Modern manners

Thursday

Mary Killen

Dear Mary solves problems for Nicky Haslam, Nigel Slater, Professor Mary Beard and others

From Nicky Haslam Q. Being considered something of a guru on the subject of things common, can you advise me how to finesse the host or hostess who asks, challengingly, ‘I suppose you think my twinkling decorations/strings of cards/mulled wine/sushi/antler headband/children are terribly common?’ A wan smile won’t suffice. A. Say, ‘Yes I do. You’re so clever to be in the vanguard. Common is the new chic.’ From Nigel Slater Q. With each passing year (I am nearly 60, for heaven’s sake), I am finding it increasingly difficult to lie convincingly. This is a particular problem when unwrapping presents. The grateful words flow from my lips like warm jam from

Quentin Letts

The year of the cad

Now that former Central Office favourite Mark Clarke has been banned for life from the Conservative party, he could pursue a career in copy-writing. He seems to have a twisted aptitude for that sort of thing. When leading the Tories’ general election RoadTrip 2015 of young activists, many of them peachy girls, Mr Clarke was said to have had the slogan ‘Isolate, inebriate and penetrate’. Though he denies the bon mot, his approach was apparently wildly successful — which is more than can be said for his attempts to land a parliamentary seat. Several women, including at least one serving cabinet minister, fell for this plausible smarmer over the years. Mr

Joan Collins

Christmas Notebook | 10 December 2015

As I strolled through the aisles in a large department store, I almost choked when I read a large display that blared: ‘Don’t forget to treat your pussy at Christmas…’ with relief I read the rest of the ad: ‘…and your bow-wow too!’ Beneath the dubious banner lay a massive display of beautifully wrapped chew toys, scratching posts and all manner of treats and playthings. That’s when I realised this entire Christmas practice has gone truly bonkers. Every 6 January I breathe a sigh of relief as I take down and store the enormous number of Christmas decorations with which I festoon my house. ‘Never again!’ I say to Percy,

Thursday

Harry Mount

The secret brilliance of Prince Philip’s ‘gaffes’

Prince Philip has died at the age of 99. Writing in 2015, Harry Mount reflected on the Duke of Edinburgh’s personable style and sense of public service. I’ve just been on the receiving end of a Prince Philip gaffe, of sorts, and I loved it. It was at a lunch last week at the Cavalry and Guards Club for the Gallipoli Association — the charity that commemorates victims and veterans of that tragic, doomed campaign. For 40 years, the Duke of Edinburgh has been the association’s patron. And so, in Gallipoli’s centenary year, he came to the association’s lunch. Before lunch, he roamed at will around the cavernous drawing room, chatting

Thursday

Cosmo Landesman

Women’s issues are for everyone now, not just feminists

Like all right-thinking lefty men who came of age in the women’s liberation movement of the 1970s, I always thought of myself as a feminist. But now, thanks to Meryl Streep, I’ve been liberated from the label. Last week I heard her on the radio promoting her new film Suffragette. Asked why the story of the suffragettes hadn’t been made into a film before now, she said that in Hollywood the men with the power to get films made didn’t see this subject as anything to do with them. ‘It wasn’t their fight,’ said Streep. But now things were changing. ‘Increasingly we think that women’s issues and women rights are

Thursday

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: Another way to deal with a maddening blackhead

Q. Might I suggest an alternative solution to E.B. of London’s problem (3 October) about the person sporting a ‘maddening’ blackhead at a poolside party? Surely a more tactful way of drawing the man’s attention to the blackhead would have been for E.B. to pretend she thought it was an insect that had landed. On failing to shoo it away, she could have exclaimed that it might be a tick and he should remove it and then offered to assist in this operation. The nuisance could thus have been dealt with without the poor man even discovering that he had an embarrassing zit. — J.P., Stratford upon Avon A. Thank

Thursday

The Spectator

Dear Mary: How can girls avoid freezing in cold marquees?

Q. What do you do when you are so cold at a party that you cannot enjoy it? At a recent 21st in Hampshire the theme was Summer of Love so I was in a beaded catsuit and my friends were in cotton minidresses with bandanas and thin velvet coats. But the theme Arctic Explorers would have been more appropriate. There were heaters in the marquee but they only made a difference if you stood in front of them and only one person at a time could do so. The food and music were brilliant but all we could think about was how cold we were. Our host was cold

James Bartholomew

I invented ‘virtue signalling’. Now it’s taking over the world

To my astonishment and delight, the phrase ‘virtue signalling’ has become part of the English language. I coined the phrase in an article here in The Spectator (18 April) in which I described the way in which many people say or write things to indicate that they are virtuous. Sometimes it is quite subtle. By saying that they hate the Daily Mail or Ukip, they are really telling you that they are admirably non-racist, left-wing or open-minded. One of the crucial aspects of virtue signalling is that it does not require actually doing anything virtuous. It does not involve delivering lunches to elderly neighbours or staying together with a spouse

Thursday

Molly Ceglowski

Baby steps

When I was pregnant, nearly everyone who’d had children asked me and my husband whether we’d booked our antenatal course with the National Childbirth Trust. Men tended to ask with a gleam of sadistic glee in their eye, and the question was almost always followed by a hurried disclaimer: ‘Ignore most of what they say, but it’s worth it for the friends.’ It seemed like an expensive and boring way to make friends: the courses are usually 17 hours long and they cost several hundred pounds. The NCT offers heavily discounted rates to people who can’t afford it, but for most of its pupils, the full fee is an accepted

Thursday

Mary Wakefield

Is my only choice to be a cynic or a sucker?

It’s all the rage to mistrust the powerful these days, to say politicians are scum, or all bankers are selfish. Journalists are considered particularly disgusting post-Corbyn, which encourages all manner of needling on Twitter: ‘I’m sorry, but if you’re a journalist you should get a better job.’ This from a Corbynite. ‘I’m sorry, but…’ — are there three more irritating words? All this sticking it to The Man. All this talk of real, kindly people versus the shifty elite. I think it’s bogus. Not because the elite isn’t greedy but because the implication is that we the people have some sort of solidarity; that we’re let down only by our

Thursday

Dot Wordsworth

Twitter speak

‘Tweeting’s like text messaging, isn’t it?’ said my husband confidently, though not, as usual, from any knowledge of the matter. I find the register of language in tweets interesting. The tweeter in his own right must assume an easy tone, quite different from that of the niggling troll. As far as style goes, I was impressed by Jamie Reed, the Labour MP who made public his resignation from the shadow cabinet when Jeremy Corbyn had hardly finished his acceptance speech. Mr Reed is fond of tweeting, and quite good at it. The little picture (tweeters it call an avatar) with his account shows Larry Sanders, the fictional chatshow host. Having

Thursday

Mark Mason

The perfect pub

Whenever one of those news stories appears about how many pubs have been forced to close in the last year, I always think of George Orwell. He would have had the correct reaction: lots of pubs are forced to close because they’re terrible. Yes, the pub is a wonderful British institution, with a long and noble history — but that doesn’t mean that any individual pub has a God-given right to stay open forever. If a landlord waters down his beer and scowls at his customers, as plenty of them do, they’ve only got themselves to blame when the bailiffs come knocking. We know Orwell had strong opinions on the

Thursday

Dot Wordsworth

Names | 27 August 2015

We reached peak Charlie in 2012, when 5,571 baby boys were given the name. There were only 4,642 last year. Perhaps the Paris massacre early this year will leave more infants than ever lisping ‘Je suis Charlie’ when they learn to talk. Names go in waves. In the Office for National Statistics list of last year’s names in England and Wales, diminutives are noticeably popular. Charlie, not Charles, is at No. 5 for boys, with Harry, not Henry, at No. 3 and Jack, not John, at No. 2. The tendency is less pronounced among girls, with the tenth most popular name being Sophie, though Lily (ninth) and Poppy (fifth) sound like diminutives. Of

Anne Williams

Last orders | 27 August 2015

Lant Street would be easy to miss, if you weren’t looking for it. Charles Dickens lodged on Lant Street as a child, during his father’s stay in Marshalsea debtors’ prison nearby. The Gladstone Arms is about halfway down, doors open to the narrow street on a warm afternoon in August. Inside, an old man nurses a pint in late summer light that falls through mullioned windows. The grain of the oak floors has a dark patina of London grime. There is nothing spiffed-up about the place. But it’s beautiful, and in decent nick. A black and white cat sits on the piano. This tiny place is also a live music

Douglas Murray

Death watch | 27 August 2015

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/thereturnofassisteddying/media.mp3″ title=”Lord Falconer and Douglas Murray debate ‘assisted dying'” startat=42] Listen [/audioplayer]A couple of years ago I contacted Holland’s top pro-euthanasia organisation. Our House of Lords looks likely to approve a bill legalising euthanasia here, I told them. ‘Very exciting!’ came the reply. Next month Parliament will again be discussing ‘assisted dying’, and although the tone of the British debate is not yet quite like the Dutch one, a shift in tone has undoubtedly occurred. In the past few years euthanasia has been renamed ‘assisted dying’ and become part of the ‘progressive’ cause. As two assisted dying bills, including Lord Falconer’s, come back to Parliament, the onus seems to

Ysenda Maxtone Graham

The breast test

How should a new mother feed her baby? You might well imagine that was up to her. While some mothers take to breast-feeding as if their bosoms have been waiting all their lives for it, others find it exhausting, excruciating and demoralising. Sacrificing every waking hour to nature’s cause, they still produce a mere soupçon of milk, not nearly enough to satisfy a ravenous baby. So isn’t it sometimes better to bottle-feed, with formula milk? Beware. To do such a thing, in our guilt-ridden, competitive age, is seen as stepping into an abyss of last resort. Never mind that your baby will stop crying at last, fall blissfully asleep: the

Thursday

Isabel Hardman and Lara Prendergast

The dangerous food fad

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/thecleaneatingcult/media.mp3″ title=”Ian Marber, Isabel Hardman and Lara Prendergast discuss the cult of clean eating” startat=40] Listen [/audioplayer]The supermarket aisle has become a confusing place. It used to be full of recognisable items like cheese and butter; now you find yourself bamboozled by all manner of odd alternatives such as ‘raw’ hummus, wheat-free bread and murky juices. You have to stay pretty alert to make sure you pick up a pint of proper milk, rather than a soy-based alternative or one free from lactose. Supermarkets have become shrines to ‘clean eating’, a faith that promises happiness, healthiness and energy. Food is to be worshipped — and feared. As with all

Mary Killen

Your problems solved | 20 August 2015

Q. How can you tactfully tell someone that the large skin tag or blob they have grown in the centre of their forehead is disfiguring and should be removed? The person involved is a dear cousin who spends all her time do-gooding and thinking of others and is totally unvain. Her boyfriend, who should be the one to tell her, is one of those half-baked hippie types and would consider himself above commenting on anything so transient as ‘appearance’. No doubt he reassures her if she asks whether she should have it removed, but it is definitely spoiling her looks. — Name withheld, Ludlow A. Next time you see your

The Spectator

Barometer | 20 August 2015

No sex, please Several friends of the late Sir Edward Heath asserted that he could not be guilty of sexually assaulting children because he was asexual. How many adults do not experience sexual attraction? — A 2004 study by Anthony F. Bogaert, of Brock University, Ontario, Canada, analysed responses to a British questionnaire ten years earlier. Of 18,000 respondents, 195, or just over 1%, had agreed with the statement ‘I have never felt sexually attracted to anyone at all’. — A 1983 study by a student at the University of Michigan classified 5% of males and 10% of females as asexual. Unaccountable spending The EU declined to offer a breakdown

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

Mirror, mirror

Body dysmorphia, the unfortunate medical condition whereby a perfectly pleasant/slender person believes themselves to be ugly/fat, is a strange and sad thing. I’d always presumed it to be (like anorexia and bulimia) a primarily female problem, so much more importance being placed on the appearance of women than men. Respectable medical surveys indicate otherwise. Nevertheless, women tend to see themselves as less attractive than they are. A sizeable number of men, on the other hand, suffer from the opposite delusion. I call them Magic Mirror men, because they seem to possess an inner looking-glass which tells them that they are, indeed, the fairest of them all. Why else do ugly