Society

Thursday

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 26 July 2018

Towering above this medieval French village is dun-coloured cliff of volcanic rock, dramatically floodlit at night, topped by two ancient lookout towers. A wide waterfall once flowed over this cliff and at night the floodlights pick out the grooves and caverns worn away over thousands of years. For the last couple of millennia these caverns have been the dwelling places of all sorts of refugees and paupers and one of the larger ones was turned into a hospice for old soldiers of Napoleon’s citizen army. The rock is too hard and impervious to allow for much modification of the cavern walls, but a rough stone wall with window and doorway

Melissa Kite

Real life | 26 July 2018

Stefano came back to paint the front of the house. I have never been so pleased to see his red and white van. He emerged with a startling new crew cut instead of his wavy black hair. He was wearing a red and white T-shirt with his company logo on it. But otherwise, he was the same. He grinned a wide grin and held out his enormous hand to shake mine. ‘Hello boss,’ he said. ‘I’m not the boss,’ I said, ‘You’re the boss.’ He laughed. He has not been here for six months since he helped me finish the major works inside the house after the builder boyfriend walked

Susanna Gross

Bridge | 26 July 2018

It’s hard to explain to non-bridge players just how all-consuming this game is. For those of us who move in the same highly competitive circles, it’s simply a way of life. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about bridge. For now, though, my kids are on their summer break, so bridge has to take a back seat. My fellow fanatics sometimes find this hard to grasp. Last week, the England international Claire Robinson sent me a text asking if I could have supper in mid-August. ‘I’ll be in Sweden,’ I replied. ‘Lovely!’ she said. ‘Who are you playing with?’ ‘Er, my children on a beach…’ And I

Raymond Keene

Fiend from Hull

This year’s British Championship commences today in Hull. Among a powerful field, which includes Michael Adams and defending champion Gawain Jones, Luke McShane stands out as a supremely dangerous tactician, who at his best can overrun any opponent. This week’s game shows him outmanoeuvring a leading contender from last year’s championship. McShane-Howell: British Championship, Llandudno 2017; French Defence 1 e4 e6 2 d4 d5 3 Nd2 It is not clear to me that the French Defence suits Howell’s style. In the later playoff game for the title McShane-Howell continued 3 e5 and White also won. 3 … c5 4 Ngf3 cxd4 5 Nxd4 Nc6 6 Bb5 Bd7 7 Nxc6 bxc6

Raymond Keene

no. 516

Black to play. This position is from Brown-Adams, British Championship, Bournemouth 2016. Black has various ways to force mate but only one move does the job in five moves at most. Can you find it? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 31 July 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 … N4xd5 Last week’s winner Alex Burghart, London SW1

Peter Jones

Water, water, everywhere | 26 July 2018

Given that we use only 2 per cent of the rain that falls on these islands, one would not think it an insuperable job to secure our water supplies during the longest dry spells. If the Romans could do it with their technology, surely we can with ours. Since communities in the ancient world could survive only if they had supplies of fresh water available in the first place — rivers, wells and cisterns — aqueducts were not strictly necessary for human survival. Many places never had one (e.g. London). It was the baths, the Romans’ leisure centres, that created the demand. According to a late survey, Rome had 154

The Spectator

Barometer | 26 July 2018

Relax Asked about her spare time, Theresa May said she liked walking, cooking (she has 150 cookbooks) and watching the US TV series NCIS. How typical is she in choosing how she spends her leisure time? — A Sport England survey in 2016 suggested that 18.6 million Britons had walked for leisure in the past 28 days. — An Aviva survey last year claimed Britons had an average of 158 books in their homes. One in ten homes did not have a single book. — The fifth series of NCIS (which stands for Naval Criminal Investigative Service) has an average of 2.6 million viewers when shown on Channel 5. In

The Spectator

Letters | 26 July 2018

The Stauffenberg plot Sir: Matthew Olex-Szczytowski argues that the German officers who tried to kill Hitler did so only to save Germany from defeat, and were themselves Nazi war criminals (‘An alternative history’, 21 July). He is wrong on both counts. In fact, they tried to overthrow Hitler long before defeat was imminent. The first attempt to assassinate the Führer took place in 1938, one year before the war. The conspirators tried again in 1939 and 1940, when the Nazi regime was still triumphant. Many of them joined the movement in order to oppose Hitler’s genocidal policies. Their resistance to the Holocaust and the crimes against Poles and Russians is

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 26 July 2018

Home Dame Margaret Hodge accused Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, of being an ‘anti-Semite’ and a ‘racist’ in front of a number of MPs at Westminster; within 12 hours she had received a disciplinary letter. ‘People have to be judged on what they do and not on what they say,’ she insisted on BBC radio. The government announced pay rises for a million public sector workers, with 2.9 per cent for the armed forces, 2.75 per cent for prison officers, up to 3.5 per cent for teachers and 2 per cent for police and general practitioners. The budget for London’s Crossrail project rose from £14.8 billion to £15.4 billion. London,

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

Pecking order

Nando’s, c. 1987, is a restaurant in the Great North Leisure Park, Finchley, N12, off the North Circular, which is my favourite orbital, solely from familiarity. The Great North Leisure Park includes a cinema, a bowling alley, a Pizza Hut, something called Chimichanga, and Nando’s. But the real draw of the Great North Leisure Park is the car park. If you live in north London, free parking is a destination in itself. Put it next to a nuclear reactor, and they’d come bearing toddlers. I fell into Nando’s due to sloth. I was with children, and people who can’t vote shouldn’t have destination restaurants, but they do, based on their firmly

The Spectator

Troubled water

The year 1976 rises like a spectre whenever the sun shines for more than a few days. That long, dry, hot summer has become a regular reference point for people in their late forties and over searching for happy memories of childhood or young adulthood. Those too young to remember it will nevertheless be familiar with photographs of people dipping in the fountains in Trafalgar Square, walking alongside dried-up reservoirs or showing a ‘Blitz spirit’ as they filled buckets from standpipes in the streets. Yet rarely does anyone see the summer of 1976 in a clear light: as a time when our then state-owned water industry failed to cope with

Dot Wordsworth

County lines

We are suddenly all expected to know that county lines are to do with the selling of illegal drugs in rural Britain. There is, I think, a confusion built into the term, though language is capable of accommodating such inconsistencies. Most of the stuff in the papers and on television on the subject derives from County Lines, Violence, Exploitation & Drug Supply, a report published last year by the National Crime Agency. It says that the phrase county lines refers to the supply of Class A drugs ‘from an urban hub into rural towns or county locations’. It adds: ‘A key feature of county lines drug supply is the use

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 26 July 2018

Q. My wife’s much younger sister is lazy and impossible. She forgets birthdays, is invariably late, lets people down and seems to think it’s all a laugh. Examples: forgetting to put the Christmas lunch in to cook so we had to wait four hours for what turned into a very poor evening meal. Informing us of a serious heart condition via a two-line text message, to which my wife responded but then heard nothing. Her husband is similar, once berating my wife in public for not going to see her sister in hospital when we had not been informed that she was there. Her youngest daughter was 18 earlier this

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 26 July 2018

At a speaker luncheon last week, someone I didn’t know passed me a note asking ‘Have you stopped supporting capital punishment?’ As far as I could remember, I have never supported capital punishment, so I was slightly at a loss for a reply. My problem with the subject is that I have always felt ambiguous. On the one hand, capital punishment is horrible, bad for the executioner as well as the victim, and fatal to the innocent. On the other, I cannot confidently argue that, when conducted under law, it would be wrong in every single circumstance. Some times, and perhaps some actions, are so bad that the death penalty

Columba

2369: Prodigious

Each of ten clues contains a misprinted letter in the definition part. Corrections of misprints spell a word which can be read as an indicator of the unclued lights in each of four columns of the grid.   Across   1 Revolutionary avoids accepting one god (7) 6 Destroyed each bit of opium (7) 11 Priest and paramour lapsing? (6) 12 Tense champion catching alien in addition (7) 14 Mouldings attached to front of impressive gateway (5) 15 Dredge section mostly exposed (5) 16 See current process releasing a vitamin (6) 17 Rascal having problem carrying Albanian coin around (6) 19 Worn-out horse, mad at vet, I smarten up (9)

Sarah Whitebloom

Who cares about care homes?

For millions of middle-aged children, finding good care for their parents is akin to a Grail quest — and just as unlikely to succeed. How can you tell if a care home is good? There are so many horror stories of neglect, abuse and even deaths. Most people rely on ratings from the Care Quality Commission (CQC). But when the care regulator says a home is ‘good’, does that mean it is actually good? In fact, as I discovered, it could mean anything. The CQC’s coveted ‘good’ grade is supposed to be a reassuring measure. It should tell you that your relation will be safe, because a team of inspectors

Kit Eastwood

Dusting off the past

Visiting Pompeii, it is hard to miss the garden of the fugitives. It is on every other postcard in the gift shop: an excavated garden with 13 bodies twisting in an agonising tableau of pain, caught at the instant of their death. They are frozen in history and separated from the onlooker by a glass wall and museum labels — a human moment presented with the cold distance of an archaeological exhibit. Ceridwen Dovey’s third novel is anchored in Pompeii and chooses the garden as its focal point. She tells the story of two characters, Royce and Vita, their rejections by their individual loves and attempts to find meaning after

The Spectator

to 2366: The square

THE RUSSIA HOUSE, TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY and A MURDER OF QUALITY are novels by JOHN (41) LE CARRÉ, whose surname is the puzzle’s TITLE (13) in FRENCH (30).   First prize Ian Webster, Craven Arms, Shropshire Runners-up Angus Ross, Old Portsmouth, Hampshire; Samantha Pine, Poole, Dorset

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Michel Barnier confirms David Davis’ Brexit deal warning

David Davis could be forgiven a wry chuckle today. For what he warned Theresa May about has come to pass: Michel Barnier has made clear that the EU Commission can’t accept Theresa May’s proposed facilitated customs arrangement as it won’t have a third country (ie, the UK) collecting tariffs on its behalf: ‘The EU cannot and the EU will not delegate the application of its customs policy and rules and VAT and excises duty collection to a non-member who would not be subject to the EU’s governance structures.’ This was the main point of the Chequers offer: that Britain would have frictionless trade with the rest of the EU by