Man out of time Sir: That Mary Wakefield left Rowan Williams ‘with my questions for the most part unresolved’ will come as no surprise to his former students, myself included (‘The ABC of faith’, 19 April). As a ‘mature’ student at Cambridge, there was something very inspiring about Williams the academic, but also comfortingly peaceful
The unclued announcement from BBC1’s Pointless quiz is: ‘We gave one hundred people one hundred seconds to name as many cats as they could’. The other three unclued lights are CATS – as well as 25 Across! First prize Jenny Atkinson, Amersham, Bucks Runners-up Peter Turner, Bearsden, Glasgow; Colin Boyce, Heathfield, East Sussex
Home Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, no longer believes that a trans woman is a woman, his official spokesman said at a lobby briefing. He was asked about this six days after the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom ruled that a woman is defined by biological sex in equalities law. The justices unanimously
Papal reign The mostly elderly runners and riders to be the next pope are unlikely to challenge the record for the longest papal reign – still held by the very first pope, St Peter, who served for 34 years in the 1st century. The second-longest reign was the 31 years and 7 months served by
If one were to ask for a quintessential display of the British character it would be hard to better the Shrewsbury Flower Show. Officially the world’s ‘longest-running flower show’, according to the Guinness World Records, it is held over two days in August, attracting 60,000 visitors. This summer should be the show’s 150th birthday. Last
Pope Francis has died aged 88. At 7.35 a.m., the Vatican announced that Pope Francis had ‘returned to the house of the Father’ at his residence in the Vatican’s Casa Santa Marta. Cardinal Farrell, who announced the death, added that Francis ‘taught us to live the values of the Gospel with fidelity, courage and universal
On Monday evening, The Spectator’s editor Michael Gove and Spectator columnist and associate editor Douglas Murray sat down for a live event at the Methodist Central Hall in Westminster. In front of a packed auditorium with 1,500 guests, they discussed the October 7th massacre; Douglas’s latest book, On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel, Hamas and the Future of the West; and
Double date This year, Orthodox Easter is on the same date as the western Easter, 20 April. How common is that? The Orthodox Church has a different date for Easter because it still calculates the date according to the Julian calendar, which runs 13 days behind the Gregorian calendar. But the dates coincide when the
He’s not the messiah Sir: To Freddy Gray’s meticulous dissection of Trumpian chaos theory (‘Shock tactics’, 12 April) I would add one element: religion. Donald Trump seems to believe the blood he spilt in the failed assassination attempt anointed him his country’s Redeemer: ‘I was saved by God to make America great again.’ Messiahs look
Live not by lies, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn warned the West half a century ago, but we have hardly heeded him since. Fictions have bewitched our minds and captured our culture. Hard truths struggle to be heard. Last week BBC presenters took the leader of the opposition to task for her failure to watch a Netflix drama,
Home Parliament was recalled from its Easter recess to sit on a Saturday for the first time since the Falklands War of 1982 to pass a bill to take control of British Steel, which amounts to no more than the works at Scunthorpe owned by the Chinese company Jingye since 2020. Scunthorpe, which employs 2,700
The unclued lights are the ten councils which form the Greater Manchester Authority. First prize Sarah Warburton, London SE3 Runners-up Paul Voogt, Horley, Surrey; Louisa Magrath, London W3
When you are sad, and imminently grey, Will you take down my poems and say ‘That bastard took and took and took From me, for the sake of his lousy book’ —And have me, who am truly old and grey Terribly in handcuffs taken away?
Reality check Sir: While I share Mr Gove’s diagnosis of lodestar-less Starmerism (‘Cruel Labour’, 5 April), I cannot share the accompanying pearl-clutching. For decades, politicians and voters have engaged in a mutually reinforcing entitlement spiral that took it as given that the civil service and welfare bill could expand ad infinitum, that working for a
Crash comparison What’s the biggest stock market crash ever? – There are different ways to measure a crash. The biggest percentage fall in the Dow Jones Index in a single day occurred on 19 October 1987 (or ‘Black Monday’) when the Dow fell by 22.6%. – The biggest fall in percentage terms over a longer
The theme-word is SMITH which can be preceded by GOLD (24A), LADY (37A), HAMMER (3D), BLACK (5D) and SILVER (22D). The pertinent quotation ‘A mighty man is he’ at 9D comes from The Village Blacksmith by Longfellow. BLACK had to be shaded. First prize Andy Grady, Tutbury, Staffs Runners-up Steve Reszetniak, Margate, Kent; Oenone Green,
Parliament’s last day before recess is usually a dull affair. A one-line whip allows MPs to return to their constituencies early and the matters for debate are deliberately parochial. When the Commons rose for Easter this week, the government could have expected attention to have been even more desultory than normal, since politicians and the
Home In response to President Donald Trump’s global tariffs, Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, said: ‘This is not just a short-term tactical exercise. It is the beginning of a new era.’ He wrote in the Sunday Telegraph: ‘We stand ready to use industrial policy to help shelter British business from the storm.’ The FTSE100
Open arms Sir: The latest magazine (29 March) has two references to American military capabilities, from Rod Liddle and Francis Pike. Mr Liddle suggests that the prevalent attitude over there is that we ‘Yerpeans’ should have contributed more to the recent strike on Yemen (‘America first, Europe last’). He may not have known it was
The unclued lights (with the pair at 41/2) include the colours of the RAINBOW, as confirmed by 24 Across. First prize Roslyn Shapland, Ilkeston, Derbyshire Runners-up C.G. Millin, Ramleaze, Wilts; Susan Hay, Wolverhampton