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Recently in Spectator Life Rob Crossan laid bare ‘the unpalatable truth about British food’ – namely that it is, er, in some establishments he’s been to, done badly. Leaving aside the fact he’s looking for his fish and chips in the wrong place (outside the M25 it wouldn’t be such a struggle), encountering a few dodgy versions of British fare is not a good reason to sit idly by and allow our culinary heritage to disappear. British food can compete with the world’s best – if we allow it to. In many ways we have had to develop a thick skin when it comes to the loss of treasured bastions

When Herbert von Karajan was at his celestial height in the 1960s, juggling conducting duties at the Berlin Philharmonic, the Vienna State Opera and the Salzburg Festival, his musicians liked to tell a joke. ‘Karajan gets in a taxi, and the driver asks, “Where to?” Karajan says, “It doesn’t matter, they want me everywhere.”’ Not bad for a German joke. You want to dump on Trump? Send for Schama! A fresh look at Rembrandt? There’s a professor at Columbia who knows everything! Who is the Karajan of our day, hopping from gig to gig with the assurance of the born maestro? It must be Simon Schama, historian supreme, and transatlantic

Just when it seemed as though January in Britain couldn’t get any bleaker, along came ‘Veganuary’. Cue loads of puny, blue-haired wokerati spending this month preaching about how we should give up on two of man’s greatest pleasures – meat and cheese. If you’ve been finding it irritating, you’re not alone. In surveys of public opinion, vegans are hated more than any other group, with the exception of drug addicts. So when a chef tells the newspapers that he’s banned vegans from his restaurant, or a magazine editor jokes that they should be killed, do you feel justified in allowing a smirk of amusement to cross your face? After all, in an era when we are

Tomorrow’s Cheltenham Trials Day, as its name suggests, usually throws up plenty of clues to which horses will be winning at the festival on the same course in less than two months’ time. There is no doubt which horse running tomorrow is most likely to triumph at the festival itself and that is Constitution Hill. However, Nicky Henderson’s unbeaten eight-year-old gelding is at odds of around 1-10 tomorrow for the Unibet Hurdle (3 p.m.) and none of his four opponents will trouble him if he runs to his best. So that race is out of bounds as a betting proposition. The Grade 2 Betfair Cleeve Hurdle (3.35 p.m.) over three miles