Society

Thursday

Peter Jones

The abortion debate is as old as time

Now that parliament has decided to decriminalise abortion, it is interesting to see what the ancients made of the matter. The question for them was, as for us – when did the foetus become ‘human’? The answer was when it developed a psukhê (‘soul’). Some Greek philosophers argued that the foetus was fully ‘ensouled’ from the moment of conception, and abortion was therefore wrong. Others asserted it was only ensouled at birth. The ‘gradualists’ thought the foetus took between 36 and 50 days to became human (active kicking was a good sign). Aristotle (d. 322 BC) argued that the embryo became human when it had developed four ‘capacities’ in the

Angus Colwell

Is your restaurant halal?

Dos Mas Tacos opened recently next to Spitalfields Market, one of London’s trendiest and busiest areas. Two beef birria tacos cost £11.50; two mushroom vegano are £10.50; a ‘can-o-water’ is £2.50. But look a little closer at their menu, and something jumps out: no pork and no alcohol. You’d expect a carnitas option at a taqueria, and you’d want a Corona with it. You can’t get either at Dos Mas Tacos. Huh, and hmm. I came across the place on TikTok, via a video of the two founders, Rupert and Charlie Avery, outside their shop. They’re well-heeled lads, twins with posh accents. They used to work in the superyacht industry.

Arabella Byrne

Millennials don’t want brown furniture

For me, it was the sideboard that did it. Originally the centrepiece of my grandmother’s dining room, upon her death it was passed on to my mother, who kept it grudgingly in her cottage even though you couldn’t get to the kitchen without banging your hip against its bow front. At some stage it was passed on to my sister, who paid a considerable sum to store it because she had no room for it in her terraced house. Some years later, I was informed that I must house this precious mahogany albatross myself. After some handwringing and sadness, lack of space forced me to pass it on to someone

Grayson Perry

Why do my outfits make people so angry?

I have always cycled everywhere in London, not because I want to save the planet but because I want to get to my destination on time. I ride a big heavy Dutch woman’s bike: practical, less nickable and I can wear pretty much anything while riding it. On this occasion I was wearing frilly pink nursery-print dungarees, pink patent bootees, a sweet little jacket with puffy pale-blue bows down the front, a pink cloche hat and a pink-and-blue shiny PVC backpack. I was just locking my bike to the railings on Charing Cross Road when an angry man approached. ‘Are you a paedophile?’ he roared. ‘Why are you dressed like

Douglas Murray

The dangers of toxic femininity

The American critic and classicist Daniel Mendelsohn has just published a new translation of The Odyssey. In his superb introduction, Mendelsohn also does something that many modern translators and critics avoid, which is to point to the oddness and different-ness of Homer’s world. For that and many other reasons, reading Mendelsohn’s fresh and clear translation was a counterweight to one of the great imperatives of our time: ‘Let us look at this long-ago thing only in order to see if it can shed any light on the glorious us and now.’ Everything is about ‘understanding’, ‘listening’, ‘speaking for’ and ‘alleviating’ the suffering of others Yet a timeless work remains timeless

Francis Pike

In defence of exorcism

British politics and ghosts are subjects that rarely meet. Sometimes an MP or parliamentary aide might report a sighting of one of various spirits that inhabit the Palace of Westminster. It is said, for instance, that the ghost of the assassin John Bellingham haunts the Commons lobby at the spot where he gunned down Spencer Perceval. And last year the diary secretary to speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle excited the tabloids with her claim that once, in one of parliament’s side rooms, she felt a phantom dog nuzzling against her leg. When I bought a pied-à-terre in Kensington, I got the dowser to give it a psycho-spiritual once-over In general, though,

Toby Young Toby Young

The secret to ‘womankeeping’

God, men are pathetic. At least, that’s the view of Angelica Puzio Ferrara, a researcher at Stanford, who has come up with a new term to explain the emotional labour women are having to do to help men cope with their psychological problems: ‘mankeeping’. According to Ferrara, ‘patriarchal masculinity’ stops men from developing ‘emotionally intimate bonds’ with each other, so they inevitably unburden themselves to their wives and girlfriends, expecting them to listen attentively as they drone on about their ‘issues’. They can’t open up to their male buddies about this stuff because they don’t want to appear vulnerable and unmanly. So they unload on their female partners instead. Yet

Christopher Fletcher

The hidden value of notes

‘You asshole,’ was my friend’s cheery greeting when we met in Ludlow. I’d mucked up the time. Reconciled, we walked to his place and on the door was a note he’d left me, scrawled on a card with an image of him mimicking Philip Larkin proudly sitting on a border stone: ‘Just a note that you are an asshole. Call.’ Stuart, a collector of manuscripts, showed me a recent acquisition, a note by Sir Edward Elgar, graced with a self-portrait featuring, my friend is sure, an immodestly large penis. I think it’s his coat tail. We debated the iconography while listening to ‘Nimrod’. Notes are often discarded – who hasn’t

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

The rise and rise of the ‘tantric sector’

For the past 25 years I have commuted to London from Otford, a delightful village outside Sevenoaks. I do this in adherence to Sutherland’s Law – not the excellent 1970s BBC series featuring Iain Cuthbertson, but a rule of my own devising which states that you should always travel from the smallest airport or railway station possible.  Recently, much of the station car-park was closed so a colossal pedestrian footbridge could be constructed 50 yards away; this replaced a pedestrian level crossing at the same spot, which lay along a footpath connecting one part of Otford to another. In 25 years, I have seen pedestrians using it on three occasions.

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: Where should I seat Hollywood stars at dinner?

Q. My husband and I have recently made very good friends with some neighbours in France. They know I am having a 60th birthday party in London and have assumed they will be invited too. My problem is one of these new friends is a world-famous Hollywood actor and his wife is famous in her own right. I am worried about where I will seat them. I wouldn’t want to give the impression to a roomful of my oldest friends (none of whom is famous) that I think the ‘stars’ are more important than they are, but neither do I want to offend the stars, who I fear will expect

Olivia Potts Olivia Potts

The key to a great American key lime pie

A few years ago, a friend wrote a cookery book for the UK market, full of gorgeous dishes, many of them esoterically British. It was snapped up by an American publisher who, as well as converting my friend’s careful metric measurements into loosey-goosey volume-based cup measures, queried a couple of her more British ingredients, one being golden syrup. My friend had a recipe for treacle tart which – as anyone who has made it knows – is just a whole tin of golden syrup held together with a handful of breadcrumbs and an egg. But golden syrup is hard to get hold of in the US. Her American publishers wanted

Luke McShane

False moves

Right before the end of my game against Alexei Shirov at the World Rapid Team Championships earlier in June, I had the better side of a drawn position and a full 20 seconds to make a move. Not too bad: Shirov is a former member of the world elite, whose brilliant games I had revered since childhood, and a draw would secure us victory in the match. At that moment, my mind left the chessboard. It pondered the winning position I had earlier in the game. And it drifted back, yet again, to the middlegame, which reached the position in the diagram below, right after I, playing Black, had captured

Bruce Anderson

To rehydrate, drink beer

‘The nuisance of the tropics is/the sheer necessity of fizz.’  Over the past few days, during which England endured sub-tropical sweltering, it was more a matter of beer. I do not wish to denigrate water, which is all very well in its place. I often drink it. But for urgent, nay life-saving, rehydration, nothing beats beer. Now that almost all beer is properly made, I just tend to order any pint that catches my eye. In recent temperatures, the eyes have been busy. As I may have written before, there is one curiosity about beer. The Belgians, Czechs and Germans – plus other European countries – produce lager-style beers that

Luke McShane

No. 856

White to play. Maroroa Jones-Aronian, World Rapid Team Championship, London 2025. Aronian’s last move Nf6-e4 was a blunder. Which response prompted immediate resignation? Email answers to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 30 June. There is a prize of £20 for the first correct answer out of a hat. Please include a postal address. Last week’s solution 1 Rh8+! If 1…Kxh8 2 Qg8 is mate. The game ended in a draw by repetition after 1…Qxh8 2 Qxe7+ Kh6 3 Qg5+ Kh7 4 Qe7+ etc. Last week’s winner Ted Ditchburn, Monkseaton, Tyne and Wear

Nicholas Farrell

My daring escape from the Italian police

Dante’s Beach, Ravenna I often feel as if I know what it was like to be a member of La Résistance in Nazi–occupied France because I have three disco-age daughters. Last week, the call-to-action stations flashed up on WhatsApp at 03.06, just as the cockerels were beginning to crow and the enemy was setting up his road blocks. ‘Papà, can you come and get me?’ It was Rita, aged 16. ‘Where are you?’ ‘Marina.’ Cristo bloody Santo! A 25-minute drive away. ‘I can walk towards you,’ suggested Rita, the little sweetie. ‘No! Not if you’re wearing a miniskirt,’ I messaged back. ‘Or hot pants.’ She had gone with a girlfriend

Victoria Lane

Spectator Competition: Who’s who?

For Competition 3405 you were invited to submit a scene in which Doctor Who has regenerated into someone very unexpected. Plenty of interesting transformations resulted, featuring among others Paddington Bear, Mary Berry and two Jacob Rees-Moggs, but the winners of the £25 vouchers are below. The Doctor, regenerating as a tall, meaty-faced man in jeans, a plaid shirt and his mid-sixties, soon got clumsily busy for comic effect with screwdrivers, sonic and otherwise, setting about the Tardis console and causing Fleetwood Mac to play at excessive volume before sending us zagzigging erratically across spacetime on a far from grand tour. ‘What could possibly go wrong?’ he bellowed, overemphasising every word

Dot Wordsworth

The cunning meanings of quant

The FT headline said: ‘Man Group orders quants back to office five days a week.’ I didn’t know what quants were and all my husband could say was: ‘Complete quants’, as though it were funny. Of course I kept thinking of Mary Quant, and I suppose her name was French in origin. There was a Hugo le Cuint in 1208 and a Richard le Queynte in Hampshire in 1263. The name would relate to quant or quaint, meaning ‘clever’ or ‘cunning’, and derived from Latin cognitus. The varied spelling overlapped with the word Chaucer used for a woman’s private parts, which comes from a completely different Latin word. Such is

Melissa Kite

Has my father’s BBC addiction peaked?

‘I want the stairlift to go faster!’ said my mother, as the machine she was sitting on whirred furiously while she moaned to me about it on the phone. ‘How fast do you want it to go?’ I asked, imagining it doing 60mph down the short run of stairs in their little house in Coventry, coming to an abrupt halt at the bottom, then catapulting her across the living-room floor because she never does the seatbelt up. ‘It’s too slow!’ she declared, and I could hear her slapping various bits of it and banging the switches on the arm. ‘When the man comes to service it I’m going to tell

Doc

2709: Our set

The unclued lights are of a kind. One of them consists of two separate theme-words juxta-posed: one is of two words and two have to be paired. The letters in the red squares spell another theme-word and the letters in the yellowsquares can be arranged to form yet another (two-word) theme word. Across 1 Realise she can be awkward (6) 11    Pedro’s ‘See you later’ makes Oates laugh (5,5) 14    Bravo, gents, maybe May’s first flower (5) 18    Sky lad mixed polyester resins (6) 19    Bristle at small letter (4) 22    38 with mould in relief (6) 24    Obtain oil that’s for cooking the chop? (9) 25    European birds in