Society

Thursday

Clementine Hain-Cole

Rhubarb

The tale of forced Yorkshire rhubarb has the makings of a David Lean film. Frosty Slavic beginnings, wartime devotion, steam trains. Rhubarb was brought to Britain from Siberia towards the end of the 17th century, and it’s hard to imagine a more eccentrically British fruit — though technically it is of course a vegetable. The curious method of ‘forcing’ rhubarb to make it fruit early wasn’t discovered until January 1817, when gardeners digging a trench inadvertently buried some rhubarb crowns in soil. Uncovered, it would have taken until Easter for these crowns to show any signs of growth. One can imagine the gardeners’ surprise when, a fortnight later, bright pink

Dea Birkett

Doing it for themselves

They cut virgin paths through tropical forests, paddled dugout canoes over West African rapids, sailed along the Yangtze in a sampan, climbed the Rocky Mountains with a gun-toting guide, galloped across the Iraqi desert in search of sheikhs, slept under the stars and ate a lot of snake. It’s easy to be seduced by the exploits of the Victorian women travellers. Broadcaster Mariella Frostrup pays homage to ‘their courage, curiosity and pioneering spirit’ in her new book, Wild Women and Their Amazing Adventures Over Land, Sea and Air, a collection of 50 pieces of travel writing by women. Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls, now revived by the National Theatre in London,

The Spectator

to 2398: All steamed up

The unclued lights are the names of FAMOUS STEAM TRAINS including the pairs at 14/15 and 17/30.   First prize Jenny Harris, Cheltenham, Glos Runners-up Virginia Porter, Gwaelod-y-Garth, Cardiff; Wendy Atkin, Sleaford, Lincs

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Don’t call Corbynistas ‘cultural Marxists’

Suella Braverman, the Conservative MP for Fareham, said yesterday that the radical left is increasingly hostile to open debate and is now obsessed with ‘snuffing out’ freedom of speech. And how did the radical left respond to her comments? By trying to snuff out her freedom of speech. It was almost too perfect: a politician says lefties are easily offended and determined to shut down opinions they don’t like, and lefties respond by stamping their feet and saying, ‘I’m offended! Shut her down!’ Self-awareness isn’t the new left’s strong suit. The Corbynista left’s main beef with Braverman’s comments, which she made during a discussion about Brexit organised by the Bruges

Robert Peston Robert Peston

A snap election simply cannot happen – and yet it might

Here are the reasons why there must be and cannot be a general election. First, the drivers of a general election: 1) Tomorrow, MPs will start the process of identifying, via so-called indicative votes, a route through the Brexit mess that a majority of them can back. 2) This process is likely to continue next Monday, when a range of Brexit or no-Brexit options should be whittled down to one. 3) There will then be a vote, maybe the following day, compelling the prime minister to negotiate with Brussels whatever MPs have decided. It is too early to say what option MPs will coalesce around. And maybe they are too

Ross Clark Ross Clark

The shame of Jacob Rees-Mogg

Until this morning Jacob Rees-Mogg had had a remarkable Brexit. From being an obscure backbencher he had risen, without any formal position, to being just about the most powerful figure in the Conservative party after the Prime Minister. He controlled a party within a party, influencing the votes of seventy or so MPs. He became the most lucid of all MPs on Brexit, speaking with a logic and clarity which disarmed his opponents. He introduced a term to the debate – vassalage – which identified perfectly the weakness of Theresa May’s deal, and emphasised how the EU had successfully driven the Prime Minister into a corner. But this morning, all

Bruce Anderson

Three Tories in search of solace

Three tribal Tories had gathered for a convivial glass, and also a consolatory one. One quoted Huskisson’s verdict after Goderich’s brief and worthless premiership. ‘Never surely was there a man at the head of affairs so weak, undecided and utterly helpless.’ Well, the female sex has now caught up. I said that at least she had refuted Hopkins. ‘No worst, there is none.’ As long as Theresa May is in charge, there could always be a worst. The terrible premier has out-gloomed the Terrible Sonnets. We were hiding away in a club, hoping not to meet any foreigners. Not that any of us is in the least xenophobic. One chap

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

Too many people are innumerate

A levels, from the perspective of a ‘choice architect’, are a disaster. While pupils are free to pick and mix freely among the humanities, science is implicitly presented as an all-or-nothing package deal. Any aspiring scientist must study at least three of the big four: mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology. People who want to keep their options open, or who are reluctant to drop, say, history, are forced at around the age of 15 to make a highly asymmetric choice: either bet the farm on science or abandon it entirely. Faced with this skewed option, too many do the latter. This means many otherwise intelligent people leave university with a

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Let battle commence…

To most of the cabinet, it does not matter if Theresa May announces a timetable for her resignation: they can’t see her lasting until the summer and the race for her successor is now on. Coffees are being bought, dinners laid on, allies sounded out — all in expectation of a contest being called at any moment. This time, the leading candidates hope to be ready with campaign managers, teams, manifestos and more. Even those holding back are doing so strategically. And given that this is the Conservative party, there will be blood. If there is a general election this year, Tories are adamant that May won’t lead them into

Jonathan Ray Jonathan Ray

Wine Club 30 March

I’m acutely aware that we rarely offer champagne in these pages, other than the occasional treat from our beloved Pol Roger (the Speccie house pour), largely because I’ve never found one that’s good enough or well-priced enough. Well, crikey, thanks to Esme Johnstone of fromvineyardsdirect I’ve finally now found one. The Arlaux Champagne Premier Cru, Brut Grande Cuvée NV (1) fair knocked my socks off. Produced by the Arlaux family from insecticide-free Premier Cru vineyards in the Montagne de Reims, it’s first-rate fizz and no mistake. And don’t just take my word for it. Its gloriously honeyed, toasty notes and finest of fine mousses also caught the eye of Robert

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

The real winner from Brexodus won’t be Frankfurt, Paris or Dublin

How big is Brexodus — the flight of business and people from the City of London in parallel with our exit from the EU? I observed recently that squealing from the Square Mile has been minimal compared to sectors that make and move physical goods — suggesting that banks, insurers and investment houses have quietly completed all the necessary rejigging of domiciles and compliance that will permit them to carry on making money willy-nilly. There’s been plenty of paddling beneath the City surface. A report by the New Financial thinktank ‘identified 275 firms in the UK that have moved or are moving some of their business, staff, assets or legal

Paul Wood

Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.

 Washington REVERSE FERRET! When he edited the Sun, Kelvin MacKenzie used to throw open his office door and bellow this at the newsroom when the paper had got a story wrong. It came from the northern endurance sport of ferret-legging: a pair of razor-toothed ferrets are put down your trousers — no underwear allowed. The Sun would call the ferrets off some hapless public figure and go into full reverse without apology or explanation. If we in the media have spent the past two years getting the Trump-Russia story wrong, simply pulling a reverse ferret now would not be enough. There would have to be something more. But is a

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

Netflix and kill

Thumbing avidly through Heat magazine recently in a fevered search for the latest on the Cheryl/Liam/Naomi infernal triangle, I was startled to find a pull-out preview of a new true-crime magazine called Crime Monthly. It was aimed at an audience that is presumably satiated with seeing celebrities tormented and now wants to read about ordinary people being tortured. Heat magazine — once a bona fide pop-culture phenomenon — is often now found on free magazine stands, so the publishers, Bauer, are chasing the money. The self-important actress Kristen Stewart once compared being papped to being raped, but there’s obviously more profit now in flogging the real thing. The preview was

Lucy Vickery

Cringe benefits

In Competition No. 3091 you were invited to submit toe-curlingly bad analogies. This is an idea shamelessly pinched from the Washington Post, whose contests have produced the impressively so-bad-they’re good ‘Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze’ (Chuck Smith) and ‘Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever’ (Jennifer Hart). Yours, too, were gloriously cringe–inducing. Laboured, overwrought, banal, tasteless — yet grimly compelling for all that. The winners take a fiver each per analogy printed below. As the narcotic took effect, Frank felt extremely odd, as if he were sole occupant of a set in a Venn diagram containing men who loved the novels of Barbara

Wednesday

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

In defence of the Parkfield Community School parents

‘Do you think LGBT rights should be taught in schools?’ Women’s Hour has got itself into a spot of bother by trailing a discussion on same-sex education with this tease. The objection is to the question mark, which hints sinisterly at a debate. We are at very real risk of a debate on relationships education and same-sex equality thanks to a noisy coalition of religious parents. The backlash began at Parkfield Community School, an academy primary with more than 700 pupils in Hodge Hill, the most deprived constituency in Birmingham. The roll is almost exclusively ethnic minority and a majority of pupils are of Pakistani origin; the ‘vast majority’ of the

Tuesday

Becky O’Connor

Would you be tempted by a 40-yr home loan? I know I would

I remember it so well: the existential angst, the self-doubt, the bitter railing against intergenerational inequality, all of which preoccupied me for much my twenties. The cause? Anxiety about getting on the housing ladder. When you’re in that desperate state, it’s all consuming. Owning your own home is the holy grail of adulthood. You imagine that if you achieve it, everything else will be alright, you will get on with the rest of your life, focus more on your career, somehow be more of a person. Flowers will grow in your garden, you’ll do things like chat to the neighbours and you will no longer be beholden to landlords, with

Daniel Rey

Prince Charles’s trip to Cuba is a big mistake

More than 120 years ago, Winston Churchill sailed to Cuba. While there, he dreamt of a country ‘free and prosperous…throwing open her ports to the commerce of the world, sending her ponies to Hurlingham and her cricketers to Lords.’ Now, in spite of Cuba’s communist revolution, the British government seems to have the same optimistic view as Churchill. But is it right to do so? On Sunday, the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall landed in Havana. Their tour is the first official royal appointment in Cuba, a four-day trip the British government hopes will strengthen economic and diplomatic relations with the communist country. The royal trip may

Monday

Lucy Vickery

Spectator competition winners: what Keats really thought of that nightingale

For the latest challenge competitors were asked to submit a recently discovered lost poem by a well-known poet that makes us see him or her in a new light. Step for-ward, Philip Larkin, flower arranger, Slough fan John Betjeman and knickers-on-fire Emily Dickinson. Congratulations all round are in order this week, but I especially admired Alanna Blake’s palinodic villanelle from Dylan Thomas: Calm down, relax, accept the dying light, It will be unaffected by your rage, For all our sakes, give up this futile fight… And G.M. Davis’s Tennyson, who reveals what he really thought of her maj: What a prissy old Queen is Victoria! She looks like a case