Society

Thursday

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 12 July 2018

Q. A long-standing friend has an admirer of some means. He has invited her to borrow his fully staffed and equipped yacht and entertain a selection of guests, including myself, while we sail around the Med. I’ve become somewhat addicted to luxury and I’ve been so looking forward to this for weeks. I imagined myself lying on a lounger throughout, but I’ve now heard of a late addition to the line-up. My friend has confused good with good value and has misguidedly invited a man who has been immensely helpful in a professional capacity to some of those who will be on board. But I’ve been in a group with

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

A smashing tea

Claridge’s is a toff sanctuary and one of the best hotels on earth. It specialises in its own myth, which is easy when Winston Churchill fell into a suite at the end of the war, and missed Dwight Eisenhower running the other way. Eisenhower was not afraid of the Axis, but the soft furnishings at Claridge’s felled him utterly and he fled to Kingston-upon-Thames like my mother did. The kings of Greece, Norway and Yugoslavia also spent the war at Claridge’s, in a sort of unlucky king convention. There is a story, perhaps apocryphal, that Yugoslav earth was laid under the Yugoslav queen’s bed, not because she was a vampire,

Dot Wordsworth

Turd

I have never lost my admiration for Boris Johnson’s summary of British ambitions over Brexit as ‘having our cake and eating it’. It taught a generation of EU bureaucrats an important English idiom. So it is with renewed admiration, if involuntary distaste, that I regard his success in reintroducing turd into polite conversation. It has been used openly on Radio 4 at breakfast-time, ever since Mr Johnson was reported to have remarked during the Chequers cabinet meeting (or kidnapping) that defending the Brexit plan would be like ‘polishing a turd’. The Oxford English Dictionary gives the proverb ‘You can’t polish a turd’, comparing it to ‘You can’t make a silk

Taki

High life | 12 July 2018

What a week this has been! What a great mood I’m in! Why, it’s almost like being in bed… with Georgie Wells. (Details will follow, but don’t let me mislead you. I didn’t even get to first base.) It began the day before those amber waves of grain and purple mountain majesties were celebrated, with a speech I gave before the nicest and brightest group of men you’d ever wish to meet, none of whom go to places like Gstaad or are seen in places like the Eagle. Afterwards my mate Tim Hanbury and I went hunting for women at 5 Hertford Street and ended up paralytic instead. On 4

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 12 July 2018

I flew from Marseille to Gatwick, rode the Gatwick Express to Victoria, and walked down the thoroughfare of Victoria Street eating a Marks & Spencer egg and tomato sandwich. In Victoria Street, I bought a shirt, pattern of flying ducks, from the House of Fraser selected menswear sale, to replace the sweat-soaked one I was wearing. Then I cut through the passage leading to Palmer Street and dropped in for an unpremeditated haircut at the Pall Mall barbershop. The chap who cut my hair was lively and talkative. Where had I come from today? France, I said. France? He didn’t like France. He’d tried it a few times but France

Melissa Kite

Real life | 12 July 2018

This was going to be about how a major phone company surprised me by delivering a fantastic service. I was quite excited because secretly I have always wanted to be forced to admit that in spite of my rock bottom expectations, all is right with the world. It began when I went into the Carphone Warehouse to buy a new iPhone, something I had dreaded and put off for so long that my old iPhone was held together with gaffer tape. I sat down with a nice chap and told him I wanted a phone exactly like my old one, because I’m weird. He said they no longer did 64

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 12 July 2018

Home Boris Johnson resigned as Foreign Secretary the day after David Davis resigned as Brexit Secretary, both in reaction to a government plan for Brexit agreed by the cabinet after being held incommunicado at Chequers for 12 hours, their mobile phones confiscated. At Chequers, Mr Johnson was reported to have said: ‘Anyone defending the proposal we have just agreed will find it like trying to polish a turd.’ In his resignation letter he said that the Brexit ‘dream is dying, suffocated by needless self-doubt’, adding: ‘We are truly headed for the status of a colony.’ Dominic Raab, the housing minister, replaced Mr Davis; Kit Malthouse replaced Mr Raab. Jeremy Hunt,

Susanna Gross

Bridge | 12 July 2018

I have a horrible feeling my column this week is going to read like a mutual-back-scratch. In the last issue, Janet wrote about my team winning the Hubert Phillips Trophy (which gave my ego as much of a boost as winning the thing itself). Now her team has gone and won the ‘Patton Lavazza’ at the Summer Bridge Festival of Biarritz — so it’s my turn to congratulate her.   The coastal town of Biarritz hosts one of the most popular events on the international bridge calendar. Quite apart from the stunning James Bond-location and the huge number of players who take part (including several jet-setting bridge stars), it offers

Pabulum

2367: When pigs fly

Five unclued lights form a quotation from a work concerning the 18 of 19, 15A and 23. The 18’s name will appear in the completed grid and must be shaded.   Across 4    Placidity of English queen nearing Ross and Cromarty town (9) 9    Dumb mimickings parish rioters bandied (10) 11    Old statesman from Burundi following woman around (5) 12    Fishy young goddess snubbed arriviste (7) 14    Refined gent eats over in the same place (5) 16    Classy hawk takes kip in Kelso (6) 21    People and prophet largely like a bunch of grapes (8) 22    What stimulates enthusiasm? (7) 24    Related little ladies stripped (4) 25    Mood of Loretta

The Spectator

to 2364: Frolicsome Threesome

WEIN (2D) suggests 21, 35 and 37 (German wines); WEIB suggests 10, 25 and 42 (Germanic female names); GESANG suggests 14, 27 and 31 (German-speaking composers of sung works). STRAUSS, highlighted, composed the waltz Wein, Weib und Gesang.   First prize P.G. Hampton, Wimborne, Dorset Runners-up Roy Robinson, Sheffield; Jenny Mitchell, Croscombe, Somerset

Sunder Katwala

How football united a nation

England did not expect. That was the key to this summer’s World Cup. Last night’s defeat by Croatia was a gut-wrenching disappointment. Yet four weeks ago, any England fan told that the World Cup run would end in extra-time in the semi-finals would have jumped at the prospect. On and off the pitch, it has been a summer that has changed how we think about England. Is football just sport? Yes. But sport can do things that nothing else can. Nations are imagined communities of millions where we share something with people we do not know. There are few other things than sport that thirty million of us can share that captures

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Why England’s part-time fans will be hurting the most

My lovely, wonderful wife was disconsolate. She went to bed, desolated. This is the problem with people who tune in for six matches every four years. They can’t believe defeat. If she came to Millwall a little more often she would become inured. By a little more often I meant “ever”. Defeat hurts more when you think it can’t happen. I think that’s how twenty million Brits were today. After they’d thrown the beer around for a bit, when reality set in. They can’t believe it. And so it becomes a national tragedy, when really it’s just another game of football lost. The trouble with tragedies is they prevent you

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

We don’t know where Brexiteers are going now. And neither do they

In happier days when Britain was not on the brink of disintegration, David Davis told me a story about the 19th century French politician Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin. Little did I suspect that soon he would be living it. The Francophiles among you will recall the apocryphal tale of Ledru-Rollin enjoying his lunch at a Parisian café when a revolutionary crowd stormed past. Ledru-Rollin leapt from his seat and cried “There go the people. I must follow them, for I am their leader.” Where were they going? He did not know. What was his plan? He did not have one. True believers in Brexit are revolting, and not without cause. They

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

The Remainers are in charge now

There has been a Remainer coup. Remainers now inhabit virtually all of the highest offices in the land. Overnight, adherents to this minority political viewpoint seized the final levers of political power. This is the one downside — and what a downside it is — to the belated outbreak of principle among the cabinet’s Brexiteers: their walking away has allowed Theresa May to further surround herself with fellow Remainers, and pretty much expel the Brexit outlook from her cabinet. The new foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, voted Remain. As did his replacement at the Department of Health, Matt Hancock. Hancock is a former acolyte of George Osborne, arch-Remainer and now chief

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Theresa May’s weakness is a virtue

Something rather remarkable happened yesterday: Theresa May had a good day. This counts as news and is itself testament to the miserable time she has endured since she became Prime Minister. Some of this – much of it, in fact – was her own fault. Or at least her own responsibility. If she had called an election in September 2016 it seems likely she would have been rewarded with a handsome majority and, just as usefully, a thumping mandate for her own interpretation of Brexit. Delaying until June 2017, however, meant she missed her chance. By that stage the moment had passed. The election became another unwanted imposition. Voters, given

Simon Barnes

The agony of penalties

Last week, for the first time since 1996, and for the second time in nine attempts, England won a match that was decided by a penalty competition. You may have read something about it. The penalty shoot-out is the classic example — the type specimen — of a sport transforming itself for television. Television loves penalties because television loves drama. When drama is mixed with partisanship the mixture is irresistible: a perfect piece of entertainment. Many sports have gone down the same route: changing their essence to please television, to create entertainment and ultimately to make more money. It’s not always a bad thing. The tie-break in tennis was first

Roger Alton Roger Alton

An epochal, joyful, brain-churning World Cup

Like most people with any taste, I like the odd vodka, I love Crime and Punishment, I enjoy Turgenev and Chekhov, and who doesn’t like to listen to Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov? Their national anthem’s not bad either. In other words, Russia’s quite a place, give or take the odd poisoning or country takeover. And as this epochal, joyful, brain-churning World Cup roars into the last lap, let’s look back at what some of Fleet Street’s finest were predicting just a few weeks ago for the land of Dostoevsky and Stravinsky. Ignoring the admirable advice to steer clear of Nazi references, this was the Observer’s Nick Cohen: ‘If you wonder how

Daisy Dunn

Alpacas

Of all the window displays in Amsterdam this spring there was just one that stopped me in my tracks. I had come for tulips, canals, the tremendous Van Gogh and Japan exhibition, but the unexpected highlight of my trip was the sight of a dozen alpacas beaming through the glass of a shop front off the Herengracht. Nothing could have made me forget the rain like this jubilant herd. I have long had a passion for alpacas but had never seen faux ones quite so lifelike. These were made from real alpaca fur — brown, white, chocolatey caramel — and were proportionally perfect, as though a craftsman had scaled a

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

How pleasing to find out that most cave art was made by women

Why do so many women feel such a strong urge to paint? It has been troubling me for years now. There are hundreds of thousands of us up and down the country, not pros but dedicated nonetheless. We pay for classes, huddle around artists we admire; we head to the coast on holiday to try, and fail, to capture the wash of sky and sea. On weekday evenings we congregate in art schools and stare in a demented fashion at naked men and women, determined to master the human form. All around the world, there are women with watercolours locked in battle with household objects: flowers, lemons, bowls. People talk