Bruce Anderson is The Spectator's drink critic, and was the magazine's political editor
My friend Dominic decided that it was time to convoke a lunch. There were matters to discuss, including that perennial topic, the travails of the Tory party. We met at the end of last week, before the Labour conference. In the old pre-Blair days, Labour conferences were generally run as benefit matches for the Conservatives,
I have a friend who insists that he takes little interest in politics. Even so, the other evening he came out with three sentences which take us straight to the heart of our present discontents. ‘I’m sick to death of talking about Brexit. Yet I can’t stop talking about Brexit. Why don’t the politicians just
What do you get if you cross a dyslexic, an insomniac and an agnostic? Someone who wakes up at 4 a.m. and says: ‘Is there a dog?’ There was a lot of dog talk this weekend, and about the tributes they bring to their owners in the shooting field. A South African who had just
‘The Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.’ Is there a more charming passage in the Bible? It makes God sound like an English gentleman, vastly superior to Baal or Ashtoreth or any other rival. But at the end of his stroll, Jehovah would condemn Adam and his descendants to
We are living through the most dramatic period in British peacetime history since the agitations leading up to the Great Reform Bill – and, irrespective of Brexit, there is more to come. The UK is about to experience a revolution in government. This will take one of three forms. There could be a chassis revolution,
Foolish me. I could have been writing this by the shore of Lake Trasimene, with only one problem: how to transmit it to London. Last time I stayed in the delightful house there, the technology was still in the era of Hannibal’s victory. There was no wifi, only spasmodic mobile-phone reception, and the nearest English
My host twinkled sardonically. ‘We’re bound to be discussing Boris. So what’s the right wine?’ I suggested a bunker-busting Australian Shiraz, preceded by an alluring, minxy champagne: cuvée Madame Claude. ‘No, we need something intellectual, to bring perspective.’ ‘That sounds like Graves, perhaps a Pessac-Leognan.’ ‘Got it in one. Came across a couple of bottles
Imagine. About ten years ago, you are a publisher or a TV commissioning editor and someone comes to you with a bright idea. They want to write about a gallivanting scapegrace who has found his way into politics. A fellow who combines the seriousness of Bertie Wooster with the morals of Donald Trump; a strolling
England. On a glorious summer afternoon in the Sussex countryside, I had been invited to watch polo at Cowdray Park, the game’s equivalent of Lord’s. A beautiful lawn, overlooked by the ruins of a great Elizabethan house burnt down in the 1790s; a sky with gentle, Constable clouds; classically English trees — this is Glyndebourne
For more than forty years, I have assumed that most Tory party members were the salt of the earth. They may not have banged on about civic virtue or active citizenship, but they practised both. They may not have been interested in political philosophy, but they could tell a good ‘un from a wrong ‘un.
We were in a club, discussing Norman Stone, recently departed, over a meal that he would have enjoyed. Norman divided opinions. This manifested itself in his obituaries. Professor Sir Richard Evans summed up for the prosecution. He cited Norman’s failure to build on his early scholarly promise and his chronic neglect of academic duties. He
He just will not do. Sexual incontinence alone should not disqualify Boris from the premiership, though it is hardly an asset. But the latest incident dramatises the flaws in his character. Indeed, one could say that he is all flaw and no character. There are three major flaws. The first is serial dishonesty. He simply
Cricket is the most gracious of games. County grounds in the lee of cathedrals, village greens in the perfect setting of trees and a pub, and not far from the parish church: even if the match will not be over in time for evensong, there is more than a hint of Dearly Beloved, a phrase
We had all said everything there was to say about Brexit a hundred times over. So the conversation took different routes. We discussed D-Day, Philip Hammond, clichés and President Trump. D-Day: what an awesome concentration of men and materiel — what a magnificent expression of military, national and moral resolve. A youngster made the sort
A book, a bottle, a bower set in an ancient garden: you think that if you walked round the right corner, there would be England, putting manure on the roses. Kipling reminds us that gardening is hard work and that beauty depends on bent backs. True enough, but they also serve who only sit and
In the old days, if the Tory party was in trouble, old hands who had seen it all before would attempt to steady the buffs with a traditional rallying-cry: ‘pro bono publico – no bloody panico.’ Today, that message is needed as never before, but would the MPs take any notice? In the nineteenth century,
There is no new thing under the sun. Over the weekend, I read a book which was alarmingly relevant to our present discontents: The Neophiliacs, by Christopher Booker, written at the end of the 1960s. That decade began well. The country had recovered from the austerities of wartime. It seemed to be an era of
During the Middle Ages, some of the monastic halls which evolved into Oxbridge colleges allowed their younger inmates to indulge in jocundus honestus after the evening meal. There is nothing monastic about the clubs around St James’s, least of all at their dining tables. But there is still plenty of jocund. Honestus? That is another
There was a shrewd old Tory MP called John Stokes. He was not on the left of the party. Indeed, I once told him that he was the right pole. He chuckled at the compliment. Others — including some Conservatives — would not have regarded that as a favourable assessment, and often found his views
Three tribal Tories had gathered for a convivial glass, and also a consolatory one. One quoted Huskisson’s verdict after Goderich’s brief and worthless premiership. ‘Never surely was there a man at the head of affairs so weak, undecided and utterly helpless.’ Well, the female sex has now caught up. I said that at least she
