Society

Thursday

Dot Wordsworth

Poetaster

‘What about poetaster, then?’ asked my husband accusingly, looking up from his whisky and the Spectator, in which I’d ruminated on gloomster. He expects me to know the origins of all words, and blames me for their irregularities. I’d long suffered an itch from poetaster. It’s not that I thought it pronounced poe-taster, but that I’d presumed the -aster element was from Greek aster, a star. It’s not. Why should a star make a poet a bad poet? Now that I’ve looked it up, I know that -aster is a classical Latin suffix expressing incomplete resemblance. This suffix has no relation to the English -ster suffix, as in gloomster or

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 15 August 2019

Q. I want my guests to feel welcome when they stay with us and certainly don’t want to nag them. My problem is with some in-laws who I can only describe as ‘un-housetrained’. It’s fine when they are downstairs where I can keep an eye on them, but their bedroom is a problem. Last time they came they left soaking bath towels on their beds, a window open in a gale and a glass of red wine on the carpet just waiting to be kicked over. They know we don’t have cleaners so there is no excuse for anyone to go into their room other than to snoop, but it

Toby Young Toby Young

Labour is shooting itself in the foot

The Glorious Twelfth this year, signalling the start of the grouse-shooting season, was overshadowed by a Labour party press release demanding a ‘review’ into driven shooting. Labour’s shadow environment secretary Sue Hayman left people in little doubt as to what she expected this review to conclude. ‘The costs of grouse shooting on our environment and wildlife need to be properly weighed up against the benefit of landowners profiting from shooting parties,’ she said. ‘For too long the Tories have bent the knee to landowners, and it’s our environment and our people who pay the price.’ Needless to say, this is all virtue-signalling nonsense. For a start, the shooting industry imposes

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 15 August 2019

Home Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, proposed an extra 10,000 prison places and the expansion of stop-and-search powers. PC Stuart Outten, 28, was cut in the head with a machete after he stopped a van in Leyton, east London, in the early hours; Muhammed Rodwan, 56, of Luton, was charged with attempted murder. While trying to make an arrest, PC Gareth Phillips, 42, was run over in Moseley, Birmingham, by someone driving his own car; Mubashar Hussain, 29, was charged with attempted murder. The RAF is to allow recruits to wear beards. John Bercow, the Speaker, said that he thought parliament could stop Britain leaving the EU without an agreement.

Pabulum

2421: Tina

‘40/37/1A’, as he has been called, was born in 28 (two words) and died in 30/36. He was a reluctant ‘guest’ at 16’s twenty-seventh birthday party. 22 and 40 combine to form an anagram of the name of one of his works, while the puzzle’s title suggests the name of another. His surname appears as a clued light and must be shaded.   Across 5    English poet has women quite turned on (6) 9    Passing vet can see ninety bats (10) 14    Rex’s hairdo (3) 17    Dutch archbishop pirouetting in formal garb (5) 18    Film star Peter upset a swashbuckling one? (5) 20    Backward journo needling woke Oscar winner? (7)

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Sales of The Spectator: 2019 H1

We can today announce that The Spectator’s sales have hit another record high: 77,889 for the first half of this year, up 9 per cent year-on-year. Print subscriptions are growing at their fastest rate since 1995, but we’re recruiting new subscribers through digital means. We hear a lot about the decline of print, or even ‘subscription fatigue’, so ours is an unusual story. And one that I’d like to tell you about in more detail. The Spectator is the world’s oldest weekly, but its sales are at a 191-year high and growing fast. A typical new subscriber will today come to the magazine after reading our articles online (we have two million

Ben Sixsmith

Locking up bankers won’t solve Britain’s crime epidemic

On Monday, a 16-year-old boy was stabbed to death in Munster Square in Camden. A Witness reported seeing three men ‘screaming and laughing’ as they chased him with a machete. The poor kid apparently sought refuge in a house, banging on the door and pleading for help, but his pursuers were close behind him. A couple of days before, across town in Leyton, a police officer had been attacked with a machete after trying to stop a van. PC Stuart Outten was slashed across his head and hand but courageously resisted the attack and survived. In Tottenham, a week before, an 89-year-old woman was reportedly raped and murdered in her

The Spectator

to 2418: Sweet

Unclued lights are all sweet wines. WESTERNISED, an anagram of DESSERT WINE, was to be highlighted. &nbsp First prize Erin Barrack, Beeston, Nottinghamshire Runners-up Jane F. Adongo, Canterbury, Kent Kiran Parekh, Wayne, Illinois, USA

Jonathan Ray Jonathan Ray

Wine Club 17 August

Everyone loves Beaujolais. Now come on, don’t be like that! Of course they do! I’m not talking about ropey old Beaujolais Nouveau, that vin ordinaire — vin very ordinaire — of 1980s notoriety; I’m talking about the pukka, old-vine, low-yield, top-notch Beaujolais from one of the ten crus of the region. At their best, these wines from Brouilly, Chénas, Chiroubles, Côte de Brouilly, Fleurie, Juliénas, Morgon, Moulin-à-Vent, Régnié and Saint-Amour are an absolute joy and delight. Produced from 100 per cent Gamay, they’re fresh, ripe, vibrant, juicy, silky, racy, moreish and about as thirst-quenchingly drinkable as any wine you’ll find. There’s no doubt that the region’s wines are better than

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Do unconditional offers really help A-level students?

I know what it is like to receive an unconditional offer for university. In 1984, when I took the Cambridge entrance exam, if you passed, you then only had to meet the matriculation requirements of the university, which were two Es at A-level. For someone predicted straight As (virtually all Oxbridge candidates), that wasn’t asking a lot. It was hard not to slacken off a little, to take a mental gap year, or six months at any rate, for the last two terms of the sixth form. I slipped to a B in further maths, which seemed an embarrassment at the time, though I know others who took a bigger

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

Looking for a new idea? Try borrowing an old one

Recently I suggested a new approach to commuter-train overcrowding. It simply involved reformulating the problem by accepting that not all overcrowding is equally bad: 100 people forced to stand 10 per cent of the time do not experience anything like the same irritation as ten people who have to stand 100 per cent of the time. So my suggestion was that a proportion of peak-time train seating — even a few peak-time trains — should be reserved for annual season ticket holders. But when I mentioned this to a group of engineers, one pointed out something that hadn’t occurred to me: ‘Airlines already do that.’ ‘They do?’ ‘Well, airlines don’t

Bruce Anderson

Summer in the city

Foolish me. I could have been writing this by the shore of Lake Trasimene, with only one problem: how to transmit it to London. Last time I stayed in the delightful house there, the technology was still in the era of Hannibal’s victory. There was no wifi, only spasmodic mobile-phone reception, and the nearest English newspapers were 50 miles away. ‘Where ignorance is bliss…’ Instead, I stayed in London to work out what was happening. As I say, folly. After two fruitless weeks, I have not even identified the questions, let alone the answers. There have been compensations: one great Test match, and very likely more to follow. Steve Smith

Lucy Vickery

Spanish eyes

In Competition No. 3111 you were invited to submit William Topaz McGonagall’s poetic response to Magaluf.   The Tayside Tragedian was much taken with the town of Torquay, and wrote a poem singing its praises. But what would he have made of Shagaluf? He took a dim view of alcohol, if these lines are anything to go by:   Oh, thou demon Drink, thou fell destroyer; Thou curse of society, and its greatest annoyer. What hast thou done to society, let me think? I answer thou hast caused the most of ills, thou demon Drink. Some of you clearly reckon, though, that beneath the teetotal, God-fearing façade lay something altogether

Lionel Shriver Lionel Shriver

Contraception is the answer to climate change

When last week’s IPCC report warned that the human race may soon have trouble feeding itself, my reaction was: duh. Having pooh-poohed the 1960s ‘population bomb’ alarmism that would have us all balancing on our allotted five square inches of Earth by now, we’ve grown complacent about increasing our 7.7 billion world population by at least a quarter in the next 30 years, and by about half in 2100, when we’re likely to number around 11 billion. Perhaps it’s forgivable that an outfit called the ‘Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’ would blame a perilous future food supply on climate change. Yet it’s astounding that in the report’s broad news coverage

Iain Dale

Edinburgh Notebook | 15 August 2019

I’ve been coming to the Edinburgh Fringe for five years, but this is the first time I’ve dipped my toe into the stormy waters of performing. My show Iain Dale All Talk is a series of 24 interviews with politicians, media personalities and, er, Christopher Biggins. As I write this, I’ve just compèred the last show of the run and can look back on 12 days of variety, headline-making, insight and laughs. What do I remember? Nicola Sturgeon in fits of laughter describing what it’s like talking to the Maybot; Jess Phillips telling me she’d run to succeed Jeremy Corbyn and forming her cabinet live on stage; and Dr David

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

Who’s to blame for my terrible journey?

Look out. Here comes a column banging on about something that, in the grand scheme of things, really doesn’t matter. But I’ve just turned 70 and surely among the compensations for old age must be the right to have a jolly good grumble from time to time. Mine, here, will be about the new hard train seats. ‘They feel like sitting on an ironing board,’ passengers are complaining. Since the beginning of last year, and all over the country, rail operating companies have been rolling out (hallelujah! — a chance to use this ghastly expression entirely appropriately) a new kind of railway carriage. First it was Thameslink; then it was

Robert Tombs

Time warp

How we love bringing history into our political debates. It may seem strange in a country where so little history is taught at school, but perhaps that makes it easier. We grab hold of vague notions of the past for a Punch-and-Judy brawl. There could hardly be a better example of this than Brexit, in which we skim through the whole of our history to search for analogies to batter the other side with. The Roman empire, the Norman conquest, the Wars of the Roses, the British Empire, appeasement, the second world war, Suez… Leavers have fulminated against ‘traitors’ who deserve the Tower for flouting Henry VIII’s assertion of sovereignty.

Melissa Kite

For the love of dog

The picture on the front of the Animal Blessing Service programme featured a dog, a cat, a rabbit, a goldfish, a cockatoo, a hamster, a snake and a ferret. In the event, the congregation was confined to people and dogs, including my two cockers. We sat in a circle in the shady courtyard of St James’s Church, Piccadilly as the Reverend Lindsay Meader, resplendent in a rainbow stole, led us in prayer. If a passing tourist wanted to understand British people and their animals, they had come to the right place. A few sightseers did wander into the square and watch for a while. St James’s is a dog-friendly church

Wednesday

The Spectator

The Spectator, the oldest magazine in the world, to launch US edition

The Spectator, which has published weekly out of London since 1828, will launch a US edition this fall. Spectator USA has had a successful digital-only presence in America since the spring of 2018. It will publish its first monthly US print edition on October 1, only 191 years after the launch of the London edition. ‘Better late than never,’ says Andrew Neil, Chairman of The Spectator worldwide. ‘With our unparalleled success in the UK and our happy experience in Australia, we’ve decided it’s time to bring our unique brand of magazine journalism to the US. Like its mothership back in London, The Spectator’s US edition will be no dour, dull, run-of-the-mill political magazine. We will not be