Uncategorized

Wednesday

John Sturgis

Ten novels about flooding

Shropshire was named this week as an unlikely entrant in the top ten global dream travel destinations for 2024 – alongside more predictable contenders like Mauritius. This news received extensive media coverage, most of which featured serene, summery images of Ironbridge, the Georgian engineering marvel that is the county’s most recognisable attraction. There was something wonderfully British about the fact that, at the very moment this story appeared, Ironbridge itself was at the centre of flood defence efforts to stop the swollen River Severn bursting its banks. The ruin that floods can bring has plagued mankind since the earliest settlements Thankfully, those Ironbridge defences held firm but after days of torrential

Tuesday

Graham Boynton

How BA lost the plot

I am writing this from Nashville, Tennessee, where British Airways was supposed to have flown me and a planeload of Boeing 787 customers on a direct service from Heathrow. However, the night before our intended departure I received a terse message from the airline saying that the flight had been cancelled. A later email informed me that I would be flying on their code-share partner American Airlines (AA) to Charlotte, North Carolina. Then after a layover I would eventually be deposited at my destination. There is mounting frustration at what they say is BA’s ‘unreliability and general low standards’ Not surprisingly the American Airlines flight was rammed with passengers, many

Zak Asgard

There’s something sad about Sandbanks

I’ve always had a soft spot for the English seaside. It’s idiosyncratic, a little kitschy, a little gross. There are those pre-war beach windbreakers. There are tuna and sweetcorn sandwiches in packed lunches. There’s a mangy dog nipping at your feet as you run into icy waters. It’s always windy, often pebbled, and full of litter. The spit of sand stretches out along the English Channel and unfurls into Poole Harbour We love it like we love mushy peas – that is to say we learn to love it. But Sandbanks is nothing like that. Sandbanks is considered a cut above, and it is. The chintzy aspects of seaside towns

Mark Mason

Flavour of the month: January – robots, Dr Who and The Beatles

Welcome to the month that faces backwards to last year and forwards to this – which is why it’s named after Janus, the Roman god of transitions, who himself has two faces. Read on to discover January’s trivia, including a joke from Stevie Wonder, a mistake by David Blunkett’s officials, and the reason Heather Mills thinks her daughter is musical … 1 January 1900 – Nigeria becomes a British protectorate. Today the country is home to approximately one-fifth of the world’s black population. (230 million out of 1.2 billion.) 2 January 1921 – premiere of the play R.U.R. by the Czech writer Karel Capek. The play gave us the word

Monday

Sam Leith Sam Leith

How am I supposed to remember what happened in The Tourist?

Hooray, I thought. There’s a new season of The Tourist. I remember liking that, I thought. It was that thing with the bloke in Australia, wasn’t it? And I was all set to settle down for a good binge, when I realised that I had almost literally no idea what had happened in the first season. This is a personal grumble, but I’d bet dollars to donuts I’m not the only one in this position.  One thing I knew is, it was confusing. There was a bloke in, yes, Australia, who had had a bump on the head and didn’t know who he was, except he was Jamie Dornan. I remember there was a bit with some

Sean Thomas

Have we just discovered aliens?

It’s one of the greatest puzzles of the universe, and one that has vexed humanity ever since we first gazed at the stars and thought of other worlds. Is our Earth the sole place that harbours life, or might it be found elsewhere, among the trillions of planets, star systems and galaxies? As Arthur C. Clarke put it: ‘Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.’ The fact that they are all British, and all using similar language, suggests they are referring to the same thing The revelation that we might be seriously close to an answer is, therefore, momentous

James Innes-Smith

The sad decline of Piccadilly Circus

It’s always sad to see a beloved landmark lose its identity – but when the landmark in question is one of the most recognisable places on earth, it’s doubly troubling. In recent years, Piccadilly Circus, once described as ‘the hub of the world’, has descended into a shamefully hollowed out sideshow. Stately Edwardian buildings, once home to department stores, elegant restaurants and upmarket entertainment venues, lie empty or have been colonised by dubious landlords and cancerous ‘candy stores’. All of life seemed to congregate here – it really did feel like the epicentre of the world The West End has always been London’s beating heart but these days the old

Alec Marsh

What critics get wrong about Zulu

It is a great mystery how Zulu, a tale of imperial derring-do from the Anglo-Zulu war of 1879, has avoided being cancelled. On the face of it, this is a film that revels in one of the most heinous, most blood-thirsty chapters of our colonial past, one tinged with technologically enabled white supremacy. Here is a war film about 140 white Europeans who take on a Zulu force of 4,000 and defeat them, thanks largely to the rapid and orchestrated fire of short-chamber Martini-Henry rifles. (‘And a bayonet,’ as Nigel Green, as colour sergeant Bourne, puts it, ‘with some guts behind it.’) In the age of Zulu, colonialism wasn’t just

Friday

Penworthy

Two bets for the Cheltenham Festival

At 8 a.m. this morning, my column was done, the ‘i’s were dotted, the ‘t’s crossed. I had even suggested a headline, ‘Three mudlarks for Sandown tomorrow’.  Within half an hour, I would be pressing the send button on my weekly email to my friends at Spectator Life. Sadly, just 20 minutes later, the whole column was redundant. My three fancies that loved heavy ground would not have the chance to lark around in the mud: tomorrow’s Sandown card, the highlight of which was due to be the final of the Unibet Veterans’ Handicap Chase, was abandoned due to waterlogging. Since no bookie I have ever come across can be

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

In praise of Israeli women

I’ve always admired Israeli women. Though I didn’t see any in the flesh before my first trip to the Promised Land 20 years ago, at Sunday School I far preferred the complex women of the Old Testament – Deborah the judge, Yael the assassin, Ruth the first philo-Semite – to the repenting hookers and grieving mothers of the New. The book of Exodus revolves around the actions of five women; the Talmud teaches that ‘the Jewish people were redeemed from Egypt because of the merit of the righteous women of that generation’. Israel is a beacon of freedom in a region steeped in misogyny,  viewed with murderous loathing by nations

James Jeffrey

The mystical power of Assisi

In the courtyard of the bishop’s palace, the young man who would become Saint Francis stripped naked in front of his parents and various town and church officials. He handed his clothes with a bag of money on top to his father, saying: ‘I give these back to you. From now on I have one father; the Father in Heaven’. Deep in the basilica is a striking painting depicting a six-winged Seraphim angel bestowing the stigmata with what looks like lasers It was a turning point in his life (not to mention devastating for his parents). He would become known as Il Poverello – ’the little poor man’ in Italian’

Thursday

Theo Hobson Theo Hobson

The joy of middle-aged football

I can tell when my life’s going OK. My stray thoughts are not about what a loser I am but about what a terrible footballer I am. Why didn’t I shoot when I had that chance? Why did I pass to the opposition? And, oh dear, I wonder how Diego’s knee is? For almost a decade I’ve been playing football on Saturday mornings in a local park in London. For the first few years I was a fair-weather visitor, shy about it. I’m not much of a joiner and I don’t have much chat about the transfer window, so I felt awkward and almost stopped going. A couple of others

Wednesday