Society

Haggis

Someone on The Kitchen Cabinet remarked that sambusa, as samosa is known in Somalia, came from Arabic. Perhaps it does, for the Hindi samosa, which we have borrowed for the fried triangles, comes from Persian sambose. Loan words weave in and out of the routes of trade and cultural conquest between the Near East and the East Indies. Far more mysterious is haggis. Before the 18th century, this dish was not regarded as particularly Scottish. Thomas Hobbes did not think it ridiculous to use it in a translation of the Odyssey: ‘Antinous a haggas brought, fill’d up / With fat and blood’, to be enjoyed with bread and wine. But

Dear Mary | 25 April 2019

Q. Like many of his profession, Manolo, my most-proficient masseur, has the gift of the gab and maintains a garrulous monologue throughout my weekly session. This would be all right if he did not constantly break off from his pummelling to make a point — or just spout. Often (I’ve checked with his clock) his pauses to elaborate on an anonymous patient’s therapy can add up to 15 minutes of my 45-minute session, which is disconcerting, as massage is costly. How can I halt Manolo’s volubility without using words which might offend or affect the efficacy of his work? (Pretending to meditate is out of the question as my collaboration

Portrait of the week | 25 April 2019

Home Theresa May, the Prime Minister, returned to parliament after the Easter recess to find backbenchers plotting to get rid of her. The 1922 Committee agonised over whether to change its rules in order to hold another vote of no confidence in her. More than 70 local Conservative association chiefs called an extraordinary general meeting of the National Conservative Convention to consider the proposition: ‘We no longer feel that Mrs May is the right person to continue as prime minister.’ A poll of Conservative councillors by Survation, for the Mail on Sunday, found that 40 per cent were planning to vote for the Brexit party in next month’s EU elections.

What Isis wants

It has become commonplace to describe terror attacks as ‘senseless’. The horrific Easter Sunday bombings in Sri Lanka, which cost the lives of more than 350 people, several British citizens among them, make little sense. The only way to understand them is as a symptom of the growing globalisation of terror. The tactics — synchronised bombs on a Christian holy day — are grotesquely familiar. And it was not surprising to learn that one of the attackers was partly educated in London. The attacks, on three Catholic churches and three hotels favoured by westerners, clearly targeted Christians. The culprits have been identified as local Islamic extremists. The purpose of the

Diary – 25 April 2019

The best moment of my Easter ended up being an impromptu debate with the delightful comedian Sarah Millican about the concept of ‘the ideal Easter egg’. If memory serves, Sarah may have preferred the large eggs with extra chocolates inside. I prefer the opposite — small, delicate ones with no extra treats. I hope my preference won’t be seen as another stereotypical middle-class protest against greed and excess… I was asked to be a judge of the Churchill Awards, which celebrate the societal contributions of the over 65s. At first I thought it must be a mistake. Don’t you have to be old to do that? Then I checked. I

The Scruton tapes

Sometimes a scandal is not just a scandal, but a biopsy of a society. So it is with the assault on Sir Roger Scruton, who in recent weeks has been smeared in the media, fired by the government and had his life’s work assailed. Scruton is the latest, though far from the first victim of the modern outrage mob. It is now four years since the Nobel prize-winning scientist Tim Hunt was fired by University College London (among other institutions who were lucky to have him). That happened after one member of the audience at a conference in Korea tweeted something he had said about working with women and professed

Solution to 2402: Test Pilots

BOYCOTT (24), GOWER (25), MAY (40), GRACE (2), STRAUSS (23), HAMMOND (27), CLOSE (34), and ROOT (36) have all held the England Test CAPTAINCY which solvers had to highlight.   First prize Ken Rae, Shetland Runners-up Eddie Looby, Longbridge, Birmingham; Anthony White, Folkestone, Kent

Rod Liddle

A crafty apple

Overheard on the eastbound Jubilee Line train today at about 1620. Two blokes, sitting next to each other, apparently friends. One of them takes out an apple and starts eating it. The other one looks at him and says: ‘What are you doing?’ His friend continues eating the apple. ‘Are you having a crafty apple? Are you?’ The man continues to eat the apple. ‘You are! Oooooh. A crafty apple. Nice.’

Given up hope? Join the club

During the Middle Ages, some of the monastic halls which evolved into Oxbridge colleges allowed their younger inmates to indulge in jocundus honestus after the evening meal. There is nothing monastic about the clubs around St James’s, least of all at their dining tables. But there is still plenty of jocund. Honestus? That is another matter. The other evening, in a gathering well-equipped with bottles and glasses, someone remarked that we were still in the last lap of Lent and then asked an improbable and unexpected question: ‘So what have you given up, Anderson?’ I was pleased with my reply: ‘Hope.’ That provoked table-wide groans, from those who feared that

Jonathan Ray

Wine Club 27 April

Something new this week, with our first-ever offer from Naked Wines, the online retailer that’s been much in the (wine) news thanks to the proposed rebranding of Majestic. Majestic — which, along with venerable, old-school merchant Lay & Wheeler, is part of the Rowan Gormley–led Naked Wines stable — will close some of its stores while renaming its remaining ones as Naked Wines. Watch this space. Anyhow, it was Naked Wines that famously shook up the trade a dozen years ago with its novel concept, whereby so-called ‘angels’ stump up £20 a month and lob it to selected winemakers in return for decent vino, available at what NW claims to

Rod Liddle

We’re in a terrible tangle over Islam

The carnage in Sri Lanka which left more than 300 dead may have been carried out by ‘Buddhists’, according to the BBC Today presenter Nick Robinson on the morning after those hideous bombings. We all grope slowly towards meaning, don’t we? We look for precedent, we search for clues. I did both when I heard of the murders and came to a different conclusion to Nick. Someone had attacked Christians and westerners in a series of suicide bombings: that gave me an inkling. Perhaps — just perhaps — it wasn’t Buddhists. Perhaps it was instead the fanatics responsible for the vast majority of terrorism outrages in the world (Global Terrorism

John Connolly

Goop

The other day, as I walked with my partner through Notting Hill, we came across a shop which deserves to be visited just as an experience, or perhaps an education, for people not yet aware how extremely silly the 21st century can be. We had heard strange and interesting things about Goop, an online store and blog run by the actress Gwyneth Paltrow, famed for its weird and often obviously ill-advised ‘remedies’ (vaginal steaming anyone?), but never knew it had a physical store. Stepping inside, it’s clear that within these walls Gwyneth is treated as a guru. She’s referred to reverentially as ‘GP’ and before you even get to the

Off the agenda

God save us from committees. They’re an increasingly outdated way of getting things done. But there’s a certain sort of person who loves them. What’s worse, they want you to love them too. Anyone who has spent more than 15 minutes as the parent of a school-age child will be familiar with the emails. ‘Joyce has now served as treasurer of the committee for seven consecutive years, and really does want a break. Please can someone volunteer to take over? It’ll only take a few hours of your time each month — and it can be great fun!’ Yeah, right. Then comes the emotional blackmail. ‘I’m sure your child loves

Lionel Shriver

We are all self-haters now

As an American coming of age at the fag end of the 1960s, I celebrated self-loathing. Everything about the United States was shameful: its shallow consumerism, its environmental rapacity, its worship of money, its racism, its political assassinations, its catastrophic involvement in Vietnam. Everything about the American past was shameful, too: slavery, the massacre of Native Americans, the arrogance of manifest destiny. No surprises. At the time, these views constituted a set menu. Yet amid all this wallowing in ignominy, did I feel, myself, ashamed? Nah. Sure, I claimed to. But the sensation of genuine disgrace is soul-destroying. Drenched in actual shame, you don’t want to leave the house —

Praise be

In Competition No. 3095 you were invited to submit an elegy by a poet on another poet.   The prompt for this challenge was ‘Adonais’, Shelley’s celebrated 55-stanza tribute to Keats. Frank McDonald imagined Keats responding in kind:   My heart aches for you, brother Percy Bysshe, Who wept for me although my name was writ In water. Dearest friend, it was my wish We two romantics might some autumn sit…   Robert Schechter, meanwhile, channelled Auden, who also wrote a famous elegy to a fellow poet. Here he is on Ogden Nash:   Earth, receive an honoured guest. Ogden Nash is laid to rest. Let the Yankee vessel sink

Julie Burchill

Keeping the faith | 25 April 2019

After hearing about the massacre in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday, I went to church, happily sang the word God and stuffed £20 in the collection plate. I’m a believer and am lucky to have a lovely church on the corner of the square where I live. I attend irregularly, but on my frequent walks to my volunteer job I always enjoy disapproving as I read the list of activities going on at the community centre which is in ‘the award-winning conversion’ (the sin of pride, for starters) of the nave of the church — bridge (gambling), astrology circle (false prophets), kung-fu (violence) and pilates (vanity), all in one week!

Martin Vander Weyer

Bramson the corporate raider is not wrong about Barclays

If you know my personal history with Barclays, you may be wondering whether I’m for or against Edward Bramson. To recap, I’m a former second-generation employee of the bank as well as the custodian of a family shareholding that’s never likely to be sold — and nowadays, rather miraculously given everything that’s happened to me and the bank since I left 27 years ago, a recipient of its pension largesse. Bramson, by contrast, is a Johnny-come-lately: a New York-based ‘activist investor’ whose firm Sherborne has become Barclays’ third largest shareholder by building a 5.5 per cent stake, and who is seeking a seat on the bank’s board at next week’s