Charles Moore is The Spectator’s chairman.
He is a former editor of the magazine, as well as the Sunday Telegraph and the Daily Telegraph. He became a non-affiliated peer in July 2020.
A friend, a senior retired mandarin, emails. He complains that rural lockdown means that he and his wife have ‘got out of the habit of making even the simplest decisions’. I know exactly what he means, and I suspect the problem is more widespread than the shires. The capacity to decide is like a muscle:
Mathias Döpfner is that still rare thing — an outspoken German. I have known him slightly for many years and admire his brain and boldness: a long time ago he even came close to buying the Telegraph Group. The 6ft 7in CEO of Axel Springer has just issued a challenge to Europe and particularly to
Our neighbour, the much-respected local undertaker, conducted twice as many funerals in April as in the same month last year. One might be tempted to say ‘It’s an ill wind…’, but in fact it has been grim, both from a professional and a human point of view. ‘We have had,’ he says — with a
Mathias Döpfner is that still rare thing — an outspoken German. I have known him slightly for many years and admire his brain and boldness: a long time ago he even came close to buying the Telegraph Group. The 6ft 7in CEO of Axel Springer has just issued a challenge to Europe and particularly to
The coronavirus came to Britain a little later than to many comparable European countries. We are emerging from the worst of it correspondingly later. I am told that ministers and officials do not yet have a systematic way of studying the successes and failures of those chronologically ahead of us. Surely there should be one.
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Charles Moore recently published Herself Alone, the final volume of an authorised biography of Margaret Thatcher. When writing, he realised that the story is half-tragedy, half-Whodunnit. Many of those involved in her fall had a motive. This podcast is a narrative of the events leading up to Mrs Thatcher’s fall, voiced by Charles Moore and
During the second world war, the collection of the National Gallery had to be hidden in a mountain in Wales to prevent bomb damage. Its director, Kenneth Clark, eventually realised, however, that this was bad for morale, and so made a single but striking exception. Starting with Rembrandt’s ‘Portrait of Margaretha Trip’, which the gallery
Although I once edited this paper, and have written for it for almost 40 years, I did not know that it is the oldest magazine in the world. I learn this from 10,000 Not Out, David Butterfield’s short but scholarly new history of the paper from its foundation in 1828 to today. I wonder why
A neighbour of ours, self-isolating and with poor lung function, has twice been telephoned recently by the medical authorities. After pleasant preliminaries about her health, both callers muttered something about ‘If the worst happened and you did become ill’. So she cut through: ‘Are we getting round to DNR [Do Not Resuscitate]?’ They admitted as much.
We know, because of the lack of widespread testing, that incidences of Covid-19 are under-reported. What is less well known is that they may be over-reported as a cause of death. In hospices and in care homes, I gather, where tests are not available, doctors are encouraged, if in doubt, to write ‘suspected Covid‑19’ on
I now have several friends who have caught the virus. Some barely noticed; some nearly died. In the latter category is Nicholas Coleridge, doyen of the world of glossy magazines. He was taken to hospital in Worcester delirious (‘I got loonier and loonier’) and stayed for 12 days. A doctor gravely warned his wife Georgia,
It is good of President Trump to offer Boris Johnson his best wishes and the best American pharmaceuticals (though no doubt Jeremy Corbyn would see this as a prelude to American takeover of the National Health Service). During the second world war, on Boxing Day 1941, Churchill had a minor heart attack after trying too
On the ‘count your blessings’ principle, it is worth making a list of benefits of the coronavirus era. These include: no aeroplane noise, no smell of hamburgers, much shorter weekend newspapers, more work for good butchers, and a temporary end to the persecutions of TV Licensing. I am wondering whether to refuse to pay my
‘I am a columnist for the Daily Telegraph,’ I began a text message to an NHS executive last week. Due to predictive text, the word ‘columnist’ was replaced by ‘communist’. Luckily, I spotted it just in time to delete. But perhaps the error was accurate. Some say we have all come to see the virtue
One recognises the need for firm rules about social distancing and other measures to control the coronavirus spread; but one should also recognise the need to keep things going. We rightly hail the NHS workers. We should also applaud the tremendously efficient businesses which continue to supply grocers’ shops and pharmacies. Given the difficulties and
‘Lourdes shrine closes healing pools as precaution against coronavirus,’ says a discouraging headline in the Catholic Herald. Jesus ‘made the lame to run’ and ‘gave the blind their sight’, but Christians are not like Jesus, however much they may try to imitate him. We lack miraculous powers; and so, in matters of life and death
Boris Johnson gave a sort of permission for Mr Sunak’s policy when he said that he and the Chancellor were acting ‘like any wartime government’. Economically, that is surely right. Socially, however, the Blitz spirit won’t work this time. In 1940, men were happy to gather in their clubs and pubs, as the bombs fell,
When we left this Britain on Thursday last week, life was almost as usual. Shops and restaurants were open. The Battle Observer was reporting that environmentalists, angry that East Sussex County Council’s pension funds are invested in fossil fuels, were organising a one-day protest demanding a ‘sex strike’. No one, they insisted, must have sexual
There cannot be many positive aspects to the coronavirus outbreak, but I wonder if it carries one for stock markets. We had been told repeatedly, before all this, that the markets badly needed a ‘correction’ after their uniquely long bull run. If they were now sliding because of a banking or commercial event, confidence might
Monday night’s Commons rebellion over Huawei was on a surprisingly serious scale for a new government with a big mandate. The problem for the government is not just the actual danger of our security being breached by Huawei, real though that is. It is also strategic. The government is not treating the subject this way,
