The Battle for Britain | 26 October 2024
Society
Thursday
Why the young are fleeing to Portugal
The legendary music producer Rick Rubin once asked me why I had never moved to the United States. The answer, I think, comes down to an important trade-off: quantity of earnings vs quality of consumption. Historically, once you had a job, there was a limit to the lifestyle choices you could make Whereas the United States is certainly a better place to earn and accumulate money, Europe is, on balance, still a better place to spend it. (Which may explain why Rick asked me that question at his summer home in Italy.) This imbalance partly arises from a fundamental asymmetry in the transmission of ideas. Whenever anything good or interesting
Dear Mary: How do I stop my friend’s banal WhatsApp messages?
Q. I have a very dear friend who lives in Scotland, so we rarely see each other. Before the internet existed, we would call each other on the landline two or three times a year for a pleasant catch-up, and meet sporadically. However, since the onslaught of social media, my friend has taken to sending several WhatsApps per day, almost always saying things like ‘How is your day going?’, adding a few banal details of the current weather in the Highlands or what she plans to bake that day. I feel guilty if I don’t reply at all, so find myself sending pleasantries back, even though I am feeling very
WR Masters
Two of England’s brightest prospects received a golden opportunity to play at the WR Chess Masters Cup, an elite knockout tournament held at the Langham Hotel in London last week. WR is Wadim Rosenstein, a keen chess player and CEO of the German WR logistics group, which last year partnered with Fide to organise the World Rapid and Blitz Team Championships in Düsseldorf. Shreyas Royal recently broke the record to become the UK’s youngest grandmaster at the age of 15 years and seven months. In the first round of the knockout, he faced former world champion Viswanathan Anand. With two extra pawns in the diagram below, one would expect
The finest Rhône I have ever tasted
The medics would have one believe that alcohol is a depressant. That may be their conclusion drawn from test tubes in laboratories. Fortunately, however, it bears little relation to real life, which is just as well. The world has rarely been in greater need of antidepressants, in every form. One tries to tease American friends out of their gloom, reproaching them for taking their independence too early. Last time I attempted that, it did not work. ‘If Washington and Jefferson had foreseen Trump vs Harris, they would have asked George III for forgiveness.’ The 2014 Hommage à Jacques Perrin was just about the finest Rhône I have ever tasted In
Do you ‘cock a snook’ – or snoot?
‘This is interesting, darling,’ my husband called out from beside his whisky while I was doing the washing-up. The interesting thing was in a short black-and-white film made by John Betjeman for television in 1968 and now on BBC iPlayer called Contrasts: Marble Arch to Edgware. The camera showed him in the bare interior of the Wellington Arch at Hyde Park Corner turned into a little police station. I felt one ahead on this, as I had since been up the arch, for the sake of the view, mostly. I remembered from an exhibition there that the name of the police station cat had been Snooks. With Snooks in mind, I
No. 824
White to play and mate in two moves. Composed by Hermann Feodor Lehner, Deutsche Schachzeitung, 1873. Email answers to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 28 October. There is a prize of £20 for the first correct answer out of a hat. Please include a postal address and allow six weeks for prize delivery. Last week’s solution 1…f6! wins, e.g. 2 Rxf6+ Qxf6. Shankland chose 1…Kh7? missing 2 Qg8+!! Kxg8 3 d8=Q+ Kh7 4 Qh4 with perpetual. 1…Kh5 2 Rc5+ is no better. Last week’s winner Kevin Kiernan, London EC2
The Spectator’s Jilly Cooper Competition
For Competition 3372 you were invited to submit a prose-style mash-up of Jilly Cooper and another famous writer. The entries were very amusing, though a handful were a little too pornographic for publication. Some of you seemed regrettably unfamiliar with the works of Cooper while others seemed to err in the other direction. I anticipated a fair few Austen–Coopers and there were indeed several excellent examples – shout-outs to Janine Beacham and D.A. Prince for theirs. Also deserving of a mention: a couple of versions of Chandler-meets-Jilly (Mike Morrison and Basil Ransome-Davies), Brian Murdoch for his Cooper/Tolkien, and David Silverman, who brilliantly yet unprintably infused Jane Eyre with some essence
The medicinal powers of a good book
‘And they lived happily ever after. The end.’ ‘Again.’ My poor father, bidden to read the story of the moment over and over again. Long after I could read perfectly well for myself, at bedtime I needed to hear his quiet monotone that never failed to send me to sleep, just as, though my taste in books was always adventurous, I had a narrow range of preferred stories at night, or if I was unwell. When the shadows thrown by the lamp form themselves into monsters, familiar comforts are required. Alice in Wonderland was read until the words must surely have faded on the page, and if he missed a
My boyfriend, the hedgehog hero
‘I’m making a hedgehog rescue ladder,’ said the builder boyfriend, who was on his knees in the farmyard, drilling a series of mini rungs into place on two mini rails. The builder boyfriend keeps going to check but the hedgehog seems very happy, snoozing away in its comfy box I should have known. Why did I even ask? Of course he was making a hedgehog rescue ladder. The BB doesn’t like to admit it, but beneath the gruff exterior he has such a soft spot for all living creatures that he often bends down to pick up stranded worms from pavements and roads. It is a charming contradiction in his
What the Delameres did for Kenya
Kenya’s Rift Valley The story of Kenya’s Europeans such as the 5th Baron Delamere, who died recently, is one of hard work. In late 1897 his grandfather, the 3rd Baron, rode his horse up the Rift Valley’s eastern escarpment into the highlands. For a year he had been trekking through Somalia’s burning deserts and now he saw cool waters, green grass and fresh winds. ‘Here was a promised land, the realisation of a Rider Haggard dream of a rich and fertile country hidden beyond impenetrable deserts and mountains… a modern Eldorado, waiting only for recognition,’ wrote his biographer Elspeth Huxley. Tom, a friend of mine, spent years languishing in Kamiti
Bridge | 26 October 2024
Super star Juniors are springing up everywhere, living, breathing and playing bridge. Nicolai (The Kid) Heiberg-Evenstad (16) from Norway and Christian Lahrmann (21) from Denmark are both already professional bridge players and are crazy talented both in the bidding and the play. One of the finest card players of the ‘new’ generation is England’s Ben Norton. Watch how he helped himself to a game swing against one of the stronger teams at the recent WBT event in Copenhagen (see diagram). Ben and his partner, Stefano Tommasini, rapidly bid to their vulnerable game, although they missed out on the best spot of 3NT by North. West led the ♣K, which was
2677: What’s in a name?
Unchecked and mutually cross-checking letters in 14 unclued lights spell out PEEP – THE SPECTATOR CHARACTERS RECREATE REST. One such light is hyphened and another comprises two words. Across 1 Bundle of stuff needing time (7) 5 Dubious party assumes American power (7) 9 Church, with Old English exterior, from which arrows are launched (4) 13 Impressive collection of maths and physics constants (4) 14 Long-lost beast is such, or a fake (7) 16 Letters delivered for Badger (5) 17 Cold bottle of milk overturned – it’s irresistible to kitty (6) 20 Mediterranean restaurant worker sent back outside state (7) 21 Least cautious female interrupts returning emperor (7) 25 Fight animals
2674: New crop – solution
7D sung by 40A suggested other unclued lights, all anagrams of fruits: 12A mango; 17A apple; 18A apricot; 24A damson; 9D tangerine. MELON, an anagram of LEMON, was to be highlighted. First prize Kathleen Durber, Stoke-on-Trent Runners-up Clare Reynolds, London SE24; Sid Field, Stockton on Tees
Is Wes Streeting the Hamlet of the health service?
Is Wes Streeting the Hamlet of the Health Service? Is this undoubtedly talented and thoughtful young Labour prince fatally irresolute when it comes to doing what he knows must be done? Few politicians have articulated so clearly the need for reform of our healthcare system. Streeting’s insistence that the NHS should be a service not a shrine angered all the right people, which is to say the BMA. It marked a welcome departure from the treacly displays of affection which have hitherto characterised ‘debate’ about the health service. More recently, the Health Secretary has frankly admitted that the NHS is letting patients down and acknowledged its manifold inefficiencies. The need
The ICC’s rogue prosecutor
Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of 7 October, went to meet his maker last week. Having spent a year being pursued through the underground tunnels of Gaza that he had built, he finally put his head up above the surface in the Tal al-Sultan area of Rafah. The world that had told the IDF not to go into Rafah was once again proved wrong. Sinwar was killed in an exchange of fire by a 19-year-old Israeli soldier who was not even in uniform on 7 October. People inside the ICC were annoyed by the way Khan made himself a sort of ‘world policeman’ A couple of days after Sinwar’s demise, I
The lessons of the Chris Kaba case
I wonder if we should join with the radical campaigning organisation Buy Larger Mansions (BLM) in order to protest about both the verdict in the Chris Kaba case and indeed the racism inherent in the Metropolitan Police? Perhaps we can get Gary Lineker and Alan Shearer to wear some BLM badges on Match of the Day and recreate the heady, exciting atmosphere of 2020 when white liberals in the US and here decided that George Floyd was a kind of combination of Toussaint Louverture and Rosa Parks, rather than a former criminal jailed eight times, including for robbery with a deadly weapon. It is true that every man’s death diminishes
Portrait of the week: Budget leaks, prisoners released and Israel kills Hamas leader
Home Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was expected to freeze tax thresholds in the Budget on 30 October, to swell government income as more working people were brought into higher tax bands. Before Labour formed a government, she had said that the Conservatives, by freezing tax thresholds, were ‘picking the pockets of working people’. Weeks of speculation on the Budget were encouraged by leaks and by constant questioning of ministers about how Labour would keep to its manifesto undertaking not to raise taxes on ‘working people’ by increasing income tax, national insurance or VAT. The International Monetary Fund raised its growth forecast for the United Kingdom to 1.1
The OnlyFans model, the milkshake and me
What better start to a Monday than to attend Westminster Magistrates’ Court? I was there for the trial of the young OnlyFans model Victoria Thomas Bowen who threw a banana milkshake at my face on the day that I launched my campaign in Clacton. Unbelievably, she planned to plead not guilty despite the fact that the whole thing was caught on camera. Rumours that her reason for doing all of this was because I had unsubscribed from her page are untrue. There was the usual circus of media outside as I arrived, but Victoria still insists she didn’t throw the milkshake just to get publicity for her website. It was
Decline and fall: how university education became infantilised
Last month, after 21 years studying and teaching Classics at the University of Cambridge, I resigned. I loved my job. And it’s precisely because I loved the job I was paid to do, and because I believe so firmly in preserving the excellence of higher education, in Britain and beyond, that I have left. When I arrived in Cambridge two decades ago, giants were still walking the earth. Students could attend any lecture, at any level, in any department; graduate and research seminars were open to any interested party, and you could sit at the feet of the greats. Unforgettable gatherings of everyone from undergraduates to professors would discuss the
