Society

Thursday

Merlin Hanbury-Tenison

My neighbour has kidnapped my beavers

My beavers have been kidnapped. A few months ago there were five of them living on my family’s farm on Bodmin Moor. Now there are none. I know where they are and I have received proof of life from their kidnapper, but he will not release them back to me or allow me to collect them and bring them home. I miss them and often walk along their stretch of river and past their dams with a tear in my eye. I miss them and often walk along their stretch of river and past their dams with a tear in my eye I was quite early to the beaver game.

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

Cornwall’s gypsies face eviction

‘Don’t use our real names,’ says the teenage gypsy. ‘Other gypsies will laugh at us.’ Even in a tracksuit, the girl is crazy beautiful, and strangely remote. She is talking to me because her mother, whom I call Susan, has been ordered to remove her caravans from a council site in the West Country. If Susan, mother of five, and carer to two grandchildren, is evicted by Cornwall council, her family will be scattered to the winds. It’s a peculiarly awful fate for gypsies. They are tribal, and family is everything to them. It is the first eviction of a gypsy from a council site in this county. The site

Douglas Murray

Britain is losing friends – and making enemies

Whatever way you voted in 2016, I suspect that many of us have the same image of post-Brexit Britain. It is easier to capture in a cartoon than in prose but it looks something like this. A chap tries to make a leap across a canyon, falls ever so slightly short and as a result gets wedged in a crevice. And there he is – stuck. Neither on one side or the other and gaining the benefits of neither ledge. The Conservative party obviously carries a large amount of responsibility for this – not least for the fact that European law still dictates our insane migration policy. But the current

James Innes-Smith

There’s nothing sexy about a sex party

‘Sorry sir, the rules clearly state that all single men must be accompanied by a woman.’ As the frustrated guest is ushered off the premises, my female companion and I are welcomed into a grand reception room where the organised sex party is being held. A barmaid offers us some complimentary condoms and a handful of Quality Street, along with some fluorescent orange punch served in plastic cups. Should we be engaging in small talk or ripping each other’s clothes off? No one seems to know The organisers of tonight’s paid event claim they cater for the world’s ‘sexual elite’ but there’s something disarmingly ordinary about the snaggle-toothed mid-lifers trooping

The Spectator

Who performed at past presidential inaugurations?

Gig economy Donald Trump had the Village People perform at a concert prior to his inauguration. Who topped the bill at previous presidential inaugurations, either on the day or at accompanying concerts? – Joe Biden (2021): Lady Gaga – Donald Trump (2017): Kid Rock – Barack Obama (2013): Beyoncé – Barack Obama (2009): Aretha Franklin – George W. Bush (2001): Wayne Newton – Bill Clinton (1993): Michael Jackson – George H.W. Bush (1989): Stevie Ray Vaughan (rhythm and blues star) – Ronald Reagan (1981): Frank Sinatra – Jimmy Carter (1977): Leonard Bernstein Trade marks President Trump is threatening a trade war. How important is our trading relationship with the US?

Peter Jones

Seneca’s guide to coping with disaster

How does one attempt to console someone on the destruction of their home, a fate recently visited on so many citizens of Los Angeles? Seneca, the millionaire philosopher and adviser to the emperor Nero, associated consolation with ‘reprimanding, dissuading, exhorting, commending’. He exemplifies that in a letter musing on the reaction which his friend Liberalis had had to the destruction by fire of his beloved Lugdunum (Lyon) in Gaul ad 64. This had caused Liberalis to worry about the strength of his own character, usually so steadfast, when confronted with this disaster. Seneca contended that we should be ready for anything, since there is ‘nothing that Fortune, when it so

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

The Pope’s revenge: why the new Archbishop of Washington is such a controversial choice

For an 88-year-old man who has spent only five days in the United States and doesn’t speak English, Pope Francis is a surprisingly partisan observer of American politics. For most of his life he was, like a typical Argentinian, viscerally but vaguely anti-American. Robert McElroy’s nickname among Catholic conservatives is ‘the wicked witch of the west’ But by the time he became Pope in 2013 both he and the Democratic party had embraced the ideology of the globalist left. And so they became allies. In 2016, Francis gave his blessing to the Hillary Clinton campaign’s Catholic front organisations, motivated not just by a shared obsession with anti-racism and climate change

Ameer Kotecha

Confessions of a Costco Guy

Those who use TikTok, or are familiar with Ed Davey’s dance routines on social media, may have heard of the ‘Costco Guys’. For those with an aversion to TikTok (or to Ed Davey), Andrew ‘A.J.’ Befumo Jr. and Eric ‘Big Justice’ Befumo are a father-and-son duo who became internet celebrities by gorging on food items in their local Costco in Florida and rating them on a ‘boom or doom’ scale. Cue 2.5 million followers and debut single ‘We Bring the Boom’ – which Davey chose as the soundtrack to his latest bid for online attention. Patrick Maguire was probably right in the Times last week to say that this sort

Toby Young Toby Young

The Trump I (barely) know

I can’t say I know the new President of the United States very well, but during the five years I lived in New York between 1995 and 2000 we were on nodding terms. That is to say, when I turned up at a party and he was there too, we would politely acknowledge each other. This was for two reasons, neither of which reflects particularly well on me. The first is that I was briefly the party columnist for Vanity Fair, deciding whose photos should appear in the monthly round-up. Donald Trump was keen for his picture to appear as often as possible, obviously, hence the nod. The second and

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

The case for ‘Areas of Outstanding Natural Ugliness’

I was leaving the car park of my local shop yesterday – a manoeuvre which involves a hair-raising reverse on to a busy road – when a thought struck me. ‘There’s no chance anyone would get planning permission for a shop here today.’ Either someone from the council would declare there was no safe vehicular access, or else neighbours would complain about the noise. Failing that, someone else would find that the marshland behind the site was the breeding ground for some rare but disgusting toad, or complain that a sweet shop could not open within a parsec of a primary school. You know something has gone wrong when Crawley

Susan Hill Susan Hill

Learning is a lifelong joy

‘I love learning about things’ (Amelia, aged nine). Not all children do, but many who have not experienced the pleasure of learning early come to see the point of it in later life. Like most writers, I loved books from childhood, and learned favourite pages simply by re-reading. When Thomas Hardy came along for A-level, I was so passionate about his novels that I learned whole pages by heart. But like Amelia, I also loved learning about things – places, cultures, weather, insects, trees, how coal was mined and steel made and glass blown. Ladybird Books were a great source of interest and information, and still are, though when I

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: Where can a thirtysomething woman meet eligible men?

Q. I am a single woman in my thirties and I am at my wits’ end as to where I can meet intelligent, interesting bachelors. Apps are hopeless. I work in publishing but literary men are endlessly promiscuous. Most men my age at parties are married. Any suggestions? – M.S., London SW11 A. You are looking in the wrong places – areas where too many women are competing for too few men. Knowing they are a scarce commodity prompts commitment-phobia in literary and arty types. Better to set out into nerdier pastures in search of an underconfident geek who only needs a makeover. Start attending lectures and conferences in theoretical

Melissa Kite

Marriage is corny and pointless – but we’re doing it anyway

The one question the priest did not ask me, thank goodness, was why I wanted to get married. That might have held up the enterprise indefinitely, and we are already so far behind with this attempted wedding of ours that I dare not risk another hold-up. Since serving the notice at Cork Registry Office, it’s a year down the line nearly and the builder boyfriend and I are no nearer to saying: ‘I do.’ Our only option is to get married, despite all my misgivings about how corny and pointless marriage is I’m nearer to saying: ‘I really can’t be bothered.’ Or: ‘If anything happens to me just bury me

Luke McShane

London Classic

My first round game from the first edition of the London Chess Classic in 2009 remains a vivid memory, not least because it ran for 163 moves and nearly eight hours. (I won!) England’s premier international event returned for its 14th edition in December, having skipped two pandemic years, with new sponsorship from XTX markets, and a new venue at the Emirates Stadium in London. The programme included a dozen separate events, headed by an elite invitational tournament in which the top seeds were the former world championship candidates Shakhriyar Mamedyarov and Vidit Gujrathi. They tied for second place in the final tables, alongside the England team members Michael Adams and

Bruce Anderson

The Reagan effect on wine lists

Let us indulge in a slight paraphrase. What rough beast slouches towards the White House to be reborn? The inauguration ceremonies remind us that many Americans still hanker after monarchical splendour. Even as contentious a figure as Donald Trump is accorded the dignities appropriate to a head of state. The same of course is true of M. Macron, who carries them off better. The dignified portion of the constitution, or the efficient one? It could easily be argued that President Trump is better in the latter role. In his early phase, President Macron wanted us to see him as a Napoleonic figure. Indeed. Napoleon le Petit. If a bottle was

Aidan Hartley

Like my father before me, I’ve found comfort in yoga

Malindi, Kenya In 1967, Tanzania’s socialist rulers seized all my parents’ property – their ranchland, their home and their cattle – and overnight my father saw the fruits of all his labour taken from him. He had no time to dwell on his misfortune, since he had a wife and four children to support, so at the age of 60 he picked himself up and vanished off to work in Somalia. My father’s last words were ‘yoga breathing’ and he died smiling We went to live at a beach hut in Malindi, on the Kenya coast, which became our new home. Dad’s job involved long spells out in the wilderness

Dot Wordsworth

Is ‘legacy’ an insult?

‘Why can’t you have legacy tomatoes?’ asked my husband. ‘There are plenty of heritage tomatoes.’ He might well ask. Heritage tomatoes, usually called heirloom tomatoes in America, are cultivars valued for flavour lost in many modern hybrids. They include the Black Krim from the Crimea and the delicious Raf, grown in Almeria, its name an unromantic acronym from Resistente al Fusarium, since it is resistant to a fungus. Only since the 1970s has heritage been used as a label for things of historical, cultural or scenic interest. The fashionable term was applied in 1983 to the new quango English Heritage. Like heritage, a legacy was something we were glad to

Olivia Potts Olivia Potts

Hunter’s chicken: the ultimate cheer-me-up-quickly recipe

Pub food in Britain has had a mixed reputation over the years. For a long time, the most a pub would have to offer as food would be some pork scratchings or a pickled egg. There certainly wasn’t a brigade of chefs in white coats in a shiny chrome kitchen. This is midweek-teatime cooking, it’s sling-it-in-an-oven cooking, it’s cheer-me-up-quickly cooking Pub grub started to appear in the 1970s, but it was simple, filling and predictable. It was the sort of unpretentious, low-priced food that was suitable for a worker’s lunch break. So up and down the country pub menus all hit the same beats: steak and kidney pie, ham with

Luke McShane

No. 834

Black to play. Gukesh-Giri, Wijk aan Zee, 2025. With less than a minute, Giri erred and lost here. Which move would have won him the game? Email answers to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 27 January. There is a prize of a £20 John Lewis voucher for the first correct answer out of a hat. Please include a postal address. Last week’s solution 1 Qxd5! exd5 2 Re8+ Bf8 3 Rxf8+ Kxf8 (or 3…Kg7 4 Rxf7+ Qxf7 5 Nxf7 Kxf7 6 hxg6+) 4 Nh7+ Kg7 5 Nxf6 Kxf6 6 h6! wins Last week’s winner Stephen Belding, Rugby, Warwickshire