Society

Thursday

Melissa Kite

Real life | 9 May 2019

A letter before action, or something that looked very much like it, arrived on my doormat from an insurance company. Regarding an incident on 25 October 2018: ‘We are holding you responsible for the damage caused to our insured’s vehicle and the related costs,’ it said. While I had a valid insurance policy, my insurance company was not responding and so they were looking to instruct solicitors to recover their losses direct from me. Proceedings would be served directly on me and not my insurers and could ultimately lead to a court judgment being entered against me, it said. The letter then gave me a final chance to contact my

Robin Oakley

The turf | 9 May 2019

So the Silver Fox has called it a day. We will never see Ruby Walsh, the man whom even Sir Anthony McCoy modestly calls the best jump jockey ever, riding competitively again. Though sad for his countless fans in Britain, it is entirely understandable that Ruby chose to announce his retirement at his beloved Punchestown last week after riding Kemboy to victory in the Gold Cup. But the racing authorities here must find an appropriate way of celebrating his stellar career. Ruby wasn’t as physically resilient as A.P. and had to cope with some dreadful injuries along the way, but there has never been a more intelligent rider over obstacles.

Janet de Botton

Bridge | 9 May 2019

Imagine you are on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?. You have just won £500,000 and cannot go home with less than £120,000. You use your last lifeline (50/50) leaving you a straight guess to become a millionaire or drop £380K. Even though it’s mathematically correct to guess, most people would take the money.   We bridge players are luckier. We have lots of clues in the bidding — or lack of it — the opening lead and the carding signals the opps use. If we find out as much as possible, the final answer is rarely a guess.   Both North and South pushed a fair bit to get

Doc

2407: Stickmen

The unclued lights, four of two words, individually or as a pair, are of a kind.   Across 11    After hint turned up, end of match had leftist outwitted (7) 12    Problem with French name turning page (6) 13    January not starting pleasant round island — likely to be soaked?  (9, three words) 14    Break-time first — that’s the general drift! (5) 16    Light-hearted joking when taking tea with F-Fawley (5) 19    Data emerged; half rejected. What a yarn (7) 21    The look of disheartened middlemen (4) 24    Tail, small and trim (4) 25    Tool for shaping wood from a spruce possibly (7) 30    Neapolitans ain’t removed from reviewing European

Ben Macdonald

The scourge of the grouse moor

Britain’s hunting estates were once beautiful. Walking through the New Forest, we can all appreciate how the purchase of land for hunting can radically protect our countryside. Almost a thousand years after William the Conqueror set aside this wooded wonderland, we can still enjoy its aged oak pastures, Britain’s largest herds of free-roaming grazing animals, and a chorus of birdsong that has been lost in most other corners of our land. Britain’s original royal forests model is recognised around the world as a commonsense approach to hunting. From Alaska to Scandinavia, hunters, alongside ecotourists, invest huge profits to sponsor the natural world. Hunters take a quota of animals from these

The Spectator

to 2404: 1+2 = 3+4

The first and second letters of the unclued lights are the same as the third and fourth ones. All the solutions are words or one phrase eight letters long. ARARAT at 32 Down matches the pattern but is only six-letters in length and had to be highlighted.   First prize D. Thorpe, Totternhoe, Bedfordshire Runners-up John Honey, Brentford, Middlesex; Brian Le Marquer, Horndean, Hants

Prue Leith

A Cook’s Notebook

In the past few weeks, on three separate occasions, I have met three different women who for years (one for more than 30 years) volunteered for the Samaritans. All three have now quit. One, Sarah Anderson, said: ‘Chad Varah [the founder] must be spinning in his grave.’ The Samaritans has changed, they say. It still provides a vital service, being the only 24/7 helpline for potential suicides or other desperate people — but it’s become a one-number call-centre, where the call goes to the next available volunteer, probably hundreds of miles away. Face-to-face conversations are now rare, and they’ve given up their old ‘absolute confidentiality’ policy. Sarah has set up

Bruce Anderson

Spare us the new

There is no new thing under the sun. Over the weekend, I read a book which was alarmingly relevant to our present discontents: The Neophiliacs, by Christopher Booker, written at the end of the 1960s. That decade began well. The country had recovered from the austerities of wartime. It seemed to be an era of social stability. Most couples who married expected to stay married and bring up their children in stable families. Living standards were rising. National service was about to end. The public schools, whose oppressive regimes had created many left-wing dissidents, were liberalising. Politics was also stable. Less than three years after the Suez debacle, Harold Macmillan

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

Why aren’t there more big infrastructure projects?

In 2012 I finished a meeting in Berlin and headed to Tegel airport. Apparently mine was a historic flight, since the airport was to close that very week. Future flights would soon land at the wondrous new Berlin Brandenburg airport, which would be opening ‘within months’. Seven years later, planes still fly into Tegel. The new airport may open in 2020 or 2021; no one knows. So far, the project has cost €9 billion, triple the original estimate. The roof is 100 per cent overweight. All the electrical wiring may need replacing. The escalators were too short, so end not at floor level but on an ersatz plinth. Underneath, empty trains

William Cook

Windermere

‘A love of boats and sailing is the surest of all passports to a happy life,’ wrote Arthur Ransome. Standing on Windermere Jetty on a crisp clear morning, gazing out across the cool grey water, you can see what he meant. Sailing around England’s largest lake is a great way to spend a lazy day, and the new Windermere Jetty Museum is the best place to embark. There’s been a boating museum in Bowness since the 1970s, but it used to be more modest — a collection of old steamboats saved from the scrapyard by a local builder called George Pattinson. Now his old fleet has a much smarter home:

Sam Leith Sam Leith

‘Come on: cancel me’

‘I grew up in LA where we all thought fame was a joke,’ says Bret Easton Ellis. ‘My class was filled with people from Laura Dern to the girls in Little House on the Prairie. And it always seemed a bit of a joke. I never really imagined that was on the cards for me. And I really haven’t done a lot of the things that you’re supposed to do to stay famous. ‘I haven’t published anything in ten years. I haven’t tried to write that novel that’s going to give critical acclaim or a prize or two — which I’ve never won. And I seem to be continually controversial

Joanna Rossiter Joanna Rossiter

Home truths | 9 May 2019

As any parent of young children will tell you, toddler groups exist as much for the adults as for the kids, and my local meet-up is no exception. We knock back coffee and compete to see who has had the least sleep while the children run riot on trikes. The small talk always winds its way round to nursery: which ones are good, which ones are near work, how much they charge per hour. You’d be forgiven for wondering why any of us chose to have children, such is the zeal with which we plot our escape. ‘They just installed CCTV,’ enthused one mother to me recently. ‘So I’ll be

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

Are you a Tweedy or a Trainer?

‘Too tweedy? Goodness gracious me!’ Rory Stewart sounded startled. A contender for the Tory leadership, he was being interviewed by the BBC’s Paddy O’Connell last Sunday morning on Radio 4’s Broadcasting House. O’Connell asked the MP for Penrith and the Border how he responded to the criticism that ‘the Conservative party is too tweedy’. A short discussion of the relationship between 21st-century Toryism and tweed followed, during which Stewart revealed that in his rural constituency ‘quite a lot of us wear some tweed’. Only ‘some’ tweed, mind you: Stewart sensed he was on tricky ground here. Leadership candidates in all parties get used to being asked if they’ve ever smoked

The Spectator

How to fight Bolshevism

From 10 May 1919: The heart of the country is always for moderation. Nothing could show this more plainly than the recent by-elections. It was felt that the Prime Minister had been given too clean a sheet of paper to write his policy on, and that it would be good for him to feel that the country had criticism to offer, and was, moreover, able to put on the curb. But this balancing process was not, and never is, a violent swoop towards pulling down everything that exists. There was certainly nothing revolutionary in it.  

Jonathan Ray Jonathan Ray

An evening with Glenmorangie

We had quite a coup the other day when Dr Bill Lumsden, Director of Distilling at Glenmorangie (and also, incidentally, Ardbeg), chose the Spectator boardroom in which to launch Glenmo’s majestic new release, the Grand Vintage 1991. Apart from a handful of drinks journalists the night before, those Speccie readers lucky enough and swift enough to have grabbed a ticket were the first in the world to sample this extraordinary whisky. Dr Bill, as he’s fondly known by one and all, is one of the leading figures of the Scotch whisky industry and was named Master Distiller/Master Blender of the Year by Whisky Magazine’s Icons of Whisky Awards in 2016

Lucy Vickery

The full English

In Competition No. 3097 you were invited to submit a poem about Englishness in the style of a well-known poet.   The line-up was mostly predictable — from Chesterton, so-called ‘prophet of Brexit’, through Larkin, Betjeman, Brooke, Housman and, of course, Kipling. But it was an American, Ogden Nash, whose pen portrait of us prompted me to set this challenge:   Let us pause to consider the English Who when they pause to consider themselves they get all reticently thrilled and tinglish, Because every Englishman is convinced of one thing, viz: That to be an Englishman is to belong to the most exclusive club there is…   The winners, in

Lee Langley

A corpse in waiting

Who is a hero? Javier Cercas, in his 2001 novel Soldiers of Salamis, asked the question, searching for an anonymous hero, a soldier in the Spanish civil war. The book won major prizes and transformed Cercas from a respected Spanish novelist into an international literary figure. Eighteen years on, he returns to the war with his new novel, Lord of All the Dead. This time his theme is the nature of heroism itself, interwoven with a more personal quest: a reluctant picking over the bones of his great-uncle Manuel Mena, a hero of the Franco era who became an embarrassment to his family as the wheel of history turned. It’s

Wednesday

Sam Leith Sam Leith

The Books Podcast: Bret Easton Ellis on coming out as Patrick Bateman

In this week’s books podcast I’m joined by Bret Easton Ellis. The author of Less Than Zero, American Psycho and Imperial Bedrooms is here to talk about his first nonfiction book White, and the savage critical response to it. We discuss censorious millennials, the fascination of actors, his problem with David Foster Wallace, ‘coming out’ as Patrick Bateman – and his own personal Ed Balls Day, when he posted what he thought was a text message ordering drugs to Twitter.

The Spectator

Full transcript: Douglas Murray in conversation with Roger Scruton

What does it mean to be a conservative? Last night, The Spectator brought together Douglas Murray and Roger Scruton to discuss that question. Here is the full transcript of their conversation: Douglas Murray: Some months ago, The Spectator said to me that they would like me to do an event and who would I like to do it with. And I said I’m very used to doing events with my enemies and spend rather too much time with them and would like to spend the evening with a friend. And they said: anyone in particular? And I said first choice, Roger Scruton. And a lot of things have happened since