Society

Over the centuries, the British royal family have been many things: conquerors, vanquishers, tyrants and buffoons. They have been denied their destiny, gone mad with grief, been exalted and even exiled. They have been beheaded, beholden, belligerent and benevolent, but until now they have never really been victims. And certainly not self-identifying victims. Yet the cult of victimhood has engulfed the royal battlements like a poisoned ivy. It has curled into ducal nook and princessy psyche, and it has turned some of the most privileged people on the planet into a whiny bunch. Recently, we have discovered the following. The Duke of Cambridge struggled in his role as air ambulance

The rise to fame of Greta Thunberg, the teenage climate activist, has been nothing short of extraordinary. Less than a year ago, she was an unknown schoolgirl from Sweden, albeit an unusual one: she is the daughter of a famous opera singer and an actor. Thunberg also has Asperger’s syndrome, obsessive-compulsive disorder and selective mutism. The latter, she says, ‘basically means I only speak when I think it’s necessary’. ‘Now is one of those moments,’ she said in a Ted talk watched hundreds of thousands of times on the topic that first brought her into the public eye: her decision to stage a ‘school strike’ last August to draw attention

This week’s Best Buys are one year fixed-rate ISAs. Even if you have opened one in the previous tax year, you can still open another, so if you have some spare cash to hand it’s always worthwhile taking a look at what rates are on offer. Here are some of the best, from data supplied by moneyfacts.co.uk.

What’s behind the rise in demand for food banks? Over the past few years, the default Conservative line has been that the reasons people need emergency help are ‘complex’. This is certainly true: the figures released by the Trussell Trust, which runs the largest network of food banks in the country, show that there is no one factor in food bank use. But those figures also show quite clearly that problems with the payments of benefits, or cuts to benefits, are a major driver: the top four reasons cited for referring someone to a food bank in 2017-18 were low income (28.49 per cent), benefit delays (23.74 per cent), benefit

What can the EU do to help the Britons out of their Brexit quagmire? Until very recently, the answer would have been ‘little, if anything’. There is a deal on the table, which Theresa May herself pronounced to be non-negotiable. Well, parliament directed her — and by implication, the EU — to think again and to reconsider the vexed question of the Irish backstop. Does anybody on either side of the channel really want to wreck the future relationship between the UK and the EU over the unsolved issue of the Irish border, as well as risk creating renewed enmity along it? God forbid. The EU’s reluctance to come forward

Why is dating not as fun as it used to be? Statistics show that we are having less sex, birth rates are plummeting and surveys indicate our lives are too fast-paced and stressful. In this week’s Spectator, Zoe Strimpel, laments that modern dating has misplaced the excitement of meeting someone you connect with – that instant spark – with endless pre-arranged Tinder dates. Zoe joins us for this week’s podcast with Doctor Cath Mercer, a lead scientist with one of the UK’s largest surveys of sexual and romantic lifestyles. They discuss how apps and internet porn have sucked the joy from dating, and advise  how to cut through the noise and

When we think of frosty diplomatic relations between states, members of the European Union don’t typically come to mind. And yet the word ‘frosty’ is exactly what the relationship between Italy and France has become. In fact, ‘frosty’ may too tepid of a description. The Italians can be stubborn people. But so can the French. And for the first time many Europeans can remember, the stubbornness is compounded by two governments in Rome and Paris that are at each other’s throats on some of the biggest issues of the day. On one side is Italian deputy prime ministers Matteo Salvini and Luigi Di Maio, two fierce nationalists who consider the

A notable feature from the recently concluded elite tournament at Wijk aan Zee was the abject failure of former world champion Vladimir Kramnik, who finished in equal last place. I have been conjecturing that it might be time for him to put his pieces back in the box, in the style of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Tis all a Chequer-board of nights and days. Where Destiny with men for Pieces plays: Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays, And one by one back in the closet lays. He could evolve into an elder statesman for the new Fidé regime led by Arkady Dvorkovich and his vice-president Nigel Short.