Society

Friday

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

The cultural appropriation of the first world war

Last week I was in the Somme, visiting the first world war battlefields before the great and the good descend on the region this week to mark the centenary of the Armistice. In one cemetery I found propped against the headstone of Captain Frank Morkill a plastic folder, left two months earlier by a relative. Inside was a facsimile of his last letter home, written three days before he was killed in action on September 15 1916. ‘I can truly say without any mock heroism that I am only too thankful to have seen the dawn of Germany’s downfall,’ wrote Morkill, a Canadian, who had been wounded twice in previous

Thursday

Raymond Keene

Nos morituri

Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana, those two gladiators of the mind, will duel in London during the remainder of this month for the title of world chess champion.   Twelve games will be played, and if no clear victor emerges there will be a rapidplay tie break on November 28. It is my prediction that in spite of the fact that their ratings are very close (Carlsen 2835, Caruana 2832), the more artistic Caruana will succumb to the extreme pragmatist Carlsen, by the score of 6½ to 4½.   Should Caruana somehow escape to a level score after the stipulated dozen games, then I hold out little hope for him

Raymond Keene

no. 531

White to play. This is from Carlsen-Caruana, Bilbao 2012. Black has blundered right out of the opening. How did Carlsen gain a decisive advantage? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 13 November 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 … Qxc4 Last week’s winner Bernard Golding, Newcastle upon Tyne

The Spectator

Barometer | 8 November 2018

It is cricket The use of a baseball expression, backstop, for possible arrangements over the Irish border could upset some Brexiteers. Yet the concept of a ‘backstop’ can be traced to a much more British game, cricket. The use of ‘backstop’ for what we would now call a wicket keeper was first recorded in the Oxford Dictionary in 1819. Seventy years later it cropped up in baseball, as a name for a fence rather than a person. When, in 1890, baseball players started calling the catcher a backstop too, the fence became, in effect, a backstop to the backstop. Big swims Ross Edgley became the first person to swim round

Dot Wordsworth

Seven and six

Someone on the wireless was talking about marrying in the Liberty of Newgate before the Marriage Act of 1753, and she said it would cost ‘Seven shillings, sixpence’. It made me realise that knowing of pounds, shillings and pence is not to recapture the language of the world in which the units were used. I would have said (not in 1753, granted): ‘Seven shillings and sixpence’, or simply ‘Seven and six’. If there were pounds before the shillings, I’d have said: ‘Nineteen pounds, seven and six’. I’ve just looked up Mr Micawber’s famous dictum in David Copperfield, and this is how he put it: ‘Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure

The Spectator

Lessons from America

Donald Trump can, at the very least, claim to have killed off political apathy. Americans this week voted in greater numbers than in any such elections of the past half-century — but it does not follow that this is an encouraging development. The midterm results were a blow for Trump, but not much of a blow. American politics is developing along the lines with which we are familiar: a cultural war, where voters are enthused not so much by what candidates have to say but because of tribal hatred of the opposition. President Trump has proved an even more incendiary figure than candidate Trump: he has not stopped campaigning or

Taki

High Life | 8 November 2018

New York   An old-fashioned party is a gathering of friends invited by the host or hostess, who foots the bill. Old-fashioned parties are very rare in New York nowadays. Actually, they are non-existent, having been replaced by the charity shindig: the guests pay, the host or hostess profits, the gossip columns get to write about it, and the charity sometimes even gets to see some of the moolah the climbers paid to get in. Last week I went to an old-fashioned party given by Prince Pavlos of Greece and his princess, M-C. The occasion was the princess’s sister Pia Getty’s birthday. I ran into a lot of old friends

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 8 November 2018

Three years ago we were given a bag of skunk, Catriona and I, provenance Glasgow. It was one gigantic dried bud wrapped in polythene. Cannabis in any shape or form usually renders me paranoid, especially if I smoke it in company and there is conversation. I’ve come to hate it. The delusion is always the same: I become unconvinced by my persona, which seems to have been chosen at random from a number of equally eligible candidates, and now feels like a flimsy, hackneyed mask. If the paranoia intensifies, I fall under the further illusion that everyone in the room’s personas except mine are as ingrained as oak rings, and

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 8 November 2018

Home Theresa May, the Prime Minister, set off for St Symphorien Military Cemetery in Mons, from which she was to join President Emmanuel Macron to lay wreaths at Thiepval for the centenary of the Armistice. Jeff Fairburn resigned as chief executive of Persimmon, the housing company, after his £75 million bonus attracted public comment. Marks & Spencer reported falling clothing and food sales. The New Look fashion chain increased the number of shops it planned to close from 60 to 85. British Airways passengers on a flight from Orlando, Florida, scheduled to reach London eight hours later, spent 77 hours on the journey, including an opportunity to sleep on the

Melissa Kite

Real life | 8 November 2018

If you are wondering, any more than usual, how your tax is being spent, you should know that I have been summoned to a Calf Stretching Education Group. According to the letter from the NHS, it has come to the attention of my local hospital that I have tight calf muscles. ‘We would like to invite you to the Calf Stretching Education Group in order to give you the opportunity to manage your condition better.’ My condition is still a little unclear to me, but it has something to do with a lump on the side of my toe. I went to see a specialist about a bunion and she

Robin Oakley

The turf | 8 November 2018

Fairy tales can happen. On Sunday the filly God Given won Italy’s only Group One race of the season, the Premio Lydia Tesio, providing Newmarket trainer Luca Cumani with his 50th Group One winner. Just days before he had moved many of his staff to tears by announcing that on 1 December he will retire and sell the Bedford House Stables where he has operated for 43 years, sending out two Derby winners in Kahyasi (1988) and High Rise (1998) and winning a host of big races around the world. Only Sir Mark Prescott and Sir Michael Stoute have run Newmarket yards for longer and there has been no doubting

Janet de Botton

Bridge | 8 November 2018

This autumn has been the busiest (bridge-wise) I can remember. It started with the Crockfords final at the beginning of September (we came second), then there was the World Championships in Orlando (we came nowhere) and the Pairs and Teams Grand Prix of Poland in Vilnius (we came second in both). We have just played the third and final weekend of the English Premier League, which we had been leading all the way, and we came… second, beaten by the strong Allfrey team by one VP. What a heartbreaker! Of course there was much discussion about the hands between rounds. Who was in which contract? Who had made? Who had

Toby Young Toby Young

The scrutiny of Scruton

‘Once identified as right-wing you are beyond the pale of argument,’ wrote Sir Roger Scruton. ‘Your views are irrelevant, your character discredited, your presence in the world a mistake. You are not an opponent to be argued with, but a disease to be shunned. This has been my experience.’ Unfortunately, that experience is due to intensify for the 74-year-old conservative philosopher. Last weekend, the government announced it had set up a commission to try and make new housing developments ‘beautiful’ and appointed Sir Roger as its chair. It’s one of the few sensible things the present government has done; so, of course, it’s caused a scandal. Within minutes of Sir

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 8 November 2018

The sixth of November 1918 was remembrance day for my great-grandfather, Norman Moore. It was the fourth anniversary of the death of his younger son, Gillachrist (known as Gilla), a second lieutenant in the Royal Sussex Regiment, who had been killed at the first battle of Ypres. Sitting quietly in his London house in Gloucester Place, Moore heard shouting in the street: rumours of peace were spreading. ‘If it be so,’ he wrote in his diary, ‘how appropriate on Gillachrist’s day for he gave his life to resist German power.’ It became so five days later. On 9 November, NM (as he was always called) attended the Lord Mayor’s Banquet

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 8 November 2018

Q. At every drinks party one will be in mid-conversation with another guest and someone will walk over and loiter briefly. If I know the new arrival I will introduce them, and if not I will introduce both of us, and describe what we are discussing so the new person can join in. But I am bored by people who arrive and merely say to me or the other guest something like, ‘Oh I saw Milo in Scotland last week’, ending the original discussion and cutting out one of the original guests. — G.F., Gasper, Wiltshire A. Most people make this mistake out of nerves and are perfectly happy with

Fieldfare

2384: Bang!

Unclued lights, singly or correctly paired, are of a kind, as given in Chambers. Ignore one apostrophe.   Across 5    Maiden admitting born overseas originally, not in Danish city (6) 11    Author’s note on leader of band (6) 13    Sort of thinking muscle real troublesome (7) 15    Old royal servant, one that looks to captivate women (5) 16    Tragic heroine misses artist, not in office yet (5) 17    Tropical veg regularly feed herbivores (6) 18    A rector ruined can’t function (6) 21    One taken in by eccentric vagrant (5) 22    Shelf with enough strength after soak (7) 28    Wild about education, like the US government? (7) 31    No time for

Tim Laurence

Diary – 8 November 2018

How on earth should one do it? How should the centenary of the end of a war be marked? Not just any war — the Great War. A war which involved almost every country and resulted in millions of deaths. As we approach the 100th eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the answer is that we will mark its end in many different ways. This year 11 November falls on a Sunday, so the main remembrance events must all happen on one day. A gentleman’s agreement in Europe had been that each nation would mark it in their own way on their own soil. However President

The Spectator

to 2381: Step changes

The word ladder connecting UNITED and STATES goes: UNITES (1D), URITES (18), WRITES (7D), WHITES (34), WHILES (30A), WHALES (7A), SHALES (10), STALES (31).   First prize Belinda Bridgen, London NW8 Runners-up Tom Eadon, Melton Mowbray; Tom Richards, Wolfscastle, Pembrokeshire

Douglas Murray

The ignorant hounding of Roger Scruton

There are times when you wonder whether our culture is too stupid to survive. The thought has kept occurring over recent days as I have watched the cooked-up furore over the appointment of Sir Roger Scruton to chair a British government commission looking into beauty in architecture. What are Scruton’s qualifications for this unpaid job? Well, he has written two exceedingly influential books on architecture, The Aesthetics of Architecture (1980) and The Classical Vernacular (1995), as well as numerous papers and articles on the subject. He has spent more than half a century thinking about the question. And he is also Britain’s most famous living philosopher, respected in – and honoured by