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
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
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,
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
The unclued lights (one of two words) share a feature, different in each case, and one is a past participle. One of the clued solutions shares this feature but is not as long and should be highlighted. One other solution is an acronym. Across 5 Army doctor’s business supported by wife’s capital (6) 10 New move in Bern towards the end of the year (10, two words) 12 Aristocratic address in heart of family plot and garden (6) 16 More than one existence demented enthusiast shuts out (5) 17 Duck rejected nests beside trees (7) 18 ‘Endurance’ wrecked mainmast, all but one metre (7) 20 Pursuing girl, I must
If you’re going away this Easter and are on a budget, it makes sense to ensure your money goes as far as it possibly can. One way of doing this is to use the most cost-effective credit card that you can. Here are some of the best travel credit cards on the market at the moment – from data supplied by moneyfacts.co.uk.
It is not good form for the British to be awkward and obstructive. The art of the compromise was the polite British way of doing things. Or so it used to be thought. But Europe’s axis has tilted since Theresa May’s inability to secure an exit from the EU. Jacob Rees-Mogg’s recent tweet calling for Britain to be ‘difficult’ and paralyse the workings of the EU from inside sums up this toppling of conventional etiquette. Now that the extension has been granted until 31 October with few constraints on British membership, should Britain form an awkward squad in Brussels to block Europe’s institutions? And if so, where do we look
On the afternoon of 19 April 1919, troops commanded by brigadier-general Reginald Dyer opened fire on thousands of unarmed Indian protesters massed at an enclosed garden in Amritsar in Punjab known as Jallianwala Bagh. When the shooting stopped – and it stopped only because Dyer ran out of ammunition – some 500 people, mostly Sikhs, lay dead. Dyer lost his job but kept his life, liberty, and reputation. Bigots in Britain, energetically vilifying those who denounced him, raised thousands of pounds to lubricate his transition from the subcontinent to the English countryside. Edwin Montagu, secretary of state for India, was traduced in the press and in the corridors of the
It is claimed that the prophet Muhammad loved cats. His favourite was called Muezza and he would do without his cloak on a cold day rather than disturb his sleeping pet. Muhammad was not alone in finding these creatures beguiling. Indeed, despite there being no mention of them in the Bible, cats have a prestigious holy pedigree in Christianity too. The medieval mystic St Julian of Norwich locked herself away in a room attached to a church, dispensing prayer and advice to those who passed. It was a tough calling for she was alone, anchored to the church — which was why she was known as an anchoress. Her one
Mary Berry’s dependable The Aga Book — a book of the last century and part of my kitchen library — is full of the good sense of a domestic science instructor. There’s little hint Mary would later be crowned glam granny celebrity judge on TV’s The Great British Bake Off; neat as a pin in floral jacket, tough but twinkly, fair but firm. The iron hand in a pastry glove. Post-Bake Off, she is still unstoppable. There has been a surge of cookery programmes, accompanying hardbacks and further explorations into her life, her garden, her travels — recently being zoomed around Rome on a motorbike. Wherever we turn, there smiles
The unclued lights are ACCENTS or DIACRITICAL SIGNS and any appearing on letters in the grid had to be ignored. First prize Professor Colin Ratledge, E. Yorkshire Runners-up V.A. Plomer, Swindon; B. Taylor, Bolton
Civilisation only ever hangs by a thread. Today one of those threads seems to have frayed, perhaps snapped. It is impossible to watch the footage coming out of Paris, all that can be done is to groan and turn away. It is not possible to watch the spire of Notre Dame collapse. It is not possible to watch the great cathedral consumed by fire. Evelyn Waugh once said that in the event of a fire in his house, if he was able only to save his children or his library, he would save his library because books were irreplaceable. Only at a moment such as this is it possible to