Society

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

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

Jean Vanier’s world of love and kindness

Jean Vanier has died at the age of 90. In 2017, the founder of L’Arche spoke to The Spectator‘s Mary Wakefield about how a visit to an ‘idiot’ asylum inspired him: Some of the time, most of the time, it’s tricky to believe in God. There’s just too much that’s sad — and behind it all, the ceaseless chomping of predators. Then sometimes the mist lifts and just for a moment you can see why the saints insist that everything’s OK. There’s a documentary out now, Summer in the Forest, that for a while cleared the mist for me and made sense of faith. It tells the stories of a

Tuesday

Daniella Greenbaum Davis

Censored in the City: Dave Rubin on the American liberal orthodoxy

Censored in the City is a new podcast taking you through a round-up of news, politics, and culture in New York City, Washington DC, and abroad, focusing on stories and issues beyond the 24/7 news cycle. Each week, I am joined by a guest to discuss the long-term, underlying issues behind the headlines.  In this episode, I’m joined by Dave Rubin: libertarian commentator, the creator and host of The Rubin Report. We talk about the Intellectual Dark Web, the state of liberalism in modern America, and ask why the Left has fetishised Islam.

Monday

James Kirkup James Kirkup

Women are being silenced from speaking about transgender rights

I have written several times here about the fear that some women have about expressing their opinions and concerns about the trans-rights agenda. I know of women in many walks of life, some of them prominent public figures, who think that current and potential policies intended to make life easier for trans women (that is, people born male who know identify themselves as women) will have the effect of diminishing women’s safety, dignity and legal standing. Among their concerns are the gradual erosion of laws that allow companies and organisations to restrict access to particular services and spaces according to sex (which is a biological fact). They fear that ‘gender’

Madeleine Kearns

The ruling on Caster Semenya is a common sense compromise

Was the Caster Semenya ruling fair? It’s an emotional case that has sparked debate across the world. Born with a disorder of sex development (DSD), the South African runner was raised female and has never thought of herself as anything else. But on Wednesday, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) ruled to uphold the International Association of Athletics Federation’s (IAAF) regulations for female athletes with DSDs. In order to compete in the women’s category, the court decided, Semenya must take drugs to lower her testosterone levels. Whichever way you look it – and there are a lot of ways of looking at it – it’s a no-win situation. Sports

Mary Dejevsky

Damian Green’s social care model breaches a sacred tenet of the NHS – and a good thing, too

The central proposal in Damian Green’s recent paper on social care is that care provision should be treated like pensions. In ‘Fixing the care crisis’, he argues that everyone should be entitled to ‘a decent standard of care’ funded by the state – in the same way as they are entitled to a state pension – but could then choose to ‘top up’ from their own resources to add what he calls ‘bells and whistles’. The benefits from such a system, as he sees it – and I agree – could be manifold. It should eliminate the patent injustice, according to which cancer care is fully state-funded while dementia care

Jenny McCartney Jenny McCartney

Romanticising Northern Ireland’s history is a deadly mistake

For those of us who grew up in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, there is a pungent but negative sense of time travel around New IRA statements. The New IRA spokesman is a ‘T. O’Neill’ — which, you might notice, is just a consonant and some bad blood away from the old Provisional IRA spokesman ‘P. O’Neill’ — and his sonorous words, like those of his predecessor, are carefully crafted to mask a sad, nasty reality. The most recent one, in the aftermath of the New IRA murder of the journalist Lyra McKee, offered an ‘apology’ which stated that ‘in the course of attacking the enemy Lyra McKee was tragically

Sunday

Laurence Wilkinson

Israel Folau and the right to freedom of expression

Australian rugby player Israel Folau’s disciplinary hearing, which is set to determine whether he will lose his AUS$4m mega-contract for an Instagram post he published in April, will drag into a second day after eight hours of legal argument failed to settle the issue on Saturday. It is expected that the three-person tribunal will decide at some point next week whether Folau’s comments on social media were grievous enough to end his rugby career. Folau has serious rugby credentials; he is the joint-third highest try scorer of all time for Australia, and has won the Australian Rugby ‘Player of the Year’ award a record three times in 2014, 2015 and

Karl Williams

Roger Scruton’s treatment shows the moral cowardice of the Tories 

In his vindication of Sir Roger Scruton, Douglas Murray quite rightly refers to the affair as ‘a biopsy of a society’. It was also a biopsy of the Conservative party in particular, and a dispiriting one at that. It is notable that while a good slice of the conservative commentariat came to Scruton’s defence, Conservative MPs were conspicuously silent, except for those who rushed to excoriate Scruton. This response was indicative of the gap between the party in the country and the Parliamentary Conservative Party, which has seen an attenuation of the conservative instinct and — as has been argued in these pages — seems bereft of ideas or vision.

Lucy Vickery

Spectator competition winners: how it feels to be a half-eaten gorgonzola

Your latest challenge was to submit a short story that ends ‘I feel like a half-eaten gorgonzola’. Thanks to reader Mark O’Connor, who suggested that this observation which, in case you were wondering, comes from a letter written by Lytton Strachey to his elder brother James on 27 July 1908, might be incorporated into a challenge. It turned out to be a tricky one: despite valiant — and often ingenious — attempts to incorporate the given phrase without the edges showing, there was an inevitable element of stiltedness and contrivance. Medusa and Emile Zola enjoyed starring roles in many entries — some more successful than others. Honourable mentions go to

Saturday

Hugh Campbell

The truth about Noah Carl

My great friend Dr Noah Carl joins a group of distinguished academics removed from their posts this spring. But while Jordan Peterson (visiting fellowship rescinded by Cambridge) and Sir Roger Scruton (sacked as a commission chair by James Brokenshire) can arguably hold their own and get on with their lives, Noah – an early-career Junior Research Fellow at St Edmund’s College, Cambridge – has been fired from his only job, made unemployed by the braying mob. When Noah first told me of his appointment in Oxford’s Turf Tavern last year, it was a great cause for celebration. A Junior Research Fellowship is, after all, something of a holy grail for

Friday

Daniel DePetris

The United Nations and the fracturing of Western unity

The United Nations Security Council was designed to, in a phrase, keep the peace. Life didn’t have to be brutish and short; if the great powers got into a room, they could wield their collective might and solve any problem.  The Security Council’s top priority—“the maintenance of international peace and security”—would prevent a third Great War from killing millions of people. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a utopian fantasy land. It turns out that the Security Council, populated by fifteen different countries with their own set of interests, can be just as dog-eat-dog as the world in which it represents. And in the age of Donald Trump, the top UN body

Michael Fotis

Beware of financial products described as ‘innovative’ or frictionless

Over the last few years a steady stream of new financial firms have launched products and services meant to make our lives a little bit easier. Often described as innovative or frictionless, some of these products could improve our financial health, while others look set to deliver a dose of pain. And as more innovative and frictionless products and services come to market, there’s one word that we don’t tend to hear so much about: wisdom. Financial firms have been busy removing friction from their processes in order to make things easier, but when it comes to themes like consumer credit or pension freedom, is this always a good thing?

Thursday

Raymond Keene

Déjà vu | 2 May 2019

In my column of 20 April I reported on the overwhelming victory by world champion Magnus Carlsen in the elite Gashimov Memorial tournament at Shamkir, Azerbaijan. Almost immediately he went on to repeat his annihilation of the world’s best by taking first prize at the Grenke tournament in Baden Baden and Karlsruhe, in Germany.   After struggling in his World Championship contest against Fabiano Caruana in London, Carlsen appears rejuvenated, and is treating the world’s elite rather as Alexander Alekhine dealt with the illuminati of his day at the great tournaments of San Remo 1930 and Bled 1931. My theory is that Carlsen, a quick learner, has absorbed lessons from the

Raymond Keene

no. 552

Black to play. This position is a variation from Keymer-Carlsen, Grenke 2019. Black is a piece down. What is the only move to stay in the game? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 7 May 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 Be5 Last week’s winner Alan Norman, Impington, Cambridge

Peter Jones

Rebuilding Artemis’s temple

As soon as the blaze that nearly brought down Notre Dame was extinguished, two questions were asked: how did it catch fire? And how will it be rebuilt? So too with a famous Greek temple. In 560 bc in Ephesus on the west coast of modern Turkey was built a massive temple to Artemis (Roman Diana), the largest building we know of from the Greek world and the first to be constructed out of marble. It was sponsored by Croesus, king of Lydia, a man so rich you could commit suicide by jumping off his wallet. But it was intentionally burned down in 356 bc by a man called Herostratus,

The Spectator

Letters | 2 May 2019

The last straw Sir: In his vindication of Sir Roger Scruton, Douglas Murray quite rightly refers to the affair as ‘a biopsy of a society’ (‘The Scruton tapes’, 27 April). It was also a biopsy of the Conservative party in particular, and a dispiriting one at that. It is notable that while a good slice of the conservative commentariat came to Scruton’s defence, Conservative MPs were conspicuously silent, except for those who rushed to excoriate Scruton. This response was indicative of the gap between the party in the country and the Parliamentary Conservative Party, which has seen an attenuation of the conservative instinct and — as has been argued in these

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 2 May 2019

Home Of those who voted Conservative in 2017, 53 per cent intend to vote for the Brexit party in the EU elections on 23 May, according to a YouGov poll. Brandon Lewis, the Conservative party chairman, said: ‘As a government, our first priority is not to have to fight the EU elections,’ adding that there was still time to cancel them if parliament approved the Brexit withdrawal agreement reached by Theresa May, the Prime Minister. Labour’s National Executive Committee agreed party policy should be to hold a referendum (with a question yet to be decided) if it could not get changes to the government’s deal or precipitate a general election.