Society

Thursday

Sarah Sands

Diary – 28 June 2018

In this gloriously sunny week, the cavalry horses are off on their summer break to Bodney, Norfolk. They can be seen prancing across Holkham beach, scattering oyster catchers, pushchairs, Cath Kidston picnics and naturists. Everybody loves to see the horses, some plunging into the sea, others shying gingerly from the spray. I am especially keen, having watched some of them Trooping the Colour a couple of weeks ago. Charles Moore has already noted approvingly that, when Field Marshal Guthrie took a tumble, his horse stood immaculately still. It is a slightly equine-centric view of the episode, but not heartless, since Guthrie is on the mend. Major-General Ben Bathurst, commander of

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 28 June 2018

Gordon Brown, echoing Aneurin Bevan, says that the greatest gift that the NHS brings to people is ‘serenity’. He is surely right that this is what it brought 70 years ago — for the simple, important reason that people would no longer need to say of treatment, ‘I just can’t afford it’. But comparable ‘serenity’ is provided, in different ways, in, for example, Germany, the Netherlands and Australia. Defenders of today’s NHS have to explain not why it is more serene than pre-1948, but whether it matches the current arrangements of comparable countries. ‘Serenity’ is not the word one would apply to many British hospitals today. In these Notes last

Toby Young Toby Young

The problem with deciding things are ‘problematic’

A controversy has erupted in Folkestone over a forthcoming screening of Zulu, the classic British war film. A charity has arranged to show the film at the Silver Screen Cinema on Saturday to raise money for members of the armed forces and their families, but the event may have to be cancelled following a letter to the town’s mayor signed by 28 locals objecting to Zulu’s ‘racist overtones’. ‘The film glorifies the myth that was created in 1879 after the humiliation of the British military defeat at the battle of Isandlwana,’ they write. ‘The Battle of Rorke’s Drift was, in reality, little more than a footnote after a far more

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 28 June 2018

Q. A close friend is an elderly writer who has contributed, as a monthly columnist, to the same publication for many years. His powers are undimmed. However, he has not moved with the times and will not self-edit. I have had it from a mole that the much younger sub-editors on the magazine, one of whom wants to write the column herself, are claiming to resent the time they must spend ‘correcting’ his offensive copy. I’ve told him this but he is stubborn and says he refuses to be gagged. We all know the power of presenteeism — these people are in the office, he is not and I worry

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

A Tudor feast

Sargeant’s Mess (2018) is a tourist catcher’s net in restaurant form by the Tower of London (c. 1078). It has views of the wide, fat Thames — an old man now, like Falstaff — on its slow journey to Southend-on-Sea. The City of London grows like a glass parasite, but it can’t do anything about the Conqueror’s keep. It is partly made of Norman stone — a joke for historians only? — and it won’t be gentrified, amended, or moved. The Tower squats inside those insanely over-repointed medieval walls like a dowager abutting a conservatory. It will never, and I say this happily, be a block of flats, or an Apple

Dot Wordsworth

Azulejos

A friend sent a nice postcard from Portugal showing the outside of a church covered with old blue tiles. She said it reminded her of delft ware. That word has its own historical peculiarity. We used to call it delf, as you can find in Dickens and his contemporaries. That is because the town of Delf was spelt in the same way, taking its name from its chief canal. The Dutch shared with the English (though we have largely forgotten it) a word delf meaning ‘ditch’ — something delved or dug. But then the town added a t to its name to make it Delft, and the English followed suit

Taki

High life | 28 June 2018

Schloss Wolfsegg   I was watching two very old men slowly approaching the open doors of the Pilatus airplane I was leaning against when it dawned on me that they were the two pilots who were about to fly me to my daughter’s wedding. The one called Willy extended his hand, as did Alex, a short guy who looked as though he was in his nineties. ‘Ah, Herr Tennisman,’ he said, referring to a match I had won more than 50 years earlier when I was on the tennis circuit, ‘wie geht es?’ Willy then told me that Alex had retired from flying airbuses 30 years before, and now flew

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 28 June 2018

I heard the last and final call for flight 6114 to Nice while shuffling forward in the unexpectedly long queue for security. My chances of catching it now looked slim. They looked slimmer still when my bag was nudged into the line of those needing to be searched, and I despaired at my rotten luck. Eventually, my bag was placed on the metal search table and I presented myself as the owner. Across the table, I faced two women, both aged about 60. One was in command, the other subordinate. The commanding one had a smoker’s face with a touch of the eldritch about it that wouldn’t have looked out

Melissa Kite

Real life | 28 June 2018

Finally, I got my hands on a gun. About the size of a sawn-off shotgun it was, just under 20in long, a fine specimen of a weapon. It was surprisingly light and easy to wield. I held it and thought of all that I might now accomplish. Everything I had dreamed of could now become reality. I would right all the wrongs. I would put things in order. Oh, I would do so many things. I stood in front of the bedroom mirror and admired my reflection holding the gun unloaded, pulling the trigger to see how it felt. It felt good. I went down to the cellar and rummaged

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 28 June 2018

Home The Commons voted in favour of a new runway at Heathrow by 415 votes to 119. Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, who had previously promised to lie in front of the bulldozers, absented himself from the vote, instead meeting the Deputy Foreign Minister of Afghanistan in Kabul. ‘My resignation would have achieved absolutely nothing,’ he said. Greg Hands resigned as trade minister because he opposed the runway. The Scottish government said it still supported the runway even though SNP MPs at Westminster abstained. Spanish-owned Ferrovial, which operates Heathrow, is to move its international headquarters from Britain to Amsterdam because of Brexit. Friends of Gavin Williamson, the Defence Secretary, denied

Susanna Gross

Bridge | 28 June 2018

When my talented friend Paula Leslie and I decided to put a team together for the Hubert Philips Bowl (England’s mixed teams championship), it was really just an excuse to see more of each other. Six undefeated matches later, and our team has won the cup! We’re all elated: we beat Sandra Penfold’s team by a small margin, but to beat them at all is a feather in anyone’s cap. Team Penfold, featuring the mighty Brian and Nevena Senior, are a force to be reckoned with. Indeed, just the previous day, they had won a Crockfords match in style.   Funnily enough, it’s a hand from that match, rather than

The Spectator

An unhappy birthday

When Nye Bevan launched the NHS on 5 July 1948, most of the British population could not expect to celebrate a 70th birthday. Life expectancy at birth for men was 66 and for women 71. That this has since grown to 79.1 years and 82.8 years respectively is in part — though far from entirely — thanks to the NHS. Many insist that Bevan’s description of the service as the ‘envy of the world’ remains true. For Lord Lawson, a former editor of this magazine, the NHS is ‘the closest thing the English people have to a religion’ — an assertion confirmed during the opening ceremony of the London Olympics,

Doc

2365: Beds

One of the clued lights below reveals the theme which Brewer confirms. One of the unclued lights is not paired as the others are. Two successively numbered unclued lights form one of the theme words.   Across 1    Become angry when deportees sadly lose pot (6, two words) 7    Veto in favour of offer (6) 13    Leading industrialist appears in nude, wandering in Italian city (5) 15    Posts set in position beside ploughs (9) 16    German novelist is skilled in situ, regularly (6) 20    Judge arrives, eating snack (7) 21    A-type Lotus just first at the top (6) 22    9, most of 10 and top of 11 in disorder (6)

Simon Marcus

Is transgender ideology making the UK’s mental health crisis worse?

There is a mental health crisis in the UK. The symptoms are often body related, and the causes are complex, but a new orthodoxy now labels some of these people as transgender. This means that instead of getting psychological care, increasing numbers are encouraged to take potentially dangerous hormones on their way to transitioning gender. The World Health Organisation’s recent ruling that it will no longer classify being transgender as a mental illness is hailed by some as a progressive step forward. But could this shift in thinking actually compound matters and mean that transgender patients’ other medical issues are ignored? There has undoubtedly been a cultural change on the

Tim Marshall

The return of walls

What kind of a president would build a wall to keep out families dreaming of a better life? It’s a question that has been asked world over, especially after the outrage last week over migrant children at the American border. Donald Trump’s argument, one which his supporters agree with, is that the need to split parents from children at the border strengthens his case for a hardline immigration policy. Failure to patrol the border, he says, encourages tens of thousands to cross it illegally — with heartbreaking results. His opponents think he is guilty, and that his wall is a symbol of America closing in on itself. In fact, building

The Spectator

to 2362: MEN OF NOTE IV

The unclued lights are COMPOSERS whose surnames begin with the letter D.   First prize E.C. Hynard, Guernsey Runners-up Geran Jones, London SW1 R.C. Teuton, Frampton Cotterell

Charles Moore Charles Moore

Don’t interfere with Britain’s charitable causes

A new body called the Charity Tax Commission has been asked to look into the £3.7 billion tax reliefs given to charities. The Financial Ombudsman, Sir Nicholas Montagu, chairs the commission. He asks, ‘Are the right charities benefiting and should we start asking some awkward questions about whether there might be more to show for the money if we distinguished between charities?’ He invites the views of interested parties. Jonathan Ruffer, the rescuer of Auckland Castle, about whom I have written in these pages, has sent Sir Nicholas an interesting reply, based on his experience of giving away £200 million (95 per cent of his post-tax income) to charitable causes. He

Theo Hobson Theo Hobson

Justin Welby needs to get off the fence

My opinion of Justin Welby has been rising over the last few years. At first he seemed a text-book public school Evangelical, a sad contrast to the Welsh wizard Williams. But he proved himself good at the job, which is largely about seeming a good egg while evading awkward doctrinal questions. Having read his book Reimagining Britain, my opinion of him has not exactly fallen, but it has ceased to rise. The book doubtless has its virtues. Its discussions of practical matters such as housing and finance are acute and helpful. But Welby’s treatment of the question of Christianity’s relationship to secular culture is a predictable mix of evasion and muddle. He sounds

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

The Spectator Podcast: Angela’s ashes

As anti-migrant sentiment sweeps across Europe, is the continent turning against Angela Merkel for her open-door policy, and is this the end of Merkel? Meanwhile, Donald Trump announced his new mission – to establish a sixth branch of the US military, the Space Force. Is this such a bad idea? And last, while it may be greedy and corrupt, should Fifa be celebrated for making the World Cup truly global? Angela Merkel is struggling. On the continent, anti-migrant sentiment is being whipped up by leaders like Austria’s Sebastian Kurz and Italy’s Matteo Salvini. At home, her re-election results were less than ideal and her coalition partner has pushed for a