Society

Thursday

Rachel Johnson

My secret Ukraine trip with Boris

Kyiv On the morning of 24 February, I woke just before seven as a tentative apricot dawn was spreading over scrubby flatlands dusted with light snow. The secret train was trundling into an unprepossessing town, houses scattered amid spindly pines, nothing to write home about. I didn’t even look for a station sign as they’d all been removed to fox Vladimir Putin’s mercenaries. This country is under martial law, a curfew, and as morning was breaking Ukraine was entering the fourth year of fighting off its vast neighbour’s vicious and unwanted advances. We’d boarded the previous night near the Polish border (I know it sounds ridiculous but I am not

Melissa Kite

Has someone been smuggling drugs in my hay bales?

The hay dealer showed me his latest stock and told me the bright green hay would cost me a staggering €165 a bale. ‘I don’t want to smoke it, I want to feed it to my horses,’ I said, looking doubtfully at what was apparently best meadow hay. It was a very large bale, and it was very green, but even so. I would expect to pay €80 for a large bale, so twice that did not make any sense. I took a handful of it and smelt it and it had a pungent, grassy aroma. There was a strange twang to it. I asked if he could deliver me

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

Are you Ramadan-ready?

‘Are you Ramadan-ready?’ That was the poster in Sainsbury’s advertising its delicious range of fast-breaking foods (rice was one). And the striking thing about it was… the ‘you’. That ‘you’ means the normal customer, the default Sainsbury’s shopper. Same with the email I got from the swanky Belgravia hair salon I used to visit: Here, we understand that Ramadan is a time of reflection, renewal and spiritual focus – and we also know how important it is to take a moment for yourself amid the busy days of fasting and prayer. That’s why we are delighted to announce that our salon will be open late during Ramadan, offering evening appointments

Peter Jones

The Roman approach to ending a war

We await the full details of Donald Trump’s ‘take it or leave it’ solution to the Ukraine war, but at least Romans liked that sort of clarity. Take the war between Rome and the Carthaginian Hannibal, begun in 218 bc. Rome had already defeated Carthage in a long drawn-out battle over the possession of Sicily. In search of revenge, the father of young Hannibal made him swear never to befriend Rome. His family conquered southern Spain, rich in silver mines, agriculture and manpower, and when in 219 bc Hannibal sacked Saguntum, a town allied to Rome, Rome sent an embassy to clarify the situation. The Carthaginians complained of Roman treachery

Robin Oakley

The strange superstitions of the racing world

In racing, superstitions are rife. I once saw a trainer remonstrate with an owner for displaying a green handkerchief: green, he insisted, was unlucky (although it doesn’t seem to work that way for owners Simon Munir and Isaac Souede, whose ‘double green’ colours have been carried to success in many top races). Henrietta Knight, who trained Best Mate, is famously superstitious: straw on the way is OK, but if she sees a load of hay en route to the races she’s so sure of bad luck that she’s inclined to turn back. She couldn’t bear to watch Best Mate’s Gold Cups from the stands and hid in a tent behind

Janet de Botton

Bridge | 1 March 2025

The European Transnational Championships were held last week in Prague, and were won by the gargantuanly strong Zimmerman team, but it was not plain sailing. They appeared to have lost their quarter-final to the Italian team Bianchi, but that doesn’t happen in Zimmerland. Twice during the 56-board, day-long match they asked for rulings against something the opps had or hadn’t done and twice the director ruled against them. They then went to appeal on both rulings and eventually won both sometime around midnight and emerged the winners by one IMP! Their star player Michal Klukowski would get many votes as the strongest player in the world today. Just see how

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

The great betrayal of the SAS

We should all feel scared to our bones about the persecution of the SAS, soldiers harried through the courts for jobs they did many decades ago. It’s not that the SAS should be allowed to behave like trigger-happy psychos, but as Paul Wood wrote in this magazine before Christmas, Special Forces are now being hounded and punished for simply following orders and conducting operations. And what will we soft sofa-sitters do when no one wants to be a soldier any more? Wood described in particular the plight of 12 soldiers of a Specialist Military Unit (SMU) deployed in Ireland in February 1992 to apprehend a gang of IRA terrorists –

Toby Young Toby Young

The woke movement is finally over

Is the ‘Cathedral’ about to fall down? That’s the name given by the right-wing blogger Curtis Yarvin to denote the 21st century’s most prestigious intellectual institutions, particularly in journalism and academia. He’s talking about the BBC, CNN, the Guardian, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Reuters, Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc. But we can enlarge the definition to include nearly all the West’s high-status institutions and professions. One of the mysteries of the Cathedral, he says, is that the people in these power centres seem to be members of the same cult-like religious movement – the Great Awokening, Wokus Dei – even though there’s no Holy See

Roger Alton Roger Alton

The real reason for Scotland’s Six Nations defeat

The confused world of Duhan van der Merwe must seem more confused than usual after last weekend. The Scotland winger with an accent that sounds more Western Cape than Western Isles found himself crowned man of the match despite Scotland’s defeat by England at Twickenham, while at the same time being scapegoated as the man who lost the game and the Calcutta Cup for his adopted nation. Van der Merwe, who at 6ft 4in and nearly 17 stone could easily be mistaken for a lock forward, was roundly criticised for cutting away from the posts rather than towards them when he ran in the try right at the end of

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: How do I tell my friend that hot food needs hot plates?

Q. A divorced male friend, renting in Notting Hill, has had no historic experience of cooking but has discovered Lidgate pies and started giving lunches. His dining table seats 12, he provides good wine and cheese and the ambiance, the quality of guests and the (fake) log fire make for a superb atmosphere. His morale has been considerably boosted. But sadly the pies (potentially fabulous) are always lukewarm by the time the food is on the plates. Am I alone in thinking that hot plates are essential when serving hot food? If so, how can I say something without undermining his new confidence? – B.B., London W11 A. Well done

Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

The tiramisu is one of the loveliest things I’ve eaten anywhere: La Môme London reviewed

La Môme is the new ‘Mediterranean’ restaurant at the Berkeley, Knightsbridge’s monumental grand hotel. It has changed, as all London’s grand hotels have changed: it is Little Dubai in the cold and the chintz is on the bonfire. Fairy lights hang from the awning of the entrance, as if in an eternal Christmas. I barely recognise it, though I ate an impersonation of a mandarin in its overwrought Instagram-friendly bakery two years ago, and it was inferior to a real mandarin. I cling to that. Designers must keep busy: this means grand hotels are always getting renovated – it’s life of a kind. The lobby feels gold, though that may

Dot Wordsworth

Geoffrey Madan and the joy of ‘unusual articles’

In 1924 Geoffrey Madan retired, aged 29, and devoted himself to books. ‘A genius for friendship, selfless devotion to progressive causes, a deep and touching love of animals and of natural beauty – he would not have claimed for himself any of these so frequent attributes of the lately dead,’ said an obituary never published. Published 34 years posthumously, however, in 1981, were Geoffrey Madan’s Notebooks, a commonplace book edited by J.A. Gere and John Sparrow, with a foreword by his friend Harold Macmillan. One entry lists 17 lives in the Dictionary of National Biography ‘of interest and not usually read’, such as John Selby Watson (1804-84), ‘author and murderer’;

Sophia Money-Coutts

The secret to a great service station

A couple of months ago, an invitation arrived. Would I like a room at the Savoy for the Baftas? I could attend the awards, guzzle champagne, walk the red carpet alongside Demi Moore and Ariana Grande and so on. Sadly, I replied, I was already booked up that weekend as a judge for a very different kind of competition: the World Marmalade Awards in Cumbria. This year marks the 20th anniversary of this event, held at a whopping Grade-I listed house just outside Penrith, surrounded by stone walls and sheep. Ahead of time, all judges were told to bring warm clothes, so I drove from London with a suitcase of

Gus Carter Gus Carter

Meet the Zoomer Doomers: Britain’s secret right-wing movement

One of the striking aspects of the AfD’s success in the German elections was the party’s popularity among the young, especially men under 25: one in four voted for the hard-right movement. Support for bracingly conservative positions among Gen-Z men isn’t just a German phenomenon, however. In Westminster and beyond, a new breed of young right-wing influencers is seeking to shift our politics. Meet the Zoomer Doomers. They use acerbic posts to humiliate the defenders of the status quo, in a strategy known as ‘from posting to policy’. Terms such as ‘Boriswave’ – which refers to the net migration figure that spiked at 900,000 under Johnson’s leadership – first appeared

Paul Wood

The strange beauty of the vigil for the Pope

Steady rain during the day stopped just before Monday’s evening prayers for Pope Francis in Saint Peter’s Square. A line of cardinals sat on a platform, an ageing politburo in black and scarlet. A couple of thousand of the faithful and the curious stood below. Vatican gendarmes, wearing kepis and carrying sidearms, directed people to their places. The Swiss Guard were not on duty. Their gaudy, striped uniforms would anyway have been too exuberant for the occasion, a tenth night in hospital for the Pope, dangerously ill with double pneumonia at the age of 88. Floodlights illuminated the great baroque façade of the most famous building in Christendom. Cobblestones glistened;

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Foreign aid cut, Pope in hospital and King pulls a pint

Home Before flying to Washington, Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, said: ‘We have to be ready to play our role if a force is required in Ukraine once a peace agreement is reached.’ He told the Commons that Britain would raise defence spending to 2.5 per cent of national income by 2027, funded by cutting development aid from 0.5 per cent to 0.3 per cent of GDP. The government surplus for January, when much tax comes in, was £15.4 billion, the highest ever, but far below the £20.5 billion predicted by the Office for Budget Responsibility. Average household energy bills will rise from April by £111 to £1,849 a

Charles Moore Charles Moore

What will Zelensky’s fate be?

Kyiv We resemble pilgrims. Because of the war, no one can fly to Ukraine, and so we travel, romantically, by night train. ‘We’ means assorted European dignitaries, a thin sprinkling of Americans, and the media. I find myself sharing a cabin with a former president of the European parliament. The holy day is Monday, the third anniversary of the Russian invasion. We emerge, yawning and crumpled, into the sub-zero dawn. The collective object is to show our devotion to Ukraine’s struggle. This year, our numbers are swollen because of Donald Trump. (In a Polish service station near the border I noticed a magazine cover in which his face is superimposed

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

The reformation of the Labour party

The world order has shifted on its axis, having been given a peremptory boot by the US President. What is striking to me is the speed with which our government has accustomed itself to the new dawn, overnight, almost with a sense of relief. Listen to senior Labour figures today and they do not always sound like the internationalist lifestyle-leftist Labour ninnies of old. They sound rather less internationalist than previous Conservative administrations. A whole stupid ideology seems to have been shed within a week or so. It would not surprise me hugely to hear Keir Starmer talk of ‘remigration’ in fond terms in the not-too-distant future. The Prime Minister

The Spectator

Keir Starmer’s welcome embrace of realism

Sixty-five years ago, a British Prime Minister acknowledged that a new world order was coming to pass and that it was time to lay down a burden the country could, and should, no longer shoulder. Harold Macmillan’s ‘wind of change’ speech in Cape Town signalled the eclipse of empire, the retreat of Britain from imperial pretensions and a new age of nationalism in Africa. Today, our own Prime Minister has trimmed his sails to catch a very different wind of change. He is navigating a new path – necessitated by the impact of Storm Donald from across the Atlantic. Sir Keir Starmer has indicated that Britain is willing to bear