Society

Thursday

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 10 May 2018

Q. My 50th birthday is looming and I am hosting a small dinner in a restaurant. This has proved challenging as I have at least 40 people I like but can only ask 25. However, of those I have already asked, ten are still hedging with ten days to go. If these A-listers would just admit they’re unable to come, I could ask people from my B-list. How can I pin down the flaky non-committers? — O.A., London SW6 A. Email the hedgers a photo of the menu saying the restaurant is asking you to firm up orders. Could they specify their preference in the way of fish, meat or

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

Curry heaven

Indian Accent is an Indian restaurant in Albermarle Street, deepest Mayfair, on the site of Rohit Khattar’s Chor Bizarre (‘thieves market’). It follows branches in New York and New Delhi, which featured at no. 9 in the 2016 Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants List, sponsored by S. Pellegrino and Acqua Panna. Apparently you have to mention that, or they shut the water off. The chef is Manish Mehrotra, praised in the New York Times, and a man of growing fame. Indian Accent offers ‘progressive’ Indian cuisine, which, translated, means you cannot summon the waiter and ask for a secret chicken balti. I call this the Howard Jacobson Experiment, because he does this

Dot Wordsworth

Paranoid

I sat up with a jerk, after contemplating the wallpaper in the television dramatisation of The Woman in White, when a character wondered aloud if he was paranoid. Paranoid? How could he be? The novel was finished by 1860 and paranoid was not invented till 1902 (in a translation of a book by the psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin) Kraepelin applied paranoid to delusions in what he called dementia praecox. From 1912 dementia praecox began to be supplanted by schizophrenia. None of this was dreamt of by Wilkie Collins. The TV adaptor, Fiona Seres, would never have introduced references to Tesla cars. On the other hand, she no doubt used invisibly anachronistic

Taki

High life | 10 May 2018

New York Talk about high life this is not. I smelled a rat long ago, but then the scent got weaker and weaker. Now it’s back — and stronger than ever. I’m talking here, of course, about the Saudis, the Qataris and the son-in-law who has also risen, Jared Kushner. Almost a year ago the Saudis issued an ultimatum to Qatar to meet its list of demands or face a blockade by Saudi-allied countries in the Gulf. All sorts of accusations were made and the Qataris were given 24 hours to comply. While the 300,000 Qatari citizens froze en masse, the couple of million non-Qatari migrant workers went about their

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 10 May 2018

Should I or shouldn’t I go and see The Death of Stalin, showing at the French village cinema last Sunday evening? To help me decide, I looked at what the compendious movie website Rotten Tomatoes had to say about it. The scores on the Tomatometer were disquieting. Ninety-six per cent of the 202 reviews by critics deemed it a hit, whereas only 78 per cent of 4,129 reviews posted by the general public agreed. Interesting. Normally, if a film is worth seeing, the film critics’ scores and the mob’s are roughly in alignment at 90 per cent or above. But when they differ by as much as this, one suspects

Melissa Kite

Real life | 10 May 2018

The first time I saw a woman leading a horse down the lane on a lead, both she and it dressed from head to foot in high viz, she in a crash helmet and safety vest, I thought nothing of it. But that was a good year ago now, and since then the increasing number of terrified, fully armoured women leading horses out for a walk like they were dogs rather than riding them means I can no longer pretend this practice is a one-off or not really happening. Much as I would like to turn a blind eye to the increasing madness in the horse world, I have to

Robin Oakley

The turf | 10 May 2018

I suppose, given the income and the opportunity to indulge, you could eventually tire of even Meursault, Mauritius and Mrs Oakley’s sublime chicken pudding. Guiltily, because racing means nothing if it is not a celebration of the best, I notice a fleeting thought going through my mind as I slalom through Swinley Bottom and approach Newmarket for the first of the season’s Flat racing Classics: ‘Please can somebody other than Aidan O’Brien win the 2,000 Guineas this year.’ Before this year’s race, the genius who prepares the horses for John Magnier’s Coolmore operation at Ballydoyle Stables in Co. Tipperary had won the race a record eight times, and sure enough

Janet de Botton

Bridge | 10 May 2018

This year’s Schapiro Spring Foursomes, England’s best tournament by a mile, wasn’t held in the usual Stratford-upon-Avon venue but in the rather grim Warwick Hilton. Adding energy and enthusiasm were four or five junior teams. Don’t imagine they are treated with kid gloves, though. A well-known figure on the circuit was playing against the Under 16s (most of them look 11) when one of them, hands too small to comfortably hold the cards (according to my source!), took his time with a bid and was called to task by our man for breaking tempo and thereby giving his (ten-year-old) partner unauthorised information! Only 103 IMPs up on the kids, he

Douglas Murray

Diary – 10 May 2018

I spend my life moving. Over recent years it was research. Now it’s caused by that research. But I have become adept at adding things on to each trip. In Naples at the weekend, I visited the Sansevero chapel which contains the ‘veiled Christ’ of Sanmartino — a work Canova said he would have given ten years of his life to have created. This is so moving to see in the flesh — even the nail wounds visible through the marble shroud — that you have to make an effort not to ignore the other masterworks around it. Afterwards I steal a night down the coast in Positano. The sun

Peter Jones

A matter of life and death | 10 May 2018

Alfie Evans was seven months old when he went to hospital with seizures. When more than a year later doctors said that nothing more could be done for him, his parents took the hospital to court. They lost a number of cases on the issue, and when the courts ruled he could not be moved abroad, public outrage ensued. The ancient view on such events was very different. In 1931 a well (dated to c. 150 bc) was excavated in Athens and found to be a mass grave into which some 450 babies had been discarded. Recent analysis shows that one third had died from bacterial meningitis, an infection of

Pabulum

2358: Poem IV

Unclued lights are words from a poem, its author and a relevant location. Elsewhere, ignore two accents.   Across 7    Music like reggae from Saskatchewan (3) 11    Carriage policeman pulled over beside hedge (6) 13    Judge meets drug addict who’s declining (7) 15    Ionian cardinal crossing Iowa (5) 16    Strong pickle’s sound (5) 17    Seminary keeps beer for Arab? (6) 18    Woman is sickly Australian (5) 21    Colour of rock bordering river (5) 22    Thoroughly noble bard’s cap (7) 27    Cover of books French author penned (7) 29    Silent historian ignores us (5) 30    Funky river has aquatic beasts (6) 32    One round child with love for Mexican snack (5)

Joe Baron

The shameful failure to learn the lessons from Ann Maguire’s murder

Ann Maguire was a dedicated teacher, utterly devoted to the children in her care. She had worked in the teaching profession for over four decades, had a loving husband, two grown-up daughters and, after the death of her sister 30 years earlier, selflessly raised her two nephews as her own. She was a good person who clearly cared about others. But tragically, back in 2014, she was brutally murdered by a disturbed and deranged pupil. She was attacked and stabbed seven times in her classroom, as she marked another pupil’s work. Since then, disgracefully, her bereaved husband’s attempts to find out about the circumstances surrounding her death have been met

Tom Ball

Putin shows off his ‘dagger’ on Victory Day

It’s difficult to think of a good comparison from the thousands of public holidays, festivals, galas and pageants around the world by which to describe Victory Day celebrations in Russia. Remembrance Day is too sombre, Bastille Day too jolly.  The day on which Russians remembers the nasally voice of Joseph Stalin coming over the wireless to announce the end of the war is a curious mix of solemnity and jubilation. In St. Petersburg one year, I remember thinking how swiftly the funereal marches of the morning turned to night-time revelry, with sailors who had earlier been firing off three-volley salutes now tanked up and cavorting across the town in high spirits. Then there’s the bravado that goes with it too. International Women’s Day is widely and actively observed in Russia, and though there is an official male equivalent in November, Victory Day is

The Spectator

to 2355: A Poet Skylarking

13 1A 23 22 is from SHELLEY’S ‘Ode to a Skylark’. Other unclued lights had ‘a poet hidden in the light’: OVID in 6A; LARKIN in 16; ELIOT in 17; TATE in 42; AUDEN in 43. Two poets’ names in the puzzle’s real title, ‘A Poet Skylarking’, needed highlighting.   First prize Wilf Lewsey, East Leake, Loughborough Runners-up Lewis Corner, South Fremantle, Australia; Roger Sherman, Richmond, Middlesex

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

If you want £10k at 25, you should have to compete for it

Would it really be fairer, in an inter-generational sense, to whack an ‘NHS levy’ on pensioners while giving every 25-year-old £10,000 to help them buy a first home or start a business? These are recommendations by the Resolution Foundation, chaired by former Tory minister Lord Willetts, to address what it sees as a breakdown in the ‘contract’ between young and old. That contract allegedly says that each generation should expect to be better off than its parents — but in the current economic climate, many of our delicate ‘millennials’ believe they’re going to end up worse off, unable to afford their own homes and saddled with the ever-rising cost of

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Tim Farron just can’t escape gay sex

What does Tim Farron think about gay sex? Like Ken Livingstone’s repeated reluctance to discuss Hitler, the former Lib Dem leader has never really offered his views on the subject. This time a year ago, for instance, he was so busy talking about all the things his party was putting into its general election manifesto that there was just never time for the matter to creep into interviews. He’s never avoided questions on gay sex, or changed his views on gay sex, or offered formulations which sound as though he loves gay people (just not in The Way) but actually mean he doesn’t think they should be having gay sex.

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

We’re deluding ourselves about gang violence

Hey, Londoners — been stabbed or shot yet this week? Just thought I’d check as the place seems to resemble, in its violence, downtown Mogadishu right now — and indeed is graced with many of the same kinds of people. That’s probably why you haven’t been stabbed or shot yet: the murdering has been committed exclusively, so far as I can tell, within the minority ethnic communities by young men who are either immigrants or the children of immigrants. So you’re safe for a while, until they’ve all been used up and the stabby shooty young men get around to you. Given this demographic, you might be surprised that the

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

Keep your DNA to yourself

Nearly ten years ago, a lorry driver known only as ‘Michael Harry K’ adopted an extreme response to combating what he saw as declining standards on the autobahns: he started shooting at other vehicles. In a four-year spree he fired around 700 rounds at cars and trucks before his arrest in June 2013. What helped him evade justice for so long was the same thing that prevents us learning his full name: German privacy laws. Trucks pay tolls on autobahns, and so CCTV records the number plates of vehicles passing through toll booths. After the first 30 shootings, it could have been a routine procedure to identify the one vehicle

Jonathan Ray Jonathan Ray

Wine Club 12 May

Spring is definitely here, in all its capricious glory, and, in cahoots with FromVineyardsDirect, we’ve selected six wines — all from France — with which to enjoy its many moods. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve recommended the 2014 Cave de Lugny Crémant de Bourgogne (1), both here and elsewhere. It’s one of the best sparkling wines for the price that you will find anywhere. I featured it recently at a tasting of sparkling wine and Grandes Marques champagnes and it was voted the star of the show. Produced using the champagne method by the Cave de Lugny co-operative in Burgundy, it’s a classic blend of handpicked Chardonnay and