Society

Thursday

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The fascinating life of Sir Henry Keswick

Sir Henry Keswick died on Tuesday, aged 86. Under his proprietorship, from 1975 to 1981, The Spectator recovered, and began the almost continuous growth in reputation and circulation it has enjoyed ever since. The key to his ownership was that he appointed the ideal editor, Alexander Chancellor, a friend from Eton and Cambridge, who was, Henry claimed, the only journalist he knew. Having done this, he sensibly did little more, other than cover the overdraft, which was bigger than the £75,000 price. He was the first-ever owner of the paper who was not also its editor. He gave it the freedom to flourish. The purchase of The Spectator was part

Wednesday

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Farewell, Quincy Jones – I’ll always remember you

There are many reasons to remember Quincy Jones, who has died aged 91 in Los Angeles. Let me deal with just one. Jones was responsible for the soundtrack of one of the most remarkable films of the 1960s, In The Heat of The Night, which is still in my all-time top ten of movies. Directed by the peerless Norman Jewison (who also died this year, aged 97), the film is mostly remembered for the clever, nuanced performances from the two leading actors and the sometimes electric interplay between them – Rod Steiger as the tired, reflexively bigoted and lonely white sheriff of a small Mississippi steel town and Sidney Poitier as

Matt Ridley

Dam shame: what really caused Valencia’s floods?

Who is to blame for the devastating floods that hit Valencia on 29 October? The mob that surrounded King Felipe at the weekend and drove Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez out of town with a hail of mud and stones was angry at the failure to forecast the flood and warn people to get out of its way. The BBC would like us to be angry at man-made climate change for causing the storm – putting out a headline the very next day: ‘Scientists say climate change made Spanish floods worse.’ Charts of rainfall in Spain show no trend towards a higher frequency of more extreme downpours Yet Valencia had a

Imogen Yates

Gen Z love ecstatic dance. Would I?

Two months ago I moved to London and found it a disorientating experience. Most of my friends were already settled when I got here, and I found myself overwhelmed, isolated and always on the wrong Circle line train. Everyone seemed to have their ‘thing’; something they belonged to. What was mine? I tried a 5 a.m. run club. It was horrendous. I tried the East London conceptual art scene, but couldn’t keep a straight face. Then one Friday night I found myself in church, but not for a prayer service. This church was deconsecrated, converted and the activity that evening was something called ‘ecstatic dance’. Yet the setting was appropriate

Peter Jones

The Russell Brand of ancient Greece

The ‘lifestyle guru’ Russell Brand is now under police investigation and (in desperation?) has taken to hawking magic amulets. Still, it has to be better than his announcement that he had become a Christian. As the Greek satirist Lucian pointed out, such a move did little good for one such would-be ‘celeb’ (Latin celeber, ‘busy, crowded’), Peregrinus. He was born c. ad 95 and, suspected of killing his father, went into exile. In Palestine he linked up with a group of Christians and soon became a figure of some authority, a prophet and church-leader widely admired for his understanding (and invention) of scriptures. Lucian, commenting on how easily people are

Gus Carter Gus Carter

Could inheritance tax changes help farmers in the long run?

Britain’s farmers are in a bind. Despite sitting on land worth millions, they are unable to release that wealth without selling – and many struggle to make money from what they produce. According to Defra, almost one in five farms make a loss, while a quarter made less than £25,000 last year. Yet there are parts of the Labour movement that see farmers as money-grubbing, tweed-clad elites benefiting from special tax breaks and hefty subsidies. James Buckle, a farmer from Suffolk, understands those frustrations: ‘If our farm is worth £10 million, and we’ve got these new inheritance tax rules, we’ve got to pay something like £1.6 million to pass it

Sean Thomas

My glimpse into a childless world

If you are looking for a pointer for the future of the world, the free-diving fisherwomen on the matriarchal, shamanistic South Korean island of Jeju are not an obvious example of where we’re heading. Because the haenyeo are famously unique. And famously hardy. But what is happening to them should concern us all. In simple wetsuits they spend hours in the cold, clear waters, seeking out sea slugs, oysters, conches and abalone. They are fiercely independent – they spearheaded resistance to the Japanese in the 1930s and 1940s. But here’s the thing, as Nari (age 70) tells me in the haenyeo’s coastal mud-room: ‘We are probably the last. We have

Simon Heffer

Labour’s war on the countryside

Two miles from where I am writing, the neighbouring village is plastered with posters demanding ‘Say No to Pylons’. The object of loathing is a 112-mile power line from Norwich to Tilbury that would carry wind-generated electricity from the North Sea to a supposed 1.5 million homes. As a concession to the famous landscape of Dedham Vale on the Essex-Suffolk border, the cabling will run underground for 3.3 miles. But because of John Constable’s inexplicable failure to paint the rest of the route, people living near the other 108.7 miles must have their vistas ruined by 160ft pylons. The developers claim it is twice as expensive to bury power lines

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

In defence of the liberal elite

You can hear it already. Rising from the tents of the dejected Democrat camp comes the whimper of self-reproach. It’s all our fault. Liberalism created this monster. There’s a distinct whiff of mea culpa in the air. Nostra culpa, nostra maxima culpa for the alienation of half the American people.  Donald Trump and his mob? It’s the fault of liberals for not feeling Trump-America’s pain. We fed their despair. Nigel Farage and his Reform party? Liberal Britain’s fault for being too stuck up to take Red Wall voters’ concerns seriously. Noses in the air (apparently), deaf to the woes of all those deplorables, and babbling about trans rights, preferred pronouns

The Spectator

Letters: What is the Chancellor trying to achieve?

Zero-sum game Sir: Though troubled by the impact of Budget measures on employers and economic growth, I am more baffled by the regressive nature of those measures on the most vulnerable sectors – retail, hospitality, social care and students (‘Tax, spend, borrow’, 2 November). While the employer of a full-time employee earning £50,000 a year will see a cost increase of 2 per cent, the comparable increases for a full-time adult, a half-time adult and a 16-hour-a-week student on the minimum wage are 10.4 per cent, 13.1 per cent and a staggering 23.2 per cent respectively – and retail and hospitality are also hit by a major reduction in business

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Donald Trump and the revenge of the deplorables

So now we know what happens when you sneer at voters as ‘garbage’. When you view them as ‘deplorables’. When you treat them as the dim stooges of demagoguery, the playthings of powerful men. When you brand them ‘low information’ and chortle in your coffee houses about how Donald Trump is ‘preying’ on their ‘hazy understanding’ of political affairs. What happens is that they don’t vote for you. Kamala played the ‘fascist’ card, breezily unaware of what a grotesque slight it is to the voters The past 24 hours in the United States have been nothing short of extraordinary. This is the revenge of the deplorables, to borrow the slur

Tuesday

Stephen Webb

Has the police watchdog learnt nothing from the Chris Kaba debacle?

The uproar following the acquittal of Police Sergeant Martyn Blake over the death of Chris Kaba exposes a deep unease with the police complaints process. Even without knowing about Kaba’s past criminal record, the jury spent barely three hours before acquitting Blake. Yet last night’s BBC Panorama documentary suggests that those in the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) – who took the original decision to refer the case to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) – remain convinced they were right to do so. This apparent failure to learn lessons raises worrying concerns about the IOPC’s approach. An IOPC probe led to misconduct hearings for officers who shot and injured a robber

Theo Hobson Theo Hobson

The trouble with Guy Fawkes night

My reaction to fireworks is a bit eccentric. Lovely, I think, but can’t they be more meaningful? To be more precise, this is my view of Bonfire Night, formerly known as Guy Fawkes night. It would be nice, I think, if we could revive the annual event as a celebration of our shared values. To be fair, it retains a faint gunpowdery whiff of this. Most Britons are aware that we are celebrating a historic victory over terrorism. But the awareness is fading. Ideally, Guy Fawkes would have belonged to some obscure sect that is now safely defunct The main problem with trying to revive the meaningfulness of this festival

Jack Symes

The ‘joy’ of fireworks isn’t worth the misery they inflict on animals

The crowd gathers, wrapped in thick coats and scarves, the crisp air mingling with the scent of hot chocolate and warm smoke from the bonfire. Children sit on their parents’ shoulders, eyes wide with anticipation, as the first crackle in the sky is met with an appreciative cheer. As more fireworks light up the sky, the excitement begins to wane. Each pop and bang elicit fewer reactions, and the comfort of shared laughter and idle chit-chat begins to take hold. Soon enough, the fireworks become little more than a backdrop to the real joy of the evening – familiar faces and easy conversation. Sheltered in our homes, a very different

Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

The cult of Paddington has gone too far

‘Kindness is like marmalade – a little goes a long way,’ Paddington Bear tweeted recently. But it isn’t only imaginary talking bears who take this approach on social media. The News Agents’ Emily Maitlis was inspired by the rather sickly – and given the seriousness of current events, rather inappropriate – chummy love-in between Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer at their final Commons encounter last week. ‘Just imagine if PMQs was like this every week,’ she tweeted wistfully, ‘Conciliatory. Helpful. Bipartisan. Passionate and compassionate.’ Paddington’s thoughts on social media are enthusiastically greeted by the kind of grown-ups who feel tewwibly sad about Brexit Thankfully, as it turned out, Rishi Sunak

Monday

Jim Lawley

Heads will roll after Spain’s flooding catastrophe

Spain’s King and Queen were pelted with mud yesterday when they visited Paiporta, epicentre of the flood disaster zone in the Valencia region. Over two hundred people have died in the flooding, dozens of them in Paiporta; more are thought to be trapped and, by this time, surely dead in underground garages and car parks. Local people are furious that the authorities were slow to issue flood warnings when the rains came last Tuesday and then very poor at coordinating what has turned out to be a seriously under-resourced relief effort. Locals seized the opportunity to vent their feelings of abandonment and desperation, chanting ‘Murderers’ and hurling slurry at the

Ross Clark Ross Clark

James Dyson isn’t helping farmers

If I were president of the National Farmers’ Union I know what my first task would be today: ring up Sir James Dyson and plead with him to keep his trap shut. It isn’t that Dyson, one of the few living Britons who has set up a manufacturing business of worldwide reputation, isn’t worth listening to on the economy and many other things. But when it comes to protecting the interests of family farms – which is the NFU’s prime interest after last week’s Budget – Dyson is the very last voice you should want to hear publicly supporting your case. Dyson is the last voice you should want to

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Do we care that the King is rich?

For the first time, the true extent of the property held by the King and the Prince of Wales’s private estates, the Duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall has been revealed, according to a splashy Sunday Times investigation. There are 5,410 separate properties up and down the country paying millions of pounds annually in rents and fees and charges. The NHS pays to warehouse its ambulances, the Navy pays for the use of jetties, charities rent London office blocks, and money rolls in for everything from the training of troops on Dartmoor to the housing of prisoners in a jail on His Maj’s land. ‘Revealed,’ the headline hoots, ‘The property empires

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Kemi Badenoch isn’t the ‘black face’ of ‘white supremacy’

We need to talk about Dawn Butler. Following the election of the first ever black leader of a major party in this country, Ms Butler took to X not to congratulate but to sneer. Not to cheer this final breakthrough for racial equality in the UK but to share a poisonous description of the person who made the breakthrough as the ‘black face’ of ‘white supremacy’. It is one of the worst things a member of the ruling party has done since they came to power four months ago. Labour’s Dawn Butler retweeted tips for ‘surviving a Kemi Badenoch victory’ Yes, when Kemi Badenoch was announced as the new leader

Sunday

Robin Ashenden

What Gen Z need to know about the 1990s

‘Nothing,’ said Vladimir Nabokov, ‘revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it’. If smell is the most evocative of all the senses, it seems that Gen Z’s fabled nostalgia for the 1990s has reached new heights. It isn’t just the fashions and music they’re now spending their money on but also the decade’s fragrances. Sales of 90s classics like ‘Joop! Homme’ and ‘CK One’ have rocketed and there has, over the last month, been a 228 per cent increase in sales of Calvin Klein’s ‘Eternity for Men’. But what if Generation Z were able simply to follow their noses and return to the 1990s