Society

Wednesday

Lucy Vickery

Spectator competition winners: the worm who came back to life after 46,000 years

In Competition No. 3313, you were invited to supply a poem about the worms that were resurrected by scientists after being frozen in the Siberian permafrost for 46,000 years. The tiny roundworms, buried deep underground since the late Pleistocene, were brought back to life by being immersed in water and transported to Germany – in a scientist’s pocket – to see what lessons the creatures might yield for 21st-century humanity. (They were, it was discovered, able to survive extreme low temperatures by entering a dormant state called cryptobiosis.) Their remarkable story produced a smart, lively and varied entry. A commendation to W.J. Webster’s limerick: A Pleistocene worm from Siberia, Dug

Richard Madeley

Don’t cancel Queen

Another week, another whitewash. The latest chunk of culture to be painted out of existence is ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’, Queen’s 1978 hit. Don’t misunderstand me. I’ve never liked the song. I think it’s crude, patronising and misogynistic. It was pretty dated even on the day Queen recorded it. But that’s my problem. Millions loved it. That’s why it was track four on the band’s 1981 Greatest Hits album. But as Universal Records re-release Queen’s classic collection, FBG is track nothing. Track gone. Track ghosted. We’ve got to stop doing this neopuritanical cultural censorship, whether it be with songs, books (Enid Blyton’s PC-filtered Famous Five or P.G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves), fairy stories

Luke McShane

No. 766

White to play. Steiger-Stebbings, European Senior Team Championship, 2023. White played 1 h2-h4, and a draw was agreed a few moves later. What opportunity did he overlook? Answers should be emailed to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 28 August. 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 Qxf5+ Kxf5 2 Bd3 mate Last week’s winner Gordon Ironside, Wallington, Sutton

Luke McShane

Senior teams

England teams brought home a raft of medals from the European Senior Teams Championship, held last month in Swidnica, Poland. England’s first team were top seeds in the over-50s event, with an all-grandmaster lineup (Mark Hebden, John Emms, Keith Arkell, Glenn Flear and Chris Ward). They faced a serious challenge from Slovakia, whom they defeated in the final round by 2.5-1.5. Mark Hebden was the standout performer, winning the individual gold medal on top board with a 7.5/8 score. His game against Jonathan Hill, from England’s third team, had a neat finish. Jonathan Hill–Mark Hebden European Senior (50+) Team Championship In the diagram position, capturing the rook on Rc2 would

Dot Wordsworth

The changing face of ‘values’

‘Don’t they know what prolific means?’ asked my husband, looking up in a bad-tempered way from a headline on the BBC website: ‘Lucy Letby: Investigating the UK’s most prolific child killer.’ Sky News, the Mail, Reuters and the CheshireLive website used the phrase too. Prolific comes from the Latin prolificus, meaning ‘producing or capable of producing offspring’. It can be used figuratively to mean ‘abundantly creative’ or just ‘productive’. A poet might deliberately use the phrase prolific child killer as a harsh oxymoron. For a journalist to use it in such a context is deplorable. A word far less easy to pin down is now widely used as a weapon:

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: how to leave a boring book club

Q. I am organising a funeral for a close relative and am puzzled that some people wish to attend the wake but not the service of committal at the crematorium. My view is that if you want to enjoy the wake, which will be a good party in a perfect country pub, then you should be willing to pay your respects first. Should I simply not inform these people in advance of the wake venue, since it is usual for this to be revealed only at the funeral on the order of service sheet? – Name and address withheld A. You could reply: ‘We haven’t quite sorted out the wake

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

What I learned from being debanked

My own debanking story concerns a card rather than a bank account. Not the same degree of inconvenience as Nigel Farage, but a similarly telling insight into modern administrative culture. I feel awkward writing this, because in the 30 years I have used American Express, including an enjoyable decade when I also worked for the brand as a copywriter, few companies have impressed me more. They are unfailingly courteous and responsive. On many occasions, such as when arriving at an airport to discover I had to pay £4,000 for an unratified airline ticket, my card has been invaluable; I willingly follow their advice not to leave home without it. But

Toby Young Toby Young

The appalling hypocrisy of Peter Wilby

According to the ancient proverb, if you sit by the river for long enough you will see the body of your enemy float by. That happened to me earlier this week when I discovered the fate of Peter Wilby, a former editor of the New Statesman and the Independent on Sunday. In 2018, when I was forced to resign from a government job over old tweets, Wilby wrote an article saying my public humiliation had come as no surprise to him. Apparently, I’d made a career out of ‘denigrating women, homosexuals, disabled people, ethnic minorities and anybody on benefits’, and ‘disgraced’ the memory of my dead father. ‘At one stage

John Mac Ghlionn

Should trans women be banned from women’s chess?

The arguments for keeping trans women from participating in women’s sport are well rehearsed. As the former Olympic swimmer Sharron Davies wrote in this magazine in June, the simple truth is that men on average run faster, jump higher and are stronger than women. Their biology gives them irreversible advantages.  Even the world of chess has been pulled into the debate. Last week, the International Chess Federation banned trans women from participating in women’s matches. The English Chess Federation, on the other hand, refuses to exclude trans women. On first inspection, the decision to ban makes no sense. After all, the usual arguments of unfair physical advantages in women’s games

The Spectator

Are whole life orders becoming more common?

Bank on it Does the August bank holiday actually celebrate anything? – When bank holidays were first established in 1871, the August bank holiday fell at the beginning of the month, allegedly because it was an important week for cricket in Yorkshire, the home county of MP Sir John Lubbock, who introduced the parliamentary act creating bank holidays. – It was moved to the Monday after the last Saturday in August as an experiment in 1965, largely because early August coincided with the annual factory closure, and many workers were on holiday then anyway. – In 1968 and 1969 the holiday fell in September, so in 1971 it was fixed

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

In defence of budget airlines

I have a memory picture of an urban highway in Shenzen, southern China. Recently built, with abundant flowering shrubs planted along its central reservation, it was lined as far as the eye could see by uncountable apartment towers, many of them unfinished. This was 2009 and it was my first glimpse of the debt-fuelled property bonanza that had begun to grip the Chinese economy – alongside the export-led manufacturing boom that was also plainly visible, thanks to satellite maps of the vast agglomeration of factories surrounding the new-rich residential areas. It’s easy to be a permanent bear in any market, because history tells us they all come crashing down in

The Spectator

Letters: Hollywood owners have ruined Wrexham FC

Wild abandon Sir: As upsetting and pointless as is the National Trust’s cancelling of the fishing lease on the River Test at Mottisfont Abbey (Letters, 19 August), it is all of a piece with the way the National Trust is going. On the 13,000-acre Wallington Estate in Northumberland, the Trust has recently spent a small fortune elaborately fencing off 50 acres to release beavers on one of the two farms they have recently taken out of agricultural production. They trumpet their intention to create ‘Wild Wallington’ by abandoning it to nature and planting trees on as much of the estate’s farmland as they can. The farms at Wallington were wrested

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Why can’t NHS managers spot a serial killer?

No one who has paid any attention to NHS scandals over the past few decades should be at all surprised by the way in which managers at Lucy Letby’s hospital repeatedly dismissed concerns about her. When worried consultants produced considerable evidence to show that the nurse was present at every single event where a baby had dramatically collapsed or suddenly died, they ended up being the ones in the firing line. Management even forced them to apologise to Letby personally at an HR meeting, to which, bizarrely, the nurse brought along her parents. Doctors are suspicious of the calibre of those managing them, and the managers are often on the

Lionel Shriver Lionel Shriver

Therapy has turned on itself

Were I to overcome a lifelong scepticism about the healing powers of talk therapy, I imagine languishing on a psychiatrist’s divan and whimpering something along these lines: ‘All this “woke” stuff – I’ve even come to hate the word. Resisting its idiocies is taking over my life. I worry that I’m not setting my own agenda. When you decry something as stupid, aren’t you still babbling about something stupid? It’s a big, wonderful world out there, and “wokery” is killjoy, reductive and mean. I feel trapped.’ Yet according to the recent essay collection Cynical Therapies, I’d elicit an icy response. ‘Look here, Karen,’ my hypothetical therapist charges with a scowl.

Janet de Botton

Bridge | 26 August 2023

To over-ruff or not to over-ruff? THAT is the question. Terence Reese said: ‘When you’re offered an over-ruff, think twice about it, and then reject it.’ If you have a natural trump trick, it’s usually wrong to waste it on an over-ruff, but when you don’t, it can be hard to resist. Good old Terence was right though (he usually was); it often costs at least one trick, sometimes more… The Chairman’s Cup in Sweden at the end of July was won by a multi-national team led by Gillian Miniter, from the USA, playing with Joe Grue, Tom Paske and – almost inevitably these days – the Rimstedt brothers. Here’s

Melissa Kite

Have millennials sunk my house sale?

We were about to exchange contracts when I got a call from the estate agent to tell me that another list of queries had come in. I took one look at it and decided I had better not read it properly, because I saw the words ‘wind turbines’. In a few decades no conveyancing will be possible and no one willbe able to move house ‘What the hell is this?’ I asked the agent, who was stuttering: ‘Oh dear… calm down…’ ‘Don’t tell a woman to calm down!’ I shouted. And he apologised profusely. I felt sorry for him. It wasn’t his fault. The buyer’s solicitor had gone on holiday

Taki

The day I have dreaded has finally arrived: my birthday

Coronis Trafficking in enchantment, I sailed west to Coronis, the most perfect private isle on this planet. At times I think I’m in the realm of fantasy, such is the beauty of the place, the perfection of its function, yet a nouveau riche, Bezos or Zuckerberg, say, would most likely find it not up to par because of its understatement. The island is greener than green, with olive trees and pines and vegetable gardens all planted by the owners, stone bungalows hidden from view, a great main house even more hidden from view, a discreet beach clubhouse, all in a wholesome, nostalgic setting poignantly evocative of a time before Succession-tinged

Jawad Iqbal

Why India wants to conquer the moon

India – or, to be more precise, its leader Narendra Modi – wants to conquer space. That is why the success of the country’s latest moon mission matters so much. Only three countries – the United States, the former Soviet Union and China – have completed a successful landing on the lunar surface. No country has ever managed a landing near the moon’s south pole – a treacherous and freezing landscape, covered in darkness. India has long harboured the dream of being the first nation to do so, demolishing once and for all hurtful aspersions that it is a minnow in the space race. There is big money to be

Tuesday

Ben Lazarus Ben Lazarus

How did United handle the Mason Greenwood scandal so badly?  

It’s hard not to be shocked by the distressing clip shared online, allegedly featuring the Manchester United footballer Mason Greenwood. In the clip a woman can be heard trying to stop a man forcing her into having sex. The audio was uploaded in January last year alongside images of the alleged victim looking bruised and battered, with blood running down from her mouth.   When the clip was released, Manchester United responded by suspending the now 21-year-old Greenwood. But they stopped short of tearing up his contract. This was the first big mistake the club made. They could have saved themselves a huge amount of hassle (and appalling publicity) had they, at