A tax on empty dwellings Sir: Both the Conservative and Labour candidates (‘Battle for London’, 2 January) rightly see housing as the big issue in London’s mayoral election this year: Ukip and the Greens would probably say the same. But if one travels along the river at night and observes the large blocks of flats
OK sports fans, what do Dame Vivien Duffield and Evelyn Waugh have in common? The answer is absolutely nothing, so why start 2016 with such a dumb question? Waugh was short and round and so is Vivien, but apart from weight and height there are no similarities. So why ask? Easy. I was reading about
The well-bred Sea Pigeon, who had finished seventh in the Derby when trained at Beckhampton by Jeremy Tree, was later bought by the wine and spirits importer Pat Muldoon to go into training over hurdles with Gordon W. Richards in Penrith. The story goes that on his first foray out of his new northern yard,
The new year was two hours young. My boy and I were side by side on a row of three fixed plastic seats in the corridor of the accident and emergency ward. The both of us had come directly from our respective New Year’s Eve festivities, as had most, if not all, of the patients
This is an uplifting story of survival with which to usher in the New Year. At Stoke Park, my home in Northamptonshire, I went the other day into the West Pavilion, one of two 17th-century buildings that were once connected by colonnades to a country house that burned down in 1896. It is one large
‘Start at the back and try to pass as many horses as you can,’ said the trainer, as we stepped on to the all-weather track at Lingfield. It was only a practice gallop but I couldn’t have been more excited if I’d been lining up for the Gold Cup. Darcy had been loaded on to
Call me nuts but on 29 December I left lovely, sunny, delicious France for the fairly unlovely Royal National Hotel to play the year end’s last event, the one-day Swiss Teams. God it was fun. I hadn’t played a hand in 12 days (and counting) and we were all in a great mood (unusual), rested
So far my responsibilities as the 2016 chair of the Man Booker prize have been rather light. We’ve had our first meeting, received our first batch of books, and I’ve bought a smart notebook for record-keeping. I shall take a step back from journalism this year, including my Sunday Times column, but that doesn’t mean
The London Classic, the end of the million-dollar Grand Tour, was something of a damp squib. A surfeit of draws meant the event largely boiled down to who was most effectively able to despatch the cellar dwellers Anand and Topalov. Top scores out of nine were as follows: Carlsen, Giri and Vachier-Lagrave 51/2 each, Aronian
The outsiders Did the seven members of Harold Wilson’s cabinet who campaigned to leave the Common Market in the 1975 referendum damage their careers? Michael Foot, Employment Secretary. Made deputy leader by Jim Callaghan in 1976. Elected leader in 1980. Tony Benn, Industry Secretary. Challenged Denis Healey unsuccessfully for Labour deputy leadership in 1981. Barbara
Black to play. This is a variation from Carlsen-Grischuk, London Classic 2015. Carlsen won but this week’s puzzle shows how he could have gone wrong. Black has two ways to win immediately. Can you find both key moves? Answers to me at The Spectator by Tuesday 12 January or via email to victoria@spectator.co.uk. There is
At the end of next week, a judge will decide whether the ‘trial of the facts’ can proceed now that its subject, Lord Janner, is dead. Janner was accused, on various occasions, of child abuse, though the Crown Prosecution Service, on three occasions, over more than 20 years, decided that there was no case to
How much longer can the liberal left survive in the face of growing scientific evidence that many of its core beliefs are false? I’m thinking in particular of the conviction that all human beings are born with the same capacities, particularly the capacity for good, and that all mankind’s sins can be laid at the
Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, decided to allow ministers to campaign for either side in the referendum on membership of the European Union, once his negotiations had been concluded on Britain’s relationship with the EU. The government said it was commissioning 13,000 houses to be built by small builders on public land made available
When David Cameron said this week that he is worried his children would not be able to afford to buy their own homes, he struck on one of the greatest economic problems of his premiership. The old British promise is that if you work hard and make the right decisions, you can advance in life
Q. Although I have met most of the fellow occupants of my building at residents’ meetings, we don’t socialise. However our newest neighbour, a Canadian, has now emailed all the other women in the building offering to open up her own flat for a bonding evening of drinks and nibbles and where we would watch
The Feng Shang Princess is a floating Chinese restaurant on the Regent’s Canal in north London, which flows from Little Venice to the Guardian to Limehouse, and in which they quite often find corpses in shopping trolleys and vice versa. I do not know if the restaurant moves, and could theoretically travel to Paddington. I
When the much missed Frank Johnson (1943–2006), once editor of The Spectator, wrote in 1980 that ‘the peculiar need for something to be frightened about only seems to affect those of us who are part of the chattering classes’, I think that ‘those of us’ meant himself, and me and you, dear reader. It is
Clues in italics are cryptic indications of partial answers. In each case, the indicated part must be 5 39 (five words in all) to create the full answer to be entered in the grid. Definitions of the resulting entries are supplied by unclued lights. Across 1 Film second struggle (5) 6
The thematic term (formed by letters cut from definitions, 17, and letters added to definitions) is SCISSORS-AND-PASTE. Unclued lights are types of scissors (9, 25, 31, 32) and paste (1, 6D, 20, 28). First prize L. Coumbe, Benfleet, Essex Runners-up Stephen Gore, Seer Green, Bucks; C.R. Haigh, Hassocks, West Sussex
