Society

Thursday

Raymond Keene

No garlands

At St Louis, world champion Magnus Carlsen met with unexpected setbacks in both the rapid and blitz sections. In both cases his play was unusually lacklustre and his self-assurance seemed to crumble. I can’t imagine Capablanca, Alekhine, Botvinnik or Kasparov ever uttered such words about their own play as Carlsen did when he said: ‘Everything’s going wrong. My confidence is long gone and now I just don’t really care anymore. My number one wish now is for the tournament to be over, it cannot come soon enough.’ Lev Aronian was the overall winner.   Yu Yangyi-Carlsen: St Louis Blitz 2019 (see diagram 1)   19 Nxf6+ Bxf6 20 gxh5 c3

Raymond Keene

no. 568

White to play. This is from Aronian-Mamedyarov, St Louis 2019. We are only just out of the opening but White has a killing blow. What is it? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 27 August 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 Ba4 Last week’s winner Cecil Taitz, London NW4

Susanna Gross

Bridge | 22 August 2019

Terence Reese’s concentration at the bridge table was legendary. Most people know the story of how Boris Schapiro once wagered £50 that Reese wouldn’t notice if a naked woman entered the room and walked around while he was playing. Somehow, he found a willing woman — and won his bet.   I’d always assumed the story was apocryphal, but an incident at TGR’s recently got me wondering. A few of us were playing rubber bridge, and the club’s manager, Artur Malinowski, offered to bring us coffee. He returned holding four steaming mugs, but somehow began losing his grip. ‘Help!’ he shouted. Like everyone else, I didn’t notice. He shouted again.

Doc

2422: 40 furlongs

The unclued Across lights are of a kind, as are the unclued Down ones, all verifiable in Chambers.   Across 7    Awkward tiff before mid-July is spasmodic (6) 11    Passionate entreaty from injured courier, around last month (10, three words) 13    Older noble initially gallant during those times (5) 14    Stock Exchange certificate St Paul found regularly (5) 15    Be determined by timeless article a very long time (7, two words) 17    Bringing ashore fish and it’s boxed! (7) 18    Indian comprehending most of old language (6) 19    Male Europeans consume unknown Mediterranean dishes (4) 22    Missed end of planned deadline – a note omitted (6) 24    Working in the

Timmy Fisher

The Spectator Podcast: can the royal family survive its makeover?

A steady stream of royal scandals has put the monarchy firmly in the limelight this week. Prince Andrew’s suspicious friendship with the late Jeffery Epstein and the continued controversy over Meghan and Harry’s hypocritical bow to ‘woke’ causes have given the royal press office a lot to think about. But is this latest set of embarrassments indicative of a monarchy losing its grip? Why aren’t the younger royals toeing the line? And is there anything they could do that would risk compromising the Queen’s authority? In this week’s cover article, Jan Moir argues that the younger royals are undermining the gold standard that the Queen has spent 67 years upholding.

Thomas Vann Altheimer

Why Denmark should sell Greenland to Donald Trump

Why is it considered better that we liberal Danes run Greenland rather than the Americans? Is liberalism more effective at countering Russian and Chinese expansionist ambitions?  Gullible Danes, who are now smugly laughing off Trump’s offer, find Chinese commercial investment innocent because it does not make territorial claims explicit. And our pacifist vision for the territory is to let well-intentioned scientists dig for ice-core samples to figure out how the climate looked in the Jurassic age and mine the vast frozen island for stories about melting ice to frighten the world. Handing Greenland to the United States is Denmark’s only chance to counter Russian arctic domination and Chinese ambitions. With

Rory Geoghegan

How verbal and physical abuse drove me out of the police

The past decade has not been kind to those we entrust, in the words of Sir Robert Peel, ‘to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen’. Since 2010, police numbers have fallen by more than 20,000, with too many choosing to leave the force owing to physical and emotional assaults in a stressed and underfunded job. I can sympathise, because I had to step away from the front line and the job I loved three years ago. At the time, friends and family repeatedly asked me why I felt I had to leave. Set against the latest news of escalating assaults on police, I’m not so

The Spectator

to 2419: Figures in place

The unclued lights are English place names which include a number in their spelling. These words appeared as figures in the grid — eg BRENTWOOD appears as BREN2OD in the grid. Ruyton XI Towns needed no change!   First prize Peter Gregson, Amersham, Bucks Runners-up J. Smith, Beeston, Norfolk; L. Coumbe, Benfleet, Essex

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Could the Yellow Vests spoil Macron’s Biarritz G7 summit?

Who was the bright spark who thought it would be a good idea to hold this weekend’s G7 summit in Biarritz? At the height of summer? Normally in August the population of this Atlantic coastal resort in France’s Basque country balloons from 25,000 to more than 110,000. But not this year. Admittedly the arrival in Biarritz in the last fortnight of 13,200 law enforcement personnel has swelled the numbers, but they’re unlikely to be buying beach towels and taking surfing lessons. Biarritz is in lockdown and the airport is closed until Sunday, along with the main train station and those of four neighbouring resorts. Tourists and commuters will have to

Aidan Hartley

The astonishing resilience of my beach paradise

Malindi   I could measure my whole life in the summers I’ve spent on the beach in front of our family’s seaside house on Kenya’s north coast. Walking along the white sand, eyes down among the flotsam, seaweed, cuttlebones and ghost crabs, for decades I have been finding shards of blue and white porcelain washed up from some lost wreck. I like to imagine they are from one of 15th-century Chinese explorer Zheng He’s ships, which carried a live giraffe back from the East African coast to the emperor in his capital. I wonder if in a lifetime I might find enough broken pieces to make an entire bowl. That

Lucy Vickery

The Brexiteers

In Competition No. 3112 you were invited to submit an extract from Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Brexiteers.   The title of this new addition to the G&S canon was, of course, a nod to The Gondoliers. But in an entry both serious and silly, full of wit and whimsy, you also plundered The Mikado (‘Four little maids in politics, we,/ Boris-resistant as can be…’), Iolanthe (Lord Chancellor’s ‘Nightmare Song’) and H.M.S. Pinafore (‘Ring the merry bells for Brexit!’), among others. There were stellar performances from Max Gutmann, Sylvia Fairley, David Shields and D.A. Prince. They were only narrowly outstripped by the winners below, who earn £30 each.   Mine is

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Is there anything that can’t be put down to a ‘condition’?

I suppose it is overstating the case to suggest that dyslexia is simply a term coined to assuage the disappointment of middle-class parents faced with offspring who are considerably thicker than they fondly imagined them to be. There was an interesting report a few years ago by Professor Joe Elliott of Durham University. He wrote: ‘On the basis of current research, there are no meaningful grounds to differentiate between so-called dyslexic and non-dyslexic poor readers. Genetics, neuroscience and cognitive science can help us better understand the underlying nature of reading disability, but they do not offer means to make a dyslexic/poor reader distinction.’ Well, quite. The dyslexia industry — by

Laura Freeman Laura Freeman

How woke is your home?

Quick! Roll up the Persian carpet. Hide the willow-pattern service. Sweep the wok and chopsticks under the Berber rug. Mr and Mx Virtue-Signaller from number 12 are on their way over for tea. How woke is your house? If your impeccably enlightened neighbour ran a finger along the mantelpiece, would you pass the cultural-appropriation test? First it was yoga classes. Then fancy dress. Don’t go near a costume shop until you’ve consulted one of many online guides advising party-goers ‘how not to dress like an offensive idiot’. Tread carefully with turbans, kimonos, cheongsams, saris, bindis and Native American headdresses. Dare to wear a sombrero? On your own head be it.

Jan Moir

By royal disappointment: Meghan and Harry’s behaviour is undermining the monarchy

August on Royal Deeside. Soft rain falls without cease on the Caledonian pine forests, it soaks into the ancient peatlands and it darkens the pelts of the red deer chewing heather out on the moor. Behold the beauty and the glory of the Scottish land and skies, from deep inside a luxurious estate where the troubles of the world melt into this velvety panorama. Certainly, one has always found this to be the case. One has taken peaceful refuge here every summer since one was one. However, one’s tranquillity is being tested this year, most sorely. Recent newspaper headlines and strident television bulletins will have made uncomfortable reading and viewing

Roger Alton Roger Alton

Bring out the biltong for Labuschagne, an Ashes hero

Funny, the things cricketers put on their bats. England’s Jos Buttler has ‘Fuck it’ written at the top of his blade to remind him it’s only a game (or something like that). Australian Marnus Labuschagne, who for my money was one of the great heroes of the Ashes Test at Lord’s, has the image of an eagle drawn on the bottom of his bat. It’s to remind young Marnus of one of his favourite Bible passages, Isaiah 40:31: ‘For those who hope in the Lord, He shall renew their strength. They shall soar on wings like eagles; they shall run and not grow weary, they shall walk and not be

Douglas Murray

Who’ll be the next jihadi-jackpot winner?

Reading the news this week of Jihadi Jack (née Letts, of Oxfordshire) having his UK passport withdrawn, my mind went to a Canadian television programme earlier this year. While most people can’t recall what was on TV last night, for us connoisseurs of western masochism the 2019 Easter edition of Tout le monde en parle (Television de Radio-Canada) was a collector’s item. The subject was Omar Khadr. In case you haven’t had the pleasure, the Khadrs are a Canadian family of Palestinian-Egyptian origin. Since 2001 they have had a sketchy patch. Specifically, family members have shown a terrible propensity for being at ‘weddings’ at the wrong place and time. Specifically

Colin Freeman

How did my children become more middle class than me?

In a café in Norfolk last week, my seven-year-old son uttered words that mortified me. No, he didn’t comment loudly on someone’s weight, or ask why the lady next to us had a moustache. It was worse than that. Asked by a kindly man at the next table if he was enjoying his bacon sandwich, he declared to the café at large: ‘Yes, but I prefer them with rocket!’ Judging by the gentleman’s slightly blank smile, I’m not sure if he even knew what rocket was, let alone that in the London suburb where I live, it’s now as much a part of breakfast as smashed avocado on toast. Inwardly,

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Why you can’t let Brexit affect your life

A couple with a first baby sought my advice: they had accepted a low offer for their cramped London flat and bid the asking price for a nice house in commuterland. But they need a bigger mortgage and if Brexit leads to a property crash, they could face negative equity and financial stress. Should they call the whole thing off? Emphatically I said they should not: buying a family home is a long-term choice, rarely regretted, in which fluctuating value matters far less than whether you love the house and whether (as in their case, I gathered) income is sufficient to support the mortgage. Conventional wisdom, perhaps, but I’m pleased

James Delingpole James Delingpole

When did English A-level become a science?

Now that my youngest has got her A-level grades, I’m finally free to say just how much I have loathed the past 20 or so years I have spent helping my children with their English homework. This is a sad admission. After all, I studied English at university and still love reading classic literature and learning poetry by heart. But when I read that the number of 18-year-olds taking English A-level has plummeted to its lowest level since 2001 I wasn’t at all surprised. If I were that age, I’m not sure I’d choose to do English either. The first taste I had of just how grisly English has become