Spain

[UPDATE: The dog is now dead, WSJ reports.] For anyone concerned about Spain’s ability to contain Ebola, after a Spanish nurse’s aide tested positive for the virus, fear not: Madrid’s regional government plans to euthanize the infected woman’s pet dog in the interest of combatting contagion. The dog, a 12-year-old mutt named Excalibur, shows no sign of infection, and it’s unclear whether the disease even can be transmitted from dogs to humans. A 2005 report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes that ‘dogs might be asymptomatically infected by Ebola virus,’ and that during Gabon’s 2001-02 outbreak, ‘several dogs were highly exposed to Ebola virus by eating infected dead animals.’ ‘We cannot

It is a wicked thing to revel in someone else’s misery. Trouble is, occasionally it can’t be helped. So – bye, bye Spain! I think I would have traded England winning tonight (and therefore prolonging the agony) for Spain’s magnificently rapid exit from this world cup. Oh, Chile – you brave sons of Pinochet and Allende! Whichever you prefer – who cares? It is the more civilised parts of Latin America which have shone in this world cup – Chile themselves and Costa Rica. Brazil struggled and have been, uh, “fortunate”, Argentina looked distrait, Uruguay simply incompetent (though that opinion may need to be revised later); Mexico, the world’s great

You see – that’s the trouble. You write off the World Cup for moral reasons because of FIFA sleaze (and that opening game). And then Spain are magnificently humiliated, cheering me up more than I could have thought possible. Undoubtedly talented, Spain have nonetheless been boring us rigid for too long, with that self-regarding, tippy tappy, stifling of what the game should really be about. The Netherlands taught them that, with great glee. I haven’t been so pleased about a world cup result for ages – well, not since the French fell to bits against Mexico and South Africa. You sort of hope this is the end of an era,

Chefs have a problem. Think of much of the best food you have ever eaten. Caviar, English native oysters, sashimi, foie gras, truffles, jamon iberico, grouse, golden plover, properly hung Scotch beef; Stilton, the great soft cheeses: all have one point in common. They require minimal intervention from the kitchen. With the assistance of one female sous-chef, even I could roast a grouse. The chef would come into his own over pudding, and indeed with Welsh rarebit, but one can understand why this does not provide enough outlet for creativity. There are always the great French bourgeois dishes, which few of us eat often enough. Navarin of lamb, blanquette de

The ostensible subject matter is misleading, as is any conflation with his lesser relatives’ wassailing peasants and roistering village squares. But Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s work is profoundly serious. It has a formidable intellectual content, a Shakespearian emotional range: a sardonic and stoical view of the human condition. There are paintings — ‘The Triumph of Death’, ‘The Blind Leading the Blind’ — which descend from Hieronymus Bosch. There is also the marvellous ‘Fall of Icarus’. According to recent scholarship, the version we have is not a Bruegel, but a later copy. That is plausible; it looks later. Yet the composition is classic Bruegel. He would be drawn to any legend expressing

This is an unusual book: a Spanish historian writes the life of an English historian of Spain. In doing so, as the historian in question is the extraordinary Raymond Carr, still with us at 94, María Jesús González also writes about the rural West Country of his childhood, the English class system, educational opportunities in the 1930s, social mobility, Wellington College, the Gargoyle Club, Rosa Lewis at the Cavendish, four Oxford colleges, Giraldo and his orchestra, G.D.H. Cole, John Neale, Hugh Trevor-Roper, A.J. Ayer, John Sparrow, A.L. Rowse, Oswald, Diana and Nicholas Mosley, Isaiah Berlin, Margaret Thatcher and even the Queen. In academia and society — mostly high — here

The most dramatic part of Lothar-Günther Buchheim’s unmatched submarine novel, Das Boot, takes place beneath the Straits of Gibraltar, when Buchheim’s U-boat is ordered from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean. ‘How can we get through?’ Asks one of the luckless crew, certain that Gibraltar’s massive defences will be the death of them. At least 9 U-boats were destroyed making that perilous run during the Second World War. The story of Gibraltar is not merely a tale of garrisons and gunships. The Spectator’s unique archive provides some insight into the life of the colony over the last 200 years, especially at times when the Rock became embroiled in Spanish intrigue or when it was threatened by

Home A senior figure in the Conservative party with strong social connections to David Cameron, the Prime Minister, was reported by the Telegraph and Times to have said that Conservative constituency associations ‘are all mad swivel-eyed loons’. Lord Feldman, the party’s co-chairman, said it was not he. Mr Cameron sent an email to party activists saying: ‘I am proud of what you do. And I would never have around me those who sneered or thought otherwise.’ The rumpus erupted as Conservative voters defected to the UK Independence Party, and Conservative MPs became impatient with the leadership of Mr Cameron. It followed a rebellion by 116 Conservative backbenchers, who had voted