Society

Saturday

Ross Clark Ross Clark

What David Attenborough’s climate change show didn’t tell you

Given the reception that awaited Richard Madeley when he ventured last week that David Attenborough is “not a saint, just a broadcaster” – something which is evidently true, though I haven’t formally checked with the Vatican – one delves into this subject with some intrepidness. Nevertheless, great documentary-maker though he may be, Attenborough cannot be allowed to get away with the propaganda element of his latest piece, his documentary Climate Change: the Facts which went out on Thursday evening.    Before I get going, don’t even bother thinking of calling me a climate change denier in the pockets of oil companies, or whatever. I am happy to accept the observable facts:

Friday

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

My least favourite countries in the world

Every year during Easter Week I draw up a chart of my least favourite countries and distribute the list to close friends and relatives. I’ve been doing this for thirty years now and I’m sure it has proved helpful to those close to me. So sure, in fact, that I intend, from now on, to post the same chart here. I hope in time my hate list will come to be seen as a familiar herald of summer, like letters to the Times about the first cuckoo or Christian names given to children. I never explain my reasoning: in most cases there is no need. And where there is need

Thursday

Johnny Mercer

Why I was wrong to call for Roger Scruton to be sacked

It’s been an interesting week. I was perhaps a little too hasty to jump in the ring and conduct what I thought was a defence of values that Tom Tugendhat and I both share. I saw him condemning what we both thought were anti-Semitic remarks, made by an individual who had previously made offensive comments I could not agree with. In fact, it turned out to be poor journalism from an individual whose social media posts afterwards revealed his motives. I was too quick to respond to partial quotes and partial information spread on social media with (it translated later) malicious intent. To this day we don’t know what he

Siva Thangarajah

The Spectator Podcast: Easter special

Earlier this week the world watched in horror as the Notre Dame went up in flames. Although the roof and its spire were lost, the main body of the cathedral survived. So did most of its holy artefacts, and the gleaming, golden cross above the altar – which graces this week’s magazine cover. The outpouring of grief and sympathy around the world – from Christians and atheists alike – showed how beloved the Notre Dame is as a historical and architectural icon. However, Damian Thompson, Spectator Associate Editor and host of the Holy Smoke Podcast, says we must not forget that the Notre Dame is primarily a  Catholic place of worship. And

John Keiger John Keiger

Macron’s bid to woo the yellow vests risks opening a battle on two fronts

As France and the world grieved over the Notre Dame fire, French national politics rolled on behind the scenes. President Macron was scheduled to broadcast to the nation on his reform programme following the national consultation (Grand Débat) that has been underway for three months in the hope of quelling the five-month-old yellow vest protests. The fire an hour before forced him to cancel the presidential message. But because the details of the reforms were in the pre-recorded speech – and because France is France – the outline of the programme leaked heavily. This was not a bad case of ‘a good day to bury bad news’; Macron was furious.

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Fretting over ‘land inequality’ is a waste of time

As if the nation is not already mired in enough scandal, now comes the revelation that half the land in England is owned by just 25,000 individuals and organisations (1% of the population!). How wrong and elitist that sounds when placed beneath a Guardian headline which implies it is a yet another measure of horrible inequality and deprivation. According to Labour MP John Trickett “The dramatic concentration of land ownership is an inescapable reminder that ours is a country for the few and not the many”. But it means nothing at all. We are not an agrarian society. Fewer than one per cent of the population are employed in agriculture.

Wednesday

The Spectator

Barometer | 17 April 2019

Embassy endurance Julian Assange was thrown out of the Ecuadorian embassy in London, seven years after seeking sanctuary from extradition proceedings. But there are people who have hidden longer in embassies: — Jozsef Mindszenty, a Hungarian cardinal, spent 15 years in asylum in the US embassy in Budapest. He had served eight years in jail for opposing the communist regime but was freed during the Hungarian uprising in 1956. In 1971, he was allowed to leave Hungary to live in exile in Austria. — Berhanu Bayeh, Ethiopian foreign minister between 1986 and 1989, has been sheltering in the Italian embassy in Addis Ababa since 1991, when his government was overthrown

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

Top brass

Bellamy’s is a Franco-Belgian brasserie in Bruton Place, a dim alley in the charismatic part of Mayfair; the part that has not been ruined. There isn’t much you can do with an alley except blow it up. It feels like a survivor from a more ancient time: 2004. Its rivals from that time are broken or gone. Annabel’s is now enormous. The Ivy is a franchise like KFC. The new generation of fashionable restaurants have glittering statuary by cretinous artists, professional PRs and spin. They are ideas. What use is an idea when you want three courses of French–Belgian cuisine for £29.50 a head in central London? Bellamy’s is named

Raymond Keene

Carlsen the Great

I cannot conceal the feeling over the years of Magnus Carlsen’s leading position at the head of world chess, that his victories were to be ascribed to his powers of Sitzfleisch (endurance at the board) or opposing errors, rather than his own enterprise, dynamism and genius. The result of the London world championship last year tended, if anything, to reinforce this belief, with all the games in the classical section being drawn.   The Gashimov Memorial tournament, which ended earlier this month at Shamkir in Azerbaijan, has forced me to revise that opinion. Carlsen dominated the event, displaying huge energy, aggression and versatility. The scores (out of 9) were as

Raymond Keene

no. 550

Black to play. This position is a variation from Navara-Carlsen, Shamkir 2019. What is Black’s only winning move? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 23 April 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 Rc8+ Last week’s winner Guy Herbert, London

Roger Scruton

Diary – 17 April 2019

I travel back from London with the St Matthew Passion filling my head, after the moving performance from the Elysian Singers and Royal Orchestral Society under Sam Laughton at St James’s Piccadilly. Why does that last chord send shivers down the spine? The dark instrumentation, the sense that it is not an ending but a beginning, that this shadow-filled saraband will repeat itself for ever? Or is it just the story — surely one of the greatest narratives in all literature, in which nothing is redundant and yet everything is said? I arrive home with the chord still in my head, C minor with a B natural thrust like a

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week – 17 April 2019

Home Although the latest date for Brexit had been postponed by the European Council until Halloween, 31 October, the government had to confront the prospect of holding elections to the European parliament on 23 May if parliament would not agree to Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement before then. Former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith said that May should go before those elections, which ‘would be a disaster for the country. What are you going to say on the doorstep — vote for me and I’ll be gone in three months?’. Nigel Farage launched his Brexit party. The House of Commons went into recess until 23 April, St George’s day. Philip Hammond,

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 17 April 2019

This week, the Wolfson History Prize announced its shortlist. It is always worth drawing attention to, precisely because it is not attention-seeking. Neither ‘woke’ nor stuffy, the prize is simply interested in serious history. This year’s list of six ranges in terms of subject from birds in the ancient world and building Anglo-Saxon England, through maritime London in the age of Cook and Nelson, to Queen Victoria and India (a love affair in which the two never met), Oscar Wilde, and the quest for justice after Nazi persecutions. It being Holy Week, I am wondering what would happen if all the four Gospels were on the Wolfson shortlist. Obviously they

Toby Young Toby Young

No, I’ve no idea what’s going on in Game of Thrones either

By the time you read this, James Delingpole and I will have made our first podcast in 596 days. That’s the length of time that elapsed between the last episode of Game of Thrones and the new one broadcast on Monday night. Yes, that’s right, we have our very own Thronecast in which we dissect every instalment of the long-running saga. This isn’t exactly original. Every self-respecting broadcaster has a Thronecast these days. There’s even a Thronecast Shopping Network where you can buy miniature iron thrones for your mantelpiece. Although why anyone would want to is a mystery. The era when the series enjoyed cult status is long gone. Last

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 17 April 2019

Q. I am not a professional writer but on the strength of a short piece I contributed to a Festschrift have been asked to extend this to a 5,000-word memoir. I had no idea how difficult I would find it to do this work outside of the office context in which I normally operate. I can’t seem to crack this challenge. It’s not that I find I can’t write. My problem is that I can’t start. Every day I find a reason to procrastinate. What do you suggest? —Name and address withheld A. Ask one of your most ruthless and greedy friends to help you out. Send him a cheque

Dot Wordsworth

Epic

Spoiler alert: in Henry Fielding’s play Tom Thumb, the hero is swallowed by a cow ‘of larger than the usual size’. Before this tragic end comes a scene between Princess Huncamunca and Lord Grizzle, who declares: ‘Oh, Huncamunca, Huncamunca, oh! / Thy pouting Breasts, like Kettle-Drums of Brass, / Beat everlasting loud Alarms of Joy.’ At this the Haymarket Theatre roared, for Fielding was parodying a line widely mocked two months earlier, in February 1730, during the ten-day run of the tragedy Sophonisba by James Thomson, where Masinissa (King of Numidia) exclaims: ‘Oh! Sophonisba, Sophonisba, oh!’ It might not sound worth mocking now, but in 1730 theatre-goers, had to bear

Taki

High life | 17 April 2019

New York On 21 April 1980, Rosie Ruiz won the fabled Boston Marathon in record time and looked as fresh as a daisy when the media descended on her after she had been crowned with a wreath à la ancient Greece. Rosie answered all the questions. She loved running. This was only her second marathon. No, she had never been tired or doubtful of victory during the two hours and 32 minutes of the race. The newspapers and the hacks went wild. Well, the reason for Rosie’s freshness, it later transpired, was that she had entered the race half a mile from the finish. She had missed all the checkpoints

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 17 April 2019

We drove north and parked in the designated car park with a quarter of an hour to spare before the minibus was due to pick us up and take us to our holiday destination. On it would be up to six strangers with whom we were to spend a week in the confined space of a boat. Marvellous. Happy days. There was only one slight snag. Catriona and I would be enjoying the holiday for free in exchange for my writing an article about it. And the company sponsoring us had asked me not to tell the others, who were paying a great deal of money, about this arrangement. We

Melissa Kite

Real life | 17 April 2019

An angry villager accosted me outside my house as I came through my front door. ‘You’re wrong about those horses,’ she called. By which she meant the 123 horses taken from a farm down the road by the RSPCA. ‘They were never fed!’ she shouted at me. ‘They were starved! We have been trying to help them for years!’ I sighed. ‘Just a moment, please,’ I said, putting my handbag in the car. I walked over to where she was standing. ‘Look, those horses were all fat if anything. I’ve got leaked photos of each one of them taken by vets in RSPCA custody days after seizure. They look perfectly

Susanna Gross

Bridge | 17 April 2019

You’re probably familiar with the old bridge adage: ‘Never put down an 8-card suit in dummy’. If you’re lucky enough to be dealt such a hand — you’d better make sure you’re the one to set trumps. Of course, it does occasionally happen that your partner won’t stop bidding his own suit, forcing you to end up laying your beautiful hand on the baize like a corpse on a slab. In which case, be prepared for much joshing in the bar later. However, I’m hardly one to talk, as the other day I did something far more outrageous with my beautiful 8-suiter — and I haven’t stopped being teased since.