Society

Thursday

Raymond Keene

Royal road

The mathematician Euclid once boldly informed King Ptolemy Soter I of Egypt that there was no royal road to geometry. However, a royal road to a UK visa does exist and it has just been granted to the family of nine-year-old prodigy Shreyas Royal, by means of the intervention of the Home Secretary himself.   A vigorous campaign has been in train for most of this year to prevent the Royal family from being deported in September. This included a charitable programme of chess tuition implemented by the experienced junior coach Julian Simpole, whose former pupils included Luke McShane and David Howell. Shreyas has been invited to make the ceremonial

Melissa Kite

Real life | 23 August 2018

After I had been glossing the woodwork for a few days, I started to feel light-headed. It hadn’t occurred to me that the paint was solvent-based, of course. Not until I caught sight of the writing on the tin one evening while painting a bedroom doorframe did it make sense. But it was too late, because I had inhaled enough of the stuff by then. The keeper arrived to find me neurotically painting architrave so that the paint lines were correct to the nearest millimetre. I was up against the wood so close my nose was virtually touching it, as if I were painting the Sistine chapel. And all the

Raymond Keene

no. 520

White to play. This position is from Nakamura-Mamedyarov, St Louis 2018. Unfortunately for Mamedyarov, he has just blundered in a winning position. How did Nakamura exploit his lapse? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 28 August 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 Bc4 Last week’s winner Richard England, London

Susanna Gross

Bridge | 23 August 2018

Long-married couples are notoriously intolerant of one another at the bridge table. It’s as if all their pent-up irritation comes bursting forth — no matter how humiliating for their partner. Frankly, some players are so mean to their spouses that if they behaved like that in everyday life, it would be classified as mental cruelty. It’s not always so bad, but even the happiest of couples snap sometimes. At least, that’s what I thought until I came across John and Lucy Phelan, from Ireland, at the Summer Festival. Their behaviour left me stunned: they weren’t just nice to each other, they were delightful. And it’s not like they’re newlyweds or

The Spectator

When fear fails

Economies run on confidence — as Franklin D. Roosevelt observed when he told Americans, in his first inaugural address during the depths of the Great Depression in 1933, that they had ‘nothing to fear except fear itself’. If that confidence is lost, if people collectively start drawing in their horns, squirrelling money away because they fear turbulent economic times ahead, then recession can all too easily become a self-fulfilling prophecy. No serious economist would dispute this theory. The puzzle is why the UK economy, riddled with Brexit anxieties, is in such good health. The Dutch prime minister said we were ‘collapsed’. The New York Times publishes frequent reports saying that

Toby Young Toby Young

Jerk rice – with a side serving of insanity

Earlier this week, the Labour MP Dawn Butler ‘called out’ Jamie Oliver for ‘appropriation’. His sin, according to the shadow minister for women and equalities, was to launch a product called Punchy Jerk Rice. ‘I’m just wondering do you know what #Jamaican #jerk actually is?’ she asked him on Twitter. ‘It’s not just a word you put before stuff to sell products… Your jerk rice is not OK. This appropriation from Jamaica needs to stop.’ The notion that it is problematic for white people to ‘appropriate’ the culture of other ethnic groups has become widespread on the left. Three years ago, Erika Christakis, a Yale lecturer, sparked protests after she

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 23 August 2018

Q. I live in a houseshare with two other people; one of whom I am very fond of and the other, not so much. She lies and cheats and is a terrible friend. She is a social climber extraordinaire who has abandoned her real friends. My other housemate is of the same opinion. The lease is coming up for renewal. We don’t want to move, so how do we get her out? She will not take this lying down. — Name and address withheld A. A calm three-step procedure will be necessary. Enlist the help of a monied friend, who has connections to both you and the good housemate. He

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

Back to the Eighties

I wouldn’t normally visit Coq d’Argent, which I think means the chicken of money. It is a moderately famous restaurant in a pink and brown tower in the City of London, once owned, as so much has been, by Sir Terence Conran, and now by D&D, specialists in soulless food barns. As restaurants go, it feels unlucky. It has — how to put this? — a circular roof garden from which people sometimes throw themselves off. One was a restaurant critic, but his last meal was not at Coq d’Argent. That was at Hawksmoor in Spitalfields. He had good taste, then, and he quoted Samuel Johnson on Twitter as he

Dot Wordsworth

Relish the opportunity

The Sun gave a sad picture of British loneliness recently in a report about the national yearning to play a board game like Monopoly, which could only be fulfilled about five times a year when someone could be found to play it with. In passing, the paper remarked: ‘Two-thirds of Brits would also relish the opportunity to play a life-size version of their favourite board game.’ Whether or not this unlikely claim is true, there’s an awful lot of relishing going on these days, and opportunity is usually the thing relished. What, according to the Telegraph gardening pages, will you do with the opportunity for a relaxed afternoon in such

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 23 August 2018

Home Government finances were in surplus by £2 billion in July. Public sector net debt rose to £1,777.5 billion, equal to 84.3 per cent of GDP, £17.5 billion more than a year before, but less as a proportion of GDP than last year’s 86 per cent. Jeremy Hunt, the Foreign Secretary, flew to Washington and made a speech urging the European Union to take stronger sanctions against Russia. President Vladimir Putin of Russia danced with Karin Kneissl, the new foreign minister of Austria, at her wedding, and then met Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany at the Meseberg Palace near Berlin. The government took over the management of Birmingham prison from G4S midway through

Richard Madeley

Diary – 23 August 2018

Down here near Nice, you find most locals unsurprised by the catastrophic Genoa bridge collapse. The Italian border is only a few miles away but most people will find any excuse not to cross it — including my wife and me. In fact, these days we don’t go there at all. We haven’t done for years. Friends find this strange. After all, Italy’s closeness is one of the reasons we bought the place. So why do I fight shy of motoring through the long autostrada tunnel that runs under the pre-Alps, linking Menton to Ventimiglia? Because it’s bloody dangerous. Not on the scrupulously maintained French side, brightly lit with clearly

Lavatch

2373: Susurrus

Unclued lights are three groups of three words of a kind, each group defined by the name of a different main character from a novel. The fourth main character of the novel (6, two words) must be highlighted in the completed grid.   Across 1    I hope gas travels in passages in US (8) 8    Firms making fruit-producing plant (4) 12    Old character about to drink fill when wine’s new (9, two words) 15    Prisoner welcomes month, one that’s boiling (7) 17    Growl resounded around (4) 18    Rope from cafeteria tables (5) 19    A journalist retains right transferred once (7) 23    Drop of port wine, red, in mixture (8) 24   

The Spectator

to 2370: Problem XII

The numbers were linked to titles of classic works of FICTION (12): The Two DROVERS (26) (Walter Scott), The Three MUSKETEERS (1D) (Alexandre Dumas (père)), The Thirty-Nine STEPS (34) (John Buchan), The Five RED HERRINGS (36D/5A) (Dorothy L. Sayers), Eight COUSINS (15D) (Louisa M. Alcott) and Five WEEKS IN A BALLOON (14/20) (Jules Verne). 2 x 3 x (39 + [5 x 8]) x 5 = 2370.   First prize M. O’Halgon, East Lothian, Scotland Runners-up Philip Wickens, Horsham, West Sussex; Kathryn Apandwicz, East Witton, Leyburn

James Kirkup James Kirkup

Is it a crime to say ‘women don’t have penises’?

Is it now a crime to say “women don’t have penises”? A police force and a City mayor seem to think it might be. They are promising to investigate women who say so. That question arises because some women are putting up stickers in public places bearing those words. Some of those stickers are pink and shaped like penises. The point being made is that some people believe that if you have a penis, you’re not a woman. Other people believe that some women have penises. It is perfectly possible to be recognised in law as a trans woman while retaining fully-functional male genitals, and some estimates suggest the majority

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

The fury of the stop Brexit mob has finally been explained

At last they’ve found a name for it. A name for the meltdown that has occurred in certain political circles since June 2016. A name for the daily Twitter-rage against That Referendum. A name for the clearly potty belief that we are heading for the End of Days and that it is all the fault of dumb voters who don’t like the EU. A name for the non-stop fuming about Britain’s ‘inferior’ people and the almighty mess they have apparently landed the nation in. It’s called Brexit Anxiety Disorder. At least that is how Tom McTague at Politico sums up the findings of two psychological experts who have looked into

Jacob Heilbrunn

Trump’s presidency has imploded – in less than two years

This is the beginning of the end of the Donald Trump presidency. The double whammy of Michael Cohen, his former fixer, pleading guilty on eight counts, including illegal hush money payments, or, to put it more precisely, campaign contributions, to two women at Trump’s personal direction for ‘the purpose of influencing the election,’ coupled with the conviction of his former campaign manager Paul Manafort on eight counts, constitute a mortal blow to his already tottering presidency. It is also likely to administer the coup de grace to Republican hopes for the November midterm elections and to complicate the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh. The calculations of Senate majority leader

Will Heaven

Jail breaks

You need a strong stomach to be Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Prisons, as a letter from Peter Clarke — the current holder of the title — proved this week. HMP Birmingham was in an ‘appalling’ state during his unannounced visit at the start of August. ‘We saw evidence of bodily fluids left unattended, including blood and vomit… next to numerous rat droppings.’ His findings marked a dramatic new low for the prison estate. But they won’t surprise anyone who has recently worked in or visited a bog-standard English jail. When I was appointed speechwriter to Michael Gove at the Ministry of Justice two years ago, I was given a

Roger Alton Roger Alton

The baby who could transform English cricket

Alice Cook’s impending third child could turn out to be the perfect delivery for England. Already the expectant father Alastair has asked for a few days off work, thus possibly sparing the England selectors a synapse-crunching headache. At some point before the end of days the problem of what to do with ‘Chef’ has to hit the top of the in-tray. Cook is England’s highest Test run-scorer by a country mile and blessed with the stamina, courage and application of a Cheltenham Gold Cup winner. But his batting form is beginning to tail off and his catching, once as solid as Fort Knox, is now erratic. Above all, this greatest

Christopher Fletcher

Kites

I’ve flown only three kites in my life. My stepfather bought me the first. I remember seeing him from a window approaching our little mews house off Bond Street, clutching it furled in its packet as though his life depended upon it. The previous day he had overcharged an electric plane sent for my birthday by my other father, the one left in America following a youthful marriage that didn’t pan out. The walk to the launch took us past the barley-twist facades of Mount Street and Allens the butchers (alas, no more) whose soft light, sawdust and warm meaty air I always recall pooling the pavement on autumn trudges