks for +800. In they sailed to claim seventh position.   Unfortunately, I haven’t watched many boards due to the

Lavatch

2427: In other words

The unclued lights are of a kind, all confirmed in Chambers or Oxford. A portmanteau word (7) defining this phenomenon (verified in Oxford) must be highlighted in the completed grid. Ignore two accents.   Across 1    Fazed soldier losing face before VE Day (8) 8    Book musical with delayed start (4) 12    Playing records with no musical instruction (9) 13    Time to stop monkey goddess (5) 15    Person chanting beside private houses (7) 17    A figure in divine sun (4) 18    Stripped off Greek girl (5) 19    As grain may be, or pea under ground (8) 22    Swinger welcoming popular retailer (8) 23    Tiles of oak star designed (7) 25   

John Keiger John Keiger

Jacques Chirac leaves behind a limited legacy

The death today of the Fifth Republic’s fifth president, at the age of 86, is also the passing of its most romanesque character. Tall and debonair, Jacques Chirac’s charms worked their magic with the ladies at a higher rate than even the standard operating procedure for most French presidents. Chirac’s social and political ascension bears the stamp of Balzac. A provincial lower middle-class republican upbringing in the rural Corrèze is transformed by the stereotypical transfer to Paris at the behest of a local patron. Good schooling followed by the elite nurseries for top civil servants – Sciences Po and ENA – put the boy Chirac on the right path. Marriage in

The Spectator

to 2424: Poem V

The poem is La Belle Dame sans Merci by John Keats. ATONY (2), CORYZA (3), LOCKJAW (6), ENTERITIS (8) and NEUROMA (13) are examples of WHAT CAN AIL THEE (1A), while AND NO BIRDS SING might be a comment on GOOSE (26), MARABOU (28), CRANE (38) and RAVEN (39). JK, upwards in the tenth column, was to be shaded.   First prize David Threasher, London W5 Runners-up Chris Edwards, Pudsey, Leeds; Mrs J. Sohn, Gorleston, Great Yarmouth

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Cast off: how knitters turned nasty

At first glance, Nathan Taylor might seem the very definition of a ‘right on’ hipster. He goes by the name of ‘Sockmatician’ online and he’s famous in the knitting world for his complicated double-knit patterns. On his Instagram, in between videos of people speed-knitting and many, many photos of socks, Taylor had posts about what it was like to be an HIV-positive man who came out in the 1980s. He dislikes Donald Trump and Brexit. He has even set up ‘inclusive hashtags’ such as #diversknitty, and his profile carefully sets out the pronouns people should use to address him. So far, so woke. But recently Sockmatician has found himself accused

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Is the UK heading towards a US-style Supreme Court?

Ruth Bader Ginsburg likes her office. The US Supreme Court justice, a spry 86-year-old who trains twice a week with an ex-Special Forces soldier, is a liberal icon on America’s highest court. A decade ago, she gave an interviewer a tour of her chambers, explaining: ‘I like a quiet place and I am glad to be overlooking the courtyard and not the front of the building, and so I’m not disturbed by demonstrators.’ Demonstrators are a hazard of the job for a court that is, when all the polite artifice is stripped away, a supreme legislature of nine. On sitting days, when the rawest of issues are being decided, the

Two flaws in the Supreme Court’s verdict

Now that more experts have had time to study the ruling, the legal validity of the Supreme Court decision on the prorogation of Parliament is unravelling with every passing day. The court cited two cases to justify its involvement in political decisions: the Case of Proclamations (1611) and Entick v Carrington (1765).  The Case of Proclamations laid down that the King could not make new laws by proclamation. The easiest way to study it is to look at the notes of the case by the presiding judge, Sir Edward Coke in his Selected Writings (p. 486 of the Liberty Fund online PDF version). The King wanted to prohibit building in

Bruce Anderson

There is always time for a bottle of Champagne

My friend Dominic decided that it was time to convoke a lunch. There were matters to discuss, including that perennial topic, the travails of the Tory party. We met at the end of last week, before the Labour conference. In the old pre-Blair days, Labour conferences were generally run as benefit matches for the Conservatives, whose poll ratings were usually enhanced by several points. Perhaps those good old times would return. There was a jingle of yesteryear: ‘Anything you can do, I can do better.’ Mr Corbyn seemed determined to replace ‘better’ with ‘worse’, and the Labour conference did indeed go as well as we had hoped. Then the Supreme

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

There is only one law: there must be no Brexit

You’re surprised? Really? What are you surprised by? The specifics — that 11 non-elected, mostly public-school-educated judges, and doubtlessly Remainers I’d guess, should put the final nail into the lid of Brexit? Yeah, sure — that knocked me for six. Never saw that coming. Or was it the generality that surprised you — we’re not getting Brexit after all? If it’s the latter, I don’t think there’s much hope for you. What seemed to me fairly plain on 24 June 2016 — that they, meaning our liberal establishment, would never let it happen — became an absolute certainty by the turn of this year. By January it was either no

Mark Mason

We have the French Revolution to thank for Ordnance Survey maps

You could say it started because of the French. The turmoil caused by their revolution got the British military worried about the possibility of an invasion, so maps of the ‘invasion coast’ (beginning with Kent in 1801) were produced. Hence the name ‘Ordnance Survey’. Until the 1960s every director general of the agency held an army rank. The first five-mile baseline from which everything was measured had been laid out earlier by Major-General William Roy, its two ends marked by cannons stuck in the ground. Coincidentally one of these lay just outside what is now Heathrow. It’s still there, near the junction of Northern Perimeter Road and Nene Road. Searching

Lionel Shriver Lionel Shriver

The world is stuck in a debt trap

I don’t usually get up early just for an appointment at a bank. Yet last Tuesday in New York, I lost sleep in order to slam a trove of savings into a certificate of deposit. Surely I could have delayed the quotidian chore for any old day. What was the hurry? I wanted to ensure that the cash would earn a Great Big Two Per Cent. As expected, the next day the Federal Reserve, America’s central bank, made its second 0.25 per cent interest rate cut in three months. More cuts are to come — though starting from a miserable 1.75 per cent, it won’t take much whittling before we’re

Anthony Quinn

Why do we write dedications in books?

When my siblings and I were clearing out my dad’s bookshelves (he died earlier this year), I made sure to keep any books in which I’d written a personal dedication to him. For some reason I baulked at the idea of them passing into the hands of strangers, or just being left to languish in the anonymous corners of charity bookshops. Worse than that would have been copies of my own novels, dedicated on the title page to ‘Dad’. (‘So even his own father didn’t bother keeping them…’) Why do we write dedications in books? I understand it as a romantic gesture: a way to show off your tremendous good

Lucy Vickery

Speeches as sonnets

In Competition No. 3117 you were invited to recast a famous political speech as a sonnet.   Lots of you went for Elizabeth I’s address to the troops at Tilbury, but James Aske got there first in 1588, with a verse reworking  that appeared in Elizabetha Triumphans, his celebration of the Armada victory.   Well done: you were on mischievous form this week and clearly gave careful thought to your choice of speech. The winners, who each pocket £20, are printed below. First up is Ann Drysdale’s version of Cromwell’s dissolution of the rump parliament. It’s time to close the curtain on this farce, Your petty squabblings and your rotten

Wednesday

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Books Podcast: Israeli short stories with Etgar Keret

This week’s podcast features the Israeli writer Etgar Keret, talking about his new collection of short stories Fly Already. Topics on the agenda: how an Israel writer can address the Holocaust, why one of Etgar’s stories caused a dear friend of his to have to change his name, whether writing stories is a useful thing to do, whether smoking dope is a help or a hindrance to creativity, and why — alas — Brits so far don’t seem to ‘get’ Etgar’s sense of humour.

Tuesday

Lara Prendergast Lara Prendergast

With Jessie Burton

24 min listen

Jessie Burton is the bestselling author of The Miniaturist and The Muse. In this episode of Table Talk, she tells Lara and Livvy about growing up with her dad’s packed lunches, the diet of a budding actress, and her dislike for marzipan (despite The Miniaturist!). Jessie’s new book, The Confession, is out now. Presented by Lara Prendergast and Olivia Potts.

Dominic Green Dominic Green

The apotheosis of St. Greta

‘You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words’ is perhaps the whitest thing anyone has ever said at the UN. What is the correct answer? Is it (a) Go to your room? Or is it (b) Forgive me, to make it up you, Daddy and I are going to set the entire course of human civilisation on a new track? The correct answer — if you want to see your name in the Times or get a slot on CNN, and if you want to avoid getting mobbed by climate cultists — is of course, to apologise, mortify the flesh, shove tofu plugs into your every

Monday

Kathrine Jebsen Moore

Does Norway have a far-right problem?

Norway. That idyllic, small nation of five million people just across the North Sea, is not what it seems. With its high standard of living, peculiarly slow TV shows (do you want to watch people build a clock for 30 hours?), and beautiful, quiet nature, you’d be fooled into thinking it’s a nice, peaceful country. But according to an article in the Guardian, Norway has a problem. It’s in the grip of pervasive, far-right nationalism, breeding terrorists by the…well, at least, two. And its right-of-centre government, in spite of extending Norway’s generous welfare payments to newly-arrived immigrants, has been “appeasing and instrumentalising hatred for years”, according to Sindre Bangstad, a