From The Spectator, 17 October 1914: King Carol of Roumania died suddenly at the Castle of Pelesh, Sinaia, on Saturday last, in his seventy-sixth year, and is succeeded by his nephew, Prince Ferdinand, born in 1865, who married in 1893 Princess Marie, daughter of the Duke of Edinburgh. King Carol, as a Hohenzollern, undoubtedly cast
‘No, I don’t think we’ve met, but I have abused you on social media.’
‘I’ve got us a TV dinner, followed by a Facebook dinner, followed by a Twitter dinner, followed by a. . . ’
‘Part of the constitution… they’re allowed to make just one smoke signal each.’
‘We all draw crap on our walls but he has to make such a big deal of it!’
Man flu season
‘There’s been a coo.’
‘Push! Push! Push harder!’
‘They’re much easier to get than they used to be.’
‘You’re not really the Latin lover I was looking for.’
‘I’m not saying he’s old but he still uses a land-line.’
‘Climate change? Not in our lifetime.’
Nothing to fear Sir: So long as we are not breaking any law, we have nothing to fear from the police being able to access our mobiles (‘Licence to snoop’, 11 October). They, however, would be committing a crime if they released any information so gleaned to anyone except to the judiciary if we are
Dirty dancing David Cameron was accused of causing racial offence by posing with blacked-up Morris dancers, though it was pointed out that the tradition dates from 16th-century jobless labourers covering their faces with soot. Other Morris dancer controversies: — In 2011 the Slubbing Billys were thrown out of a pub in Durham for breaking a
Home Checks began at British airports for passengers who might have come from west Africa with Ebola fever (even though there are no direct flights from the countries most affected). People who rang 111 with suspicious symptoms were to be asked whether they’d come from a high-risk country. Police arrested three men and three women
Turkey has long been a bridge between the West and the Middle East. Its record on free speech may be lamentable and it treats its Kurdish minority shoddily, but against that stands a genuine will to improve its human rights record and an ambition to become a modern, free and prosperous state. This has long
