Society

Thursday

Lionel Shriver Lionel Shriver

What’s Trump got to do with the price of turkey?

During last week’s excruciating Oval Office make-nice between an insultingly buddy-buddy American President and a fraudulently obsequious New York City mayor-elect, the contest was over which pol was the more patronising. At one point Trump graciously granted his petitioner permission to call him a ‘fascist’ while clearly implying the guy’s OTT campaign rhetoric had been embarrassing. Donald Trump sat regally on his throne, patting Zohran Mamdani’s arm while commending ‘Attaboy!’ as if petting a golden retriever that had fetched a ball. For his part, Mamdani stood mutely by the Resolute desk with cartoonish humility, hands over crotch. This cowed performance of beta-male submission was meant to disguise who’d got a

William Atkinson

Why are we so suspicious of magpies?

I started counting magpies during my brief, doomed time as a history teacher. Trudging in every morning, the grim prospect of Weimar Germany with the Year 11s ahead, I began to take note of the number I spotted. If, on first sight, I spied only one, I knew I would have a terrible day. If I saw two, it would be lovely. If I spotted one, saluted furiously, said ‘Hello Captain’, told him the date, and then saw two, I might be all right. I’m not usually superstitious (I’m pessimistic enough to assume that everything usually turns out for the worst), so I’m not sure where this habit came from.

Taki

My life as a writer

It was roughly 55 years ago, at the tail end of the 1960s, that I took the monumental decision to become a writer. It wasn’t exactly an agonising one. By then I’d been on the European tennis circuit for a decade, and was kaput. Joining the circuit at 19, I travelled non-stop seeing the world. I was never tired or hungover no matter how much I partied – and I partied relentlessly. And, needless to say, there were constant thump-thumps in the heart, as at every opportunity I pursued beautiful women. Right out of the box, I found writing easy. Well, it was not exactly writing; copying is the better

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

The art of owning up

Though Rebecca Culley is obviously a wrong ’un – having stolen £90,000 from her dear old gramps while pretending to care for him and only spend a minimum of his cash on ‘bits and bobs’ – I couldn’t help feeling a flash of admiration for her. When she was caught bang to rights, she diagnosed herself as a ‘spoilt brat’. At last, a person with lousy personality traits – in this case acquisitiveness, laziness and dishonesty – has refused to reach for some bogus medical synonym to justify their behaviour and has used words which all of us can read and think: ‘Yep, sounds about right.’ In return the judge

Peter Jones

What the newspapers reported in ancient Rome

Nero’s personal amphitheatre, recently discovered near the Vatican, was praised to the skies in the ancient Romans’ ‘newspaper’. The historian Tacitus commented drily that it ought to carry stories of much greater historical merit. The ‘newspaper’ was the Acta Diurna (‘Daily Events’), written on papyrus by actuarii, posted up on an Album (whiteboard) in the Roman forum and elsewhere, and left for a few days before being taken down and put into storage for future reference (no copies survive). It was Julius Caesar’s ‘very first act as consul (59 bc) to ensure that the proceedings both of the Senate and of the people should be published daily’. Covering a huge

The Spectator

Letters: Britain’s energy policy is unsustainable

Unsustainable energy Sir: Sir Richard Dearlove (‘Net cost’, 22 November) succinctly sums up the views of many of us who cannot understand the whole lemming-like net-zero policy. This leap into the abyss was precipitated by Boris Johnson and the torch is now carried by Ed Miliband, who seems to have carte blanche to make matters worse. The destruction of our automobile and energy industries in terms of GDP and Treasury receipts is mindless – more so in a country producing less than 1 per cent of the world’s CO2 emissions. Interestingly, Matt Ridley’s article in the same issue (‘Star power’) gives longer-term hope regarding fusion energy generation, but it will be

Douglas Murray

The theatre isn’t a thinktank

Readers tend not to approve of rows between columnists, but I must take issue with something Lloyd Evans wrote in ‘No life’ last week. Our theatre critic claimed that his companionship ‘is very low calibre’, that he ‘can’t match anyone in conversation’ and that he ‘can barely recall making a witty or worthwhile comment’ in his life. I should like to disagree. Some time ago at a party in The Spectator’s garden I got talking with Lloyd and he said one of the most interesting things I’d heard in years. I had gone over to congratulate him on summing up the general awfulness of most of George Bernard Shaw’s plays

The Spectator

Could ‘Your party’ become the shortest-lived political party in British history?

Party poopers ‘Your party’ holds its inaugural conference this weekend in a state of internal wrangling. Could it become the shortest-lived political party in British history? It was registered on 30 September, meaning it will have to survive until 6 June next year to outlive Change UK – the anti-Brexit party launched in February 2019. It was formally registered on 15 April that year and dissolved on 19 December after flopping in the general election. Other failed political start-ups lasted a surprising length of time: — Veritas, a Eurosceptic party founded by former Labour MP Robert Kilroy-Silk in 2005, was eventually merged with the English Democrats in 2015. — The

Toby Young Toby Young

Is bet365 punishing me for being a peer?

On my way to the QPR game against Hull last Saturday, I was astonished to discover that Ladbrokes had made QPR the favourites. Eh? Going into this game, the Rs were 18th in the table, whereas Hull were sixth. They’d won four of their last six, whereas we were winless in five. ‘It’s almost worth putting a bet on Hull,’ I joked to Charlie, my 17-year-old son. Then I thought: ‘Why not? At least that way, if QPR lose I’ll make some money.’ But if I was going to do it, I might as well get the most favourable odds, so I did a quick trawl of the online betting

Olivia Potts Olivia Potts

The glory of gravy

In Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, when Ben Gunn is found by Jim Hawkins, sunburnt and wide-eyed after three years of being marooned on the island, the first thing he asks Hawkins for is cheese: ‘Many’s the long night I’ve dreamed of cheese – toasted mostly.’ As a greedy person prone to daydreaming, I’ve often wondered what my ‘cheese – toasted mostly’ would be. A dozen oysters? A cold negroni in a fluted tumbler? A perfect quivering soufflé? I think it’s gravy. That’s my desert island dream, the idea I can’t shake, the touchstone I’d return to. I’d take gravy in any form: thick and rich, made from meat scraps,

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

Could a degree make you less employable?

A few years ago my employer, the advertising agency Ogilvy, introduced a recruitment scheme called ‘The Pipe’. It was a ‘non-graduate’ recruitment scheme, the name a pun on the smoking implement of choice of the company’s founder, David Ogilvy. Ogilvy himself was kicked out of Oxford in 1931, so this seemed doubly appropriate. The idea was conceived and promoted by two people in our creative department alarmed by the risk of monotone uniformity which results from formalised, risk-averse recruitment procedures. Our aim, in short, was to introduce a kind of stereophonic sound to hiring. Just to be clear, we did not exclude university graduates from applying: it was simply that

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: Can I remain friends with someone who has a frozen face?

Q. A close friend of my own age, 52, has had various things done to her face and now looks different. She definitely looks younger than 52 – certainly when photographed – but in real life the effect is just weird. I feel I can’t properly communicate with her, i.e. ‘read’ her. I have said this to her but she clearly thinks I’m just envious because she’s offered to front the money for me to have the same treatment. We are at an impasse. How can I rescue this long-term friendship when I don’t enjoy interacting with a frozen face and dread seeing her? – S.H., London W11 A. No

Bruce Anderson

A Frenchman who does not drink wine is a disgrace

The world is in an even greater mess than was apparent. I am not referring to Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan or other swamps of mayhem and misery, although they are bad enough. No: the new crisis is in France, and it has two malign and reinforcing aspects. First, large numbers of the younger French have given up drinking wine. It is not clear what they are substituting: Coca-Cola, perhaps. If so, God help us (and them). A Frenchman who does not drink wine is a disgrace to his history and heritage. After the liberation in 1944, and in order to punish collaborators, the new French government created a crime: indignité nationale.

Luke McShane

AI puzzles

Generative artificial intelligence is a modern marvel. Should you wish to see an octopus juggling dinner plates in the desert, it is now just a few keystrokes away. Images, videos, poetry, music – everything is possible. But have you ever scrutinised an AI-generated picture of people playing chess? Inevitably, the position will be incoherent. Look closer, and you may find that the board dimensions are wrong, with adjacent corners both white or both black. Squint a bit, and perhaps you will notice squares that are somehow both colours at the same time, like some clumsy knockoff of an M.C. Escher print. Producing anything of real artistic merit turns out to be quite

Dot Wordsworth

Who has ‘roadman’ vibes?

The Alibi bar in Altrincham, Cheshire, caused a hoo-ha last week by banning single entrants after 9 p.m. The landlord, Carl Peters, explained: ‘Sometimes, if you let people in on their own, the reason why they’re on their own is that they’ve got no one to talk to, so they start mithering other groups.’ Mithering is a familiar word in the north-west. Mrs Gaskell, who was brought up in Knutsford, nine miles from Altrincham, used it in Mary Barton (1848): ‘Don’t mither your mammy for bread.’ Mr Peters had other things on his mind, too. His quite chatty sign on dress code specifies: ‘No sportswear/trackies. No Stone Island. No ripped/frayed

Luke McShane

No. 878

White to play. A nice example from the ‘Generating Chess Puzzles’ paper mentioned above. Which move allows White to force checkmate on the kingside? Email answers to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 1 December. 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 Qg7+! Rxg7 2 fxg7+ Kg8 3 Nf6+ Kxg7 4 Nxd5 and White won Last week’s winner Stuart Bahn, Teddington

Nicholas Farrell

The Italian approach to cheating

Dante’s Beach, Ravenna The unseasonably warm wind blowing in across the fields from the brooding Adriatic caused my wife Carla to announce ‘Tira aria da terremoto’ (‘earthquake air’). She feels our family lives on a knife edge, encircled by omens and demons. And who can blame her? Looked at one way, we have had it pretty tough of late. The other day the post person, who is a woman on a three-wheeled scooter and never brings good news, handed me with her grim habitual smirk a court order obtained by Ravenna city council. It requires us to demolish the front door of our house and a skylight on the sloping

Lucy Vickery

Spectator Competition: Lines of beauty

For Competition 3427 you were invited to write a paean on a place traditionally considered to be ugly. In an accomplished entry, in which many took inspiration from William McGonagall, the Bard of Dundee, honourable mentions go to Ralph Goldswain, Richard Warren and Elizabeth Kay. The winners, led by Bill Greenwell on the Pompidou Centre, are rewarded with £25 John Lewis vouchers. You wear your insides on the out Like knickers over jeans – Your architect’s a gadabout On art’s amphetamines – You’re lost inside each scaffold-tube Each Quadro-coloured duct As garish as a cheap Galoob For us to deconstruct But how I love your bold and brash Riposte to

Melissa Kite

The unexpected aftermath of the BB’s car crash

The garage owner came at me with an angry expression as I pulled on to his forecourt, which was the last thing I was expecting. His employee had just crashed head on into the builder boyfriend while driving a sales car and, in my naivety, I was expecting the garage owner to cover the cost of the removal of the resulting wreckage – the written-off pick-up truck belonging to the BB and the totalled car driven down the wrong side of the road by the garage worker. But for some strange reason, which I hoped would become clear, he had let me pick up the bill for the recovery. I