Taking care | <td colspan="2">How much do local authorities spend on adult social care (at 2024/25 prices)? | 2009/10 | £23.2bn | 2011/12 | £22.1bn | 2013/14 | £21.2bn | 2015/16 | £21.7bn | 2017/18 | £22.1bn | 2019/20 | £23.3bn | 2021/22 | £25.2bn | 2023/24 | £26.9bn | 2024/25 | £27.8bn | <td colspan="2">Department for Health and Social Care | Department for Health and Social Care
Not even the apocalypse could make me desperate enough to buy corned beef
在局势艰难之时。接下来是饼干（Peter's Yard——为了配鹰嘴豆泥），以及几包大米和意面。 幸运的是，我的调料架储备相当充足，所以不必太担心应急口粮的口味问题。我还准备好了开罐器、开瓶器（为了那些美妙的地中海红葡萄酒）和电池供电的肉类温度计——毕竟，谁想在国家紧急状态期间还搞出食物中毒？不过，我在心里提醒自己，下次路过 Holland and Barrett 时得进去买些薄荷片和活性炭药片，据说这两者对缓解肠胃不适非常有效。 世界卫生组织建议每户家庭…
Concrete may be dirty to produce, but you can't use bamboo or flax to create dams, tunnels and bomb shelters
ly 的碳排放，这源于燃烧石灰石以生产水泥——水泥与水、沙子和骨料共同构成了混凝土。但混凝土本身是无辜的——至少在有人决定用它做一些愚蠢且丑陋的事情之前是这样。 撇开建筑技术的奇迹不谈，混凝土在隐喻上的运用更令人着迷。建筑材料很容易转化为意象：钢铁般的决心（steely resolve）、玻璃心（a heart of glass）、木讷的表情（a wooden expression），以及缺根筋（a few bricks short of a load）。…
我们对 Last Mile 的投资正助力将英国各地的新住宅和开发项目与至关重要的“最后一英里”公用事业服务连接起来。 我们致力于通过将住宅连接至必要的公用事业基础设施，帮助交付英国所需的高质量、节能住宅。 欲了解更多信息，请访问 macquarie.com 位于 Barnton, The Avenue 的 Last Mile 项目
“摩根先生，”电话那头传来一个伪装成贵族般的嗓音，“我是斯宾塞伯爵。我这次抓到你了，你这个混蛋。” suffice it to say，在那个所谓的“历史学家”因在其新书中发表关于我的谎言而被强迫公开道歉后，上周并没有发生这样的通话。（他指控我在1993年担任《镜报》编辑，当时该报发布了戴安娜王妃在健身房的照片，这是一次臭名昭著的侵犯隐私行为，导致了100万英镑的赔偿金——但我直到1995年才加入《镜报》。） 然而，31年后，这次通话所涉及的讽刺之处我深有…
在安迪·伯纳姆（Andy Burnham）周二于工党党代会上发表讲话后，一位资深的派系斗争专家宣称：“我们现在全都是伯纳姆主义者了。”浪漫主义者热爱这种辞令；愤世嫉俗者则敬佩这种冷酷。“高手识高手，”一位工党人士说道。 首相的演说旨在为寻求支持的受伤政党打气。这篇演说充满情感且具有个人色彩，但同时又具有强烈的政治性，展现出他对工党价值观及其利益的敏锐洞察。“购房权”（Right to Buy）曾吸引大批民众投奔保守党，而现在这一政策将在新房中被叫停；一个新…
首相安迪·伯纳姆宣布，养老金三倍锁定机制将于 2030, 年结束，届时将取消与收入的挂钩。他身着西装但未系领带，在工党党代会上表示：“我将与过去 40 年的方向决裂。”他表示，如果房屋被闲置或出租但未得到良好维护，将被没收。他表示将“废除玛格丽特·撒切尔对水务公司公有制的意识形态禁令”；他将通过建立一家公有公司——英国电网（Great British Grid）来降低电价。在布莱克斯托克的凯西男爵夫人（Baroness Casey of Blackstoc…
《如何思考恐怖主义：关于哲学、历史与政治的反思》 (How To Think About Terrorism: Reflections on Philosophy, History and Politics) 作者：夸西姆·卡萨姆 (Quassim Cassam) 与 理查德·英格利什 (Richard English) 牛津大学出版社 (OUP)，£25，272页
《战争》(War) Sky Atlantic / Now TV 《账目中的科林》(Colin from Accounts) 在他在2012年写的那部带着自嘲幽默的小说《忘记妻子的男人》(The Man Who Forgot His Wife) 中，约翰·奥法雷尔 (John O'Farrell) 将日益野蛮的离婚过程比作战争：“1939年，英国皇家空军认为轰炸黑森林以剥夺德国人的木材是不道德的。但到了1945年，他们则在故意制造火风暴，以杀死尽可能多的平民…
周五。我在克拉科夫向聚集于此的情报机构、执法部门和行为科学家发表讲话。我告诉他们如何在工作中协助打击反犹主义。这次演讲是访问奥斯威辛-比克瑙纪念馆和博物馆的前奏。仅有言语是不够的。在我们会面之时，立陶宛强调了俄罗斯试图通过侵入领空来恐吓支持乌克兰的北约国家。 周六。中国举办了机器人奥运会，坚定地聚焦于技术增强的未来。这个周末，我们英国人举办了一场规模相当的活动。我们的活动中没有 AI 驱动的人形机器人；相反，这里全是高升程凸轮轴、低沉的引擎轰鸣、啤酒、尼龙…
[MATTHEW PARRIS] I bid fond farewell to Great Lives
在我家的床头有一个小架子，我把早晨有用的东西都放在上面。硬币、钥匙、我的智能手机、一些耳滴剂，还有……我看着它，它也回望着我。“你不再需要我了，”它似乎在说，“大概这辈子再也不会需要了。” 我承认，我的眼中泛起了一丝泪光。这是事实。我的 BBC 通行证挂在蓝色挂绳上，经常放在床边，以便我能直接从德比郡前往位于牛津圆环附近的广播大楼（New Broadcasting House）的 BBC 演播室。 有多少次，我从地铁站走出来，沿着摄政街上街，经过那座像“胡…
Q. 如果调情不可行，还有其他方式能向某人表达好感吗？我的情况是：在一次午餐会上，一名非常有吸引力的女孩坐在我的右边，而她的右边坐着一个显然也喜欢她的男人。因为这个男人表现出对我创业公司的投资兴趣，我不想与他竞争，以免破坏他加入的可能性。于是我表现得很淡定，结果她离开时完全不知道我对她感兴趣。我当时该如何更好地处理这种情况？—— 姓名与地址保密 A. 当那个男人安全地转身离开后，你应该编一个虚构的书名，然后问那个女孩，例如：“你读过戴德丽·斯奎尔（Deir…
[THE SPECTATOR ESTABLISHED 1828] The return of Old Labour
When the Social Democratic Party was launched in 1981, its prospectus was dismissed witheringly by the liberal thinker Ralf Dahrendorf as a plan for ‘a better yesterday’. Andy Burnham has gone one better. He plans to rerun Labour’s last term in office. But this time with feeling.
The Prime Minister's address to his party conference was many things – fluent, passionate, moving, politically effective. But one thing it was not: forward-looking. The quality of the delivery invited comparison with Tony Blair but, unlike Blair, our current PM was not promising modernisation. He was instead seeking to revisit the Blair years and pursue the road not taken by Labour in 1997 – the long march left.
The heart of the Burnham programme is a rejection of the New Labour belief that an accommodation had to be made with Margaret Thatcher's own modernisation of Britain's economy. The Blairites believed that they needed to demonstrate moderation and discipline before Labour could be trusted to govern again. They had to accept the erosion of union power, embrace a bigger role for the market and reject their own activists' obsessions before they could pursue their central project of public-sector reform. Above all, a vigorous private sector had to be supported to generate growth – with taxes set at a level that encouraged entrepreneurship – and education policy reformed to match global competitors.
Every single one of those Blairite principles was comprehensively trashed by Andy Burnham this week. Thatcher's (and John Major's) privatisations should be reversed; the historic crime of council house sell-offs atoned for. Far from reforming the National Health Service, with greater market discipline, accountability, choice and contestability, its monolithic model should be extended with the creation of a new bureaucratic behemoth – the National Care Service. Paid for with more public money.
Because, whatever the merits of amending the pension triple lock, the Burnham proposals will cost additional billions at a time when public debt is still escalating. The PM clearly regrets that he was never able, as health secretary in 2009, to build back Bevan, but now he is seeking to make good on those ambitions just when the nation's finances are growing weaker by the day.
The repudiation of Blairism and the embrace of an older, more left-wing path for Labour were there in the promise of state control of utilities and state direction of investment. Largesse for the trade unions was announced by John Healey in a speech which celebrated the solidarity displayed during the miners' strike but said next to nothing about the real problems of rising energy prices and the real opportunities offered by technological transformation. We are entering an age where AI is transforming our world but the
Every Blairite principle was comprehensively trashed by Andy Burnham this week
Chancellor would rather channel Dennis Skinner than Demis Hassabis.
The prostration before the household gods of the left continued with Ed Miliband's endorsement of the campaign run by Gaza independents to put Israel in the dock, and Burnham's own suggestion that he would like an electoral system more congenial to Zack Polanski's dreams of power. Blair knew that bowing to left-wing pressure groups moved Labour further away from the mainstream, further away from government and further away from deserving power. But for those within Labour who chafed against the constraints he imposed, who wanted to empower the ‘broad’ left and who hated his resolute stand against Islamism and with Israel, the Burnham revisionism is sweet indeed. It's a northern soul revival calculated to appeal to Labour's ideological heartlands.
But while the Burnham Restoration has a certain shrewd political logic – uniting left-wing voters under a ‘progressive banner’ just as the right is divided – it is a policy disaster for the country. The central challenges facing the nation are either ducked or made worse. The few promising policies of the Starmer era are diluted. The worst are exacerbated.
Britain suffers at the moment from low growth, ballooning debt, high energy costs, low investment, inadequate preparation for technological change, uncontrolled migration and invertebrate defences. On these huge and unavoidable problems the government is hopelessly unequal to the task. Its policies will add costs to business, hike taxes on enterprise, deter investment from abroad in infrastructure, do nothing to reassure lenders, drive up the cost of debt, force energy bill payers to subsidise yet another quango, leave oil and gas unexploited in the ground, make data centres unaffordable, generate a hostile environment for entrepreneurs, offer innovators only more regulation, make it easier for terrorist sympathisers to enter the country, do nothing to stop small boats, keep the military underfunded and dismay our allies in the fight against extremism.
There is a sad irony in that the more sensible ministers within the Starmer government – Wes Streeting and Shabana Mahmood – who agitated for Starmer’s removal are now themselves diminished figures. Streeting’s plans for NHS reform are dead. And he has to endorse a spending settlement which leaves the country unable to defend itself. The Home Secretary, meanwhile, has had to row back on reforms that would have toughened migration rules and has now been forced to introduce a fast track for more Hamas sympathisers to settle safely in Britain. She will know these are mistakes. But her voice, and her supporters, have been eclipsed by the new power in the land.
The King in the North has given his bannermen cause to cheer like never before. But for the rest of us, winter is coming.
Kelvin MacKenzie's 80th birthday party was the Fleet Street equivalent of a Mafia Five Families reunion, only less aesthetically pleasing. Piers Morgan, p7
Even in the squalid world of modern football there are standards to observe. Throw the book at 'Citeh'. They deserve no mercy.
Michael Henderson, p16
I don't know much, but I do know I never want to get a Wizz Air flight to Luton, unless in a full-blown wartime evacuation. Melissa Kite, p53
Pickled Onion is every serious person's favourite flavour of Monster Munch. Chas Newkey-Burden, p47
大卫·麦克洛斯基 (David McCloskey) 在第 14 页探讨了 MI6 与 CIA 之间关系的现状。他曾是 CIA 的工作人员，也是《The Rest is Classified》的共同主持人。
📄 Original Section
---
CONTRIBUTORS
David McCloskey looks at the state of the relationship between MI6 and the CIA on p14. He is a former staff member at the CIA and co-host of The Rest is Classified.
Ariane Bankes 在第32页撰写关于莫奈的文章，她是一位作家和艺术史学家。她最新的著作是《爱的品质：世纪核心的双胞胎姐妹》（The Quality of Love: Twin Sisters at the Heart of the Century）。
Chris Mullin 是一位前国会议员，其作品包括《一场非常英国式的政变》（A Very British Coup）以及一系列关于其议会生活的日记。他在第34页撰写关于 Alf Dubs 的文章。
📄 Original Section
---
Michael Henderson
laments the degradation of Man City on p16. He has written about sport for the Mail, Telegraph, Times, Guardian and Observer.
Penny Mordaunt's
Notebook appears on p18.
She was leader of the House
of Commons 2022-2024 and
defence secretary from 1 May
to 24 July 2019.
Ariane Bankes, who writes about Monet on p32, is a writer and art historian. Her most recent book is The Quality of Love: Twin Sisters at the Heart of the Century.
Chris Mullin is a former MP whose work includes A Very British Coup and a series of diaries of his life in parliament. He writes about Alf Dubs on p34.
北爱尔兰第一部长米歇尔·奥尼尔在波塔当的加瓦吉路加入抗议者，以阻挡橙色会成员，后者在一次隔夜法庭听证会中获得许可，将在 28 年来首次进行游行。北爱尔兰事务大臣克里斯·布莱恩特爵士匆匆从工党会议返回，局势陷入僵局。扎费尔·多根（Zafer Dogan，32 岁，被判罪名是拍摄数千张女性和女孩的照片并使用 AI 将图像色情化）在 8 月 6 日认罪与 9 月 24 日被判刑之间，被允许保释回他实施犯罪的公寓（该公寓俯瞰一个操场）。反移民活动人士、被称为 Danny Tommo 的丹尼尔·托马斯在一段视频显示他砍击英吉利海峡的一艘橡皮艇后，对刑事损坏罪名表示不认罪。英超联赛表示，曼城足球俱乐部通过安排“虚假合同”来掩盖超过 £8.3 亿的秘密资金；俱乐部将提出上诉。
📄 Original Section
---
Home
Andy Burnham, the Prime Minister, announced the end of the pensions triple lock from 2030, when the link with earnings would be broken. Wearing a suit but no tie, he told the Labour party conference: 'I will make a break with the direction of the past 40 years.' He said that houses would be confiscated if left unoccupied or if rented out but not well maintained. He said he would 'repeal Margaret Thatcher's ideological ban on public ownership of water companies'; he would reduce electricity prices by establishing the Great British Grid, a publicly owned company. He tearfully promised a National Care Service, after a review by Baroness Casey of Blackstock. Ties with the EU would be explored and electoral reform would be in the next Labour manifesto. John Healey, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, promised 'a new age of industrialisation', exemplified by the building of a £115 million research ship at Faslane. Diesel prices hit record levels. Household energy prices were expected to jump in January by a typical £276 a year, even with a government cut in VAT. Heathrow expected a third runway by 2039, instead of 2035.
Something odd happened in Gloucestershire. Five men, British nationals from London in their twenties, were arrested on suspicion of preparation of a terrorist act and of offences under the Explosives Act near RAF Fairfield, used by the US Air Force for strikes against Iran. Three white vans had turned up in the village of Whelford, where 85 households were evacuated. One of the men had phoned 999. No explosives were found. The men were released on bail. President Donald Trump of America said: 'We had them under investigation. They were looking to do big damage.' Marco Rubio, the US Secretary of State, said the incident 'clearly involves the hands of a foreign actor'.
Michelle O'Neill, the First Minister of Northern Ireland, joined protestors in the Garvaghy Road in Portadown to block Orangemen given permission in an overnight court hearing to march for the first time in 28 years. Sir Chris Bryant, the Northern Ireland Secretary, hurried back from the Labour conference and a stalemate developed. Between pleading guilty on 6 August and being sentenced on 24 September, Zafer Dogan, 32 (convicted of taking thousands of pictures of women and girls before using AI to sexualise the images), was granted bail to the flat (overlooking a playground) where he had committed the crimes. Daniel Thomas, known as Danny Tommo, the anti-migrant campaigner, pleaded not guilty to criminal damage after a video appeared to show him slashing at a dinghy in the Channel. Manchester City arranged ‘sham contracts’ to disguise secret funding of more than £830 million, the Premier League said; the club is to appeal.
Saudi Arabia intercepted six ballistic missiles fired by Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi militia. Yemen's government forces fought the Houthis around Taiz. Oil prices rose. Mr Trump rejected a proposal by Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. US long-term borrowing costs hit their highest level since 2002. The US banned the import of wine and whey from Canada. Mighty Sparrow, the calypso singer, died aged 91.
Russia destroyed Ukraine's National Academy of Sciences in the historic heart of Kyiv and hit a data centre, severing internet connection for 100,000 households. Estonia said Russia was behind an arson attack last month on a Tallinn defence company, Milrem Robotics, supplying Ukraine with unmanned military vehicles. Cyber-criminals who hacked the FBI said they had sensitive medical data such as allergies and blood test results for thousands of its special agents. Fatima Ezzahra El Mansouri was appointed Morocco's first woman prime minister. Eighteen people were killed when eight gunmen stormed a bar near Johannesburg; hours later, ten people were killed outside an entertainment venue near Cape Town.
Pope Leo said Mass for a crowd of 700,000 filling the Place de la Concorde and the Champs-Elysées in Paris. The American archbishop Fulton Sheen (1895-1979) was beatified during a Mass at Peoria, Illinois. In France 400 people were arrested in two days as secondary-school pupils demonstrated against a shortage of teachers. Spain’s coalition government issued a decree banning evictions until 2030, after thousands demonstrated against the eviction of an 87-year-old Madrid woman unable to pay rent rises. CSH
“摩根先生，”电话那头传来一个伪装成贵族般的嗓音，“我是斯宾塞伯爵。我这次抓到你了，你这个混蛋。” suffice it to say，在那个所谓的“历史学家”因在其新书中发表关于我的谎言而被强迫公开道歉后，上周并没有发生这样的通话。（他指控我在1993年担任《镜报》编辑，当时该报发布了戴安娜王妃在健身房的照片，这是一次臭名昭著的侵犯隐私行为，导致了100万英镑的赔偿金——但我直到1995年才加入《镜报》。）
这就像是舰队街版的“黑手党五大家族”聚会，只不过在视觉上没那么赏心悦目。寿星最著名的头条新闻装饰在桌子上，不过其中没有包括我一直以来最喜欢的那条，那条现在还贴在我父母家楼下的厕所里。那是基于一篇关于酒精对男性性能力削弱影响的报道，警告称：“警告：喝酒会让你的‘小家伙’起皱（DRINK'LL WRINKLE YOUR WINKLE）。”
‘Mr Morgan,’ said the faux-regal voice at the end of the line, ‘this is Earl Spencer. I’ve got you now, you bastard.’ Suffice it to say, this call didn’t happen last week after the alleged ‘historian’ was forced to publicly apologise for publishing a lie about me in his new book. (He accused me of being Mirror editor in 1993 when it published gym photos of Princess Diana in a notorious invasion of her privacy that cost £1 million in damages – but I didn’t join the Mirror until 1995.)
However, the irony of what that call was about isn't lost on me, 31 years later. I was editor of the News of the World at the time, and one of Spencer's friends passed us a letter from him revealing his plans to leave his ailing wife Victoria and take their kids to America, where he'd be a TV reporter. Spencer waited until our first edition dropped with the scoop before calling to inform me it was a hoax. 'That letter was all made up,' he chortled jubilantly. 'I suspected who your source was, so I wrote it to him knowing he wouldn't be able to resist passing it on to you. And it's all rubbish. Ha! What are you going to do now then, eh? Ha, ha!' 'Why didn't you tell us before we printed the paper?' I replied. 'Ha! Because if I had, you would've pretended I hadn't caught you out. You're going to have to admit you've printed lies now, aren't you, and apologise. Enjoy! Ha, ha!' Like I said, ironic. As I read the Earl's grovelling apology for printing lies about me, all I could think was: 'I've got you now, you bastard. Ha, ha!'
My unlikely saviour back in 1995 was ex-Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie – who, when I hurriedly called him for advice, observed: ‘That sounds like a disgusting attempt by Earl Spencer to con News of the World readers, using his family to do so.’ We switched headlines to ‘WHAT A CHARLIE – Althorp invents pack of lies about wife and kids to trick NoW readers’ and Spencer swiftly went from victim to villain in the court of public opinion.
I recently attended Kelvin's 80th birthday party at Hampton Court.
It was the Fleet Street equivalent of a Mafia Five Families reunion, only less aesthetically pleasing. The birthday boy's most famous headlines adorned the tables, though didn't include my all-time favourite which is still in my parents' downstairs loo. It was based on a report about the debilitating effect of alcohol on male sexual performance and cautioned: 'WARNING: DRINK'LL WRINKLE YOUR WINKLE.'
THE SPECTATOR Subscribe for only £1 a week
020 4572 7556 quoting intro
Introductory offer. Auto-renewing payments only. \$1 a week in Australia at spectator.com.au/intro
The weird thing about Spencer's erroneous attack on me in his book, other than how fact-checkers at Penguin didn't spot it (not least because they also published my bestselling diaries The Insider which covered that period of my career!), is that in 2000 he came to the Mirror for a surprisingly convivial 'make-up' lunch, notable for his failure to recognise a famous fellow guest. 'Many thanks for an interesting and enjoyable lunch,' he wrote to me afterwards. 'A varied guest list, the airing of many subjects, and the Mirror's hospitality all made for a justifiably long session at the table. I feel bad not remembering Carol Vorderman. Still, she looks a lot better now than I can ever remember her looking in Countdown.' Memory clearly isn't his strong point.
Talking of lunch, and memory failures, Diana's former chef Darren McGrady was quoted in the Daily Mail as saying that after I dined with her at Kensington Palace, she told him afterwards I was a 'jerk'. To set the record straight, I invited her former butler Paul Burrell – who served the meal that McGrady had cooked – onto my Uncensored show and asked if that was true. 'No!' he replied. 'You got on like a house on fire! I don't want to blow smoke in your direction, but she liked you.' Now that's a historian I can trust.
Of course, my Spencer schadenfreude may be short-lived if the apocalyptic warnings of AI killing us all come to pass. In his last TV interview, Professor Stephen Hawking told me AI was the biggest threat to mankind's survival. 'The great danger is if we let it self-design, for then it can improve itself rapidly and we may lose control,' he explained. That was nine years ago. I fear we've either reached that point – or are about to.
‘A ny news on the knighthood, yet?’ texted Dame Joan Collins. Well, I’m reliably informed our senior royals are as giddy as Lottery winners at seeing Spencer’s vindictive, disingenuous, King-bashing book causing him global humiliation for getting basic facts wrong. My pleasure to serve, Your Majesty.
首相的演说旨在为寻求支持的受伤政党打气。这篇演说充满情感且具有个人色彩，但同时又具有强烈的政治性，展现出他对工党价值观及其利益的敏锐洞察。“购房权”（Right to Buy）曾吸引大批民众投奔保守党，而现在这一政策将在新房中被叫停；一个新的国家护理服务（National Care Service）将把数千名更多成员纳入工会的怀抱。进步主义将根植于伯纳姆选择的模式中，权力下放将按他的条件实施：允许市长增加支出，但限制其削减税收。“我们终于有一位真正的政治家担任首相了，”一名年轻的国会议员赞许地说道。
After Andy Burnham's speech at the Labour party conference on Tuesday, one veteran factionalist declared: 'We are all Burnhamites now.' Romantics love the rhetoric; cynics respect the ruthlessness. 'Game recognises game,' says one Labour figure.
The Prime Minister's address was pitched at a wounded party seeking support. Emotive and personal, yet also intensely political, it showed a keen awareness not just of Labour's values, but of its interests too. Right to Buy, which attracted legions to the Tory ranks, will be halted for new homes; a new National Care Service will bring thousands more members into the unions' fold. Progressivism will be entrenched in the model Burnham chooses, with devolution imposed on his terms: mayors allowed to spend more, but restricted from cutting tax. 'We have a politician as Prime Minister,' says a young MP approvingly.
The new leader understands that, for all its talk of radicalism, Labour is instinctively a conservative beast. Even by the standards of a party conference, this year's jamboree was a peculiarly nostalgic affair, full of references to HP sauce, miners' lamps and northern soul. In his bid to roll back Margaret Thatcher's 1980s settlement on buses, houses, water and more, Burnham was attempting to construct a 21st-century version of the postwar Labour bargain.
The dominant political operator of that pre-Thatcher age, of course, was the figure who loomed larger over this conference than any other: Harold Wilson, another northern football-lover whose views bounced between the traditions of the Tribune left and the old right. References to Wilson's government peppered cabinet members' speeches – 'the white heat of technology' featured in no fewer than four. Party officials flocked to buy merchandise commemorating 60 years since Wilson's 1966 victory. 'We pretend the first two years didn't happen,' jokes a backbencher, seeing parallels between 1964 and 2024.
The Wilson comparison is instructive. Labour lore recalls him as the champion of gay, ethnic and women's rights – rather than the man who devalued the pound in 1967. Burnham, too, is full of talk about reform and plans, even as Britain's economy is at the mercy of unfavourable world events. There was an uncomfortable irony in John Healey's speech on Monday: it was 50 years to the day that his namesake, Denis, had to beg the party to back a £2.3 billion IMF bailout. The day after the current Chancellor's speech, UK borrowing hit its highest rate this century.
Some of Burnham's cabinet also consciously see themselves in the party's lineage. Louise Haigh, his effective deputy, talks often of Barbara Castle: ‘A diminutive Yorkshire redhead with a grit and determination that occasionally found herself in trouble,’ as she says. Haigh has been handed responsibility for growth by Burnham and there is an echo here of Wilson's short-lived Department of Economic Affairs, set up to constrain the power of the Treasury. Already, officials fear
Even by the standards of a party conference, this year's Labour jamboree was peculiarly nostalgic
that a clash with the Chancellor is looming, with predictable Labour criticisms mounting about Healey and his department's ‘lack of imagination’. Burnham has said he wants ‘No. 10 leading on that growth mission’ to ‘unlock the blockages’ in Whitehall; Wilson said similar of the DEA, just weeks before devaluation.
Kanishka Narayan, the AI minister, cites Tony Benn as a fellow public-school, techno-enthusiast – even if Narayan is of a different intellectual tradition. ‘The Labour right’s future is Kanishka,’ says a former Wes Streeting backer. Intelligent and industrious, Narayan did an estimated 70 conference events, with his role being to present an alternative political economy to the Prime Minister’s more insular world view. ‘Burnham is offering 20th-century solutions to 21st-century problems,' says a former civil servant. Marrying AI to the reindustrialisation agenda could be the government's best chance of success.
'Andy Burnham promised huge change.'
Others are still adjusting to fluctuating party moods. Shabana Mahmood, the Home Secretary, has been christened ‘Subana’ by colleagues, such is her diminished public profile after the backlash over her legal migration reforms. Health – so often the great Labour rallying cry – featured little in this conference either. Both Yvette Cooper, the current Health Secretary, and Bridget Phillipson, the demoted equalities minister, face losing their seats to Reform as Burnham mulls reopening the European question. ‘The Midlands’ sparkies are the new Durham miners,’ says a sceptical figure, pointing to the key battlegrounds.
For now, the Labour tribe is united, amid fears the next right-wing government will resemble some grotesque fusion of Selsdon men and Powellite bastards. Hopes are high for next week's Holborn and St Pancras by-election, with most in Labour expecting a triumph over Zack Polanski, the Green leader who put himself forward. 'Next Thursday we pop his bubble,' boasts a 2024 MP. Activists on the ground report that a key moment was Ed Miliband's sanctions on Israeli settlements last month. 'That really went down well,' says one involved, reflecting on the Foreign Secretary's speech in parliament. Tellingly, no cabinet minister attended the Labour Friends of Israel's party at the conference.
After that, the Budget looms. ‘It’s the most important Budget this parliament,’ explains a government aide. ‘If it falls apart, if you can’t defend it on Kuenssberg that Sunday, then that’s it.’ After £75 billion in tax rises in 2024 and 2025, a similar scale is not envisaged this time, with Healey taking care to consult widely with parliamentary colleagues. ‘Dip their hands in the blood,’ suggests one ex-Treasury staffer. Next spring’s spending review is expected to be a chastening experience for the revised cabinet. ‘Let’s see if it is happy families after that,’ says one Tory aide.
Like Wilson, Burnham has inherited a dire economic outlook, not of his own making. But having raised the hopes of his party in Liverpool, the challenge now is to be more than yet another transient political figure, condemned by history as little more than a mere tactician. His party has cause to hope again – yet offering just a ‘better yesterday’ will not be enough.
It is repeatedly pointed out – I have probably written it myself – that the triple lock on the state pension is ruinous. There is a genuine difficulty, though, political and moral, about getting rid of it. No one likes to lose a benefit they already possess. The abolition will annoy 99 per cent of its recipients, of whom there are 13.2 million. Besides, we pensioners have retained a traditional skill almost entirely lost to younger generations, called voting. We know how to go to a polling station and put a cross on a ballot paper. We therefore have the power to slay any party we think is making us poorer. The Tories invented the triple lock. If they abandoned it, they would be hit even worse than Nick Clegg was hit when he reversed Lib Dem policy against tuition fees as the price of coalition. That is the political argument. The moral argument is that pensioners feel they have earned their pension. This is not literally the case, because the National Insurance we have paid in our working lives is not, in reality, insurance. Our pensions come out of current funding. Morally, however, we have earned it by working, and it is not, even triple-locked, outstandingly good. I suggest opposition parties would be wise to hold off and let Labour trip up on the triple lock. By freezing tax thresholds, it will soon tax pensioners on their triple-lock gains because their income exceeds the £12,570 tax threshold. In his speech to his party conference on Tuesday, Andy Burnham tripped. He said the triple lock will be sacrificed to pay for his scheme for a social care service modelled on the NHS. Many millions receiving, or about to receive, a pension will now fear losing the clear financial advantage of the triple lock in exchange for the highly uncertain, undated promise of state-provided social care.
The railways are trundling back towards nationalisation, to shouts of joy at the Labour conference. Rail privatisation has many faults (Margaret Thatcher always fought shy of it because of monopoly problems: it was introduced by John Major after she left office), but why should complete state control improve the service? Under
nationalisation from 1948 to 1995, British Rail failed to expand passenger journeys significantly. In 1950, there were roughly 32 billion passenger kilometres travelled. By 1994, that figure had fallen slightly to just below 30 billion, despite that fact that the population had increased by nearly 9 million. Since privatisation – except, unavoidably, during Covid – passenger kilometres have shot up, roughly 63 billion in the latest annual figure.
The Daily Telegraph's scoop about the distressing circumstances of the great explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes is remarkable. If a famous, well-connected man can be so cut off from the outside world by his second wife in a succession of care homes, what must be happening to thousands, without powerful friends, in a similar situation? The story reminds me of a hunch I had ten years ago. Until then, Sir Ranulph had been a gentle supporter of hunting, allowing hunts on his Exmoor farm, and speaking in Westminster for the Countryside March. Suddenly, in 2016, he denounced hunting. In advance of a Tory conference fringe meeting organised by the League against Cruel Sports (LACS), he was reported as being about to say that his mind had been changed by discovering a fox on the couple's Cheshire farm that had been injured during a hunt: 'After my wife and I saw the fox's injuries, we called the vet. We laced food with medicine... to prevent infection setting in from bites to her rear.' The vixen later died. 'The Cheshire Hunt chased that fox before our eyes and she took six days to die,' he said, 'Do not believe hunters when they say the fox has a quick and painless death... You try being chewed to death by hounds.'
This sounded inauthentically ignorant to me. Sir Ranulph would have known that hunted foxes were never ‘chewed to death’. One hound is bigger than one fox. A pack of hounds is 30-strong. In fox-hunting (now banned in Britain), the lead hound kills the fox almost immediately with a bite to the back of the neck. The animal is torn apart, but only when dead. It is also – as I have often witnessed – all but impossible for a fox to escape from a pack wounded. A fox can often evade its pursuers, but only if it is not wounded and therefore fit. Any ‘chewed’ fox that the Fienneses found must have been bitten in a fight with another fox, a badger or (less likely) a dog. Sir Ranulph’s phrases, like ‘the so-called tradition of terrifying wild animals for pure enjoyment is now, as it always has been, a brutal and insupportable self-indulgence’ sounded ventriloquised. Checking on what he said in 2016, I notice that contemporary press accounts report only the pre-briefing, not the meeting. In a strange TV interview, he appeared to read out a prepared script. It is not clear to me that Sir Ranulph actually delivered his fiery speech in public. Was he, even ten years ago, under some sort of control?
His name is still being used. A Facebook page called ‘Sir Ranulph Fiennes’ is reposting numerous accounts of alleged violations of the Hunting Act as recent as last month, all in the heated and inaccurate language of antis (e.g. calling hounds ‘dogs’). Sir Ranulph, cognitively frail and confined in care homes for two years, surely cannot be doing this. ‘Sir Ranulph Fiennes’ cannot be Sir Ranulph Fiennes. Friends from the south-west say that Sir Ranulph was most unhappy to leave Exmoor to support his wife’s 60-odd Arab horses on the Cheshire farm, but worried he might lose access to their daughter if he did not. Apparently his first wife’s memorial stone is on the Exmoor farm, and his own name is on it too, awaiting his death. ‘My name will always be there,’ he told friends. His situation is strange and sad. A Fiennes friends and family WhatsApp group seeks a legal challenge to the lasting power of attorney in this case, to release the prisoner.
['I get better every day'] Can Kemi Badenoch revive the Tory party?
TIM SHIPMAN
Kemi Badenoch, like many in the Labour party, is not sorry to see the back of Keir Starmer. 'I did not find Starmer an interesting person,' she says. 'He never said anything interesting.' Andy Burnham is a different proposition. 'Quite interesting,' she thinks. 'He has more of a clear sense of who he is politically, which makes him more confident in terms of what he wants to do. But who he is politically is so far removed from who I am politically that I think that there's a sharper contrast between us.'
We speak in her office in Portcullis House with the Labour conference in full cry in Liverpool. ‘It feels very much like student union people who’ve got older, but they still want to do the stuff that they did in the student union,’ Badenoch says. Her verdict on Burnham’s big speech on Tuesday is that the Prime Minister is offering ‘Corbynism with better packaging’, with socialist solutions from the 1970s that ‘will fail again’. But that sharper contrast has energised her. ‘Hearing his speech, it’s clear we are now about to have a battle of ideas. It’s given me more confidence that, even in this messy political era, the Conservatives are going to win.’
Burnham, she says, ‘likes to say yes to everyone – and that is something which I learned a long time ago is a recipe for disaster’. Nowhere, she believes, is this more obvious than in Labour’s approach to the ballooning benefits budget. ‘They are the welfare party. It’s in their DNA. They’re not the party of the working classes at all.’ If Burnham is a ‘people pleaser’, Badenoch wants to make a virtue of her abrasive reputation – the people displeaser the country needs. ‘No one wants to be the person to say “No”. And I want Spectator readers to know that the person who’s saying “No” has arrived and is leading the Conservative party.’
At Tory conference, which begins in Birmingham this weekend, she will announce plans to ‘put the fair back in welfare’ – both for taxpayers and those condemned to a life on handouts. The Tories will advance two principles: that those who have paid in are entitled to more than those who have not. 'If you have worked for a very long time, you can be on benefits for much longer because those people are less likely just to sit back and not look for a job,' she explains. 'After six months, if you haven't found a job and you're just not taking that seriously, you will lose money.'
Second, those who can work should do so. 'It's unfair to the people who get up and go to
完成“投入工作”计划的人将获得一份记录其技能的“就职准备奖”（Ready for Work Award）。但在参加六个月的“投入工作”计划后，仍未就业的年轻人将降至基础的生存津贴（Subsistence Allowance）。还将采取措施，让年轻人更多地由其父母而非纳税人负责（对于没有父母或在护理系统中的人设有缓解措施）。一名消息人士表示：“这是一项‘严厉之爱’政策。它将提供帮助，同时也会强制执行。”这就是一个带有威胁的保姆国家；一个拿着雨伞枪的玛丽·波平斯。
'Even families on benefits know that the system is out of control. But no one wants to get off the treadmill first'
work, having others earn more than them for not working. Even families on benefits know that the system is out of control. But no one wants to be the one to get off the treadmill first. We need to force that. Government has to do that.' Badenoch is incensed by 'sickfluencers' on YouTube teaching people how to claim benefits for ADHD or anxiety. 'There are a lot of people who do not have a mental disability but claim to have one using low-level conditions... These are conditions you can work with, and so you should be working. We're not going after the vulnerable. It is the people who can work who aren't working that are the target.'
One of the most striking policies Badenoch will announce is a ‘tough love’ approach to young people. A Tory government would set up a ‘Get To Work’ programme, banning young people who have not worked from drifting straight onto benefits. Under 25s who have less than six months in continuous employment will no longer be able to sign on to universal credit when they leave school or turn 18.
Those without a job or an apprenticeship will only be able to claim a new ‘Get to Work Allowance’ – and they’ll only get that if they participate
in a six-month Get to Work programme. To get the money, they will have to complete work activities, such as daily attendance at a local job centre, work-experience placements, training courses or community work. They will need to apply for jobs and go to interview-prep workshops, plus attend group sessions to develop the communication skills that employers complain young job applicants lack.
Those who complete the Get to Work programme will receive a ‘Ready for Work Award’ recording their skills. But after six months on Get to Work, young people still not working will drop down to a basic Subsistence Allowance. There will also be steps to make young people more the responsibility of their parents rather than taxpayers (with mitigations for those without parents or in the care system). ‘This is a tough love policy,’ a source says. ‘It will provide help as well as enforcement.’ This is the nanny state with menaces; Mary Poppins with an umbrella gun.
Badenoch also signals that she wants to toughen the statutory cap on total welfare spending. 'That's certainly something that we are considering,' she says. 'MPs just vote for it to increase, an automatic ratchet, because no one wants to be the person to say no.'
Some will doubtless say Badenoch is making the Conservatives the ‘nasty party’ once again. Refreshingly, she doesn’t care. ‘The people who are going to say “nasty party” will always say it. Quite frankly, the reason why we’re in this mess is because we kept pandering to those people and trying to make them like us. And did it work? No, it didn't.'
Indeed, she attributes a new optimism among Tory MPs to her plain-speaking approach: 'We're finally saying what we believe and we're not scared to say it. We should be more aggressive.'
A year ago at conference she stabilised her leadership with a pledge to abolish stamp duty. She downplays recent speculation she will announce the outright abolition of inheritance tax this time: 'I'm not someone who likes to play the same movie twice. Inheritance tax – we want to get rid of it, but we've got to do our working first.'
Expect far more focus on the economy than Labour. ‘Burnham has no plans to make anybody wealthier,’ she says. ‘He has no plans to get businesses hiring people. Where are the plans for ownership, whether it’s people owning their own property, owning shares, owning businesses? There are none, because he doesn’t want people owning things or being responsible for their own lives. People hated that model so much that it ushered in the era of popular capitalism which we saw in the 1980s and 1990s. That is what people will see at my party conference.’
Badenoch will also emphasise security. ‘Defence and national security are going to be the defining issue of the next few years,’ she says. ‘We have become so complacent as a country, as politicians, and we need to get
‘We’re finally saying what we believe and we’re not scared to say it. We should be more aggressive’
serious.' She is critical of Ed Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, who ignored intelligence advice before sanctioning Israel, a country she calls 'a critical security partner'. She says Miliband's glad-handing of the foreign minister of Iran, the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism, was 'incredibly naive. Gormless, in fact, is probably the word that I would use.'
Badenoch was incredulous when Burnham said at PMQs that he would not promote national security at the expense of social security. ‘I thought I couldn’t possibly have heard him say that. I genuinely couldn’t believe it. I don’t think he will ever say that again.’ She puts Burnham’s mistake down to him not having a leadership contest to hone his lines. ‘He’s now doing all his thinking out loud and this is what he really believes.’
She can't resist a parting shot at her former leadership rival turned Reform defector. 'Rob Jenrick never exited leadership contest mode. And he's now doing it in his new party.' As a wheeze at conference the Tories have produced an 88ft-long illustration of Labour's first two years in power in the style of the Bayeux Tapestry. It features 150 taxpayers being shot in the eye with a tax arrow, 14 political journalists, including this one, and numerous images of a tiny wailing Jenrick.
Here today
Power seems immutable
A never-ending dance
Entirely indestructible
Each blow the merest glance
Yet what was indisputable
Now looks much more like chance.
Jenrick and Suella Braverman's defections in January were a relief: 'It was like watching someone come in and pick two unexploded bombs that I was working out how to defuse and just take them away. Now in shadow cabinet, we just talk freely. No one holds anything back. No one's taking notes.'
Badenoch has faced criticism for banning former ministers, such as Grant Shapps, from the list of Tory candidates. Grandees say that Badenoch, despite her seemingly impregnable position, fears a leadership challenge before the next election if she doesn't turn things around in the polls and that Shapps's habit of running a spreadsheet of dissenting MPs was a threat to her position. Others see a reluctance to let Penny Mordaunt return in the same light. 'She was frightened of Grant's spreadsheet,' a former cabinet minister says. 'She'll let Penny back but is deliberately keeping her waiting.'
Badenoch admits she has ‘slowed down the former MPs who are coming back’, but says that is giving ‘some new candidates a chance’. She is proud that there will be ‘no more Heidi Allens’ (the former MP who tried to overturn Brexit and welfare cuts before joining the Lib Dems). She won’t comment directly on Shapps, but in response to a question about him, she criticises MPs who plot. ‘I am looking for improved standards of conduct. When people have nothing except politics, that’s when the psychodrama comes,
'Hope, eh Andy?'
-John Hayes
when they're in the bars all the time. They've got nothing else to do.' She says Mordaunt 'hasn't been blocked'.
The Tories overtook Reform in a recent poll but are still below where they were when Badenoch took over. Nonetheless, she is encouraged by Nigel Farage's recent wobbles. 'We call Farage “Grumpy Grandpa” because he’s always complaining about something.' She accuses the Reform leader of ‘trying to intimidate’ journalists who probe his affairs. 'It’s not fun when the press are all over you and there’s endless scrutiny. But it’s the job.'
She also strikes a different tone to Farage on Donald Trump. The President's recent call for a united Ireland made her ‘very irritated’. She understood American concerns over Iran’s nuclear programme, but calls it ‘frustrating’ that the Americans ‘clearly hadn’t thought about what could happen in the Strait of Hormuz. I just don’t think these guys think past page one.’ She adds: ‘It’s Trump’s actions rather than the words that I really focus on. If you focus on the words, then we’re all over the place. He’s quite erratic.’
While Reform's recent receipt of £72 million is a huge challenge to the Tories, Badenoch says: 'It's actually encouraged quite a few people to give us a bit more. People who were thinking of splitting their money between the two parties said, "They don't need my money now", so that's helpful.'
Badenoch knows she still has a mountain to climb. ‘My own ratings have improved but the party brand is still not enough associated with me,’ she says. ‘This is a different party from 2024. And I’ve got to show that. I think the public are screaming for a party with common sense. We’ve got sensible plans that are actually going to work this time.’
Sensible plans will help. ‘This time’ is a reminder of the challenge to overcome public scepticism of Tory pledges. But Badenoch wants to make her own luck. ‘I’m not just waiting for other people to fail,’ she says. ‘I think that’s foolishness and I get better every day.’
“觉醒”酒吧有两种类型：基于证据的觉醒和基于氛围的觉醒。在利兹的Attic酒吧，你可以找到前者的一个典型例子。“清洁空气社交”（Clean Air Socials）全年都在那里举办活动，本月还将举办另一场。入场标准如下：在室内期间必须“全程佩戴高质量呼吸防护器（FFP2或FFP3）”，并在门口出示侧向流检测（lateral flow test）阴性证明。此外，建议使用阀门在佩戴口罩的情况下饮水。在这些夜晚，场内会放置数台HEPA空气净化器和一台远紫外线（far-UVC）灯，旨在减少房间内空气传播的病毒数量。举办一个让免疫功能受损者也能派对的舞会显然没什么不对，但为什么新冠病毒是唯一被重点提及的病毒？
另一个来自利兹的例子：今年6月，在Wharf Chambers举办的一场“支持巴勒斯坦酷儿电影”活动要求“强制佩戴口罩”。没有FFP2口罩，不得入内。1月份在布里斯托Watershed举办的一场“令人作呕的卡巴莱”（Sickening Cabaret）之夜也有同样的指令。在谢菲尔德Crookes Social Club举办的一场Andro and Eve活动中，口罩是被鼓励佩戴的，但该俱乐部在8月因允许“恢复英国”（Restore Britain）举办会议而遭到抨击后，声称自己是“非政治性的”。
交叉性（还记得这个词吗？）解释了为什么支持巴勒斯坦 = 戴上口罩。这
📄 Original Section
---
Last ditch attempt
The hunt for Britain's wokest bar
ANGUS COLWELL
Annalisa Quinn is an editor at the Boston Globe magazine, and through a mixture of good fortune, good journalism and good writing, she published the perfect story for our times last week.
On 31 August, a lesbian bar in western Massachusetts called Last Ditch posted on Instagram that ‘it is with love we inform our immunocompromised disabled divas we will be opening Saturday nights as mask optional’. Previously, KN-95 face masks were the minimum level of protection required to attend the bar at all times.
The owners were swiftly accused of being eugenicists. One commentator said: 'People like you kill disabled people in the name of your own leisure and convenience.' Another wished the venue to be firebombed. Last Ditch attempted an apology. It wasn't good enough, since they posted an Instagram card without alt-text for the visually impaired. Two of the three founders had left the business, one to enrol in clown school. The remaining founder, Jackie Matellian, began to cry under her mask in a meeting. Soe Noire, a black lesbian who goes by 'he/him' pronouns, said Matellian's crying was 'racist', and demanded payment to keep going to 'community meetings'.
Everyone found it funny, even on Bluesky. The Boston Globe got an extra thousand subscribers in the 24 hours after it posted the story. This was wokeness at its most defeated, its most exhausted. You don't need to combat it with defunding, anger or debate. You just need to tip off a Boston Globe reporter.
But there was one sentiment going around that was plainly wrong. It was expressed in the Atlantic: 'Reminder: this is a bar. You know, the place where you go to drink beer.' But nowhere is just a bar. That argument says: what does a bar have to do with your identity? The answer, of course, is everything.
All pubs and all bars are left- or right-wing, woke or unwoke. That much is obvious. But where is this country's Last Ditch?
There are two types of woke bars: evidence-based woke and vibes-based woke. At the Attic in Leeds, you'll find a good example of the former. Clean Air Socials have run events there throughout the year, and have another one coming up this month. The entry criteria are thus: you need to wear a ‘high quality respirator (FFP2 or FFP3) at all times whilst indoors’, and show proof of a negative lateral flow test at the door. It’s also recommended you use a valve to drink through your mask. On these nights, there will be several HEPA purifiers in the venue, and a far-UVC lamp, which is meant to reduce how many viruses can be airborne in a room. There is clearly little wrong with running a dance night where the immunocompromised can party. But why is Covid the main virus mentioned?
Another example from Leeds: in June this year, a Queer Cinema for Palestine event at Wharf Chambers was ‘masks mandatory’. No FFP2 mask, no admission. A ‘Sickening Cabaret’ night at Watershed in Bristol in January had the same edict. Masks were encouraged at an Andro and Eve event at Crookes Social Club in Sheffield, but the club itself said it was ‘apolitical’ after it was slammed for letting Restore Britain host a meeting in August.
Intersectionality (remember that?) explains why pro-Palestine = mask up. The
你很难在酒吧里看到“伦敦呼吸顺畅”的人。觉醒主义（Wokeness）通常不在那里出现，但它在其他场所生存。我在肖尔迪奇（Shoreditch）访问的一家名为“共同出版社”（The Common Press）的“酷儿书店”可能是最著名的（他们没脱咖啡因咖啡了，而那正是我真正想要的）。毋庸置信，开一家同性恋书店没什么不对，但普里亚姆瓦达·戈帕尔（Priyamvada Gopal）的《造反帝国》（Insurgent Empire）和塔里克·阿里（Tariq Ali）的《温斯顿·丘吉尔：他的时代，他的罪行》（Winston Churchill: His Times, His Crimes）所获得的推广程度，与任何关于性取向的内容不相上下。
What does a bar have to do with your identity? The answer, of course, is everything
original argument about intersectional discrimination, made by Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989, used an analogy of a motorway intersection to argue that different forms of prejudice can hit someone at the same time (to be hit by two cars at once would be unlucky, but it's within the laws of physics, I guess).
But intersectional solidarity has often been elusive, and we saw that in the capital this summer, when Breathe Easy London, a ‘Covid-safe’ events group, accused the London Dyke March of harming the participants by not insisting on ‘dykes’ and their allies wearing masks outside. Trans people, Breathe Easy argued, have a 48 per cent long-Covid rate, and said that one marcher had been ‘permanently injured’. It concluded that London Dyke March was ‘personally responsible for disabling their attendees’.
You don't really see the Breathe Easy folks in the pub. Wokeness isn't generally found there, but it does survive in other venues. The Common Press in Shoreditch, a ‘queer bookshop’ I visited (they were out of decaf coffee, which I genuinely wanted), is probably the most famous. Nothing wrong with a gay bookshop, needless to say, but Priyamvada Gopal's Insurgent Empire and Tariq Ali's Winston Churchill: His Times, His Crimes are given as much promotion as anything to do with sexuality.
So the woke bookshop survives, but pubs are more impregnable. There are plenty of unwoke pubs across the country. Your favourite pub, I assume, isn't particularly woke. Though there is such a thing as too unwoke. In March, ten people at the Chequers in Hornchurch got involved in a mass fight, where chairs were thrown and heads kicked. Staff, funnily enough, refused to give statements.
The Dog and Partridge in the suburbs of Birmingham was pretty unwoke too. It's being considered for demolition after it closed in 2020, following a meat cleaver attack at a ‘family-friendly’ beach party. Perhaps not terribly woke either is a rumoured East End pub which claims there's a private event on if a non-white person walks in.
Sipping my Guinness Zero in the Auld Shillelagh in Stoke Newington (never have I been more confident that somewhere would have that in the fridge), I reflected on the upsides of the British left. Yes, the aesthetics here were woke: plenty of mullets, caps and roll-up cigarettes. But this Irish pub in the middle of Diane Abbott's constituency is still excellent.
Our divisions are class-based, not identity-based like America's. Our left-wing pubs descend from old working-class traditions: miners' pubs, Irish pubs and the like. America doesn't have that, so it's corporate identarian insanity like Last Ditch. In London, there were until fairly recently two main lesbian bars. One, La Camionera, doesn't have any rainbow flags. The other, Goldie Saloon, has now closed, having ended its days as a dog-grooming business run by a straight man from Essex. What would the Last Ditch crowd make of that?
[DOUGLAS MURRAY] The game we're not allowed to win
Some years ago I heard a moving story about Roy Jenkins. An unpromising start to any anecdote but stay with me. It involved a croquet match during the late period of his life – as Chancellor of the University of Oxford – when Jenkins had become one of the grander, not to say more pompous, figures in our public life. According to someone playing with him, his Lordship had appalling luck. Although he wielded his mallet with all requisite skill, his ball would not go through the hoops. Eventually the grand old man stormed off the pitch in a great huff. Only after he had left did the other players discover that the ball Lord Jenkins had been working was from a different croquet set, and too big to fit through the hoops.
I have been thinking of the incident of Lord Jenkins and the crooked croquet match lately. Not just because I enjoy the image of his Lordship puffing off the pitch in a fury, but because it feels like something similar is going on at a national level. Someone has queered the game, forbidding us from winning even on home turf.
Our much overpraised Home Secretary used her party conference speech to condemn the ‘racists’ who marched in the south of England the other week with their faces covered. She had nothing to say about the far larger number of people from her own Muslim community who have marched through Tower Hamlets and elsewhere, covering their faces and being infinitely more thuggish. On Question Time a panellist whose grandmother came here from Bengal claimed that the men on that south of England march were not just racist but exhibiting ‘small penis behaviour’. What’s more, this woman – a self-described communist – said the people objecting to illegal migration were not patriotic and not British.
We seem to be facing a slew of similar pronouncements of late – often from people who have either arrived in the country recently or whose parents arrived comparatively recently. It seems that absolutely anyone can turn up in Britain and tell us what is or is not British. But if we quibble with this lack of manners we are, of course, called ‘racist’. This is deeply unfair.
As I have pointed out before, if my parents had chosen to move to, for example,
Pakistan and given birth to me there, I think I’d regard my position in the country as something like a visitor or a guest. I can say with considerable certainty that the entire population of Pakistan would regard me in such a light. But if I went around telling the Pakistani people what their country was or should be, and what Pakistani values were or were not, then I think people would think me a little presumptuous, to say the least. Yet the British public have to hear arrival after arrival tell us who we are or who we should be and they do so with the confidence that comes from knowing that most British people are too polite to clear their throat, say ‘ahem’ in a meaningful manner, and then give them both rhetorical barrels.
But it isn't just recent arrivals who have joined this game of telling us what we are
It seems that absolutely anyone can turn up in Britain and tell us what is or is not British
or should be. This week the Labour government's under-secretary for nature, one Jenny Riddell-Carpenter, warned that the ‘far-right’ are likely to co-opt the countryside in the next election. Specifically she said that they will summon up ‘a Britain that never really existed’. She continued: ‘It’ll be that warm ale, a black labrador by your feet in a pub that doesn’t exist. It’ll be a very far-right nostalgic vision of Britain that we don’t want to have, [that] never really existed.’
Woad rage
About which there are many eloquent things to say. One of which is ‘WTF?’ Are the presence of black labradors around the feet now another dog-whistle? Must our ale only ever be cold? And who is Jenny Riddell-Carpenter to tell us that we are ‘far-right’ if we engage in any of these activities?
More importantly, the image of Britain she tries to evoke is not some ‘far-right’ mirage of a country that never existed. It is in fact a small part of a Britain that exists very nicely for many of us. A Britain that exists and is neither political nor invented.
And all this happened in a week in which any opportunities to object to the disaster this country is being led into seemed to contract yet again.
On Tuesday, an activist known as ‘Danny Tommo’ was refused bail. The crime of which he stands accused, and to which he has pleaded not guilty, is damaging a migrant boat. Tommo is alleged to have slashed the dinghy having taken matters into his own hands, apparently as a result of British government claims that it can do nothing to stop boatloads of illegal migrants arriving each day. If he’s found guilty, the full force of the law – the same force that takes no interest in your own burgled property – is likely to come down on him in predictable fashion and he could well spend the coming weeks in jail because he harmed the property of an illegal smuggling gang.
It is not surprising. This week we also learned that a Muslim lecturer has been teaching British police officers about ‘Islamophobia’ and the threat of Nigel Farage. Meanwhile, our Foreign Secretary, Ed Miliband, was sucking up to his counterpart from the world’s number one terrorist-sponsoring state – Iran – and declaring himself ‘humbled’ in the presence of the Palestinian representative to the UK.
Which brings me back to Roy Jenkins. By all accounts, Jenkins's fellow players didn't realise their error. But it seems to me that as a nation we are playing on a pitch that has been deliberately queered. I have this lovely column in which to voice my own frustrations. But most of the British public do not, and as they notice that the game is rigged they may do more than simply leave the pitch in a huff.
在信号情报（SIGINT，指拦截通信）方面，两国关系更为紧密，几乎不存在任何“调皮”行为。美国国家安全局（NSA）及其英国对应机构 GCHQ 经常在共享系统上工作并共同收集情报。正如理查德·克巴杰（Richard Kerbaj）在其精彩的著作《五眼联盟秘密史》（The Secret History of the Five Eyes）中所指出的，NSA 甚至为 GCHQ 的部分站点支付了运营费用。
在人力情报（HUMINT）和信号情报（SIGINT）联系的底层，是一张个人关系的网。我在研究《伦敦站》（London Station）时，请求我的 CIA 联系人向其英国同行进行正式介绍，发现有数十名官员保持着密切联系，其中许多人在退休后依然如此。这些网络的规模超过了美国官员与任何其他西方情报机构共享的规模。我在上一部关于摩萨德（Mossad）的小说中尝试进行类似的尝试，却发现很难找到与以色列同行保持密切联系的 CIA 官员。前 局长约翰·布伦南（John Brennan）曾表示，他“对于与英国同行分享我们最敏感的秘密没有任何顾虑”。
这并不是说这种互动毫无摩擦。我的研究发现了一些案例，其中两家机构竞争招募同一名资产，争夺主导地位，而且有时——令人震惊且恐怖地——在追求的目标方面对彼此不够坦诚。而且英国显然是较弱的一方。几位前 官员告诉我，当情况变得紧迫时， CIA 总是胜出。如果它想要某样东西——一个案件或某种协助——它几乎总能得到。反之则不然，而这可能会令人恼火。
The Special Relationship has seen more special days. Earlier this year, President Trump delivered his verdict: 'How is the relationship? It's the relationship where, when we asked them for help, they were not there. When we needed them, they were not there. When we didn't need them, they were not there. And they still aren't there.'
Trump was referring to divisions between the US and UK over the wisdom and conduct of the war in Iran. (Even amid a spat, though, he can dish out praise. Just this week, following the arrest of five men outside RAF Fairfield, used by American bombers to strike Iran, the President said the UK authorities had done an ‘amazing job’.) But his remarks landed at a moment of divergence in the US-UK relationship that extends well beyond Iran. Washington has imposed and reimposed tariffs on Britain. Last year the UK paused intelligence-sharing that could have assisted American strikes against suspected drug boats in the Caribbean, which London views as illegal. Trump has branded the deal to hand the Chagos islands to Mauritius an ‘act of great stupidity’.
All this has resulted in a great deal of hand-wringing about the resilience or otherwise of the Special Relationship. There is a great fear of change, given how historically close the relationship is, particularly in intelligence. The Special Relationship's entire origin story, in fact, is a cryptographic exchange over German and Japanese codes at Bletchley Park in 1941. Eighty-five years later, the intelligence connection between the US and UK remains central; having the same set of eyes and ears means you see the world similarly and act accordingly.
But might gathering political headwinds blow hard enough to damage it? To understand how – or if – the intelligence partnership might come apart, it is helpful to examine how it actually works.
This is the subject of my new novel, London Station, in which I imagine a scenario where the CIA and MI6 begin spying on each other. There is a historical precedent for this. Prior to the second world war, Britain intercepted US diplomatic traffic and conducted influence campaigns on American soil.
In one instance, British spies drew up and disseminated a supposed Nazi map depicting Germany's vision for a partition of South America in a bid to frighten US policymakers into entering the war.
This is not how the relationship works today. Now, the CIA and MI6 share extensively and conduct joint operations. The same is true of the two domestic security services, the FBI and MI5. Though details about the Fairford plot are still emerging, Trump's praise and his cryptic claim that 'we had them under view for a long time' hints at another example of US-UK intelligence cooperation.
The CIA and MI6 share a lot of human intelligence – HUMINT – even if they don't always offer the names of their sources. There is no published percentage of exactly
Britain is the decidedly junior partner. When push comes to shove, the CIA wins out
how much they share. In my conversations with current and former officials, it's obviously not 100 per cent, but I'd wager it's fairly close to that.
The two services also don't conduct operations on one another's soil without the consent and participation of their opposite numbers – although my contacts did acknowledge both sides' occasional naughtiness. Perhaps, in theory, an MI6 officer under commercial cover might be dispatched to the US to hobnob with interesting targets, and the Americans might not be informed.
On signals intelligence – SIGINT, referring to intercepted communications – the two countries are even closer, and there is very little naughtiness. The US National Security Agency (NSA) and its British equivalent, GCHQ, often work off shared systems and collect the intelligence together. As Richard Kerbaj notes in his fabulous book The Secret History of the Five Eyes, the NSA has even paid the operating expenditure for some GCHQ sites.
But if the Americans have more money, geography still matters for intercepting satellite communications and tapping fibre-optic cables. Britain's imperial legacy creates unique value through a network of installations across Europe, the Middle East and south-east Asia. After 9/11, when the US was considering contingency plans if a terrorist attack took the NSA offline, the answer was to use GCHQ as the backup. That level of trust is likely without equal in the espionage business.
Underlying the HUMINT and SIGINT ties is a web of personal relationships. When I was researching for London Station, I asked my CIA contacts for warm introductions to their British counterparts and found dozens of officers who were in close touch, many after retirement. The scale of these networks is beyond those US officers share with any other western intelligence agency. I attempted a similar feat for my last novel, about Mossad, and found it much harder to find CIA officers in close contact with their Israeli equivalents. John Brennan, former director of the CIA, has said that he ‘had no qualms whatever about sharing our most sensitive secrets with my British counterparts’.
This is not to say that the interaction is frictionless. My research turned up cases in which the two services compete to recruit the same assets, jostle for primacy and are sometimes – shock, horror – less than forthcoming with one another over the targets they're pursuing. And Britain is the decidedly junior partner. Several former CIA officers have told me that when push comes to shove, the CIA wins out. If it wants a thing – a case, some assistance – it almost always gets it. The reverse is not true, and this can rankle.
Tension aside, the overarching logic is simple but powerful. Let's say the combined value of the US-UK intelligence relationship is 100 units. The US contributes 80, the UK 20 (these figures are estimates for the purpose of demonstration), and both partners receive the full 100. The US grumbles that the UK does not pull its weight: 'The Brits are pickpockets', in the uncharitable words of a former senior CIA officer I interviewed. And UK intelligence officers might complain about the damn Yanks throwing their weight around and ignoring the British contribution, which can be significant. But 100 units is greater than the individual contributions of both nations.
This all adds up to a relationship that is both deep and flexible. First, the depth. Political bluster aside, the two countries share largely overlapping geopolitical interests. Public spats over, say, the means of dealing with Iran hide basic agreements over the nature of the threat from the regime. The same could be said for China and Russia.
Flexibility is also an advantage in an era when, as a recent House of Lords report aptly puts it, the ‘once easy cultural bonds between Britain and America are beginning to fray’. The Special Relationship is not a formalised and rigid arrangement. A president cannot withdraw from it, nor rip up a piece of paper, because one does not exist. This flexibility means that cooperation can continue or even deepen in one domain even as it weakens elsewhere. The two nations’ intelligence services will keep open lines of communication amid any public mudslinging.
So what, if anything, could splinter the partnership? Over its long history the Special Relationship has experienced strain. Consider policy differences over the Suez crisis in 1956, the Vietnam war (Britain did not send troops) and the extent of Britain's tilt toward Europe in the early 1970s. The last of these led President Nixon to temporarily cut off some intelligence sharing; the
Brits retaliated during the Yom Kippur war of 1973 by placing restrictions on US intelligence activities and overflights from bases in Britain and Cyprus.
Similarly, we should now expect divergence, in at least in some areas. The two countries are decades from the shared experiences of the second world war and Cold War. Elements of the US political class, particularly in MAGA-world, are sceptical of global entanglements and increasingly see the UK as weak and irrelevant. In London Station, I imagine a CIA run by a character named Bobby Jerome, the founder and CEO of the nation's largest residential home-building business, a commercial animal with strong political instincts, a cultural distaste for the Brits and a desire to review the agency's foreign partnerships. This is perhaps not so unbelievable; Trump appointed Bill Pulte, heir to a home-building fortune, as acting director of National Intelligence (this happened, I should note, after I'd finished the novel).
But even Bobby's reign of terror runs into the cold logic of the US-UK intelligence relationship: he discovers that the CIA is getting more out of the partnership than it puts in. There can be more divergence, more tension and less shared affinity even as the relationship remains close. It does not have to be ‘special’ to deliver benefits to both countries.
This means that even if a J.D. Vance or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez administration – both likely to be sceptical of European commitments – takes power in Washington, the relationship is primed to adapt and shift, not to break. If policy disagreements widen, as they probably will, over the wisdom of military American interventions, the value of Nato, the geopolitical competition with China or Washington’s more go-it-alone, abrasive diplomatic attitude, the machinery exists to continue delivering military, security and political benefits that advance the interests of both nations.
The flexible, adaptable and mutually beneficial intelligence partnership is exactly the sort best positioned to evolve and survive amid stormy political seas on both sides of the Atlantic. Let's hope it does.
[A tale of two Cities] The sad moral decline of the club I once loved
MICHAEL HENDERSON
Fifty-nine years ago this month, a barrel-chested footballer called Francis Lee left Bolton Wanderers for Manchester City, and an impressionable eight-year-old followed him. Within a year ‘the City’ were First Division champions, and ‘Franny’, my childhood hero, had become an England international.
Early memories are usually the most vivid. FA Cup winners in 1969, the men from Maine Road completed a trifecta of domestic pots the following year with the League Cup – and added a dollop of cream with the European Cup Winners' Cup. The years of plenty didn't last. In those days prizes were distributed more widely. But what larks.
Last week the club Lee served as a star player and, two decades later, as chairman, found itself chained in the doghouse. A Premier League investigation, conducted over three years of laborious fact-checking, found it guilty of 114 charges relating to financial jiggery-pokery.
Cooking the books, in other words – and in the eyes of their accusers, City then smothered them with a Béarnaise sauce. Beyond east Manchester, great was the rejoicing. A club once regarded as a variety act – the disgraced broadcaster Stuart Hall habitually referred to Maine Road as ‘the theatre of base comedy’ – have been widely resented since the Abu Dhabi United Group, led by Sheikh Mansour, rode into town 18 years ago, carrying bags of gold. The Etihad Stadium, their home since 2003, is seen as a den of cheats.
City have vowed to challenge any punishment and, as they have unlimited funds, the claims and counter-claims may stretch on like the Great North Road. As far as the footballing world is concerned, however, they have been judged bang to rights. A significant points deduction, and even relegation from the Premier League, are possible.
It's a grubby tale of a game that has sold its soul, and City are by no means the only offenders. The Premier League fined Chelsea £10 million four years ago, Everton and Nottingham Forest were docked points, and the Glazer brothers – Americans who own a majority share in Manchester United – have run up £1 billion worth of debt since they took over England's biggest club in a leveraged buyout 21 years ago.
But City is the main story, on account of their decade and more of glory. Champions of England eight times since 2012, they became European champions in 2023 when victory in the FA Cup landed them a remarkable treble. A club that went 35 years without winning a trophy has come in from the cold. Except, it now appears, the transformation was facilitated by persistent rule-breaking by a foreign state.
The fans don't care. Fans never do. So long as ‘their’ team is winning, the scarftwirlers will tolerate everything: the reflexive dishonesty of players, the shrieking of one-eyed managers and the shenanigans of agents. Since the Premier League was created in 1992, all parties have frolicked in
Manchester City's transformation, it appears, was facilitated by persistent rule-breaking by a foreign state
a land of milk and honey. The traditional English game has been marketed as ‘entertainment’ for an international audience, promoted by biddable television pundits.
When City topped the old First Division in 1968, all 11 players were English. So was the manager, Joe Mercer, and the coach, Malcolm Allison. The chairman, Albert Alexander, was a local man who had given his life to the club. Lee cost City £60,000 when he travelled ten miles down the road from Bolton. Colin Bell, the finest player to represent the club since the war, joined from Bury for £45,000. Other members of that champion team were recruited from Doncaster Rovers, Plymouth Argyle, Stockport County and Swindon Town. Never such innocence again.
'I said has anything new happened?'
Now there are few English players in the Premier League and most clubs are owned and managed almost exclusively by foreigners. Commercially, it has been a roaring success. Morally, it brings to mind Mickey Duff's maxim. 'In this game,' the boxing promoter said, 'you can fuck a flea if the money's right.'
It wasn't always a land of enchantment, even when England were winning their only World Cup in 1966. The players were paid poorly and the grounds, while character-ful, were dismal. At Maine Road there was a malodorous cavern called the Kippax Stand, which could have passed for Nibelheim, the subterranean home of wretches in Das Rheingold.
Was the game better in those days? Well, it produced men like Gordon Banks, Jimmy Armfield, Ray Wilson, Bobby Moore, Bobby Charlton, Jimmy Greaves, Martin Peters and Alan Ball, who would walk into an England XI today. Not one wore a tattoo, crashed a Bentley or lived in a mansion. Between 1959 and 1976, no team retained the First Division title, so the game was certainly more competitive. And those men played on heavy pitches, with old-fashioned leather balls, when referees took a more tolerant view of what constituted foul play.
Three years ago, after City had won that treble, I wrote my hero a letter. 'I have drifted away from the club,' I told him, 'but I'm grateful to you for providing so many golden memories. For at least one person it's still the club of Colin Bell, Francis Lee and Mike Summerbee, and it always will be.'
He replied in an unsteady hand, which suggested something was wrong. A week later Franny died, at the age of 79, after a battle with cancer. He's still my hero, and I remain temperamentally a Blue. But modern cocky Manchest-oh has got the club it deserves, and Manchest-oh can keep it.
Sport, the great Hugh McIlvanney liked to say, should never be more than ‘a glorious distraction’. We have come a long way since then, but even in the squalid world of contemporary football there are standards to observe. Throw the book at ‘Citeh’. They deserve no mercy.
在保守党党会议周，我需要准备好护照。我将从伯明翰直接前往曼哈顿的百老汇。已故的戴维·阿梅斯爵士（Sir David Amess）曾担任“音乐人计划”（Music Man Project）的主席，这是一个由患有学习障碍的音乐家组成的合唱团。这家位于绍森德-昂-希（Southend-on-Sea）的小型慈善机构现在已具有全球影响力，在全英国范围内提供教学材料和音乐机会，并通过姐妹组织将其扩展至全球。他们的理念是应该在世界上最好的场馆演出。我曾协助戴维爵士成功争取到了在皇家阿尔伯特音乐厅演出的机会。在他们那里演出的当晚，他宣布了他们有一天在百老汇举办自己演出的梦想。在他被谋杀近五年后的今天，他们将实现这一目标。次日，他们将在联合国演出，届时我们将宣布成立一个残疾音乐家国际联盟。过去几周对他们来说充满挑战。挫折包括他们的巴士被蓄意破坏，以及航班在最后一刻被取消。他们乐观地应对了这一切。
我的这一周将以两场筹款活动收尾，分别是为了保守党协会和退伍军人慈善机构。前者在索利哈尔（Solihull），后者在国家纪念树林（National Memorial Arboretum）。能见到这么多致力于改善生活的人，总是能给我带来启发。如果我们的国家遭遇不幸，这些人将是名单上的首选。我的这一周以两次纪念活动作为开端和结尾——一次是为了纪念众多被仇恨谋杀的人，另一次是为了纪念那些拥有至高之爱的人。
📄 Original Section
---
[WARTIME NOTEBOOK] Penny Mordaunt
Friday. I address intelligence agencies, law enforcement and behavioural scientists as they gather in Krakow. I tell them how they can help combat anti-Semitism in their work. The speech is a prelude to a visit to the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial and museum. Words are not enough. While we meet, Lithuania highlights Russian attempts to bully pro-Ukrainian Nato countries with airspace incursions.
Saturday. China has held the Robot Olympics, firmly fixed on a tech-enhanced future. This weekend we Brits held an event of similar magnitude. Ours is devoid of AI-enabled humanoids; instead, it is all high lift cams, low growls, beer, nylons, rouge, flat caps and the exquisite aroma of Castrol R. Do not dismiss the Goodwood Revival as backward-looking. In Britain, nostalgia is fuel for the future. The traditional and familiar are no brake on progress. They are a necessary condition of it. Trackside, in the shadow of towering Hannah Waddingham and her preacher hat, I enjoy a brew with fellow dyslexic and driving legend Jackie Stewart. He is towering, too, in a different way. Meanwhile, three Russian aircraft are intercepted in Estonian airspace.
Monday. The start of The Wargame. This is the TV version of Sky's podcast, simulating the start of a hot war with Russia. Your editor and I spent four days in a bunker with political opponents, role-playing a coalition government on the brink. While we had been filming, fictional events of hybrid warfare mirrored the reality. An assassination in Poland and another Russian vessel in our waters. Four days of filming was condensed into four hours of telly. Diplomacy, the creation of strategic dilemmas, choking off Russia's ability to fight in Ukraine, financial sanctions and 58 attempts to get Potus to trigger Article 5 did not make the edit. By Wednesday's episode we were at Bikini State Red Alert.
No one will be surprised to hear me highlight our lack of conventional forces and the sense of spending 5 per cent GDP to prevent a war costing 50 per cent of it. But when Harriet Harman (Sky's home secretary) and Nicola Sturgeon (Sky's deputy prime minister) have joined the cause to re-arm, people ought to wake up. It is about to be too late.
As the nation watches the fictional disaster unfold, in the real world, Vilnius and Copenhagen airports are closed because of Russian-launched balloons and drones. The drones were launched from three Russian-affiliated vessels. One is the shadow tanker Boracay, part of a now 1,000-strong dark fleet.
While we wait for the government to come to its senses, we do what we can. I speak to two resilience groups this week. They are trying to ensure that whatever happens to us in the coming months and years, life can continue in the UK. Good people working hard to stay ahead of the threat. While I am on my feet, Denmark's intelligence service issues a warning as Russia's hybrid campaign escalates. Europe's agencies and Baltic ministers say that these can no longer be called 'hybrid'. They are overt attacks. In the UK, Wes Streeting urges us all to stock up on baked beans. He is doing all he can, it seems, to give Labour a second wind.
In a few days' time, the Royal Navy's Crew 1 in MCM2 Squadron will be stood down. They have no vessel to lower the
White Ensign on, no shore establishment in which to meet to celebrate 20 years' service so accomplished that it earned them the name 'Fighting Aces'. They were the crew that dealt with MV Smyrtos as she sailed into UK waters earlier this year. These sailors will quietly head off to other duties, on other ships, with other shipmates while we do our damnedest to ensure they get a proper send-off.
For Conservative party conference week, I will need my passport. I will be heading from Birmingham straight to Broadway in Manhattan. The late Sir David Amess was president of the Music Man Project, a choir of musicians with learning disabilities. This small charity in Southend-on-Sea now has global reach, providing teaching materials and music opportunities across the UK and, via sister organisations, worldwide. Their philosophy is that they should play the best venues in the world. I had helped Sir David in his successful attempt to secure the Royal Albert Hall. On the night they performed there he announced their dream to one day play their own show on Broadway. Nearly five years since his murder, they will be doing exactly that. The day after, they play at the UN, where we will announce an international alliance of disabled musicians. The past few weeks have been challenging for them. Setbacks were their bus being vandalised and their flights being cancelled at the last minute. They have cheerfully dealt with it all.
My week comes to a close with two fundraisers, for Conservative Associations and for veterans' charities. The former is in Solihull; the latter at the National Memorial Arboretum. I'm always inspired to meet so many people working to make life better. If the worst befell our country, these folk would be first on the team sheet. My week has been book-ended with memorials – one to so many murdered by hate and one to those that hath no greater love.
《伟大的生活》这个创意不是我的。这个荣誉属于一位卓越的 BBC 制片人和主持人迈尔斯·沃德（Miles Warde）。他创办了这个系列，并且自从我在几年后加入以来，他一直担任我的高级编辑。迈尔斯是一个古怪的天才，他自己的产出量惊人。当公司（面临进一步削减开支的需求）要求他为自己的职位参加面试时，迈尔斯拒绝了。于是我想，最好的办法是在迈尔斯离开时一起离开，因为我想象不出没有他的节目会是什么样子。
但这真是一段精彩的旅程！我经历过嘉宾愤而离场（克里斯托弗·希钦斯，他觉得我在他选择列昂·托洛茨基这件事上对他太苛刻，骂我是个该死的保守党人，愤而冲出房间，然后又迅速冲了回来）。我也遇到过尴尬的请求（斯诺登勋爵，玛格丽特公主的前夫，他提名了初代 Mini 的设计师亚历克·伊西戈尼斯，后者在 2.30 点要求
📄 Original Section
---
[MATTHEW PARRIS] I bid fond farewell to Great Lives
By my bed at home is a little shelf on which I put useful things for the morning. Coins, keys, my smartphone, some eardrops and... I looked at it, and it looked back at me. 'You won't be needing me any more,' it seemed to say, 'probably ever again in your life.'
I confess a tear pricked my eyes. It was true. My BBC pass, on its blue lanyard, is often beside my bed, ready for when I go straight from Derbyshire to the BBC studios in New Broadcasting House near Oxford Circus.
How many times have I walked from the Tube station, up Upper Regent Street, past the ‘pepper pot’ church, John Nash’s All Souls at Langham Place, and in through those BBC revolving doors. In fact the question is not rhetorical. I’ve done it more than 500 times because that’s how many Great Lives programmes I’ve presented for Radio 4 since I started 20 years ago, in 2006.
I'm leaving. Probably my last programme, already recorded, will be broadcast this month; and I'm not confident the corporation will decide to continue the series. I so hope they do.
You may have heard an episode or two. The format is beautifully simple. We invite as our guest somebody notable in public life and ask them to nominate, from the ranks of the dead, a figure – famous or obscure – whose life they have greatly admired. Then we get a third person to join us in the studio – an academic, perhaps, or a biographer, even a descendant or old friend of the person nominated: someone who can augment my guest’s enthusiasm with some extra information. We chat for 40 or 50 minutes – it’s a chat, not a symposium – which my producer then edits down to the half-hour of the broadcast programme.
The Great Lives idea was not mine. That distinction goes to an extraordinary BBC producer and presenter, Miles Warde. He started the series and has been my senior editor ever since I joined it, a few years in. Miles is a quirky genius whose own output has been prodigious. When the corporation (faced with the need for further cuts) asked him to interview for his own job, Miles declined. Best, then, I thought, to leave when Miles does, for I can't imagine the programme without him.
And, at 77, I should probably be looking at stepping back soon, anyway. Not for me the 'Gosh, he's 88 and still churning it out!' reputation. Not for me words like 'sprightly'. Slowly we lose our edge: I'm not as quick with responses as I once was, so I'll confine myself mostly to print and quit regular broadcasting while (I flatter myself) I'm ahead.
But what a ride it's been! I've had walk-outs (Christopher Hitchens, who, feeling I was giving him too hard a time over his choice of Leon Trotsky, called me a bleeding Tory, stormed out, then promptly stormed back in again). I've had awkward requests (Lord Snowdon, Princess Margaret's ex-husband, nominating Alec Issigonis, designer of the original Mini, who asked for wine at 2.30 in
Some of my most memorable programmes have celebrated a life most listeners won't have heard of
the afternoon: we had to send someone out to buy a bottle). I've had some remarkable out-of-studio locations (interviewing the climber Joe Simpson of Touching the Void in the wind and rain perched on Stanage Edge in Derbyshire; and our programme on Roger Deakin, the water-loving nature writer and right-to-roamer, whom we celebrated by recording from a houseboat on the Thames, after which we stripped naked and dived into the river – only our guest from the Guardian kept his pants on).
My favourites? Too many to name, beyond saying this: some of my most memorable programmes have celebrated a life most listeners won't have heard of, but more should. Ada Lovelace, Byron's daughter, whom he never returned to England to see, an invalid and mathematical prodigy who died young but has some claim to have co-invented the computer along with Charles Babbage, has stayed always in my memory, not so much for her computing as for her passionate belief that poetry, art and beauty are cosmically linked with mathematics.
‘We don’t want to go too crazy and get rid of it completely.’
Speaking of great women, many years ago Miles decided to tally their prominence in our programmes. He found that, among more than 300 nominators, half the women had chosen a woman and half had chosen a man as their great life. Among male nominators, all but three had chosen another man. We resolved to put that right, and we have.
We might otherwise never have featured Princess Vera Gedroits, Russia's first woman military surgeon and professor of surgery, decorated for her battlefield work after the Russo-Japanese war, openly lesbian, who honed her skills in a cement factory, became a favourite of the Tsarina and (a towering figure of a woman) manhandled a whimpering Rasputin out of her surgery in the Imperial Palace. Vera even survived the transition to revolutionary communism, was a noted author and died peacefully in Kyiv, where she'd moved with her lover. She was nominated by her distant relative Mel Giedroyc, the actress and comedian best known for co-presenting The Great British Bake-off.
I often imagine what our great life would think if she or he were hovering above us in the studio. I believe Princess Vera would have been proud of Mel. On present plans, Vera will be my last great life.
I bow out sadly but without the least bitterness. Should I ever do Desert Island Discs, I know one choice I'll make. Noël Coward's 'Why Must the Show Go On?' about show business. 'Butchers and bakers,' he writes, 'Get little applause for their pains/When I think of miners and waiters in diners/ The query forever remains/ Why must the show go on?' So...
Stop being gallant, and don't be such a bore. Pack up your talent, there's always plenty more.
And if you lose hope, take dope And lock yourself in the john. Why must the show go on?
What is so special about the Garvaghy Road to Ulster Unionists? The area around Portadown attained significance for loyalists thanks to the Battle of the Diamond in 1795 when Protestant and Catholic forces clashed at a road junction. Twelve years later, Orangemen started their annual march from Portadown to the church at Drumcree, returning via the Garvaghy Road, which was then in the countryside. It wasn't entirely peaceful then, with a Protestant magistrate remarking in 1835 that the Orangemen had gone out of their way to pass by a Catholic chapel, stirring up the locals. But the march became more of a flashpoint after a council estate inhabited mostly by Catholics was built along the Garvaghy Road in the 1960s.
The Chancellor, John Healey, announced £6 billion for shipbuilding as part of his attempt to reindustrialise Britain. Which countries produced the most merchant ships in 2024, by share of total global value?
Rod Stewart, 81, 宣布在退休前进行最后一次巡演。还有哪些 20 世纪 60 / 70 年代的音乐艺人仍在巡演？
Van Morrison, 81, 今年秋天将在英国进行 12 场巡演。
Bob Dylan, 85, 今年秋天将在欧洲举行 30 场音乐会。
Ringo Starr, 86, 在春季进行了 12 场的美国巡演。
Deep Purple 乐队（包括早期成员 Ian Gillan, 81, Roger Glover, 80, 和 Ian Paice, 78）今年秋天在欧洲有 37 场演出。Roger Daltrey, 82, 正在美国进行一场 20 场的个人巡演。Willie Nelson, 93, 已预订参加明年 4 月在加利福尼亚州举行的一场音乐节。
海地裔加拿大作家 Thélyson Orélien 惊人的名声崩塌，在许多方面类似于我们关于 Jason Arday 的文化战争。这位备受赞誉的作者因其对移民经历的深刻描述，在电视演播室以及魁北克和巴黎圣日耳曼德普雷（Saint-Germain-des-Prés）的文学沙龙中备受推崇，但上周在 X 上被指控连续剽窃并使用人工智能撰写其最新小说。他的指控者谴责那种“低期望的软偏见”，认为这导致觉醒派知识分子对平庸视而不见，因为他们的英雄是一位大写的黑人
📄 Original Section
---
Still out there
Rod Stewart, 81, announced one final tour before he retires. Which other 1960s/1970s music acts are still on the road?
Van Morrison, 81, has a 12-date UK tour this autumn.
Bob Dylan, 85, has 30 European concerts this autumn.
Ringo Starr, 86, had a 12-date US tour in the spring.
Deep Purple (including early members Ian Gillan, 81, Roger Glover, 80, and Ian Paice, 78) have 37 dates in Europe this autumn. Roger Daltrey, 82, is in the middle of a 20-date solo tour in the US. Willie Nelson, 93, is booked at a festival in California next April.
The spectacular fall from grace of Haitian-Canadian writer Thélyson Orélien in many ways resembles our own culture war over Jason Arday. The celebrated author, feted in TV studios and in the literary salons of Quebec and Paris's Saint-Germain-des-Prés for his hard-hitting descriptions of the migrant experience, was accused on X last week both of serial plagiarism and of using artificial intelligence to write his latest novel. His accusers decried the soft bigotry of low expectations that caused the woke intelligentsia to turn a blind eye to mediocrity because their hero was a capital-B Black
奥雷利安（Orélien）否认了这些指控。文学侦探们指出，Pangram——这个将他小说《要么如此，要么死亡》（C'était ça ou Mourir）中大篇幅文本标记为非人类创作的 AI 检测器——容易出现误报，它曾错误地将 LLM 出现之前很久就写就的法国经典文学页面标记为 LLM 生成。然而，这并未能阻止龚古尔奖（Prix Goncourt，相当于法国的布克奖，且并非反动政治的温床）委员会将奥雷利安的书从今年的入围名单中剔除。
那么，那些自称是公众品味仲裁者和把关人的评论家和奖项委员会又如何呢？正如《要么如此，要么死亡》（C'était ça ou Mourir）所展示的， LLM 已经彻底愚弄了他们。
📄 Original Section
---
A former literary scholar at All Souls, Oxford, has called AI ‘completely brilliant’
man. His defenders, just as in Arday's case, tried to dismiss the original accuser as an extremist (the anonymous account responsible turned out to be run by Samuel Fitoussi, a columnist for the right-wing Le Figaro). They also attempted to cast the affair as the working of a racist lynch mob. The leftie magazine Les Inrockuptibles even came up with the thrillingly Stalinist line that 'in this affair, whether the accusation is well-founded is not what matters most'.
Orélien has denied the accusations. Literary sleuths have pointed out that Pangram – the AI detector that has marked up swaths of the text of his novel C'était ça ou Mourir as non-human – is prone to false positives, wrongly flagging pages of classic French literature written long before the advent of AI. That, however, has not stopped the committee of the Prix Goncourt, France’s equivalent of the Booker Prize and not known as a hotbed of reactionary politics, dropping Orélien’s book from this year’s shortlist.
But l'affaire Orélien poses a far more serious question for our times than the obvious one about race relations. What would it mean if a novel part-written by AI were actually excellent? In a fair world, should the author be sharing his prize with the Large Language Model (LLM) which may have toiled as his co-author? 'This book is very good – if it's AI that made it, we should use it!' the Goncourt Committee member Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt told a talk show in the wake of the scandal. 'No, I'm kidding!' he quickly added.
But if Schmitt is kidding, other authors and thinkers are starting to engage with the real possibility that the world is approaching a singularity moment where AI is as good as humans at ‘thinking’ and writing. The remarkable Dr Iain McGilchrist, a former literary scholar at All Souls, Oxford, who re-qualified as a consultant psychiatrist, has called AI ‘completely brilliant’, able to offer advice with a sensibility ‘very like my brother, who is an extraordinarily civilised art historian’. Lower down the intellectual totem pole, Alain Damasio, known as ‘the Pope of French science fiction’, is sufficiently secure in his reputation to admit that he regularly uses AI in his writing. ‘I’m stunned by its creative capabilities when it comes to imaginary worlds,’ he said recently. ‘It’s almost on the same level as my own craftsmanship, and it’s only going to keep improving.’
The Orélien case is just the latest in a long line of acclaimed books that have been flagged as AI. Rie Kudan, winner of Japan's 2024 Akutagawa Prize, admitted that she had used ChatGPT. AI-detector-triggering stories have won four out of the ten Commonwealth Short Story regional competitions in the last two years. An almost wholly AI written book was runner-up in a Chinese science fiction prize in 2023.
But there's a catch. Anthropic, the creator of Claude, has bought up millions of books and scanned them to build the database of its LLM (and then pulped the copies, sparking outrage). In other words, the published works of most authors writing today are already in the belly, or the mind, of the beast. (I know this because Anthropic owes me and thousands of other authors involved in a successful \$1.5 billion class action suit a shed-load of money for compensation.) That helps explain why a book by French author Sophie Jomain written in 2009 could come up as 94 per cent AI. A new text written by Jomain came up as 100 per cent machine-generated. 'What does that mean?' asks Jomain. 'The more I write, the more my writing starts to resemble artificial intelligence? Or is it that the more I write, the more artificial intelligence feeds on it and starts to resemble me?' In a further mind-bending twist, Pangram also offers to 'humanise' AI text for a fee, playing both gamekeeper and poacher.
Most people believe using AI to write is a kind of faking or cheating. But the question of whether the art it produces is automatically bad remains. The German artist Wolfgang Beltracchi painted hundreds of fakes of 20th-century masters that were validated by art historians, specialists at Christie's and the director of Paris's Pompidou Centre. They sold for tens of millions. Max
'The sermon was a massive improvement – the vicar must be using AI!'
Ernst's own widow even certified one of the works. Beltracchi was exposed (and jailed) in 2011, and the value of his fakes obviously plunged – though his creations were objectively brilliant in conception and execution. Claude recently wrote a ‘Bach’ fugue that even music scholars describe as ‘workman-like’ and non-experts like me find magical.
But Orélien – if he did use AI – wasn’t faking Ernst or Bach. He was faking himself. Moreover, people are still unaware that powerful new LLMs work best as a car you drive, not as a robot you send on errands. Try prompting an AI programme, even one as powerful as Claude’s Opus 5, to ‘write me a novel in the style of Thélyson Orélien’ and the result will be identifiable as AI slop – superficially convincing, maybe, but full of heavyhanded stylistic formulas and wooden characters. Amazon Books, whose content is estimated to be at least 40 per cent AI-created, is full of such formulaic genre-fiction drek.
However, if you, as an author, ask the machine to thoughtfully critique the prose you wrote yourself, it will likely do a great job. From there, it's a fatally simple step to asking the LLM to go ahead and add its fixes and thereby improve your text. That's the slippery slope on which today's literary world finds itself. Samuel Fitoussi asks whether 'the work of writing will change form... no longer about choosing each word, but about guiding one's AI'. Could we soon be living in a world where 'the one who produces the best novels will be the one who has invested the most creativity, intelligence or, at least, some kind of something in their AI'?
Fitoussi's perhaps bleak vision contains chinks of hope for human creativity. In his prediction, universal access to AI does not mean anyone can write a novel. The machine could become ‘a cognitive lever, a talent amplifier’ for those with sufficient mastery to use it. Non-masters of the craft, meanwhile, will merely produce derivative rubbish.
And what about the critics and prize committees who claim to be the arbiters and gatekeepers of public taste? As C'était ça ou Mourir has shown, AI already has them thoroughly fooled.
Earlier this month, the government launched its ‘Prepare’ campaign, urging us to plan for all manner of emergencies and put together a kit of food and supplies big enough to last several days. Housing Secretary Angela Rayner helpfully revealed what she’d be stockpiling: ‘Mascara, concealer, a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, some baked beans and a tin of custard – I like custard.’
This is perfect timing: Putin seems to be breathing a little more heavily down our necks and – phew! – I’ve just moved into a house with an understairs cupboard big enough for an emergency pantry.
A quick glance online tells me I can buy so-called ‘go bags’ complete with first aid kits, head torches, mess tins and fire starters from roughly £175. All very useful, no doubt, but not much fun.
So I dig a little further and come across the X page of Lucy Easthope, a disaster expert who's advised the government on all manner of catastrophes, including, most recently, the Covid pandemic. She suggests: 'It's OK for the 72-hour [emergency] cupboard to be things you like.' Say no more. In the spirit of Angela Rayner, I shall make my own survival kit.
This should be easy, I think. I've long felt I have the makings of a survivalist: every time I go on holiday to the Mediterranean, I make sure to leave space in my hold luggage for a few bottles of good red wine and extra-virgin olive oil. It just tastes so much better when bought from the source – and it's good to be prepared for when the Filippo Berio spikes above £10 a litre back home.
Hoarding three days of supplies shouldn't have to take on the frantic nature of dashing for loo roll at the start of lockdown. I log into my Sainsbury's delivery app and get tapping. In go a selection of jarred beans and chickpeas (not the tinned stuff, please), as well as capers and artichokes. Next, some tinned tomatoes, olives (Perelló, obvs), tuna and anchovies. I'm not sure even the apocalypse could make me desperate enough to buy corned beef.
I opt for a bottle of concentrated lemon juice, and while I'm not confident it will provide much vitamin C, it would mean I could still churn out some homemade hummus
幸运的是，我的调料架储备相当充足，所以不必太担心应急口粮的口味问题。我还准备好了开罐器、开瓶器（为了那些美妙的地中海红葡萄酒）和电池供电的肉类温度计——毕竟，谁想在国家紧急状态期间还搞出食物中毒？不过，我在心里提醒自己，下次路过 Holland and Barrett 时得进去买些薄荷片和活性炭药片，据说这两者对缓解肠胃不适非常有效。
Easthope 在 X 上聚集了令人印象深刻的 30,000 名追随者，大家都渴望获得她的准备技巧——所以我很高兴自己并不孤单。有人在她的帖子下评论道：“现在我想看‘英国大生存赛’。你和 Nigella 在野战医院或大规模除污中心风格的帐篷里，引导参赛者完成‘本周末日’主题的任务。”算我一个——但得等我的 Sainsbury's 购物订单送到之后。
📄 Original Section
---
Not even the apocalypse could make me desperate enough to buy corned beef
when things get tough. Next go in crackers (Peter's Yard – for the hummus) and a few packets of rice and pasta.
Luckily, I’ve got a pretty well-stocked spice rack so don’t have to worry too much about flavouring my emergency rations. I’m also sorted for a can opener, corkscrew (for the lovely Mediterranean reds) and battery-powered meat thermometer – would you want to be getting food poisoning in a national emergency? I do, however, make a mental note to pop into Holland and Barrett next time I’m passing for some peppermint and charcoal pills, both meant to be very good for upset stomachs.
The World Health Organisation recommends keeping ten litres of water per household member per day in supply. Those big plastic five-litre canisters of water are somewhat unsightly, but needs must and, in any case, they'll be well hidden under my stairs.
We will also need that water for cooking and washing, which makes me think I'd better invest in a few good jugs for the tub – the water flow from my navy-blue Oliver Bonas jug is a little hard to control. I add some San Pellegrino to the basket too, because in times of hardship, it will be important to keep our dignity.
I also have the cat to think about. I usually feed him fresh, 100 per cent real meat food that, to my husband's chagrin, takes up most of our freezer. But if the power cuts out, that would all go off quite quickly. I chuck a few boxes of kibble into the order – I hope the cat forgives me.
I stock up on candles (tapered, of course – and enough to fill the freshly mounted wall sconces in my new dining room) and matches. Once that order is sorted, I also toggle over to John Lewis for a swanky Roberts radio – battery- and solar-powered – so I can listen to any government emergency updates as and when disaster strikes.
I'm not the only person I know who's thinking about survival. A friend of a friend has taken up crossbow lessons and another is learning to fish. I vow to do better with my vegetable patch next year (or would I be better off digging a shelter in the garden instead?) and to learn how to pickle.
Easthope has gathered an impressive 30,000 followers on X, all keen to get her tips on how to prepare – so I’m glad I’m not alone. One comments under her post: ‘Now I want “The Great British Prep Off”. You and Nigella in a field hospital or mass decontamination centre-style tent guiding contestants through “apocalypse of the week” themed tasks.’ Count me in – but only once my Sainsbury’s shop arrives.
问题的一部分在于媒体本身。BBC 经常在很久之后才报道这些故事，或者将其作为次要的本地新闻。这一点至关重要，因为 BBC 网站在阅读量上远超国内其他在线新闻来源，因此其迟缓会对公众意识产生巨大的影响。然而，公众在面对国家衰落的明显迹象时，也有一种深刻的疲惫感。如果他们听说过这些事情，许多人认为对此做出反应要么是“低端”的，要么是不值得
📄 Original Section
---
[MADELINE GRANT] It's all too much
There were many reasons why John Ruskin hated Rococo. The overly decorated style was a bête noire for the great architectural critic because he thought it the supreme example of excess and by its excess it concealed its true meaning. We are in an era of British life which I can only think of as ‘late Rococo incompetence’. The excess of bad news, government ineptitude and baffling decisions made by the state is now so great that we are struck dumb, incapable of meaningful reaction.
The news cycle abounds with evidence of this tidal wave of depressing or destructive acts. The sheer number of hideous stories has desensitised us. In the past, rapes, foiled terror plots, government corruption scandals or days featuring unprecedented levels of illegal immigration would dominate news bulletins, front pages and social media. Now they're just accepted as part of the wider tapestry of horror.
These stories often come in insane twos and threes. Earlier this week, for example, in just 48 hours, we learnt that Abu Hamza's wife was getting a £70,000 property makeover courtesy of British taxpayers, that we granted citizenship and asylum to a bona fide Hamas operative (who promptly showed his gratitude by plotting terror attacks on British soil) and that Shabana Mahmood, for all her tough talk, won't actually do anything about migration other than increasing routes from countries whose citizens are more likely to commit harm to British people. These barely made a splash. By the time you read this, the news cycle may already have moved on. Indeed, such was my shock about Hamza's wife, I temporarily forgot that Britain also provided council housing for the First Lady of Sierra Leone.
Last October, a man named Wayne Broadhurst was stabbed to death by an Afghan migrant in a quiet street in Uxbridge while walking his dog. It was precisely the sort of random, senseless killing of an innocent member of the public that would once have prompted weeks of discussion and national soul-searching. It emerged that the migrant had lied about his age, but had – inevitably – been given asylum and free accommodation. Yet the murder wasn’t prominently featured in many newspapers; nor was it mentioned in the Commons that week. To date, Broadhurst has only been mentioned once in parliament, by shadow home secretary Chris Philp commenting on the government's silence.
Part of the problem is the media itself. The BBC often covers these stories only very belatedly, or as a minor local item. This matters because the BBC website is by a wide margin the country's most-read online news source so its sluggishness has an outsize impact on awareness. However, there is also a sense of profound weariness among the public when confronted with obvious indicators of national decline. If they've heard of these things at all, many perceive reacting to them as either ‘low status’ or not worth
The sheer number of hideous stories has desensitised us
the effort. Perhaps this is simply the consequence of being so ground down. It's easy to see why. When they are so numerous, treating each act of malice or incompetence with the fury it deserves wouldn't result in anything changing; it would just result in an aneurysm.
This applies to the wider incompetence of the Establishment too. We are desensitised to the nature of our national situation and the appalling triviality of our government. Scandals – in the civil service, the legal system, the Church, the universities, the NHS and the government – are now so abundant that they get memory-holed after a day of coverage when once their very uncovering would have consumed weeks of news.
This week's Labour conference has been a veritable tsunami of bad ideas, from the mooted destruction of educational standards to ball-dropping on visas, migration and
'You're wasting your time, they've got a doorbell camera.'
Heathrow. The government has just handed councils the power to seize homes deemed ‘vacant’ after just six months. ‘I’ll say it again,’ crowed multiple-property owner Emily Thornberry in the manner of a corrupt Soviet commissar. ‘If you leave a home empty long-term in the middle of a housing crisis, it should be seized.’
It bears repeating: we are led by people who believe they should be able to expropriate your property and rent it out if they feel you are not putting it to good enough use. This is full-Commie stuff, and doubly terrifying – for if they believe this, then what other gross tyrannies may be awaiting us? But once again, the ‘safety in numbers’ approach to madness seems to be paying off.
Each of these demonstrations of folly merits a dissection, but such is the deluge that barely any will receive the criticism required. This is partly due to that febrile news cycle. However, many of them will get a free pass because of the Rococo nature of this incompetence and the fatigue it inspires. Since the last general election, we’ve gone from managing decline to speed-running it and nobody can quite keep up.
The deluge is sometimes absurd. This week the Defra minister Jenny Riddell-Carpenter claimed at a fringe group meeting that the countryside was going to be weaponised by ‘the far-right’. Country pubs, black labradors and warm ale are apparently part of a fascist conspiracy – and a vision of England that never existed. Bold talk from the MP for Suffolk Coastal. What is the appropriate response to this? ‘Am I having a stroke?’ comes to mind as the most obvious one. But that’s the point: the deluge of the inane, the mad and the wicked continues, demoralising and radicalising as it does so. They are dismantling the England you grew up in and then telling you it never existed.
One might question whether this is a deliberate tactic to overwhelm us with incompetence and malfeasance. The Rococo was designed to act as such, providing so many possible places to look that getting any sense of the wider vision became impossible. Ruskin rejected this because he thought it deceitful. We ought to reject the current deluge and the diversionary tactics for exactly the same reason.
Sir: It was disappointing to read Fin Taylor's Diary (26 September) in which he reflected upon feeling a ‘tinge of satisfaction’ at the California wildfires. He made the rather sweeping statement that Californians believe they live beyond the laws of nature, and that those affected are so rich that it is of no consequence.
In fact, the fires at Pacific Palisades affected the whole community. Near to us, a children's day centre, largely used by low-income families, was completely lost. Our local Ralph's supermarket burned to the ground with dozens of jobs lost. Landscapers, gardeners, waiters, domestic workers all lost their livelihoods. Whether a billionaire or working for \$20 an hour, the merciless devastation touched everyone.
Sir: It was touching to read of Peter Hitchens's affection for Canada following his disenchantment with the USA ('Swing state', 19 September). But he is far from being the first Brit to make this particular North American journey. In the wake of America's War of Independence, the former colonies were no place for 'loyalists' – the term then used for settlers who backed the Crown between 1775 and 1783. As well as suffering political isolation, loyalists had their property confiscated and lives threatened by victorious and vengeful rebels. As a result, thousands of persecuted Anglophiles sought asylum in the new northern settlements of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island.
Throughout eastern Canada, these refugees are still referenced and lauded by ‘loyalist’ parks, plaques and street names. Likewise, in the many memorials marking two world wars, Canada’s contribution to Britain’s armed forces is proudly acknowledged: in even the remotest villages of Newfoundland, the Maple Leaf and Union Jack fly alongside cenotaphs and statues. So Hitchens is right to feel more at home in Canada; and Anglo-Canadians are right to be distrustful of their southern neighbour.
Sir: In his Notes of 19 September, Charles Moore laments that people are forced to move quickly along the length of the Bayeux tapestry due to the huge numbers wanting to see it. Could I point out that, for
那些想要避免这种麻烦的人来说，在伯克郡的雷丁这里永久展出了一件全尺寸的复制品（由斯塔福德郡利克的女士们于 1885 年制作）。它位于雷丁博物馆，距离主车站（现通过伊丽莎白线与伦敦相连）仅五分钟步行路程。这里不仅值得为了挂毯而访问，还值得去看看一个被已故的约翰·贝杰曼爵士（Sir John Betjeman）评价为“很少有城镇比这里更值得探索”的地方。詹姆斯·霍尔斯（James Halls），伯克郡，雷丁
📄 Original Section
---
LETTERS
those who want to avoid this hassle, there is a full-size copy of it (made in 1885 by ladies in Leek, Staffordshire) on permanent display here in Reading, Berks? Located in Reading museum, it is only a five-minute walk from the main station (now connected to London on the Elizabeth line). Worth visiting not just for the tapestry but also to see a place about which the late Sir John Betjeman said ‘few towns better repay exploration’. James Halls Reading, Berkshire
Sir: I must reply to David Wood's letter (26 September) because he invokes my late brother in support of his dismissal of the importance of Bible knowledge. I gained the strong impression that Christopher eventually wished he hadn't given his anti-God book the subtitle How Religion Poisons Everything, because it is so obviously untrue. Religion doesn't poison the art, architecture, literature and music which it has inspired. Nor does it poison the hospitals and other charitable benefactions which it stimulates. As for the Bible, my brother was on record, more than once, praising the power and beauty of scripture. In one essay, 'When the King Saved God' in 2011, he wrote 'A culture that does not possess this common store of image and allegory will be a perilously thin one.' I can personally bear witness that, at our father's funeral, he chose to read the following passage from St Paul's Epistle to the Philippians: 'Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.' Far too soon afterwards, I read the same verses at his memorial gathering.
Sir: Jim Lawley's entertaining review of 1864: The Year That Changed Cricket, with its instances of archaic eccentricities (Books, 22 September), reminds me of a slightly unusual match I once took part in between a local team and members of my English Civil War re-enactment group. We used a curved bat, such as I have seen in the Long Room at Lord's, and two stumps rather than three. The locals wore cricket whites, boots and club caps; we had knee-length breeches, flat-toed latchet shoes, Montero caps and in one instance a lobster-pot helmet. They followed MCC laws, we the rules of 17th-century engagement; I
shall never forget the surprise on the face of their opening batsman when, going for his first run, our corporal rugby-tackled him to the ground.
Sir: Patrick West's piece on Micronations (Notes on..., 26 September) and his mention of Piddington's independence bid brought to mind the precedent set by Heathcote Williams's and David Rappaport's Free and Independent Republic of Frestonia in west London in 1977. With its own flag and stamps, it was supported by various luminaries including Sir Geoffrey Howe. Its purpose was a serious one: to find permanent social housing for the homeless in the area, in which it succeeded.
Sir: Rupert Hawksley's article ‘All bets are off’ (26 September) makes no mention of the National Lottery or the extraordinary expansion of its scratch cards. When the Lottery was introduced, these were highly controversial, yet parliament permitted them within the established framework. They have since become ubiquitous, available in virtually every convenience store. It is curious that, while Labour’s proposed restrictions on traditional bookmakers are being scrutinised, scratch cards receive no attention whatsoever. If the concern is the accessibility and normalisation of gambling, why is the National Lottery apparently exempt from the discussion?
Sir: In response to Keith Johnson's Notes on... Dogs barking in the distance (19 September), the most chilling polar opposite must be from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in Silver Blaze, with the dog in the night-time remaining silent.
先生：我亲爱的已故岳母在被问到晚餐吃什么时，总是回答“whim-woms with gooses’ bridles”（信件版，9月26日）。我至今也没搞清楚她是什么意思。
苏·梅森（Sue Mason）
林肯郡，长萨顿
📄 Original Section
---
Whim-woms again
Sir: My dear late mother-in-law, when asked what was for dinner, always replied ‘whim-woms with gooses’ bridles’ (Letters, 26 September). Never did find out what she meant.
Over the last 10 years, we’ve partnered with the UK to invest more than £300 million in aerospace innovation and infrastructure. Together, we are strengthening the country’s aerospace capabilities for generations to come.
这是一篇营销传播文章。投资者可能无法收回原始投资金额。本广告不应被视为投资建议。重要信息：本公告构成了根据《2000年金融服务与市场法》第 21 条进行的金融推广，由 Polar Capital LLP 准备并发布。Polar Capital 是一家注册号为 OC314700 的有限责任合伙企业，经英国金融行为监管局（FCA）授权并监管。
其他事务 / 马丁·范德·韦尔 (MARTIN VANDER WEYER)
📄 Original Section
---
Capital at Risk.
This is a marketing communication. Investors may not get back the original amount invested. This advertisement should not be construed as advice for investment. Important Information: This announcement constitutes a financial promotion pursuant to section 21 of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 and has been prepared and issued by Polar Capital LLP. Polar Capital is a limited liability partnership with registered number OC314700, authorised and regulated by the UK Financial Conduct Authority ("FCA").
Healey should slash fuel taxes to avert a winter diesel crisis
Chancellor John Healey's ‘new age of industrialisation’ was one of the catchier soundbites of the Labour conference. But (to adapt Humphrey Bogart) it won’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world during a winter of soaring diesel prices, round-the-block pump queues and rationing to protect priority users. Which is all possible if President Trump enacts a 90-day block on diesel exports ahead of November’s midterm elections in a desperate move to ease US domestic fuel prices, which have surged since his crazy Iran war began.
Four in ten engines on British roads are still diesel-fuelled, despite the hype for electric power. Besides ten million cars, the diesel fleet includes the vast majority of emergency vehicles. A full tank for an average family car or tradesman's van already costs £31 more than it did at the start of the year. It could rise by the same again before Christmas – not least because the UK holds barely six weeks' worth of diesel stock, having closed most of the refineries that had large-scale storage capacity.
We rely for fuel imports on the Netherlands first and the US second, but the Dutch in turn buy from the US and every wholesaler in Europe will wade into a bidding war if shipments diminish. A vision looms of a return to September 2000, when a truckers' blockade of refineries in protest against fuel taxes brought the economy to a standstill.
And there's no supply solution in sight, other than a vague hope that Trump pretends not to remember he said last weekend that he's ‘thinking about [a diesel export ban] very seriously’. Even if he resiles, he has shaken the market in the wrong direction.
If he carries the threat through, Healey won't be able to halt panic-buying or a plunge in business and consumer confidence; but he can suppress pump prices by temporarily reducing the 53p-per-litre fuel duty and the 20 per cent VAT rate, which would account for another 38p in a £2.30 litre. Has any Labour chancellor ever had the wisdom to slash tax to keep the economy alive? Diesel could be the test case.
It so happens that my diesel Audi, nicknamed ‘the fat cruiser’, was recently written off (while parked) by a lunchtime drunk-driver, and its replacement is a petrol-powered Skoda. So for all the hassle involved, at least my fuel costs should be lower pro tem. The oddity in an otherwise efficient digital claim process was that the insurance company eased its own cash flow by sending a cheque for the write-off value by snail mail. For ten unnecessary days I’ve been left in the last-century position of Billy Bunter awaiting a postal order.
In my distant youth, I was an occasional denizen of the Shed at Stamford Bridge. No longer an active Chelsea fan, these days I watch instead the financial games of leading clubs and owners. So I'm keen to hear the ‘irrefutable evidence’ Manchester City says it will bring forward to rebut the 114 alleged breaches of Premier League rules of which it's reported to have been found guilty.
Charges dating from 2009 to 2018 relate, inter alia, to not providing accurate financial information and not disclosing full details of player and manager remuneration. The appeal process will drag on as opposing legal teams rack up colossal fees. Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester United and Spurs have signalled that they will each seek compensation of £100 million-plus if City is judged to have unfairly disadvantaged them. The big bucks at stake overshadow the fact that expulsion or relegation as a sanction on England's most garlanded club would be traumatic for the loyal supporters who are its real long-term stakeholders. Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan of Abu Dhabi, City's ultimate owner since 2008, is probably too rich and distant to be perturbed.
Meanwhile, the other big football story of the week – the Prime Minister's plan to reverse a 1985 anti-hooliganism ban on fans drinking alcohol during matches – stirred another youthful memory: of packed terraces cascading with urine and the related shame of going home with pungent soaked trousers. The Manchester City case is the reputational equivalent of what we used to call a hot leg for the entire venal milieu of top-flight football.
Charlotte Church has castigated Ed Sheeran for choosing ‘consumerism and capitalism over doing the right thing’. I’m not sure I’d recognise either of these British songsters if they sat next to me on a bus. But as this column believes capitalism generally is the right thing, Church’s broadside – at her ‘End Times Pop Dungeon’ gig in Cardiff, described as ‘part euphoric rave, part total Dadaist carnage’ and which I’m sorry to have missed – demands further enquiry.
Sheeran's US tour is in a pickle following the sacking of the pro-Palestinian rapper Macklemore as a support act under pressure from venue owners; the withdrawal of other musicians in solidarity; and the cancellation of two more shows. Sheeran's emotional (if scripted) apology at a concert in Philadelphia, presenting himself as a naive artist drawn into the maelstrom of Israel-Palestine anger, provoked mixed reactions, including Church's.
But she’s not wholly wrong about Ed: there’s another Sheeran behind the sad ginger with a guitar. At 35, he has systematically amassed a portfolio of business interests, including rental properties across London, besides the tightly controlled operation of his recordings and tours. The Sunday Times estimates his fortune at more than £400 million. And you wouldn’t want to tangle with him on anything to do with music copyright, a field in which his lawyers have won or settled a series of high-profile cases.
In reality, Sheeran is a poster boy for the hard-nosed mode of capitalism that sometimes pervades the music biz. Whether his on-stage tears were sincere or crocodile, we certainly don't need to feel sorry for him.
As a child, I would disappear down to the beach in Cornwall and spend hours investigating rock pools. From above they looked empty. Get down on your knees and suddenly there were fish, crabs and entire worlds. The UK stock market is rather like that.
The ice cream in Cornwall was pretty good too.
Years later, I met Edward Hugo. Smart, relentless and the sort of man you trust. He was waiting in a coffee shop. The rain was biblical. London was miserable. And yet I had spent years dreaming about this moment. Now I just needed Ed to say yes.
In 2019, we founded Kernow: a contrarian investment manager specialising exclusively in UK equities.
The timing was terrible.
Everyone seemed to agree about Britain. Unloved. The UK stock market had become the financial equivalent of a seaside town in November. We thought this was wonderful.
Human beings have always struggled to distinguish an unpopular thing from a bad thing. Our job is to work out where the market has confused the two. We hunt for good businesses hiding behind bad stories.
“Human beings have always struggled to distinguish an unpopular thing from a bad thing. Our job is to work out where the market has confused the two”
Why go to all this trouble?
Mediocrity is now almost free. Imagine being back at school and being told everyone will receive the average mark of the class. Why would anyone bother revising? The average falls and everyone shares equally in the decline.
Our bet is that nobody grows up dreaming of being average. So we chose something else. To invest our family's capital alongside a group of wealthy and wise clients. Preferably both.
We cannot promise to always be right. We can promise to work tirelessly.
Cornwall taught me something I later rediscovered in markets: the view is usually better when the crowd is somewhere else.
If you believe in thinking for yourself.
If you believe Britain is worth a closer look.
If you still enjoy finding what others miss.
By Alyx Wood
Take a look
Professional investors only. Capital at risk. Issued by Kernow Asset Management Limited which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.
CULTURE CLUB/BRIDGEMAN VIA GETTY IMAGES
kiaoliug
jupaiik
Αλημε Αιμίζυ 4.
Engraving of the Emperor Charlemagne, after Albrecht Dürer
这或许不是一个令人愉悦的评判，但它值得思考，因为如果说有人能够进入8世纪和9世纪人类的思想世界，那么很有可能就是耶和华见证人。加洛林时代确实有些方面显得过于熟悉，但无论是普京，还是人工智能即将毁灭人类的威胁，都无法让我们大多数人真正接近那个时代——在那个世界里，歌革和玛各（Gog and Magog）就在地平线上，末日临近，而每一次瘟疫、饥荒或阿拉伯人的胜利都被视为上帝惩罚之手的体现。
黑暗时代可能不像人们曾经认为的那么黑暗，但它们确实非常、非常诡异。在那个时期，强大的“铁锤”查理·马特（Charles 'the Hammer' Martel）的尸体可能会在圣但尼的坟墓中被一条巨龙焚毁；那是一个充满迹象、警告、预兆和预言之梦的时代。詹姆斯·帕尔默写到了这样一个出现在——或者说没有出现在——查理曼皇帝脑海中的梦：
Charlemagne's Dream: The Rise and Fall of the Carolingian Empire by James Palmer Basic Books, £25, pp. 352
I don't know if it is still the case, but there was a time in London when the ring of a doorbell on Saturday morning could only mean the Jehovah's Witnesses and another copy of Watchtower. They all made for some pretty dotty reading in those days, but there was one article that has stuck in the memory – a piece that asked, and predictably answered, the question: 'How Great was Charlemagne?' The article concluded: 'Though then known as Charles the Great, he was great neither in God's eyes nor in the eyes of those whose standards are set by God's Word.'
If it is not an attractive judgment, it is one that needs thinking about, because if anyone is equipped to enter into the mind of 8th- and 9th-century Man it is very possibly the Jehovah's Witness. There are certainly aspects of the Carolingian age that seem only too familiar, but neither Putin nor even the imminent destruction of humanity at the hands of AI can inch most of us close to a world when Gog and Magog were on the horizon, the Last Days looming and the retributive hand of God seen in every plague, famine or Arab victory.
The Dark Ages might not have been quite as dark as was once thought, but they really were very, very strange. It was a period in which the corpse of the mighty Charles 'the Hammer' Martel might be found incinerated by a dragon in his St Denis sepulchre; a time of signs, warnings, omens and prophetic dreams. James Palmer writes of one such dream that came – or did not come – to the Emperor Charlemagne:
In it a mysterious man approached him with a sword engraved with four ominous and mostly untranslatable Germanic words; raht, radoleiba, nasg, and enti. The meaning seemed immediately clear to him because he was also a would-be philosopher... There would be four ages of his dynasty; one of abundance, one of sudden failure, one of great disorder, and then? Enti clearly meant either that the end of his line would come or the end of the world.
It didn't quite work out like that – the Carolingians would stumble on deep into the 10th century and the world did not end – but it was close enough to give Palmer his title and his book its narrative trajectory. It falls naturally into three parts. The first is devoted to Charles Martel and the rise of Pippin the Short; the second to the extraordinary career
It was an age when genuine piety could happily coexist with appalling brutality
of his son Charles; and the last and longest to the endless, internecine struggles of his warring successors.
While it might be argued that it was all something of a sideshow, that the important stuff was happening a long way to the east, what a sideshow it was! It is hard to think that anyone in the early 8th century would have given the last Merovingians the time of day; but within two generations that had all changed and the ‘backwater barbarian kingdom’ of the Franks had transformed into a ‘mighty cosmopolitan empire that stretched from northern Spain to the River Danube and from the rich ports of the North Sea to the eternal City of Rome’.
The central figure here is, inevitably, Charlemagne, and the one date everyone knows, Christmas Day 800, when he was crowned ‘Augustus’ by Pope Leo in Rome’s St Peter’s Basilica. There is no question that Charlemagne towers over his age in a way his great father never did, but Pippin deserves a due that he rarely gets; and if there is one other date we all ought to recognise it is 754, when another pope crossed the Alps to anoint Pippin king and cement a symbiotic compact of papacy and power that would rumble on through the succeeding centuries.
It was not the sole legacy of Carolingian rule either, because if Charlemagne can be hailed as ‘the Father of Europe’, his successors might well be branded the inadvertent fathers of Europe’s historic rivalries. On Charlemagne’s death in 814, Louis the Pious succeeded as sole emperor; but he would be the last of the line to do so and as son turned on father, brother on brother and half-brother, uncle on nephew, and east on west, Charlemagne’s empire broke up along fault-lines all too familiar from many a future war.
If it seems a lot to pack into 270 pages of text, Palmer makes a terrific job of it. A week from now and half of it will probably be forgotten; but for the next few days at least, before Clement, Adelbert and their fellow heretics slip back into the darkness of the Dark Ages and all those Louis – the Pious, the German, the Younger, the Stammerer – once more blur into a single, composite Carolingian, this wonderful cast of saints, sinners, popes and ranting churchmen will make for hugely entertaining company.
Pitched somewhere between Janet Nelson's King and Emperor and Simon Wilder's Lotharingia, this is serious but popular history writing at its best. Palmer is more confident than Nelson that one can ‘know’ Charlemagne, and it is a convincing picture he presents. It was an age when genuine piety could happily coexist with appalling brutality, and renaissance stirrings with the darkest fears. The reformer and educator who brought the Anglo-Saxon scholar Alcuin to the Aachen court (a man who was as aware as any Jehovah’s Witness could wish of the coming judgment of God) was also the savage warlord who could have 4,500 Saxons beheaded in a day. To get some sense of that first Charlemagne, one should visit Aachen; to understand something of the whole man one could do a lot worse than take along Palmer’s Charlemagne’s Dream.
Portrait of the artist in his own words Ariane Bankes
Claude Monet: A Life in Letters edited by Teresa Krasny et al Thames & Hudson, £30, pp. 552
For a painter we acknowledge as a master of atmospheric effects and ever-changing light, whose early work ‘Impression, Sunrise’ sparked the artistic revolution that became Impressionism, Claude Monet (1840-1926) spent an awful lot of time complaining about the weather. He was obsessed by it, cowed and crushed by it, inspired by it to flights of genius, and its vagaries would become the intrinsic focus of his art: ‘I have just returned, covered in mud and soaking wet, the weather is so awful it is impossible to do any work’ is a constant grizzle. He seethes with frustration as he is
forced to make constant changes as everything keeps growing and getting greener... In brief, because of these changes, I am following Nature without being able to capture her... Each day I find it harder, and then there is the river, which falls, then rises, green one day, yellow the next, now nearly dry, but it will become a raging torrent tomorrow after the terrible rain we are having.
He takes us right there to the river bank, his letters often reading as a litany of anguish, a record of unremitting struggle with the elements and so much else.
Given his battles with the climate, let
'Self-portrait with beret', by Claude Monet, 1886
PHOTO 21/UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP/GETTY IMAGES
alone the grinding poverty and nagging self-doubt that beset his early career, it is remarkable that he never gave up. His obsessive commitment to painting, his wild ambition and courage – even arrogance – in overturning convention, and his shrewd management of his career and profile, are all on display in this newly translated selection from his correspondence: 417 letters in all, including some never previously published, to friends, family, dealers, patrons, fellow artists and statesmen. Selected (and authenticated) to
He constantly importuned friends and dealers, hustling for money, initially with little hope of success
chart the trajectory of Monet's life as a painter and family man, they provide a scholarly and volatile portrait of the artist in his own words on the centenary of his death.
His volatile nature affected his writing as much as his painting. If there are glimmers of brilliance to be savoured, there is also the prosaic business of just getting along. The personal letters chosen here, covering some seven decades, are the most compelling, veering from elation to despair, with little middle ground.
In early adulthood, the provincial boy from Le Havre was fired by excitement at works he saw in ‘this dizzying Paris’ – by Delacroix, Corot, Courbet, Daubigny, the Barbizon School – and dazzled by the range of painterly possibilities. But his father’s disapproval and lack of financial support condemned Monet to penury from the off, and he scrabbled to sell enough to house and feed himself, let alone his first wife Camille and his growing family. He was constantly importuning friends and dealers, hustling for work or money, initially with little hope of success.
Desperation tinges every line of his begging letters: ‘I am being punished now for being too ambitious... I am on the verge of having everything seized and sold: all my studies would be taken,’ he writes to Courbet while completing his monumental ‘Luncheon on the Grass’ (now a star exhibit at the Musée d’Orsay). Sometimes he could not work for lack of paints even, and cursed his fate. He lashes out to his friend Frédéric Bazille:
I have nothing left to do but bang my head against the wall, for I have no claim to an instant fortune, and if everyone who said the same thing as you sent me 50 francs or even 40, I would certainly not be in this situation.
Then the sun would come out, and he would be working again, hope renewed.
Monet was a plein-air painter at heart, and his moves, first to Argenteuil on the Seine, then to a riverside house at Vertheuil, marked his transition to a painter of effects, or the vaporous effects of weather. But life was no easier, and the art market no more receptive to this experiment, and he sank to new depths of despair during the 1870s, as his wife ailed and the debts built up.
What a relief, then, to see him gradually emerge from self-laceration in the 1880s, as his efforts finally bore fruit – adverse weather notwithstanding – and he achieved domestic happiness in an unconventional ménage with Alice Hoschedé, the estranged wife of his former patron. They pooled their eight children, two sons from Monet's marriage to Camille (who had died in 1879), and six of Alice's, and defied social opprobrium to live together, initially at Vertheuil and then from 1883 at Giverny, the house of Monet's dreams.
His letters to Alice in their early years together betray a tentative, cautious sensibility; he addresses her as ‘Dear Madame’ until the eventual day of their wedding in 1892, and plainly has to manage fluctuating expectations on her part, threats of separation and fears of abandonment until their relationship settled into one of absolute trust and intimacy, and he could confidently address her as ‘My dearest darling’. She was his first port of call, and he wrote to her daily – sometimes twice daily – whenever his frequent painting forays separated them.
His solicitous courtesy to Alice and a wide circle of friends sets a different tone from his correspondence with dealers and collectors, with whom he could be crisp. He bares his inner steel even to the faithful and endlessly proactive Parisian gallerist Paul Durand-Ruel, his prime dealer and champion from the early 1870s. Despite signing
If he'd had students, he'd have said always have a broom at hand
to sweep out all the readymade images of your subject which come to mind;
he'd have said this is the hardest part, harder than putting paint on canvas.
He'd have said the broom's handle should become smooth from use
and the day you think you don't need it is the day memory has won.
Look at the results of his encounter with that iris – he's eighty-four
and it's as though
he's never looked at one before.
-Helen Farish
Helen Farish's fifth collection, Monet's Broom, will be published by Bloodaxe in November to mark the centenary of the artist's death
off ‘Your devoted’ or ‘Yours devotedly’, he regularly hounds Durand-Ruel for money and upbraids him for lack of better promotion and visibility. And he openly gives his work to other dealers, calculating that the resulting rivalry will boost his prices, which it does. The financial breakthrough came with Durand-Ruel’s exhibition in 1891 of the first of Monet’s acclaimed series paintings, ‘The Grainstacks’. Thereafter, his market grew not just in France but in Germany and America, and by the end of the century Monet would be a millionaire.
Wealth did not mellow him. He remained a beady curator of his newfound celebrity and still suffered almost suicidal bouts of artistic despair. Grief, too, after his beloved Alice died, followed by his elder son Jean, in middle age. Each of these was enough to stop him temporarily in his tracks; but his pool at Giverny, shimmering with waterlilies, rescued him, offering him one last project in which to invest his all. Conceived during the first world war as a ‘retreat for peaceful meditation’ from the fray, in which his son Michel was fighting and friends were dying, these magnificent studies on canvas were Monet’s apotheosis, his retort to the barbarity and destruction of war.
He had always been generous to fellow artists, campaigning for their recognition and legacy (he masterminded the bequest of Manet's shocking ‘Olympia’ to the Louvre), and his warm friendship with Georges Clemenceau now paved the way to lavish gifts of his own to the state, notably the 22 ‘Water Lilies’ panels that found a permanent home in the Jeu de Paume.
We learn from the Introduction that the 417 letters presented here were selected from 3,642 identified by scholars to date. Organised into six chronological chapters, with introductory essays to give context, they certainly narrate a life of rare struggle and fulfilment, but I wonder if every one earns its place: some are, frankly, dull business notes, and the youthful pleas for funds to all and sundry become wearyingly repetitious. I wished for more of the warmth and humour so evident in the letters to Alice and friends, vivid with anecdote and observation – how Monet nearly lost his life when engulfed by a huge wave in Etretat, or bunked down miserably on a sodden painting trip between rats (above) and a pig (below) with only a tallow candle to read by; or his ecstatic reaction to Bordighera on the Riviera. 'One would need a palette of diamonds and precious stones' to do it justice, he declared.
As he confessed to his beloved step-daughters, ‘writing is not my forte’, and why should it be, when painting so evidently was? But cumulatively, with their well-chosen illustrations, these letters give us a granular portrait of a life of ceaseless striving and self-criticism in which the personal and painterly were inextricably braided. As he recollected in 1917, Monet ricocheted between ‘moments of great discouragement and of courage, but such is my life’.
How To Think About Terrorism: Reflections on Philosophy, History and Politics
by Quassim Cassam and Richard English OUP, £25, pp. 272
This book begins with rueful comments on the absence of philosophy from terrorism literature. The phenomenon is frequently analysed through psychological, religious, political, economic, sociological and military perspectives, but rarely from the philosophical. Yet questions such as how and why terrorists opt for violence, how they justify it to themselves and others, how they regulate it and why they stop, all have philosophical ramifications. As do questions about counter-terrorism, particularly with reference to retributive terror, running agents in terrorist organisations, interrogation and torture.
Quassim Cassam and Richard English, philosopher and historian respectively, avoid the easy route of exploring such questions via abstract thought experiments. The best known of these frequently features in discussions of possible justifications of torture: if your prisoner had concealed a nuclear device in London timed to explode later this afternoon and was refusing to say where, would you be justified in torturing him? Instead of agonising over such hypothetical scenarios, the authors focus on actual examples of what they call lived experience, showing that in real life such issues are surrounded by the messy complexities of timing, truth, error, falsehood, motive and efficacy.
They also resist the temptation to reach for some ultimate definition of terrorism applicable in all circumstances at all times. As we know, one man's terrorist may be another man's freedom fighter. Overly precise definitions can lead to arguing that Ukrainian resistance to Russian occupation is terrorism (as the Russians would claim, of course), or that the destruction of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie in 1988 was a justified response to American military action. Instead, the authors opt for a descriptive and interpretive approach, outlining what characterises terrorism and stressing the importance of context, motive and intention. Their emphasis is on what works, and they conclude that the legal definition offered in the Terrorism Act of 2000 will ‘suffice for most practical purposes’.
Nearly all modern discussions of terrorism assume and focus on non-state terrorism as conducted by terrorist groups, some of which may be state-sponsored. However, there is also state terrorism, as openly advocated in the Terror following the French Revolution. This is terror ‘systematically embedded in the state’s structures and identities’, such as in the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany – or, arguably, in today’s China. The book’s summary of the differences between Hamas and Israel in this respect is succinct and persuasive.
It is non-state terrorism, however, that the authors find ‘emblematic of terrorism as a whole’. In discussing its various aspects, particularly methods, motives and purposes, they encouragingly cite the groundbreaking research by the US academic Audrey Cronin, who concluded that terrorism nearly always fails. She examined 450 campaigns and found that only 4.4 per cent achieved their strategic aims, that 6.4 per cent had some limited success and that 87.1 per cent were complete failures.
This is relevant to any philosophical assessment of a terrorist group's justification of its actions: if your aims are in practice unachievable – the universal adoption of Islamic Sharia law, for example, or the extinction of the human race, or the expulsion of Northern Ireland from the UK against the democratically expressed wishes of its majority – this must surely torpedo any attempted justification for murdering people in order to (not) achieve it.
Such considerations, along with evaluation of means and ends, are the meat and drink of philosophical analysis and should be deployed in any attempt to persuade terrorists of the wrongfulness and futility of their ways. Much has been written about preventing people becoming terrorists, usually emphasising something called the radicalisation process. Cassam and English argue that this is an assumption by policy-makers who need generalisations in order to secure predictability.
Particularists, on the other hand, claim there is no single path to radicalisation and that it is pointless to strive for generalities when human beings are all specificity. Cassam and English favour a hybrid approach, while inclining towards the particular; profiling terrorists, they reckon, is about as useful as profiling farmers. But ‘the Devil alone knoweth the heart of man’ pronounced a medieval judge, and they concede that, ‘with the best will in the world, we might still be unable to make sense of the excesses of an Emwazi [the sadistic IS executioner, Jihadi John] or a Breivik [the Norwegian mass murderer]’.
Assessment as to whether terrorists are mad or sane, and whether terrorism is rational or irrational, leads to the conclusion that most terrorists are fanatical rather than mad, and that although terrorism can be rational it is inherently neither one nor the other. This illustrates why philosophy should be part of terrorism studies: how we see terrorists affects how we treat them, and how we treat them can affect whether or why they do it. There are no complete answers, but this approach, like the book that endorses it, is a worthwhile endeavour.
尽管上议院已显得过时，但其中仍有一些卓越的人物，阿尔夫·达布斯便是其中之一。他出生于一个异族婚姻家庭——父亲是犹太人，母亲则不是。他随尼古拉斯·温顿爵士 (Sir Nicholas Winton) 组织的其中一次“儿童运输”从布拉格来到这个国家，所有的财产都装在一个背包里，外套上贴着一张标明身份的行李标签。他的许多犹太同胞就没那么幸运，在死亡集中营中丧生。
《背着背包的男孩》（The Boy with the Knapsack）一书并没有什么惊人的揭秘。达布斯的主张可能并非每个人都感兴趣，但他的活力、真诚和正直在书中熠熠生辉。他写道：“我将永远想要感谢这个国家。我曾获得过救命稻草，而相应地，我也一直尝试为他人提供救命稻草。”现年 93 岁的他依然精神矍铄。
特内里费阿丹·马丁礼堂（Auditorio de Tenerife Adán Martín）由圣地亚哥·卡拉特拉瓦设计，于 2003 年竣工，主要由白色钢筋混凝土建成。
📄 Original Section
---
[Doing unto others Chris Mullin] The Boy with the Knapsack: An Extraordinary Life from the Kindertransport to the House of Lords
by Alf Dubs
Ithaka, £25, pp. 320
For all that it is an anachronism, the House of Lords contains some remarkable specimens, not least Alf Dubs. The child of a mixed marriage – his father was Jewish, his mother not – he arrived in this country from Prague on one of the kindertransports organised by Sir Nicholas Winton, with his possessions in a knapsack and a luggage label on his coat identifying him. Many of his Jewish compatriots were not so lucky and perished in the death camps.
He was fortunate in another respect, too. Unlike with many of his companions, his father had already made it out and was there to greet him. His mother eventually managed to join them, arriving in the UK just four days before the outbreak of war. Her first application for an exit permit resulted in her being thrown down stairs by the Gestapo officer in charge. Luckily, he also threw her passport after her, which enabled her to escape.
Initially they lived in Northern Ireland, where Dubs's father had found work in a textile factory; but he died within a year and young Alf and his mother moved to a bedsit in Manchester. There she, a trained nurse, found work scrubbing floors in a restaurant and later as a school meals supervisor. Alf, meanwhile, progressed via a primary school for Czech exiles and Cheadle Hume grammar school to the LSE. His interest in politics was sparked by the discovery of the death camps as they were liberated by the Allied armies: 'I believed that if evil people could do such terrible things, they could be countered by others doing something good.'
After national service and a spell as a supply teacher at a rough secondary school in Hackney, Dubs ended up working for an advertising agency, in due course becoming a councillor in Westminster. Among the controversies of the day were plans to drive a dual carriageway through Piccadilly Circus and demolish the old Covent Garden, both which were seen off by the public outcry.
Dubs was lucky to be elected to parliament for Battersea in 1979, not a good year for Labour, and he retained the seat against the odds in 1983, an even worse year, only to be defeated four years later. A highlight of his seven years in the Commons was the struggle to save Battersea power station from demolition by developers. He also describes a mentally ill constituent turning up at his surgery, first with a knife and later with a hammer, intent on killing him. Death threats to MPs are nothing new.
Out of parliament, Dubs eventually found work as chief executive of the British Refugee Council, helping to assimilate successive waves of refugees from places such as Vietnam and Bosnia. In 1994, he was appointed to the Lords, where he flourished, first as a minister in the Northern Ireland office and later as a campaigner for the more humane treatment of refugees, particularly children. The Dubs amendment to the 2015 Immigration Bill obliged the government to admit 3,000 unaccompanied minors living in destitution in European refugee camps. After initially accepting it, the government eventually reneged, but not before 480 impoverished children had been rescued. Although Dubs received much public encouragement, not everyone was happy. 'A pity you survived the Holocaust,' wrote one anonymous correspondent. 'They will become terrorists like you,' wrote another.
Having visited the camps in France, Jordan and Greece and looked the damned in the eyes, Dubs writes:
It is the lack of hope that so appals me about the plight of refugees today… I have found desperate people, including many lone children, who have no prospect of finding a new life. They may have survived the terrible experiences that led them to flee, but just surviving has become their lot… It is my hope that we will also remember the humanity that was shown to children like me – and honour that humanity by standing together and once again welcome those persecuted by war so they too can have hope for the future.
The Boy with the Knapsack contains no great revelations. Dubs's causes will not be everyone's cup of tea, but his energy, sincerity and integrity shine through. He writes: 'I shall always want to say thank you to this country. Lifelines were provided for me and, in turn, I have tried to provide them for others.' Aged 93, he is still going strong.
The Auditorio de Tenerife Adán Martín, designed by Santiago Calatrava and completed in 2003, made primarily of reinforced white concrete
支持和反对混凝土的论据都十分微妙，正如《英国皇家建筑师学会杂志》（RIBA Journal）编辑 Stephen Parnell 在一本非常聪明且平衡的书中所解释的那样。这本书既不是辩护词，也不是攻击，而是对这种最熟悉却被误解的复合材料的一次客观评估。关于混凝土，有一点是无可争议的，那就是它的极度过剩。根据美国地质调查局的数据，全球年度混凝土产量相当于地球上每人两公吨。
The Iron Curtain, or at least its most visible symbol, was not metal. Berlin's Antifaschistischer Schutzwall (Anti-Fascist Protection Wall) was concrete. Its ugliness of form and function seemed to many proof of the evils inherent in this ancient building material. But for every hideous Berliner Mauer, you have a glorious Roman Pantheon. The dome of Hadrian's incomparable temple is, after nearly two millennia, the largest unreinforced concrete structure in the world.
In our own era, concrete has allowed the best architects to do their best work. Witness Le Corbusier's Ronchamp chapel. And who would argue against Denys Lasdun's National Theatre as the best late-20th-century British building? The shuttering used to contain the poured concrete has acquired the grain of its wooden construction – proof of concrete's ability to absorb textures and colours to emotional effect. So much care was taken, the architect said, that it would have been cheaper to clad the theatre in Carrara marble – and he confessed to finding the smell of concrete an aphrodisiac.
The cases both for and against concrete are nuanced, as Stephen Parnell, the editor of the RIBA Journal, explains in a very clever book which is neither an apologia nor an attack, but a well-balanced appraisal of this most familiar yet misunderstood composite. One indisputable thing about concrete is its superabundance. According to the US Geological Survey, global annual concrete production is the equivalent of two metric tonnes for every person on the planet.
The Guardian has called concrete ‘the most destructive material on Earth’. But this is a misunderstanding. True, the manufacture of concrete creates nearly 10 per cent of year-
撇开建筑技术的奇迹不谈，混凝土在隐喻上的运用更令人着迷。建筑材料很容易转化为意象：钢铁般的决心（steely resolve）、玻璃心（a heart of glass）、木讷的表情（a wooden expression），以及缺根筋（a few bricks short of a load）。约翰·贝杰曼（John Betjeman）将混凝土视为“蔓延的灰色”。而“具体诗”（concrete poetry，注：concrete兼有“混凝土”和“具体”之意）？则与抒情完全相反。
Concrete may be dirty to produce, but you can't use bamboo or flax to create dams, tunnels and bomb shelters
ly carbon emissions, which comes from the burning of limestone to produce cement, one of concrete's constituents along with water, sand and aggregates. But concrete itself is blameless – at least until someone decides to do something stupid and ugly with it.
Miracles of construction technology apart, it's the metaphors of concrete that fascinate. Building materials lend themselves to imagery: steely resolve, a heart of glass, a wooden expression and a few bricks short of a load. John Betjeman thought of concrete as ‘creeping grey’. And concrete poetry? It's the very opposite of lyrical.
The case for concrete is simple and clear. It is strong and adaptable. Almost indestructible in compression, its weakness in tension can be relieved by inserting metal rods as reinforcement, known as ‘rebar’. It may be dirty to produce, but you cannot use bamboo or flax to create flood walls, dams, bridges, foundations, tunnels and bomb shelters.
The word ‘concrete’ has a 1553 citation in the OED as ‘a cohesion of particles’. A British patent of 1824 for ‘artificial stone’ defined the modern material. But the French were the energetic pioneers of concrete in contemporary architecture and it became the defining medium of Modernism. However, Le Corbusier’s beton brut (‘raw concrete’) is ironically sourced from Ruskin’s High Victorian moralistic truth-to-materials trope. And this is just one of the complexities in coming to terms with a substance both ancient and modern, as well as enabling and disturbing.
Referring to Le Corbusier, the term ‘Brutalism’ was coined by Reyner Banham in 1955. Never meant to be derogatory, it was intended to describe the Modernists’ preference for expressive raw materials. But Brutalism and concrete became conflated, the one term being used to condemn the other.
It is routine for traditionalists to detest concrete in any form, even streetlights: 'When all our roads are lighted/ By concrete monsters sited,' Betjeman wrote. But concrete is a supremely malleable material and can be coloured, polished, textured and moulded to achieve delightful effects. Stained underpasses are caused by bad design and municipal neglect, not by concrete itself.
Donald Trump reveals the ambiguities of the material. In his early fever dream about containing Mexican narcos and rapists, he spoke of a ‘beautiful’ concrete wall, suggesting the rhetoric of power. In fact the wall is composed of steel panels filled with concrete. Then, in a 2020 Executive Order, the President, intent on beautifying federal buildings, condemned the use of ‘exposed poured concrete’.
Although Brutalism has now been accepted into the canon of architectural history as a good thing, concrete buildings still attract spiteful responses. In 2016, John Madin's superb Birmingham Library was demolished. It was only 42 years old. Last year, Stephen Hodder's excellent Centenary Building in Salford, the winner of the very first Stirling Prize in 1996, was pointlessly razed. These were notably stupid destructive acts. One answer to the environmental problems concrete causes is to restrict production and intelligently re-use what already exists, but that demands more vision and creativity than the Salford and Birmingham authorities possess.
Of course, concrete enthusiasts sometimes get it wrong. In New York, Rafael Vinoly wanted his super-tall 432 Park Avenue to be more white, but the pigment he added to the mix degraded its structural integrity and billionaires are now running scared from terrifying cracks on the 96th floor. Just a few years earlier, rusting rebar in Riccardo Morandi's poorly maintained Genoa bridge caused a catastrophic collapse. Concrete in itself is neither good nor bad: it's artificial and morally neutral. It can cause delight or horror depending on the design.
Parnell's father was a concrete professional, and the expertise has been inherited. But this is not a dogmatic book, rather an instructive and amusing one. Concrete prose is more entertaining than concrete poetry.
这是托宾的第12部小说，是《漫长冬季》（A Long Winter）的续作，后者是他附在名为《母亲与儿子》（Mothers and Sons，2006年）的短篇小说集中的一部中篇。他曾表示，在规划这部中篇小说时，他追求一种“缓慢、沉浸式、第三人称亲密”的风格。这正是我们在《桥》中体会到的。如果不是因为对细节充满爱意——我想说是令人兴奋——的关注，以及文字中那忧郁而华丽的美感，这本书将会显得十分阴郁。
A small, beautiful book about betrayal, the cost of isolation and the persistence of human decency, Colm Tóibín's The Bridge is set in the 1950s, in a remote Catalan village high in the Pyrenees, among people cut off from the modern world. Cut off for now. A bridge across the river threatens to speed the advent of paved roads, telephones and electricity.
Miquel and his father live in an old stone dwelling on a hardscrabble farm, attended by an orphaned houseboy, Manolo, and haunted by the reverberating absence of Miquel's mother, who was caught in a sudden snowstorm and died. Her corpse, buried under ice, lay undiscovered until a spring thaw. Since her death, Miquel and his father have taken to smuggling goods out of nearby Andorra. The latest cargo consists of items emblematic of creeping modernity: styluses for recordplayers and a load of condoms, ‘enough for an army for a year’.
Consider the condom. It facilitates contact of a certain kind and also acts as a barrier – an equivocal function perfectly suited to a novel where the unequivocal is exceedingly rare, where silence is both blessing and curse, where ice both kills and preserves and where a stranger is both threat and promise.
Tóibín's 12th novel is a sequel to A Long Winter, a novella he tacked on to a collection of stories called Mothers and Sons (2006). He has said that when planning the novella, he aimed for a style that would be ‘slow, immersive, third-person intimate’. That’s exactly what we get in The Bridge, which would be a bleak book if it weren’t for the loving – I want to say exciting – attention to detail, and the sombre gorgeousness of the prose.
It's not a happy story. Miquel's father sees the newly constructed bridge as an opportunity for more convenient, modernised smuggling ('smuggling was, for many, a game, like hunting'), and rushes to take advantage, trading Miquel's beloved donkey, along with his own, for a jeep. The Pyrenees is not a part of the world suited to haste. Halfway through the book, on the bridge itself, the police stop father and son; their contraband is hidden under a pile of stones in the back of the new jeep. They have been betrayed – by the father's foolishness, and by a supposed friend's perfidy, with dire consequences. Miquel, who is passive to a fault, accepts his fate with an animal-like (donkey-like) placidity.
Gay in a world where the very idea is an abomination, Miquel is doubly cut off. Lying awake at night, he comes to believe that his ‘isolation was nothing new, that he had always been far away even from those to whom he had been closest’. His next thought is sadder still: ‘He was closer to his mother in the months... when he was searching for her body than he had been when she was alive.’ Furtive embraces with Manolo dilute his essential loneliness, as does an erotic encounter in the town where the bridge has been built – a meeting explicitly detailed yet somehow prudishly veiled by Miquel’s innate reticence.
The beauty of the novel lies not in the dramatic mountainous landscape or even in the slow, immersive style, but rather in the person of Miquel, whose gentle, uncomplaining, totally unselfconscious goodness is a kind of miracle – the triumph of virtue over fear and want and malicious manipulation. He knows better than to reveal himself – ‘the rule was you kept your thoughts to yourself’ – or to expect a happy ending. Indeed, his situation is never promising. Yet he will endure, sustained by ‘memories and imaginings’ and something else – not hope but ‘a kind of brightness’.
Barbara Kingsolver's bestselling novels tackle political and social issues and win prizes, among them the Pulitzer and Women's Prize for Fiction (twice). Subjects she has covered include colonialism; environmental issues (preserving ecosystems and flora and fauna, and punishing polluting companies); the validity of extended family approaches to child-rearing in Cherokee Nation communities; the art of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera and their friendship with Trotsky; and the McCarthy era and the House UnAmerican Activities Committee. She has also explored parallels between 19th-century struggles for rationalism in the form of Darwinism and economic hardships under despotic leaders and their echo in today's US; the desolation wrought by the loss of industries such as timber and coal, and the subsequent vulnerability of deracinated youngsters to opiates sold as safe.
Sometimes her liberal sensibilities collide with her wish to defend her Appalachian community, held back by economic hardship and traditional farming methods practised for generations despite making a loss. In her novel Demon Copperhead, ‘Demon’ chides those who label such people ‘deplorables’ – but Kingsolver has said that she loves Hillary Clinton and thinks her ‘basket of deplorables’ comment about half of Donald Trump’s supporters was ‘taken out of context’.
Partita concentrates on social and family issues – class impacting on confidence, and the corrosion of self-esteem by an abusive parent. It also has a strong feminist message. In the farming background from which the protagonist Livia Cable comes, women never have careers outside the community. The novel is also a gorgeous exploration of classical music. Livia, an unusually talented pianist, wins a scholarship to a prestigious music school. Needing to be better than others to overcome snobbish prejudice, she works her fingers almost literally to the bone. But then distraction arrives.
Kingsolver astutely describes the irony of rich kids dressing like the homeless while members of Livia's grindingly poor community take pride in looking smart; the mistaking of sexual intimacy for love; and the emptiness of heartbreak. The prose is stuffed with imaginative similes and metaphors. Occasionally some are strained ('We honoured our dead attachment like a corpse between us') or too obvious: Livia burning everything in her mother's house is clearly an ablation of past regrets. But this is an enthralling novel, full of pathos, wisdom and humour.
Bishop Odo presides over the pre-battle feast, blessing the food and drink
It makes for a good pub quiz question: what has 632 people, 202 horses, 55 dogs, 41 ships and only six women? Along with the UK's heatwaves came Bayeux Tapestry fever as the Canterbury Embroidery returned to England for ten months after something approaching a millennial sojourn in France. The British Museum was barely able to cope with the demands on its website for the first tranche of tickets to visit the exhibition.
It is easy to see why. The Tapestry depicts, in an abundance of endlessly fascinating detail, that most famous date in English history: 1066. In popular perception, the doughy Anglo-Saxons narrowly lost to that bastard Duke William and his land-grabbing Normans at the Battle of Hastings, consequently being forced to submit to the Norman yoke. It was a true revolution in politics, religion and society. William all but swept away the upper echelons of magnates to reward his followers; Norman saints vaulted over English ones in newly erected stone churches; and a vast castle-building programme stamped the authority of the new power across the land. Eadwig and his missus Hildgyth among the peasants would also have noted the changes.
All this stemmed from William's success at Hastings in October of that fateful year. But had the duke, born illegitimate, now, by force, become a legitimate king? He could point to his victory on the battlefield as a God-given judgment on his claim to the English throne. However, he and
尽管这本书非常精彩，但考虑到其昂贵的价格，人们或许希望纸张能更光亮一些。不过，整幅挂毯的大比例复制品允许人们无休止地审视那些迷人的细节，每次重新回顾都能有新发现。这幅挂毯无可争议的重要性解释了为何会出现大量关于它的新书和修订本。特别值得一提的是大卫·马斯格罗夫（David Musgrove）和迈克尔·刘易斯（Michael Lewis）的《巴约挂毯的故事》（The Story of the Bayeux Tapestry， Thames & Hudson 出版，£12.99）的更新版。
这幅挂毯的临时回归值得其周围所有的炒作，而配套的展览书籍则进一步增加了兴奋感。
📄 Original Section
---
Never backward in coming forward, Odo is all over the narrative
others clearly felt this was insufficient proof – hence the Tapestry. The magnificent, 225ft-long monument of shameless propaganda is lucidly explicated in a superb accompanying book from the British Museum, in which a host of distinguished medievalists re-examine this most iconic relic from the past.
For all that it has been studied, there remain uncertainties. We know that, technically, the Tapestry is an embroidered textile (don't ask me to explain its stem-, laid-and-couched- and satin-stitch techniques: the book does that). On other matters, we rely on speculative, if often challenged, consensus. Displaying ‘strong affiliations to both sides of the English Channel’, it was ‘likely designed in Canterbury' (the English were renowned for their needlework), its creation dating to somewhere between 1067 and the 1070s. The earlier date is gathering favour, being 'a time when the newly crowned William the Conqueror still hoped to rally the English to his cause and forge a united Anglo-Norman kingdom'. If so, it did not prevent widespread rebellion in 1069.
Readers of this impressive book and visitors to the exhibition will have their attention drawn to key scenes. An early one shows Earl Harold swearing a pledge before William, almost certainly in acknowledgement of the duke's ‘rightful’ succession to the throne of England, ‘despite Prince Edgar [Ætheling] by now being prepared to succeed’ Edward the Confessor. William liked to present – or even fabricate – such oath-taking ceremonies to vindicate his landgrabs. The appearance of Halley’s Comet soon afterwards is a ‘disquieting’ omen, underlining Harold’s subsequent sacrilegious oath-breaking.
And, in the most famous depiction of an English royal death in history, is King Harold really killed by an arrow in the eye? Written sources claim he was hacked to pieces. The two figures under the inscription ‘Here Harold is killed’ – one struck by an arrow, the other by a sword – are totally different, but we ‘cannot rule out the possibility that they represent the same person’.
The book, interestingly, suggests that in addition to its overt propaganda purposes, the Tapestry may have been a transportable artwork, unfolded at gatherings ‘as the basis of a spoken performance’, with a narrator expanding on the story. One can easily envisage an actor hamming it up, embellishing the scenes with dramatic flair. After all, ‘history’ was a form of entertainment at the time.
William's half-brother Bishop Odo of Bayeux is considered the Tapestry's probable patron. Never backward in coming forward, he is all over the narrative, most notably presiding over a pre-battle feast, administering a Christ-like benediction, and rallying the troops at a critical juncture of the combat, wielding his club (or is it a baton of command?), reminding William of his debt to him.
Splendid as the book is, at its hefty price one might have hoped for glossier paper. Still, the large-scale reproductions of the whole Tapestry allow for endless perusal of the fascinating details which reward constant revisits with new discoveries each time. The undisputed importance of the Tapestry explains the spate of new and revised books devoted to it. Especially worthy of mention is the update of David Musgrove and Michael Lewis's The Story of the Bayeux Tapestry (Thames & Hudson, £12.99).
The temporary return of the Tapestry deserves all the hype surrounding it, and the accompanying exhibition book adds further to the excitement.
Daisy Dunn tells the story of the all-powerful but naughty goddess Aphrodite, the subject of a new Ashmolean show
A phrodite – talk about a difficult birth. Her father the Sky (Ouranos) had come to resent the fertility of his wife/mother the Earth (Gaia). They’d had 18 children already – a game-some brood that included Titans, Cyclopes, and the 100-handed Hecatoncheires. The last of these were so hateful that Ouranos convinced himself that he would be murdered by one of them and usurped as ruler on high.
Ouranos's way of coping with his complex was to keep on having sex with his wife so as to hole up his offspring in the birth canal. Gaia urged her sons to save her, but only Kronos, the youngest of the Titans, was brave enough. While his father was still at it, Kronos went in and lopped off his genitals with a sickle. The divine bits plopped into the sea, and from the resulting froth emerged the goddess – beautiful, fully formed and, for a time, impervious to her family's dire dysfunctionality.
It was popularly believed that Aphrodite was named after that amniotic sea foam – aphros in Greek – but the debated etymology has also been linked to the Hebrew-Phoenician Ashtoreth, which the Greeks rendered as Astarte. Astarte was the name of Aphrodite’s forebear, an ancient Near Eastern deity who, like her associated goddesses Inanna and Ishtar, served as patroness of beauty, sex and war.
Astarte was sometimes worshipped as a Queen of Heaven; a beautiful double-statuette survives from the 2nd century showing a grey marble Aphrodite Ourania ('Of the Heavens') dressed in a star-spangled gown, alongside a more plainly dressed white Aphrodite Pandemos ('Of all the people'). The sculpture comes from Cyprus, Aphrodite's island. Having bobbed up on the sea, the goddess was said to have floated towards Kythera before arriving in Paphos – she would for ever be associated with seafaring as well as love.
She stepped ashore gracefully, tentatively, as though treading ice. A number of enig-
The ‘Capitoline Venus’ was so realistic a man ejaculated over it in the 4th century BC
matic sculptures survive showing her placing one foot on a tortoise or turtle. Other pieces, often made of terracotta, show her emerging from a shell of her own. You see the influence of these on Botticelli's 'Birth of Venus' (c.1485), in which the golden beauty glides ashore atop a scallop shell, blown in on the exhalations of Zephyrus and Aura. Shells, doves, mirrors and dolphins remained her favourite things.
People had begun to worship a fertility goddess on Cyprus as early as the Neolithic period. Hundreds of stone and terracotta figurines, dating from 4000 to 2500 BC, have been uncovered, and it is clear that pilgrims visited her sanctuaries on the island from at least as early as 1000 BC. Some of the offerings left to her are shaped as mothers holding children; Aphrodite would later acquire the epithet ‘Kourotrophos’ (Nurturer of Children) to complement her role as protectress of wives and prompter of child-making.
It was on Cyprus that the mainland Greeks learned her appeal. Absent from the surviving Mycenaean clay tablets, which name Hera, Athena, Persephone and other chief goddesses, Aphrodite made her mark as a distinct Greek goddess with a Greek name only after the collapse of the Bronze Age. (On Cyprus she would continue to be known as Kypria – ‘Cyprian Goddess’ – or Astarte until the end of the 4th century BC.)
The new era brought many more mainlanders to Cyprus and its religion. The sex goddess is first attested as both ‘Aphrodite’ and ‘Kypris’ in the 8th-century BC epics of Homer. In the Odyssey, she is presented as the unfaithful wife of Hephaestus, the lame-footed god of metallurgy. Their marriage, though unhappy, made perfect sense, for Cyprus was associated chiefly with the mining and export of bronze.
A copper alloy figurine from Cyprus of an Astarte/Aphrodite-type goddess, dated to the end of the Bronze Age, stands on a base shaped like one of the island's export ingots. Nude, with apple-like breasts and owl-alert eyes, she places her hands firmly around her stomach.
Look at it closely and you'll also discern a long plait hanging over her right shoulder. Aphrodite's hair – and her fondness for touching it – enthralled the Greeks and Romans, who worshipped her as Venus. She was often depicted wringing it out on the shore. Artists went in for modelling and painting her as she rose from the sea, dripping wet, her breasts riding up her ribcage as she stretched, as she does in a lovely 5th-century BC marble panel found in the grounds of Villa Ludovisi in Rome. Botticelli had Venus touch her hair, not to dry it, but to cover her pudenda. There’s a similar coyness to some of the most celebrated ancient statues. There is the ‘Crouching Aphrodite’, whose position artfully conceals her nudity, and the ‘Venus de’Medici’, who hovers one hand over her breast and the other over her vagina. Then there is the ‘Capitoline Venus’, a Roman version of a Greek original by Praxiteles, which was said to have been so realistic that a man ejaculated over it in the 4th century BC. Being caught in the nude – too slow to cover herself up – evidently made Venus only more desirable.
Michelangelo Pistoletto's ‘Venus of the Rags’ (1967, 1974), which you may have seen at the Tate, riffs on the goddess's unlikely modesty. His garden-centre statue of her has her back to us as she stands before a heap of laundry as if to say, ‘Get me some clothes!’
Why did Aphrodite become so shy? She does not look shy in those very early figu-
Roman politicians embraced Aphrodite as if she were their glamorous old granny
rines. She is not shy in Homer, where she embarks upon a steamy affair with the war god Ares, only to be caught in flagrante in a web of her husband's invention. It is even recorded that a temple was built for her in 6th-century BC Athens using the proceeds of a tax on brothels.
Her bashfulness must be a reflection of the feelings she engendered in those who carved and wondered at her. It was a complicated thing to embrace the lustiness of an adulterous goddess while praising the chastity of mortal women. Artists, seldom timid about baring flesh, knew what the authorities wanted to see. An apocryphal tale of a courtesan and artist's model escaping prosecution by baring her breasts to the jury was told with one part opprobrium to two parts titillation. Love, marriage, sex, children – all things to pray for, but what was acceptable for the gods was to be watered down for mortals. That was just the order of things.
Aphrodite's sexiness was not, in the end, an insurmountable problem. Roman politicians still embraced her as if she were their glamorous old granny. Lucius Cornelius Sulla, a dictator of the late Roman Republic, viewed Venus as his familial patron and gave both her name and his own to the Roman colony of Pompeii (Colonia Cornelia Veneria Pompeianorum).
'Venus', c.1490, by Sandro Botticelli and his workshop
More directly, Julius Caesar claimed descent from Venus via her grandson Iulus, child of Aeneas, hero of the Trojan War. The dictator even erected a temple to Venus Genetrix in his forum at Rome. There's evidence that Caesar's recent ancestors had courted the same divine connections. Whether or not the plebs took him at his word, the association lent a dash of humour and charm to Caesar's otherwise scandalous seduction of other senators' wives. What else to expect of a man with the love goddess's blood coursing his veins?
Given the history, you can see why the suffragettes took umbrage. ‘I didn’t like the way men visitors gaped at it all day long,’ said Mary Richardson of Velazquez’s ‘Rokeby Venus’, into which she’d sliced gashes worthy of sickle-wielding Kronos. Man Ray’s reassemblage of the goddess in his ‘Vénus Restaurée’ of 1936 involved enwrapping her defenceless torso in rope which, even to the most sympathetic female eye, cannot fail to evoke the strains of female bondage.
The Greek philosophers would have enjoyed unravelling the psychology of this. Who are we punishing, the all-powerful but naughty goddess or the naughtiness we struggle to keep power over in ourselves?
Aphrodite: The Making of a Goddess is at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, from 8 October until 11 April 2027.
节目单的最后一项是由韩国编舞师 Jae Man Joo 创作的《纯真之兆》（Auguries of Innocence），这简直是一场灾难。其挥舞与哀嚎的动作带有皮娜·鲍什（Pina Bausch）的有害影响，配乐采用了拉脱维亚神秘极简主义者 Peteris Vasks 沉闷的低鸣，其间穿插着由僧侣 Gogeum Sunim 演奏的法鼓音乐（beopgongyang）录音；作品还引用了威廉·布莱克的诗作。请后排的观众停止窃笑。
一位像女巫一样且毛发浓密的女士（由 Sangeun Lee 勇敢地饰演），被描述为“灵魂编织者”，她主导着一群追随者，后者在她的咒语控制下在地上打滚。整个氛围非常阴暗，但随着“召唤者”、“管道”和“容器”的出现，气氛稍微好转了一些，随后所有人脱掉衣服（谢天谢地，肉色连体袜还留在身上）并进行纯洁的拥抱。我感觉到了一种亚当与夏娃的氛围，以及一种熟悉的希望——即和平与自然的和谐将战胜所有糟糕的事物。但愿如此吧。那些容易被这种嬉皮士风格吸引的人可能会在这里发现丰富的精神收获，但我绝不是唯一一个觉得它极其严肃且死气沉沉的人。
📄 Original Section
---
Dance Martial art Rupert Christiansen
English National Ballet: Rhythm Riot
Sadler's Wells
The only problem with presenting a blazing masterpiece such as Balanchine's Symphony in Three Movements as a curtain raiser is that it will make anything that follows it look pallid or insignificant. And that's what blights English National Ballet's new triple bill, which starts with a massive blast of electricity and ends in a big slow yawn.
Symphony in Three Movements formed part of the astonishing festival that George Balanchine masterminded in 1972 as a homage to his close friend and artistic inspiration Igor Stravinsky, who had died the previous year. Presented in one week were 31 ballets to the composer's scores, 21 of them new, ten of them by Balanchine himself. The dancers of New York City Ballet, enthralled to the cult of Balanchine, were worked like slaves to the point of exhaustion, nowhere more so than in creating the large-scale Symphony in
Three Movements, set to a brassy and extravert neoclassical score composed from 1942 to 1945 and described by Stravinsky as his ‘war symphony’.
Balanchine picked up on this martial edge in his choreographic vocabulary. The ballet evokes a battlefield, a parade-ground, military manoeuvres: the corps moves urgently in straight lines that divide and reunite, as if under fire, and the three electrifying pas de deux are wary duels rather than amorous courtships. One dancer described the ferocious energy level required as comparable to 'being shot out of a cannon', and at this first performance, ENB's plucky cast still look shy of the challenges. They need to shock and awe: to be more predatory, more aggressive, more ruthless. Precision is all, right up to the magnificent final tableau that presents arms to the audience. A for effort all round, however, and gold stars to Ksenia Ovsyanick and Rentaro Nakaaki in particular for their scrupulous execution of the intricate central section.
What chance have two new pieces by young choreographers in the wake of the matchless genius sparked by Balanchine and Stravinsky's partnership? Micaela Taylor comes off better with her Bow Out, an amiable and audience-pleasing compendium of American jazz dance, freewheeling from lindyhop and tap to breaking and popping, danced in tuxedos with terrific verve and charm. The blot is a protracted and pretentious final section in which the dancers one by one discard their jackets in front of a microphone stand. A statement of something, but God knows what.
The final item in the programme, Auguries of Innocence, by the Korean choreographer Jae Man Joo, was a real downer. Marked in its flailing and wailing by the baneful influence of Pina Bausch, it uses a dreary drone of a score by the Latvian mystic minimalist Peteris Vasks, interspersed with a recording of beopgongyang drum music played by a monk, the Venerable Gogeum Sunim; reference is also made to the poems of William Blake. Stop that snickering in the back row, please.
A witchy and hairy lady (gamely incarnated by Sangeun Lee), described as ‘The Weaver of Souls’, presides over a coven of acolytes who roll around on the floor in thrall to her incantations. It’s all very dark, but things cheer up a bit with the appearance of ‘The Caller’, ‘The Conduit’, and ‘The Vessel’, before everyone takes their clothes off (flesh-coloured body stockings mercifully remain) and engages in chaste embraces. I sensed some sort of Adam and Eve vibe, as well as the familiar hope that peace and harmony with nature will triumph over all the bad stuff. If only. Those susceptible to this sort of hippie thing may find rich spiritual pickings here, but I will not be alone in finding it dreadfully earnest and deathly dull.
Charleston in Firle, East Sussex, until 7 March 2027
Marlow Moss: Space, Movement & Light
Ward Moretti, until 30 October
Every visitor to Charleston Farmhouse will know the work of Quentin Bell even if they don't realise it. He made the distinctive clay colander lights there, and many of the zany sculptures and ceramics. The son of Vanessa Bell, he grew up at Charleston, and later, when he was of great age – and even greater beard – he led a campaign to ensure the place was properly preserved. But what was Bell's work really like?
This exhibition gives us about 100 examples so that his singular vision emerges, and guess what, for all the progressive modernism of his background, he had a taste for Victoriana, fairground illusionism and the Belle Époque. His reliefs are dancers out of Degas, his figurines dressed like Manet's bar attendant. He was fascinated by Maupassant, De Sade and 'the darker currents of fin-de-siècle French culture'. There's a memorably creepy sculpture of an 'invisible' clay man and woman, which are merely empty, rutting clothes.
Art was his way of life. Aged six, he was scooping blue clay out of the Charleston pond and baking it in the nursery fire. Soon he was adding sand to make the finished tea-cups stronger (two are on display). He loved to paint on clay but, as he got better at making pots and plates, his mother and Duncan Grant would often swipe them to decorate themselves. He and his aunt Virginia Woolf worked on in-house newspapers with the mischievous aim of ‘giving the utmost pain to everyone concerned’, his drawings paired with her distinctive handwriting. There’s also his childish sketch of a man who came to tea, which looks to be Lytton Strachey.
Quentin, deemed unfit for military service due to TB, spent the second world war digging vegetables and writing a fantasy novel The Upheaval, 2,000 pages long; the illustrations, though done in Biro, look wonderful. It could have become escapist literature like Peake's or Tolkien's, maybe, but David Garnett told him to give it up.
Alongside his teaching career, and his writing, he made beautiful birthday cards for his children, illustrated stories, and created 3-D ‘goggleboxes’, sort of toy theatres. When you peep into the one here, it reveals a saucy parody of a modern art gallery. He made about 17 of these during his lifetime, amusing and sui generis, for sure, but it’s not hard to see why relatively few survive. His biggest achievement is probably the lifesize levitating lady in fibreglass painted to look like bronze. There is one at Charleston by the pond, as well as at Leeds, where he was professor of fine art. But I prefer 'Horseplay', in which a terrible accident has befallen a smug Staffordshire couple familiar from the Victorian earthenware mantelpiece-topper. The horse is bolting, the lady's legs are akimbo, and the gallant is manifestly failing to save her.
‘Blunderhead’, 1966, by Quentin Bell
Marlow Moss (1889-1958) was the opposite of Bell. Her work was pure abstraction, mathematics guiding her practice, which was precise and ritualistic. She would paint her geometrical shapes seven times, letting each layer dry for seven days. Rejecting the hautbourgeois Jewish Kilburn family she was born into, she swapped Marjorie for Marlow, and got an Eton crop and jodhpurs. She was hanging out with the cubists in Paris seeking
Scholars assumed Mondrian taught Moss, but their relationship has recently been reassessed as two-way
rhythm in ‘pure geometric figures’ when she met Mondrian.
Scholars assumed he taught her, but their relationship has recently been reassessed as two-way. It is now believed that the neoplastic double-line – tram tracks running across the canvas – was her innovation, not his. Art-world fortunes are made of such distinctions. Moss's ‘White, Yellow and Black’ (1953) sold for £1.2 million at Sotheby's in June. You can see it, glowing and profound, at Ward Moretti, alongside a carefully curated show of 35 works.
Both Bell and Moss designed interiors for new ways of living. In 1937, at Evreux in Haute-Normandie, Moss and her partner Netty Nijhoff designed and created a modernist home of ‘unsurpassed cleanliness and harmony’, wrote the designer Max Bill. ‘Everything was bright, fresh, transparent.’ Moss had to escape to England by boat in 1940. She settled in Lamorna in Cornwall, but effectively had to begin again. Everything of that modernist paradise, including most of her pre-war work, was looted and went up in a Nazi firestorm.
E vgeny Titov has landed at the Royal Opera, and he has good news for Britain's beleaguered opera scene. 'It's the best place to work,' he declares, leaning forward with enthusiasm; and already he's thrown the interview off course. Usually with overseas artists there are courtesies, and then a tactful acknowledgment that British companies work under unavoidable pressures of time and money. But this actor-turned-opera director, whose career has taken him from St Petersburg to the Salzburg Festival, has seen a few things, and he means what he says. He likes it here.
‘Everybody told me before I came, “You will love it,” he says. “Oh, is that so?”, I thought: I visited a few times for preparation and I was, like, “Yeah, it’s good,
but I don't see the difference." But when you start rehearsing, it's amazing. Amazing! Because of the people, because of the working conditions, because of how they take care of you, and how quickly they react. Everything's prepared, everything's thought through. Honestly, I'm not the kind of person who goes to Zurich, and then Vienna, and tells them all that they're best. No, the Royal Ballet and Opera is definitely the best organised place I've ever been, and the most supportive. Really! It's impressive.'
He sits back, beaming. Titov has just completed a full day's rehearsal on the Royal Opera's new production of Parsifal, but you wouldn't guess it. Wagner's final opera is a work apart, as vast and as beautiful as
Tristan und Isolde or Götterdämmerung, but freighted with a philosophical complexity that can daunt even the most devoted Wagnerite. Wagner didn't even call Parsifal an opera; to him it was a ‘Bühnenweihfestspiel’ – a ‘consecrational stage festival’ – and the Nazis, troubled by its Christian symbolism, discouraged performances. There’s enough here to put any director through the wringer.
Titov, however, has a reputation as a livewire, and right now he seems far from tired. ‘I work very passionately, and I’m very emotional,’ he says, and his collaborators across Europe (his operatic credits range from Enescu’s Oedipe in Berlin to George Benjamin’s Lessons in Love and Violence in Zurich) testify that his is the kind of energy that rubs off. Parsifal, though – surely this is different; a special case. Isn’t it draining to immerse yourself so completely in this, of all operas?
‘No. I would say everything from Monteverdi onwards requires a different approach. If you do Sir George Benjamin: the same. And Tchaikovsky is Tchaikovsky: I’m directing The Queen of Spades this winter and that’s also something completely different. It’s almost as big as Parsifal, in some ways, but with a completely different energy. Everything, if you do it right, requires a special treatment, because every piece is its own world.’
'I'm not doing propaganda theatre – writing slogans on the wall. That's too easy'
And Titov knows all about moving between worlds. Raised in Ust-Kamenogorsk, Kazakhstan, he trained at the St Petersburg Theatre Arts Academy and spent the early years of his career as an actor. 'I was successful – I was doing films in Russia, and getting good stage roles; Jason in Medea, Jim in The Glass Menagerie. I was doing Ostrovsky. But I realised that I needed to be out in the world. I hadn't seen London or New York or Rome'. With only the sketchiest grasp of German, he applied to study directing at the Max Reinhardt Seminar in Vienna, was rejected, and then, a year later, on his second attempt, accepted – all while holding down a repertory job in Russia.
‘I was flying back to Russia twice a month, to perform. My biggest and worst fear, every time, was that afterwards I would get to border control at the airport and they would not let me go back to Vienna. They would not let me out.’ After fobbing off his employers with a story of a lost passport, he burned his bridges and settled in the West. ‘I haven’t been back to Russia since 2014, and I definitely don’t want to go now. I don’t want to find out what would happen. In Vienna I found that I could be free, and learned the most important thing, which is to really understand who you are. This, you have to learn.'
So go on, then: who is Evgeny Titov, as he makes his British debut with his first ever Parsifal? ‘I’m very crazy, absolutely free, six years old!’ Well, he said it, and there’s no ignoring the boyish exuberance that Titov projects both in person, and (by all accounts) in his working methods. That’s one reason why companies across Europe are so keen to work with him. Titov’s uninhibited energy and directness has a way of breaking familiar works wide open, of releasing fresh insights and surprising perspectives.
Still, ‘It’s very hard for me to talk about my own work,’ he admits. ‘The critics are always saying it’s existential, it’s deep, it’s going into characters. I don’t know. In Germany directors are interested in “concepts” where Parsifal takes place on Mars, or in a factory where they kill chickens. That’s not a concept. It’s nothing – just a very, very bad staging. So I try to go deep into the play.’ His own ideas about Wagner’s Grail legend centre on the twin figures of Parsifal – a redeemer who stands in need of redemption – and Kundry, the cursed, undying woman and the opera’s only female protagonist. Early reports suggest that the setting will be post-apocalyptic.
‘No spoilers!’ laughs Titov, and he is anxious that audiences should let his – and Wagner’s – work speak on its own terms. He has said that in theatre direction, ‘intuition plays a bigger part than knowledge’; his productions, he insists, have no personal agenda. ‘I’m not doing propaganda theatre. I’m not this political director who’s doing, “Women should be liberated,” or whatever – writing slogans on the wall and saying, “Look, look, this is what I’m doing.” I think that’s too easy. I think it’s too simple. I’m not saying, “Oh, I’ll show you, this stupid Wagner.” I don’t want to destroy anything.’
‘I believe the art is more clever than the artist,’ says Titov, and few would dispute that Parsifal is very clever indeed. It’s just that Titov believes that – like any enduring art work – it might not necessarily mean what its creator said it meant. ‘Maybe Wagner is not as free and as right as he thought, because wherever there is certainty, you are in danger.’
To art, then, its freedom. Certainly, Titov accepts that his own work might escape his imagination, to reveal a life and meaning of its own. In fact, for a director with roots in conventional theatre, the discipline of opera – where so much of the performance (and our response to it) is dictated by music that is beyond the stage director's control – is itself a sort of liberation. That's not merely a backhanded compliment to the conductor (Titov is a big fan of Covent Garden's Jakub Hrusa. 'In my opinion, he's really a wall of passion – he just doesn't show it'). It's an acceptance that creative freedom can take many forms, and Titov thinks often about freedom.
‘Yes, we have to think about what is behind the music, and not be anaesthetised by it. But you can only be free if you have very clear borders; because real freedom only comes when you know that not everything is possible. If everything is possible, that’s not freedom. You can find it if you really squeeze; if you ask questions about a work of art. Then you can discover what the work means to you. If you just reject the questions, that’s not freedom. It’s a salad. You need the shadow, to see the light.’
Parsifal is at the Royal Opera House until 17 October.
[Pop A star is reborn Michael Hann] Echo & The Bunnymen Regent's Park Open Air Theatre
没有人加入摇滚乐队是因为他们不想被认可。被崇拜对明星来说至关重要，有时甚至过于重要，但这只会让那些热爱他们的人更加在意。在摄政公园一个辉煌的夜晚，人们发出的“我们爱你，麦克！”的呐喊声中就能听到这一点。Echo & The Bunnymen 的主唱伊恩·麦卡洛（Ian McCulloch）——他曾因公开宣称自己的乐队比任何其他乐队都优秀而闻名——在近几
📄 Original Section
---
Good Kid Roundhouse
No one ever joined a rock band because they didn't want to be recognised. Being adored matters to stars, sometimes too much, but that only makes those who love them care even more. That could be heard in the cries of 'We love you, Mac!' at a glorious night in Regent's Park. Echo & The Bunnymen's singer Ian McCulloch – who was once famous for pronouncing on how much better his band was than any other – has not had an easy time of it in recent
Bunnymen 的新专辑《Apples for Isaac》——十多年来的首张专辑——不仅出人意料地不错，而且确实很出色。而上周的演出则令人惊叹。
📄 Original Section
---
Over 17 songs, McCulloch got what he needed: proof that he was still a rock star
years. Unlike his peers in the Cure and U2, he's not playing to 50,000 people at a time, though his band were regarded as every bit their equals – perhaps their betters – in the early 1980s.
Fans had in fact noted that McCulloch had recently been physically incapable of performing onstage. He’d appear slumped in a chair and let the crowd do all the singing – to say he likes a drink would be very much an understatement (almost all of a recent round of press interviews were conducted over several pints in favoured Liverpool pubs). But from apparent disaster he has pulled a victory.
The new Bunnymen album, Apples for Isaac – the first in more than a decade – was not only surprisingly good, but actually good. And the show last week was wonder-
圆屋剧院的 Z 世代们对 Good Kid 的兴奋之情溢于言表。现场气氛狂热。但我禁不住在想，无论乐队还是观众，在 40 年后是否还会在意彼此。他们是一个来自多伦多的五人组，演奏着不安的朋克流行乐
📄 Original Section
---
THE PERFECT CHRISTMAS GIFT
At Forman & Field, we create hampers brimming with artisan treasures. From the elegant Smoke & Bubbles duo - smoked salmon paired with English sparkling wine - to magnificent wicker hampers filled with premium hams, caviar, foie gras and fine spirits. The essence of Christmas, delivered with love to those who matter most.
10% OFF ANY FORMAN & FIELD HAMPER
Enjoy a 10% discount off our festive range of hampers which you can pre-order for Christmas delivery. Offer applies to products in the Hampers section of our website with orders over £100 placed before the end of October. Use code: SPECCY10 at checkout.
Discover more inspiration and explore our complete range of Christmas delights at formanandfield.com
10% OFF
OUR FESTIVE
RANGE OF
HAMPERS
THE BOLNEY
Estate
CUVÉE NOIR
NV BRUT
FST 1956
PULBROOK & GOULD
LONDON
ful. We call them Bunnymen but it's really just McCulloch, four hired hands who stood in the shadows and guitarist Will Sergeant, who played on only four songs and didn't write any of them. So it was McCulloch's show to throw away.
It must be said that his between-songs chatter was far too long and often incomprehensible. But his singing was good enough – though a lifetime of smoking and drinking have worn away his croon – and he has a catalogue worth wielding. Obviously the oldies were what roused the audience – ‘The Cutter’, ‘Seven Seas’, ‘The Killing Moon’ – but the three new songs, ‘Brussels Is Haunted’, ‘An Unstoppable Force’, and especially the unexpected motorik glam of ‘Lab Rats Ran’ stood proudly alongside them. Over 17 songs, McCulloch got what he needed: proof that he was still a rock star.
The Gen Zers at the Roundhouse couldn't have been more excited for Good Kid. It was febrile. But I couldn't help wondering whether either band or audience would care about each other in 40 years. They're a Toronto quintet, playing jittery punky pop
他们甚至看起来像电子游戏角色——每个人穿着不同的原色衣服，在台上跳来跳去。他们还像澳大利亚的儿童娱乐组合 The Wiggles（他们在舞台上的举止非常像幼儿园老师）。这看起来像是在模仿一支摇滚乐队，但那是因为我成长在不同的时代。
回到家后进行了一些谷歌搜索，我对他们的不满变成了愤怒。Good Kid 的主唱 Nick Frosst 不仅仅是在科技行业工作，他是个地地道道的“科技兄弟”（tech bro）。他共同创立了一家名为 Cohere 的 AI 公司，据称该公司估值达 70 亿加元 billion。撇开我对超高净值人群的偏见不谈，我唯一能想到的就是：他为什么要这么做？他内心深处有什么本能的需求需要证明自己？我找不到答案。我不认为摇滚乐必须是局外人的专属领地，但我只是不确定我是否希望它落在那些想要控制我们思考方式的人手中。
📄 Original Section
---
Good Kid is the first truly digitally native rock band: all of them work in tech
– like the Strokes if they were wholesome – and the crowd sang everything back at them at full volume.
Playing in a band appears to be just content creation for them. The gig was streamed live on Twitch, with the chat thread scrolling on a screen onstage, and before they went on, two members interviewed fans in the front row with a camera crew. Those fans had been won from Reddit and the gaming communities, rather than through radio and touring; this is the first truly digitally native rock band: all of them work in tech.
They even look like video-game characters – all in different primary colours, leaping around. They also resemble the Australian children's entertainers the Wiggles (their manner onstage is very kindergarten teacher). It looked like an impersonation of a rock band but then I grew up in a different age.
My irritation with them turned to rage on getting home and doing some Googling. Good Kid's singer Nick Frosst doesn't just work in tech, he's a bona-fide tech bro. He co-founded an AI company called Cohere, which is apparently valued at \$7 billion. Setting aside my chippiness about very-high-net-worth individuals, all I could think of was: why is he doing this? What visceral need is there in him to prove himself? I couldn't find an answer. I don't think rock music needs be the sole preserve of the outsider, but I'm just not sure I want it in the hands of people who want to control the way we think.
The Last Ship, a musical written by and featuring Sting, is touring Europe, Australia and America. The show is a class-war parable set in Newcastle during the 1980s. A team of shipbuilders are about to complete a new vessel, the Utopia, when a bossy government minister, Baroness Tynedale, arrives at the docks to deliver bad news. With her brightblue suit and posh hectoring voice, she's a pantomime Mrs Thatcher and she announces that the yard will be seized and flogged to private investors.
The shipbuilders establish a Marxist committee and plot to overturn her evil scheme. A gripping start. Plucky Geordies pitted against yuppie scavengers from London. The show even features a song about the competing merits of collectivism and monetarism.
Then it all implodes. The story takes off on a two-hour detour that explores the lives of various characters with emotional problems. Teenage Ellen dreams of starting a new life in London. Jackie the foreman (played by Sting) contracts a lung disease of unknown origin. The beautiful but prickly Meg can't decide between two dreadful boyfriends. Will she choose wet blanket, Freddy, or faithless drifter, Gideon, who impregnated her and promptly ran away?
These sob stories mean nothing to the audience because they don't affect the mutiny at the yard. Bad storytelling. Barney Norris's clumsy script is an updated version of two earlier attempts by various writers. After 120 minutes of waffle, the story gets back on track. Security staff occupy the shipyard. The rebels devise a plan to kick them out. Baroness Tynedale shows up to take personal charge of the battle.
Then a surreal touch. A chorus line of militant feminists arrives dressed in matching jeans and tartan scarves. They look like fans of the Bay City Rollers. Perhaps they can break the deadlock. The ending, when it finally emerges, takes ages to unfold because it has to wrap up the stories of Ellen, Jackie, Freddy, Gideon and Meg, plus a couple of other figures.
The show seems to overlook its chief asset, Sting. He's a decent actor (far better than Bowie or Jagger) and he plays the role of Jackie with rugged, hard-nosed sincerity. But he barely gets to exercise his vocal cords. Why did he not give himself a big crowd-pleasing number at the close of Act One? The probable answer is that a dramatic work is a collective enterprise, like class war, and the individual has to subordinate his ego to the interests of the group.
But that ideal doesn't work in musical theatre, which usually centres on a single personality whose transformation delights and thrills the audience. This story has no lead character. And the design suffers from its own good intentions. The goal is to make the audience feel the dispiriting and oppressive atmosphere of a shipyard. A vast skeleton of metal girders has been constructed over the phallic prow of a ship that thrusts obtrusively on to the stage. It's horrible and it stays in place throughout the action. This is a decent show but hardly a classic. Some audience members may have wondered why Sting didn't just deliver a medley of hits and then hold a whip-round for the rainforest, like in the old days.
Table 17 is a romantic comedy that turns into a public tribunal or a bear-baiting session. At the start of the show, the crowd are invited to shout out comments
Rishawn is a dazzlingly gifted comedian who makes this a five-star show
and advice to the characters. We open with Jada getting ready for an inappropriate date. She's so anxious about the meeting that she can't even share the details with her therapist.
Her date, Dallas, is a handsome stud with a nerdy streak who always wears green corduroy trousers. They meet at a chic restaurant staffed by snobbish narcissists. The barman fancies himself as a stud. 'I get laid hard and often. That's not a cocky statement it's simply da truth.' To demonstrate his technique, he leaps on to the bar and humps away at an imaginary girlfriend.
His colleague River runs the table bookings and he gets far too involved in the personal lives of his customers. When Jada and Dallas show up, we learn that they were engaged to be married but broke it off. Both want to see if the spark is still alive. Of course it is.
But will they snuff it out or feed the flames? The audience had their say. Shouts of ‘he’s lying’ or ‘don’t do it’ pealed out from the stalls. It’s rare to see a show where the crowd are so involved that they barrack the characters. Marisha Wallace plays Jada as a kittenish flirt who always wants more than she has. Multi-rolling Michael Rishawn impersonates the restaurant staff and a seductive airline steward who tempts Jada away from Dallas. Rishawn is a dazzlingly gifted comedian who makes this a five-star show. A hilarious night out.
在他在2012年写的那部带着自嘲幽默的小说《忘记妻子的男人》(The Man Who Forgot His Wife) 中，约翰·奥法雷尔 (John O'Farrell) 将日益野蛮的离婚过程比作战争：“1939年，英国皇家空军认为轰炸黑森林以剥夺德国人的木材是不道德的。但到了1945年，他们则在故意制造火风暴，以杀死尽可能多的平民。”正如剧名所示，这部由明星主演的关于离婚的新剧《战争》也做了类似的类比——只不过在这里，这对不幸的夫妇直接快进到了德累斯顿大轰炸。
In his ruefully funny 2012 novel The Man Who Forgot His Wife, John O'Farrell compares the increasingly uncivilised process of divorce to war: 'In 1939 the RAF thought it was immoral to bomb the Black Forest to deprive the Germans of timber. But by 1945 they were deliberately creating firestorms to kill as many civilians as possible.' As the title suggests, the starry new divorce-based drama War makes a similar comparison – except that here the unhappy couple are cutting straight to Dresden.
The show began as it meant to go on: which is to say, glitteringly. At a London awards ceremony of ineffable poshness, Morgan Henderson (Dominic West) was named Pioneer of the Year for creating one of the world's biggest yet nicest social media platforms. In his impressively oily acceptance speech, Morgan declared that ‘we need as much accountability online as there is IRL’. Ironically for him, though, accountability IRL was about to land him in a whole heap of trouble.
During his speech, a young hottie had caught his eye and when it turned out they were staying at the same hotel, it wasn't long before they were doing the customary clothes-tearing, vertical-foreplay thing against his bedroom wall. The following morning as he slept, the hottie then took a selfie of them in bed together and forwarded it to his wife Carla, with the accompanying text, 'It's done.'
Continuing the commitment to glitter, when the message arrived, Carla (Sienna Miller – I did say it was starry) was in Paris where, as a world-famous movie star, she was plugging her latest film. Even so, she found time to summon her London lawyers and issue the unambiguous legal instruction, ‘Take this photo, take this case and take him for every fucking penny he’s got.’
At this stage, Carla was hoping her plans for divorce would stay secret, but Morgan soon had his suspicions and decided to lawyer up too. He opted for a team from a rival firm, who gleefully took on what was ‘likely to be the biggest divorce case in British legal history’. Once they had, it was clear that the eponymous war applies at least as much to the couple’s lawyers as to the couple themselves. Both firms promised to ‘fight dirty’ – and both proved as good as their word in ways I’d better not spoil given that this first episode goes out on Friday.
What I can say is that the result is enormous, dark fun. Viewers who like a goodie or two to root for should probably look elsewhere. Yet, while the characters may be uniformly mean, the programme-makers are unfailingly generous in making sure we have a good time, as the twists and one-liners pile up, and the lawyers' dirtiness is accompanied by large dollops of the best kind of soapiness.
Granted, dramas that allow us to simultaneously ogle at and despise rich people have become somewhere between a TV staple and a TV cliché. Nonetheless, War is shaping up to be one of the most entertaining (although maybe not weightiest) examples since Succession.
On a sadder note, this week we said goodbye to the brilliant Colin from Accounts, written by and starring Patrick Brammall and Harriet Dyer, who are husband and wife IRL. Right to the end, it achieved that rare feat for a comedy drama of being both comic and dramatic.
As you may (and possibly should) know by now, the title comes from the name that the main characters Gordon and Ash gave to the mild-mannered dog that he ran over at the start of the first series after she
而在最后一集中，《财务部的科林》（Colin from Accounts）坚守了其理想，那种令人振奋的、不矫情的风格才逐渐地（且非常令人满意地）让位于完全的理查德·柯蒂斯（Richard Curtis）式风格。尽管该剧已获得全球成功，但它依然保持着毫不妥协的澳大利亚特色，戈登和艾什浪漫之路上最后一个障碍，源于他一个轻率的决定：在一次“单身派对”（bucks）上进行“热吻”（pash）。
📄 Original Section
---
War is shaping up to be one of the most entertaining examples since Succession
flashed her nipple at him. From there, their shared love of the dog turned into a shared love of each other – which in classic rom-com style, they were intermittently aware of but that we never doubted for a minute. Series two ended with Gordon making an embarrassingly drunken public proposal at a friend's wedding that kyboshed the relationship for three years. This third one duly saw them edging their way back together.
Throughout its run, perhaps the most impressive aspect of the show was its perfect control of tone: one that constantly undercut the essential sweetness with lots of rudery, yet never undermined it. But there was also a terrific line-up of supporting characters – each of whom got a chance to shine, or receive their richly deserved comeuppance, in this week's concluding two episodes.
And in the final one of all, Colin from Accounts stayed true to its ideals, as the bracing lack of soppiness only gradually (and very satisfyingly) gave way to the full Richard Curtis. Despite its now-global success, it also remained uncompromisingly Australian, with the last of the many obstacles in Gordon and Ash's romantic path provided by his ill-advised decision to have a ‘pash’ at a ‘bucks’.
These are strange days in the recording industry. Heaven alone knows why Platoon – an Apple subconglomerate with all the charm of the Borg – has decided that this is the moment to release a cycle of Schumann symphonies recorded live by Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2018. But I’m not complaining. No conductor records these four misunderstood masterpieces for the glory.
No: it has to be love; and while you can draw any number of conclusions from Platoon's decision to give the recordings away for free via streaming and download platforms, the real value is in the listening. If perceptions of Dudamel as a hyperactive ex-wunderkind were ever really justified, they aren't now. Like any maestro, he's as good as his last performance, and his Schumann symphonies are polished and audibly sincere – big on colour, but unafraid to follow Schumann into the shadows in (say) the Beethoven-inspired slow movement of the Second, or the fourth movement of the Rhenish, Schumann's high-gothic evocation of Cologne Cathedral.
In truth, the only serious problem is that Dudamel's Schumann isn't fantastic enough. He has a slightly foursquare way of sitting back on the rhythms. You long for more intimacy in the Fourth's caressing violin solo, and less self-consciousness at the magic moment when Schumann the dreamer suddenly, impossibly, halts his Spring symphony to float away into a cadenza for horns and flute. This is music of pine forests and dew: with the Dude, you never quite get off the freeway. Still, there's a lot here that's good, and if you don't like it, you can always ask for your money back.
In the 1970s and 1980s, pickled onions lurked in dubious-looking jars on the counters of fish-and-chip shops, and behind the bar in pubs. There would often be a jar of them at a Christmas buffet, while posh households kept a spring-loaded pickled onion fork in the kitchen drawer.
Back then, they were one of just a few foodstuffs capable of giving British mouths a thrill. But as supermarket shelves began to groan under the weight of harissa, wasabi and chilli sauce, the humble pickled onion fell out of fashion. In 1997, Alan Partridge summed up the mood when he was offered a pickled onion by ‘Geordie Michael’. ‘Erm, no – I hate them!’ he replied with scorn.
It was a shameful damnation of something with such an illustrious history. Mesopotamians are thought to have developed the technique of pickling around 2400 BC, when they began soaking cucumbers and other foods in saltwater brine and vinegar to preserve them through harsh winters. The method caught on when people realised that it was also a convenient way of adding new tastes and textures to the plate.
The Romans introduced onions and pickling to Britain following their invasion in AD 43 and by the 1700s, pickled onions were taking off. Sarah Harrison's 1739 cookbook, The House-Keeper's Pocket-Book, advised aspiring picklers to ‘take your small Onions, lay them in Salt and Water a Day’ before pickling them in a mixture of ‘White Wine Vinegar, Cloves, Mace and a little Pepper’. By the 20th century, the darker flavour of malt vinegar had become strongly associated with the British pickled onion, which was often eye-wateringly strong.
WE'VE HADA FEW...
Other nations, however, had the impertinence to produce versions of their own. So in 1959 British scientists in a laboratory in Leatherhead, Surrey, set out to create the perfect pickled onion. As British Pathé explained, the project was a matter of ‘national prestige’ because nearly all the best pickling onions came from abroad, chiefly Holland and Egypt. ‘Why, pray, shouldn’t the cold roast beef of old England be served with English pickled onions?’ the narrator asked.
Why indeed? The researchers, in tweed suits, used a huge revolving drum to peel the onions without bringing tears to their eyes. This was serious work: the team, said Pathé, had a ‘breathtaking responsibility to the public’.
Now, having survived both the culinary revolution and several decades of neglect, the pickled onion is back. Red onions spearheaded the revival, becoming a fermented feature of tacos, burgers, sandwiches, salads and Middle Eastern dishes, their sharp acidity cutting through rich foods. The Gibson cocktail adds a pickled onion to its blend of gin and dry vermouth. Pickled Onion is every serious person's favourite flavour of Monster Munch crisps.
In Britain, the revival has coincided with our renewed enthusiasm for fermentation. About 8.5 million UK households bought pickled onions in the past year, and in the 12 weeks to August, sales rose 12 per cent year on year. Data from Ocado showed that the pickles, gherkins and olives category is up 30 per cent. Earlier this month, London held its first major festival dedicated to pickling and fermentation: the Big Brine. As chefs embrace pickling as a way of using more of certain ingredients and reducing food waste, it seems the pickled onion has managed to win favour with the sustainability crowd and find itself on the right side of history.
SPEECH WRITING
Bringing together Britain's leading restaurants & private clubs with exclusive privileges extended discreetly to members and not publicly available elsewhere. www.luxuryrestaurantguide.com
John Richard Roberts mixed and patented MelRose Skincare from 1880 until the factory was bombed in a night raid in 1941.
The family and factory relocated to Holton Mill, Oxon, remaining there until the 1950's. Production moved to Birmingham. Melrose has continued in family hands, controlling this high quality multi-purpose skincare, as effective today as it was in earlier years.
We supply nationwide wholesalers which supply local pharmacies.
A gentleman's classic, our pleated front county cords fit in everywhere from the pub to the paddock. Expertly tailored in the finest quality thick, 8-wale corduroy. Hard-wearing and comfortable, retaining their colour and shape wash after wash—these cords are built for decades of wear, growing softer and more full of character with every season.
\- 100% cotton corduroy
\- Single pleat with a French bearer fly front
\- 2 buttoned hip & 2 deep side pockets
\- Hidden, expanding comfort waistband allows for 2" of flexibility
\- No Quibble Money Back Guarantee\*
Colours: Denim, Charcoal,
Rose, Emerald, Conker, Corn,
Purple, Moss, Navy, Burgundy,
Sand, Toffee, Pine, Poppy,
Black, Royal Blue
Waist: 32 34 36 38 40
42 44 46 48 50 52"
Leg: 27 29 31 33"
FREE
DELIVERY
& RETURNS\*
Enter
46W40
at checkout
Trustpilot ★★★★★
"Your corduroy trousers are unbeatable. Excellent quality, I don't look anywhere else." Lady Scott, Shetland, Scotland
Readers Special Offer
MT08
Burgundy
Use code 46W40 for FREE P&P to order County Cords (MT08)
peterchristian.co.uk
24hrs Online Assistance
01273 493 393
Weekdays 9-5pm – Weekends 10-3pm
Trustpilot Rated Excellent
Based on 2,000+
County Corduroy
5 STAR REVIEWS
Order by Post — Cheques payable to Peter Christian. Quote 46W40 and send to: Freepost PETER CHRISTIAN
Go Online or Call for a Free Catalogue
\*Free UK delivery offer (save £5) ends midnight 03/12/26. £75 minimum spend applies. Free returns within UK only, see our full T&Cs online. A Division of Hills of Bramley Ltd. Co Reg No 04767802
重要的发布活动包括我姐姐 Julia Gray 出色的《Kitty and Mary》，这是《傲慢与偏见》的一部书信体延伸作品（发布会在海格特举行，Gray 夫人穿着一件摄政时期的细棉布裙，现场还有共用的遮阳帽）；Victoria Hislop 在玛丽勒本举办的《The Wine-Dark Sea》（穿着金色的吊带裙）；以及 Marina Hyde 在维多利亚举办的《What A Time to Be Alive!》（穿着一件令人惊叹的白色镂空复仇
📄 Original Section
---
Best life Rachel Johnson
September makes serious demands of your Best life columnist, what with book launches, birthdays and the birth of Mona Leda, daughter of my darling niece Lara (which means Boris beats me to grandparenthood and bumps our father, Stanley – who is off-grid in Tibet researching his 30th book – up to great-grandfather).
Significant launches included my sister Julia Gray's excellent Kitty and Mary, an epistolary extension of Pride and Prejudice (the launch was in Highgate, Mrs Gray wore a Regency muslin and there was a communal bonnet); Victoria Hislop's The Wine-Dark Sea in Marylebone (slinky gold slip); and Marina Hyde's What A Time to Be Alive! in Victoria (stunning white cut-out revenge
Seeing Niall again was a bit like returning to your old prep school or childhood bedroom as an adult
dress to celebrate leaving the Graun after 26 years). But I want to tarry at Simon Sebag Montefiore's party, as it was there I saw Niall Ferguson for the first time since we were at university together, when we had such a calamitous contretemps it made headlines (well, the splash in the Oxford Mail).
He was standing in front of a ziggurat of Sebag's new bestseller, The Cauldron, a history of the Middle East. There was nothing for it.
'Hello Niall,' I said, reaching past him and plucking a copy for the author, holding court behind me, to sign. Seeing Niall again was a bit like returning to your old prep school or childhood bedroom for the first time as an adult. He seemed smaller than I remembered. 'Are we friends?' I continued, which was bold.
At this point, I suppose I should explain the casus belli. I'd once commissioned the illustrious Niall to contribute a chapter to a book I was putting together. I thought it would be a doddle. I'd just ask all my clever student friends to write 8,000-word essays for beer money, pocket the small advance for The Oxford Myth from Weidenfeld & Nicolson, and wait for the admiring reviews and royalties to roll in.
I'd asked my fellow undergrads Toby Young to write on class, Boris Johnson to do student politics, Allegra Mostyn-Owen to do drugs, Aidan Hartley to tackle town and gown, Sebastian Shakespeare on Oxford eccentrics, Niall Ferguson on ambition... ten chapters in all.
Niall's essay came in first, via pigeon post. It was typewritten, and as lucid as you would expect from the top scholar (a demyship from Magdalen) but to my untutored eye it didn't have quite enough snap, crackle and pop, so I returned it with some editing marks. This did not go down well. That was 1986.
Fast forward to Sebag's. I've just asked Niall if we're friends. 'Well, you're the only person I've ever sent a note to that just says,' he began, and then we chanted the contents of his note to me: 'Dear Rachel Johnson, Fuck off, Yours, Niall Ferguson', and how we laughed.
Writing that list of contributors today, by the way, I feel quiet pride that I was a precocious spotter of such journalistic talent. The reviewers of The Oxford Myth, however, were not so indulgent. It was the worst reviewed book of the year. I got a royal flush of vicious notices from grandees you'd have thought were far too busy and self-important to bother with such a sophomoric debut.
Chippy Welsh screenwriter Andrew Davies (it made him ‘want to throw up’), loved and lauded novelist William Boyd (it was ‘routine and uninspired’) et al couldn’t wait to pan the book. What stuck in my craw, though, was the nasty big piece in the Mail, bylined ‘Campbell Ferguson’ and headlined, ‘Just a banal degree of snobbery!’
As you might have guessed, that was Niall. Instead of turning the other cheek, I escalated, and snouted to the Oxford Mail the fact that he, an erstwhile contributor to the book, had semi-anonymously trashed it (a ‘singularly worthless volume’).
And here we both were, nice as pie, chatting about how Ayaan (Hirsi Ali, his wife) replies to neither of our texts, as if none of the Oxford blue on blue had ever happened.
for that?' It was Penguin supremo Venetia Butterfield, next to Sebag. I'd been standing with the copy of The Cauldron without moving straight to the bookseller table while I parleyed with Niall.
Such was my deep pleasure in settling the ancient feud that I felt no flare of annoyance at the insinuation that I was a thief who'd come to Nobu for the canapés, and to walk off without paying for The Book; nor indeed when Emily Maitlis, resplendent in white, told me she was nipping off to the Venice Film Festival to interview George Clooney on stage; and not even when Cliveden's glam blonde châtelaine Natalie Livingstone buzzed over to embrace Maitlis as if I weren't there. All I could do was smile, benign as a Buddha, trying to manifest my grandchildren, as yet unborn, with no wish to start a 40 years' war with anyone ever again.
The hysterical passengers at Larnaca airport were screaming and crying uncontrollably.
‘There’s a Wizz Air flight to Luton tomorrow!’ shouted one girl next to me, looking fit to pop out of her pink skin. ‘What?’ I said, appalled. I don’t know much, but I do know I never want to get a Wizz Air flight to Luton, unless in a full-blown wartime evacuation, and this wasn’t that.
When I tried to scan my boarding pass and it said ‘Flight cancelled’, I just thought ‘Good.’ As the hordes of panicking chavs bombarded the easyJet counter, I turned on my heels and began pulling my wheelie case back towards the exit.
I'm a big fan of budget airlines and hotels. Luxury frightens me and too much choice gives me panic attacks. But there are limits. A Wizz Air flight to Luton? I don't think so.
I marched to the taxi point, calling the driver. ‘Come back,’ I said to Ersin. ‘What happen?’ ‘Flight cancelled.’ ‘Flight cancel?’ ‘Where you go?’ he shouted as I walked towards him. He was now hysterical for no good reason, except I think the IVF clinic pays him to look after me, so if I don't get home safely he may be in trouble.
I climbed back into his people-carrier with disco lights on the ceiling. I looked at the panicking sunburnt chavs stampeding from the terminal to get taxis to take them to the nearest hotels and said: 'I'm coming back to Lefkosha with you.' For ever, if I can arrange it.
Ersin didn't look happy and after a long queue for the border into the Turkish republic, he barked at me for a hundred euros as he offloaded me outside the Hotel Sun. But I had the cash and he was then all smiles and insisted on pulling my case to reception.
While in the taxi I had managed to crack the enigma code of the easyJet rebooking to
Maybe I could just live here in this tiny room, I thought, as I set out all my books and toiletries and clothes again
get the next flight they could offer me. It was six days later. All the screaming pink chavs were on their iPhones prodding the rebooking options.
So I had six more days stuck in northern Cyprus. The hotel checked me back in – €260 for six nights, cheaper than living at home in Ireland for a week. I couldn't do anything in West Cork for that. I asked for my old room back – 527 please.
Maybe I could just live here in this tiny room, I thought, as I set out all my books and toiletries and clothes again.
The next day easyJet offered to pay me €450 not to get the rebooked flight, because they didn't really have the planes for everyone they'd said they had. It was tempting.
I had left the BB with two bookings. An Italian couple that night and a French couple checking in the night after that. He was texting me updates in real time. When the French arrived, he said they asked him, 'When do you think the rain is going to stop?' 'Nine months' time,' he replied. Then they started lecturing him about climate change, and he told them what he thought of that.
I blocked the rest of the days off on Airbnb so he wouldn't clash with anyone else. Still I was toying with the idea of never returning, or not returning for a long time.
I had my thyroid pills and my hormone pills to take. I had two months to try to get my numbers perfect after the last blood test.
My cardio was tip-top, according to the surgeon who listened to my heart. My kidney function was slightly down, but I wasn't surprised given the amount of drowsy antihistamine I guzzle with Lemsip every night to try to knock myself out because I'm frightened of sleeping pills.
I stopped dosing myself up for insomnia, and had six more days lying by the pool listening to country and western music. Then
I reluctantly called Ersin to come and pick me up.
At Larnaca airport, I managed to get my case pulled to pieces as the Greeks looked for a tube of Aussie hair miracle I'd forgotten was in there.
When I got out at the other end, I had to check into one of those £160-a-night sleeping kennels at Gatwick and, after that, as they didn't have a connecting flight to Cork for days, I set off for my friend's flat in Pimlico. Re-entry to the world of mindless pettiness then began in earnest.
On the packed train to Victoria the doors opened to reveal a few people on the platform at East Croydon and a voice squawked: 'Move down – selfish!' A twenty-something blonde girl with a voice like she'd inhaled helium was trying to get on.
‘Sel-fish!’ she squeaked, as though she also wanted to shout ‘Raaacist!’ and ‘Sexist!’ and ‘Just stop oil!’
Old ladies tried to move up by flattening themselves and bending in two, so I shouted: 'Listen Karl Marx, before you start spouting The Communist Manifesto, maybe consider it's you who's being selfish trying to squeeze onto a packed train when you should wait for the next one!' I should have called her Karla Marx, of course, but I didn't think of that until just now.
Back at Gatwick a few days later to get my Cork flight, the Ryanair woman wouldn't let my carry-on through. She measured it in that stupid holder thing, then made me repack the front pouches into my handbag, so I boarded the plane with an overflowing display of bikinis and knickers. She then waved through a girl with a camping pack on her back half the size of her, virtually with pots and pans hanging off it, and various bulging bumbags strapped to her waist, followed by two very large men with long pink hair wearing dresses, pulling cases larger than mine and snogging each other.
My neat carry-on had been unpacked and repacked twice by fools, and the result was that when I got back to Ireland, I couldn't find my treasured new, freshly re-read holiday copy of Tender Is The Night, complete with turned-down pages at the bits that made me cry.
If it weren't for the thought of all the medication I've got to remember to wake up and take each day, I'd pull the covers over my head indefinitely.
‘Let’s talk about your hoarding and concealing food issues.’
他还在1997年骑着Suny Bay为我赢得了亨尼西金杯赛，而两年前，我曾让他失去了在同一场比赛中获胜的机会。虽然他是我的首席骑师，但我要求他骑Black Humour，而那匹马跳跃起来像个醉汉，导致他错过了骑着Couldn't Be Better获胜的机会。但这个男人如此宽宏大量，他由衷地为我们的团队和第二骑师迪恩·加拉格尔感到高兴。
I opened the WhatsApp message and read: 'Massed missile and drone warning. About eighth since I've been here. I'm deep underground.' It was from my old friend James. 'They organise camping stools in the metro,' he added.
He was in Kyiv, where he had first gone in 1997 with his acoustic guitar and electronic keyboard and where he had met his future wife, Svetlana, who lived in distant Kharkiv. Their romance blossomed in Gurzuf on the Black Sea, where Chekhov had a house, and where they met up four times that summer.
They moved first to Bratislava on the Danube where he founded a magazine. They then moved on to a small town just over the border in Austria, where he dabbled in property and they still live. They have three children.
Later that day, he sent me another message: ‘Saturday night – the beautiful people massed in the pavement cafés of Yaroslaviv Val, Kyiv. There’s an ongoing massed drone attack. Do they care! Life is to be lived. Just an extraordinary atmosphere.’
I was at school in Canterbury with James. After university we lived in a squat together off the Walworth Road. He had been a choral scholar at New College, Oxford and I had read history at Gonville & Caius, Cambridge, and yet there we both were like Withnail and I, deep in the heart of nowhere.
Years later, I was his best man when he married Svetlana in Canterbury Cathedral and in my speech at the reception I did my best to shout the traditional Ukrainian wedding toast ‘Гірко!’ which is the order for the bride and groom to kiss and turn what is bitter sweet.
From south London, James went first much further south, to Sienna, and then Madrid, and from there to Toulouse, but found neither love nor success so he changed direction and went east to Kyiv. Back in the 1990s Kyiv was like a frontier town in the old Wild West, where anything was possible. There, he found ‘joy’ perhaps for the first time.
These days James goes back there frequently to hand over medical supplies he has crowd-funded to the resistance against the Russian regime and because he is writing a biography of the mighty Dnieper that cuts through the heart of the country he loves. I edited the first draft and it is bloody good.
Three short bits of writing about his trip this time soon reached me by email. The first described the train journey to Kyiv. His eldest daughter had refused to let him take the usual train across the border from Poland because of the recent drone attack that had narrowly missed the train carrying foreign dignitaries such as Boris Johnson. So he crossed from Slovakia instead. Due to a threatened drone attack, his train stopped just outside Kyiv to wait for the all clear.
He writes: ‘09.00. Everyone in our train abruptly stands up, hands folded in front of them. Over the speaker, an electronic clock chimes the seconds. An image – a lighted candle – appears on my Telegram channel tracking ongoing attacks. Every morning, the whole nation pauses for one minute of silence. We remember the fallen. We honour the victims of this war. Forty minutes later we edge into the central station.’
Incroyable! Such passion, such patriotism. I was also struck by his use of the word ‘we’. I’ve lived in Italy for nearly 30 years and am married to an Italian. But I do not feel Italian. Yet he feels Ukrainian. Then again, wouldn’t I feel Italian if Italy were under similar attack?
In his second piece, he says that once inside his hotel bedroom in central Kyiv, he vows to evacuate to the metro as soon as the next missile/drone attack alert arrives with a ‘ping’ on the dedicated app on his phone.
He writes: ‘PING. I’m out of bed and dressed in 20 seconds, out of the hotel in 45 seconds… On a concealed bench, lovers kissing, entwined. It’s Saturday night – they defy the curfew – they’ll defy the missiles. I make it to the metro, skip down the stairs to the first level of safety – almost no one there – just a cleaner. She indicates to me to descend the escalator.’ He goes back to the hotel and ignores subsequent alerts. ‘I dream through them all, wake up to the ongoing drone attack, but I’m damned if that’s going to stop me going out for a hearty breakfast.’
In his last piece, he describes the death-defying devil-may-care defiance of young Ukrainians as he joins them in the packed pavement bars and restaurants of central Ukraine on a late summer's Saturday night. 'For now, no one's checking their Telegram alert channel. What's the point? There's an ongoing alert. Only question is: are they drones or missiles? Cruise or ballistic? Whichever way, the young crowd thronging the streets don't care. Damn the war!'
He wonders why he keeps coming back to this ancient city and answers: ‘Threading through the Saturday evening throng, drones prowling nearby streets, I feel it, the ultimate rush; life in the raw to be lived, loved, treasured, grasped for a fleeting instant like a wild bird trembling, momentarily stilled in flight, then let go.’
But then James fell silent. I began to fear the worst. And so after three days, one evening last week, I rang him on WhatsApp. He answered and I said: 'Where are you?' 'Back in Austria,' he replied, cool as a cucumber. So we then spent five hours, 32 minutes and 25 seconds talking about this and that with the help of a drink or two.
The Turf
Charlie Brooks
With the recent passing of Johnny ‘The Fish’ Ferrand and Graham ‘Brad’ Bradley, racing lost two of its most loved and colourful characters. I was in business with both of them – one more successfully than the other.
I remember one time when Johnny the Fish and I thought the chef of our pub, the Pheasant Inn, was in the small, grotty kitchen. But when we walked in, there was no sign of him. Then we looked behind the serving counter and saw him sitting on the floor, injecting heroin into his arm. The Fish's eyes got bigger and more watery than normal, he puffed his cheeks out and dryly observed: 'Well that's a bit strong... before lunch.'
At St Michael and All Angels church in Lambourn last week, trainer Nicky Henderson regaled us with tales of the Fish.
‘You can imagine how naughty he must have been at Cheam, where the King was captain of his dorm,’ Nicky suggested. The packed church certainly could. For the last quarter of a century, they’d all fallen in love with the kindest and most irresponsible of human beings, while drinking with him.
Before we bought the Pheasant, with the aim of making it the racing pub around Lambourn, I thought he was called Johnny the Fish because he used to be a fishmonger, and he looked like a fish. But I discovered fairly quickly that it was because he drank like one.
It was a questionable acquisition. The building, if that's what you could call it, was a complete dump and had parking for only four cars. Or three, if the chef turned up. But we were proud of our new project, so when the Hendersons invited us to lunch to shoot the breeze with the Queen Mother, we persuaded her to stop in at the Pheasant on her way back to Clarence House for a large pink gin. Then I got slightly cold feet. We were having a problem with obscene graffiti in the ladies' loos, and I hadn't whitewashed some pretty fruity stuff over that morning.
‘Pink gins at the ready,’ I advised Her Majesty as we poured her into her chariot. ‘One thing though… probably best to “go” here before you leave. The loos aren’t great at the Pheasant.’
Johnny was wicked company. Every trainer and jockey in the area would stop on their way home from the races and have a skinful with him. The trouble was he drank more than everyone else put together and never really cottoned on to the idea that the customers were meant to be buying him a drink, not the other way around. He was also known as ‘the Ferret’ to his oldest mates, such as Bill Wiggins, who was unfairly nicknamed ‘Bungalow Bill’ when he was Joan Collins’s romantic partner.
Two girls were brave enough to marry Johnny, and happily the first marriage produced Suzanna, who was duly packed off to Stonar, from where he always picked her up at the back door – until he finally got a treble up at Cheltenham. On his next visit, he boldly walked up to the front door, with the swagger of a man of means. ‘Mr Ferrand, you are three terms in arrears,’ the bursar, who was lying in wait, growled. With a certain flourish, the Fish thrust a rather tatty plastic bag full of bookmakers’ £50 notes towards him with a triumphant, ‘I think you’ll find I’m now three terms in credit.’
Johnny the Fish's service is one of my happier memories of St Michael and All Angels church. So many friends from a distant past, so many boozing mates around the village – and an acceptance that there was more speed than stamina in his pedigree, which made his departure from the pubs of the Lambourn valley at the age of 76 seem like the end of a life well lived.
Brad's departure, on the other hand, after a horrible time with dementia, felt brutal and premature. He was one of the most stylish jockeys of his generation, who famously led home the five Michael Dickinson runners on Bregawn in the 1983 Cheltenham Gold Cup, and won the 1996 Champion Hurdle on Collier Bay, after getting ‘jocked-off’ the more fancied Alderbrook because he overslept and missed a morning gallop.
He also won the 1997 Hennessy Gold Cup for me on Suny Bay, two years after I cost him another victory in the same race. Although he was my first jockey, I asked him to ride Black Humour, who jumped like a drunk, and so he missed out on winning the race on Couldn't Be Better. But such was the bigheartedness of the man, he was genuinely delighted for our team and our second jockey, Dean Gallagher.
Sometimes he was too kind – or perhaps naive. Telling a judge in the High Court that the reason why another ex-jockey, Barry Wright, had a load of cash under his bed was because he’d passed on inside information on races to a punter, as they all had, as opposed to selling a barrowload of cocaine, was akin to throwing himself under a bus. It was certainly the end of his involvement in racing.
His service in Wetherby, a few days before Johnny's, was extraordinary. Every jump jockey I can think of from Britain and Ireland in the 1990s had travelled to the northern town to pay tribute to a guy who had their backs when times were hard.
I hope both men got to look down on us to see how much they were loved. 'Shouldn't we have memorial services before we die?' Simon McNeil, who rode Katabatic to win the Queen Mother Champion Chase, pondered before we sloped off to the pub.
‘O’zbekiston’, they chanted, as I weaved my way through the scrum of fans and cameramen. The host nation, Uzbekistan, had just won gold at the 46th chess Olympiad, held in Samarkand. It was clear from the start that their team, led by Nodirbek Abdusattorov and Javokhir Sindarov (both in the world’s top ten) was capable of winning. They had already won at the Chennai Olympiad in 2022, when their players were far less experienced. But to play at home, and overcome fierce competition from top seeds USA, and second seeds India (the winners in Budapest 2024), was a huge challenge. The pivotal moment, at least in hindsight, occurred in the sixth-round match between Uzbekistan and India. Nihal had played a strong game, but in the diagram position his last move, 37…Nd6-f5? was a blunder that met with a spectacular refutation. It was better to abandon the h4-pawn and retreat the king to g7.
38 Ne6+!! Rxe6 39 gxh4+ The knight's sacrifice has ensured that the Qc7 is undefended, so this wins. Nxh4 40 Qxc7 Nf3+ 41 Kg2 Nxe1+ 42 Rxe1 e2 43 Rxe2 Rxe2+ 44 Bxe2 Rxe2+ 45 Kg3 Bd3 Hoping for 46 Qxb7? Bb5, with hopes of a fortress defence. Yakubboev plays accurately to break that coordination. 46 Qg7+ Kh5 47 Kf4 Re4+ 48 Kf3 Rh4 49 Kg3 Re4 50 b5! Now 50...Bxb5 51 Qh7+ wins, so White will
White to play. Duda-Grandelius, Fide Olympiad, Samarkand, 2026. Duda soon won, but missed the strongest move in this position. Which move wins the game in style? Email answers to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 5 October. There is a prize of a £20 John Lewis voucher 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 Bf3! Then 1...Kxf3 2 Nd4#, 1...Kxg5 2 Ne4#, 1...Ke5 2 Ne8# or 1... gxf5 2 Rfxf5#
soon get a passed pawn. axb5 51 Qh7+ Kg5 52 Qxb7 b4 53 a6 Bxa6 54 Qg7+ Qg7-h7+ will win the rook after either king move, so Black resigns
Uzbekistan won that match 2.5-1.5 and never relinquished their lead, while India's team of young stars ended up with the silver medals.
It was unusual to see the world champion, Gukesh Dommaraju, playing on board 4 for India, since at the previous Olympiad he had earned an individual medal on top board. His recent form has been poor, and he may have wished to avoid a pairing against Sindarov, his challenger for the forthcoming world championship. Still, his excellent score of 8.5/11 earned him an individual silver medal, and perhaps a boost to his confidence.
The bronze medals went to Germany, who were the only team to beat Uzbekistan. They had chances to beat India too, as Donchenko stood well earlier, but Gukesh had turned the game around and finished with a flourish.
Competition 3469 invited you to submit seriously misguided love poems. This proved a popular challenge but the standard was patchy. The £25 vouchers go to those below.
Your personal sparkle
more Merkel than Markle,
more Dobbin than Arkle,
more glum Pagliacci
than fun mariachi,
more prickly than roses,
more commandments than Moses,
more Plain Jane Sans Merci
than bedtime with Circe.
And as fun as a rum-free lukewarm hot rum toddy
or a night in a whore-house with Big Ears and
Noddy.
But divorce would be costly and hard to arrange And we've done 30 years and I'm wary of change And inertia's a glue that is hard to undo; So stay stuck to me and I'll stick fast to you. Martin Parker
How do I love you? When you got in touch my screen glowed, as rekindled with desire. You'd sought me out; I'd never gone out much (shy country mouse!) but you knew how to fire all that I yearned for. So your emails came, faster and faster, sharing your rich life through photos (that Ferrari!), and your name opening so many doors. Your tremulous Wife? sent my heart racing, so that when you asked – A temporary loan? Of course, my sweet. A token that our love affair will last. And you'll return it, when at last we meet. Send me the date, and soon, and we'll agree
Send me the date, and soon, and we'll agree how well you understand the inner me. D.A. Prince
Hiding in the bushes,
I caught a glimpse of you,
and knew at once your tush is
the tush I wish to woo,
so shapely and so curvy, and in-the-right-spots plump. My heart went topsy-turvy, ensorcelled by your rump.
I heard the songbirds singing a soft, erotic sound, and somewhere bells were ringing. But then you turned around.
The songbirds all went mute,
but love, what can I say?
You're not perfect, but you're cute,
so I'll stalk you anyway.
Robert Schechter
I know you're playing hard to get, I've therefore built a shrine reminding me that I am yours, reminding me you're mine.
Your washing line provided me with skimpy underwear,
and from your favourite salon, I procured locks of your hair.
They're on the altar, neath your served and framed restraining orders; a tribute to our love that has impressed the prison warders.
And when I am released, my love, your bins will warrant trips to sift through scraps and morsels that have brushed against your lips.
Paul Freeman
Live with me and be my larva,
Gleaming cockroach of my heart,
I will be your grease-trap charmer,
Fated, baited from the start,
Like a stinky bin you draw me,
Warm as pipes or toaster wires,
Swarm close, creepy-crawly cutie,
Love me like humidifiers,
Scavenge for my love, you vermin,
I'm your soap scum, take your fill,
Fingers brush like twitching feelers,
Being apart is Rentokil,
Scurry, scuttle, leggy lurker,
Stay as near as flatworm fluking,
If your head fully was severed,
Our love would outlast a nuking.
Janine Beacham
You're not physically repulsive, not to me,
Though you channel chimpanzees when slurping tea,
Your hands are often clammy,
And your wardrobe's too Miami –
No man alive would wish to see your knees;
And your drab attempts at whoredom
Prompt a melancholy boredom,
As I shut my eyes and wonder what to squeeze
But your Queen Anne house, with carriage sweep's a pleasure,
Your daughters are enchanting beyond measure,
Your Zoffanys and Turners
Might be useful little earners,
I'll inspect your ample cellars at my leisure.
And my storm-tossed barque is broaching
And the loan sharks are approaching,
So – be Grimsby to my whaler, there's a treasure.
Nick Syrett
I'll love you till the car parks are no longer full of cars,
Till all the seas are dry and jam no longer comes in jars,
Till all the works of Edward Elgar end up in the bin,
Till every tin of biscuits simply has no biscuits in,
Till we have no more bananas and we have no sailing ships,
Till all the fish and chip shops sell you neither fish nor chips,
Till the fox won't chase the rabbit and the cat won't chase the mouse,
I would go on but then again I see you've left the house.
You are invited to submit a sonnet inspired by a well-known contemporary figure's characteristic feature. Email entries to competition@spectator.co.uk by midday on 14 October.
17 Considering British English around US and Europe (7)
20 Investigator in a large town displays sharpness (7)
21 All the best women adore drinking vermouth at start of holiday (4,4)
23 Mayflies turn up in record time over Spain (9)
27 Soldier catches fresh conch for something to eat (7)
29 Voted for Romania to produce dance music (7)
31 Assistant's blunder knocking out IT in capital (7)
35 Topple over into abyss (3)
36 Appreciation of teacher diminished (5)
A first prize of a £30 John Lewis voucher and two runners-up prizes of £20 vouchers for the first correct solutions opened on 19 October. Please scan or photograph entries and email them (including the crossword number in the subject field) to crosswords@spectator.co.uk, or post to: Crossword 2772, The Spectator, 22 Old Queen Street, London SW1H 9HP. Please allow six weeks for prize delivery.
首奖 Vicky Walmesley，埃克塞特；亚军 Peter Tanner，赫特福德；Kenny Mills，伦敦德里
📄 Original Section
---
SOLUTION TO 2769: ORDER
The SPEAKER (6A) of the HOUSE OF COMMONS (1D) has been BEHEADED (23D) seven times: BUSSY (15A), THORPE (1A), TRESHAM (12D), CATESBY (22D), EMPSON (5D), DUDLEY (41A), MORE (18A) – each are shown in the grid without their initial letter to indicate their fate.
First prize Vicky Walmesley, Exeter Runners-up Peter Tanner, Hertford Kenny Mills, Londonderry
A criticism often levelled at cookery writers is: 'I could just buy that at the supermarket', which is an apparent slam-dunk counter to the time and effort needed to make the thing yourself, i.e. why would you bother? With such people, I find myself stutteringly defending cookbooks, recipes and the practice of cooking as a whole.
My defence is both obvious and compelling: I can make it better, I can make it cheaper, I know exactly what's going into it if I've made it and, crucially, cooking is one of life's pleasures. I actively enjoy kneading and proving and waiting and peeking in the oven and stirring and whisking and slicing. Making the thing is often the whole point – the end result a delightful by-product.
However, living in 2026, I am rarely able to respond to the core argument as the item that I'm making is almost always available
橙色葡萄酒一直萦绕在我的脑海中。最近在西本恩格罗夫（Westbourne Grove）散步时，因为有些闲暇时间，我走进了一家名为 Franklin's 的店——它是附近喧闹的波托贝洛市场（Portobello market）中一片宁静的海洋。这家当地的葡萄酒吧由两位极好的伙计 Luigi 和 Lucio 经营。前者来自那不勒斯，后者来自瓦伦西亚，所以他们非常精通葡萄酒。当我要求尝试一些不寻常的东西时，他们给我端上来了一杯橙色葡萄酒。
他们的选择是 Bodegas Verum Ulterior Naranja 2024——从名字就可以看出，这是一款产自西班牙的橙色葡萄酒。口感浓郁且圆润，它与其他橙色葡萄酒的不同之处在于它是红葡萄和白葡萄的混酿：主要是 Albillo Real（一种古老的西班牙白葡萄品种），并混入了少量的 Moravia Agria（一种稀有的本土红葡萄）。
Filled just before eating, freshly made cannoli are unmatchable: elegant, indulgent and unique
in the supermarket. You can get anything nowadays. That is, apart from cannoli.
In its homeland of Sicily, cannoli abounds: you cannot walk into a café or a bakery without being accosted by pyramids of ricotta-filled cigars smelling of nuts and lemons and cinnamon. But it is absolutely impossible to get good cannoli from the supermarket and, unless you live in Sicily, it's incredibly hard to find cannoli anywhere else.
A cannoli should be a perfect contrast of a crisp shell, robust enough to hold its creamy filling but tender and brittle enough that it gives way as soon as you eat it. It is nearly impossible to achieve this if you want the cannoli to last beyond a couple of hours.
Food writer Nicola Lamb calls cannoli ‘the mayfly of pastry’, which really does capture its ephemeral nature. A cannoli more than a few hours old is a tragic cannoli: filled in advance, the creamy ricotta makes the shell soggy and sad, while attempts to prevent this lead to thick, firm shells. Also, if you are leaving the cannoli hanging around, they need refrigerating to preserve the ricotta, which makes the whole thing unpleasantly cold and the shells feel greasy when you eat them. So, no, you can't just buy these in a supermarket.
The dough is unlike any other dough I've tasted or worked with: flavoured with just a little cocoa and cinnamon, moistened with red wine and enriched with lard, it is worked until smooth, and then rolled repeatedly until it is very, very thin. During this rolling, the dough is folded over on itself, creating tightly pressed layers which, when fried, bubble up into those distinctive cannoli blisters. Wrapped around metal moulds and sealed with egg white, the shells form perfect tubes when fried, which slip eagerly off their moulds, ready to be filled with sweetened ricotta, often flavoured with pistachio, hazelnut, chocolate or citrus. I keep mine simple, folding through a palmful of candied lemon and orange peel, diced so finely it's less of a flavour and more of a perfume.
But, oh boy, is it an undertaking: food processors, kneading, a pasta machine for rolling, cannoli-specific moulds, deep-frying and piping bags. None of it requires particular skill, but it's certainly a production. If you don't fancy a project, cannoli is not for you, but if you do, this one pays dividends.
There are always ways to make things easier for yourself: while all of this can be done by hand, it takes longer and is harder. Instead, I bring my dough together in a food processor, which makes the whole thing clean and simple, as well as kick-starting the gluten development in the pastry. Using a pasta machine to roll out the dough means that you are quickly able to get the thinness needed for the shell, which is much harder by hand.
I also tend to spread my cannoli-making over two days: on the first, I strain my ricotta and make and chill my dough, and on the second I roll and fry the dough, and fill the shells.
Filled just before eating, freshly made cannoli are unmatchable: elegant, indulgent and unique. Just hold on to that thought when you're frying your third batch of shells. Don't say you weren't warned.
Makes: 12-16 cannoli
Hands-on time: 1 hour
Cooking time: 20 minutes
For the shells
200g plain flour - 1 tbsp caster sugar
1 tsp cocoa powder
½ tsp ground cinnamon
30g lard or butter - 1 egg
50ml red wine
1 tbsp white wine vinegar
Neutral oil, for frying
For the filling
500g ricotta - 90g icing sugar
50g candied citrus peel, finely diced
50g shelled pistachios, finely chopped
1. Place the ricotta in a sieve lined with muslin and leave to drain for as long as possible.
2. Put the dry ingredients in a food processor, add the lard/butter and pulse until it resembles breadcrumbs. Stir the wine, vinegar and egg yolk together (reserve the egg white for later) and add, pulsing until a dough forms. Turn out onto your work surface and knead until smooth. Wrap in clingfilm and refrigerate for at least two hours.
3. Divide your dough into four pieces. Take one and roll it using a pasta machine on the widest gauge. Fold the dough in half, and roll it again. Work down through the settings, folding the dough over each time. It's possible to use a rolling pin.
4. Lay out the dough and stamp out 11-12cm circles. Wrap a circle around each cannoli mould, using the egg white to seal it.
5. Fill a deep pan halfway with oil and heat to $180^{\circ}$ C. Lower the wrapped cannoli moulds into the oil and cook for one minute, then lift and place on kitchen paper. Slide the shells from the moulds carefully. Repeat with the rest of the dough.
6. Before serving, beat the ricotta, icing sugar and candied peel together and decant into a piping bag with a large star nozzle. Pipe into each cannoli shell, then dip each end in the chopped pistachios.
Drink
Orange revolution
Declan Lyons
Orange wine is on my mind. On a recent stroll down Westbourne Grove, and with a bit of time on my hands, I stopped into Franklin's – a sea of tranquillity in the bustle of nearby Portobello market. This local wine bar is run by two wonderful chaps, Luigi and Lucio. The former is from Naples and the latter from Valencia, so they know their wines. And when I asked to try something unusual, I was presented with a glass of orange wine.
Their choice was the Bodegas Verum Ulterior Naranja 2024 – as is evident from its name, an orange wine produced in Spain. Rich and creamy, what sets it apart from other orange wines is that it is a blend of red and white grapes: mostly Albillo Real, an ancient Spanish white variety, which is mixed with a little Moravia Agria, a rare indigenous red grape. My interest
It's bottled
to resemble
a premium
rosé and is
heavy on the
nose and then
surprisingly
light on
the palate
piqued by its organic freshness, and tales of how orange wine is all the rage with London's hipsters, I trotted off into the night determined to see what else this stable had to offer.
Now, before you despair that this column has gone woke, it's worth considering the distant origins of orange wine. Perhaps as long as 8,000 years ago the good folk of Georgia developed a method of wine production that created an unmistakably orange hue.
The key to this art is the qnevri, a giant clay pot used to ferment, store and age traditional Georgian wine. Instead of taking the juice out of the grapes, they would put them, with skins on, in the qnevri and bury it for months. The result of that skin contact is the distinctive orange colour. Obvious to some, but maybe not to others, there are no oranges in orange wine.
And while that history lesson might sound like a sidetrack, there are Georgian wine-makers who to this day use the same process to produce excellent orange wines. The first to recommend is made by the Dugladze family, with white Rkatsiteli grapes grown in the Kakheti region. After three months' storage in a qnevri, their Ranina Kakhuri is delicious and full-bodied with a distinctly dry finish. If you're looking to sample what's out there, at roughly £15 a bottle it will be hard to beat as a value proposition.
For something a little more complex, and about an additional £10 a bottle, the same family produces a Qvevri Kisi 2023. Comprised entirely of Kisi grapes, this has a darker hue than the Ranina, as it spends six months in the qvevri. It’s bottled to resemble a premium rosé and is heavy on the nose and then surprisingly light on the palate; a real treat. If the orange wine movement can seem trendy today, these two wines pay homage to thousands of years of tradition and the almighty qvevri.
Because of orange wine's surging popularity, producers across Europe are experimenting. Italy and Slovenia have both turned out excellent examples in recent years. The final one that grabbed my attention, however, is French. Made with Soleil grapes in Languedoc, Château Vieux Moulin's Le Soleil is a lightly sparkling delight with the same tint from skin-contact fermentation. This is the one to serve if you have a guest you'd like to impress and can spare the £25 price tag.
It might be too soon – or, given the drink’s long history, too late – to say that orange is the new white. But when the sun is still shining, yet without summer heat, these wines offer something different: lighter than red and more full-bodied than a dry white. Even the colour matches the leaves soon to adorn the garden. In drinking them, you’ll be saluting both the ancient Georgian method of production and the fact that it’s a continuing story of innovation.
A. 当那个男人安全地转身离开后，你应该编一个虚构的书名，然后问那个女孩，例如：“你读过戴德丽·斯奎尔（Deirdre Squill）写的《贝尔莎》（Bertha）吗？”在依然保持毫无调情意味的表情时，冷淡地继续说道：“这是一本冷门书，但贝尔莎这个角色非常迷人——就像你一样。我刚好有一本多余的。我可以从主人那里拿到你的地址，然后把它寄给你吗？”随后寄一张卡片，说非常抱歉，书似乎不见了，但问她是否愿意一起喝一杯？
Q. 我觉得你应该就“预留日期”（Save the Date）提醒发布某种形式的公共服务公告。我今年 28 岁，在筹备自己的婚礼过程中，我发现年长一代没有意识到现在的“预留日期”其实就是邀请函。过去，他们会在日历上用铅笔标下日期，然后等待正式邀请函而无需回复（RSVP）。但现在，如果你能参加，你需要通过发送邮寄地址来回应，以便发送正式邀请函。当然，我们这一代人并没有朋友的家庭住址。你必须提前几个月，甚至一年告知日期，因为人们的日程排得太满了。
—— O.E.，伦敦 SE5
A. 感谢你提醒读者注意这一点。传统的婚礼邀请函最快在 12 周前发出。如今，由于“朋友通胀”和自发性的消亡，准新人被迫在更早之前寻求确认。
A. 你们其中一人应该透露，你接手了一项“所谓的副业（side hustle）。但我现在还不被允许谈论它。唯一的问题是，不幸的是，这意味着我们将无法与德·库宁夫妇共进晚餐，因为这可能会违反我签署的竞业禁止协议。”
请将信件发送至亲爱的玛丽：
dearmary@spectator.co.uk
📄 Original Section
---
DEAR MARY YOUR PROBLEMS SOLVED
Q. If flirting is out of the question, is there another way to show someone you like them? My situation was a lunch at which a really attractive girl was on my right, but on her right was a man who obviously fancied her too. Because this man had shown interest in investing in my start up, I didn't want to compete with him and wreck the chances of his coming on board. So I played it cool and she left without any idea I was interested in her. How could I have handled this better? – Name and address withheld
A. When the other man had safely turned, you should have made up a fictional book title and asked the girl e.g. 'Have you ever read "Bertha" by Deirdre Squill?' Still wearing an unflirtatious expression, continue coldly, 'It's an obscure book, but the character of Bertha is fascinating – very much in the same way as you are. I happen to have a spare copy. Can I get your address from our host and I will put it in the post to you?' Later send a card saying you are so sorry, the book seems to have disappeared, but would she like to meet for a drink?
Q. I feel you ought to do some kind of public service announcement regarding Save the Date alerts. I am 28 and, in the course of planning my own nuptials, I have found that older generations don't realise that Save the Date is now an invite. In the past they marked the date down with a pencil in their diary and waited for the invite without RSPV-ing. But now, if you can come, you respond by sending your postal address so the proper invitation can be sent. My generation, of course, don't have our friends' land addresses. You have to give them the date months, if not a year, in advance, as people get so booked up.
– O.E., London SE5
A. Thank you for drawing this to readers' attention. Traditional wedding invitations would have gone out no earlier than 12 weeks beforehand. Today, due to friend inflation and the death of spontaneity, bridal couples are forced to seek acceptances much further in advance.
Q. Some friends who come shooting ask us to dinner but it's always just us and one other couple, the de Koonings (fake name). We think they always ask the de Koonings with us because they don't know many other 'smart' people. We don't want the de Koonings. We would much rather it was just the four of us. How can we achieve this? – Name and address withheld
A. One of you should confide that you have taken on ‘what’s called a side hustle. But I’m not allowed to talk about it yet. The only problem is that, tragically, it means we won’t be able to have dinner with the de Koonings as that could infringe the non-compete rules I’ve signed up to.’
No sacred cows Happiness is a warm rifle Toby Young
Earlier this week, I made my annual pilgrimage to the Cairngorms National Park to go deer stalking, an activity I was introduced to in the 1990s and quickly fell in love with. There are few better feelings than seeing a stag in your rifle's telescopic sight, his antlers silhouetted against the skyline, having stalked the beast for several hours, much of it on your belly. It's a challenging sport and not just because of the physical discomfort. Red deer can see, hear and smell you from thousands of yards away, so there's no alternative but to sneak up on them downwind.
Some people will recoil at the thought of deriving pleasure from shooting such a majestic animal, but if they're not killed by the ‘guests’, they'll be shot by the professional stalkers employed by the estates or the park rangers. In 2020, the Deer Working Group, which was set up by the Scottish government, recommended that there should be a maximum of ten red deer per square kilometre over large areas of open range, and an estimated 200,000 are culled every year – more now that the SNP government has scrapped seasonal restrictions, making it possible to shoot stags all year round. Visitors like me account for a tiny fraction of the total, but it's a storied tradition that has inspired some of Scotland's finest paintings (see the Landseers in the National Gallery of
It's hard to dismiss the suspicion that the real motive is a hatred of the sports associated with the landed gentry
Scotland in Edinburgh) and provides employment to an army of stalkers and gillies, with the trade being passed down from one generation to the next. The large sporting estates are also responsible for a lot of Highland tourism, sustaining thousands of small businesses.
But stalking is under siege and is gradually dying out. The principal cause is the lucrative carbon credit market, making it more profitable for landowners to embark on large peatland regeneration schemes at the expense of traditional Scottish sports. It’s particularly profitable because this ‘rewilding’ is paid for by the Scottish taxpayer, with Holyrood having committed £250 million to restoring 250,000 hectares of peatland by 2030. The landowners happily fill in the drainage ditches that, 60 years ago, they were paid to dig in the hope of improving the grazing. They sell the carbon credits each year to businesses that want to offset their emissions, and watch their land rise in value thanks to the carbon gold rush.
According to the stalker that took me out on Monday – a 65-year-old who was the fifth generation of his family to take it up – a neighbouring estate was sold recently for £19.5 million, triple what it’s worth as measured by how many deer and grouse are shot by paying guests each year, which used to be the way sporting estates were valued. Since the purchase, grouse shooting has been stopped altogether and stalking is being phased out, with the new owners aiming to keep the number of deer down to two per square kilometre. It’s safe to say he was unimpressed.
‘There are no teachers in the schools, no nurses in the hospitals,’ he said, ‘but the Scottish government can find £25 million a year to fill in some ditches that will have little or no effect.’ As we passed various pools of water, he scoffed at the idea that the uplands would benefit from being even wetter: ‘At the end of today we’ll be absolutely bloody soaking.’
One argument conservationists make is that peatland regeneration will reduce the risk of wildfires, but that is disputed by those who make their living on the land. You now need a licence to carry out a controlled burn and NatureScot is parsimonious about granting them, not wanting the carbon to be released into the atmosphere. In addition, the declining number of grouse shoots means fewer gamekeepers, so fires are less likely to be nipped in the bud. My stalker pointed out that the largest fire in the Cairngorms this year was on land that had been ‘rewilded’ by the RSPB.
Given how threadbare the evidence is that these regeneration schemes will have any impact on climate change, it's hard to dismiss the suspicion that the real motive of the SNP is a hatred of the sports associated with the landed gentry. Instead of just banning them, which would be difficult given their importance to the rural economy, they've filled the landowners' mouths with gold. Alas, most of the large estates are only too happy to embrace the carbon cash giveaway.
My visit to the Cairngorms was bit-
tersweet. As we returned to the lodge
in a Hilux with a dead stag in the back,
my sense of wellbeing was tempered
by the knowledge that this may be the
last stalk I'll ever do. Like so much
of what makes Britain such a civilised
place to live, this fine tradition won't
be with us much longer.
MICHAEL HEATH
THE SPECTATOR | 3 OCTOBER 2026 | WWW.SPECTATOR.COM
Pep and his players should be celebrated, not dissed Roger Alton
When the sonorous voice of Clive Myrie describes something as the ‘biggest sports story of the century’ in tones normally used for events in Kyiv or Gaza it’s probably time to sit up and listen. Or maybe not. The City saga – at root claiming that the club breached financial rules to pay its way from 2009 to 2018, when they won the Premier League three times – has been going on for eight years after all, and if Ferran Soriano, the chief executive, and the unfeasibly wealthy chairman, Khaldoon Al Mubarak, know what they are talking about, it’s got plenty more time to run. God help us! And they do seem pretty bullish. None of this, ‘OK guv, you got us bang to rights, we’ll come quietly’ stuff.
Personally, I find it difficult to get worked up about this story. After all, the rules were designed to stop anyone bringing down the big boys of the Premier League. Those who want the book thrown at City argue that they cheated: they were able to turbocharge their recruitment to catch up with the rest of the major clubs by overspending and hiding that spend, amid a bit of sponsorship here and a bit of investment there.
I prefer to think of what City have given us: some of the most sublime football the Premier League has ever seen
Well, who knows? Would they have been able to do it without sailing close to the rules, just by relying on Pep's genius? We'll never know. Would Pep have even joined, argue City's opponents, if they were just a mid-table club? Would Haaland have followed suit? And none of us have ever brushed up against the rules. Have we?
That admirable Mauricio Pochettino, now the US team manager, expressed the bafflement of many when he remarked, 'It is a huge sadness... We get into a situation where what got celebrated wasn't that real; what seemed good maybe wasn't so good, what didn't look good maybe was good but couldn't be good because of what happened.' Well, you know what he means...
I prefer though to think of what City have given us: some of the most sublime football the Premier League has ever seen. It wasn't bags of money running around playing football, it was some of the finest footballers ever to play in Britain: Haaland; Rodri – for years the best midfielder in Britain and the best player at the last World Cup; Bernardo Silva, the club's player of the year in 2019; Vincent Kompany, one of the most electrifying players I have ever seen; Kevin De Bruyne, footballing perfection. We have never seen players like this, and we should celebrate it.
Any argument that the trophies are tarnished seems to me to be pretty rubbish. I agree with Rodri, now at Barcelona but absolutely central to City's dominance, who insisted: 'I can tell you everything was deserved, and I'm glad I could live through one of the best eras of English football.'
We know Andy Burnham enjoys his rugby league at Everton's Hill Dickinson stadium, and he particularly likes the fact that he can sluice down a pint while watching, whereas he can't when it's his beloved football team. Now he wants all football fans to be allowed to drink at the game rather than just before or at half-time. How much drink do people need? The joys of Twickenham are cited where you can watch rugby and drink endlessly. But has he ever been? It is an ordeal. There are enough pubs and bars at the ground to keep a navy afloat, but once the game has started and you're sitting down, you're endlessly up and down as a stream of boozers shuffle past with trays of beer and then head off to the loo. No fun, Andy. Stick to the triple lock.
L est we forget, it was good to see Warwickshire going berserk as they celebrated their victory in the County Championship, showing that at least the players think it's something worth celebrating, even if cricket's administrators don't really agree. By way of compensation, poor Somerset, who finished second, saw three of their batsmen – Abell (307), Lammonby (229) and Banton (126 – batting for England) – complete innings totalling 662 runs on the same day. Hope for next year? Perhaps... Somerset have never won.
“再来一份，”我打了个嗝说道，让叉子和刀子落在盘子里。“我想这次要五花肉。”服务员匆匆跑向我们当地 Greene King 酒馆的厨房。这将是我下午的第四顿烤肉晚餐。牛肉、鸡肉和烟熏火腿已经吃过——每道菜都配有大量的脆皮烤土豆、浓浓的肉汁、金褐色的约克郡布丁、蒸卷心菜和堆成山的胡萝卜。我用英式淡啤酒将它们冲下肚。
Princess Diana's brother, Earl Spencer, appears to be out for revenge for the treatment of his sister by the King, particularly for a phone call in which he claimed that Prince Charles, as he then was, said: 'Rest assured, we'll forget her soon enough.' Aristotle would have been delighted at how precisely the Earl's reaction matched his analysis of the angry man.
The emotions, said Aristotle, especially anger, alter one's judgment, causing both distress but also pleasure. At this point Aristotle quotes Achilles who in the Iliad (the epic of Achilles's destructive wrath)
acknowledged anger as ‘far sweeter than oozing honey, spreading in a man’s heart and expanding like smoke’ (what an image!). Aristotle then defines anger as a desire for revenge in response to being belittled by someone with contempt, spite or insult. It is those feelings that Spencer nourishes in response to Charles’s ‘Rest assured’ comment. But it is perfectly possible that Charles was clumsily reaching out for one of the oldest clichés in the world in an attempt to console the Earl. Likewise, Diana's comment about Charles being in ‘love with his valet’ probably meant nothing more than a Geordie saying her man is in love with Alan Shearer. But a man on a revenge mission will brook no retreat. We seek revenge, says Aristotle, because we believe the offender wronged us; we want to cause him pain so that he will not wrong us a second time. That will teach him a lesson and bring us a degree of pleasurable satisfaction.
Spencer clearly felt that Charles's reaction at that time was an insult to himself, his sister and the whole family. The common ground is that no institution was of more importance to Greeks than the family: everything they held dear centred on it. Since nothing had greater potential for tragic consequences, the family was at the heart of Greek tragedy. The tragedians therefore fastened onto the vast range of myths centring on the family and explored what it took for a man or woman to misread so obsessively what was most precious to them as to destroy it – and themselves.
— Peter Jones
Seen elsewhere
Full English
Red Squirrel
As seen on $X$
'A nother,' I say with a belch, letting fork and knife fall to my plate. 'Pork belly this time, I think.' The waiter scuttles off to the kitchen of our local Greene King pub. This will be my fourth roast dinner of the afternoon. Beef, chicken and gammon have come and gone – each with heaps of crispy roast potatoes, lashings of gravy, golden brown yorkies, steamed cabbage and carrots piled high. I wash them down with Aenglish ale.
I'll have to put in a double session at the gym to work it off. Romanian deadlifts and kettlebell swings. But it's worth it. Because there is an active intelligence operation to subvert the British Sunday roast. Two ‘conservative’ publications, the Spectator and the Telegraph, have each recently (in the past two years) published articles bashing the nation's favourite meal. It is quite literally impossible not to enjoy melt-in-your-mouth beef and cauliflower cheese, so we must conclude
By the time I'm done, Dad has accepted that his own inaction led directly to the atrocities in Rotherham
from this latest development that the centre-right press has abandoned all pretence of opposing immigration and has instead rowed in behind the Great Replacement.
I relay this to Dad, who is sitting opposite me in an almost comatose state. Spurning my offer of a roast dinner, he has instead elected to spend the afternoon sinking pints; the empty glasses now form a sort of cairn around him. He bobs his head up and down in silent assent. But, as ever, he doesn't seem entirely convinced. Typical Torygraph boomer. 'Wake up and smell the coffee, Dad,' I say gravely, as the latest heaped plate is set before me, leading him to stir.
‘Would ya mind eating that up as quick as you can, lad – the footie’s on in a half hour.’
I snort. ‘Panem et circenses, as the Romans used to say, while the barbarians were at the gate. That’s you, Dad.’
My paterfamilias sighs. ‘Look, I’ve been thinking. D’ya think maybe it’s time you got a place of your own? You’ve got the money now, with this job of yours in IT… You could move in with Fran.’
‘Dad,’ I say, crunching on a piece of Anglo pork crackling. ‘Dad, I’m literally trying to build generational wealth here, and now you’re telling me to move out and fend for myself. Saturn devouring his own children. Atomised liberal individualism at its worst.’
‘Here we go,’ says Dad.
I continue. ‘We Anglos have a history of individualism, true – but this is a collectivist age. The English ethnicity has got to tribe up like the Italians.
Generational living, dynasty building. You must be the capo, with me as your consigliere. And a roast every Sunday.'
‘Not really in the mood for one,’ Dad says, apparently unmoved. ‘Might pop out later for a curry…’ He looks up, face going white. But it’s too late.
'THE GROOMING GANGS!' I half-shout, half-scream.
‘Calm down!’ He glances round the pub apologetically, before whispering: ‘I know you like your politics, but…’
'BUT WHAT?'
‘Well. Well, you know. Chicken tikka masala. It’s our national dish.’
I properly lose it then, and terrible is my wrath. My prophecies of death and downfall. Eat your curry, Dad – but some day curry will be the only legal food and you will be partly responsible. I fulminate. I harangue. I beat my breast. I analogise events to the Siege of Vienna of 1683, with myself cast as the Polish ‘Winged Hussars’ who carried the day for Christendom. Then I slam him with the philosophers. Evola, Nietzsche and a bit of Carl Schmitt as a garnish. My hundreds of hours spent half-digesting YouTube essays by alternative historians prove too much for my father, who is mute in the face of my barrage.
By the time I'm done, my plate is empty again, and Dad has been thoroughly cowed, having accepted that his own inaction led directly to the atrocities in Rotherham. He's reduced to begging me to leave the pub with him. 'Another,' I say to the waiter.
If only Rupert Lowe could see me now. If only Rupert Lowe were my father.
Would you blush to admit you lived in Crotch Crescent in Oxford? Once again, newspaper stories have sprouted about rude-sounding place-names. It all seems rather artificial.
What happens is that a company seeking publicity (this time a financial products outfit) finds a list of place-names that could be taken as rude. They get a survey company to show the list to innocent bystanders, who say which they find rudest. Newspapers obligingly publish the graded list as though it were news: Fanny Avenue, Crotch Crescent, Titty Hill, Wetwang,
Shitterton... down to Jackass Avenue and Great Snoring. (Are those two even rude?)
In truth, Crotch Crescent is named after a child prodigy and composer, William Crotch (1775-1847). He had a terrible time as a child being led about like some musical bear. Then at 21 he was appointed Professor of Music at Oxford, a post he held until his death.
I'd assumed that Crotch was connected in origin with cross; a street in the City of London is called Crutched Friars, after an order with a cross on their habit. But crotch is of unknown origin according to the OED.
If crotch is irresistibly funny only to Finbarr Saunders in Viz comic, what of Wetwang? To my surprise its meaning is given as ‘field of summons for the trial of a dispute’ (from Old Norse vetvangr) by Victor Watts in the Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names. The -wang is definitely ‘field’, though the OED lists the word under wong (in which form it appears in Beowulf).
But Tolkien, who knew of such matters, uses Wetwang as the English equivalent of the Sindarin (elvish) Nindalf, where nin- means ‘wet’. The Yorkshire village of Wetwang has a pond and is distinguished from Driffield nearby, which is the ‘dry field’ – though again Watts gives a different derivation, from drit (‘dirt’).
My husband has just told me that I've spoilt the joke, but I'm not sure there was much of one in the first place.
with Lord Young of Acton THURSDAY 19 NOVEMBER | 6.30 FOR 7PM | £175
Join us in the boardroom for the next in our series of Spectator Writers' Dinners with Toby Young, The Spectator's associate editor and No Sacred Cows columnist. His books include How to Lose Friends and Alienate People and The Sound of No Hands Clapping.
Over a fine dinner, accompanied by wines from Château Léoube, Toby will chat to The Spectator's features editor William Moore about politics, journalism and the fight for free speech.
It's time to upgrade Britain's electricity system.
We have the natural resources to generate more secure, affordable electricity at home.
That's why we're investing £33bn in homegrown energy, upgrading the grid and connecting more renewables to strengthen energy security, power growth and deliver reliable electricity across the country.
[THE SPECTATOR ESTABLISHED 1828] The return of Old Labour
When the Social Democratic Party was launched in 1981, its prospectus was dismissed witheringly by the liberal thinker Ralf Dahrendorf as a plan for ‘a better yesterday’. Andy Burnham has gone one better. He plans to rerun Labour’s last term in office. But this time with feeling.
The Prime Minister's address to his party conference was many things – fluent, passionate, moving, politically effective. But one thing it was not: forward-looking. The quality of the delivery invited comparison with Tony Blair but, unlike Blair, our current PM was not promising modernisation. He was instead seeking to revisit the Blair years and pursue the road not taken by Labour in 1997 – the long march left.
The heart of the Burnham programme is a rejection of the New Labour belief that an accommodation had to be made with Margaret Thatcher's own modernisation of Britain's economy. The Blairites believed that they needed to demonstrate moderation and discipline before Labour could be trusted to govern again. They had to accept the erosion of union power, embrace a bigger role for the market and reject their own activists' obsessions before they could pursue their central project of public-sector reform. Above all, a vigorous private sector had to be supported to generate growth – with taxes set at a level that encouraged entrepreneurship – and education policy reformed to match global competitors.
Every single one of those Blairite principles was comprehensively trashed by Andy Burnham this week. Thatcher's (and John Major's) privatisations should be reversed; the historic crime of council house sell-offs atoned for. Far from reforming the National Health Service, with greater market discipline, accountability, choice and contestability, its monolithic model should be extended with the creation of a new bureaucratic behemoth – the National Care Service. Paid for with more public money.
Because, whatever the merits of amending the pension triple lock, the Burnham proposals will cost additional billions at a time when public debt is still escalating. The PM clearly regrets that he was never able, as health secretary in 2009, to build back Bevan, but now he is seeking to make good on those ambitions just when the nation's finances are growing weaker by the day.
The repudiation of Blairism and the embrace of an older, more left-wing path for Labour were there in the promise of state control of utilities and state direction of investment. Largesse for the trade unions was announced by John Healey in a speech which celebrated the solidarity displayed during the miners' strike but said next to nothing about the real problems of rising energy prices and the real opportunities offered by technological transformation. We are entering an age where AI is transforming our world but the
Every Blairite principle was comprehensively trashed by Andy Burnham this week
Every Blairite principle was comprehensively trashed by Andy Burnham this week
Chancellor would rather channel Dennis Skinner than Demis Hassabis.
The prostration before the household gods of the left continued with Ed Miliband's endorsement of the campaign run by Gaza independents to put Israel in the dock, and Burnham's own suggestion that he would like an electoral system more congenial to Zack Polanski's dreams of power. Blair knew that bowing to left-wing pressure groups moved Labour further away from the mainstream, further away from government and further away from deserving power. But for those within Labour who chafed against the constraints he imposed, who wanted to empower the ‘broad’ left and who hated his resolute stand against Islamism and with Israel, the Burnham revisionism is sweet indeed. It's a northern soul revival calculated to appeal to Labour's ideological heartlands.
But while the Burnham Restoration has a certain shrewd political logic – uniting left-wing voters under a ‘progressive banner’ just as the right is divided – it is a policy disaster for the country. The central challenges facing the nation are either ducked or made worse. The few promising policies of the Starmer era are diluted. The worst are exacerbated.
Britain suffers at the moment from low growth, ballooning debt, high energy costs, low investment, inadequate preparation for technological change, uncontrolled migration and invertebrate defences. On these huge and unavoidable problems the government is hopelessly unequal to the task. Its policies will add costs to business, hike taxes on enterprise, deter investment from abroad in infrastructure, do nothing to reassure lenders, drive up the cost of debt, force energy bill payers to subsidise yet another quango, leave oil and gas unexploited in the ground, make data centres unaffordable, generate a hostile environment for entrepreneurs, offer innovators only more regulation, make it easier for terrorist sympathisers to enter the country, do nothing to stop small boats, keep the military underfunded and dismay our allies in the fight against extremism.
There is a sad irony in that the more sensible ministers within the Starmer government – Wes Streeting and Shabana Mahmood – who agitated for Starmer’s removal are now themselves diminished figures. Streeting’s plans for NHS reform are dead. And he has to endorse a spending settlement which leaves the country unable to defend itself. The Home Secretary, meanwhile, has had to row back on reforms that would have toughened migration rules and has now been forced to introduce a fast track for more Hamas sympathisers to settle safely in Britain. She will know these are mistakes. But her voice, and her supporters, have been eclipsed by the new power in the land.
The King in the North has given his bannermen cause to cheer like never before. But for the rest of us, winter is coming.
Kelvin MacKenzie's 80th birthday party was the Fleet Street equivalent of a Mafia Five Families reunion, only less aesthetically pleasing. Piers Morgan, p7
Even in the squalid world of modern football there are standards to observe. Throw the book at 'Citeh'. They deserve no mercy.
Michael Henderson, p16
I don't know much, but I do know I never want to get a Wizz Air flight to Luton, unless in a full-blown wartime evacuation. Melissa Kite, p53
Pickled Onion is every serious person's favourite flavour of Monster Munch. Chas Newkey-Burden, p47
David McCloskey looks at the state of the relationship between MI6 and the CIA on p14. He is a former staff member at the CIA and co-host of The Rest is Classified.
laments the degradation of Man City on p16. He has written about sport for the Mail, Telegraph, Times, Guardian and Observer.
Penny Mordaunt's
Notebook appears on p18.
She was leader of the House
of Commons 2022-2024 and
defence secretary from 1 May
to 24 July 2019.
Ariane Bankes, who writes about Monet on p32, is a writer and art historian. Her most recent book is The Quality of Love: Twin Sisters at the Heart of the Century.
Chris Mullin is a former MP whose work includes A Very British Coup and a series of diaries of his life in parliament. He writes about Alf Dubs on p34.
Andy Burnham, the Prime Minister, announced the end of the pensions triple lock from 2030, when the link with earnings would be broken. Wearing a suit but no tie, he told the Labour party conference: 'I will make a break with the direction of the past 40 years.' He said that houses would be confiscated if left unoccupied or if rented out but not well maintained. He said he would 'repeal Margaret Thatcher's ideological ban on public ownership of water companies'; he would reduce electricity prices by establishing the Great British Grid, a publicly owned company. He tearfully promised a National Care Service, after a review by Baroness Casey of Blackstock. Ties with the EU would be explored and electoral reform would be in the next Labour manifesto. John Healey, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, promised 'a new age of industrialisation', exemplified by the building of a £115 million research ship at Faslane. Diesel prices hit record levels. Household energy prices were expected to jump in January by a typical £276 a year, even with a government cut in VAT. Heathrow expected a third runway by 2039, instead of 2035.
Something odd happened in Gloucestershire. Five men, British nationals from London in their twenties, were arrested on suspicion of preparation of a terrorist act and of offences under the Explosives Act near RAF Fairfield, used by the US Air Force for strikes against Iran. Three white vans had turned up in the village of Whelford, where 85 households were evacuated. One of the men had phoned 999. No explosives were found. The men were released on bail. President Donald Trump of America said: 'We had them under investigation. They were looking to do big damage.' Marco Rubio, the US Secretary of State, said the incident 'clearly involves the hands of a foreign actor'.
Michelle O'Neill, the First Minister of Northern Ireland, joined protestors in the Garvaghy Road in Portadown to block Orangemen given permission in an overnight court hearing to march for the first time in 28 years. Sir Chris Bryant, the Northern Ireland Secretary, hurried back from the Labour conference and a stalemate developed. Between pleading guilty on 6 August and being sentenced on 24 September, Zafer Dogan, 32 (convicted of taking thousands of pictures of women and girls before using AI to sexualise the images), was granted bail to the flat (overlooking a playground) where he had committed the crimes. Daniel Thomas, known as Danny Tommo, the anti-migrant campaigner, pleaded not guilty to criminal damage after a video appeared to show him slashing at a dinghy in the Channel. Manchester City arranged ‘sham contracts’ to disguise secret funding of more than £830 million, the Premier League said; the club is to appeal.
Saudi Arabia intercepted six ballistic missiles fired by Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi militia. Yemen's government forces fought the Houthis around Taiz. Oil prices rose. Mr Trump rejected a proposal by Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. US long-term borrowing costs hit their highest level since 2002. The US banned the import of wine and whey from Canada. Mighty Sparrow, the calypso singer, died aged 91.
Russia destroyed Ukraine's National Academy of Sciences in the historic heart of Kyiv and hit a data centre, severing internet connection for 100,000 households. Estonia said Russia was behind an arson attack last month on a Tallinn defence company, Milrem Robotics, supplying Ukraine with unmanned military vehicles. Cyber-criminals who hacked the FBI said they had sensitive medical data such as allergies and blood test results for thousands of its special agents. Fatima Ezzahra El Mansouri was appointed Morocco's first woman prime minister. Eighteen people were killed when eight gunmen stormed a bar near Johannesburg; hours later, ten people were killed outside an entertainment venue near Cape Town.
Pope Leo said Mass for a crowd of 700,000 filling the Place de la Concorde and the Champs-Elysées in Paris. The American archbishop Fulton Sheen (1895-1979) was beatified during a Mass at Peoria, Illinois. In France 400 people were arrested in two days as secondary-school pupils demonstrated against a shortage of teachers. Spain’s coalition government issued a decree banning evictions until 2030, after thousands demonstrated against the eviction of an 87-year-old Madrid woman unable to pay rent rises. CSH
‘Mr Morgan,’ said the faux-regal voice at the end of the line, ‘this is Earl Spencer. I’ve got you now, you bastard.’ Suffice it to say, this call didn’t happen last week after the alleged ‘historian’ was forced to publicly apologise for publishing a lie about me in his new book. (He accused me of being Mirror editor in 1993 when it published gym photos of Princess Diana in a notorious invasion of her privacy that cost £1 million in damages – but I didn’t join the Mirror until 1995.)
However, the irony of what that call was about isn't lost on me, 31 years later. I was editor of the News of the World at the time, and one of Spencer's friends passed us a letter from him revealing his plans to leave his ailing wife Victoria and take their kids to America, where he'd be a TV reporter. Spencer waited until our first edition dropped with the scoop before calling to inform me it was a hoax. 'That letter was all made up,' he chortled jubilantly. 'I suspected who your source was, so I wrote it to him knowing he wouldn't be able to resist passing it on to you. And it's all rubbish. Ha! What are you going to do now then, eh? Ha, ha!' 'Why didn't you tell us before we printed the paper?' I replied. 'Ha! Because if I had, you would've pretended I hadn't caught you out. You're going to have to admit you've printed lies now, aren't you, and apologise. Enjoy! Ha, ha!' Like I said, ironic. As I read the Earl's grovelling apology for printing lies about me, all I could think was: 'I've got you now, you bastard. Ha, ha!'
My unlikely saviour back in 1995 was ex-Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie – who, when I hurriedly called him for advice, observed: ‘That sounds like a disgusting attempt by Earl Spencer to con News of the World readers, using his family to do so.’ We switched headlines to ‘WHAT A CHARLIE – Althorp invents pack of lies about wife and kids to trick NoW readers’ and Spencer swiftly went from victim to villain in the court of public opinion.
I recently attended Kelvin's 80th birthday party at Hampton Court.
It was the Fleet Street equivalent of a Mafia Five Families reunion, only less aesthetically pleasing. The birthday boy's most famous headlines adorned the tables, though didn't include my all-time favourite which is still in my parents' downstairs loo. It was based on a report about the debilitating effect of alcohol on male sexual performance and cautioned: 'WARNING: DRINK'LL WRINKLE YOUR WINKLE.'
THE SPECTATOR Subscribe for only £1 a week
020 4572 7556 quoting intro
Introductory offer. Auto-renewing payments only. \$1 a week in Australia at spectator.com.au/intro
The weird thing about Spencer's erroneous attack on me in his book, other than how fact-checkers at Penguin didn't spot it (not least because they also published my bestselling diaries The Insider which covered that period of my career!), is that in 2000 he came to the Mirror for a surprisingly convivial 'make-up' lunch, notable for his failure to recognise a famous fellow guest. 'Many thanks for an interesting and enjoyable lunch,' he wrote to me afterwards. 'A varied guest list, the airing of many subjects, and the Mirror's hospitality all made for a justifiably long session at the table. I feel bad not remembering Carol Vorderman. Still, she looks a lot better now than I can ever remember her looking in Countdown.' Memory clearly isn't his strong point.
Talking of lunch, and memory failures, Diana's former chef Darren McGrady was quoted in the Daily Mail as saying that after I dined with her at Kensington Palace, she told him afterwards I was a 'jerk'. To set the record straight, I invited her former butler Paul Burrell – who served the meal that McGrady had cooked – onto my Uncensored show and asked if that was true. 'No!' he replied. 'You got on like a house on fire! I don't want to blow smoke in your direction, but she liked you.' Now that's a historian I can trust.
Of course, my Spencer schadenfreude may be short-lived if the apocalyptic warnings of AI killing us all come to pass. In his last TV interview, Professor Stephen Hawking told me AI was the biggest threat to mankind's survival. 'The great danger is if we let it self-design, for then it can improve itself rapidly and we may lose control,' he explained. That was nine years ago. I fear we've either reached that point – or are about to.
‘A ny news on the knighthood, yet?’ texted Dame Joan Collins. Well, I’m reliably informed our senior royals are as giddy as Lottery winners at seeing Spencer’s vindictive, disingenuous, King-bashing book causing him global humiliation for getting basic facts wrong. My pleasure to serve, Your Majesty.
After Andy Burnham's speech at the Labour party conference on Tuesday, one veteran factionalist declared: 'We are all Burnhamites now.' Romantics love the rhetoric; cynics respect the ruthlessness. 'Game recognises game,' says one Labour figure.
The Prime Minister's address was pitched at a wounded party seeking support. Emotive and personal, yet also intensely political, it showed a keen awareness not just of Labour's values, but of its interests too. Right to Buy, which attracted legions to the Tory ranks, will be halted for new homes; a new National Care Service will bring thousands more members into the unions' fold. Progressivism will be entrenched in the model Burnham chooses, with devolution imposed on his terms: mayors allowed to spend more, but restricted from cutting tax. 'We have a politician as Prime Minister,' says a young MP approvingly.
The new leader understands that, for all its talk of radicalism, Labour is instinctively a conservative beast. Even by the standards of a party conference, this year's jamboree was a peculiarly nostalgic affair, full of references to HP sauce, miners' lamps and northern soul. In his bid to roll back Margaret Thatcher's 1980s settlement on buses, houses, water and more, Burnham was attempting to construct a 21st-century version of the postwar Labour bargain.
The dominant political operator of that pre-Thatcher age, of course, was the figure who loomed larger over this conference than any other: Harold Wilson, another northern football-lover whose views bounced between the traditions of the Tribune left and the old right. References to Wilson's government peppered cabinet members' speeches – 'the white heat of technology' featured in no fewer than four. Party officials flocked to buy merchandise commemorating 60 years since Wilson's 1966 victory. 'We pretend the first two years didn't happen,' jokes a backbencher, seeing parallels between 1964 and 2024.
The Wilson comparison is instructive. Labour lore recalls him as the champion of gay, ethnic and women's rights – rather than the man who devalued the pound in 1967. Burnham, too, is full of talk about reform and plans, even as Britain's economy is at the mercy of unfavourable world events. There was an uncomfortable irony in John Healey's speech on Monday: it was 50 years to the day that his namesake, Denis, had to beg the party to back a £2.3 billion IMF bailout. The day after the current Chancellor's speech, UK borrowing hit its highest rate this century.
Some of Burnham's cabinet also consciously see themselves in the party's lineage. Louise Haigh, his effective deputy, talks often of Barbara Castle: ‘A diminutive Yorkshire redhead with a grit and determination that occasionally found herself in trouble,’ as she says. Haigh has been handed responsibility for growth by Burnham and there is an echo here of Wilson's short-lived Department of Economic Affairs, set up to constrain the power of the Treasury. Already, officials fear
Even by the standards of a party conference, this year's Labour jamboree was peculiarly nostalgic
Even by the standards of a party conference, this year's Labour jamboree was peculiarly nostalgic
that a clash with the Chancellor is looming, with predictable Labour criticisms mounting about Healey and his department's ‘lack of imagination’. Burnham has said he wants ‘No. 10 leading on that growth mission’ to ‘unlock the blockages’ in Whitehall; Wilson said similar of the DEA, just weeks before devaluation.
Kanishka Narayan, the AI minister, cites Tony Benn as a fellow public-school, techno-enthusiast – even if Narayan is of a different intellectual tradition. ‘The Labour right’s future is Kanishka,’ says a former Wes Streeting backer. Intelligent and industrious, Narayan did an estimated 70 conference events, with his role being to present an alternative political economy to the Prime Minister’s more insular world view. ‘Burnham is offering 20th-century solutions to 21st-century problems,' says a former civil servant. Marrying AI to the reindustrialisation agenda could be the government's best chance of success.
'Andy Burnham promised huge change.'
Others are still adjusting to fluctuating party moods. Shabana Mahmood, the Home Secretary, has been christened ‘Subana’ by colleagues, such is her diminished public profile after the backlash over her legal migration reforms. Health – so often the great Labour rallying cry – featured little in this conference either. Both Yvette Cooper, the current Health Secretary, and Bridget Phillipson, the demoted equalities minister, face losing their seats to Reform as Burnham mulls reopening the European question. ‘The Midlands’ sparkies are the new Durham miners,’ says a sceptical figure, pointing to the key battlegrounds.
For now, the Labour tribe is united, amid fears the next right-wing government will resemble some grotesque fusion of Selsdon men and Powellite bastards. Hopes are high for next week's Holborn and St Pancras by-election, with most in Labour expecting a triumph over Zack Polanski, the Green leader who put himself forward. 'Next Thursday we pop his bubble,' boasts a 2024 MP. Activists on the ground report that a key moment was Ed Miliband's sanctions on Israeli settlements last month. 'That really went down well,' says one involved, reflecting on the Foreign Secretary's speech in parliament. Tellingly, no cabinet minister attended the Labour Friends of Israel's party at the conference.
After that, the Budget looms. ‘It’s the most important Budget this parliament,’ explains a government aide. ‘If it falls apart, if you can’t defend it on Kuenssberg that Sunday, then that’s it.’ After £75 billion in tax rises in 2024 and 2025, a similar scale is not envisaged this time, with Healey taking care to consult widely with parliamentary colleagues. ‘Dip their hands in the blood,’ suggests one ex-Treasury staffer. Next spring’s spending review is expected to be a chastening experience for the revised cabinet. ‘Let’s see if it is happy families after that,’ says one Tory aide.
Like Wilson, Burnham has inherited a dire economic outlook, not of his own making. But having raised the hopes of his party in Liverpool, the challenge now is to be more than yet another transient political figure, condemned by history as little more than a mere tactician. His party has cause to hope again – yet offering just a ‘better yesterday’ will not be enough.
It is repeatedly pointed out – I have probably written it myself – that the triple lock on the state pension is ruinous. There is a genuine difficulty, though, political and moral, about getting rid of it. No one likes to lose a benefit they already possess. The abolition will annoy 99 per cent of its recipients, of whom there are 13.2 million. Besides, we pensioners have retained a traditional skill almost entirely lost to younger generations, called voting. We know how to go to a polling station and put a cross on a ballot paper. We therefore have the power to slay any party we think is making us poorer. The Tories invented the triple lock. If they abandoned it, they would be hit even worse than Nick Clegg was hit when he reversed Lib Dem policy against tuition fees as the price of coalition. That is the political argument. The moral argument is that pensioners feel they have earned their pension. This is not literally the case, because the National Insurance we have paid in our working lives is not, in reality, insurance. Our pensions come out of current funding. Morally, however, we have earned it by working, and it is not, even triple-locked, outstandingly good. I suggest opposition parties would be wise to hold off and let Labour trip up on the triple lock. By freezing tax thresholds, it will soon tax pensioners on their triple-lock gains because their income exceeds the £12,570 tax threshold. In his speech to his party conference on Tuesday, Andy Burnham tripped. He said the triple lock will be sacrificed to pay for his scheme for a social care service modelled on the NHS. Many millions receiving, or about to receive, a pension will now fear losing the clear financial advantage of the triple lock in exchange for the highly uncertain, undated promise of state-provided social care.
The railways are trundling back towards nationalisation, to shouts of joy at the Labour conference. Rail privatisation has many faults (Margaret Thatcher always fought shy of it because of monopoly problems: it was introduced by John Major after she left office), but why should complete state control improve the service? Under
nationalisation from 1948 to 1995, British Rail failed to expand passenger journeys significantly. In 1950, there were roughly 32 billion passenger kilometres travelled. By 1994, that figure had fallen slightly to just below 30 billion, despite that fact that the population had increased by nearly 9 million. Since privatisation – except, unavoidably, during Covid – passenger kilometres have shot up, roughly 63 billion in the latest annual figure.
The Daily Telegraph's scoop about the distressing circumstances of the great explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes is remarkable. If a famous, well-connected man can be so cut off from the outside world by his second wife in a succession of care homes, what must be happening to thousands, without powerful friends, in a similar situation? The story reminds me of a hunch I had ten years ago. Until then, Sir Ranulph had been a gentle supporter of hunting, allowing hunts on his Exmoor farm, and speaking in Westminster for the Countryside March. Suddenly, in 2016, he denounced hunting. In advance of a Tory conference fringe meeting organised by the League against Cruel Sports (LACS), he was reported as being about to say that his mind had been changed by discovering a fox on the couple's Cheshire farm that had been injured during a hunt: 'After my wife and I saw the fox's injuries, we called the vet. We laced food with medicine... to prevent infection setting in from bites to her rear.' The vixen later died. 'The Cheshire Hunt chased that fox before our eyes and she took six days to die,' he said, 'Do not believe hunters when they say the fox has a quick and painless death... You try being chewed to death by hounds.'
This sounded inauthentically ignorant to me. Sir Ranulph would have known that hunted foxes were never ‘chewed to death’. One hound is bigger than one fox. A pack of hounds is 30-strong. In fox-hunting (now banned in Britain), the lead hound kills the fox almost immediately with a bite to the back of the neck. The animal is torn apart, but only when dead. It is also – as I have often witnessed – all but impossible for a fox to escape from a pack wounded. A fox can often evade its pursuers, but only if it is not wounded and therefore fit. Any ‘chewed’ fox that the Fienneses found must have been bitten in a fight with another fox, a badger or (less likely) a dog. Sir Ranulph’s phrases, like ‘the so-called tradition of terrifying wild animals for pure enjoyment is now, as it always has been, a brutal and insupportable self-indulgence’ sounded ventriloquised. Checking on what he said in 2016, I notice that contemporary press accounts report only the pre-briefing, not the meeting. In a strange TV interview, he appeared to read out a prepared script. It is not clear to me that Sir Ranulph actually delivered his fiery speech in public. Was he, even ten years ago, under some sort of control?
His name is still being used. A Facebook page called ‘Sir Ranulph Fiennes’ is reposting numerous accounts of alleged violations of the Hunting Act as recent as last month, all in the heated and inaccurate language of antis (e.g. calling hounds ‘dogs’). Sir Ranulph, cognitively frail and confined in care homes for two years, surely cannot be doing this. ‘Sir Ranulph Fiennes’ cannot be Sir Ranulph Fiennes. Friends from the south-west say that Sir Ranulph was most unhappy to leave Exmoor to support his wife’s 60-odd Arab horses on the Cheshire farm, but worried he might lose access to their daughter if he did not. Apparently his first wife’s memorial stone is on the Exmoor farm, and his own name is on it too, awaiting his death. ‘My name will always be there,’ he told friends. His situation is strange and sad. A Fiennes friends and family WhatsApp group seeks a legal challenge to the lasting power of attorney in this case, to release the prisoner.
['I get better every day'] Can Kemi Badenoch revive the Tory party?
['I get better every day'] Can Kemi Badenoch revive the Tory party?
TIM SHIPMAN
Kemi Badenoch, like many in the Labour party, is not sorry to see the back of Keir Starmer. 'I did not find Starmer an interesting person,' she says. 'He never said anything interesting.' Andy Burnham is a different proposition. 'Quite interesting,' she thinks. 'He has more of a clear sense of who he is politically, which makes him more confident in terms of what he wants to do. But who he is politically is so far removed from who I am politically that I think that there's a sharper contrast between us.'
We speak in her office in Portcullis House with the Labour conference in full cry in Liverpool. ‘It feels very much like student union people who’ve got older, but they still want to do the stuff that they did in the student union,’ Badenoch says. Her verdict on Burnham’s big speech on Tuesday is that the Prime Minister is offering ‘Corbynism with better packaging’, with socialist solutions from the 1970s that ‘will fail again’. But that sharper contrast has energised her. ‘Hearing his speech, it’s clear we are now about to have a battle of ideas. It’s given me more confidence that, even in this messy political era, the Conservatives are going to win.’
Burnham, she says, ‘likes to say yes to everyone – and that is something which I learned a long time ago is a recipe for disaster’. Nowhere, she believes, is this more obvious than in Labour’s approach to the ballooning benefits budget. ‘They are the welfare party. It’s in their DNA. They’re not the party of the working classes at all.’ If Burnham is a ‘people pleaser’, Badenoch wants to make a virtue of her abrasive reputation – the people displeaser the country needs. ‘No one wants to be the person to say “No”. And I want Spectator readers to know that the person who’s saying “No” has arrived and is leading the Conservative party.’
At Tory conference, which begins in Birmingham this weekend, she will announce plans to ‘put the fair back in welfare’ – both for taxpayers and those condemned to a life on handouts. The Tories will advance two principles: that those who have paid in are entitled to more than those who have not. 'If you have worked for a very long time, you can be on benefits for much longer because those people are less likely just to sit back and not look for a job,' she explains. 'After six months, if you haven't found a job and you're just not taking that seriously, you will lose money.'
Second, those who can work should do so. 'It's unfair to the people who get up and go to
'Even families on benefits know that the system is out of control. But no one wants to get off the treadmill first'
'Even families on benefits know that the system is out of control. But no one wants to get off the treadmill first'
work, having others earn more than them for not working. Even families on benefits know that the system is out of control. But no one wants to be the one to get off the treadmill first. We need to force that. Government has to do that.' Badenoch is incensed by 'sickfluencers' on YouTube teaching people how to claim benefits for ADHD or anxiety. 'There are a lot of people who do not have a mental disability but claim to have one using low-level conditions... These are conditions you can work with, and so you should be working. We're not going after the vulnerable. It is the people who can work who aren't working that are the target.'
One of the most striking policies Badenoch will announce is a ‘tough love’ approach to young people. A Tory government would set up a ‘Get To Work’ programme, banning young people who have not worked from drifting straight onto benefits. Under 25s who have less than six months in continuous employment will no longer be able to sign on to universal credit when they leave school or turn 18.
Those without a job or an apprenticeship will only be able to claim a new ‘Get to Work Allowance’ – and they’ll only get that if they participate
in a six-month Get to Work programme. To get the money, they will have to complete work activities, such as daily attendance at a local job centre, work-experience placements, training courses or community work. They will need to apply for jobs and go to interview-prep workshops, plus attend group sessions to develop the communication skills that employers complain young job applicants lack.
Those who complete the Get to Work programme will receive a ‘Ready for Work Award’ recording their skills. But after six months on Get to Work, young people still not working will drop down to a basic Subsistence Allowance. There will also be steps to make young people more the responsibility of their parents rather than taxpayers (with mitigations for those without parents or in the care system). ‘This is a tough love policy,’ a source says. ‘It will provide help as well as enforcement.’ This is the nanny state with menaces; Mary Poppins with an umbrella gun.
Badenoch also signals that she wants to toughen the statutory cap on total welfare spending. 'That's certainly something that we are considering,' she says. 'MPs just vote for it to increase, an automatic ratchet, because no one wants to be the person to say no.'
Some will doubtless say Badenoch is making the Conservatives the ‘nasty party’ once again. Refreshingly, she doesn’t care. ‘The people who are going to say “nasty party” will always say it. Quite frankly, the reason why we’re in this mess is because we kept pandering to those people and trying to make them like us. And did it work? No, it didn't.'
Indeed, she attributes a new optimism among Tory MPs to her plain-speaking approach: 'We're finally saying what we believe and we're not scared to say it. We should be more aggressive.'
A year ago at conference she stabilised her leadership with a pledge to abolish stamp duty. She downplays recent speculation she will announce the outright abolition of inheritance tax this time: 'I'm not someone who likes to play the same movie twice. Inheritance tax – we want to get rid of it, but we've got to do our working first.'
Expect far more focus on the economy than Labour. ‘Burnham has no plans to make anybody wealthier,’ she says. ‘He has no plans to get businesses hiring people. Where are the plans for ownership, whether it’s people owning their own property, owning shares, owning businesses? There are none, because he doesn’t want people owning things or being responsible for their own lives. People hated that model so much that it ushered in the era of popular capitalism which we saw in the 1980s and 1990s. That is what people will see at my party conference.’
Badenoch will also emphasise security. ‘Defence and national security are going to be the defining issue of the next few years,’ she says. ‘We have become so complacent as a country, as politicians, and we need to get
‘We’re finally saying what we believe and we’re not scared to say it. We should be more aggressive’
‘We’re finally saying what we believe and we’re not scared to say it. We should be more aggressive’
serious.' She is critical of Ed Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, who ignored intelligence advice before sanctioning Israel, a country she calls 'a critical security partner'. She says Miliband's glad-handing of the foreign minister of Iran, the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism, was 'incredibly naive. Gormless, in fact, is probably the word that I would use.'
Badenoch was incredulous when Burnham said at PMQs that he would not promote national security at the expense of social security. ‘I thought I couldn’t possibly have heard him say that. I genuinely couldn’t believe it. I don’t think he will ever say that again.’ She puts Burnham’s mistake down to him not having a leadership contest to hone his lines. ‘He’s now doing all his thinking out loud and this is what he really believes.’
She can't resist a parting shot at her former leadership rival turned Reform defector. 'Rob Jenrick never exited leadership contest mode. And he's now doing it in his new party.' As a wheeze at conference the Tories have produced an 88ft-long illustration of Labour's first two years in power in the style of the Bayeux Tapestry. It features 150 taxpayers being shot in the eye with a tax arrow, 14 political journalists, including this one, and numerous images of a tiny wailing Jenrick.
Here today
Power seems immutable
A never-ending dance
Entirely indestructible
Each blow the merest glance
Yet what was indisputable
Now looks much more like chance.
Jenrick and Suella Braverman's defections in January were a relief: 'It was like watching someone come in and pick two unexploded bombs that I was working out how to defuse and just take them away. Now in shadow cabinet, we just talk freely. No one holds anything back. No one's taking notes.'
Badenoch has faced criticism for banning former ministers, such as Grant Shapps, from the list of Tory candidates. Grandees say that Badenoch, despite her seemingly impregnable position, fears a leadership challenge before the next election if she doesn't turn things around in the polls and that Shapps's habit of running a spreadsheet of dissenting MPs was a threat to her position. Others see a reluctance to let Penny Mordaunt return in the same light. 'She was frightened of Grant's spreadsheet,' a former cabinet minister says. 'She'll let Penny back but is deliberately keeping her waiting.'
Badenoch admits she has ‘slowed down the former MPs who are coming back’, but says that is giving ‘some new candidates a chance’. She is proud that there will be ‘no more Heidi Allens’ (the former MP who tried to overturn Brexit and welfare cuts before joining the Lib Dems). She won’t comment directly on Shapps, but in response to a question about him, she criticises MPs who plot. ‘I am looking for improved standards of conduct. When people have nothing except politics, that’s when the psychodrama comes,
'Hope, eh Andy?'
-John Hayes
when they're in the bars all the time. They've got nothing else to do.' She says Mordaunt 'hasn't been blocked'.
The Tories overtook Reform in a recent poll but are still below where they were when Badenoch took over. Nonetheless, she is encouraged by Nigel Farage's recent wobbles. 'We call Farage “Grumpy Grandpa” because he’s always complaining about something.' She accuses the Reform leader of ‘trying to intimidate’ journalists who probe his affairs. 'It’s not fun when the press are all over you and there’s endless scrutiny. But it’s the job.'
She also strikes a different tone to Farage on Donald Trump. The President's recent call for a united Ireland made her ‘very irritated’. She understood American concerns over Iran’s nuclear programme, but calls it ‘frustrating’ that the Americans ‘clearly hadn’t thought about what could happen in the Strait of Hormuz. I just don’t think these guys think past page one.’ She adds: ‘It’s Trump’s actions rather than the words that I really focus on. If you focus on the words, then we’re all over the place. He’s quite erratic.’
While Reform's recent receipt of £72 million is a huge challenge to the Tories, Badenoch says: 'It's actually encouraged quite a few people to give us a bit more. People who were thinking of splitting their money between the two parties said, "They don't need my money now", so that's helpful.'
Badenoch knows she still has a mountain to climb. ‘My own ratings have improved but the party brand is still not enough associated with me,’ she says. ‘This is a different party from 2024. And I’ve got to show that. I think the public are screaming for a party with common sense. We’ve got sensible plans that are actually going to work this time.’
Sensible plans will help. ‘This time’ is a reminder of the challenge to overcome public scepticism of Tory pledges. But Badenoch wants to make her own luck. ‘I’m not just waiting for other people to fail,’ she says. ‘I think that’s foolishness and I get better every day.’
Annalisa Quinn is an editor at the Boston Globe magazine, and through a mixture of good fortune, good journalism and good writing, she published the perfect story for our times last week.
On 31 August, a lesbian bar in western Massachusetts called Last Ditch posted on Instagram that ‘it is with love we inform our immunocompromised disabled divas we will be opening Saturday nights as mask optional’. Previously, KN-95 face masks were the minimum level of protection required to attend the bar at all times.
The owners were swiftly accused of being eugenicists. One commentator said: 'People like you kill disabled people in the name of your own leisure and convenience.' Another wished the venue to be firebombed. Last Ditch attempted an apology. It wasn't good enough, since they posted an Instagram card without alt-text for the visually impaired. Two of the three founders had left the business, one to enrol in clown school. The remaining founder, Jackie Matellian, began to cry under her mask in a meeting. Soe Noire, a black lesbian who goes by 'he/him' pronouns, said Matellian's crying was 'racist', and demanded payment to keep going to 'community meetings'.
Everyone found it funny, even on Bluesky. The Boston Globe got an extra thousand subscribers in the 24 hours after it posted the story. This was wokeness at its most defeated, its most exhausted. You don't need to combat it with defunding, anger or debate. You just need to tip off a Boston Globe reporter.
But there was one sentiment going around that was plainly wrong. It was expressed in the Atlantic: 'Reminder: this is a bar. You know, the place where you go to drink beer.' But nowhere is just a bar. That argument says: what does a bar have to do with your identity? The answer, of course, is everything.
All pubs and all bars are left- or right-wing, woke or unwoke. That much is obvious. But where is this country's Last Ditch?
There are two types of woke bars: evidence-based woke and vibes-based woke. At the Attic in Leeds, you'll find a good example of the former. Clean Air Socials have run events there throughout the year, and have another one coming up this month. The entry criteria are thus: you need to wear a ‘high quality respirator (FFP2 or FFP3) at all times whilst indoors’, and show proof of a negative lateral flow test at the door. It’s also recommended you use a valve to drink through your mask. On these nights, there will be several HEPA purifiers in the venue, and a far-UVC lamp, which is meant to reduce how many viruses can be airborne in a room. There is clearly little wrong with running a dance night where the immunocompromised can party. But why is Covid the main virus mentioned?
Another example from Leeds: in June this year, a Queer Cinema for Palestine event at Wharf Chambers was ‘masks mandatory’. No FFP2 mask, no admission. A ‘Sickening Cabaret’ night at Watershed in Bristol in January had the same edict. Masks were encouraged at an Andro and Eve event at Crookes Social Club in Sheffield, but the club itself said it was ‘apolitical’ after it was slammed for letting Restore Britain host a meeting in August.
Intersectionality (remember that?) explains why pro-Palestine = mask up. The
What does a bar have to do with your identity? The answer, of course, is everything
What does a bar have to do with your identity? The answer, of course, is everything
original argument about intersectional discrimination, made by Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989, used an analogy of a motorway intersection to argue that different forms of prejudice can hit someone at the same time (to be hit by two cars at once would be unlucky, but it's within the laws of physics, I guess).
But intersectional solidarity has often been elusive, and we saw that in the capital this summer, when Breathe Easy London, a ‘Covid-safe’ events group, accused the London Dyke March of harming the participants by not insisting on ‘dykes’ and their allies wearing masks outside. Trans people, Breathe Easy argued, have a 48 per cent long-Covid rate, and said that one marcher had been ‘permanently injured’. It concluded that London Dyke March was ‘personally responsible for disabling their attendees’.
You don't really see the Breathe Easy folks in the pub. Wokeness isn't generally found there, but it does survive in other venues. The Common Press in Shoreditch, a ‘queer bookshop’ I visited (they were out of decaf coffee, which I genuinely wanted), is probably the most famous. Nothing wrong with a gay bookshop, needless to say, but Priyamvada Gopal's Insurgent Empire and Tariq Ali's Winston Churchill: His Times, His Crimes are given as much promotion as anything to do with sexuality.
So the woke bookshop survives, but pubs are more impregnable. There are plenty of unwoke pubs across the country. Your favourite pub, I assume, isn't particularly woke. Though there is such a thing as too unwoke. In March, ten people at the Chequers in Hornchurch got involved in a mass fight, where chairs were thrown and heads kicked. Staff, funnily enough, refused to give statements.
The Dog and Partridge in the suburbs of Birmingham was pretty unwoke too. It's being considered for demolition after it closed in 2020, following a meat cleaver attack at a ‘family-friendly’ beach party. Perhaps not terribly woke either is a rumoured East End pub which claims there's a private event on if a non-white person walks in.
Sipping my Guinness Zero in the Auld Shillelagh in Stoke Newington (never have I been more confident that somewhere would have that in the fridge), I reflected on the upsides of the British left. Yes, the aesthetics here were woke: plenty of mullets, caps and roll-up cigarettes. But this Irish pub in the middle of Diane Abbott's constituency is still excellent.
Our divisions are class-based, not identity-based like America's. Our left-wing pubs descend from old working-class traditions: miners' pubs, Irish pubs and the like. America doesn't have that, so it's corporate identarian insanity like Last Ditch. In London, there were until fairly recently two main lesbian bars. One, La Camionera, doesn't have any rainbow flags. The other, Goldie Saloon, has now closed, having ended its days as a dog-grooming business run by a straight man from Essex. What would the Last Ditch crowd make of that?
[DOUGLAS MURRAY] The game we're not allowed to win
[DOUGLAS MURRAY] The game we're not allowed to win
Some years ago I heard a moving story about Roy Jenkins. An unpromising start to any anecdote but stay with me. It involved a croquet match during the late period of his life – as Chancellor of the University of Oxford – when Jenkins had become one of the grander, not to say more pompous, figures in our public life. According to someone playing with him, his Lordship had appalling luck. Although he wielded his mallet with all requisite skill, his ball would not go through the hoops. Eventually the grand old man stormed off the pitch in a great huff. Only after he had left did the other players discover that the ball Lord Jenkins had been working was from a different croquet set, and too big to fit through the hoops.
I have been thinking of the incident of Lord Jenkins and the crooked croquet match lately. Not just because I enjoy the image of his Lordship puffing off the pitch in a fury, but because it feels like something similar is going on at a national level. Someone has queered the game, forbidding us from winning even on home turf.
Our much overpraised Home Secretary used her party conference speech to condemn the ‘racists’ who marched in the south of England the other week with their faces covered. She had nothing to say about the far larger number of people from her own Muslim community who have marched through Tower Hamlets and elsewhere, covering their faces and being infinitely more thuggish. On Question Time a panellist whose grandmother came here from Bengal claimed that the men on that south of England march were not just racist but exhibiting ‘small penis behaviour’. What’s more, this woman – a self-described communist – said the people objecting to illegal migration were not patriotic and not British.
We seem to be facing a slew of similar pronouncements of late – often from people who have either arrived in the country recently or whose parents arrived comparatively recently. It seems that absolutely anyone can turn up in Britain and tell us what is or is not British. But if we quibble with this lack of manners we are, of course, called ‘racist’. This is deeply unfair.
As I have pointed out before, if my parents had chosen to move to, for example,
Pakistan and given birth to me there, I think I’d regard my position in the country as something like a visitor or a guest. I can say with considerable certainty that the entire population of Pakistan would regard me in such a light. But if I went around telling the Pakistani people what their country was or should be, and what Pakistani values were or were not, then I think people would think me a little presumptuous, to say the least. Yet the British public have to hear arrival after arrival tell us who we are or who we should be and they do so with the confidence that comes from knowing that most British people are too polite to clear their throat, say ‘ahem’ in a meaningful manner, and then give them both rhetorical barrels.
But it isn't just recent arrivals who have joined this game of telling us what we are
It seems that absolutely anyone can turn up in Britain and tell us what is or is not British
It seems that absolutely anyone can turn up in Britain and tell us what is or is not British
or should be. This week the Labour government's under-secretary for nature, one Jenny Riddell-Carpenter, warned that the ‘far-right’ are likely to co-opt the countryside in the next election. Specifically she said that they will summon up ‘a Britain that never really existed’. She continued: ‘It’ll be that warm ale, a black labrador by your feet in a pub that doesn’t exist. It’ll be a very far-right nostalgic vision of Britain that we don’t want to have, [that] never really existed.’
Woad rage
About which there are many eloquent things to say. One of which is ‘WTF?’ Are the presence of black labradors around the feet now another dog-whistle? Must our ale only ever be cold? And who is Jenny Riddell-Carpenter to tell us that we are ‘far-right’ if we engage in any of these activities?
More importantly, the image of Britain she tries to evoke is not some ‘far-right’ mirage of a country that never existed. It is in fact a small part of a Britain that exists very nicely for many of us. A Britain that exists and is neither political nor invented.
And all this happened in a week in which any opportunities to object to the disaster this country is being led into seemed to contract yet again.
On Tuesday, an activist known as ‘Danny Tommo’ was refused bail. The crime of which he stands accused, and to which he has pleaded not guilty, is damaging a migrant boat. Tommo is alleged to have slashed the dinghy having taken matters into his own hands, apparently as a result of British government claims that it can do nothing to stop boatloads of illegal migrants arriving each day. If he’s found guilty, the full force of the law – the same force that takes no interest in your own burgled property – is likely to come down on him in predictable fashion and he could well spend the coming weeks in jail because he harmed the property of an illegal smuggling gang.
It is not surprising. This week we also learned that a Muslim lecturer has been teaching British police officers about ‘Islamophobia’ and the threat of Nigel Farage. Meanwhile, our Foreign Secretary, Ed Miliband, was sucking up to his counterpart from the world’s number one terrorist-sponsoring state – Iran – and declaring himself ‘humbled’ in the presence of the Palestinian representative to the UK.
Which brings me back to Roy Jenkins. By all accounts, Jenkins's fellow players didn't realise their error. But it seems to me that as a nation we are playing on a pitch that has been deliberately queered. I have this lovely column in which to voice my own frustrations. But most of the British public do not, and as they notice that the game is rigged they may do more than simply leave the pitch in a huff.
The Special Relationship has seen more special days. Earlier this year, President Trump delivered his verdict: 'How is the relationship? It's the relationship where, when we asked them for help, they were not there. When we needed them, they were not there. When we didn't need them, they were not there. And they still aren't there.'
Trump was referring to divisions between the US and UK over the wisdom and conduct of the war in Iran. (Even amid a spat, though, he can dish out praise. Just this week, following the arrest of five men outside RAF Fairfield, used by American bombers to strike Iran, the President said the UK authorities had done an ‘amazing job’.) But his remarks landed at a moment of divergence in the US-UK relationship that extends well beyond Iran. Washington has imposed and reimposed tariffs on Britain. Last year the UK paused intelligence-sharing that could have assisted American strikes against suspected drug boats in the Caribbean, which London views as illegal. Trump has branded the deal to hand the Chagos islands to Mauritius an ‘act of great stupidity’.
All this has resulted in a great deal of hand-wringing about the resilience or otherwise of the Special Relationship. There is a great fear of change, given how historically close the relationship is, particularly in intelligence. The Special Relationship's entire origin story, in fact, is a cryptographic exchange over German and Japanese codes at Bletchley Park in 1941. Eighty-five years later, the intelligence connection between the US and UK remains central; having the same set of eyes and ears means you see the world similarly and act accordingly.
But might gathering political headwinds blow hard enough to damage it? To understand how – or if – the intelligence partnership might come apart, it is helpful to examine how it actually works.
This is the subject of my new novel, London Station, in which I imagine a scenario where the CIA and MI6 begin spying on each other. There is a historical precedent for this. Prior to the second world war, Britain intercepted US diplomatic traffic and conducted influence campaigns on American soil.
In one instance, British spies drew up and disseminated a supposed Nazi map depicting Germany's vision for a partition of South America in a bid to frighten US policymakers into entering the war.
This is not how the relationship works today. Now, the CIA and MI6 share extensively and conduct joint operations. The same is true of the two domestic security services, the FBI and MI5. Though details about the Fairford plot are still emerging, Trump's praise and his cryptic claim that 'we had them under view for a long time' hints at another example of US-UK intelligence cooperation.
The CIA and MI6 share a lot of human intelligence – HUMINT – even if they don't always offer the names of their sources. There is no published percentage of exactly
Britain is the decidedly junior partner. When push comes to shove, the CIA wins out
how much they share. In my conversations with current and former officials, it's obviously not 100 per cent, but I'd wager it's fairly close to that.
The two services also don't conduct operations on one another's soil without the consent and participation of their opposite numbers – although my contacts did acknowledge both sides' occasional naughtiness. Perhaps, in theory, an MI6 officer under commercial cover might be dispatched to the US to hobnob with interesting targets, and the Americans might not be informed.
On signals intelligence – SIGINT, referring to intercepted communications – the two countries are even closer, and there is very little naughtiness. The US National Security Agency (NSA) and its British equivalent, GCHQ, often work off shared systems and collect the intelligence together. As Richard Kerbaj notes in his fabulous book The Secret History of the Five Eyes, the NSA has even paid the operating expenditure for some GCHQ sites.
But if the Americans have more money, geography still matters for intercepting satellite communications and tapping fibre-optic cables. Britain's imperial legacy creates unique value through a network of installations across Europe, the Middle East and south-east Asia. After 9/11, when the US was considering contingency plans if a terrorist attack took the NSA offline, the answer was to use GCHQ as the backup. That level of trust is likely without equal in the espionage business.
Underlying the HUMINT and SIGINT ties is a web of personal relationships. When I was researching for London Station, I asked my CIA contacts for warm introductions to their British counterparts and found dozens of officers who were in close touch, many after retirement. The scale of these networks is beyond those US officers share with any other western intelligence agency. I attempted a similar feat for my last novel, about Mossad, and found it much harder to find CIA officers in close contact with their Israeli equivalents. John Brennan, former director of the CIA, has said that he ‘had no qualms whatever about sharing our most sensitive secrets with my British counterparts’.
This is not to say that the interaction is frictionless. My research turned up cases in which the two services compete to recruit the same assets, jostle for primacy and are sometimes – shock, horror – less than forthcoming with one another over the targets they're pursuing. And Britain is the decidedly junior partner. Several former CIA officers have told me that when push comes to shove, the CIA wins out. If it wants a thing – a case, some assistance – it almost always gets it. The reverse is not true, and this can rankle.
Tension aside, the overarching logic is simple but powerful. Let's say the combined value of the US-UK intelligence relationship is 100 units. The US contributes 80, the UK 20 (these figures are estimates for the purpose of demonstration), and both partners receive the full 100. The US grumbles that the UK does not pull its weight: 'The Brits are pickpockets', in the uncharitable words of a former senior CIA officer I interviewed. And UK intelligence officers might complain about the damn Yanks throwing their weight around and ignoring the British contribution, which can be significant. But 100 units is greater than the individual contributions of both nations.
This all adds up to a relationship that is both deep and flexible. First, the depth. Political bluster aside, the two countries share largely overlapping geopolitical interests. Public spats over, say, the means of dealing with Iran hide basic agreements over the nature of the threat from the regime. The same could be said for China and Russia.
Flexibility is also an advantage in an era when, as a recent House of Lords report aptly puts it, the ‘once easy cultural bonds between Britain and America are beginning to fray’. The Special Relationship is not a formalised and rigid arrangement. A president cannot withdraw from it, nor rip up a piece of paper, because one does not exist. This flexibility means that cooperation can continue or even deepen in one domain even as it weakens elsewhere. The two nations’ intelligence services will keep open lines of communication amid any public mudslinging.
So what, if anything, could splinter the partnership? Over its long history the Special Relationship has experienced strain. Consider policy differences over the Suez crisis in 1956, the Vietnam war (Britain did not send troops) and the extent of Britain's tilt toward Europe in the early 1970s. The last of these led President Nixon to temporarily cut off some intelligence sharing; the
Brits retaliated during the Yom Kippur war of 1973 by placing restrictions on US intelligence activities and overflights from bases in Britain and Cyprus.
Similarly, we should now expect divergence, in at least in some areas. The two countries are decades from the shared experiences of the second world war and Cold War. Elements of the US political class, particularly in MAGA-world, are sceptical of global entanglements and increasingly see the UK as weak and irrelevant. In London Station, I imagine a CIA run by a character named Bobby Jerome, the founder and CEO of the nation's largest residential home-building business, a commercial animal with strong political instincts, a cultural distaste for the Brits and a desire to review the agency's foreign partnerships. This is perhaps not so unbelievable; Trump appointed Bill Pulte, heir to a home-building fortune, as acting director of National Intelligence (this happened, I should note, after I'd finished the novel).
But even Bobby's reign of terror runs into the cold logic of the US-UK intelligence relationship: he discovers that the CIA is getting more out of the partnership than it puts in. There can be more divergence, more tension and less shared affinity even as the relationship remains close. It does not have to be ‘special’ to deliver benefits to both countries.
This means that even if a J.D. Vance or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez administration – both likely to be sceptical of European commitments – takes power in Washington, the relationship is primed to adapt and shift, not to break. If policy disagreements widen, as they probably will, over the wisdom of military American interventions, the value of Nato, the geopolitical competition with China or Washington’s more go-it-alone, abrasive diplomatic attitude, the machinery exists to continue delivering military, security and political benefits that advance the interests of both nations.
The flexible, adaptable and mutually beneficial intelligence partnership is exactly the sort best positioned to evolve and survive amid stormy political seas on both sides of the Atlantic. Let's hope it does.
[A tale of two Cities] The sad moral decline of the club I once loved
[A tale of two Cities] The sad moral decline of the club I once loved
MICHAEL HENDERSON
Fifty-nine years ago this month, a barrel-chested footballer called Francis Lee left Bolton Wanderers for Manchester City, and an impressionable eight-year-old followed him. Within a year ‘the City’ were First Division champions, and ‘Franny’, my childhood hero, had become an England international.
Early memories are usually the most vivid. FA Cup winners in 1969, the men from Maine Road completed a trifecta of domestic pots the following year with the League Cup – and added a dollop of cream with the European Cup Winners' Cup. The years of plenty didn't last. In those days prizes were distributed more widely. But what larks.
Last week the club Lee served as a star player and, two decades later, as chairman, found itself chained in the doghouse. A Premier League investigation, conducted over three years of laborious fact-checking, found it guilty of 114 charges relating to financial jiggery-pokery.
Cooking the books, in other words – and in the eyes of their accusers, City then smothered them with a Béarnaise sauce. Beyond east Manchester, great was the rejoicing. A club once regarded as a variety act – the disgraced broadcaster Stuart Hall habitually referred to Maine Road as ‘the theatre of base comedy’ – have been widely resented since the Abu Dhabi United Group, led by Sheikh Mansour, rode into town 18 years ago, carrying bags of gold. The Etihad Stadium, their home since 2003, is seen as a den of cheats.
City have vowed to challenge any punishment and, as they have unlimited funds, the claims and counter-claims may stretch on like the Great North Road. As far as the footballing world is concerned, however, they have been judged bang to rights. A significant points deduction, and even relegation from the Premier League, are possible.
It's a grubby tale of a game that has sold its soul, and City are by no means the only offenders. The Premier League fined Chelsea £10 million four years ago, Everton and Nottingham Forest were docked points, and the Glazer brothers – Americans who own a majority share in Manchester United – have run up £1 billion worth of debt since they took over England's biggest club in a leveraged buyout 21 years ago.
But City is the main story, on account of their decade and more of glory. Champions of England eight times since 2012, they became European champions in 2023 when victory in the FA Cup landed them a remarkable treble. A club that went 35 years without winning a trophy has come in from the cold. Except, it now appears, the transformation was facilitated by persistent rule-breaking by a foreign state.
The fans don't care. Fans never do. So long as ‘their’ team is winning, the scarftwirlers will tolerate everything: the reflexive dishonesty of players, the shrieking of one-eyed managers and the shenanigans of agents. Since the Premier League was created in 1992, all parties have frolicked in
Manchester City's transformation, it appears, was facilitated by persistent rule-breaking by a foreign state
a land of milk and honey. The traditional English game has been marketed as ‘entertainment’ for an international audience, promoted by biddable television pundits.
When City topped the old First Division in 1968, all 11 players were English. So was the manager, Joe Mercer, and the coach, Malcolm Allison. The chairman, Albert Alexander, was a local man who had given his life to the club. Lee cost City £60,000 when he travelled ten miles down the road from Bolton. Colin Bell, the finest player to represent the club since the war, joined from Bury for £45,000. Other members of that champion team were recruited from Doncaster Rovers, Plymouth Argyle, Stockport County and Swindon Town. Never such innocence again.
'I said has anything new happened?'
Now there are few English players in the Premier League and most clubs are owned and managed almost exclusively by foreigners. Commercially, it has been a roaring success. Morally, it brings to mind Mickey Duff's maxim. 'In this game,' the boxing promoter said, 'you can fuck a flea if the money's right.'
It wasn't always a land of enchantment, even when England were winning their only World Cup in 1966. The players were paid poorly and the grounds, while character-ful, were dismal. At Maine Road there was a malodorous cavern called the Kippax Stand, which could have passed for Nibelheim, the subterranean home of wretches in Das Rheingold.
Was the game better in those days? Well, it produced men like Gordon Banks, Jimmy Armfield, Ray Wilson, Bobby Moore, Bobby Charlton, Jimmy Greaves, Martin Peters and Alan Ball, who would walk into an England XI today. Not one wore a tattoo, crashed a Bentley or lived in a mansion. Between 1959 and 1976, no team retained the First Division title, so the game was certainly more competitive. And those men played on heavy pitches, with old-fashioned leather balls, when referees took a more tolerant view of what constituted foul play.
Three years ago, after City had won that treble, I wrote my hero a letter. 'I have drifted away from the club,' I told him, 'but I'm grateful to you for providing so many golden memories. For at least one person it's still the club of Colin Bell, Francis Lee and Mike Summerbee, and it always will be.'
He replied in an unsteady hand, which suggested something was wrong. A week later Franny died, at the age of 79, after a battle with cancer. He's still my hero, and I remain temperamentally a Blue. But modern cocky Manchest-oh has got the club it deserves, and Manchest-oh can keep it.
Sport, the great Hugh McIlvanney liked to say, should never be more than ‘a glorious distraction’. We have come a long way since then, but even in the squalid world of contemporary football there are standards to observe. Throw the book at ‘Citeh’. They deserve no mercy.
Friday. I address intelligence agencies, law enforcement and behavioural scientists as they gather in Krakow. I tell them how they can help combat anti-Semitism in their work. The speech is a prelude to a visit to the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial and museum. Words are not enough. While we meet, Lithuania highlights Russian attempts to bully pro-Ukrainian Nato countries with airspace incursions.
Saturday. China has held the Robot Olympics, firmly fixed on a tech-enhanced future. This weekend we Brits held an event of similar magnitude. Ours is devoid of AI-enabled humanoids; instead, it is all high lift cams, low growls, beer, nylons, rouge, flat caps and the exquisite aroma of Castrol R. Do not dismiss the Goodwood Revival as backward-looking. In Britain, nostalgia is fuel for the future. The traditional and familiar are no brake on progress. They are a necessary condition of it. Trackside, in the shadow of towering Hannah Waddingham and her preacher hat, I enjoy a brew with fellow dyslexic and driving legend Jackie Stewart. He is towering, too, in a different way. Meanwhile, three Russian aircraft are intercepted in Estonian airspace.
Monday. The start of The Wargame. This is the TV version of Sky's podcast, simulating the start of a hot war with Russia. Your editor and I spent four days in a bunker with political opponents, role-playing a coalition government on the brink. While we had been filming, fictional events of hybrid warfare mirrored the reality. An assassination in Poland and another Russian vessel in our waters. Four days of filming was condensed into four hours of telly. Diplomacy, the creation of strategic dilemmas, choking off Russia's ability to fight in Ukraine, financial sanctions and 58 attempts to get Potus to trigger Article 5 did not make the edit. By Wednesday's episode we were at Bikini State Red Alert.
No one will be surprised to hear me highlight our lack of conventional forces and the sense of spending 5 per cent GDP to prevent a war costing 50 per cent of it. But when Harriet Harman (Sky's home secretary) and Nicola Sturgeon (Sky's deputy prime minister) have joined the cause to re-arm, people ought to wake up. It is about to be too late.
As the nation watches the fictional disaster unfold, in the real world, Vilnius and Copenhagen airports are closed because of Russian-launched balloons and drones. The drones were launched from three Russian-affiliated vessels. One is the shadow tanker Boracay, part of a now 1,000-strong dark fleet.
While we wait for the government to come to its senses, we do what we can. I speak to two resilience groups this week. They are trying to ensure that whatever happens to us in the coming months and years, life can continue in the UK. Good people working hard to stay ahead of the threat. While I am on my feet, Denmark's intelligence service issues a warning as Russia's hybrid campaign escalates. Europe's agencies and Baltic ministers say that these can no longer be called 'hybrid'. They are overt attacks. In the UK, Wes Streeting urges us all to stock up on baked beans. He is doing all he can, it seems, to give Labour a second wind.
In a few days' time, the Royal Navy's Crew 1 in MCM2 Squadron will be stood down. They have no vessel to lower the
White Ensign on, no shore establishment in which to meet to celebrate 20 years' service so accomplished that it earned them the name 'Fighting Aces'. They were the crew that dealt with MV Smyrtos as she sailed into UK waters earlier this year. These sailors will quietly head off to other duties, on other ships, with other shipmates while we do our damnedest to ensure they get a proper send-off.
For Conservative party conference week, I will need my passport. I will be heading from Birmingham straight to Broadway in Manhattan. The late Sir David Amess was president of the Music Man Project, a choir of musicians with learning disabilities. This small charity in Southend-on-Sea now has global reach, providing teaching materials and music opportunities across the UK and, via sister organisations, worldwide. Their philosophy is that they should play the best venues in the world. I had helped Sir David in his successful attempt to secure the Royal Albert Hall. On the night they performed there he announced their dream to one day play their own show on Broadway. Nearly five years since his murder, they will be doing exactly that. The day after, they play at the UN, where we will announce an international alliance of disabled musicians. The past few weeks have been challenging for them. Setbacks were their bus being vandalised and their flights being cancelled at the last minute. They have cheerfully dealt with it all.
My week comes to a close with two fundraisers, for Conservative Associations and for veterans' charities. The former is in Solihull; the latter at the National Memorial Arboretum. I'm always inspired to meet so many people working to make life better. If the worst befell our country, these folk would be first on the team sheet. My week has been book-ended with memorials – one to so many murdered by hate and one to those that hath no greater love.
[MATTHEW PARRIS] I bid fond farewell to Great Lives
[MATTHEW PARRIS] I bid fond farewell to Great Lives
By my bed at home is a little shelf on which I put useful things for the morning. Coins, keys, my smartphone, some eardrops and... I looked at it, and it looked back at me. 'You won't be needing me any more,' it seemed to say, 'probably ever again in your life.'
I confess a tear pricked my eyes. It was true. My BBC pass, on its blue lanyard, is often beside my bed, ready for when I go straight from Derbyshire to the BBC studios in New Broadcasting House near Oxford Circus.
How many times have I walked from the Tube station, up Upper Regent Street, past the ‘pepper pot’ church, John Nash’s All Souls at Langham Place, and in through those BBC revolving doors. In fact the question is not rhetorical. I’ve done it more than 500 times because that’s how many Great Lives programmes I’ve presented for Radio 4 since I started 20 years ago, in 2006.
I'm leaving. Probably my last programme, already recorded, will be broadcast this month; and I'm not confident the corporation will decide to continue the series. I so hope they do.
You may have heard an episode or two. The format is beautifully simple. We invite as our guest somebody notable in public life and ask them to nominate, from the ranks of the dead, a figure – famous or obscure – whose life they have greatly admired. Then we get a third person to join us in the studio – an academic, perhaps, or a biographer, even a descendant or old friend of the person nominated: someone who can augment my guest’s enthusiasm with some extra information. We chat for 40 or 50 minutes – it’s a chat, not a symposium – which my producer then edits down to the half-hour of the broadcast programme.
The Great Lives idea was not mine. That distinction goes to an extraordinary BBC producer and presenter, Miles Warde. He started the series and has been my senior editor ever since I joined it, a few years in. Miles is a quirky genius whose own output has been prodigious. When the corporation (faced with the need for further cuts) asked him to interview for his own job, Miles declined. Best, then, I thought, to leave when Miles does, for I can't imagine the programme without him.
And, at 77, I should probably be looking at stepping back soon, anyway. Not for me the 'Gosh, he's 88 and still churning it out!' reputation. Not for me words like 'sprightly'. Slowly we lose our edge: I'm not as quick with responses as I once was, so I'll confine myself mostly to print and quit regular broadcasting while (I flatter myself) I'm ahead.
But what a ride it's been! I've had walk-outs (Christopher Hitchens, who, feeling I was giving him too hard a time over his choice of Leon Trotsky, called me a bleeding Tory, stormed out, then promptly stormed back in again). I've had awkward requests (Lord Snowdon, Princess Margaret's ex-husband, nominating Alec Issigonis, designer of the original Mini, who asked for wine at 2.30 in
Some of my most memorable programmes have celebrated a life most listeners won't have heard of
Some of my most memorable programmes have celebrated a life most listeners won't have heard of
the afternoon: we had to send someone out to buy a bottle). I've had some remarkable out-of-studio locations (interviewing the climber Joe Simpson of Touching the Void in the wind and rain perched on Stanage Edge in Derbyshire; and our programme on Roger Deakin, the water-loving nature writer and right-to-roamer, whom we celebrated by recording from a houseboat on the Thames, after which we stripped naked and dived into the river – only our guest from the Guardian kept his pants on).
My favourites? Too many to name, beyond saying this: some of my most memorable programmes have celebrated a life most listeners won't have heard of, but more should. Ada Lovelace, Byron's daughter, whom he never returned to England to see, an invalid and mathematical prodigy who died young but has some claim to have co-invented the computer along with Charles Babbage, has stayed always in my memory, not so much for her computing as for her passionate belief that poetry, art and beauty are cosmically linked with mathematics.
‘We don’t want to go too crazy and get rid of it completely.’
Speaking of great women, many years ago Miles decided to tally their prominence in our programmes. He found that, among more than 300 nominators, half the women had chosen a woman and half had chosen a man as their great life. Among male nominators, all but three had chosen another man. We resolved to put that right, and we have.
We might otherwise never have featured Princess Vera Gedroits, Russia's first woman military surgeon and professor of surgery, decorated for her battlefield work after the Russo-Japanese war, openly lesbian, who honed her skills in a cement factory, became a favourite of the Tsarina and (a towering figure of a woman) manhandled a whimpering Rasputin out of her surgery in the Imperial Palace. Vera even survived the transition to revolutionary communism, was a noted author and died peacefully in Kyiv, where she'd moved with her lover. She was nominated by her distant relative Mel Giedroyc, the actress and comedian best known for co-presenting The Great British Bake-off.
I often imagine what our great life would think if she or he were hovering above us in the studio. I believe Princess Vera would have been proud of Mel. On present plans, Vera will be my last great life.
I bow out sadly but without the least bitterness. Should I ever do Desert Island Discs, I know one choice I'll make. Noël Coward's 'Why Must the Show Go On?' about show business. 'Butchers and bakers,' he writes, 'Get little applause for their pains/When I think of miners and waiters in diners/ The query forever remains/ Why must the show go on?' So...
Stop being gallant, and don't be such a bore. Pack up your talent, there's always plenty more.
And if you lose hope, take dope And lock yourself in the john. Why must the show go on?
[The death of the author] What if AI is actually good at writing novels?
What is so special about the Garvaghy Road to Ulster Unionists? The area around Portadown attained significance for loyalists thanks to the Battle of the Diamond in 1795 when Protestant and Catholic forces clashed at a road junction. Twelve years later, Orangemen started their annual march from Portadown to the church at Drumcree, returning via the Garvaghy Road, which was then in the countryside. It wasn't entirely peaceful then, with a Protestant magistrate remarking in 1835 that the Orangemen had gone out of their way to pass by a Catholic chapel, stirring up the locals. But the march became more of a flashpoint after a council estate inhabited mostly by Catholics was built along the Garvaghy Road in the 1960s.
The Chancellor, John Healey, announced £6 billion for shipbuilding as part of his attempt to reindustrialise Britain. Which countries produced the most merchant ships in 2024, by share of total global value?
China....54.6% Italy....0.64%
South Korea....28.0% Germany....0.26%
Japan....12.6% Turkey....0.12%
Vietnam....1.01% India....0.06%
Philippines....0.93% US....0.04%
UNCTAD
Taking care | <td colspan="2">How much do local authorities spend on adult social care (at 2024/25 prices)? | 2009/10 | £23.2bn | 2011/12 | £22.1bn | 2013/14 | £21.2bn | 2015/16 | £21.7bn | 2017/18 | £22.1bn | 2019/20 | £23.3bn | 2021/22 | £25.2bn | 2023/24 | £26.9bn | 2024/25 | £27.8bn | <td colspan="2">Department for Health and Social Care | Department for Health and Social Care
Rod Stewart, 81, announced one final tour before he retires. Which other 1960s/1970s music acts are still on the road?
Van Morrison, 81, has a 12-date UK tour this autumn.
Bob Dylan, 85, has 30 European concerts this autumn.
Ringo Starr, 86, had a 12-date US tour in the spring.
Deep Purple (including early members Ian Gillan, 81, Roger Glover, 80, and Ian Paice, 78) have 37 dates in Europe this autumn. Roger Daltrey, 82, is in the middle of a 20-date solo tour in the US. Willie Nelson, 93, is booked at a festival in California next April.
The spectacular fall from grace of Haitian-Canadian writer Thélyson Orélien in many ways resembles our own culture war over Jason Arday. The celebrated author, feted in TV studios and in the literary salons of Quebec and Paris's Saint-Germain-des-Prés for his hard-hitting descriptions of the migrant experience, was accused on X last week both of serial plagiarism and of using artificial intelligence to write his latest novel. His accusers decried the soft bigotry of low expectations that caused the woke intelligentsia to turn a blind eye to mediocrity because their hero was a capital-B Black
A former literary scholar at All Souls, Oxford, has called AI ‘completely brilliant’
A former literary scholar at All Souls, Oxford, has called AI ‘completely brilliant’
man. His defenders, just as in Arday's case, tried to dismiss the original accuser as an extremist (the anonymous account responsible turned out to be run by Samuel Fitoussi, a columnist for the right-wing Le Figaro). They also attempted to cast the affair as the working of a racist lynch mob. The leftie magazine Les Inrockuptibles even came up with the thrillingly Stalinist line that 'in this affair, whether the accusation is well-founded is not what matters most'.
Orélien has denied the accusations. Literary sleuths have pointed out that Pangram – the AI detector that has marked up swaths of the text of his novel C'était ça ou Mourir as non-human – is prone to false positives, wrongly flagging pages of classic French literature written long before the advent of AI. That, however, has not stopped the committee of the Prix Goncourt, France’s equivalent of the Booker Prize and not known as a hotbed of reactionary politics, dropping Orélien’s book from this year’s shortlist.
But l'affaire Orélien poses a far more serious question for our times than the obvious one about race relations. What would it mean if a novel part-written by AI were actually excellent? In a fair world, should the author be sharing his prize with the Large Language Model (LLM) which may have toiled as his co-author? 'This book is very good – if it's AI that made it, we should use it!' the Goncourt Committee member Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt told a talk show in the wake of the scandal. 'No, I'm kidding!' he quickly added.
But if Schmitt is kidding, other authors and thinkers are starting to engage with the real possibility that the world is approaching a singularity moment where AI is as good as humans at ‘thinking’ and writing. The remarkable Dr Iain McGilchrist, a former literary scholar at All Souls, Oxford, who re-qualified as a consultant psychiatrist, has called AI ‘completely brilliant’, able to offer advice with a sensibility ‘very like my brother, who is an extraordinarily civilised art historian’. Lower down the intellectual totem pole, Alain Damasio, known as ‘the Pope of French science fiction’, is sufficiently secure in his reputation to admit that he regularly uses AI in his writing. ‘I’m stunned by its creative capabilities when it comes to imaginary worlds,’ he said recently. ‘It’s almost on the same level as my own craftsmanship, and it’s only going to keep improving.’
The Orélien case is just the latest in a long line of acclaimed books that have been flagged as AI. Rie Kudan, winner of Japan's 2024 Akutagawa Prize, admitted that she had used ChatGPT. AI-detector-triggering stories have won four out of the ten Commonwealth Short Story regional competitions in the last two years. An almost wholly AI written book was runner-up in a Chinese science fiction prize in 2023.
But there's a catch. Anthropic, the creator of Claude, has bought up millions of books and scanned them to build the database of its LLM (and then pulped the copies, sparking outrage). In other words, the published works of most authors writing today are already in the belly, or the mind, of the beast. (I know this because Anthropic owes me and thousands of other authors involved in a successful \$1.5 billion class action suit a shed-load of money for compensation.) That helps explain why a book by French author Sophie Jomain written in 2009 could come up as 94 per cent AI. A new text written by Jomain came up as 100 per cent machine-generated. 'What does that mean?' asks Jomain. 'The more I write, the more my writing starts to resemble artificial intelligence? Or is it that the more I write, the more artificial intelligence feeds on it and starts to resemble me?' In a further mind-bending twist, Pangram also offers to 'humanise' AI text for a fee, playing both gamekeeper and poacher.
Most people believe using AI to write is a kind of faking or cheating. But the question of whether the art it produces is automatically bad remains. The German artist Wolfgang Beltracchi painted hundreds of fakes of 20th-century masters that were validated by art historians, specialists at Christie's and the director of Paris's Pompidou Centre. They sold for tens of millions. Max
'The sermon was a massive improvement – the vicar must be using AI!'
Ernst's own widow even certified one of the works. Beltracchi was exposed (and jailed) in 2011, and the value of his fakes obviously plunged – though his creations were objectively brilliant in conception and execution. Claude recently wrote a ‘Bach’ fugue that even music scholars describe as ‘workman-like’ and non-experts like me find magical.
But Orélien – if he did use AI – wasn’t faking Ernst or Bach. He was faking himself. Moreover, people are still unaware that powerful new LLMs work best as a car you drive, not as a robot you send on errands. Try prompting an AI programme, even one as powerful as Claude’s Opus 5, to ‘write me a novel in the style of Thélyson Orélien’ and the result will be identifiable as AI slop – superficially convincing, maybe, but full of heavyhanded stylistic formulas and wooden characters. Amazon Books, whose content is estimated to be at least 40 per cent AI-created, is full of such formulaic genre-fiction drek.
However, if you, as an author, ask the machine to thoughtfully critique the prose you wrote yourself, it will likely do a great job. From there, it's a fatally simple step to asking the LLM to go ahead and add its fixes and thereby improve your text. That's the slippery slope on which today's literary world finds itself. Samuel Fitoussi asks whether 'the work of writing will change form... no longer about choosing each word, but about guiding one's AI'. Could we soon be living in a world where 'the one who produces the best novels will be the one who has invested the most creativity, intelligence or, at least, some kind of something in their AI'?
Fitoussi's perhaps bleak vision contains chinks of hope for human creativity. In his prediction, universal access to AI does not mean anyone can write a novel. The machine could become ‘a cognitive lever, a talent amplifier’ for those with sufficient mastery to use it. Non-masters of the craft, meanwhile, will merely produce derivative rubbish.
And what about the critics and prize committees who claim to be the arbiters and gatekeepers of public taste? As C'était ça ou Mourir has shown, AI already has them thoroughly fooled.
Earlier this month, the government launched its ‘Prepare’ campaign, urging us to plan for all manner of emergencies and put together a kit of food and supplies big enough to last several days. Housing Secretary Angela Rayner helpfully revealed what she’d be stockpiling: ‘Mascara, concealer, a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, some baked beans and a tin of custard – I like custard.’
This is perfect timing: Putin seems to be breathing a little more heavily down our necks and – phew! – I’ve just moved into a house with an understairs cupboard big enough for an emergency pantry.
A quick glance online tells me I can buy so-called ‘go bags’ complete with first aid kits, head torches, mess tins and fire starters from roughly £175. All very useful, no doubt, but not much fun.
So I dig a little further and come across the X page of Lucy Easthope, a disaster expert who's advised the government on all manner of catastrophes, including, most recently, the Covid pandemic. She suggests: 'It's OK for the 72-hour [emergency] cupboard to be things you like.' Say no more. In the spirit of Angela Rayner, I shall make my own survival kit.
This should be easy, I think. I've long felt I have the makings of a survivalist: every time I go on holiday to the Mediterranean, I make sure to leave space in my hold luggage for a few bottles of good red wine and extra-virgin olive oil. It just tastes so much better when bought from the source – and it's good to be prepared for when the Filippo Berio spikes above £10 a litre back home.
Hoarding three days of supplies shouldn't have to take on the frantic nature of dashing for loo roll at the start of lockdown. I log into my Sainsbury's delivery app and get tapping. In go a selection of jarred beans and chickpeas (not the tinned stuff, please), as well as capers and artichokes. Next, some tinned tomatoes, olives (Perelló, obvs), tuna and anchovies. I'm not sure even the apocalypse could make me desperate enough to buy corned beef.
I opt for a bottle of concentrated lemon juice, and while I'm not confident it will provide much vitamin C, it would mean I could still churn out some homemade hummus
Not even the apocalypse could make me desperate enough to buy corned beef
Not even the apocalypse could make me desperate enough to buy corned beef
when things get tough. Next go in crackers (Peter's Yard – for the hummus) and a few packets of rice and pasta.
Luckily, I’ve got a pretty well-stocked spice rack so don’t have to worry too much about flavouring my emergency rations. I’m also sorted for a can opener, corkscrew (for the lovely Mediterranean reds) and battery-powered meat thermometer – would you want to be getting food poisoning in a national emergency? I do, however, make a mental note to pop into Holland and Barrett next time I’m passing for some peppermint and charcoal pills, both meant to be very good for upset stomachs.
The World Health Organisation recommends keeping ten litres of water per household member per day in supply. Those big plastic five-litre canisters of water are somewhat unsightly, but needs must and, in any case, they'll be well hidden under my stairs.
We will also need that water for cooking and washing, which makes me think I'd better invest in a few good jugs for the tub – the water flow from my navy-blue Oliver Bonas jug is a little hard to control. I add some San Pellegrino to the basket too, because in times of hardship, it will be important to keep our dignity.
I also have the cat to think about. I usually feed him fresh, 100 per cent real meat food that, to my husband's chagrin, takes up most of our freezer. But if the power cuts out, that would all go off quite quickly. I chuck a few boxes of kibble into the order – I hope the cat forgives me.
I stock up on candles (tapered, of course – and enough to fill the freshly mounted wall sconces in my new dining room) and matches. Once that order is sorted, I also toggle over to John Lewis for a swanky Roberts radio – battery- and solar-powered – so I can listen to any government emergency updates as and when disaster strikes.
I'm not the only person I know who's thinking about survival. A friend of a friend has taken up crossbow lessons and another is learning to fish. I vow to do better with my vegetable patch next year (or would I be better off digging a shelter in the garden instead?) and to learn how to pickle.
Easthope has gathered an impressive 30,000 followers on X, all keen to get her tips on how to prepare – so I’m glad I’m not alone. One comments under her post: ‘Now I want “The Great British Prep Off”. You and Nigella in a field hospital or mass decontamination centre-style tent guiding contestants through “apocalypse of the week” themed tasks.’ Count me in – but only once my Sainsbury’s shop arrives.
There were many reasons why John Ruskin hated Rococo. The overly decorated style was a bête noire for the great architectural critic because he thought it the supreme example of excess and by its excess it concealed its true meaning. We are in an era of British life which I can only think of as ‘late Rococo incompetence’. The excess of bad news, government ineptitude and baffling decisions made by the state is now so great that we are struck dumb, incapable of meaningful reaction.
The news cycle abounds with evidence of this tidal wave of depressing or destructive acts. The sheer number of hideous stories has desensitised us. In the past, rapes, foiled terror plots, government corruption scandals or days featuring unprecedented levels of illegal immigration would dominate news bulletins, front pages and social media. Now they're just accepted as part of the wider tapestry of horror.
These stories often come in insane twos and threes. Earlier this week, for example, in just 48 hours, we learnt that Abu Hamza's wife was getting a £70,000 property makeover courtesy of British taxpayers, that we granted citizenship and asylum to a bona fide Hamas operative (who promptly showed his gratitude by plotting terror attacks on British soil) and that Shabana Mahmood, for all her tough talk, won't actually do anything about migration other than increasing routes from countries whose citizens are more likely to commit harm to British people. These barely made a splash. By the time you read this, the news cycle may already have moved on. Indeed, such was my shock about Hamza's wife, I temporarily forgot that Britain also provided council housing for the First Lady of Sierra Leone.
Last October, a man named Wayne Broadhurst was stabbed to death by an Afghan migrant in a quiet street in Uxbridge while walking his dog. It was precisely the sort of random, senseless killing of an innocent member of the public that would once have prompted weeks of discussion and national soul-searching. It emerged that the migrant had lied about his age, but had – inevitably – been given asylum and free accommodation. Yet the murder wasn’t prominently featured in many newspapers; nor was it mentioned in the Commons that week. To date, Broadhurst has only been mentioned once in parliament, by shadow home secretary Chris Philp commenting on the government's silence.
Part of the problem is the media itself. The BBC often covers these stories only very belatedly, or as a minor local item. This matters because the BBC website is by a wide margin the country's most-read online news source so its sluggishness has an outsize impact on awareness. However, there is also a sense of profound weariness among the public when confronted with obvious indicators of national decline. If they've heard of these things at all, many perceive reacting to them as either ‘low status’ or not worth
The sheer number of hideous stories has desensitised us
The sheer number of hideous stories has desensitised us
the effort. Perhaps this is simply the consequence of being so ground down. It's easy to see why. When they are so numerous, treating each act of malice or incompetence with the fury it deserves wouldn't result in anything changing; it would just result in an aneurysm.
This applies to the wider incompetence of the Establishment too. We are desensitised to the nature of our national situation and the appalling triviality of our government. Scandals – in the civil service, the legal system, the Church, the universities, the NHS and the government – are now so abundant that they get memory-holed after a day of coverage when once their very uncovering would have consumed weeks of news.
This week's Labour conference has been a veritable tsunami of bad ideas, from the mooted destruction of educational standards to ball-dropping on visas, migration and
'You're wasting your time, they've got a doorbell camera.'
Heathrow. The government has just handed councils the power to seize homes deemed ‘vacant’ after just six months. ‘I’ll say it again,’ crowed multiple-property owner Emily Thornberry in the manner of a corrupt Soviet commissar. ‘If you leave a home empty long-term in the middle of a housing crisis, it should be seized.’
It bears repeating: we are led by people who believe they should be able to expropriate your property and rent it out if they feel you are not putting it to good enough use. This is full-Commie stuff, and doubly terrifying – for if they believe this, then what other gross tyrannies may be awaiting us? But once again, the ‘safety in numbers’ approach to madness seems to be paying off.
Each of these demonstrations of folly merits a dissection, but such is the deluge that barely any will receive the criticism required. This is partly due to that febrile news cycle. However, many of them will get a free pass because of the Rococo nature of this incompetence and the fatigue it inspires. Since the last general election, we’ve gone from managing decline to speed-running it and nobody can quite keep up.
The deluge is sometimes absurd. This week the Defra minister Jenny Riddell-Carpenter claimed at a fringe group meeting that the countryside was going to be weaponised by ‘the far-right’. Country pubs, black labradors and warm ale are apparently part of a fascist conspiracy – and a vision of England that never existed. Bold talk from the MP for Suffolk Coastal. What is the appropriate response to this? ‘Am I having a stroke?’ comes to mind as the most obvious one. But that’s the point: the deluge of the inane, the mad and the wicked continues, demoralising and radicalising as it does so. They are dismantling the England you grew up in and then telling you it never existed.
One might question whether this is a deliberate tactic to overwhelm us with incompetence and malfeasance. The Rococo was designed to act as such, providing so many possible places to look that getting any sense of the wider vision became impossible. Ruskin rejected this because he thought it deceitful. We ought to reject the current deluge and the diversionary tactics for exactly the same reason.
Sir: It was disappointing to read Fin Taylor's Diary (26 September) in which he reflected upon feeling a ‘tinge of satisfaction’ at the California wildfires. He made the rather sweeping statement that Californians believe they live beyond the laws of nature, and that those affected are so rich that it is of no consequence.
In fact, the fires at Pacific Palisades affected the whole community. Near to us, a children's day centre, largely used by low-income families, was completely lost. Our local Ralph's supermarket burned to the ground with dozens of jobs lost. Landscapers, gardeners, waiters, domestic workers all lost their livelihoods. Whether a billionaire or working for \$20 an hour, the merciless devastation touched everyone.
Sir: It was touching to read of Peter Hitchens's affection for Canada following his disenchantment with the USA ('Swing state', 19 September). But he is far from being the first Brit to make this particular North American journey. In the wake of America's War of Independence, the former colonies were no place for 'loyalists' – the term then used for settlers who backed the Crown between 1775 and 1783. As well as suffering political isolation, loyalists had their property confiscated and lives threatened by victorious and vengeful rebels. As a result, thousands of persecuted Anglophiles sought asylum in the new northern settlements of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island.
Throughout eastern Canada, these refugees are still referenced and lauded by ‘loyalist’ parks, plaques and street names. Likewise, in the many memorials marking two world wars, Canada’s contribution to Britain’s armed forces is proudly acknowledged: in even the remotest villages of Newfoundland, the Maple Leaf and Union Jack fly alongside cenotaphs and statues. So Hitchens is right to feel more at home in Canada; and Anglo-Canadians are right to be distrustful of their southern neighbour.
Sir: In his Notes of 19 September, Charles Moore laments that people are forced to move quickly along the length of the Bayeux tapestry due to the huge numbers wanting to see it. Could I point out that, for
those who want to avoid this hassle, there is a full-size copy of it (made in 1885 by ladies in Leek, Staffordshire) on permanent display here in Reading, Berks? Located in Reading museum, it is only a five-minute walk from the main station (now connected to London on the Elizabeth line). Worth visiting not just for the tapestry but also to see a place about which the late Sir John Betjeman said ‘few towns better repay exploration’. James Halls Reading, Berkshire
Sir: I must reply to David Wood's letter (26 September) because he invokes my late brother in support of his dismissal of the importance of Bible knowledge. I gained the strong impression that Christopher eventually wished he hadn't given his anti-God book the subtitle How Religion Poisons Everything, because it is so obviously untrue. Religion doesn't poison the art, architecture, literature and music which it has inspired. Nor does it poison the hospitals and other charitable benefactions which it stimulates. As for the Bible, my brother was on record, more than once, praising the power and beauty of scripture. In one essay, 'When the King Saved God' in 2011, he wrote 'A culture that does not possess this common store of image and allegory will be a perilously thin one.' I can personally bear witness that, at our father's funeral, he chose to read the following passage from St Paul's Epistle to the Philippians: 'Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.' Far too soon afterwards, I read the same verses at his memorial gathering.
Sir: Jim Lawley's entertaining review of 1864: The Year That Changed Cricket, with its instances of archaic eccentricities (Books, 22 September), reminds me of a slightly unusual match I once took part in between a local team and members of my English Civil War re-enactment group. We used a curved bat, such as I have seen in the Long Room at Lord's, and two stumps rather than three. The locals wore cricket whites, boots and club caps; we had knee-length breeches, flat-toed latchet shoes, Montero caps and in one instance a lobster-pot helmet. They followed MCC laws, we the rules of 17th-century engagement; I
shall never forget the surprise on the face of their opening batsman when, going for his first run, our corporal rugby-tackled him to the ground.
Sir: Patrick West's piece on Micronations (Notes on..., 26 September) and his mention of Piddington's independence bid brought to mind the precedent set by Heathcote Williams's and David Rappaport's Free and Independent Republic of Frestonia in west London in 1977. With its own flag and stamps, it was supported by various luminaries including Sir Geoffrey Howe. Its purpose was a serious one: to find permanent social housing for the homeless in the area, in which it succeeded.
Sir: Rupert Hawksley's article ‘All bets are off’ (26 September) makes no mention of the National Lottery or the extraordinary expansion of its scratch cards. When the Lottery was introduced, these were highly controversial, yet parliament permitted them within the established framework. They have since become ubiquitous, available in virtually every convenience store. It is curious that, while Labour’s proposed restrictions on traditional bookmakers are being scrutinised, scratch cards receive no attention whatsoever. If the concern is the accessibility and normalisation of gambling, why is the National Lottery apparently exempt from the discussion?
Sir: In response to Keith Johnson's Notes on... Dogs barking in the distance (19 September), the most chilling polar opposite must be from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in Silver Blaze, with the dog in the night-time remaining silent.
Sir: My dear late mother-in-law, when asked what was for dinner, always replied ‘whim-woms with gooses’ bridles’ (Letters, 26 September). Never did find out what she meant.
Over the last 10 years, we’ve partnered with the UK to invest more than £300 million in aerospace innovation and infrastructure. Together, we are strengthening the country’s aerospace capabilities for generations to come.
This is a marketing communication. Investors may not get back the original amount invested. This advertisement should not be construed as advice for investment. Important Information: This announcement constitutes a financial promotion pursuant to section 21 of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 and has been prepared and issued by Polar Capital LLP. Polar Capital is a limited liability partnership with registered number OC314700, authorised and regulated by the UK Financial Conduct Authority ("FCA").
ANY OTHER BUSINESS | MARTIN VANDER WEYER
Healey should slash fuel taxes to avert a winter diesel crisis
Healey should slash fuel taxes to avert a winter diesel crisis
Chancellor John Healey's ‘new age of industrialisation’ was one of the catchier soundbites of the Labour conference. But (to adapt Humphrey Bogart) it won’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world during a winter of soaring diesel prices, round-the-block pump queues and rationing to protect priority users. Which is all possible if President Trump enacts a 90-day block on diesel exports ahead of November’s midterm elections in a desperate move to ease US domestic fuel prices, which have surged since his crazy Iran war began.
Four in ten engines on British roads are still diesel-fuelled, despite the hype for electric power. Besides ten million cars, the diesel fleet includes the vast majority of emergency vehicles. A full tank for an average family car or tradesman's van already costs £31 more than it did at the start of the year. It could rise by the same again before Christmas – not least because the UK holds barely six weeks' worth of diesel stock, having closed most of the refineries that had large-scale storage capacity.
We rely for fuel imports on the Netherlands first and the US second, but the Dutch in turn buy from the US and every wholesaler in Europe will wade into a bidding war if shipments diminish. A vision looms of a return to September 2000, when a truckers' blockade of refineries in protest against fuel taxes brought the economy to a standstill.
And there's no supply solution in sight, other than a vague hope that Trump pretends not to remember he said last weekend that he's ‘thinking about [a diesel export ban] very seriously’. Even if he resiles, he has shaken the market in the wrong direction.
If he carries the threat through, Healey won't be able to halt panic-buying or a plunge in business and consumer confidence; but he can suppress pump prices by temporarily reducing the 53p-per-litre fuel duty and the 20 per cent VAT rate, which would account for another 38p in a £2.30 litre. Has any Labour chancellor ever had the wisdom to slash tax to keep the economy alive? Diesel could be the test case.
It so happens that my diesel Audi, nicknamed ‘the fat cruiser’, was recently written off (while parked) by a lunchtime drunk-driver, and its replacement is a petrol-powered Skoda. So for all the hassle involved, at least my fuel costs should be lower pro tem. The oddity in an otherwise efficient digital claim process was that the insurance company eased its own cash flow by sending a cheque for the write-off value by snail mail. For ten unnecessary days I’ve been left in the last-century position of Billy Bunter awaiting a postal order.
In my distant youth, I was an occasional denizen of the Shed at Stamford Bridge. No longer an active Chelsea fan, these days I watch instead the financial games of leading clubs and owners. So I'm keen to hear the ‘irrefutable evidence’ Manchester City says it will bring forward to rebut the 114 alleged breaches of Premier League rules of which it's reported to have been found guilty.
Charges dating from 2009 to 2018 relate, inter alia, to not providing accurate financial information and not disclosing full details of player and manager remuneration. The appeal process will drag on as opposing legal teams rack up colossal fees. Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester United and Spurs have signalled that they will each seek compensation of £100 million-plus if City is judged to have unfairly disadvantaged them. The big bucks at stake overshadow the fact that expulsion or relegation as a sanction on England's most garlanded club would be traumatic for the loyal supporters who are its real long-term stakeholders. Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan of Abu Dhabi, City's ultimate owner since 2008, is probably too rich and distant to be perturbed.
Meanwhile, the other big football story of the week – the Prime Minister's plan to reverse a 1985 anti-hooliganism ban on fans drinking alcohol during matches – stirred another youthful memory: of packed terraces cascading with urine and the related shame of going home with pungent soaked trousers. The Manchester City case is the reputational equivalent of what we used to call a hot leg for the entire venal milieu of top-flight football.
Charlotte Church has castigated Ed Sheeran for choosing ‘consumerism and capitalism over doing the right thing’. I’m not sure I’d recognise either of these British songsters if they sat next to me on a bus. But as this column believes capitalism generally is the right thing, Church’s broadside – at her ‘End Times Pop Dungeon’ gig in Cardiff, described as ‘part euphoric rave, part total Dadaist carnage’ and which I’m sorry to have missed – demands further enquiry.
Sheeran's US tour is in a pickle following the sacking of the pro-Palestinian rapper Macklemore as a support act under pressure from venue owners; the withdrawal of other musicians in solidarity; and the cancellation of two more shows. Sheeran's emotional (if scripted) apology at a concert in Philadelphia, presenting himself as a naive artist drawn into the maelstrom of Israel-Palestine anger, provoked mixed reactions, including Church's.
But she’s not wholly wrong about Ed: there’s another Sheeran behind the sad ginger with a guitar. At 35, he has systematically amassed a portfolio of business interests, including rental properties across London, besides the tightly controlled operation of his recordings and tours. The Sunday Times estimates his fortune at more than £400 million. And you wouldn’t want to tangle with him on anything to do with music copyright, a field in which his lawyers have won or settled a series of high-profile cases.
In reality, Sheeran is a poster boy for the hard-nosed mode of capitalism that sometimes pervades the music biz. Whether his on-stage tears were sincere or crocodile, we certainly don't need to feel sorry for him.
As a child, I would disappear down to the beach in Cornwall and spend hours investigating rock pools. From above they looked empty. Get down on your knees and suddenly there were fish, crabs and entire worlds. The UK stock market is rather like that.
The ice cream in Cornwall was pretty good too.
Years later, I met Edward Hugo. Smart, relentless and the sort of man you trust. He was waiting in a coffee shop. The rain was biblical. London was miserable. And yet I had spent years dreaming about this moment. Now I just needed Ed to say yes.
In 2019, we founded Kernow: a contrarian investment manager specialising exclusively in UK equities.
The timing was terrible.
Everyone seemed to agree about Britain. Unloved. The UK stock market had become the financial equivalent of a seaside town in November. We thought this was wonderful.
Human beings have always struggled to distinguish an unpopular thing from a bad thing. Our job is to work out where the market has confused the two. We hunt for good businesses hiding behind bad stories.
“Human beings have always struggled to distinguish an unpopular thing from a bad thing. Our job is to work out where the market has confused the two”
Why go to all this trouble?
Mediocrity is now almost free. Imagine being back at school and being told everyone will receive the average mark of the class. Why would anyone bother revising? The average falls and everyone shares equally in the decline.
Our bet is that nobody grows up dreaming of being average. So we chose something else. To invest our family's capital alongside a group of wealthy and wise clients. Preferably both.
We cannot promise to always be right. We can promise to work tirelessly.
Cornwall taught me something I later rediscovered in markets: the view is usually better when the crowd is somewhere else.
If you believe in thinking for yourself.
If you believe Britain is worth a closer look.
If you still enjoy finding what others miss.
By Alyx Wood
Take a look
Professional investors only. Capital at risk. Issued by Kernow Asset Management Limited which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.
CULTURE CLUB/BRIDGEMAN VIA GETTY IMAGES
kiaoliug
jupaiik
Αλημε Αιμίζυ 4.
Engraving of the Emperor Charlemagne, after Albrecht Dürer
Charlemagne's Dream: The Rise and Fall of the Carolingian Empire by James Palmer Basic Books, £25, pp. 352
I don't know if it is still the case, but there was a time in London when the ring of a doorbell on Saturday morning could only mean the Jehovah's Witnesses and another copy of Watchtower. They all made for some pretty dotty reading in those days, but there was one article that has stuck in the memory – a piece that asked, and predictably answered, the question: 'How Great was Charlemagne?' The article concluded: 'Though then known as Charles the Great, he was great neither in God's eyes nor in the eyes of those whose standards are set by God's Word.'
If it is not an attractive judgment, it is one that needs thinking about, because if anyone is equipped to enter into the mind of 8th- and 9th-century Man it is very possibly the Jehovah's Witness. There are certainly aspects of the Carolingian age that seem only too familiar, but neither Putin nor even the imminent destruction of humanity at the hands of AI can inch most of us close to a world when Gog and Magog were on the horizon, the Last Days looming and the retributive hand of God seen in every plague, famine or Arab victory.
The Dark Ages might not have been quite as dark as was once thought, but they really were very, very strange. It was a period in which the corpse of the mighty Charles 'the Hammer' Martel might be found incinerated by a dragon in his St Denis sepulchre; a time of signs, warnings, omens and prophetic dreams. James Palmer writes of one such dream that came – or did not come – to the Emperor Charlemagne:
In it a mysterious man approached him with a sword engraved with four ominous and mostly untranslatable Germanic words; raht, radoleiba, nasg, and enti. The meaning seemed immediately clear to him because he was also a would-be philosopher... There would be four ages of his dynasty; one of abundance, one of sudden failure, one of great disorder, and then? Enti clearly meant either that the end of his line would come or the end of the world.
It didn't quite work out like that – the Carolingians would stumble on deep into the 10th century and the world did not end – but it was close enough to give Palmer his title and his book its narrative trajectory. It falls naturally into three parts. The first is devoted to Charles Martel and the rise of Pippin the Short; the second to the extraordinary career
It was an age when genuine piety could happily coexist with appalling brutality
It was an age when genuine piety could happily coexist with appalling brutality
of his son Charles; and the last and longest to the endless, internecine struggles of his warring successors.
While it might be argued that it was all something of a sideshow, that the important stuff was happening a long way to the east, what a sideshow it was! It is hard to think that anyone in the early 8th century would have given the last Merovingians the time of day; but within two generations that had all changed and the ‘backwater barbarian kingdom’ of the Franks had transformed into a ‘mighty cosmopolitan empire that stretched from northern Spain to the River Danube and from the rich ports of the North Sea to the eternal City of Rome’.
The central figure here is, inevitably, Charlemagne, and the one date everyone knows, Christmas Day 800, when he was crowned ‘Augustus’ by Pope Leo in Rome’s St Peter’s Basilica. There is no question that Charlemagne towers over his age in a way his great father never did, but Pippin deserves a due that he rarely gets; and if there is one other date we all ought to recognise it is 754, when another pope crossed the Alps to anoint Pippin king and cement a symbiotic compact of papacy and power that would rumble on through the succeeding centuries.
It was not the sole legacy of Carolingian rule either, because if Charlemagne can be hailed as ‘the Father of Europe’, his successors might well be branded the inadvertent fathers of Europe’s historic rivalries. On Charlemagne’s death in 814, Louis the Pious succeeded as sole emperor; but he would be the last of the line to do so and as son turned on father, brother on brother and half-brother, uncle on nephew, and east on west, Charlemagne’s empire broke up along fault-lines all too familiar from many a future war.
If it seems a lot to pack into 270 pages of text, Palmer makes a terrific job of it. A week from now and half of it will probably be forgotten; but for the next few days at least, before Clement, Adelbert and their fellow heretics slip back into the darkness of the Dark Ages and all those Louis – the Pious, the German, the Younger, the Stammerer – once more blur into a single, composite Carolingian, this wonderful cast of saints, sinners, popes and ranting churchmen will make for hugely entertaining company.
Pitched somewhere between Janet Nelson's King and Emperor and Simon Wilder's Lotharingia, this is serious but popular history writing at its best. Palmer is more confident than Nelson that one can ‘know’ Charlemagne, and it is a convincing picture he presents. It was an age when genuine piety could happily coexist with appalling brutality, and renaissance stirrings with the darkest fears. The reformer and educator who brought the Anglo-Saxon scholar Alcuin to the Aachen court (a man who was as aware as any Jehovah’s Witness could wish of the coming judgment of God) was also the savage warlord who could have 4,500 Saxons beheaded in a day. To get some sense of that first Charlemagne, one should visit Aachen; to understand something of the whole man one could do a lot worse than take along Palmer’s Charlemagne’s Dream.
Portrait of the artist in his own words Ariane Bankes
Claude Monet: A Life in Letters edited by Teresa Krasny et al Thames & Hudson, £30, pp. 552
Claude Monet: A Life in Letters edited by Teresa Krasny et al Thames & Hudson, £30, pp. 552
For a painter we acknowledge as a master of atmospheric effects and ever-changing light, whose early work ‘Impression, Sunrise’ sparked the artistic revolution that became Impressionism, Claude Monet (1840-1926) spent an awful lot of time complaining about the weather. He was obsessed by it, cowed and crushed by it, inspired by it to flights of genius, and its vagaries would become the intrinsic focus of his art: ‘I have just returned, covered in mud and soaking wet, the weather is so awful it is impossible to do any work’ is a constant grizzle. He seethes with frustration as he is
forced to make constant changes as everything keeps growing and getting greener... In brief, because of these changes, I am following Nature without being able to capture her... Each day I find it harder, and then there is the river, which falls, then rises, green one day, yellow the next, now nearly dry, but it will become a raging torrent tomorrow after the terrible rain we are having.
He takes us right there to the river bank, his letters often reading as a litany of anguish, a record of unremitting struggle with the elements and so much else.
Given his battles with the climate, let
'Self-portrait with beret', by Claude Monet, 1886
PHOTO 21/UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP/GETTY IMAGES
alone the grinding poverty and nagging self-doubt that beset his early career, it is remarkable that he never gave up. His obsessive commitment to painting, his wild ambition and courage – even arrogance – in overturning convention, and his shrewd management of his career and profile, are all on display in this newly translated selection from his correspondence: 417 letters in all, including some never previously published, to friends, family, dealers, patrons, fellow artists and statesmen. Selected (and authenticated) to
He constantly importuned friends and dealers, hustling for money, initially with little hope of success
He constantly importuned friends and dealers, hustling for money, initially with little hope of success
chart the trajectory of Monet's life as a painter and family man, they provide a scholarly and volatile portrait of the artist in his own words on the centenary of his death.
His volatile nature affected his writing as much as his painting. If there are glimmers of brilliance to be savoured, there is also the prosaic business of just getting along. The personal letters chosen here, covering some seven decades, are the most compelling, veering from elation to despair, with little middle ground.
In early adulthood, the provincial boy from Le Havre was fired by excitement at works he saw in ‘this dizzying Paris’ – by Delacroix, Corot, Courbet, Daubigny, the Barbizon School – and dazzled by the range of painterly possibilities. But his father’s disapproval and lack of financial support condemned Monet to penury from the off, and he scrabbled to sell enough to house and feed himself, let alone his first wife Camille and his growing family. He was constantly importuning friends and dealers, hustling for work or money, initially with little hope of success.
Desperation tinges every line of his begging letters: ‘I am being punished now for being too ambitious... I am on the verge of having everything seized and sold: all my studies would be taken,’ he writes to Courbet while completing his monumental ‘Luncheon on the Grass’ (now a star exhibit at the Musée d’Orsay). Sometimes he could not work for lack of paints even, and cursed his fate. He lashes out to his friend Frédéric Bazille:
I have nothing left to do but bang my head against the wall, for I have no claim to an instant fortune, and if everyone who said the same thing as you sent me 50 francs or even 40, I would certainly not be in this situation.
Then the sun would come out, and he would be working again, hope renewed.
Monet was a plein-air painter at heart, and his moves, first to Argenteuil on the Seine, then to a riverside house at Vertheuil, marked his transition to a painter of effects, or the vaporous effects of weather. But life was no easier, and the art market no more receptive to this experiment, and he sank to new depths of despair during the 1870s, as his wife ailed and the debts built up.
What a relief, then, to see him gradually emerge from self-laceration in the 1880s, as his efforts finally bore fruit – adverse weather notwithstanding – and he achieved domestic happiness in an unconventional ménage with Alice Hoschedé, the estranged wife of his former patron. They pooled their eight children, two sons from Monet's marriage to Camille (who had died in 1879), and six of Alice's, and defied social opprobrium to live together, initially at Vertheuil and then from 1883 at Giverny, the house of Monet's dreams.
His letters to Alice in their early years together betray a tentative, cautious sensibility; he addresses her as ‘Dear Madame’ until the eventual day of their wedding in 1892, and plainly has to manage fluctuating expectations on her part, threats of separation and fears of abandonment until their relationship settled into one of absolute trust and intimacy, and he could confidently address her as ‘My dearest darling’. She was his first port of call, and he wrote to her daily – sometimes twice daily – whenever his frequent painting forays separated them.
His solicitous courtesy to Alice and a wide circle of friends sets a different tone from his correspondence with dealers and collectors, with whom he could be crisp. He bares his inner steel even to the faithful and endlessly proactive Parisian gallerist Paul Durand-Ruel, his prime dealer and champion from the early 1870s. Despite signing
If he'd had students, he'd have said always have a broom at hand
to sweep out all the readymade images of your subject which come to mind;
he'd have said this is the hardest part, harder than putting paint on canvas.
He'd have said the broom's handle should become smooth from use
and the day you think you don't need it is the day memory has won.
Look at the results of his encounter with that iris – he's eighty-four
and it's as though
he's never looked at one before.
-Helen Farish
Helen Farish's fifth collection, Monet's Broom, will be published by Bloodaxe in November to mark the centenary of the artist's death
off ‘Your devoted’ or ‘Yours devotedly’, he regularly hounds Durand-Ruel for money and upbraids him for lack of better promotion and visibility. And he openly gives his work to other dealers, calculating that the resulting rivalry will boost his prices, which it does. The financial breakthrough came with Durand-Ruel’s exhibition in 1891 of the first of Monet’s acclaimed series paintings, ‘The Grainstacks’. Thereafter, his market grew not just in France but in Germany and America, and by the end of the century Monet would be a millionaire.
Wealth did not mellow him. He remained a beady curator of his newfound celebrity and still suffered almost suicidal bouts of artistic despair. Grief, too, after his beloved Alice died, followed by his elder son Jean, in middle age. Each of these was enough to stop him temporarily in his tracks; but his pool at Giverny, shimmering with waterlilies, rescued him, offering him one last project in which to invest his all. Conceived during the first world war as a ‘retreat for peaceful meditation’ from the fray, in which his son Michel was fighting and friends were dying, these magnificent studies on canvas were Monet’s apotheosis, his retort to the barbarity and destruction of war.
He had always been generous to fellow artists, campaigning for their recognition and legacy (he masterminded the bequest of Manet's shocking ‘Olympia’ to the Louvre), and his warm friendship with Georges Clemenceau now paved the way to lavish gifts of his own to the state, notably the 22 ‘Water Lilies’ panels that found a permanent home in the Jeu de Paume.
We learn from the Introduction that the 417 letters presented here were selected from 3,642 identified by scholars to date. Organised into six chronological chapters, with introductory essays to give context, they certainly narrate a life of rare struggle and fulfilment, but I wonder if every one earns its place: some are, frankly, dull business notes, and the youthful pleas for funds to all and sundry become wearyingly repetitious. I wished for more of the warmth and humour so evident in the letters to Alice and friends, vivid with anecdote and observation – how Monet nearly lost his life when engulfed by a huge wave in Etretat, or bunked down miserably on a sodden painting trip between rats (above) and a pig (below) with only a tallow candle to read by; or his ecstatic reaction to Bordighera on the Riviera. 'One would need a palette of diamonds and precious stones' to do it justice, he declared.
As he confessed to his beloved step-daughters, ‘writing is not my forte’, and why should it be, when painting so evidently was? But cumulatively, with their well-chosen illustrations, these letters give us a granular portrait of a life of ceaseless striving and self-criticism in which the personal and painterly were inextricably braided. As he recollected in 1917, Monet ricocheted between ‘moments of great discouragement and of courage, but such is my life’.
How To Think About Terrorism: Reflections on Philosophy, History and Politics
by Quassim Cassam and Richard English OUP, £25, pp. 272
This book begins with rueful comments on the absence of philosophy from terrorism literature. The phenomenon is frequently analysed through psychological, religious, political, economic, sociological and military perspectives, but rarely from the philosophical. Yet questions such as how and why terrorists opt for violence, how they justify it to themselves and others, how they regulate it and why they stop, all have philosophical ramifications. As do questions about counter-terrorism, particularly with reference to retributive terror, running agents in terrorist organisations, interrogation and torture.
Quassim Cassam and Richard English, philosopher and historian respectively, avoid the easy route of exploring such questions via abstract thought experiments. The best known of these frequently features in discussions of possible justifications of torture: if your prisoner had concealed a nuclear device in London timed to explode later this afternoon and was refusing to say where, would you be justified in torturing him? Instead of agonising over such hypothetical scenarios, the authors focus on actual examples of what they call lived experience, showing that in real life such issues are surrounded by the messy complexities of timing, truth, error, falsehood, motive and efficacy.
They also resist the temptation to reach for some ultimate definition of terrorism applicable in all circumstances at all times. As we know, one man's terrorist may be another man's freedom fighter. Overly precise definitions can lead to arguing that Ukrainian resistance to Russian occupation is terrorism (as the Russians would claim, of course), or that the destruction of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie in 1988 was a justified response to American military action. Instead, the authors opt for a descriptive and interpretive approach, outlining what characterises terrorism and stressing the importance of context, motive and intention. Their emphasis is on what works, and they conclude that the legal definition offered in the Terrorism Act of 2000 will ‘suffice for most practical purposes’.
Nearly all modern discussions of terrorism assume and focus on non-state terrorism as conducted by terrorist groups, some of which may be state-sponsored. However, there is also state terrorism, as openly advocated in the Terror following the French Revolution. This is terror ‘systematically embedded in the state’s structures and identities’, such as in the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany – or, arguably, in today’s China. The book’s summary of the differences between Hamas and Israel in this respect is succinct and persuasive.
It is non-state terrorism, however, that the authors find ‘emblematic of terrorism as a whole’. In discussing its various aspects, particularly methods, motives and purposes, they encouragingly cite the groundbreaking research by the US academic Audrey Cronin, who concluded that terrorism nearly always fails. She examined 450 campaigns and found that only 4.4 per cent achieved their strategic aims, that 6.4 per cent had some limited success and that 87.1 per cent were complete failures.
This is relevant to any philosophical assessment of a terrorist group's justification of its actions: if your aims are in practice unachievable – the universal adoption of Islamic Sharia law, for example, or the extinction of the human race, or the expulsion of Northern Ireland from the UK against the democratically expressed wishes of its majority – this must surely torpedo any attempted justification for murdering people in order to (not) achieve it.
Such considerations, along with evaluation of means and ends, are the meat and drink of philosophical analysis and should be deployed in any attempt to persuade terrorists of the wrongfulness and futility of their ways. Much has been written about preventing people becoming terrorists, usually emphasising something called the radicalisation process. Cassam and English argue that this is an assumption by policy-makers who need generalisations in order to secure predictability.
Particularists, on the other hand, claim there is no single path to radicalisation and that it is pointless to strive for generalities when human beings are all specificity. Cassam and English favour a hybrid approach, while inclining towards the particular; profiling terrorists, they reckon, is about as useful as profiling farmers. But ‘the Devil alone knoweth the heart of man’ pronounced a medieval judge, and they concede that, ‘with the best will in the world, we might still be unable to make sense of the excesses of an Emwazi [the sadistic IS executioner, Jihadi John] or a Breivik [the Norwegian mass murderer]’.
Assessment as to whether terrorists are mad or sane, and whether terrorism is rational or irrational, leads to the conclusion that most terrorists are fanatical rather than mad, and that although terrorism can be rational it is inherently neither one nor the other. This illustrates why philosophy should be part of terrorism studies: how we see terrorists affects how we treat them, and how we treat them can affect whether or why they do it. There are no complete answers, but this approach, like the book that endorses it, is a worthwhile endeavour.
[Doing unto others Chris Mullin] The Boy with the Knapsack: An Extraordinary Life from the Kindertransport to the House of Lords
[Doing unto others Chris Mullin] The Boy with the Knapsack: An Extraordinary Life from the Kindertransport to the House of Lords
by Alf Dubs
Ithaka, £25, pp. 320
For all that it is an anachronism, the House of Lords contains some remarkable specimens, not least Alf Dubs. The child of a mixed marriage – his father was Jewish, his mother not – he arrived in this country from Prague on one of the kindertransports organised by Sir Nicholas Winton, with his possessions in a knapsack and a luggage label on his coat identifying him. Many of his Jewish compatriots were not so lucky and perished in the death camps.
He was fortunate in another respect, too. Unlike with many of his companions, his father had already made it out and was there to greet him. His mother eventually managed to join them, arriving in the UK just four days before the outbreak of war. Her first application for an exit permit resulted in her being thrown down stairs by the Gestapo officer in charge. Luckily, he also threw her passport after her, which enabled her to escape.
Initially they lived in Northern Ireland, where Dubs's father had found work in a textile factory; but he died within a year and young Alf and his mother moved to a bedsit in Manchester. There she, a trained nurse, found work scrubbing floors in a restaurant and later as a school meals supervisor. Alf, meanwhile, progressed via a primary school for Czech exiles and Cheadle Hume grammar school to the LSE. His interest in politics was sparked by the discovery of the death camps as they were liberated by the Allied armies: 'I believed that if evil people could do such terrible things, they could be countered by others doing something good.'
After national service and a spell as a supply teacher at a rough secondary school in Hackney, Dubs ended up working for an advertising agency, in due course becoming a councillor in Westminster. Among the controversies of the day were plans to drive a dual carriageway through Piccadilly Circus and demolish the old Covent Garden, both which were seen off by the public outcry.
Dubs was lucky to be elected to parliament for Battersea in 1979, not a good year for Labour, and he retained the seat against the odds in 1983, an even worse year, only to be defeated four years later. A highlight of his seven years in the Commons was the struggle to save Battersea power station from demolition by developers. He also describes a mentally ill constituent turning up at his surgery, first with a knife and later with a hammer, intent on killing him. Death threats to MPs are nothing new.
Out of parliament, Dubs eventually found work as chief executive of the British Refugee Council, helping to assimilate successive waves of refugees from places such as Vietnam and Bosnia. In 1994, he was appointed to the Lords, where he flourished, first as a minister in the Northern Ireland office and later as a campaigner for the more humane treatment of refugees, particularly children. The Dubs amendment to the 2015 Immigration Bill obliged the government to admit 3,000 unaccompanied minors living in destitution in European refugee camps. After initially accepting it, the government eventually reneged, but not before 480 impoverished children had been rescued. Although Dubs received much public encouragement, not everyone was happy. 'A pity you survived the Holocaust,' wrote one anonymous correspondent. 'They will become terrorists like you,' wrote another.
Having visited the camps in France, Jordan and Greece and looked the damned in the eyes, Dubs writes:
It is the lack of hope that so appals me about the plight of refugees today… I have found desperate people, including many lone children, who have no prospect of finding a new life. They may have survived the terrible experiences that led them to flee, but just surviving has become their lot… It is my hope that we will also remember the humanity that was shown to children like me – and honour that humanity by standing together and once again welcome those persecuted by war so they too can have hope for the future.
The Boy with the Knapsack contains no great revelations. Dubs's causes will not be everyone's cup of tea, but his energy, sincerity and integrity shine through. He writes: 'I shall always want to say thank you to this country. Lifelines were provided for me and, in turn, I have tried to provide them for others.' Aged 93, he is still going strong.
The Auditorio de Tenerife Adán Martín, designed by Santiago Calatrava and completed in 2003, made primarily of reinforced white concrete
The Iron Curtain, or at least its most visible symbol, was not metal. Berlin's Antifaschistischer Schutzwall (Anti-Fascist Protection Wall) was concrete. Its ugliness of form and function seemed to many proof of the evils inherent in this ancient building material. But for every hideous Berliner Mauer, you have a glorious Roman Pantheon. The dome of Hadrian's incomparable temple is, after nearly two millennia, the largest unreinforced concrete structure in the world.
In our own era, concrete has allowed the best architects to do their best work. Witness Le Corbusier's Ronchamp chapel. And who would argue against Denys Lasdun's National Theatre as the best late-20th-century British building? The shuttering used to contain the poured concrete has acquired the grain of its wooden construction – proof of concrete's ability to absorb textures and colours to emotional effect. So much care was taken, the architect said, that it would have been cheaper to clad the theatre in Carrara marble – and he confessed to finding the smell of concrete an aphrodisiac.
The cases both for and against concrete are nuanced, as Stephen Parnell, the editor of the RIBA Journal, explains in a very clever book which is neither an apologia nor an attack, but a well-balanced appraisal of this most familiar yet misunderstood composite. One indisputable thing about concrete is its superabundance. According to the US Geological Survey, global annual concrete production is the equivalent of two metric tonnes for every person on the planet.
The Guardian has called concrete ‘the most destructive material on Earth’. But this is a misunderstanding. True, the manufacture of concrete creates nearly 10 per cent of year-
Concrete may be dirty to produce, but you can't use bamboo or flax to create dams, tunnels and bomb shelters
Concrete may be dirty to produce, but you can't use bamboo or flax to create dams, tunnels and bomb shelters
ly carbon emissions, which comes from the burning of limestone to produce cement, one of concrete's constituents along with water, sand and aggregates. But concrete itself is blameless – at least until someone decides to do something stupid and ugly with it.
Miracles of construction technology apart, it's the metaphors of concrete that fascinate. Building materials lend themselves to imagery: steely resolve, a heart of glass, a wooden expression and a few bricks short of a load. John Betjeman thought of concrete as ‘creeping grey’. And concrete poetry? It's the very opposite of lyrical.
The case for concrete is simple and clear. It is strong and adaptable. Almost indestructible in compression, its weakness in tension can be relieved by inserting metal rods as reinforcement, known as ‘rebar’. It may be dirty to produce, but you cannot use bamboo or flax to create flood walls, dams, bridges, foundations, tunnels and bomb shelters.
The word ‘concrete’ has a 1553 citation in the OED as ‘a cohesion of particles’. A British patent of 1824 for ‘artificial stone’ defined the modern material. But the French were the energetic pioneers of concrete in contemporary architecture and it became the defining medium of Modernism. However, Le Corbusier’s beton brut (‘raw concrete’) is ironically sourced from Ruskin’s High Victorian moralistic truth-to-materials trope. And this is just one of the complexities in coming to terms with a substance both ancient and modern, as well as enabling and disturbing.
Referring to Le Corbusier, the term ‘Brutalism’ was coined by Reyner Banham in 1955. Never meant to be derogatory, it was intended to describe the Modernists’ preference for expressive raw materials. But Brutalism and concrete became conflated, the one term being used to condemn the other.
It is routine for traditionalists to detest concrete in any form, even streetlights: 'When all our roads are lighted/ By concrete monsters sited,' Betjeman wrote. But concrete is a supremely malleable material and can be coloured, polished, textured and moulded to achieve delightful effects. Stained underpasses are caused by bad design and municipal neglect, not by concrete itself.
Donald Trump reveals the ambiguities of the material. In his early fever dream about containing Mexican narcos and rapists, he spoke of a ‘beautiful’ concrete wall, suggesting the rhetoric of power. In fact the wall is composed of steel panels filled with concrete. Then, in a 2020 Executive Order, the President, intent on beautifying federal buildings, condemned the use of ‘exposed poured concrete’.
Although Brutalism has now been accepted into the canon of architectural history as a good thing, concrete buildings still attract spiteful responses. In 2016, John Madin's superb Birmingham Library was demolished. It was only 42 years old. Last year, Stephen Hodder's excellent Centenary Building in Salford, the winner of the very first Stirling Prize in 1996, was pointlessly razed. These were notably stupid destructive acts. One answer to the environmental problems concrete causes is to restrict production and intelligently re-use what already exists, but that demands more vision and creativity than the Salford and Birmingham authorities possess.
Of course, concrete enthusiasts sometimes get it wrong. In New York, Rafael Vinoly wanted his super-tall 432 Park Avenue to be more white, but the pigment he added to the mix degraded its structural integrity and billionaires are now running scared from terrifying cracks on the 96th floor. Just a few years earlier, rusting rebar in Riccardo Morandi's poorly maintained Genoa bridge caused a catastrophic collapse. Concrete in itself is neither good nor bad: it's artificial and morally neutral. It can cause delight or horror depending on the design.
Parnell's father was a concrete professional, and the expertise has been inherited. But this is not a dogmatic book, rather an instructive and amusing one. Concrete prose is more entertaining than concrete poetry.
A small, beautiful book about betrayal, the cost of isolation and the persistence of human decency, Colm Tóibín's The Bridge is set in the 1950s, in a remote Catalan village high in the Pyrenees, among people cut off from the modern world. Cut off for now. A bridge across the river threatens to speed the advent of paved roads, telephones and electricity.
Miquel and his father live in an old stone dwelling on a hardscrabble farm, attended by an orphaned houseboy, Manolo, and haunted by the reverberating absence of Miquel's mother, who was caught in a sudden snowstorm and died. Her corpse, buried under ice, lay undiscovered until a spring thaw. Since her death, Miquel and his father have taken to smuggling goods out of nearby Andorra. The latest cargo consists of items emblematic of creeping modernity: styluses for recordplayers and a load of condoms, ‘enough for an army for a year’.
Consider the condom. It facilitates contact of a certain kind and also acts as a barrier – an equivocal function perfectly suited to a novel where the unequivocal is exceedingly rare, where silence is both blessing and curse, where ice both kills and preserves and where a stranger is both threat and promise.
Tóibín's 12th novel is a sequel to A Long Winter, a novella he tacked on to a collection of stories called Mothers and Sons (2006). He has said that when planning the novella, he aimed for a style that would be ‘slow, immersive, third-person intimate’. That’s exactly what we get in The Bridge, which would be a bleak book if it weren’t for the loving – I want to say exciting – attention to detail, and the sombre gorgeousness of the prose.
It's not a happy story. Miquel's father sees the newly constructed bridge as an opportunity for more convenient, modernised smuggling ('smuggling was, for many, a game, like hunting'), and rushes to take advantage, trading Miquel's beloved donkey, along with his own, for a jeep. The Pyrenees is not a part of the world suited to haste. Halfway through the book, on the bridge itself, the police stop father and son; their contraband is hidden under a pile of stones in the back of the new jeep. They have been betrayed – by the father's foolishness, and by a supposed friend's perfidy, with dire consequences. Miquel, who is passive to a fault, accepts his fate with an animal-like (donkey-like) placidity.
Gay in a world where the very idea is an abomination, Miquel is doubly cut off. Lying awake at night, he comes to believe that his ‘isolation was nothing new, that he had always been far away even from those to whom he had been closest’. His next thought is sadder still: ‘He was closer to his mother in the months... when he was searching for her body than he had been when she was alive.’ Furtive embraces with Manolo dilute his essential loneliness, as does an erotic encounter in the town where the bridge has been built – a meeting explicitly detailed yet somehow prudishly veiled by Miquel’s innate reticence.
The beauty of the novel lies not in the dramatic mountainous landscape or even in the slow, immersive style, but rather in the person of Miquel, whose gentle, uncomplaining, totally unselfconscious goodness is a kind of miracle – the triumph of virtue over fear and want and malicious manipulation. He knows better than to reveal himself – ‘the rule was you kept your thoughts to yourself’ – or to expect a happy ending. Indeed, his situation is never promising. Yet he will endure, sustained by ‘memories and imaginings’ and something else – not hope but ‘a kind of brightness’.
Barbara Kingsolver's bestselling novels tackle political and social issues and win prizes, among them the Pulitzer and Women's Prize for Fiction (twice). Subjects she has covered include colonialism; environmental issues (preserving ecosystems and flora and fauna, and punishing polluting companies); the validity of extended family approaches to child-rearing in Cherokee Nation communities; the art of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera and their friendship with Trotsky; and the McCarthy era and the House UnAmerican Activities Committee. She has also explored parallels between 19th-century struggles for rationalism in the form of Darwinism and economic hardships under despotic leaders and their echo in today's US; the desolation wrought by the loss of industries such as timber and coal, and the subsequent vulnerability of deracinated youngsters to opiates sold as safe.
Sometimes her liberal sensibilities collide with her wish to defend her Appalachian community, held back by economic hardship and traditional farming methods practised for generations despite making a loss. In her novel Demon Copperhead, ‘Demon’ chides those who label such people ‘deplorables’ – but Kingsolver has said that she loves Hillary Clinton and thinks her ‘basket of deplorables’ comment about half of Donald Trump’s supporters was ‘taken out of context’.
Partita concentrates on social and family issues – class impacting on confidence, and the corrosion of self-esteem by an abusive parent. It also has a strong feminist message. In the farming background from which the protagonist Livia Cable comes, women never have careers outside the community. The novel is also a gorgeous exploration of classical music. Livia, an unusually talented pianist, wins a scholarship to a prestigious music school. Needing to be better than others to overcome snobbish prejudice, she works her fingers almost literally to the bone. But then distraction arrives.
Kingsolver astutely describes the irony of rich kids dressing like the homeless while members of Livia's grindingly poor community take pride in looking smart; the mistaking of sexual intimacy for love; and the emptiness of heartbreak. The prose is stuffed with imaginative similes and metaphors. Occasionally some are strained ('We honoured our dead attachment like a corpse between us') or too obvious: Livia burning everything in her mother's house is clearly an ablation of past regrets. But this is an enthralling novel, full of pathos, wisdom and humour.
Bishop Odo presides over the pre-battle feast, blessing the food and drink
It makes for a good pub quiz question: what has 632 people, 202 horses, 55 dogs, 41 ships and only six women? Along with the UK's heatwaves came Bayeux Tapestry fever as the Canterbury Embroidery returned to England for ten months after something approaching a millennial sojourn in France. The British Museum was barely able to cope with the demands on its website for the first tranche of tickets to visit the exhibition.
It is easy to see why. The Tapestry depicts, in an abundance of endlessly fascinating detail, that most famous date in English history: 1066. In popular perception, the doughy Anglo-Saxons narrowly lost to that bastard Duke William and his land-grabbing Normans at the Battle of Hastings, consequently being forced to submit to the Norman yoke. It was a true revolution in politics, religion and society. William all but swept away the upper echelons of magnates to reward his followers; Norman saints vaulted over English ones in newly erected stone churches; and a vast castle-building programme stamped the authority of the new power across the land. Eadwig and his missus Hildgyth among the peasants would also have noted the changes.
All this stemmed from William's success at Hastings in October of that fateful year. But had the duke, born illegitimate, now, by force, become a legitimate king? He could point to his victory on the battlefield as a God-given judgment on his claim to the English throne. However, he and
Never backward in coming forward, Odo is all over the narrative
Never backward in coming forward, Odo is all over the narrative
others clearly felt this was insufficient proof – hence the Tapestry. The magnificent, 225ft-long monument of shameless propaganda is lucidly explicated in a superb accompanying book from the British Museum, in which a host of distinguished medievalists re-examine this most iconic relic from the past.
For all that it has been studied, there remain uncertainties. We know that, technically, the Tapestry is an embroidered textile (don't ask me to explain its stem-, laid-and-couched- and satin-stitch techniques: the book does that). On other matters, we rely on speculative, if often challenged, consensus. Displaying ‘strong affiliations to both sides of the English Channel’, it was ‘likely designed in Canterbury' (the English were renowned for their needlework), its creation dating to somewhere between 1067 and the 1070s. The earlier date is gathering favour, being 'a time when the newly crowned William the Conqueror still hoped to rally the English to his cause and forge a united Anglo-Norman kingdom'. If so, it did not prevent widespread rebellion in 1069.
Readers of this impressive book and visitors to the exhibition will have their attention drawn to key scenes. An early one shows Earl Harold swearing a pledge before William, almost certainly in acknowledgement of the duke's ‘rightful’ succession to the throne of England, ‘despite Prince Edgar [Ætheling] by now being prepared to succeed’ Edward the Confessor. William liked to present – or even fabricate – such oath-taking ceremonies to vindicate his landgrabs. The appearance of Halley’s Comet soon afterwards is a ‘disquieting’ omen, underlining Harold’s subsequent sacrilegious oath-breaking.
And, in the most famous depiction of an English royal death in history, is King Harold really killed by an arrow in the eye? Written sources claim he was hacked to pieces. The two figures under the inscription ‘Here Harold is killed’ – one struck by an arrow, the other by a sword – are totally different, but we ‘cannot rule out the possibility that they represent the same person’.
The book, interestingly, suggests that in addition to its overt propaganda purposes, the Tapestry may have been a transportable artwork, unfolded at gatherings ‘as the basis of a spoken performance’, with a narrator expanding on the story. One can easily envisage an actor hamming it up, embellishing the scenes with dramatic flair. After all, ‘history’ was a form of entertainment at the time.
William's half-brother Bishop Odo of Bayeux is considered the Tapestry's probable patron. Never backward in coming forward, he is all over the narrative, most notably presiding over a pre-battle feast, administering a Christ-like benediction, and rallying the troops at a critical juncture of the combat, wielding his club (or is it a baton of command?), reminding William of his debt to him.
Splendid as the book is, at its hefty price one might have hoped for glossier paper. Still, the large-scale reproductions of the whole Tapestry allow for endless perusal of the fascinating details which reward constant revisits with new discoveries each time. The undisputed importance of the Tapestry explains the spate of new and revised books devoted to it. Especially worthy of mention is the update of David Musgrove and Michael Lewis's The Story of the Bayeux Tapestry (Thames & Hudson, £12.99).
The temporary return of the Tapestry deserves all the hype surrounding it, and the accompanying exhibition book adds further to the excitement.
Daisy Dunn tells the story of the all-powerful but naughty goddess Aphrodite, the subject of a new Ashmolean show
A phrodite – talk about a difficult birth. Her father the Sky (Ouranos) had come to resent the fertility of his wife/mother the Earth (Gaia). They’d had 18 children already – a game-some brood that included Titans, Cyclopes, and the 100-handed Hecatoncheires. The last of these were so hateful that Ouranos convinced himself that he would be murdered by one of them and usurped as ruler on high.
Ouranos's way of coping with his complex was to keep on having sex with his wife so as to hole up his offspring in the birth canal. Gaia urged her sons to save her, but only Kronos, the youngest of the Titans, was brave enough. While his father was still at it, Kronos went in and lopped off his genitals with a sickle. The divine bits plopped into the sea, and from the resulting froth emerged the goddess – beautiful, fully formed and, for a time, impervious to her family's dire dysfunctionality.
It was popularly believed that Aphrodite was named after that amniotic sea foam – aphros in Greek – but the debated etymology has also been linked to the Hebrew-Phoenician Ashtoreth, which the Greeks rendered as Astarte. Astarte was the name of Aphrodite’s forebear, an ancient Near Eastern deity who, like her associated goddesses Inanna and Ishtar, served as patroness of beauty, sex and war.
Astarte was sometimes worshipped as a Queen of Heaven; a beautiful double-statuette survives from the 2nd century showing a grey marble Aphrodite Ourania ('Of the Heavens') dressed in a star-spangled gown, alongside a more plainly dressed white Aphrodite Pandemos ('Of all the people'). The sculpture comes from Cyprus, Aphrodite's island. Having bobbed up on the sea, the goddess was said to have floated towards Kythera before arriving in Paphos – she would for ever be associated with seafaring as well as love.
She stepped ashore gracefully, tentatively, as though treading ice. A number of enig-
The ‘Capitoline Venus’ was so realistic a man ejaculated over it in the 4th century BC
The ‘Capitoline Venus’ was so realistic a man ejaculated over it in the 4th century BC
matic sculptures survive showing her placing one foot on a tortoise or turtle. Other pieces, often made of terracotta, show her emerging from a shell of her own. You see the influence of these on Botticelli's 'Birth of Venus' (c.1485), in which the golden beauty glides ashore atop a scallop shell, blown in on the exhalations of Zephyrus and Aura. Shells, doves, mirrors and dolphins remained her favourite things.
People had begun to worship a fertility goddess on Cyprus as early as the Neolithic period. Hundreds of stone and terracotta figurines, dating from 4000 to 2500 BC, have been uncovered, and it is clear that pilgrims visited her sanctuaries on the island from at least as early as 1000 BC. Some of the offerings left to her are shaped as mothers holding children; Aphrodite would later acquire the epithet ‘Kourotrophos’ (Nurturer of Children) to complement her role as protectress of wives and prompter of child-making.
It was on Cyprus that the mainland Greeks learned her appeal. Absent from the surviving Mycenaean clay tablets, which name Hera, Athena, Persephone and other chief goddesses, Aphrodite made her mark as a distinct Greek goddess with a Greek name only after the collapse of the Bronze Age. (On Cyprus she would continue to be known as Kypria – ‘Cyprian Goddess’ – or Astarte until the end of the 4th century BC.)
The new era brought many more mainlanders to Cyprus and its religion. The sex goddess is first attested as both ‘Aphrodite’ and ‘Kypris’ in the 8th-century BC epics of Homer. In the Odyssey, she is presented as the unfaithful wife of Hephaestus, the lame-footed god of metallurgy. Their marriage, though unhappy, made perfect sense, for Cyprus was associated chiefly with the mining and export of bronze.
A copper alloy figurine from Cyprus of an Astarte/Aphrodite-type goddess, dated to the end of the Bronze Age, stands on a base shaped like one of the island's export ingots. Nude, with apple-like breasts and owl-alert eyes, she places her hands firmly around her stomach.
Look at it closely and you'll also discern a long plait hanging over her right shoulder. Aphrodite's hair – and her fondness for touching it – enthralled the Greeks and Romans, who worshipped her as Venus. She was often depicted wringing it out on the shore. Artists went in for modelling and painting her as she rose from the sea, dripping wet, her breasts riding up her ribcage as she stretched, as she does in a lovely 5th-century BC marble panel found in the grounds of Villa Ludovisi in Rome. Botticelli had Venus touch her hair, not to dry it, but to cover her pudenda. There’s a similar coyness to some of the most celebrated ancient statues. There is the ‘Crouching Aphrodite’, whose position artfully conceals her nudity, and the ‘Venus de’Medici’, who hovers one hand over her breast and the other over her vagina. Then there is the ‘Capitoline Venus’, a Roman version of a Greek original by Praxiteles, which was said to have been so realistic that a man ejaculated over it in the 4th century BC. Being caught in the nude – too slow to cover herself up – evidently made Venus only more desirable.
Michelangelo Pistoletto's ‘Venus of the Rags’ (1967, 1974), which you may have seen at the Tate, riffs on the goddess's unlikely modesty. His garden-centre statue of her has her back to us as she stands before a heap of laundry as if to say, ‘Get me some clothes!’
Why did Aphrodite become so shy? She does not look shy in those very early figu-
Roman politicians embraced Aphrodite as if she were their glamorous old granny
Roman politicians embraced Aphrodite as if she were their glamorous old granny
rines. She is not shy in Homer, where she embarks upon a steamy affair with the war god Ares, only to be caught in flagrante in a web of her husband's invention. It is even recorded that a temple was built for her in 6th-century BC Athens using the proceeds of a tax on brothels.
Her bashfulness must be a reflection of the feelings she engendered in those who carved and wondered at her. It was a complicated thing to embrace the lustiness of an adulterous goddess while praising the chastity of mortal women. Artists, seldom timid about baring flesh, knew what the authorities wanted to see. An apocryphal tale of a courtesan and artist's model escaping prosecution by baring her breasts to the jury was told with one part opprobrium to two parts titillation. Love, marriage, sex, children – all things to pray for, but what was acceptable for the gods was to be watered down for mortals. That was just the order of things.
Aphrodite's sexiness was not, in the end, an insurmountable problem. Roman politicians still embraced her as if she were their glamorous old granny. Lucius Cornelius Sulla, a dictator of the late Roman Republic, viewed Venus as his familial patron and gave both her name and his own to the Roman colony of Pompeii (Colonia Cornelia Veneria Pompeianorum).
'Venus', c.1490, by Sandro Botticelli and his workshop
More directly, Julius Caesar claimed descent from Venus via her grandson Iulus, child of Aeneas, hero of the Trojan War. The dictator even erected a temple to Venus Genetrix in his forum at Rome. There's evidence that Caesar's recent ancestors had courted the same divine connections. Whether or not the plebs took him at his word, the association lent a dash of humour and charm to Caesar's otherwise scandalous seduction of other senators' wives. What else to expect of a man with the love goddess's blood coursing his veins?
Given the history, you can see why the suffragettes took umbrage. ‘I didn’t like the way men visitors gaped at it all day long,’ said Mary Richardson of Velazquez’s ‘Rokeby Venus’, into which she’d sliced gashes worthy of sickle-wielding Kronos. Man Ray’s reassemblage of the goddess in his ‘Vénus Restaurée’ of 1936 involved enwrapping her defenceless torso in rope which, even to the most sympathetic female eye, cannot fail to evoke the strains of female bondage.
The Greek philosophers would have enjoyed unravelling the psychology of this. Who are we punishing, the all-powerful but naughty goddess or the naughtiness we struggle to keep power over in ourselves?
Aphrodite: The Making of a Goddess is at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, from 8 October until 11 April 2027.
The only problem with presenting a blazing masterpiece such as Balanchine's Symphony in Three Movements as a curtain raiser is that it will make anything that follows it look pallid or insignificant. And that's what blights English National Ballet's new triple bill, which starts with a massive blast of electricity and ends in a big slow yawn.
Symphony in Three Movements formed part of the astonishing festival that George Balanchine masterminded in 1972 as a homage to his close friend and artistic inspiration Igor Stravinsky, who had died the previous year. Presented in one week were 31 ballets to the composer's scores, 21 of them new, ten of them by Balanchine himself. The dancers of New York City Ballet, enthralled to the cult of Balanchine, were worked like slaves to the point of exhaustion, nowhere more so than in creating the large-scale Symphony in
Three Movements, set to a brassy and extravert neoclassical score composed from 1942 to 1945 and described by Stravinsky as his ‘war symphony’.
Balanchine picked up on this martial edge in his choreographic vocabulary. The ballet evokes a battlefield, a parade-ground, military manoeuvres: the corps moves urgently in straight lines that divide and reunite, as if under fire, and the three electrifying pas de deux are wary duels rather than amorous courtships. One dancer described the ferocious energy level required as comparable to 'being shot out of a cannon', and at this first performance, ENB's plucky cast still look shy of the challenges. They need to shock and awe: to be more predatory, more aggressive, more ruthless. Precision is all, right up to the magnificent final tableau that presents arms to the audience. A for effort all round, however, and gold stars to Ksenia Ovsyanick and Rentaro Nakaaki in particular for their scrupulous execution of the intricate central section.
What chance have two new pieces by young choreographers in the wake of the matchless genius sparked by Balanchine and Stravinsky's partnership? Micaela Taylor comes off better with her Bow Out, an amiable and audience-pleasing compendium of American jazz dance, freewheeling from lindyhop and tap to breaking and popping, danced in tuxedos with terrific verve and charm. The blot is a protracted and pretentious final section in which the dancers one by one discard their jackets in front of a microphone stand. A statement of something, but God knows what.
The final item in the programme, Auguries of Innocence, by the Korean choreographer Jae Man Joo, was a real downer. Marked in its flailing and wailing by the baneful influence of Pina Bausch, it uses a dreary drone of a score by the Latvian mystic minimalist Peteris Vasks, interspersed with a recording of beopgongyang drum music played by a monk, the Venerable Gogeum Sunim; reference is also made to the poems of William Blake. Stop that snickering in the back row, please.
A witchy and hairy lady (gamely incarnated by Sangeun Lee), described as ‘The Weaver of Souls’, presides over a coven of acolytes who roll around on the floor in thrall to her incantations. It’s all very dark, but things cheer up a bit with the appearance of ‘The Caller’, ‘The Conduit’, and ‘The Vessel’, before everyone takes their clothes off (flesh-coloured body stockings mercifully remain) and engages in chaste embraces. I sensed some sort of Adam and Eve vibe, as well as the familiar hope that peace and harmony with nature will triumph over all the bad stuff. If only. Those susceptible to this sort of hippie thing may find rich spiritual pickings here, but I will not be alone in finding it dreadfully earnest and deathly dull.
Charleston in Firle, East Sussex, until 7 March 2027
Marlow Moss: Space, Movement & Light
Ward Moretti, until 30 October
Every visitor to Charleston Farmhouse will know the work of Quentin Bell even if they don't realise it. He made the distinctive clay colander lights there, and many of the zany sculptures and ceramics. The son of Vanessa Bell, he grew up at Charleston, and later, when he was of great age – and even greater beard – he led a campaign to ensure the place was properly preserved. But what was Bell's work really like?
This exhibition gives us about 100 examples so that his singular vision emerges, and guess what, for all the progressive modernism of his background, he had a taste for Victoriana, fairground illusionism and the Belle Époque. His reliefs are dancers out of Degas, his figurines dressed like Manet's bar attendant. He was fascinated by Maupassant, De Sade and 'the darker currents of fin-de-siècle French culture'. There's a memorably creepy sculpture of an 'invisible' clay man and woman, which are merely empty, rutting clothes.
Art was his way of life. Aged six, he was scooping blue clay out of the Charleston pond and baking it in the nursery fire. Soon he was adding sand to make the finished tea-cups stronger (two are on display). He loved to paint on clay but, as he got better at making pots and plates, his mother and Duncan Grant would often swipe them to decorate themselves. He and his aunt Virginia Woolf worked on in-house newspapers with the mischievous aim of ‘giving the utmost pain to everyone concerned’, his drawings paired with her distinctive handwriting. There’s also his childish sketch of a man who came to tea, which looks to be Lytton Strachey.
Quentin, deemed unfit for military service due to TB, spent the second world war digging vegetables and writing a fantasy novel The Upheaval, 2,000 pages long; the illustrations, though done in Biro, look wonderful. It could have become escapist literature like Peake's or Tolkien's, maybe, but David Garnett told him to give it up.
Alongside his teaching career, and his writing, he made beautiful birthday cards for his children, illustrated stories, and created 3-D ‘goggleboxes’, sort of toy theatres. When you peep into the one here, it reveals a saucy parody of a modern art gallery. He made about 17 of these during his lifetime, amusing and sui generis, for sure, but it’s not hard to see why relatively few survive. His biggest achievement is probably the lifesize levitating lady in fibreglass painted to look like bronze. There is one at Charleston by the pond, as well as at Leeds, where he was professor of fine art. But I prefer 'Horseplay', in which a terrible accident has befallen a smug Staffordshire couple familiar from the Victorian earthenware mantelpiece-topper. The horse is bolting, the lady's legs are akimbo, and the gallant is manifestly failing to save her.
‘Blunderhead’, 1966, by Quentin Bell
Marlow Moss (1889-1958) was the opposite of Bell. Her work was pure abstraction, mathematics guiding her practice, which was precise and ritualistic. She would paint her geometrical shapes seven times, letting each layer dry for seven days. Rejecting the hautbourgeois Jewish Kilburn family she was born into, she swapped Marjorie for Marlow, and got an Eton crop and jodhpurs. She was hanging out with the cubists in Paris seeking
Scholars assumed Mondrian taught Moss, but their relationship has recently been reassessed as two-way
Scholars assumed Mondrian taught Moss, but their relationship has recently been reassessed as two-way
rhythm in ‘pure geometric figures’ when she met Mondrian.
Scholars assumed he taught her, but their relationship has recently been reassessed as two-way. It is now believed that the neoplastic double-line – tram tracks running across the canvas – was her innovation, not his. Art-world fortunes are made of such distinctions. Moss's ‘White, Yellow and Black’ (1953) sold for £1.2 million at Sotheby's in June. You can see it, glowing and profound, at Ward Moretti, alongside a carefully curated show of 35 works.
Both Bell and Moss designed interiors for new ways of living. In 1937, at Evreux in Haute-Normandie, Moss and her partner Netty Nijhoff designed and created a modernist home of ‘unsurpassed cleanliness and harmony’, wrote the designer Max Bill. ‘Everything was bright, fresh, transparent.’ Moss had to escape to England by boat in 1940. She settled in Lamorna in Cornwall, but effectively had to begin again. Everything of that modernist paradise, including most of her pre-war work, was looted and went up in a Nazi firestorm.
'The art is more clever than the artist'
Richard Bratby talks to Evgeny Titov about the stupidity of German directors and why Wagner was wrong about Parsifal
E vgeny Titov has landed at the Royal Opera, and he has good news for Britain's beleaguered opera scene. 'It's the best place to work,' he declares, leaning forward with enthusiasm; and already he's thrown the interview off course. Usually with overseas artists there are courtesies, and then a tactful acknowledgment that British companies work under unavoidable pressures of time and money. But this actor-turned-opera director, whose career has taken him from St Petersburg to the Salzburg Festival, has seen a few things, and he means what he says. He likes it here.
‘Everybody told me before I came, “You will love it,” he says. “Oh, is that so?”, I thought: I visited a few times for preparation and I was, like, “Yeah, it’s good,
but I don't see the difference." But when you start rehearsing, it's amazing. Amazing! Because of the people, because of the working conditions, because of how they take care of you, and how quickly they react. Everything's prepared, everything's thought through. Honestly, I'm not the kind of person who goes to Zurich, and then Vienna, and tells them all that they're best. No, the Royal Ballet and Opera is definitely the best organised place I've ever been, and the most supportive. Really! It's impressive.'
He sits back, beaming. Titov has just completed a full day's rehearsal on the Royal Opera's new production of Parsifal, but you wouldn't guess it. Wagner's final opera is a work apart, as vast and as beautiful as
Tristan und Isolde or Götterdämmerung, but freighted with a philosophical complexity that can daunt even the most devoted Wagnerite. Wagner didn't even call Parsifal an opera; to him it was a ‘Bühnenweihfestspiel’ – a ‘consecrational stage festival’ – and the Nazis, troubled by its Christian symbolism, discouraged performances. There’s enough here to put any director through the wringer.
Titov, however, has a reputation as a livewire, and right now he seems far from tired. ‘I work very passionately, and I’m very emotional,’ he says, and his collaborators across Europe (his operatic credits range from Enescu’s Oedipe in Berlin to George Benjamin’s Lessons in Love and Violence in Zurich) testify that his is the kind of energy that rubs off. Parsifal, though – surely this is different; a special case. Isn’t it draining to immerse yourself so completely in this, of all operas?
‘No. I would say everything from Monteverdi onwards requires a different approach. If you do Sir George Benjamin: the same. And Tchaikovsky is Tchaikovsky: I’m directing The Queen of Spades this winter and that’s also something completely different. It’s almost as big as Parsifal, in some ways, but with a completely different energy. Everything, if you do it right, requires a special treatment, because every piece is its own world.’
'I'm not doing propaganda theatre – writing slogans on the wall. That's too easy'
'I'm not doing propaganda theatre – writing slogans on the wall. That's too easy'
And Titov knows all about moving between worlds. Raised in Ust-Kamenogorsk, Kazakhstan, he trained at the St Petersburg Theatre Arts Academy and spent the early years of his career as an actor. 'I was successful – I was doing films in Russia, and getting good stage roles; Jason in Medea, Jim in The Glass Menagerie. I was doing Ostrovsky. But I realised that I needed to be out in the world. I hadn't seen London or New York or Rome'. With only the sketchiest grasp of German, he applied to study directing at the Max Reinhardt Seminar in Vienna, was rejected, and then, a year later, on his second attempt, accepted – all while holding down a repertory job in Russia.
‘I was flying back to Russia twice a month, to perform. My biggest and worst fear, every time, was that afterwards I would get to border control at the airport and they would not let me go back to Vienna. They would not let me out.’ After fobbing off his employers with a story of a lost passport, he burned his bridges and settled in the West. ‘I haven’t been back to Russia since 2014, and I definitely don’t want to go now. I don’t want to find out what would happen. In Vienna I found that I could be free, and learned the most important thing, which is to really understand who you are. This, you have to learn.'
So go on, then: who is Evgeny Titov, as he makes his British debut with his first ever Parsifal? ‘I’m very crazy, absolutely free, six years old!’ Well, he said it, and there’s no ignoring the boyish exuberance that Titov projects both in person, and (by all accounts) in his working methods. That’s one reason why companies across Europe are so keen to work with him. Titov’s uninhibited energy and directness has a way of breaking familiar works wide open, of releasing fresh insights and surprising perspectives.
Still, ‘It’s very hard for me to talk about my own work,’ he admits. ‘The critics are always saying it’s existential, it’s deep, it’s going into characters. I don’t know. In Germany directors are interested in “concepts” where Parsifal takes place on Mars, or in a factory where they kill chickens. That’s not a concept. It’s nothing – just a very, very bad staging. So I try to go deep into the play.’ His own ideas about Wagner’s Grail legend centre on the twin figures of Parsifal – a redeemer who stands in need of redemption – and Kundry, the cursed, undying woman and the opera’s only female protagonist. Early reports suggest that the setting will be post-apocalyptic.
‘No spoilers!’ laughs Titov, and he is anxious that audiences should let his – and Wagner’s – work speak on its own terms. He has said that in theatre direction, ‘intuition plays a bigger part than knowledge’; his productions, he insists, have no personal agenda. ‘I’m not doing propaganda theatre. I’m not this political director who’s doing, “Women should be liberated,” or whatever – writing slogans on the wall and saying, “Look, look, this is what I’m doing.” I think that’s too easy. I think it’s too simple. I’m not saying, “Oh, I’ll show you, this stupid Wagner.” I don’t want to destroy anything.’
‘I believe the art is more clever than the artist,’ says Titov, and few would dispute that Parsifal is very clever indeed. It’s just that Titov believes that – like any enduring art work – it might not necessarily mean what its creator said it meant. ‘Maybe Wagner is not as free and as right as he thought, because wherever there is certainty, you are in danger.’
To art, then, its freedom. Certainly, Titov accepts that his own work might escape his imagination, to reveal a life and meaning of its own. In fact, for a director with roots in conventional theatre, the discipline of opera – where so much of the performance (and our response to it) is dictated by music that is beyond the stage director's control – is itself a sort of liberation. That's not merely a backhanded compliment to the conductor (Titov is a big fan of Covent Garden's Jakub Hrusa. 'In my opinion, he's really a wall of passion – he just doesn't show it'). It's an acceptance that creative freedom can take many forms, and Titov thinks often about freedom.
‘Yes, we have to think about what is behind the music, and not be anaesthetised by it. But you can only be free if you have very clear borders; because real freedom only comes when you know that not everything is possible. If everything is possible, that’s not freedom. You can find it if you really squeeze; if you ask questions about a work of art. Then you can discover what the work means to you. If you just reject the questions, that’s not freedom. It’s a salad. You need the shadow, to see the light.’
Parsifal is at the Royal Opera House until 17 October.
[Pop A star is reborn Michael Hann] Echo & The Bunnymen Regent's Park Open Air Theatre
No one ever joined a rock band because they didn't want to be recognised. Being adored matters to stars, sometimes too much, but that only makes those who love them care even more. That could be heard in the cries of 'We love you, Mac!' at a glorious night in Regent's Park. Echo & The Bunnymen's singer Ian McCulloch – who was once famous for pronouncing on how much better his band was than any other – has not had an easy time of it in recent
Over 17 songs, McCulloch got what he needed: proof that he was still a rock star
Over 17 songs, McCulloch got what he needed: proof that he was still a rock star
years. Unlike his peers in the Cure and U2, he's not playing to 50,000 people at a time, though his band were regarded as every bit their equals – perhaps their betters – in the early 1980s.
Fans had in fact noted that McCulloch had recently been physically incapable of performing onstage. He’d appear slumped in a chair and let the crowd do all the singing – to say he likes a drink would be very much an understatement (almost all of a recent round of press interviews were conducted over several pints in favoured Liverpool pubs). But from apparent disaster he has pulled a victory.
The new Bunnymen album, Apples for Isaac – the first in more than a decade – was not only surprisingly good, but actually good. And the show last week was wonder-
At Forman & Field, we create hampers brimming with artisan treasures. From the elegant Smoke & Bubbles duo - smoked salmon paired with English sparkling wine - to magnificent wicker hampers filled with premium hams, caviar, foie gras and fine spirits. The essence of Christmas, delivered with love to those who matter most.
10% OFF ANY FORMAN & FIELD HAMPER
Enjoy a 10% discount off our festive range of hampers which you can pre-order for Christmas delivery. Offer applies to products in the Hampers section of our website with orders over £100 placed before the end of October. Use code: SPECCY10 at checkout.
Discover more inspiration and explore our complete range of Christmas delights at formanandfield.com
10% OFF
OUR FESTIVE
RANGE OF
HAMPERS
THE BOLNEY
Estate
CUVÉE NOIR
NV BRUT
FST 1956
PULBROOK & GOULD
LONDON
ful. We call them Bunnymen but it's really just McCulloch, four hired hands who stood in the shadows and guitarist Will Sergeant, who played on only four songs and didn't write any of them. So it was McCulloch's show to throw away.
It must be said that his between-songs chatter was far too long and often incomprehensible. But his singing was good enough – though a lifetime of smoking and drinking have worn away his croon – and he has a catalogue worth wielding. Obviously the oldies were what roused the audience – ‘The Cutter’, ‘Seven Seas’, ‘The Killing Moon’ – but the three new songs, ‘Brussels Is Haunted’, ‘An Unstoppable Force’, and especially the unexpected motorik glam of ‘Lab Rats Ran’ stood proudly alongside them. Over 17 songs, McCulloch got what he needed: proof that he was still a rock star.
The Gen Zers at the Roundhouse couldn't have been more excited for Good Kid. It was febrile. But I couldn't help wondering whether either band or audience would care about each other in 40 years. They're a Toronto quintet, playing jittery punky pop
Good Kid is the first truly digitally native rock band: all of them work in tech
Good Kid is the first truly digitally native rock band: all of them work in tech
– like the Strokes if they were wholesome – and the crowd sang everything back at them at full volume.
Playing in a band appears to be just content creation for them. The gig was streamed live on Twitch, with the chat thread scrolling on a screen onstage, and before they went on, two members interviewed fans in the front row with a camera crew. Those fans had been won from Reddit and the gaming communities, rather than through radio and touring; this is the first truly digitally native rock band: all of them work in tech.
They even look like video-game characters – all in different primary colours, leaping around. They also resemble the Australian children's entertainers the Wiggles (their manner onstage is very kindergarten teacher). It looked like an impersonation of a rock band but then I grew up in a different age.
My irritation with them turned to rage on getting home and doing some Googling. Good Kid's singer Nick Frosst doesn't just work in tech, he's a bona-fide tech bro. He co-founded an AI company called Cohere, which is apparently valued at \$7 billion. Setting aside my chippiness about very-high-net-worth individuals, all I could think of was: why is he doing this? What visceral need is there in him to prove himself? I couldn't find an answer. I don't think rock music needs be the sole preserve of the outsider, but I'm just not sure I want it in the hands of people who want to control the way we think.
The Last Ship, a musical written by and featuring Sting, is touring Europe, Australia and America. The show is a class-war parable set in Newcastle during the 1980s. A team of shipbuilders are about to complete a new vessel, the Utopia, when a bossy government minister, Baroness Tynedale, arrives at the docks to deliver bad news. With her brightblue suit and posh hectoring voice, she's a pantomime Mrs Thatcher and she announces that the yard will be seized and flogged to private investors.
The shipbuilders establish a Marxist committee and plot to overturn her evil scheme. A gripping start. Plucky Geordies pitted against yuppie scavengers from London. The show even features a song about the competing merits of collectivism and monetarism.
Then it all implodes. The story takes off on a two-hour detour that explores the lives of various characters with emotional problems. Teenage Ellen dreams of starting a new life in London. Jackie the foreman (played by Sting) contracts a lung disease of unknown origin. The beautiful but prickly Meg can't decide between two dreadful boyfriends. Will she choose wet blanket, Freddy, or faithless drifter, Gideon, who impregnated her and promptly ran away?
These sob stories mean nothing to the audience because they don't affect the mutiny at the yard. Bad storytelling. Barney Norris's clumsy script is an updated version of two earlier attempts by various writers. After 120 minutes of waffle, the story gets back on track. Security staff occupy the shipyard. The rebels devise a plan to kick them out. Baroness Tynedale shows up to take personal charge of the battle.
Then a surreal touch. A chorus line of militant feminists arrives dressed in matching jeans and tartan scarves. They look like fans of the Bay City Rollers. Perhaps they can break the deadlock. The ending, when it finally emerges, takes ages to unfold because it has to wrap up the stories of Ellen, Jackie, Freddy, Gideon and Meg, plus a couple of other figures.
The show seems to overlook its chief asset, Sting. He's a decent actor (far better than Bowie or Jagger) and he plays the role of Jackie with rugged, hard-nosed sincerity. But he barely gets to exercise his vocal cords. Why did he not give himself a big crowd-pleasing number at the close of Act One? The probable answer is that a dramatic work is a collective enterprise, like class war, and the individual has to subordinate his ego to the interests of the group.
But that ideal doesn't work in musical theatre, which usually centres on a single personality whose transformation delights and thrills the audience. This story has no lead character. And the design suffers from its own good intentions. The goal is to make the audience feel the dispiriting and oppressive atmosphere of a shipyard. A vast skeleton of metal girders has been constructed over the phallic prow of a ship that thrusts obtrusively on to the stage. It's horrible and it stays in place throughout the action. This is a decent show but hardly a classic. Some audience members may have wondered why Sting didn't just deliver a medley of hits and then hold a whip-round for the rainforest, like in the old days.
Table 17 is a romantic comedy that turns into a public tribunal or a bear-baiting session. At the start of the show, the crowd are invited to shout out comments
Rishawn is a dazzlingly gifted comedian who makes this a five-star show
Rishawn is a dazzlingly gifted comedian who makes this a five-star show
and advice to the characters. We open with Jada getting ready for an inappropriate date. She's so anxious about the meeting that she can't even share the details with her therapist.
Her date, Dallas, is a handsome stud with a nerdy streak who always wears green corduroy trousers. They meet at a chic restaurant staffed by snobbish narcissists. The barman fancies himself as a stud. 'I get laid hard and often. That's not a cocky statement it's simply da truth.' To demonstrate his technique, he leaps on to the bar and humps away at an imaginary girlfriend.
His colleague River runs the table bookings and he gets far too involved in the personal lives of his customers. When Jada and Dallas show up, we learn that they were engaged to be married but broke it off. Both want to see if the spark is still alive. Of course it is.
But will they snuff it out or feed the flames? The audience had their say. Shouts of ‘he’s lying’ or ‘don’t do it’ pealed out from the stalls. It’s rare to see a show where the crowd are so involved that they barrack the characters. Marisha Wallace plays Jada as a kittenish flirt who always wants more than she has. Multi-rolling Michael Rishawn impersonates the restaurant staff and a seductive airline steward who tempts Jada away from Dallas. Rishawn is a dazzlingly gifted comedian who makes this a five-star show. A hilarious night out.
In his ruefully funny 2012 novel The Man Who Forgot His Wife, John O'Farrell compares the increasingly uncivilised process of divorce to war: 'In 1939 the RAF thought it was immoral to bomb the Black Forest to deprive the Germans of timber. But by 1945 they were deliberately creating firestorms to kill as many civilians as possible.' As the title suggests, the starry new divorce-based drama War makes a similar comparison – except that here the unhappy couple are cutting straight to Dresden.
The show began as it meant to go on: which is to say, glitteringly. At a London awards ceremony of ineffable poshness, Morgan Henderson (Dominic West) was named Pioneer of the Year for creating one of the world's biggest yet nicest social media platforms. In his impressively oily acceptance speech, Morgan declared that ‘we need as much accountability online as there is IRL’. Ironically for him, though, accountability IRL was about to land him in a whole heap of trouble.
During his speech, a young hottie had caught his eye and when it turned out they were staying at the same hotel, it wasn't long before they were doing the customary clothes-tearing, vertical-foreplay thing against his bedroom wall. The following morning as he slept, the hottie then took a selfie of them in bed together and forwarded it to his wife Carla, with the accompanying text, 'It's done.'
Continuing the commitment to glitter, when the message arrived, Carla (Sienna Miller – I did say it was starry) was in Paris where, as a world-famous movie star, she was plugging her latest film. Even so, she found time to summon her London lawyers and issue the unambiguous legal instruction, ‘Take this photo, take this case and take him for every fucking penny he’s got.’
At this stage, Carla was hoping her plans for divorce would stay secret, but Morgan soon had his suspicions and decided to lawyer up too. He opted for a team from a rival firm, who gleefully took on what was ‘likely to be the biggest divorce case in British legal history’. Once they had, it was clear that the eponymous war applies at least as much to the couple’s lawyers as to the couple themselves. Both firms promised to ‘fight dirty’ – and both proved as good as their word in ways I’d better not spoil given that this first episode goes out on Friday.
What I can say is that the result is enormous, dark fun. Viewers who like a goodie or two to root for should probably look elsewhere. Yet, while the characters may be uniformly mean, the programme-makers are unfailingly generous in making sure we have a good time, as the twists and one-liners pile up, and the lawyers' dirtiness is accompanied by large dollops of the best kind of soapiness.
Granted, dramas that allow us to simultaneously ogle at and despise rich people have become somewhere between a TV staple and a TV cliché. Nonetheless, War is shaping up to be one of the most entertaining (although maybe not weightiest) examples since Succession.
On a sadder note, this week we said goodbye to the brilliant Colin from Accounts, written by and starring Patrick Brammall and Harriet Dyer, who are husband and wife IRL. Right to the end, it achieved that rare feat for a comedy drama of being both comic and dramatic.
As you may (and possibly should) know by now, the title comes from the name that the main characters Gordon and Ash gave to the mild-mannered dog that he ran over at the start of the first series after she
War is shaping up to be one of the most entertaining examples since Succession
War is shaping up to be one of the most entertaining examples since Succession
flashed her nipple at him. From there, their shared love of the dog turned into a shared love of each other – which in classic rom-com style, they were intermittently aware of but that we never doubted for a minute. Series two ended with Gordon making an embarrassingly drunken public proposal at a friend's wedding that kyboshed the relationship for three years. This third one duly saw them edging their way back together.
Throughout its run, perhaps the most impressive aspect of the show was its perfect control of tone: one that constantly undercut the essential sweetness with lots of rudery, yet never undermined it. But there was also a terrific line-up of supporting characters – each of whom got a chance to shine, or receive their richly deserved comeuppance, in this week's concluding two episodes.
And in the final one of all, Colin from Accounts stayed true to its ideals, as the bracing lack of soppiness only gradually (and very satisfyingly) gave way to the full Richard Curtis. Despite its now-global success, it also remained uncompromisingly Australian, with the last of the many obstacles in Gordon and Ash's romantic path provided by his ill-advised decision to have a ‘pash’ at a ‘bucks’.
These are strange days in the recording industry. Heaven alone knows why Platoon – an Apple subconglomerate with all the charm of the Borg – has decided that this is the moment to release a cycle of Schumann symphonies recorded live by Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2018. But I’m not complaining. No conductor records these four misunderstood masterpieces for the glory.
No: it has to be love; and while you can draw any number of conclusions from Platoon's decision to give the recordings away for free via streaming and download platforms, the real value is in the listening. If perceptions of Dudamel as a hyperactive ex-wunderkind were ever really justified, they aren't now. Like any maestro, he's as good as his last performance, and his Schumann symphonies are polished and audibly sincere – big on colour, but unafraid to follow Schumann into the shadows in (say) the Beethoven-inspired slow movement of the Second, or the fourth movement of the Rhenish, Schumann's high-gothic evocation of Cologne Cathedral.
In truth, the only serious problem is that Dudamel's Schumann isn't fantastic enough. He has a slightly foursquare way of sitting back on the rhythms. You long for more intimacy in the Fourth's caressing violin solo, and less self-consciousness at the magic moment when Schumann the dreamer suddenly, impossibly, halts his Spring symphony to float away into a cadenza for horns and flute. This is music of pine forests and dew: with the Dude, you never quite get off the freeway. Still, there's a lot here that's good, and if you don't like it, you can always ask for your money back.
In the 1970s and 1980s, pickled onions lurked in dubious-looking jars on the counters of fish-and-chip shops, and behind the bar in pubs. There would often be a jar of them at a Christmas buffet, while posh households kept a spring-loaded pickled onion fork in the kitchen drawer.
Back then, they were one of just a few foodstuffs capable of giving British mouths a thrill. But as supermarket shelves began to groan under the weight of harissa, wasabi and chilli sauce, the humble pickled onion fell out of fashion. In 1997, Alan Partridge summed up the mood when he was offered a pickled onion by ‘Geordie Michael’. ‘Erm, no – I hate them!’ he replied with scorn.
It was a shameful damnation of something with such an illustrious history. Mesopotamians are thought to have developed the technique of pickling around 2400 BC, when they began soaking cucumbers and other foods in saltwater brine and vinegar to preserve them through harsh winters. The method caught on when people realised that it was also a convenient way of adding new tastes and textures to the plate.
The Romans introduced onions and pickling to Britain following their invasion in AD 43 and by the 1700s, pickled onions were taking off. Sarah Harrison's 1739 cookbook, The House-Keeper's Pocket-Book, advised aspiring picklers to ‘take your small Onions, lay them in Salt and Water a Day’ before pickling them in a mixture of ‘White Wine Vinegar, Cloves, Mace and a little Pepper’. By the 20th century, the darker flavour of malt vinegar had become strongly associated with the British pickled onion, which was often eye-wateringly strong.
WE'VE HADA FEW...
Other nations, however, had the impertinence to produce versions of their own. So in 1959 British scientists in a laboratory in Leatherhead, Surrey, set out to create the perfect pickled onion. As British Pathé explained, the project was a matter of ‘national prestige’ because nearly all the best pickling onions came from abroad, chiefly Holland and Egypt. ‘Why, pray, shouldn’t the cold roast beef of old England be served with English pickled onions?’ the narrator asked.
Why indeed? The researchers, in tweed suits, used a huge revolving drum to peel the onions without bringing tears to their eyes. This was serious work: the team, said Pathé, had a ‘breathtaking responsibility to the public’.
Now, having survived both the culinary revolution and several decades of neglect, the pickled onion is back. Red onions spearheaded the revival, becoming a fermented feature of tacos, burgers, sandwiches, salads and Middle Eastern dishes, their sharp acidity cutting through rich foods. The Gibson cocktail adds a pickled onion to its blend of gin and dry vermouth. Pickled Onion is every serious person's favourite flavour of Monster Munch crisps.
In Britain, the revival has coincided with our renewed enthusiasm for fermentation. About 8.5 million UK households bought pickled onions in the past year, and in the 12 weeks to August, sales rose 12 per cent year on year. Data from Ocado showed that the pickles, gherkins and olives category is up 30 per cent. Earlier this month, London held its first major festival dedicated to pickling and fermentation: the Big Brine. As chefs embrace pickling as a way of using more of certain ingredients and reducing food waste, it seems the pickled onion has managed to win favour with the sustainability crowd and find itself on the right side of history.
SPEECH WRITING
Bringing together Britain's leading restaurants & private clubs with exclusive privileges extended discreetly to members and not publicly available elsewhere. www.luxuryrestaurantguide.com
John Richard Roberts mixed and patented MelRose Skincare from 1880 until the factory was bombed in a night raid in 1941.
The family and factory relocated to Holton Mill, Oxon, remaining there until the 1950's. Production moved to Birmingham. Melrose has continued in family hands, controlling this high quality multi-purpose skincare, as effective today as it was in earlier years.
We supply nationwide wholesalers which supply local pharmacies.
A gentleman's classic, our pleated front county cords fit in everywhere from the pub to the paddock. Expertly tailored in the finest quality thick, 8-wale corduroy. Hard-wearing and comfortable, retaining their colour and shape wash after wash—these cords are built for decades of wear, growing softer and more full of character with every season.
\- 100% cotton corduroy
\- Single pleat with a French bearer fly front
\- 2 buttoned hip & 2 deep side pockets
\- Hidden, expanding comfort waistband allows for 2" of flexibility
\- No Quibble Money Back Guarantee\*
Colours: Denim, Charcoal,
Rose, Emerald, Conker, Corn,
Purple, Moss, Navy, Burgundy,
Sand, Toffee, Pine, Poppy,
Black, Royal Blue
Waist: 32 34 36 38 40
42 44 46 48 50 52"
Leg: 27 29 31 33"
FREE
DELIVERY
& RETURNS\*
Enter
46W40
at checkout
Trustpilot ★★★★★
"Your corduroy trousers are unbeatable. Excellent quality, I don't look anywhere else." Lady Scott, Shetland, Scotland
Readers Special Offer
MT08
Burgundy
Use code 46W40 for FREE P&P to order County Cords (MT08)
peterchristian.co.uk
24hrs Online Assistance
01273 493 393
Weekdays 9-5pm – Weekends 10-3pm
Trustpilot Rated Excellent
Based on 2,000+
County Corduroy
5 STAR REVIEWS
Order by Post — Cheques payable to Peter Christian. Quote 46W40 and send to: Freepost PETER CHRISTIAN
Go Online or Call for a Free Catalogue
\*Free UK delivery offer (save £5) ends midnight 03/12/26. £75 minimum spend applies. Free returns within UK only, see our full T&Cs online. A Division of Hills of Bramley Ltd. Co Reg No 04767802
September makes serious demands of your Best life columnist, what with book launches, birthdays and the birth of Mona Leda, daughter of my darling niece Lara (which means Boris beats me to grandparenthood and bumps our father, Stanley – who is off-grid in Tibet researching his 30th book – up to great-grandfather).
Significant launches included my sister Julia Gray's excellent Kitty and Mary, an epistolary extension of Pride and Prejudice (the launch was in Highgate, Mrs Gray wore a Regency muslin and there was a communal bonnet); Victoria Hislop's The Wine-Dark Sea in Marylebone (slinky gold slip); and Marina Hyde's What A Time to Be Alive! in Victoria (stunning white cut-out revenge
Seeing Niall again was a bit like returning to your old prep school or childhood bedroom as an adult
Seeing Niall again was a bit like returning to your old prep school or childhood bedroom as an adult
dress to celebrate leaving the Graun after 26 years). But I want to tarry at Simon Sebag Montefiore's party, as it was there I saw Niall Ferguson for the first time since we were at university together, when we had such a calamitous contretemps it made headlines (well, the splash in the Oxford Mail).
He was standing in front of a ziggurat of Sebag's new bestseller, The Cauldron, a history of the Middle East. There was nothing for it.
'Hello Niall,' I said, reaching past him and plucking a copy for the author, holding court behind me, to sign. Seeing Niall again was a bit like returning to your old prep school or childhood bedroom for the first time as an adult. He seemed smaller than I remembered. 'Are we friends?' I continued, which was bold.
At this point, I suppose I should explain the casus belli. I'd once commissioned the illustrious Niall to contribute a chapter to a book I was putting together. I thought it would be a doddle. I'd just ask all my clever student friends to write 8,000-word essays for beer money, pocket the small advance for The Oxford Myth from Weidenfeld & Nicolson, and wait for the admiring reviews and royalties to roll in.
I'd asked my fellow undergrads Toby Young to write on class, Boris Johnson to do student politics, Allegra Mostyn-Owen to do drugs, Aidan Hartley to tackle town and gown, Sebastian Shakespeare on Oxford eccentrics, Niall Ferguson on ambition... ten chapters in all.
Niall's essay came in first, via pigeon post. It was typewritten, and as lucid as you would expect from the top scholar (a demyship from Magdalen) but to my untutored eye it didn't have quite enough snap, crackle and pop, so I returned it with some editing marks. This did not go down well. That was 1986.
Fast forward to Sebag's. I've just asked Niall if we're friends. 'Well, you're the only person I've ever sent a note to that just says,' he began, and then we chanted the contents of his note to me: 'Dear Rachel Johnson, Fuck off, Yours, Niall Ferguson', and how we laughed.
Writing that list of contributors today, by the way, I feel quiet pride that I was a precocious spotter of such journalistic talent. The reviewers of The Oxford Myth, however, were not so indulgent. It was the worst reviewed book of the year. I got a royal flush of vicious notices from grandees you'd have thought were far too busy and self-important to bother with such a sophomoric debut.
Chippy Welsh screenwriter Andrew Davies (it made him ‘want to throw up’), loved and lauded novelist William Boyd (it was ‘routine and uninspired’) et al couldn’t wait to pan the book. What stuck in my craw, though, was the nasty big piece in the Mail, bylined ‘Campbell Ferguson’ and headlined, ‘Just a banal degree of snobbery!’
As you might have guessed, that was Niall. Instead of turning the other cheek, I escalated, and snouted to the Oxford Mail the fact that he, an erstwhile contributor to the book, had semi-anonymously trashed it (a ‘singularly worthless volume’).
And here we both were, nice as pie, chatting about how Ayaan (Hirsi Ali, his wife) replies to neither of our texts, as if none of the Oxford blue on blue had ever happened.
for that?' It was Penguin supremo Venetia Butterfield, next to Sebag. I'd been standing with the copy of The Cauldron without moving straight to the bookseller table while I parleyed with Niall.
Such was my deep pleasure in settling the ancient feud that I felt no flare of annoyance at the insinuation that I was a thief who'd come to Nobu for the canapés, and to walk off without paying for The Book; nor indeed when Emily Maitlis, resplendent in white, told me she was nipping off to the Venice Film Festival to interview George Clooney on stage; and not even when Cliveden's glam blonde châtelaine Natalie Livingstone buzzed over to embrace Maitlis as if I weren't there. All I could do was smile, benign as a Buddha, trying to manifest my grandchildren, as yet unborn, with no wish to start a 40 years' war with anyone ever again.
The hysterical passengers at Larnaca airport were screaming and crying uncontrollably.
‘There’s a Wizz Air flight to Luton tomorrow!’ shouted one girl next to me, looking fit to pop out of her pink skin. ‘What?’ I said, appalled. I don’t know much, but I do know I never want to get a Wizz Air flight to Luton, unless in a full-blown wartime evacuation, and this wasn’t that.
When I tried to scan my boarding pass and it said ‘Flight cancelled’, I just thought ‘Good.’ As the hordes of panicking chavs bombarded the easyJet counter, I turned on my heels and began pulling my wheelie case back towards the exit.
I'm a big fan of budget airlines and hotels. Luxury frightens me and too much choice gives me panic attacks. But there are limits. A Wizz Air flight to Luton? I don't think so.
I marched to the taxi point, calling the driver. ‘Come back,’ I said to Ersin. ‘What happen?’ ‘Flight cancelled.’ ‘Flight cancel?’ ‘Where you go?’ he shouted as I walked towards him. He was now hysterical for no good reason, except I think the IVF clinic pays him to look after me, so if I don't get home safely he may be in trouble.
I climbed back into his people-carrier with disco lights on the ceiling. I looked at the panicking sunburnt chavs stampeding from the terminal to get taxis to take them to the nearest hotels and said: 'I'm coming back to Lefkosha with you.' For ever, if I can arrange it.
Ersin didn't look happy and after a long queue for the border into the Turkish republic, he barked at me for a hundred euros as he offloaded me outside the Hotel Sun. But I had the cash and he was then all smiles and insisted on pulling my case to reception.
While in the taxi I had managed to crack the enigma code of the easyJet rebooking to
Maybe I could just live here in this tiny room, I thought, as I set out all my books and toiletries and clothes again
get the next flight they could offer me. It was six days later. All the screaming pink chavs were on their iPhones prodding the rebooking options.
So I had six more days stuck in northern Cyprus. The hotel checked me back in – €260 for six nights, cheaper than living at home in Ireland for a week. I couldn't do anything in West Cork for that. I asked for my old room back – 527 please.
Maybe I could just live here in this tiny room, I thought, as I set out all my books and toiletries and clothes again.
The next day easyJet offered to pay me €450 not to get the rebooked flight, because they didn't really have the planes for everyone they'd said they had. It was tempting.
I had left the BB with two bookings. An Italian couple that night and a French couple checking in the night after that. He was texting me updates in real time. When the French arrived, he said they asked him, 'When do you think the rain is going to stop?' 'Nine months' time,' he replied. Then they started lecturing him about climate change, and he told them what he thought of that.
I blocked the rest of the days off on Airbnb so he wouldn't clash with anyone else. Still I was toying with the idea of never returning, or not returning for a long time.
I had my thyroid pills and my hormone pills to take. I had two months to try to get my numbers perfect after the last blood test.
My cardio was tip-top, according to the surgeon who listened to my heart. My kidney function was slightly down, but I wasn't surprised given the amount of drowsy antihistamine I guzzle with Lemsip every night to try to knock myself out because I'm frightened of sleeping pills.
I stopped dosing myself up for insomnia, and had six more days lying by the pool listening to country and western music. Then
I reluctantly called Ersin to come and pick me up.
At Larnaca airport, I managed to get my case pulled to pieces as the Greeks looked for a tube of Aussie hair miracle I'd forgotten was in there.
When I got out at the other end, I had to check into one of those £160-a-night sleeping kennels at Gatwick and, after that, as they didn't have a connecting flight to Cork for days, I set off for my friend's flat in Pimlico. Re-entry to the world of mindless pettiness then began in earnest.
On the packed train to Victoria the doors opened to reveal a few people on the platform at East Croydon and a voice squawked: 'Move down – selfish!' A twenty-something blonde girl with a voice like she'd inhaled helium was trying to get on.
‘Sel-fish!’ she squeaked, as though she also wanted to shout ‘Raaacist!’ and ‘Sexist!’ and ‘Just stop oil!’
Old ladies tried to move up by flattening themselves and bending in two, so I shouted: 'Listen Karl Marx, before you start spouting The Communist Manifesto, maybe consider it's you who's being selfish trying to squeeze onto a packed train when you should wait for the next one!' I should have called her Karla Marx, of course, but I didn't think of that until just now.
Back at Gatwick a few days later to get my Cork flight, the Ryanair woman wouldn't let my carry-on through. She measured it in that stupid holder thing, then made me repack the front pouches into my handbag, so I boarded the plane with an overflowing display of bikinis and knickers. She then waved through a girl with a camping pack on her back half the size of her, virtually with pots and pans hanging off it, and various bulging bumbags strapped to her waist, followed by two very large men with long pink hair wearing dresses, pulling cases larger than mine and snogging each other.
My neat carry-on had been unpacked and repacked twice by fools, and the result was that when I got back to Ireland, I couldn't find my treasured new, freshly re-read holiday copy of Tender Is The Night, complete with turned-down pages at the bits that made me cry.
If it weren't for the thought of all the medication I've got to remember to wake up and take each day, I'd pull the covers over my head indefinitely.
‘Let’s talk about your hoarding and concealing food issues.’
I opened the WhatsApp message and read: 'Massed missile and drone warning. About eighth since I've been here. I'm deep underground.' It was from my old friend James. 'They organise camping stools in the metro,' he added.
He was in Kyiv, where he had first gone in 1997 with his acoustic guitar and electronic keyboard and where he had met his future wife, Svetlana, who lived in distant Kharkiv. Their romance blossomed in Gurzuf on the Black Sea, where Chekhov had a house, and where they met up four times that summer.
They moved first to Bratislava on the Danube where he founded a magazine. They then moved on to a small town just over the border in Austria, where he dabbled in property and they still live. They have three children.
Later that day, he sent me another message: ‘Saturday night – the beautiful people massed in the pavement cafés of Yaroslaviv Val, Kyiv. There’s an ongoing massed drone attack. Do they care! Life is to be lived. Just an extraordinary atmosphere.’
I was at school in Canterbury with James. After university we lived in a squat together off the Walworth Road. He had been a choral scholar at New College, Oxford and I had read history at Gonville & Caius, Cambridge, and yet there we both were like Withnail and I, deep in the heart of nowhere.
Years later, I was his best man when he married Svetlana in Canterbury Cathedral and in my speech at the reception I did my best to shout the traditional Ukrainian wedding toast ‘Гірко!’ which is the order for the bride and groom to kiss and turn what is bitter sweet.
From south London, James went first much further south, to Sienna, and then Madrid, and from there to Toulouse, but found neither love nor success so he changed direction and went east to Kyiv. Back in the 1990s Kyiv was like a frontier town in the old Wild West, where anything was possible. There, he found ‘joy’ perhaps for the first time.
These days James goes back there frequently to hand over medical supplies he has crowd-funded to the resistance against the Russian regime and because he is writing a biography of the mighty Dnieper that cuts through the heart of the country he loves. I edited the first draft and it is bloody good.
Three short bits of writing about his trip this time soon reached me by email. The first described the train journey to Kyiv. His eldest daughter had refused to let him take the usual train across the border from Poland because of the recent drone attack that had narrowly missed the train carrying foreign dignitaries such as Boris Johnson. So he crossed from Slovakia instead. Due to a threatened drone attack, his train stopped just outside Kyiv to wait for the all clear.
He writes: ‘09.00. Everyone in our train abruptly stands up, hands folded in front of them. Over the speaker, an electronic clock chimes the seconds. An image – a lighted candle – appears on my Telegram channel tracking ongoing attacks. Every morning, the whole nation pauses for one minute of silence. We remember the fallen. We honour the victims of this war. Forty minutes later we edge into the central station.’
Incroyable! Such passion, such patriotism. I was also struck by his use of the word ‘we’. I’ve lived in Italy for nearly 30 years and am married to an Italian. But I do not feel Italian. Yet he feels Ukrainian. Then again, wouldn’t I feel Italian if Italy were under similar attack?
In his second piece, he says that once inside his hotel bedroom in central Kyiv, he vows to evacuate to the metro as soon as the next missile/drone attack alert arrives with a ‘ping’ on the dedicated app on his phone.
He writes: ‘PING. I’m out of bed and dressed in 20 seconds, out of the hotel in 45 seconds… On a concealed bench, lovers kissing, entwined. It’s Saturday night – they defy the curfew – they’ll defy the missiles. I make it to the metro, skip down the stairs to the first level of safety – almost no one there – just a cleaner. She indicates to me to descend the escalator.’ He goes back to the hotel and ignores subsequent alerts. ‘I dream through them all, wake up to the ongoing drone attack, but I’m damned if that’s going to stop me going out for a hearty breakfast.’
In his last piece, he describes the death-defying devil-may-care defiance of young Ukrainians as he joins them in the packed pavement bars and restaurants of central Ukraine on a late summer's Saturday night. 'For now, no one's checking their Telegram alert channel. What's the point? There's an ongoing alert. Only question is: are they drones or missiles? Cruise or ballistic? Whichever way, the young crowd thronging the streets don't care. Damn the war!'
He wonders why he keeps coming back to this ancient city and answers: ‘Threading through the Saturday evening throng, drones prowling nearby streets, I feel it, the ultimate rush; life in the raw to be lived, loved, treasured, grasped for a fleeting instant like a wild bird trembling, momentarily stilled in flight, then let go.’
But then James fell silent. I began to fear the worst. And so after three days, one evening last week, I rang him on WhatsApp. He answered and I said: 'Where are you?' 'Back in Austria,' he replied, cool as a cucumber. So we then spent five hours, 32 minutes and 25 seconds talking about this and that with the help of a drink or two.
The Turf
Charlie Brooks
With the recent passing of Johnny ‘The Fish’ Ferrand and Graham ‘Brad’ Bradley, racing lost two of its most loved and colourful characters. I was in business with both of them – one more successfully than the other.
I remember one time when Johnny the Fish and I thought the chef of our pub, the Pheasant Inn, was in the small, grotty kitchen. But when we walked in, there was no sign of him. Then we looked behind the serving counter and saw him sitting on the floor, injecting heroin into his arm. The Fish's eyes got bigger and more watery than normal, he puffed his cheeks out and dryly observed: 'Well that's a bit strong... before lunch.'
At St Michael and All Angels church in Lambourn last week, trainer Nicky Henderson regaled us with tales of the Fish.
‘You can imagine how naughty he must have been at Cheam, where the King was captain of his dorm,’ Nicky suggested. The packed church certainly could. For the last quarter of a century, they’d all fallen in love with the kindest and most irresponsible of human beings, while drinking with him.
Before we bought the Pheasant, with the aim of making it the racing pub around Lambourn, I thought he was called Johnny the Fish because he used to be a fishmonger, and he looked like a fish. But I discovered fairly quickly that it was because he drank like one.
It was a questionable acquisition. The building, if that's what you could call it, was a complete dump and had parking for only four cars. Or three, if the chef turned up. But we were proud of our new project, so when the Hendersons invited us to lunch to shoot the breeze with the Queen Mother, we persuaded her to stop in at the Pheasant on her way back to Clarence House for a large pink gin. Then I got slightly cold feet. We were having a problem with obscene graffiti in the ladies' loos, and I hadn't whitewashed some pretty fruity stuff over that morning.
‘Pink gins at the ready,’ I advised Her Majesty as we poured her into her chariot. ‘One thing though… probably best to “go” here before you leave. The loos aren’t great at the Pheasant.’
Johnny was wicked company. Every trainer and jockey in the area would stop on their way home from the races and have a skinful with him. The trouble was he drank more than everyone else put together and never really cottoned on to the idea that the customers were meant to be buying him a drink, not the other way around. He was also known as ‘the Ferret’ to his oldest mates, such as Bill Wiggins, who was unfairly nicknamed ‘Bungalow Bill’ when he was Joan Collins’s romantic partner.
Two girls were brave enough to marry Johnny, and happily the first marriage produced Suzanna, who was duly packed off to Stonar, from where he always picked her up at the back door – until he finally got a treble up at Cheltenham. On his next visit, he boldly walked up to the front door, with the swagger of a man of means. ‘Mr Ferrand, you are three terms in arrears,’ the bursar, who was lying in wait, growled. With a certain flourish, the Fish thrust a rather tatty plastic bag full of bookmakers’ £50 notes towards him with a triumphant, ‘I think you’ll find I’m now three terms in credit.’
Johnny the Fish's service is one of my happier memories of St Michael and All Angels church. So many friends from a distant past, so many boozing mates around the village – and an acceptance that there was more speed than stamina in his pedigree, which made his departure from the pubs of the Lambourn valley at the age of 76 seem like the end of a life well lived.
Brad's departure, on the other hand, after a horrible time with dementia, felt brutal and premature. He was one of the most stylish jockeys of his generation, who famously led home the five Michael Dickinson runners on Bregawn in the 1983 Cheltenham Gold Cup, and won the 1996 Champion Hurdle on Collier Bay, after getting ‘jocked-off’ the more fancied Alderbrook because he overslept and missed a morning gallop.
He also won the 1997 Hennessy Gold Cup for me on Suny Bay, two years after I cost him another victory in the same race. Although he was my first jockey, I asked him to ride Black Humour, who jumped like a drunk, and so he missed out on winning the race on Couldn't Be Better. But such was the bigheartedness of the man, he was genuinely delighted for our team and our second jockey, Dean Gallagher.
Sometimes he was too kind – or perhaps naive. Telling a judge in the High Court that the reason why another ex-jockey, Barry Wright, had a load of cash under his bed was because he’d passed on inside information on races to a punter, as they all had, as opposed to selling a barrowload of cocaine, was akin to throwing himself under a bus. It was certainly the end of his involvement in racing.
His service in Wetherby, a few days before Johnny's, was extraordinary. Every jump jockey I can think of from Britain and Ireland in the 1990s had travelled to the northern town to pay tribute to a guy who had their backs when times were hard.
I hope both men got to look down on us to see how much they were loved. 'Shouldn't we have memorial services before we die?' Simon McNeil, who rode Katabatic to win the Queen Mother Champion Chase, pondered before we sloped off to the pub.
‘O’zbekiston’, they chanted, as I weaved my way through the scrum of fans and cameramen. The host nation, Uzbekistan, had just won gold at the 46th chess Olympiad, held in Samarkand. It was clear from the start that their team, led by Nodirbek Abdusattorov and Javokhir Sindarov (both in the world’s top ten) was capable of winning. They had already won at the Chennai Olympiad in 2022, when their players were far less experienced. But to play at home, and overcome fierce competition from top seeds USA, and second seeds India (the winners in Budapest 2024), was a huge challenge. The pivotal moment, at least in hindsight, occurred in the sixth-round match between Uzbekistan and India. Nihal had played a strong game, but in the diagram position his last move, 37…Nd6-f5? was a blunder that met with a spectacular refutation. It was better to abandon the h4-pawn and retreat the king to g7.
38 Ne6+!! Rxe6 39 gxh4+ The knight's sacrifice has ensured that the Qc7 is undefended, so this wins. Nxh4 40 Qxc7 Nf3+ 41 Kg2 Nxe1+ 42 Rxe1 e2 43 Rxe2 Rxe2+ 44 Bxe2 Rxe2+ 45 Kg3 Bd3 Hoping for 46 Qxb7? Bb5, with hopes of a fortress defence. Yakubboev plays accurately to break that coordination. 46 Qg7+ Kh5 47 Kf4 Re4+ 48 Kf3 Rh4 49 Kg3 Re4 50 b5! Now 50...Bxb5 51 Qh7+ wins, so White will
White to play. Duda-Grandelius, Fide Olympiad, Samarkand, 2026. Duda soon won, but missed the strongest move in this position. Which move wins the game in style? Email answers to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 5 October. There is a prize of a £20 John Lewis voucher 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 Bf3! Then 1...Kxf3 2 Nd4#, 1...Kxg5 2 Ne4#, 1...Ke5 2 Ne8# or 1... gxf5 2 Rfxf5#
Last week's winner John Roaf, Enfield
soon get a passed pawn. axb5 51 Qh7+ Kg5 52 Qxb7 b4 53 a6 Bxa6 54 Qg7+ Qg7-h7+ will win the rook after either king move, so Black resigns
soon get a passed pawn. axb5 51 Qh7+ Kg5 52 Qxb7 b4 53 a6 Bxa6 54 Qg7+ Qg7-h7+ will win the rook after either king move, so Black resigns
Uzbekistan won that match 2.5-1.5 and never relinquished their lead, while India's team of young stars ended up with the silver medals.
It was unusual to see the world champion, Gukesh Dommaraju, playing on board 4 for India, since at the previous Olympiad he had earned an individual medal on top board. His recent form has been poor, and he may have wished to avoid a pairing against Sindarov, his challenger for the forthcoming world championship. Still, his excellent score of 8.5/11 earned him an individual silver medal, and perhaps a boost to his confidence.
The bronze medals went to Germany, who were the only team to beat Uzbekistan. They had chances to beat India too, as Donchenko stood well earlier, but Gukesh had turned the game around and finished with a flourish.
Alexander Donchenko-Gukesh Dommaraju Fide Olympiad, Samarkand, 2026
Competition 3469 invited you to submit seriously misguided love poems. This proved a popular challenge but the standard was patchy. The £25 vouchers go to those below.
Your personal sparkle
more Merkel than Markle,
more Dobbin than Arkle,
more glum Pagliacci
than fun mariachi,
more prickly than roses,
more commandments than Moses,
more Plain Jane Sans Merci
than bedtime with Circe.
And as fun as a rum-free lukewarm hot rum toddy
or a night in a whore-house with Big Ears and
Noddy.
But divorce would be costly and hard to arrange And we've done 30 years and I'm wary of change And inertia's a glue that is hard to undo; So stay stuck to me and I'll stick fast to you. Martin Parker
How do I love you? When you got in touch my screen glowed, as rekindled with desire. You'd sought me out; I'd never gone out much (shy country mouse!) but you knew how to fire all that I yearned for. So your emails came, faster and faster, sharing your rich life through photos (that Ferrari!), and your name opening so many doors. Your tremulous Wife? sent my heart racing, so that when you asked – A temporary loan? Of course, my sweet. A token that our love affair will last. And you'll return it, when at last we meet. Send me the date, and soon, and we'll agree
Send me the date, and soon, and we'll agree how well you understand the inner me. D.A. Prince
Hiding in the bushes,
I caught a glimpse of you,
and knew at once your tush is
the tush I wish to woo,
so shapely and so curvy, and in-the-right-spots plump. My heart went topsy-turvy, ensorcelled by your rump.
I heard the songbirds singing a soft, erotic sound, and somewhere bells were ringing. But then you turned around.
The songbirds all went mute,
but love, what can I say?
You're not perfect, but you're cute,
so I'll stalk you anyway.
Robert Schechter
I know you're playing hard to get, I've therefore built a shrine reminding me that I am yours, reminding me you're mine.
Your washing line provided me with skimpy underwear,
and from your favourite salon, I procured locks of your hair.
They're on the altar, neath your served and framed restraining orders; a tribute to our love that has impressed the prison warders.
And when I am released, my love, your bins will warrant trips to sift through scraps and morsels that have brushed against your lips.
Paul Freeman
Live with me and be my larva,
Gleaming cockroach of my heart,
I will be your grease-trap charmer,
Fated, baited from the start,
Like a stinky bin you draw me,
Warm as pipes or toaster wires,
Swarm close, creepy-crawly cutie,
Love me like humidifiers,
Scavenge for my love, you vermin,
I'm your soap scum, take your fill,
Fingers brush like twitching feelers,
Being apart is Rentokil,
Scurry, scuttle, leggy lurker,
Stay as near as flatworm fluking,
If your head fully was severed,
Our love would outlast a nuking.
Janine Beacham
You're not physically repulsive, not to me,
Though you channel chimpanzees when slurping tea,
Your hands are often clammy,
And your wardrobe's too Miami –
No man alive would wish to see your knees;
And your drab attempts at whoredom
Prompt a melancholy boredom,
As I shut my eyes and wonder what to squeeze
But your Queen Anne house, with carriage sweep's a pleasure,
Your daughters are enchanting beyond measure,
Your Zoffanys and Turners
Might be useful little earners,
I'll inspect your ample cellars at my leisure.
And my storm-tossed barque is broaching
And the loan sharks are approaching,
So – be Grimsby to my whaler, there's a treasure.
Nick Syrett
I'll love you till the car parks are no longer full of cars,
Till all the seas are dry and jam no longer comes in jars,
Till all the works of Edward Elgar end up in the bin,
Till every tin of biscuits simply has no biscuits in,
Till we have no more bananas and we have no sailing ships,
Till all the fish and chip shops sell you neither fish nor chips,
Till the fox won't chase the rabbit and the cat won't chase the mouse,
I would go on but then again I see you've left the house.
You are invited to submit a sonnet inspired by a well-known contemporary figure's characteristic feature. Email entries to competition@spectator.co.uk by midday on 14 October.
17 Considering British English around US and Europe (7)
20 Investigator in a large town displays sharpness (7)
21 All the best women adore drinking vermouth at start of holiday (4,4)
23 Mayflies turn up in record time over Spain (9)
27 Soldier catches fresh conch for something to eat (7)
29 Voted for Romania to produce dance music (7)
31 Assistant's blunder knocking out IT in capital (7)
35 Topple over into abyss (3)
36 Appreciation of teacher diminished (5)
A first prize of a £30 John Lewis voucher and two runners-up prizes of £20 vouchers for the first correct solutions opened on 19 October. Please scan or photograph entries and email them (including the crossword number in the subject field) to crosswords@spectator.co.uk, or post to: Crossword 2772, The Spectator, 22 Old Queen Street, London SW1H 9HP. Please allow six weeks for prize delivery.
The SPEAKER (6A) of the HOUSE OF COMMONS (1D) has been BEHEADED (23D) seven times: BUSSY (15A), THORPE (1A), TRESHAM (12D), CATESBY (22D), EMPSON (5D), DUDLEY (41A), MORE (18A) – each are shown in the grid without their initial letter to indicate their fate.
First prize Vicky Walmesley, Exeter Runners-up Peter Tanner, Hertford Kenny Mills, Londonderry
A criticism often levelled at cookery writers is: 'I could just buy that at the supermarket', which is an apparent slam-dunk counter to the time and effort needed to make the thing yourself, i.e. why would you bother? With such people, I find myself stutteringly defending cookbooks, recipes and the practice of cooking as a whole.
My defence is both obvious and compelling: I can make it better, I can make it cheaper, I know exactly what's going into it if I've made it and, crucially, cooking is one of life's pleasures. I actively enjoy kneading and proving and waiting and peeking in the oven and stirring and whisking and slicing. Making the thing is often the whole point – the end result a delightful by-product.
However, living in 2026, I am rarely able to respond to the core argument as the item that I'm making is almost always available
Filled just before eating, freshly made cannoli are unmatchable: elegant, indulgent and unique
Filled just before eating, freshly made cannoli are unmatchable: elegant, indulgent and unique
in the supermarket. You can get anything nowadays. That is, apart from cannoli.
In its homeland of Sicily, cannoli abounds: you cannot walk into a café or a bakery without being accosted by pyramids of ricotta-filled cigars smelling of nuts and lemons and cinnamon. But it is absolutely impossible to get good cannoli from the supermarket and, unless you live in Sicily, it's incredibly hard to find cannoli anywhere else.
A cannoli should be a perfect contrast of a crisp shell, robust enough to hold its creamy filling but tender and brittle enough that it gives way as soon as you eat it. It is nearly impossible to achieve this if you want the cannoli to last beyond a couple of hours.
Food writer Nicola Lamb calls cannoli ‘the mayfly of pastry’, which really does capture its ephemeral nature. A cannoli more than a few hours old is a tragic cannoli: filled in advance, the creamy ricotta makes the shell soggy and sad, while attempts to prevent this lead to thick, firm shells. Also, if you are leaving the cannoli hanging around, they need refrigerating to preserve the ricotta, which makes the whole thing unpleasantly cold and the shells feel greasy when you eat them. So, no, you can't just buy these in a supermarket.
The dough is unlike any other dough I've tasted or worked with: flavoured with just a little cocoa and cinnamon, moistened with red wine and enriched with lard, it is worked until smooth, and then rolled repeatedly until it is very, very thin. During this rolling, the dough is folded over on itself, creating tightly pressed layers which, when fried, bubble up into those distinctive cannoli blisters. Wrapped around metal moulds and sealed with egg white, the shells form perfect tubes when fried, which slip eagerly off their moulds, ready to be filled with sweetened ricotta, often flavoured with pistachio, hazelnut, chocolate or citrus. I keep mine simple, folding through a palmful of candied lemon and orange peel, diced so finely it's less of a flavour and more of a perfume.
But, oh boy, is it an undertaking: food processors, kneading, a pasta machine for rolling, cannoli-specific moulds, deep-frying and piping bags. None of it requires particular skill, but it's certainly a production. If you don't fancy a project, cannoli is not for you, but if you do, this one pays dividends.
There are always ways to make things easier for yourself: while all of this can be done by hand, it takes longer and is harder. Instead, I bring my dough together in a food processor, which makes the whole thing clean and simple, as well as kick-starting the gluten development in the pastry. Using a pasta machine to roll out the dough means that you are quickly able to get the thinness needed for the shell, which is much harder by hand.
I also tend to spread my cannoli-making over two days: on the first, I strain my ricotta and make and chill my dough, and on the second I roll and fry the dough, and fill the shells.
Filled just before eating, freshly made cannoli are unmatchable: elegant, indulgent and unique. Just hold on to that thought when you're frying your third batch of shells. Don't say you weren't warned.
Makes: 12-16 cannoli
Hands-on time: 1 hour
Cooking time: 20 minutes
For the shells
200g plain flour - 1 tbsp caster sugar
1 tsp cocoa powder
½ tsp ground cinnamon
30g lard or butter - 1 egg
50ml red wine
1 tbsp white wine vinegar
Neutral oil, for frying
For the filling
500g ricotta - 90g icing sugar
50g candied citrus peel, finely diced
50g shelled pistachios, finely chopped
1. Place the ricotta in a sieve lined with muslin and leave to drain for as long as possible.
2. Put the dry ingredients in a food processor, add the lard/butter and pulse until it resembles breadcrumbs. Stir the wine, vinegar and egg yolk together (reserve the egg white for later) and add, pulsing until a dough forms. Turn out onto your work surface and knead until smooth. Wrap in clingfilm and refrigerate for at least two hours.
3. Divide your dough into four pieces. Take one and roll it using a pasta machine on the widest gauge. Fold the dough in half, and roll it again. Work down through the settings, folding the dough over each time. It's possible to use a rolling pin.
4. Lay out the dough and stamp out 11-12cm circles. Wrap a circle around each cannoli mould, using the egg white to seal it.
5. Fill a deep pan halfway with oil and heat to $180^{\circ}$ C. Lower the wrapped cannoli moulds into the oil and cook for one minute, then lift and place on kitchen paper. Slide the shells from the moulds carefully. Repeat with the rest of the dough.
6. Before serving, beat the ricotta, icing sugar and candied peel together and decant into a piping bag with a large star nozzle. Pipe into each cannoli shell, then dip each end in the chopped pistachios.
Drink
Orange revolution
Declan Lyons
Orange wine is on my mind. On a recent stroll down Westbourne Grove, and with a bit of time on my hands, I stopped into Franklin's – a sea of tranquillity in the bustle of nearby Portobello market. This local wine bar is run by two wonderful chaps, Luigi and Lucio. The former is from Naples and the latter from Valencia, so they know their wines. And when I asked to try something unusual, I was presented with a glass of orange wine.
Their choice was the Bodegas Verum Ulterior Naranja 2024 – as is evident from its name, an orange wine produced in Spain. Rich and creamy, what sets it apart from other orange wines is that it is a blend of red and white grapes: mostly Albillo Real, an ancient Spanish white variety, which is mixed with a little Moravia Agria, a rare indigenous red grape. My interest
It's bottled
to resemble
a premium
rosé and is
heavy on the
nose and then
surprisingly
light on
the palate
piqued by its organic freshness, and tales of how orange wine is all the rage with London's hipsters, I trotted off into the night determined to see what else this stable had to offer.
Now, before you despair that this column has gone woke, it's worth considering the distant origins of orange wine. Perhaps as long as 8,000 years ago the good folk of Georgia developed a method of wine production that created an unmistakably orange hue.
The key to this art is the qnevri, a giant clay pot used to ferment, store and age traditional Georgian wine. Instead of taking the juice out of the grapes, they would put them, with skins on, in the qnevri and bury it for months. The result of that skin contact is the distinctive orange colour. Obvious to some, but maybe not to others, there are no oranges in orange wine.
And while that history lesson might sound like a sidetrack, there are Georgian wine-makers who to this day use the same process to produce excellent orange wines. The first to recommend is made by the Dugladze family, with white Rkatsiteli grapes grown in the Kakheti region. After three months' storage in a qnevri, their Ranina Kakhuri is delicious and full-bodied with a distinctly dry finish. If you're looking to sample what's out there, at roughly £15 a bottle it will be hard to beat as a value proposition.
For something a little more complex, and about an additional £10 a bottle, the same family produces a Qvevri Kisi 2023. Comprised entirely of Kisi grapes, this has a darker hue than the Ranina, as it spends six months in the qvevri. It’s bottled to resemble a premium rosé and is heavy on the nose and then surprisingly light on the palate; a real treat. If the orange wine movement can seem trendy today, these two wines pay homage to thousands of years of tradition and the almighty qvevri.
Because of orange wine's surging popularity, producers across Europe are experimenting. Italy and Slovenia have both turned out excellent examples in recent years. The final one that grabbed my attention, however, is French. Made with Soleil grapes in Languedoc, Château Vieux Moulin's Le Soleil is a lightly sparkling delight with the same tint from skin-contact fermentation. This is the one to serve if you have a guest you'd like to impress and can spare the £25 price tag.
It might be too soon – or, given the drink’s long history, too late – to say that orange is the new white. But when the sun is still shining, yet without summer heat, these wines offer something different: lighter than red and more full-bodied than a dry white. Even the colour matches the leaves soon to adorn the garden. In drinking them, you’ll be saluting both the ancient Georgian method of production and the fact that it’s a continuing story of innovation.
Q. If flirting is out of the question, is there another way to show someone you like them? My situation was a lunch at which a really attractive girl was on my right, but on her right was a man who obviously fancied her too. Because this man had shown interest in investing in my start up, I didn't want to compete with him and wreck the chances of his coming on board. So I played it cool and she left without any idea I was interested in her. How could I have handled this better? – Name and address withheld
A. When the other man had safely turned, you should have made up a fictional book title and asked the girl e.g. 'Have you ever read "Bertha" by Deirdre Squill?' Still wearing an unflirtatious expression, continue coldly, 'It's an obscure book, but the character of Bertha is fascinating – very much in the same way as you are. I happen to have a spare copy. Can I get your address from our host and I will put it in the post to you?' Later send a card saying you are so sorry, the book seems to have disappeared, but would she like to meet for a drink?
Q. I feel you ought to do some kind of public service announcement regarding Save the Date alerts. I am 28 and, in the course of planning my own nuptials, I have found that older generations don't realise that Save the Date is now an invite. In the past they marked the date down with a pencil in their diary and waited for the invite without RSPV-ing. But now, if you can come, you respond by sending your postal address so the proper invitation can be sent. My generation, of course, don't have our friends' land addresses. You have to give them the date months, if not a year, in advance, as people get so booked up.
– O.E., London SE5
A. Thank you for drawing this to readers' attention. Traditional wedding invitations would have gone out no earlier than 12 weeks beforehand. Today, due to friend inflation and the death of spontaneity, bridal couples are forced to seek acceptances much further in advance.
Q. Some friends who come shooting ask us to dinner but it's always just us and one other couple, the de Koonings (fake name). We think they always ask the de Koonings with us because they don't know many other 'smart' people. We don't want the de Koonings. We would much rather it was just the four of us. How can we achieve this? – Name and address withheld
A. One of you should confide that you have taken on ‘what’s called a side hustle. But I’m not allowed to talk about it yet. The only problem is that, tragically, it means we won’t be able to have dinner with the de Koonings as that could infringe the non-compete rules I’ve signed up to.’
Write to Dear Mary at
dearmary@spectator.co.uk
No sacred cows Happiness is a warm rifle Toby Young
No sacred cows Happiness is a warm rifle Toby Young
Earlier this week, I made my annual pilgrimage to the Cairngorms National Park to go deer stalking, an activity I was introduced to in the 1990s and quickly fell in love with. There are few better feelings than seeing a stag in your rifle's telescopic sight, his antlers silhouetted against the skyline, having stalked the beast for several hours, much of it on your belly. It's a challenging sport and not just because of the physical discomfort. Red deer can see, hear and smell you from thousands of yards away, so there's no alternative but to sneak up on them downwind.
Some people will recoil at the thought of deriving pleasure from shooting such a majestic animal, but if they're not killed by the ‘guests’, they'll be shot by the professional stalkers employed by the estates or the park rangers. In 2020, the Deer Working Group, which was set up by the Scottish government, recommended that there should be a maximum of ten red deer per square kilometre over large areas of open range, and an estimated 200,000 are culled every year – more now that the SNP government has scrapped seasonal restrictions, making it possible to shoot stags all year round. Visitors like me account for a tiny fraction of the total, but it's a storied tradition that has inspired some of Scotland's finest paintings (see the Landseers in the National Gallery of
It's hard to dismiss the suspicion that the real motive is a hatred of the sports associated with the landed gentry
Scotland in Edinburgh) and provides employment to an army of stalkers and gillies, with the trade being passed down from one generation to the next. The large sporting estates are also responsible for a lot of Highland tourism, sustaining thousands of small businesses.
But stalking is under siege and is gradually dying out. The principal cause is the lucrative carbon credit market, making it more profitable for landowners to embark on large peatland regeneration schemes at the expense of traditional Scottish sports. It’s particularly profitable because this ‘rewilding’ is paid for by the Scottish taxpayer, with Holyrood having committed £250 million to restoring 250,000 hectares of peatland by 2030. The landowners happily fill in the drainage ditches that, 60 years ago, they were paid to dig in the hope of improving the grazing. They sell the carbon credits each year to businesses that want to offset their emissions, and watch their land rise in value thanks to the carbon gold rush.
According to the stalker that took me out on Monday – a 65-year-old who was the fifth generation of his family to take it up – a neighbouring estate was sold recently for £19.5 million, triple what it’s worth as measured by how many deer and grouse are shot by paying guests each year, which used to be the way sporting estates were valued. Since the purchase, grouse shooting has been stopped altogether and stalking is being phased out, with the new owners aiming to keep the number of deer down to two per square kilometre. It’s safe to say he was unimpressed.
‘There are no teachers in the schools, no nurses in the hospitals,’ he said, ‘but the Scottish government can find £25 million a year to fill in some ditches that will have little or no effect.’ As we passed various pools of water, he scoffed at the idea that the uplands would benefit from being even wetter: ‘At the end of today we’ll be absolutely bloody soaking.’
One argument conservationists make is that peatland regeneration will reduce the risk of wildfires, but that is disputed by those who make their living on the land. You now need a licence to carry out a controlled burn and NatureScot is parsimonious about granting them, not wanting the carbon to be released into the atmosphere. In addition, the declining number of grouse shoots means fewer gamekeepers, so fires are less likely to be nipped in the bud. My stalker pointed out that the largest fire in the Cairngorms this year was on land that had been ‘rewilded’ by the RSPB.
Given how threadbare the evidence is that these regeneration schemes will have any impact on climate change, it's hard to dismiss the suspicion that the real motive of the SNP is a hatred of the sports associated with the landed gentry. Instead of just banning them, which would be difficult given their importance to the rural economy, they've filled the landowners' mouths with gold. Alas, most of the large estates are only too happy to embrace the carbon cash giveaway.
My visit to the Cairngorms was bit-
tersweet. As we returned to the lodge
in a Hilux with a dead stag in the back,
my sense of wellbeing was tempered
by the knowledge that this may be the
last stalk I'll ever do. Like so much
of what makes Britain such a civilised
place to live, this fine tradition won't
be with us much longer.
MICHAEL HEATH
THE SPECTATOR | 3 OCTOBER 2026 | WWW.SPECTATOR.COM
Sport
Pep and his players should be celebrated, not dissed Roger Alton
Pep and his players should be celebrated, not dissed Roger Alton
When the sonorous voice of Clive Myrie describes something as the ‘biggest sports story of the century’ in tones normally used for events in Kyiv or Gaza it’s probably time to sit up and listen. Or maybe not. The City saga – at root claiming that the club breached financial rules to pay its way from 2009 to 2018, when they won the Premier League three times – has been going on for eight years after all, and if Ferran Soriano, the chief executive, and the unfeasibly wealthy chairman, Khaldoon Al Mubarak, know what they are talking about, it’s got plenty more time to run. God help us! And they do seem pretty bullish. None of this, ‘OK guv, you got us bang to rights, we’ll come quietly’ stuff.
Personally, I find it difficult to get worked up about this story. After all, the rules were designed to stop anyone bringing down the big boys of the Premier League. Those who want the book thrown at City argue that they cheated: they were able to turbocharge their recruitment to catch up with the rest of the major clubs by overspending and hiding that spend, amid a bit of sponsorship here and a bit of investment there.
I prefer to think of what City have given us: some of the most sublime football the Premier League has ever seen
Well, who knows? Would they have been able to do it without sailing close to the rules, just by relying on Pep's genius? We'll never know. Would Pep have even joined, argue City's opponents, if they were just a mid-table club? Would Haaland have followed suit? And none of us have ever brushed up against the rules. Have we?
That admirable Mauricio Pochettino, now the US team manager, expressed the bafflement of many when he remarked, 'It is a huge sadness... We get into a situation where what got celebrated wasn't that real; what seemed good maybe wasn't so good, what didn't look good maybe was good but couldn't be good because of what happened.' Well, you know what he means...
I prefer though to think of what City have given us: some of the most sublime football the Premier League has ever seen. It wasn't bags of money running around playing football, it was some of the finest footballers ever to play in Britain: Haaland; Rodri – for years the best midfielder in Britain and the best player at the last World Cup; Bernardo Silva, the club's player of the year in 2019; Vincent Kompany, one of the most electrifying players I have ever seen; Kevin De Bruyne, footballing perfection. We have never seen players like this, and we should celebrate it.
Any argument that the trophies are tarnished seems to me to be pretty rubbish. I agree with Rodri, now at Barcelona but absolutely central to City's dominance, who insisted: 'I can tell you everything was deserved, and I'm glad I could live through one of the best eras of English football.'
We know Andy Burnham enjoys his rugby league at Everton's Hill Dickinson stadium, and he particularly likes the fact that he can sluice down a pint while watching, whereas he can't when it's his beloved football team. Now he wants all football fans to be allowed to drink at the game rather than just before or at half-time. How much drink do people need? The joys of Twickenham are cited where you can watch rugby and drink endlessly. But has he ever been? It is an ordeal. There are enough pubs and bars at the ground to keep a navy afloat, but once the game has started and you're sitting down, you're endlessly up and down as a stream of boozers shuffle past with trays of beer and then head off to the loo. No fun, Andy. Stick to the triple lock.
L est we forget, it was good to see Warwickshire going berserk as they celebrated their victory in the County Championship, showing that at least the players think it's something worth celebrating, even if cricket's administrators don't really agree. By way of compensation, poor Somerset, who finished second, saw three of their batsmen – Abell (307), Lammonby (229) and Banton (126 – batting for England) – complete innings totalling 662 runs on the same day. Hope for next year? Perhaps... Somerset have never won.
Princess Diana's brother, Earl Spencer, appears to be out for revenge for the treatment of his sister by the King, particularly for a phone call in which he claimed that Prince Charles, as he then was, said: 'Rest assured, we'll forget her soon enough.' Aristotle would have been delighted at how precisely the Earl's reaction matched his analysis of the angry man.
The emotions, said Aristotle, especially anger, alter one's judgment, causing both distress but also pleasure. At this point Aristotle quotes Achilles who in the Iliad (the epic of Achilles's destructive wrath)
acknowledged anger as ‘far sweeter than oozing honey, spreading in a man’s heart and expanding like smoke’ (what an image!). Aristotle then defines anger as a desire for revenge in response to being belittled by someone with contempt, spite or insult. It is those feelings that Spencer nourishes in response to Charles’s ‘Rest assured’ comment. But it is perfectly possible that Charles was clumsily reaching out for one of the oldest clichés in the world in an attempt to console the Earl. Likewise, Diana's comment about Charles being in ‘love with his valet’ probably meant nothing more than a Geordie saying her man is in love with Alan Shearer. But a man on a revenge mission will brook no retreat. We seek revenge, says Aristotle, because we believe the offender wronged us; we want to cause him pain so that he will not wrong us a second time. That will teach him a lesson and bring us a degree of pleasurable satisfaction.
Spencer clearly felt that Charles's reaction at that time was an insult to himself, his sister and the whole family. The common ground is that no institution was of more importance to Greeks than the family: everything they held dear centred on it. Since nothing had greater potential for tragic consequences, the family was at the heart of Greek tragedy. The tragedians therefore fastened onto the vast range of myths centring on the family and explored what it took for a man or woman to misread so obsessively what was most precious to them as to destroy it – and themselves.
— Peter Jones
Seen elsewhere
Full English
Red Squirrel
As seen on $X$
'A nother,' I say with a belch, letting fork and knife fall to my plate. 'Pork belly this time, I think.' The waiter scuttles off to the kitchen of our local Greene King pub. This will be my fourth roast dinner of the afternoon. Beef, chicken and gammon have come and gone – each with heaps of crispy roast potatoes, lashings of gravy, golden brown yorkies, steamed cabbage and carrots piled high. I wash them down with Aenglish ale.
I'll have to put in a double session at the gym to work it off. Romanian deadlifts and kettlebell swings. But it's worth it. Because there is an active intelligence operation to subvert the British Sunday roast. Two ‘conservative’ publications, the Spectator and the Telegraph, have each recently (in the past two years) published articles bashing the nation's favourite meal. It is quite literally impossible not to enjoy melt-in-your-mouth beef and cauliflower cheese, so we must conclude
By the time I'm done, Dad has accepted that his own inaction led directly to the atrocities in Rotherham
from this latest development that the centre-right press has abandoned all pretence of opposing immigration and has instead rowed in behind the Great Replacement.
I relay this to Dad, who is sitting opposite me in an almost comatose state. Spurning my offer of a roast dinner, he has instead elected to spend the afternoon sinking pints; the empty glasses now form a sort of cairn around him. He bobs his head up and down in silent assent. But, as ever, he doesn't seem entirely convinced. Typical Torygraph boomer. 'Wake up and smell the coffee, Dad,' I say gravely, as the latest heaped plate is set before me, leading him to stir.
‘Would ya mind eating that up as quick as you can, lad – the footie’s on in a half hour.’
I snort. ‘Panem et circenses, as the Romans used to say, while the barbarians were at the gate. That’s you, Dad.’
My paterfamilias sighs. ‘Look, I’ve been thinking. D’ya think maybe it’s time you got a place of your own? You’ve got the money now, with this job of yours in IT… You could move in with Fran.’
‘Dad,’ I say, crunching on a piece of Anglo pork crackling. ‘Dad, I’m literally trying to build generational wealth here, and now you’re telling me to move out and fend for myself. Saturn devouring his own children. Atomised liberal individualism at its worst.’
‘Here we go,’ says Dad.
I continue. ‘We Anglos have a history of individualism, true – but this is a collectivist age. The English ethnicity has got to tribe up like the Italians.
Generational living, dynasty building. You must be the capo, with me as your consigliere. And a roast every Sunday.'
‘Not really in the mood for one,’ Dad says, apparently unmoved. ‘Might pop out later for a curry…’ He looks up, face going white. But it’s too late.
'THE GROOMING GANGS!' I half-shout, half-scream.
‘Calm down!’ He glances round the pub apologetically, before whispering: ‘I know you like your politics, but…’
'BUT WHAT?'
‘Well. Well, you know. Chicken tikka masala. It’s our national dish.’
I properly lose it then, and terrible is my wrath. My prophecies of death and downfall. Eat your curry, Dad – but some day curry will be the only legal food and you will be partly responsible. I fulminate. I harangue. I beat my breast. I analogise events to the Siege of Vienna of 1683, with myself cast as the Polish ‘Winged Hussars’ who carried the day for Christendom. Then I slam him with the philosophers. Evola, Nietzsche and a bit of Carl Schmitt as a garnish. My hundreds of hours spent half-digesting YouTube essays by alternative historians prove too much for my father, who is mute in the face of my barrage.
By the time I'm done, my plate is empty again, and Dad has been thoroughly cowed, having accepted that his own inaction led directly to the atrocities in Rotherham. He's reduced to begging me to leave the pub with him. 'Another,' I say to the waiter.
If only Rupert Lowe could see me now. If only Rupert Lowe were my father.
Would you blush to admit you lived in Crotch Crescent in Oxford? Once again, newspaper stories have sprouted about rude-sounding place-names. It all seems rather artificial.
What happens is that a company seeking publicity (this time a financial products outfit) finds a list of place-names that could be taken as rude. They get a survey company to show the list to innocent bystanders, who say which they find rudest. Newspapers obligingly publish the graded list as though it were news: Fanny Avenue, Crotch Crescent, Titty Hill, Wetwang,
Shitterton... down to Jackass Avenue and Great Snoring. (Are those two even rude?)
In truth, Crotch Crescent is named after a child prodigy and composer, William Crotch (1775-1847). He had a terrible time as a child being led about like some musical bear. Then at 21 he was appointed Professor of Music at Oxford, a post he held until his death.
I'd assumed that Crotch was connected in origin with cross; a street in the City of London is called Crutched Friars, after an order with a cross on their habit. But crotch is of unknown origin according to the OED.
If crotch is irresistibly funny only to Finbarr Saunders in Viz comic, what of Wetwang? To my surprise its meaning is given as ‘field of summons for the trial of a dispute’ (from Old Norse vetvangr) by Victor Watts in the Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names. The -wang is definitely ‘field’, though the OED lists the word under wong (in which form it appears in Beowulf).
But Tolkien, who knew of such matters, uses Wetwang as the English equivalent of the Sindarin (elvish) Nindalf, where nin- means ‘wet’. The Yorkshire village of Wetwang has a pond and is distinguished from Driffield nearby, which is the ‘dry field’ – though again Watts gives a different derivation, from drit (‘dirt’).
My husband has just told me that I've spoilt the joke, but I'm not sure there was much of one in the first place.
with Lord Young of Acton THURSDAY 19 NOVEMBER | 6.30 FOR 7PM | £175
Join us in the boardroom for the next in our series of Spectator Writers' Dinners with Toby Young, The Spectator's associate editor and No Sacred Cows columnist. His books include How to Lose Friends and Alienate People and The Sound of No Hands Clapping.
Over a fine dinner, accompanied by wines from Château Léoube, Toby will chat to The Spectator's features editor William Moore about politics, journalism and the fight for free speech.
It's time to upgrade Britain's electricity system.
We have the natural resources to generate more secure, affordable electricity at home.
That's why we're investing £33bn in homegrown energy, upgrading the grid and connecting more renewables to strengthen energy security, power growth and deliver reliable electricity across the country.
WE POWER CHANGE
sse.com
📄 查阅本期完整未切分外文原文 (Full Issue Raw Text)
---
3 OCTOBER 2026 | £6.50
THE
WWW.SPECTATOR.COM | EST. 1828
---
---
SPECTATOR Tough love
Tim Shipman on Kemi's plan to get Britain working again
No means
Bade NOch!
CANADA C\$12.95. EURO ZONE €9.95.
SOUTH AFRICA ZAR139.90.
SWITZERLAND CHF10.90.
MACQUARIE
---
---
Fully invested in Britain's growth
Our investment in Last Mile is helping connect new homes and developments across Britain to essential ‘last mile’ utilities services.
We're invested in helping deliver the high-quality, energy-efficient homes Britain needs by connecting them to essential utilities infrastructure.
Learn more at macquarie.com
Last Mile at The Avenue, Barnton
---
---
[THE SPECTATOR ESTABLISHED 1828] The return of Old Labour
When the Social Democratic Party was launched in 1981, its prospectus was dismissed witheringly by the liberal thinker Ralf Dahrendorf as a plan for ‘a better yesterday’. Andy Burnham has gone one better. He plans to rerun Labour’s last term in office. But this time with feeling.
The Prime Minister's address to his party conference was many things – fluent, passionate, moving, politically effective. But one thing it was not: forward-looking. The quality of the delivery invited comparison with Tony Blair but, unlike Blair, our current PM was not promising modernisation. He was instead seeking to revisit the Blair years and pursue the road not taken by Labour in 1997 – the long march left.
The heart of the Burnham programme is a rejection of the New Labour belief that an accommodation had to be made with Margaret Thatcher's own modernisation of Britain's economy. The Blairites believed that they needed to demonstrate moderation and discipline before Labour could be trusted to govern again. They had to accept the erosion of union power, embrace a bigger role for the market and reject their own activists' obsessions before they could pursue their central project of public-sector reform. Above all, a vigorous private sector had to be supported to generate growth – with taxes set at a level that encouraged entrepreneurship – and education policy reformed to match global competitors.
Every single one of those Blairite principles was comprehensively trashed by Andy Burnham this week. Thatcher's (and John Major's) privatisations should be reversed; the historic crime of council house sell-offs atoned for. Far from reforming the National Health Service, with greater market discipline, accountability, choice and contestability, its monolithic model should be extended with the creation of a new bureaucratic behemoth – the National Care Service. Paid for with more public money.
Because, whatever the merits of amending the pension triple lock, the Burnham proposals will cost additional billions at a time when public debt is still escalating. The PM clearly regrets that he was never able, as health secretary in 2009, to build back Bevan, but now he is seeking to make good on those ambitions just when the nation's finances are growing weaker by the day.
The repudiation of Blairism and the embrace of an older, more left-wing path for Labour were there in the promise of state control of utilities and state direction of investment. Largesse for the trade unions was announced by John Healey in a speech which celebrated the solidarity displayed during the miners' strike but said next to nothing about the real problems of rising energy prices and the real opportunities offered by technological transformation. We are entering an age where AI is transforming our world but the
---
---
Every Blairite principle was comprehensively trashed by Andy Burnham this week
Chancellor would rather channel Dennis Skinner than Demis Hassabis.
The prostration before the household gods of the left continued with Ed Miliband's endorsement of the campaign run by Gaza independents to put Israel in the dock, and Burnham's own suggestion that he would like an electoral system more congenial to Zack Polanski's dreams of power. Blair knew that bowing to left-wing pressure groups moved Labour further away from the mainstream, further away from government and further away from deserving power. But for those within Labour who chafed against the constraints he imposed, who wanted to empower the ‘broad’ left and who hated his resolute stand against Islamism and with Israel, the Burnham revisionism is sweet indeed. It's a northern soul revival calculated to appeal to Labour's ideological heartlands.
But while the Burnham Restoration has a certain shrewd political logic – uniting left-wing voters under a ‘progressive banner’ just as the right is divided – it is a policy disaster for the country. The central challenges facing the nation are either ducked or made worse. The few promising policies of the Starmer era are diluted. The worst are exacerbated.
Britain suffers at the moment from low growth, ballooning debt, high energy costs, low investment, inadequate preparation for technological change, uncontrolled migration and invertebrate defences. On these huge and unavoidable problems the government is hopelessly unequal to the task. Its policies will add costs to business, hike taxes on enterprise, deter investment from abroad in infrastructure, do nothing to reassure lenders, drive up the cost of debt, force energy bill payers to subsidise yet another quango, leave oil and gas unexploited in the ground, make data centres unaffordable, generate a hostile environment for entrepreneurs, offer innovators only more regulation, make it easier for terrorist sympathisers to enter the country, do nothing to stop small boats, keep the military underfunded and dismay our allies in the fight against extremism.
There is a sad irony in that the more sensible ministers within the Starmer government – Wes Streeting and Shabana Mahmood – who agitated for Starmer’s removal are now themselves diminished figures. Streeting’s plans for NHS reform are dead. And he has to endorse a spending settlement which leaves the country unable to defend itself. The Home Secretary, meanwhile, has had to row back on reforms that would have toughened migration rules and has now been forced to introduce a fast track for more Hamas sympathisers to settle safely in Britain. She will know these are mistakes. But her voice, and her supporters, have been eclipsed by the new power in the land.
The King in the North has given his bannermen cause to cheer like never before. But for the rest of us, winter is coming.
Deer departed, p60
Brutal truth, p35
In for a Penny, p18
---
---
THE WEEK
3 Leading article
6 Portrait of the Week
7 Diary
My run-in with Earl Spencer
Piers Morgan
8 Politics Labour is more united than it has been for years James Heale
9 The Spectator's Notes The strange and sad case of Ranulph Fiennes Charles Moore
13 Douglas Murray The game we're not allowed to win
19 Matthew Parris I bid fond farewell to Great Lives
20 Barometer The Garvaghy Road, shipbuilding, ageing rockers
23 Madeline Grant
Britain is entering its Rococo era
24 Letters Californian wildfires, the Bible, cricket and gambling
27 Any other business Reduce fuel duty if you're serious about industrialisation Martin Vander Weyer
10 Tough love
Kemi Badenoch's plan to get Britain working again
Tim Shipman
11 John Hayes
'Here today': a poem
12 Last ditch attempt
The hunt for Britain's wokest bar
Angus Colwell
14 Intelligence test
Can the CIA and MI6 remain close partners?
David McCloskey
16 A tale of two Cities
The sad moral decline of the club I once loved
Michael Henderson
18 Wartime Notebook
My week of fantasy and reality
Penny Mordaunt
20 The death of the author
What if AI is actually good at writing novels?
Owen Matthews
22 Prep ahead
I'm stockpiling wine,
olives and capers
Lisa Haseldine
---
---
BOOKS & ARTS
30 David Crane
Charlemagne's Dream,
by James Palmer
32 Ariane Bankes
Claude Monet: A Life in Letters, edited by Teresa Krasny et al
33 Helen Farish
'Monet's Broom': a poem
Alan Judd
How to Think About Terrorism,
by Quassim Cassam and
Richard English
34 Chris Mullin
The Boy with the Knapsack,
by Alf Dubs
35 Stephen Bayley
Concrete, by Stephen Parnell
36 Adam Begley
The Bridge, by Colm Tóibín
Leyla Sanai
Partita, by Barbara Kingsolver
37 Sean McGlynn
The Bayeux Tapestry,
edited by Sue Brunning et al
---
---
Deborah Ross is away.
Pretty pickle, p47
Shell shocked, p38
ARTS
38 Daisy Dunn
Why artists love Aphrodite
42 Interview
Evgeny Titov on directing Parsifal
Richard Bratby
40 Dance
English National Ballet:
Rhythm Riot
Rupert Christiansen
Exhibitions
Quentin Bell; Marlow Moss
Hermione Eyre
43 Pop
Echo & The Bunnymen;
Good Kid
Michael Hann
45 Theatre
The Last Ship; Table 17
Lloyd Evans
46 Television
War; Colin from Accounts
James Walton
The listener
Dudamel's Schumann
Richard Bratby
---
---
LIFE
LIFE
53 Best life Rachel Johnson
Real life Melissa Kite
54 Dolce vita Nicholas Farrell
55 The turf Charlie Brooks
AND FINALLY ...
47 Notes on... Pickled onions
Chas Newkey-Burden
56 Chess Luke McShane
Competition Lucy Vickery
57 Crossword Fire
58 The Vintage Chef Olivia Potts
59 Drink Declan Lyons
Your problems solved
Mary Killen
60 No sacred cows
Toby Young
Battle for Britain
Michael Heath
61 Sport Roger Alton
Ancient and modern
Peter Jones
62 Seen elsewhere
Red Squirrel
Mind your language
Dot Wordsworth
To be Frank, p30
Kelvin MacKenzie's 80th birthday party was the Fleet Street equivalent of a Mafia Five Families reunion, only less aesthetically pleasing. Piers Morgan, p7
Even in the squalid world of modern football there are standards to observe. Throw the book at 'Citeh'. They deserve no mercy.
Michael Henderson, p16
I don't know much, but I do know I never want to get a Wizz Air flight to Luton, unless in a full-blown wartime evacuation. Melissa Kite, p53
Pickled Onion is every serious person's favourite flavour of Monster Munch. Chas Newkey-Burden, p47
---
---
CONTRIBUTORS
David McCloskey looks at the state of the relationship between MI6 and the CIA on p14. He is a former staff member at the CIA and co-host of The Rest is Classified.
---
---
Michael Henderson
laments the degradation of Man City on p16. He has written about sport for the Mail, Telegraph, Times, Guardian and Observer.
Penny Mordaunt's
Notebook appears on p18.
She was leader of the House
of Commons 2022-2024 and
defence secretary from 1 May
to 24 July 2019.
Ariane Bankes, who writes about Monet on p32, is a writer and art historian. Her most recent book is The Quality of Love: Twin Sisters at the Heart of the Century.
Chris Mullin is a former MP whose work includes A Very British Coup and a series of diaries of his life in parliament. He writes about Alf Dubs on p34.
---
---
PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK
NO, SON, YOU CAN'T PLAY WITH THEM, THEY ARE PUTIN'S TOYS
---
---
Home
Andy Burnham, the Prime Minister, announced the end of the pensions triple lock from 2030, when the link with earnings would be broken. Wearing a suit but no tie, he told the Labour party conference: 'I will make a break with the direction of the past 40 years.' He said that houses would be confiscated if left unoccupied or if rented out but not well maintained. He said he would 'repeal Margaret Thatcher's ideological ban on public ownership of water companies'; he would reduce electricity prices by establishing the Great British Grid, a publicly owned company. He tearfully promised a National Care Service, after a review by Baroness Casey of Blackstock. Ties with the EU would be explored and electoral reform would be in the next Labour manifesto. John Healey, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, promised 'a new age of industrialisation', exemplified by the building of a £115 million research ship at Faslane. Diesel prices hit record levels. Household energy prices were expected to jump in January by a typical £276 a year, even with a government cut in VAT. Heathrow expected a third runway by 2039, instead of 2035.
Something odd happened in Gloucestershire. Five men, British nationals from London in their twenties, were arrested on suspicion of preparation of a terrorist act and of offences under the Explosives Act near RAF Fairfield, used by the US Air Force for strikes against Iran. Three white vans had turned up in the village of Whelford, where 85 households were evacuated. One of the men had phoned 999. No explosives were found. The men were released on bail. President Donald Trump of America said: 'We had them under investigation. They were looking to do big damage.' Marco Rubio, the US Secretary of State, said the incident 'clearly involves the hands of a foreign actor'.
Michelle O'Neill, the First Minister of Northern Ireland, joined protestors in the Garvaghy Road in Portadown to block Orangemen given permission in an overnight court hearing to march for the first time in 28 years. Sir Chris Bryant, the Northern Ireland Secretary, hurried back from the Labour conference and a stalemate developed. Between pleading guilty on 6 August and being sentenced on 24 September, Zafer Dogan, 32 (convicted of taking thousands of pictures of women and girls before using AI to sexualise the images), was granted bail to the flat (overlooking a playground) where he had committed the crimes. Daniel Thomas, known as Danny Tommo, the anti-migrant campaigner, pleaded not guilty to criminal damage after a video appeared to show him slashing at a dinghy in the Channel. Manchester City arranged ‘sham contracts’ to disguise secret funding of more than £830 million, the Premier League said; the club is to appeal.
---
---
Abroad
Saudi Arabia intercepted six ballistic missiles fired by Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi militia. Yemen's government forces fought the Houthis around Taiz. Oil prices rose. Mr Trump rejected a proposal by Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. US long-term borrowing costs hit their highest level since 2002. The US banned the import of wine and whey from Canada. Mighty Sparrow, the calypso singer, died aged 91.
Russia destroyed Ukraine's National Academy of Sciences in the historic heart of Kyiv and hit a data centre, severing internet connection for 100,000 households. Estonia said Russia was behind an arson attack last month on a Tallinn defence company, Milrem Robotics, supplying Ukraine with unmanned military vehicles. Cyber-criminals who hacked the FBI said they had sensitive medical data such as allergies and blood test results for thousands of its special agents. Fatima Ezzahra El Mansouri was appointed Morocco's first woman prime minister. Eighteen people were killed when eight gunmen stormed a bar near Johannesburg; hours later, ten people were killed outside an entertainment venue near Cape Town.
Pope Leo said Mass for a crowd of 700,000 filling the Place de la Concorde and the Champs-Elysées in Paris. The American archbishop Fulton Sheen (1895-1979) was beatified during a Mass at Peoria, Illinois. In France 400 people were arrested in two days as secondary-school pupils demonstrated against a shortage of teachers. Spain’s coalition government issued a decree banning evictions until 2030, after thousands demonstrated against the eviction of an 87-year-old Madrid woman unable to pay rent rises. CSH
---
---
DIARY
Piers Morgan
‘Mr Morgan,’ said the faux-regal voice at the end of the line, ‘this is Earl Spencer. I’ve got you now, you bastard.’ Suffice it to say, this call didn’t happen last week after the alleged ‘historian’ was forced to publicly apologise for publishing a lie about me in his new book. (He accused me of being Mirror editor in 1993 when it published gym photos of Princess Diana in a notorious invasion of her privacy that cost £1 million in damages – but I didn’t join the Mirror until 1995.)
However, the irony of what that call was about isn't lost on me, 31 years later. I was editor of the News of the World at the time, and one of Spencer's friends passed us a letter from him revealing his plans to leave his ailing wife Victoria and take their kids to America, where he'd be a TV reporter. Spencer waited until our first edition dropped with the scoop before calling to inform me it was a hoax. 'That letter was all made up,' he chortled jubilantly. 'I suspected who your source was, so I wrote it to him knowing he wouldn't be able to resist passing it on to you. And it's all rubbish. Ha! What are you going to do now then, eh? Ha, ha!' 'Why didn't you tell us before we printed the paper?' I replied. 'Ha! Because if I had, you would've pretended I hadn't caught you out. You're going to have to admit you've printed lies now, aren't you, and apologise. Enjoy! Ha, ha!' Like I said, ironic. As I read the Earl's grovelling apology for printing lies about me, all I could think was: 'I've got you now, you bastard. Ha, ha!'
My unlikely saviour back in 1995 was ex-Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie – who, when I hurriedly called him for advice, observed: ‘That sounds like a disgusting attempt by Earl Spencer to con News of the World readers, using his family to do so.’ We switched headlines to ‘WHAT A CHARLIE – Althorp invents pack of lies about wife and kids to trick NoW readers’ and Spencer swiftly went from victim to villain in the court of public opinion.
I recently attended Kelvin's 80th birthday party at Hampton Court.
It was the Fleet Street equivalent of a Mafia Five Families reunion, only less aesthetically pleasing. The birthday boy's most famous headlines adorned the tables, though didn't include my all-time favourite which is still in my parents' downstairs loo. It was based on a report about the debilitating effect of alcohol on male sexual performance and cautioned: 'WARNING: DRINK'LL WRINKLE YOUR WINKLE.'
THE SPECTATOR Subscribe for only £1 a week
020 4572 7556 quoting intro
Introductory offer. Auto-renewing payments only. \$1 a week in Australia at spectator.com.au/intro
The weird thing about Spencer's erroneous attack on me in his book, other than how fact-checkers at Penguin didn't spot it (not least because they also published my bestselling diaries The Insider which covered that period of my career!), is that in 2000 he came to the Mirror for a surprisingly convivial 'make-up' lunch, notable for his failure to recognise a famous fellow guest. 'Many thanks for an interesting and enjoyable lunch,' he wrote to me afterwards. 'A varied guest list, the airing of many subjects, and the Mirror's hospitality all made for a justifiably long session at the table. I feel bad not remembering Carol Vorderman. Still, she looks a lot better now than I can ever remember her looking in Countdown.' Memory clearly isn't his strong point.
Talking of lunch, and memory failures, Diana's former chef Darren McGrady was quoted in the Daily Mail as saying that after I dined with her at Kensington Palace, she told him afterwards I was a 'jerk'. To set the record straight, I invited her former butler Paul Burrell – who served the meal that McGrady had cooked – onto my Uncensored show and asked if that was true. 'No!' he replied. 'You got on like a house on fire! I don't want to blow smoke in your direction, but she liked you.' Now that's a historian I can trust.
Of course, my Spencer schadenfreude may be short-lived if the apocalyptic warnings of AI killing us all come to pass. In his last TV interview, Professor Stephen Hawking told me AI was the biggest threat to mankind's survival. 'The great danger is if we let it self-design, for then it can improve itself rapidly and we may lose control,' he explained. That was nine years ago. I fear we've either reached that point – or are about to.
‘A ny news on the knighthood, yet?’ texted Dame Joan Collins. Well, I’m reliably informed our senior royals are as giddy as Lottery winners at seeing Spencer’s vindictive, disingenuous, King-bashing book causing him global humiliation for getting basic facts wrong. My pleasure to serve, Your Majesty.
---
---
[POLITICS | JAMES HEALE] Back to the future
After Andy Burnham's speech at the Labour party conference on Tuesday, one veteran factionalist declared: 'We are all Burnhamites now.' Romantics love the rhetoric; cynics respect the ruthlessness. 'Game recognises game,' says one Labour figure.
The Prime Minister's address was pitched at a wounded party seeking support. Emotive and personal, yet also intensely political, it showed a keen awareness not just of Labour's values, but of its interests too. Right to Buy, which attracted legions to the Tory ranks, will be halted for new homes; a new National Care Service will bring thousands more members into the unions' fold. Progressivism will be entrenched in the model Burnham chooses, with devolution imposed on his terms: mayors allowed to spend more, but restricted from cutting tax. 'We have a politician as Prime Minister,' says a young MP approvingly.
The new leader understands that, for all its talk of radicalism, Labour is instinctively a conservative beast. Even by the standards of a party conference, this year's jamboree was a peculiarly nostalgic affair, full of references to HP sauce, miners' lamps and northern soul. In his bid to roll back Margaret Thatcher's 1980s settlement on buses, houses, water and more, Burnham was attempting to construct a 21st-century version of the postwar Labour bargain.
The dominant political operator of that pre-Thatcher age, of course, was the figure who loomed larger over this conference than any other: Harold Wilson, another northern football-lover whose views bounced between the traditions of the Tribune left and the old right. References to Wilson's government peppered cabinet members' speeches – 'the white heat of technology' featured in no fewer than four. Party officials flocked to buy merchandise commemorating 60 years since Wilson's 1966 victory. 'We pretend the first two years didn't happen,' jokes a backbencher, seeing parallels between 1964 and 2024.
The Wilson comparison is instructive. Labour lore recalls him as the champion of gay, ethnic and women's rights – rather than the man who devalued the pound in 1967. Burnham, too, is full of talk about reform and plans, even as Britain's economy is at the mercy of unfavourable world events. There was an uncomfortable irony in John Healey's speech on Monday: it was 50 years to the day that his namesake, Denis, had to beg the party to back a £2.3 billion IMF bailout. The day after the current Chancellor's speech, UK borrowing hit its highest rate this century.
Some of Burnham's cabinet also consciously see themselves in the party's lineage. Louise Haigh, his effective deputy, talks often of Barbara Castle: ‘A diminutive Yorkshire redhead with a grit and determination that occasionally found herself in trouble,’ as she says. Haigh has been handed responsibility for growth by Burnham and there is an echo here of Wilson's short-lived Department of Economic Affairs, set up to constrain the power of the Treasury. Already, officials fear
---
---
Even by the standards of a party conference, this year's Labour jamboree was peculiarly nostalgic
that a clash with the Chancellor is looming, with predictable Labour criticisms mounting about Healey and his department's ‘lack of imagination’. Burnham has said he wants ‘No. 10 leading on that growth mission’ to ‘unlock the blockages’ in Whitehall; Wilson said similar of the DEA, just weeks before devaluation.
Kanishka Narayan, the AI minister, cites Tony Benn as a fellow public-school, techno-enthusiast – even if Narayan is of a different intellectual tradition. ‘The Labour right’s future is Kanishka,’ says a former Wes Streeting backer. Intelligent and industrious, Narayan did an estimated 70 conference events, with his role being to present an alternative political economy to the Prime Minister’s more insular world view. ‘Burnham is offering 20th-century solutions to 21st-century problems,' says a former civil servant. Marrying AI to the reindustrialisation agenda could be the government's best chance of success.
'Andy Burnham promised huge change.'
Others are still adjusting to fluctuating party moods. Shabana Mahmood, the Home Secretary, has been christened ‘Subana’ by colleagues, such is her diminished public profile after the backlash over her legal migration reforms. Health – so often the great Labour rallying cry – featured little in this conference either. Both Yvette Cooper, the current Health Secretary, and Bridget Phillipson, the demoted equalities minister, face losing their seats to Reform as Burnham mulls reopening the European question. ‘The Midlands’ sparkies are the new Durham miners,’ says a sceptical figure, pointing to the key battlegrounds.
For now, the Labour tribe is united, amid fears the next right-wing government will resemble some grotesque fusion of Selsdon men and Powellite bastards. Hopes are high for next week's Holborn and St Pancras by-election, with most in Labour expecting a triumph over Zack Polanski, the Green leader who put himself forward. 'Next Thursday we pop his bubble,' boasts a 2024 MP. Activists on the ground report that a key moment was Ed Miliband's sanctions on Israeli settlements last month. 'That really went down well,' says one involved, reflecting on the Foreign Secretary's speech in parliament. Tellingly, no cabinet minister attended the Labour Friends of Israel's party at the conference.
After that, the Budget looms. ‘It’s the most important Budget this parliament,’ explains a government aide. ‘If it falls apart, if you can’t defend it on Kuenssberg that Sunday, then that’s it.’ After £75 billion in tax rises in 2024 and 2025, a similar scale is not envisaged this time, with Healey taking care to consult widely with parliamentary colleagues. ‘Dip their hands in the blood,’ suggests one ex-Treasury staffer. Next spring’s spending review is expected to be a chastening experience for the revised cabinet. ‘Let’s see if it is happy families after that,’ says one Tory aide.
Like Wilson, Burnham has inherited a dire economic outlook, not of his own making. But having raised the hopes of his party in Liverpool, the challenge now is to be more than yet another transient political figure, condemned by history as little more than a mere tactician. His party has cause to hope again – yet offering just a ‘better yesterday’ will not be enough.
---
---
THE SPECTATOR'S NOTES
Charles Moore
It is repeatedly pointed out – I have probably written it myself – that the triple lock on the state pension is ruinous. There is a genuine difficulty, though, political and moral, about getting rid of it. No one likes to lose a benefit they already possess. The abolition will annoy 99 per cent of its recipients, of whom there are 13.2 million. Besides, we pensioners have retained a traditional skill almost entirely lost to younger generations, called voting. We know how to go to a polling station and put a cross on a ballot paper. We therefore have the power to slay any party we think is making us poorer. The Tories invented the triple lock. If they abandoned it, they would be hit even worse than Nick Clegg was hit when he reversed Lib Dem policy against tuition fees as the price of coalition. That is the political argument. The moral argument is that pensioners feel they have earned their pension. This is not literally the case, because the National Insurance we have paid in our working lives is not, in reality, insurance. Our pensions come out of current funding. Morally, however, we have earned it by working, and it is not, even triple-locked, outstandingly good. I suggest opposition parties would be wise to hold off and let Labour trip up on the triple lock. By freezing tax thresholds, it will soon tax pensioners on their triple-lock gains because their income exceeds the £12,570 tax threshold. In his speech to his party conference on Tuesday, Andy Burnham tripped. He said the triple lock will be sacrificed to pay for his scheme for a social care service modelled on the NHS. Many millions receiving, or about to receive, a pension will now fear losing the clear financial advantage of the triple lock in exchange for the highly uncertain, undated promise of state-provided social care.
The railways are trundling back towards nationalisation, to shouts of joy at the Labour conference. Rail privatisation has many faults (Margaret Thatcher always fought shy of it because of monopoly problems: it was introduced by John Major after she left office), but why should complete state control improve the service? Under
nationalisation from 1948 to 1995, British Rail failed to expand passenger journeys significantly. In 1950, there were roughly 32 billion passenger kilometres travelled. By 1994, that figure had fallen slightly to just below 30 billion, despite that fact that the population had increased by nearly 9 million. Since privatisation – except, unavoidably, during Covid – passenger kilometres have shot up, roughly 63 billion in the latest annual figure.
The Daily Telegraph's scoop about the distressing circumstances of the great explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes is remarkable. If a famous, well-connected man can be so cut off from the outside world by his second wife in a succession of care homes, what must be happening to thousands, without powerful friends, in a similar situation? The story reminds me of a hunch I had ten years ago. Until then, Sir Ranulph had been a gentle supporter of hunting, allowing hunts on his Exmoor farm, and speaking in Westminster for the Countryside March. Suddenly, in 2016, he denounced hunting. In advance of a Tory conference fringe meeting organised by the League against Cruel Sports (LACS), he was reported as being about to say that his mind had been changed by discovering a fox on the couple's Cheshire farm that had been injured during a hunt: 'After my wife and I saw the fox's injuries, we called the vet. We laced food with medicine... to prevent infection setting in from bites to her rear.' The vixen later died. 'The Cheshire Hunt chased that fox before our eyes and she took six days to die,' he said, 'Do not believe hunters when they say the fox has a quick and painless death... You try being chewed to death by hounds.'
This sounded inauthentically ignorant to me. Sir Ranulph would have known that hunted foxes were never ‘chewed to death’. One hound is bigger than one fox. A pack of hounds is 30-strong. In fox-hunting (now banned in Britain), the lead hound kills the fox almost immediately with a bite to the back of the neck. The animal is torn apart, but only when dead. It is also – as I have often witnessed – all but impossible for a fox to escape from a pack wounded. A fox can often evade its pursuers, but only if it is not wounded and therefore fit. Any ‘chewed’ fox that the Fienneses found must have been bitten in a fight with another fox, a badger or (less likely) a dog. Sir Ranulph’s phrases, like ‘the so-called tradition of terrifying wild animals for pure enjoyment is now, as it always has been, a brutal and insupportable self-indulgence’ sounded ventriloquised. Checking on what he said in 2016, I notice that contemporary press accounts report only the pre-briefing, not the meeting. In a strange TV interview, he appeared to read out a prepared script. It is not clear to me that Sir Ranulph actually delivered his fiery speech in public. Was he, even ten years ago, under some sort of control?
His name is still being used. A Facebook page called ‘Sir Ranulph Fiennes’ is reposting numerous accounts of alleged violations of the Hunting Act as recent as last month, all in the heated and inaccurate language of antis (e.g. calling hounds ‘dogs’). Sir Ranulph, cognitively frail and confined in care homes for two years, surely cannot be doing this. ‘Sir Ranulph Fiennes’ cannot be Sir Ranulph Fiennes. Friends from the south-west say that Sir Ranulph was most unhappy to leave Exmoor to support his wife’s 60-odd Arab horses on the Cheshire farm, but worried he might lose access to their daughter if he did not. Apparently his first wife’s memorial stone is on the Exmoor farm, and his own name is on it too, awaiting his death. ‘My name will always be there,’ he told friends. His situation is strange and sad. A Fiennes friends and family WhatsApp group seeks a legal challenge to the lasting power of attorney in this case, to release the prisoner.
---
---
['I get better every day'] Can Kemi Badenoch revive the Tory party?
TIM SHIPMAN
Kemi Badenoch, like many in the Labour party, is not sorry to see the back of Keir Starmer. 'I did not find Starmer an interesting person,' she says. 'He never said anything interesting.' Andy Burnham is a different proposition. 'Quite interesting,' she thinks. 'He has more of a clear sense of who he is politically, which makes him more confident in terms of what he wants to do. But who he is politically is so far removed from who I am politically that I think that there's a sharper contrast between us.'
We speak in her office in Portcullis House with the Labour conference in full cry in Liverpool. ‘It feels very much like student union people who’ve got older, but they still want to do the stuff that they did in the student union,’ Badenoch says. Her verdict on Burnham’s big speech on Tuesday is that the Prime Minister is offering ‘Corbynism with better packaging’, with socialist solutions from the 1970s that ‘will fail again’. But that sharper contrast has energised her. ‘Hearing his speech, it’s clear we are now about to have a battle of ideas. It’s given me more confidence that, even in this messy political era, the Conservatives are going to win.’
Burnham, she says, ‘likes to say yes to everyone – and that is something which I learned a long time ago is a recipe for disaster’. Nowhere, she believes, is this more obvious than in Labour’s approach to the ballooning benefits budget. ‘They are the welfare party. It’s in their DNA. They’re not the party of the working classes at all.’ If Burnham is a ‘people pleaser’, Badenoch wants to make a virtue of her abrasive reputation – the people displeaser the country needs. ‘No one wants to be the person to say “No”. And I want Spectator readers to know that the person who’s saying “No” has arrived and is leading the Conservative party.’
At Tory conference, which begins in Birmingham this weekend, she will announce plans to ‘put the fair back in welfare’ – both for taxpayers and those condemned to a life on handouts. The Tories will advance two principles: that those who have paid in are entitled to more than those who have not. 'If you have worked for a very long time, you can be on benefits for much longer because those people are less likely just to sit back and not look for a job,' she explains. 'After six months, if you haven't found a job and you're just not taking that seriously, you will lose money.'
Second, those who can work should do so. 'It's unfair to the people who get up and go to
---
---
'Even families on benefits know that the system is out of control. But no one wants to get off the treadmill first'
work, having others earn more than them for not working. Even families on benefits know that the system is out of control. But no one wants to be the one to get off the treadmill first. We need to force that. Government has to do that.' Badenoch is incensed by 'sickfluencers' on YouTube teaching people how to claim benefits for ADHD or anxiety. 'There are a lot of people who do not have a mental disability but claim to have one using low-level conditions... These are conditions you can work with, and so you should be working. We're not going after the vulnerable. It is the people who can work who aren't working that are the target.'
One of the most striking policies Badenoch will announce is a ‘tough love’ approach to young people. A Tory government would set up a ‘Get To Work’ programme, banning young people who have not worked from drifting straight onto benefits. Under 25s who have less than six months in continuous employment will no longer be able to sign on to universal credit when they leave school or turn 18.
Those without a job or an apprenticeship will only be able to claim a new ‘Get to Work Allowance’ – and they’ll only get that if they participate
in a six-month Get to Work programme. To get the money, they will have to complete work activities, such as daily attendance at a local job centre, work-experience placements, training courses or community work. They will need to apply for jobs and go to interview-prep workshops, plus attend group sessions to develop the communication skills that employers complain young job applicants lack.
Those who complete the Get to Work programme will receive a ‘Ready for Work Award’ recording their skills. But after six months on Get to Work, young people still not working will drop down to a basic Subsistence Allowance. There will also be steps to make young people more the responsibility of their parents rather than taxpayers (with mitigations for those without parents or in the care system). ‘This is a tough love policy,’ a source says. ‘It will provide help as well as enforcement.’ This is the nanny state with menaces; Mary Poppins with an umbrella gun.
Badenoch also signals that she wants to toughen the statutory cap on total welfare spending. 'That's certainly something that we are considering,' she says. 'MPs just vote for it to increase, an automatic ratchet, because no one wants to be the person to say no.'
Some will doubtless say Badenoch is making the Conservatives the ‘nasty party’ once again. Refreshingly, she doesn’t care. ‘The people who are going to say “nasty party” will always say it. Quite frankly, the reason why we’re in this mess is because we kept pandering to those people and trying to make them like us. And did it work? No, it didn't.'
Indeed, she attributes a new optimism among Tory MPs to her plain-speaking approach: 'We're finally saying what we believe and we're not scared to say it. We should be more aggressive.'
A year ago at conference she stabilised her leadership with a pledge to abolish stamp duty. She downplays recent speculation she will announce the outright abolition of inheritance tax this time: 'I'm not someone who likes to play the same movie twice. Inheritance tax – we want to get rid of it, but we've got to do our working first.'
Expect far more focus on the economy than Labour. ‘Burnham has no plans to make anybody wealthier,’ she says. ‘He has no plans to get businesses hiring people. Where are the plans for ownership, whether it’s people owning their own property, owning shares, owning businesses? There are none, because he doesn’t want people owning things or being responsible for their own lives. People hated that model so much that it ushered in the era of popular capitalism which we saw in the 1980s and 1990s. That is what people will see at my party conference.’
Badenoch will also emphasise security. ‘Defence and national security are going to be the defining issue of the next few years,’ she says. ‘We have become so complacent as a country, as politicians, and we need to get
---
---
‘We’re finally saying what we believe and we’re not scared to say it. We should be more aggressive’
serious.' She is critical of Ed Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, who ignored intelligence advice before sanctioning Israel, a country she calls 'a critical security partner'. She says Miliband's glad-handing of the foreign minister of Iran, the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism, was 'incredibly naive. Gormless, in fact, is probably the word that I would use.'
Badenoch was incredulous when Burnham said at PMQs that he would not promote national security at the expense of social security. ‘I thought I couldn’t possibly have heard him say that. I genuinely couldn’t believe it. I don’t think he will ever say that again.’ She puts Burnham’s mistake down to him not having a leadership contest to hone his lines. ‘He’s now doing all his thinking out loud and this is what he really believes.’
She can't resist a parting shot at her former leadership rival turned Reform defector. 'Rob Jenrick never exited leadership contest mode. And he's now doing it in his new party.' As a wheeze at conference the Tories have produced an 88ft-long illustration of Labour's first two years in power in the style of the Bayeux Tapestry. It features 150 taxpayers being shot in the eye with a tax arrow, 14 political journalists, including this one, and numerous images of a tiny wailing Jenrick.
Here today
Power seems immutable
A never-ending dance
Entirely indestructible
Each blow the merest glance
Yet what was indisputable
Now looks much more like chance.
Jenrick and Suella Braverman's defections in January were a relief: 'It was like watching someone come in and pick two unexploded bombs that I was working out how to defuse and just take them away. Now in shadow cabinet, we just talk freely. No one holds anything back. No one's taking notes.'
Badenoch has faced criticism for banning former ministers, such as Grant Shapps, from the list of Tory candidates. Grandees say that Badenoch, despite her seemingly impregnable position, fears a leadership challenge before the next election if she doesn't turn things around in the polls and that Shapps's habit of running a spreadsheet of dissenting MPs was a threat to her position. Others see a reluctance to let Penny Mordaunt return in the same light. 'She was frightened of Grant's spreadsheet,' a former cabinet minister says. 'She'll let Penny back but is deliberately keeping her waiting.'
Badenoch admits she has ‘slowed down the former MPs who are coming back’, but says that is giving ‘some new candidates a chance’. She is proud that there will be ‘no more Heidi Allens’ (the former MP who tried to overturn Brexit and welfare cuts before joining the Lib Dems). She won’t comment directly on Shapps, but in response to a question about him, she criticises MPs who plot. ‘I am looking for improved standards of conduct. When people have nothing except politics, that’s when the psychodrama comes,
'Hope, eh Andy?'
-John Hayes
when they're in the bars all the time. They've got nothing else to do.' She says Mordaunt 'hasn't been blocked'.
The Tories overtook Reform in a recent poll but are still below where they were when Badenoch took over. Nonetheless, she is encouraged by Nigel Farage's recent wobbles. 'We call Farage “Grumpy Grandpa” because he’s always complaining about something.' She accuses the Reform leader of ‘trying to intimidate’ journalists who probe his affairs. 'It’s not fun when the press are all over you and there’s endless scrutiny. But it’s the job.'
She also strikes a different tone to Farage on Donald Trump. The President's recent call for a united Ireland made her ‘very irritated’. She understood American concerns over Iran’s nuclear programme, but calls it ‘frustrating’ that the Americans ‘clearly hadn’t thought about what could happen in the Strait of Hormuz. I just don’t think these guys think past page one.’ She adds: ‘It’s Trump’s actions rather than the words that I really focus on. If you focus on the words, then we’re all over the place. He’s quite erratic.’
While Reform's recent receipt of £72 million is a huge challenge to the Tories, Badenoch says: 'It's actually encouraged quite a few people to give us a bit more. People who were thinking of splitting their money between the two parties said, "They don't need my money now", so that's helpful.'
Badenoch knows she still has a mountain to climb. ‘My own ratings have improved but the party brand is still not enough associated with me,’ she says. ‘This is a different party from 2024. And I’ve got to show that. I think the public are screaming for a party with common sense. We’ve got sensible plans that are actually going to work this time.’
Sensible plans will help. ‘This time’ is a reminder of the challenge to overcome public scepticism of Tory pledges. But Badenoch wants to make her own luck. ‘I’m not just waiting for other people to fail,’ she says. ‘I think that’s foolishness and I get better every day.’
---
---
Last ditch attempt
The hunt for Britain's wokest bar
ANGUS COLWELL
Annalisa Quinn is an editor at the Boston Globe magazine, and through a mixture of good fortune, good journalism and good writing, she published the perfect story for our times last week.
On 31 August, a lesbian bar in western Massachusetts called Last Ditch posted on Instagram that ‘it is with love we inform our immunocompromised disabled divas we will be opening Saturday nights as mask optional’. Previously, KN-95 face masks were the minimum level of protection required to attend the bar at all times.
The owners were swiftly accused of being eugenicists. One commentator said: 'People like you kill disabled people in the name of your own leisure and convenience.' Another wished the venue to be firebombed. Last Ditch attempted an apology. It wasn't good enough, since they posted an Instagram card without alt-text for the visually impaired. Two of the three founders had left the business, one to enrol in clown school. The remaining founder, Jackie Matellian, began to cry under her mask in a meeting. Soe Noire, a black lesbian who goes by 'he/him' pronouns, said Matellian's crying was 'racist', and demanded payment to keep going to 'community meetings'.
Everyone found it funny, even on Bluesky. The Boston Globe got an extra thousand subscribers in the 24 hours after it posted the story. This was wokeness at its most defeated, its most exhausted. You don't need to combat it with defunding, anger or debate. You just need to tip off a Boston Globe reporter.
But there was one sentiment going around that was plainly wrong. It was expressed in the Atlantic: 'Reminder: this is a bar. You know, the place where you go to drink beer.' But nowhere is just a bar. That argument says: what does a bar have to do with your identity? The answer, of course, is everything.
All pubs and all bars are left- or right-wing, woke or unwoke. That much is obvious. But where is this country's Last Ditch?
There are two types of woke bars: evidence-based woke and vibes-based woke. At the Attic in Leeds, you'll find a good example of the former. Clean Air Socials have run events there throughout the year, and have another one coming up this month. The entry criteria are thus: you need to wear a ‘high quality respirator (FFP2 or FFP3) at all times whilst indoors’, and show proof of a negative lateral flow test at the door. It’s also recommended you use a valve to drink through your mask. On these nights, there will be several HEPA purifiers in the venue, and a far-UVC lamp, which is meant to reduce how many viruses can be airborne in a room. There is clearly little wrong with running a dance night where the immunocompromised can party. But why is Covid the main virus mentioned?
Another example from Leeds: in June this year, a Queer Cinema for Palestine event at Wharf Chambers was ‘masks mandatory’. No FFP2 mask, no admission. A ‘Sickening Cabaret’ night at Watershed in Bristol in January had the same edict. Masks were encouraged at an Andro and Eve event at Crookes Social Club in Sheffield, but the club itself said it was ‘apolitical’ after it was slammed for letting Restore Britain host a meeting in August.
Intersectionality (remember that?) explains why pro-Palestine = mask up. The
---
---
What does a bar have to do with your identity? The answer, of course, is everything
original argument about intersectional discrimination, made by Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989, used an analogy of a motorway intersection to argue that different forms of prejudice can hit someone at the same time (to be hit by two cars at once would be unlucky, but it's within the laws of physics, I guess).
But intersectional solidarity has often been elusive, and we saw that in the capital this summer, when Breathe Easy London, a ‘Covid-safe’ events group, accused the London Dyke March of harming the participants by not insisting on ‘dykes’ and their allies wearing masks outside. Trans people, Breathe Easy argued, have a 48 per cent long-Covid rate, and said that one marcher had been ‘permanently injured’. It concluded that London Dyke March was ‘personally responsible for disabling their attendees’.
You don't really see the Breathe Easy folks in the pub. Wokeness isn't generally found there, but it does survive in other venues. The Common Press in Shoreditch, a ‘queer bookshop’ I visited (they were out of decaf coffee, which I genuinely wanted), is probably the most famous. Nothing wrong with a gay bookshop, needless to say, but Priyamvada Gopal's Insurgent Empire and Tariq Ali's Winston Churchill: His Times, His Crimes are given as much promotion as anything to do with sexuality.
So the woke bookshop survives, but pubs are more impregnable. There are plenty of unwoke pubs across the country. Your favourite pub, I assume, isn't particularly woke. Though there is such a thing as too unwoke. In March, ten people at the Chequers in Hornchurch got involved in a mass fight, where chairs were thrown and heads kicked. Staff, funnily enough, refused to give statements.
The Dog and Partridge in the suburbs of Birmingham was pretty unwoke too. It's being considered for demolition after it closed in 2020, following a meat cleaver attack at a ‘family-friendly’ beach party. Perhaps not terribly woke either is a rumoured East End pub which claims there's a private event on if a non-white person walks in.
Sipping my Guinness Zero in the Auld Shillelagh in Stoke Newington (never have I been more confident that somewhere would have that in the fridge), I reflected on the upsides of the British left. Yes, the aesthetics here were woke: plenty of mullets, caps and roll-up cigarettes. But this Irish pub in the middle of Diane Abbott's constituency is still excellent.
Our divisions are class-based, not identity-based like America's. Our left-wing pubs descend from old working-class traditions: miners' pubs, Irish pubs and the like. America doesn't have that, so it's corporate identarian insanity like Last Ditch. In London, there were until fairly recently two main lesbian bars. One, La Camionera, doesn't have any rainbow flags. The other, Goldie Saloon, has now closed, having ended its days as a dog-grooming business run by a straight man from Essex. What would the Last Ditch crowd make of that?
---
---
[DOUGLAS MURRAY] The game we're not allowed to win
Some years ago I heard a moving story about Roy Jenkins. An unpromising start to any anecdote but stay with me. It involved a croquet match during the late period of his life – as Chancellor of the University of Oxford – when Jenkins had become one of the grander, not to say more pompous, figures in our public life. According to someone playing with him, his Lordship had appalling luck. Although he wielded his mallet with all requisite skill, his ball would not go through the hoops. Eventually the grand old man stormed off the pitch in a great huff. Only after he had left did the other players discover that the ball Lord Jenkins had been working was from a different croquet set, and too big to fit through the hoops.
I have been thinking of the incident of Lord Jenkins and the crooked croquet match lately. Not just because I enjoy the image of his Lordship puffing off the pitch in a fury, but because it feels like something similar is going on at a national level. Someone has queered the game, forbidding us from winning even on home turf.
Our much overpraised Home Secretary used her party conference speech to condemn the ‘racists’ who marched in the south of England the other week with their faces covered. She had nothing to say about the far larger number of people from her own Muslim community who have marched through Tower Hamlets and elsewhere, covering their faces and being infinitely more thuggish. On Question Time a panellist whose grandmother came here from Bengal claimed that the men on that south of England march were not just racist but exhibiting ‘small penis behaviour’. What’s more, this woman – a self-described communist – said the people objecting to illegal migration were not patriotic and not British.
We seem to be facing a slew of similar pronouncements of late – often from people who have either arrived in the country recently or whose parents arrived comparatively recently. It seems that absolutely anyone can turn up in Britain and tell us what is or is not British. But if we quibble with this lack of manners we are, of course, called ‘racist’. This is deeply unfair.
As I have pointed out before, if my parents had chosen to move to, for example,
Pakistan and given birth to me there, I think I’d regard my position in the country as something like a visitor or a guest. I can say with considerable certainty that the entire population of Pakistan would regard me in such a light. But if I went around telling the Pakistani people what their country was or should be, and what Pakistani values were or were not, then I think people would think me a little presumptuous, to say the least. Yet the British public have to hear arrival after arrival tell us who we are or who we should be and they do so with the confidence that comes from knowing that most British people are too polite to clear their throat, say ‘ahem’ in a meaningful manner, and then give them both rhetorical barrels.
But it isn't just recent arrivals who have joined this game of telling us what we are
---
---
It seems that absolutely anyone can turn up in Britain and tell us what is or is not British
or should be. This week the Labour government's under-secretary for nature, one Jenny Riddell-Carpenter, warned that the ‘far-right’ are likely to co-opt the countryside in the next election. Specifically she said that they will summon up ‘a Britain that never really existed’. She continued: ‘It’ll be that warm ale, a black labrador by your feet in a pub that doesn’t exist. It’ll be a very far-right nostalgic vision of Britain that we don’t want to have, [that] never really existed.’
Woad rage
About which there are many eloquent things to say. One of which is ‘WTF?’ Are the presence of black labradors around the feet now another dog-whistle? Must our ale only ever be cold? And who is Jenny Riddell-Carpenter to tell us that we are ‘far-right’ if we engage in any of these activities?
More importantly, the image of Britain she tries to evoke is not some ‘far-right’ mirage of a country that never existed. It is in fact a small part of a Britain that exists very nicely for many of us. A Britain that exists and is neither political nor invented.
And all this happened in a week in which any opportunities to object to the disaster this country is being led into seemed to contract yet again.
On Tuesday, an activist known as ‘Danny Tommo’ was refused bail. The crime of which he stands accused, and to which he has pleaded not guilty, is damaging a migrant boat. Tommo is alleged to have slashed the dinghy having taken matters into his own hands, apparently as a result of British government claims that it can do nothing to stop boatloads of illegal migrants arriving each day. If he’s found guilty, the full force of the law – the same force that takes no interest in your own burgled property – is likely to come down on him in predictable fashion and he could well spend the coming weeks in jail because he harmed the property of an illegal smuggling gang.
It is not surprising. This week we also learned that a Muslim lecturer has been teaching British police officers about ‘Islamophobia’ and the threat of Nigel Farage. Meanwhile, our Foreign Secretary, Ed Miliband, was sucking up to his counterpart from the world’s number one terrorist-sponsoring state – Iran – and declaring himself ‘humbled’ in the presence of the Palestinian representative to the UK.
Which brings me back to Roy Jenkins. By all accounts, Jenkins's fellow players didn't realise their error. But it seems to me that as a nation we are playing on a pitch that has been deliberately queered. I have this lovely column in which to voice my own frustrations. But most of the British public do not, and as they notice that the game is rigged they may do more than simply leave the pitch in a huff.
---
---
Intelligence test
Can the CIA and MI6 remain close partners?
DAVID McCLOSKEY
The Special Relationship has seen more special days. Earlier this year, President Trump delivered his verdict: 'How is the relationship? It's the relationship where, when we asked them for help, they were not there. When we needed them, they were not there. When we didn't need them, they were not there. And they still aren't there.'
Trump was referring to divisions between the US and UK over the wisdom and conduct of the war in Iran. (Even amid a spat, though, he can dish out praise. Just this week, following the arrest of five men outside RAF Fairfield, used by American bombers to strike Iran, the President said the UK authorities had done an ‘amazing job’.) But his remarks landed at a moment of divergence in the US-UK relationship that extends well beyond Iran. Washington has imposed and reimposed tariffs on Britain. Last year the UK paused intelligence-sharing that could have assisted American strikes against suspected drug boats in the Caribbean, which London views as illegal. Trump has branded the deal to hand the Chagos islands to Mauritius an ‘act of great stupidity’.
All this has resulted in a great deal of hand-wringing about the resilience or otherwise of the Special Relationship. There is a great fear of change, given how historically close the relationship is, particularly in intelligence. The Special Relationship's entire origin story, in fact, is a cryptographic exchange over German and Japanese codes at Bletchley Park in 1941. Eighty-five years later, the intelligence connection between the US and UK remains central; having the same set of eyes and ears means you see the world similarly and act accordingly.
But might gathering political headwinds blow hard enough to damage it? To understand how – or if – the intelligence partnership might come apart, it is helpful to examine how it actually works.
This is the subject of my new novel, London Station, in which I imagine a scenario where the CIA and MI6 begin spying on each other. There is a historical precedent for this. Prior to the second world war, Britain intercepted US diplomatic traffic and conducted influence campaigns on American soil.
In one instance, British spies drew up and disseminated a supposed Nazi map depicting Germany's vision for a partition of South America in a bid to frighten US policymakers into entering the war.
This is not how the relationship works today. Now, the CIA and MI6 share extensively and conduct joint operations. The same is true of the two domestic security services, the FBI and MI5. Though details about the Fairford plot are still emerging, Trump's praise and his cryptic claim that 'we had them under view for a long time' hints at another example of US-UK intelligence cooperation.
The CIA and MI6 share a lot of human intelligence – HUMINT – even if they don't always offer the names of their sources. There is no published percentage of exactly
Britain is the decidedly junior partner. When push comes to shove, the CIA wins out
how much they share. In my conversations with current and former officials, it's obviously not 100 per cent, but I'd wager it's fairly close to that.
The two services also don't conduct operations on one another's soil without the consent and participation of their opposite numbers – although my contacts did acknowledge both sides' occasional naughtiness. Perhaps, in theory, an MI6 officer under commercial cover might be dispatched to the US to hobnob with interesting targets, and the Americans might not be informed.
On signals intelligence – SIGINT, referring to intercepted communications – the two countries are even closer, and there is very little naughtiness. The US National Security Agency (NSA) and its British equivalent, GCHQ, often work off shared systems and collect the intelligence together. As Richard Kerbaj notes in his fabulous book The Secret History of the Five Eyes, the NSA has even paid the operating expenditure for some GCHQ sites.
But if the Americans have more money, geography still matters for intercepting satellite communications and tapping fibre-optic cables. Britain's imperial legacy creates unique value through a network of installations across Europe, the Middle East and south-east Asia. After 9/11, when the US was considering contingency plans if a terrorist attack took the NSA offline, the answer was to use GCHQ as the backup. That level of trust is likely without equal in the espionage business.
Underlying the HUMINT and SIGINT ties is a web of personal relationships. When I was researching for London Station, I asked my CIA contacts for warm introductions to their British counterparts and found dozens of officers who were in close touch, many after retirement. The scale of these networks is beyond those US officers share with any other western intelligence agency. I attempted a similar feat for my last novel, about Mossad, and found it much harder to find CIA officers in close contact with their Israeli equivalents. John Brennan, former director of the CIA, has said that he ‘had no qualms whatever about sharing our most sensitive secrets with my British counterparts’.
This is not to say that the interaction is frictionless. My research turned up cases in which the two services compete to recruit the same assets, jostle for primacy and are sometimes – shock, horror – less than forthcoming with one another over the targets they're pursuing. And Britain is the decidedly junior partner. Several former CIA officers have told me that when push comes to shove, the CIA wins out. If it wants a thing – a case, some assistance – it almost always gets it. The reverse is not true, and this can rankle.
Tension aside, the overarching logic is simple but powerful. Let's say the combined value of the US-UK intelligence relationship is 100 units. The US contributes 80, the UK 20 (these figures are estimates for the purpose of demonstration), and both partners receive the full 100. The US grumbles that the UK does not pull its weight: 'The Brits are pickpockets', in the uncharitable words of a former senior CIA officer I interviewed. And UK intelligence officers might complain about the damn Yanks throwing their weight around and ignoring the British contribution, which can be significant. But 100 units is greater than the individual contributions of both nations.
This all adds up to a relationship that is both deep and flexible. First, the depth. Political bluster aside, the two countries share largely overlapping geopolitical interests. Public spats over, say, the means of dealing with Iran hide basic agreements over the nature of the threat from the regime. The same could be said for China and Russia.
Flexibility is also an advantage in an era when, as a recent House of Lords report aptly puts it, the ‘once easy cultural bonds between Britain and America are beginning to fray’. The Special Relationship is not a formalised and rigid arrangement. A president cannot withdraw from it, nor rip up a piece of paper, because one does not exist. This flexibility means that cooperation can continue or even deepen in one domain even as it weakens elsewhere. The two nations’ intelligence services will keep open lines of communication amid any public mudslinging.
So what, if anything, could splinter the partnership? Over its long history the Special Relationship has experienced strain. Consider policy differences over the Suez crisis in 1956, the Vietnam war (Britain did not send troops) and the extent of Britain's tilt toward Europe in the early 1970s. The last of these led President Nixon to temporarily cut off some intelligence sharing; the
Brits retaliated during the Yom Kippur war of 1973 by placing restrictions on US intelligence activities and overflights from bases in Britain and Cyprus.
Similarly, we should now expect divergence, in at least in some areas. The two countries are decades from the shared experiences of the second world war and Cold War. Elements of the US political class, particularly in MAGA-world, are sceptical of global entanglements and increasingly see the UK as weak and irrelevant. In London Station, I imagine a CIA run by a character named Bobby Jerome, the founder and CEO of the nation's largest residential home-building business, a commercial animal with strong political instincts, a cultural distaste for the Brits and a desire to review the agency's foreign partnerships. This is perhaps not so unbelievable; Trump appointed Bill Pulte, heir to a home-building fortune, as acting director of National Intelligence (this happened, I should note, after I'd finished the novel).
But even Bobby's reign of terror runs into the cold logic of the US-UK intelligence relationship: he discovers that the CIA is getting more out of the partnership than it puts in. There can be more divergence, more tension and less shared affinity even as the relationship remains close. It does not have to be ‘special’ to deliver benefits to both countries.
This means that even if a J.D. Vance or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez administration – both likely to be sceptical of European commitments – takes power in Washington, the relationship is primed to adapt and shift, not to break. If policy disagreements widen, as they probably will, over the wisdom of military American interventions, the value of Nato, the geopolitical competition with China or Washington’s more go-it-alone, abrasive diplomatic attitude, the machinery exists to continue delivering military, security and political benefits that advance the interests of both nations.
The flexible, adaptable and mutually beneficial intelligence partnership is exactly the sort best positioned to evolve and survive amid stormy political seas on both sides of the Atlantic. Let's hope it does.
---
---
[A tale of two Cities] The sad moral decline of the club I once loved
MICHAEL HENDERSON
Fifty-nine years ago this month, a barrel-chested footballer called Francis Lee left Bolton Wanderers for Manchester City, and an impressionable eight-year-old followed him. Within a year ‘the City’ were First Division champions, and ‘Franny’, my childhood hero, had become an England international.
Early memories are usually the most vivid. FA Cup winners in 1969, the men from Maine Road completed a trifecta of domestic pots the following year with the League Cup – and added a dollop of cream with the European Cup Winners' Cup. The years of plenty didn't last. In those days prizes were distributed more widely. But what larks.
Last week the club Lee served as a star player and, two decades later, as chairman, found itself chained in the doghouse. A Premier League investigation, conducted over three years of laborious fact-checking, found it guilty of 114 charges relating to financial jiggery-pokery.
Cooking the books, in other words – and in the eyes of their accusers, City then smothered them with a Béarnaise sauce. Beyond east Manchester, great was the rejoicing. A club once regarded as a variety act – the disgraced broadcaster Stuart Hall habitually referred to Maine Road as ‘the theatre of base comedy’ – have been widely resented since the Abu Dhabi United Group, led by Sheikh Mansour, rode into town 18 years ago, carrying bags of gold. The Etihad Stadium, their home since 2003, is seen as a den of cheats.
City have vowed to challenge any punishment and, as they have unlimited funds, the claims and counter-claims may stretch on like the Great North Road. As far as the footballing world is concerned, however, they have been judged bang to rights. A significant points deduction, and even relegation from the Premier League, are possible.
It's a grubby tale of a game that has sold its soul, and City are by no means the only offenders. The Premier League fined Chelsea £10 million four years ago, Everton and Nottingham Forest were docked points, and the Glazer brothers – Americans who own a majority share in Manchester United – have run up £1 billion worth of debt since they took over England's biggest club in a leveraged buyout 21 years ago.
But City is the main story, on account of their decade and more of glory. Champions of England eight times since 2012, they became European champions in 2023 when victory in the FA Cup landed them a remarkable treble. A club that went 35 years without winning a trophy has come in from the cold. Except, it now appears, the transformation was facilitated by persistent rule-breaking by a foreign state.
The fans don't care. Fans never do. So long as ‘their’ team is winning, the scarftwirlers will tolerate everything: the reflexive dishonesty of players, the shrieking of one-eyed managers and the shenanigans of agents. Since the Premier League was created in 1992, all parties have frolicked in
Manchester City's transformation, it appears, was facilitated by persistent rule-breaking by a foreign state
a land of milk and honey. The traditional English game has been marketed as ‘entertainment’ for an international audience, promoted by biddable television pundits.
When City topped the old First Division in 1968, all 11 players were English. So was the manager, Joe Mercer, and the coach, Malcolm Allison. The chairman, Albert Alexander, was a local man who had given his life to the club. Lee cost City £60,000 when he travelled ten miles down the road from Bolton. Colin Bell, the finest player to represent the club since the war, joined from Bury for £45,000. Other members of that champion team were recruited from Doncaster Rovers, Plymouth Argyle, Stockport County and Swindon Town. Never such innocence again.
'I said has anything new happened?'
Now there are few English players in the Premier League and most clubs are owned and managed almost exclusively by foreigners. Commercially, it has been a roaring success. Morally, it brings to mind Mickey Duff's maxim. 'In this game,' the boxing promoter said, 'you can fuck a flea if the money's right.'
It wasn't always a land of enchantment, even when England were winning their only World Cup in 1966. The players were paid poorly and the grounds, while character-ful, were dismal. At Maine Road there was a malodorous cavern called the Kippax Stand, which could have passed for Nibelheim, the subterranean home of wretches in Das Rheingold.
Was the game better in those days? Well, it produced men like Gordon Banks, Jimmy Armfield, Ray Wilson, Bobby Moore, Bobby Charlton, Jimmy Greaves, Martin Peters and Alan Ball, who would walk into an England XI today. Not one wore a tattoo, crashed a Bentley or lived in a mansion. Between 1959 and 1976, no team retained the First Division title, so the game was certainly more competitive. And those men played on heavy pitches, with old-fashioned leather balls, when referees took a more tolerant view of what constituted foul play.
Three years ago, after City had won that treble, I wrote my hero a letter. 'I have drifted away from the club,' I told him, 'but I'm grateful to you for providing so many golden memories. For at least one person it's still the club of Colin Bell, Francis Lee and Mike Summerbee, and it always will be.'
He replied in an unsteady hand, which suggested something was wrong. A week later Franny died, at the age of 79, after a battle with cancer. He's still my hero, and I remain temperamentally a Blue. But modern cocky Manchest-oh has got the club it deserves, and Manchest-oh can keep it.
Sport, the great Hugh McIlvanney liked to say, should never be more than ‘a glorious distraction’. We have come a long way since then, but even in the squalid world of contemporary football there are standards to observe. Throw the book at ‘Citeh’. They deserve no mercy.
WEATHERBYS
---
---
[WARTIME NOTEBOOK] Penny Mordaunt
Friday. I address intelligence agencies, law enforcement and behavioural scientists as they gather in Krakow. I tell them how they can help combat anti-Semitism in their work. The speech is a prelude to a visit to the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial and museum. Words are not enough. While we meet, Lithuania highlights Russian attempts to bully pro-Ukrainian Nato countries with airspace incursions.
Saturday. China has held the Robot Olympics, firmly fixed on a tech-enhanced future. This weekend we Brits held an event of similar magnitude. Ours is devoid of AI-enabled humanoids; instead, it is all high lift cams, low growls, beer, nylons, rouge, flat caps and the exquisite aroma of Castrol R. Do not dismiss the Goodwood Revival as backward-looking. In Britain, nostalgia is fuel for the future. The traditional and familiar are no brake on progress. They are a necessary condition of it. Trackside, in the shadow of towering Hannah Waddingham and her preacher hat, I enjoy a brew with fellow dyslexic and driving legend Jackie Stewart. He is towering, too, in a different way. Meanwhile, three Russian aircraft are intercepted in Estonian airspace.
Monday. The start of The Wargame. This is the TV version of Sky's podcast, simulating the start of a hot war with Russia. Your editor and I spent four days in a bunker with political opponents, role-playing a coalition government on the brink. While we had been filming, fictional events of hybrid warfare mirrored the reality. An assassination in Poland and another Russian vessel in our waters. Four days of filming was condensed into four hours of telly. Diplomacy, the creation of strategic dilemmas, choking off Russia's ability to fight in Ukraine, financial sanctions and 58 attempts to get Potus to trigger Article 5 did not make the edit. By Wednesday's episode we were at Bikini State Red Alert.
No one will be surprised to hear me highlight our lack of conventional forces and the sense of spending 5 per cent GDP to prevent a war costing 50 per cent of it. But when Harriet Harman (Sky's home secretary) and Nicola Sturgeon (Sky's deputy prime minister) have joined the cause to re-arm, people ought to wake up. It is about to be too late.
As the nation watches the fictional disaster unfold, in the real world, Vilnius and Copenhagen airports are closed because of Russian-launched balloons and drones. The drones were launched from three Russian-affiliated vessels. One is the shadow tanker Boracay, part of a now 1,000-strong dark fleet.
While we wait for the government to come to its senses, we do what we can. I speak to two resilience groups this week. They are trying to ensure that whatever happens to us in the coming months and years, life can continue in the UK. Good people working hard to stay ahead of the threat. While I am on my feet, Denmark's intelligence service issues a warning as Russia's hybrid campaign escalates. Europe's agencies and Baltic ministers say that these can no longer be called 'hybrid'. They are overt attacks. In the UK, Wes Streeting urges us all to stock up on baked beans. He is doing all he can, it seems, to give Labour a second wind.
In a few days' time, the Royal Navy's Crew 1 in MCM2 Squadron will be stood down. They have no vessel to lower the
White Ensign on, no shore establishment in which to meet to celebrate 20 years' service so accomplished that it earned them the name 'Fighting Aces'. They were the crew that dealt with MV Smyrtos as she sailed into UK waters earlier this year. These sailors will quietly head off to other duties, on other ships, with other shipmates while we do our damnedest to ensure they get a proper send-off.
For Conservative party conference week, I will need my passport. I will be heading from Birmingham straight to Broadway in Manhattan. The late Sir David Amess was president of the Music Man Project, a choir of musicians with learning disabilities. This small charity in Southend-on-Sea now has global reach, providing teaching materials and music opportunities across the UK and, via sister organisations, worldwide. Their philosophy is that they should play the best venues in the world. I had helped Sir David in his successful attempt to secure the Royal Albert Hall. On the night they performed there he announced their dream to one day play their own show on Broadway. Nearly five years since his murder, they will be doing exactly that. The day after, they play at the UN, where we will announce an international alliance of disabled musicians. The past few weeks have been challenging for them. Setbacks were their bus being vandalised and their flights being cancelled at the last minute. They have cheerfully dealt with it all.
My week comes to a close with two fundraisers, for Conservative Associations and for veterans' charities. The former is in Solihull; the latter at the National Memorial Arboretum. I'm always inspired to meet so many people working to make life better. If the worst befell our country, these folk would be first on the team sheet. My week has been book-ended with memorials – one to so many murdered by hate and one to those that hath no greater love.
---
---
[MATTHEW PARRIS] I bid fond farewell to Great Lives
By my bed at home is a little shelf on which I put useful things for the morning. Coins, keys, my smartphone, some eardrops and... I looked at it, and it looked back at me. 'You won't be needing me any more,' it seemed to say, 'probably ever again in your life.'
I confess a tear pricked my eyes. It was true. My BBC pass, on its blue lanyard, is often beside my bed, ready for when I go straight from Derbyshire to the BBC studios in New Broadcasting House near Oxford Circus.
How many times have I walked from the Tube station, up Upper Regent Street, past the ‘pepper pot’ church, John Nash’s All Souls at Langham Place, and in through those BBC revolving doors. In fact the question is not rhetorical. I’ve done it more than 500 times because that’s how many Great Lives programmes I’ve presented for Radio 4 since I started 20 years ago, in 2006.
I'm leaving. Probably my last programme, already recorded, will be broadcast this month; and I'm not confident the corporation will decide to continue the series. I so hope they do.
You may have heard an episode or two. The format is beautifully simple. We invite as our guest somebody notable in public life and ask them to nominate, from the ranks of the dead, a figure – famous or obscure – whose life they have greatly admired. Then we get a third person to join us in the studio – an academic, perhaps, or a biographer, even a descendant or old friend of the person nominated: someone who can augment my guest’s enthusiasm with some extra information. We chat for 40 or 50 minutes – it’s a chat, not a symposium – which my producer then edits down to the half-hour of the broadcast programme.
The Great Lives idea was not mine. That distinction goes to an extraordinary BBC producer and presenter, Miles Warde. He started the series and has been my senior editor ever since I joined it, a few years in. Miles is a quirky genius whose own output has been prodigious. When the corporation (faced with the need for further cuts) asked him to interview for his own job, Miles declined. Best, then, I thought, to leave when Miles does, for I can't imagine the programme without him.
And, at 77, I should probably be looking at stepping back soon, anyway. Not for me the 'Gosh, he's 88 and still churning it out!' reputation. Not for me words like 'sprightly'. Slowly we lose our edge: I'm not as quick with responses as I once was, so I'll confine myself mostly to print and quit regular broadcasting while (I flatter myself) I'm ahead.
But what a ride it's been! I've had walk-outs (Christopher Hitchens, who, feeling I was giving him too hard a time over his choice of Leon Trotsky, called me a bleeding Tory, stormed out, then promptly stormed back in again). I've had awkward requests (Lord Snowdon, Princess Margaret's ex-husband, nominating Alec Issigonis, designer of the original Mini, who asked for wine at 2.30 in
---
---
Some of my most memorable programmes have celebrated a life most listeners won't have heard of
the afternoon: we had to send someone out to buy a bottle). I've had some remarkable out-of-studio locations (interviewing the climber Joe Simpson of Touching the Void in the wind and rain perched on Stanage Edge in Derbyshire; and our programme on Roger Deakin, the water-loving nature writer and right-to-roamer, whom we celebrated by recording from a houseboat on the Thames, after which we stripped naked and dived into the river – only our guest from the Guardian kept his pants on).
My favourites? Too many to name, beyond saying this: some of my most memorable programmes have celebrated a life most listeners won't have heard of, but more should. Ada Lovelace, Byron's daughter, whom he never returned to England to see, an invalid and mathematical prodigy who died young but has some claim to have co-invented the computer along with Charles Babbage, has stayed always in my memory, not so much for her computing as for her passionate belief that poetry, art and beauty are cosmically linked with mathematics.
‘We don’t want to go too crazy and get rid of it completely.’
Speaking of great women, many years ago Miles decided to tally their prominence in our programmes. He found that, among more than 300 nominators, half the women had chosen a woman and half had chosen a man as their great life. Among male nominators, all but three had chosen another man. We resolved to put that right, and we have.
We might otherwise never have featured Princess Vera Gedroits, Russia's first woman military surgeon and professor of surgery, decorated for her battlefield work after the Russo-Japanese war, openly lesbian, who honed her skills in a cement factory, became a favourite of the Tsarina and (a towering figure of a woman) manhandled a whimpering Rasputin out of her surgery in the Imperial Palace. Vera even survived the transition to revolutionary communism, was a noted author and died peacefully in Kyiv, where she'd moved with her lover. She was nominated by her distant relative Mel Giedroyc, the actress and comedian best known for co-presenting The Great British Bake-off.
I often imagine what our great life would think if she or he were hovering above us in the studio. I believe Princess Vera would have been proud of Mel. On present plans, Vera will be my last great life.
I bow out sadly but without the least bitterness. Should I ever do Desert Island Discs, I know one choice I'll make. Noël Coward's 'Why Must the Show Go On?' about show business. 'Butchers and bakers,' he writes, 'Get little applause for their pains/When I think of miners and waiters in diners/ The query forever remains/ Why must the show go on?' So...
Stop being gallant, and don't be such a bore. Pack up your talent, there's always plenty more.
And if you lose hope, take dope And lock yourself in the john. Why must the show go on?
---
---
[The death of the author] What if AI is actually good at writing novels?
BAROMETER
OWEN MATTHEWS
---
---
Orange prize
What is so special about the Garvaghy Road to Ulster Unionists? The area around Portadown attained significance for loyalists thanks to the Battle of the Diamond in 1795 when Protestant and Catholic forces clashed at a road junction. Twelve years later, Orangemen started their annual march from Portadown to the church at Drumcree, returning via the Garvaghy Road, which was then in the countryside. It wasn't entirely peaceful then, with a Protestant magistrate remarking in 1835 that the Orangemen had gone out of their way to pass by a Catholic chapel, stirring up the locals. But the march became more of a flashpoint after a council estate inhabited mostly by Catholics was built along the Garvaghy Road in the 1960s.
---
---
Sailing by
The Chancellor, John Healey, announced £6 billion for shipbuilding as part of his attempt to reindustrialise Britain. Which countries produced the most merchant ships in 2024, by share of total global value?
China....54.6% Italy....0.64%
South Korea....28.0% Germany....0.26%
Japan....12.6% Turkey....0.12%
Vietnam....1.01% India....0.06%
Philippines....0.93% US....0.04%
UNCTAD
---
---
Taking care |
How much do local authorities spend on adult social care (at 2024/25 prices)? | 2009/10 | £23.2bn | 2011/12 | £22.1bn | 2013/14 | £21.2bn | 2015/16 | £21.7bn | 2017/18 | £22.1bn | 2019/20 | £23.3bn | 2021/22 | £25.2bn | 2023/24 | £26.9bn | 2024/25 | £27.8bn |
Department for Health and Social Care | Department for Health and Social Care
---
---
Still out there
Rod Stewart, 81, announced one final tour before he retires. Which other 1960s/1970s music acts are still on the road?
Van Morrison, 81, has a 12-date UK tour this autumn.
Bob Dylan, 85, has 30 European concerts this autumn.
Ringo Starr, 86, had a 12-date US tour in the spring.
Deep Purple (including early members Ian Gillan, 81, Roger Glover, 80, and Ian Paice, 78) have 37 dates in Europe this autumn. Roger Daltrey, 82, is in the middle of a 20-date solo tour in the US. Willie Nelson, 93, is booked at a festival in California next April.
The spectacular fall from grace of Haitian-Canadian writer Thélyson Orélien in many ways resembles our own culture war over Jason Arday. The celebrated author, feted in TV studios and in the literary salons of Quebec and Paris's Saint-Germain-des-Prés for his hard-hitting descriptions of the migrant experience, was accused on X last week both of serial plagiarism and of using artificial intelligence to write his latest novel. His accusers decried the soft bigotry of low expectations that caused the woke intelligentsia to turn a blind eye to mediocrity because their hero was a capital-B Black
---
---
A former literary scholar at All Souls, Oxford, has called AI ‘completely brilliant’
man. His defenders, just as in Arday's case, tried to dismiss the original accuser as an extremist (the anonymous account responsible turned out to be run by Samuel Fitoussi, a columnist for the right-wing Le Figaro). They also attempted to cast the affair as the working of a racist lynch mob. The leftie magazine Les Inrockuptibles even came up with the thrillingly Stalinist line that 'in this affair, whether the accusation is well-founded is not what matters most'.
Orélien has denied the accusations. Literary sleuths have pointed out that Pangram – the AI detector that has marked up swaths of the text of his novel C'était ça ou Mourir as non-human – is prone to false positives, wrongly flagging pages of classic French literature written long before the advent of AI. That, however, has not stopped the committee of the Prix Goncourt, France’s equivalent of the Booker Prize and not known as a hotbed of reactionary politics, dropping Orélien’s book from this year’s shortlist.
But l'affaire Orélien poses a far more serious question for our times than the obvious one about race relations. What would it mean if a novel part-written by AI were actually excellent? In a fair world, should the author be sharing his prize with the Large Language Model (LLM) which may have toiled as his co-author? 'This book is very good – if it's AI that made it, we should use it!' the Goncourt Committee member Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt told a talk show in the wake of the scandal. 'No, I'm kidding!' he quickly added.
But if Schmitt is kidding, other authors and thinkers are starting to engage with the real possibility that the world is approaching a singularity moment where AI is as good as humans at ‘thinking’ and writing. The remarkable Dr Iain McGilchrist, a former literary scholar at All Souls, Oxford, who re-qualified as a consultant psychiatrist, has called AI ‘completely brilliant’, able to offer advice with a sensibility ‘very like my brother, who is an extraordinarily civilised art historian’. Lower down the intellectual totem pole, Alain Damasio, known as ‘the Pope of French science fiction’, is sufficiently secure in his reputation to admit that he regularly uses AI in his writing. ‘I’m stunned by its creative capabilities when it comes to imaginary worlds,’ he said recently. ‘It’s almost on the same level as my own craftsmanship, and it’s only going to keep improving.’
The Orélien case is just the latest in a long line of acclaimed books that have been flagged as AI. Rie Kudan, winner of Japan's 2024 Akutagawa Prize, admitted that she had used ChatGPT. AI-detector-triggering stories have won four out of the ten Commonwealth Short Story regional competitions in the last two years. An almost wholly AI written book was runner-up in a Chinese science fiction prize in 2023.
But there's a catch. Anthropic, the creator of Claude, has bought up millions of books and scanned them to build the database of its LLM (and then pulped the copies, sparking outrage). In other words, the published works of most authors writing today are already in the belly, or the mind, of the beast. (I know this because Anthropic owes me and thousands of other authors involved in a successful \$1.5 billion class action suit a shed-load of money for compensation.) That helps explain why a book by French author Sophie Jomain written in 2009 could come up as 94 per cent AI. A new text written by Jomain came up as 100 per cent machine-generated. 'What does that mean?' asks Jomain. 'The more I write, the more my writing starts to resemble artificial intelligence? Or is it that the more I write, the more artificial intelligence feeds on it and starts to resemble me?' In a further mind-bending twist, Pangram also offers to 'humanise' AI text for a fee, playing both gamekeeper and poacher.
Most people believe using AI to write is a kind of faking or cheating. But the question of whether the art it produces is automatically bad remains. The German artist Wolfgang Beltracchi painted hundreds of fakes of 20th-century masters that were validated by art historians, specialists at Christie's and the director of Paris's Pompidou Centre. They sold for tens of millions. Max
'The sermon was a massive improvement – the vicar must be using AI!'
Ernst's own widow even certified one of the works. Beltracchi was exposed (and jailed) in 2011, and the value of his fakes obviously plunged – though his creations were objectively brilliant in conception and execution. Claude recently wrote a ‘Bach’ fugue that even music scholars describe as ‘workman-like’ and non-experts like me find magical.
But Orélien – if he did use AI – wasn’t faking Ernst or Bach. He was faking himself. Moreover, people are still unaware that powerful new LLMs work best as a car you drive, not as a robot you send on errands. Try prompting an AI programme, even one as powerful as Claude’s Opus 5, to ‘write me a novel in the style of Thélyson Orélien’ and the result will be identifiable as AI slop – superficially convincing, maybe, but full of heavyhanded stylistic formulas and wooden characters. Amazon Books, whose content is estimated to be at least 40 per cent AI-created, is full of such formulaic genre-fiction drek.
However, if you, as an author, ask the machine to thoughtfully critique the prose you wrote yourself, it will likely do a great job. From there, it's a fatally simple step to asking the LLM to go ahead and add its fixes and thereby improve your text. That's the slippery slope on which today's literary world finds itself. Samuel Fitoussi asks whether 'the work of writing will change form... no longer about choosing each word, but about guiding one's AI'. Could we soon be living in a world where 'the one who produces the best novels will be the one who has invested the most creativity, intelligence or, at least, some kind of something in their AI'?
Fitoussi's perhaps bleak vision contains chinks of hope for human creativity. In his prediction, universal access to AI does not mean anyone can write a novel. The machine could become ‘a cognitive lever, a talent amplifier’ for those with sufficient mastery to use it. Non-masters of the craft, meanwhile, will merely produce derivative rubbish.
And what about the critics and prize committees who claim to be the arbiters and gatekeepers of public taste? As C'était ça ou Mourir has shown, AI already has them thoroughly fooled.
---
---
Prep ahead
I'm stockpiling wine, olives and capers
LISA HASELDINE
Earlier this month, the government launched its ‘Prepare’ campaign, urging us to plan for all manner of emergencies and put together a kit of food and supplies big enough to last several days. Housing Secretary Angela Rayner helpfully revealed what she’d be stockpiling: ‘Mascara, concealer, a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, some baked beans and a tin of custard – I like custard.’
This is perfect timing: Putin seems to be breathing a little more heavily down our necks and – phew! – I’ve just moved into a house with an understairs cupboard big enough for an emergency pantry.
A quick glance online tells me I can buy so-called ‘go bags’ complete with first aid kits, head torches, mess tins and fire starters from roughly £175. All very useful, no doubt, but not much fun.
So I dig a little further and come across the X page of Lucy Easthope, a disaster expert who's advised the government on all manner of catastrophes, including, most recently, the Covid pandemic. She suggests: 'It's OK for the 72-hour [emergency] cupboard to be things you like.' Say no more. In the spirit of Angela Rayner, I shall make my own survival kit.
This should be easy, I think. I've long felt I have the makings of a survivalist: every time I go on holiday to the Mediterranean, I make sure to leave space in my hold luggage for a few bottles of good red wine and extra-virgin olive oil. It just tastes so much better when bought from the source – and it's good to be prepared for when the Filippo Berio spikes above £10 a litre back home.
Hoarding three days of supplies shouldn't have to take on the frantic nature of dashing for loo roll at the start of lockdown. I log into my Sainsbury's delivery app and get tapping. In go a selection of jarred beans and chickpeas (not the tinned stuff, please), as well as capers and artichokes. Next, some tinned tomatoes, olives (Perelló, obvs), tuna and anchovies. I'm not sure even the apocalypse could make me desperate enough to buy corned beef.
I opt for a bottle of concentrated lemon juice, and while I'm not confident it will provide much vitamin C, it would mean I could still churn out some homemade hummus
---
---
Not even the apocalypse could make me desperate enough to buy corned beef
when things get tough. Next go in crackers (Peter's Yard – for the hummus) and a few packets of rice and pasta.
Luckily, I’ve got a pretty well-stocked spice rack so don’t have to worry too much about flavouring my emergency rations. I’m also sorted for a can opener, corkscrew (for the lovely Mediterranean reds) and battery-powered meat thermometer – would you want to be getting food poisoning in a national emergency? I do, however, make a mental note to pop into Holland and Barrett next time I’m passing for some peppermint and charcoal pills, both meant to be very good for upset stomachs.
The World Health Organisation recommends keeping ten litres of water per household member per day in supply. Those big plastic five-litre canisters of water are somewhat unsightly, but needs must and, in any case, they'll be well hidden under my stairs.
We will also need that water for cooking and washing, which makes me think I'd better invest in a few good jugs for the tub – the water flow from my navy-blue Oliver Bonas jug is a little hard to control. I add some San Pellegrino to the basket too, because in times of hardship, it will be important to keep our dignity.
I also have the cat to think about. I usually feed him fresh, 100 per cent real meat food that, to my husband's chagrin, takes up most of our freezer. But if the power cuts out, that would all go off quite quickly. I chuck a few boxes of kibble into the order – I hope the cat forgives me.
I stock up on candles (tapered, of course – and enough to fill the freshly mounted wall sconces in my new dining room) and matches. Once that order is sorted, I also toggle over to John Lewis for a swanky Roberts radio – battery- and solar-powered – so I can listen to any government emergency updates as and when disaster strikes.
I'm not the only person I know who's thinking about survival. A friend of a friend has taken up crossbow lessons and another is learning to fish. I vow to do better with my vegetable patch next year (or would I be better off digging a shelter in the garden instead?) and to learn how to pickle.
Easthope has gathered an impressive 30,000 followers on X, all keen to get her tips on how to prepare – so I’m glad I’m not alone. One comments under her post: ‘Now I want “The Great British Prep Off”. You and Nigella in a field hospital or mass decontamination centre-style tent guiding contestants through “apocalypse of the week” themed tasks.’ Count me in – but only once my Sainsbury’s shop arrives.
---
---
[MADELINE GRANT] It's all too much
There were many reasons why John Ruskin hated Rococo. The overly decorated style was a bête noire for the great architectural critic because he thought it the supreme example of excess and by its excess it concealed its true meaning. We are in an era of British life which I can only think of as ‘late Rococo incompetence’. The excess of bad news, government ineptitude and baffling decisions made by the state is now so great that we are struck dumb, incapable of meaningful reaction.
The news cycle abounds with evidence of this tidal wave of depressing or destructive acts. The sheer number of hideous stories has desensitised us. In the past, rapes, foiled terror plots, government corruption scandals or days featuring unprecedented levels of illegal immigration would dominate news bulletins, front pages and social media. Now they're just accepted as part of the wider tapestry of horror.
These stories often come in insane twos and threes. Earlier this week, for example, in just 48 hours, we learnt that Abu Hamza's wife was getting a £70,000 property makeover courtesy of British taxpayers, that we granted citizenship and asylum to a bona fide Hamas operative (who promptly showed his gratitude by plotting terror attacks on British soil) and that Shabana Mahmood, for all her tough talk, won't actually do anything about migration other than increasing routes from countries whose citizens are more likely to commit harm to British people. These barely made a splash. By the time you read this, the news cycle may already have moved on. Indeed, such was my shock about Hamza's wife, I temporarily forgot that Britain also provided council housing for the First Lady of Sierra Leone.
Last October, a man named Wayne Broadhurst was stabbed to death by an Afghan migrant in a quiet street in Uxbridge while walking his dog. It was precisely the sort of random, senseless killing of an innocent member of the public that would once have prompted weeks of discussion and national soul-searching. It emerged that the migrant had lied about his age, but had – inevitably – been given asylum and free accommodation. Yet the murder wasn’t prominently featured in many newspapers; nor was it mentioned in the Commons that week. To date, Broadhurst has only been mentioned once in parliament, by shadow home secretary Chris Philp commenting on the government's silence.
Part of the problem is the media itself. The BBC often covers these stories only very belatedly, or as a minor local item. This matters because the BBC website is by a wide margin the country's most-read online news source so its sluggishness has an outsize impact on awareness. However, there is also a sense of profound weariness among the public when confronted with obvious indicators of national decline. If they've heard of these things at all, many perceive reacting to them as either ‘low status’ or not worth
---
---
The sheer number of hideous stories has desensitised us
the effort. Perhaps this is simply the consequence of being so ground down. It's easy to see why. When they are so numerous, treating each act of malice or incompetence with the fury it deserves wouldn't result in anything changing; it would just result in an aneurysm.
This applies to the wider incompetence of the Establishment too. We are desensitised to the nature of our national situation and the appalling triviality of our government. Scandals – in the civil service, the legal system, the Church, the universities, the NHS and the government – are now so abundant that they get memory-holed after a day of coverage when once their very uncovering would have consumed weeks of news.
This week's Labour conference has been a veritable tsunami of bad ideas, from the mooted destruction of educational standards to ball-dropping on visas, migration and
'You're wasting your time, they've got a doorbell camera.'
Heathrow. The government has just handed councils the power to seize homes deemed ‘vacant’ after just six months. ‘I’ll say it again,’ crowed multiple-property owner Emily Thornberry in the manner of a corrupt Soviet commissar. ‘If you leave a home empty long-term in the middle of a housing crisis, it should be seized.’
It bears repeating: we are led by people who believe they should be able to expropriate your property and rent it out if they feel you are not putting it to good enough use. This is full-Commie stuff, and doubly terrifying – for if they believe this, then what other gross tyrannies may be awaiting us? But once again, the ‘safety in numbers’ approach to madness seems to be paying off.
Each of these demonstrations of folly merits a dissection, but such is the deluge that barely any will receive the criticism required. This is partly due to that febrile news cycle. However, many of them will get a free pass because of the Rococo nature of this incompetence and the fatigue it inspires. Since the last general election, we’ve gone from managing decline to speed-running it and nobody can quite keep up.
The deluge is sometimes absurd. This week the Defra minister Jenny Riddell-Carpenter claimed at a fringe group meeting that the countryside was going to be weaponised by ‘the far-right’. Country pubs, black labradors and warm ale are apparently part of a fascist conspiracy – and a vision of England that never existed. Bold talk from the MP for Suffolk Coastal. What is the appropriate response to this? ‘Am I having a stroke?’ comes to mind as the most obvious one. But that’s the point: the deluge of the inane, the mad and the wicked continues, demoralising and radicalising as it does so. They are dismantling the England you grew up in and then telling you it never existed.
One might question whether this is a deliberate tactic to overwhelm us with incompetence and malfeasance. The Rococo was designed to act as such, providing so many possible places to look that getting any sense of the wider vision became impossible. Ruskin rejected this because he thought it deceitful. We ought to reject the current deluge and the diversionary tactics for exactly the same reason.
---
---
Fire is a leveller
Sir: It was disappointing to read Fin Taylor's Diary (26 September) in which he reflected upon feeling a ‘tinge of satisfaction’ at the California wildfires. He made the rather sweeping statement that Californians believe they live beyond the laws of nature, and that those affected are so rich that it is of no consequence.
In fact, the fires at Pacific Palisades affected the whole community. Near to us, a children's day centre, largely used by low-income families, was completely lost. Our local Ralph's supermarket burned to the ground with dozens of jobs lost. Landscapers, gardeners, waiters, domestic workers all lost their livelihoods. Whether a billionaire or working for \$20 an hour, the merciless devastation touched everyone.
Terence Dackombe
Topanga, CA
---
---
Canadian friends
Sir: It was touching to read of Peter Hitchens's affection for Canada following his disenchantment with the USA ('Swing state', 19 September). But he is far from being the first Brit to make this particular North American journey. In the wake of America's War of Independence, the former colonies were no place for 'loyalists' – the term then used for settlers who backed the Crown between 1775 and 1783. As well as suffering political isolation, loyalists had their property confiscated and lives threatened by victorious and vengeful rebels. As a result, thousands of persecuted Anglophiles sought asylum in the new northern settlements of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island.
Throughout eastern Canada, these refugees are still referenced and lauded by ‘loyalist’ parks, plaques and street names. Likewise, in the many memorials marking two world wars, Canada’s contribution to Britain’s armed forces is proudly acknowledged: in even the remotest villages of Newfoundland, the Maple Leaf and Union Jack fly alongside cenotaphs and statues. So Hitchens is right to feel more at home in Canada; and Anglo-Canadians are right to be distrustful of their southern neighbour.
Richard Kelly
Nant Mawr, Flintshire
---
---
The Reading tapestry
Sir: In his Notes of 19 September, Charles Moore laments that people are forced to move quickly along the length of the Bayeux tapestry due to the huge numbers wanting to see it. Could I point out that, for
---
---
LETTERS
those who want to avoid this hassle, there is a full-size copy of it (made in 1885 by ladies in Leek, Staffordshire) on permanent display here in Reading, Berks? Located in Reading museum, it is only a five-minute walk from the main station (now connected to London on the Elizabeth line). Worth visiting not just for the tapestry but also to see a place about which the late Sir John Betjeman said ‘few towns better repay exploration’. James Halls Reading, Berkshire
---
---
Finally, brethren
Sir: I must reply to David Wood's letter (26 September) because he invokes my late brother in support of his dismissal of the importance of Bible knowledge. I gained the strong impression that Christopher eventually wished he hadn't given his anti-God book the subtitle How Religion Poisons Everything, because it is so obviously untrue. Religion doesn't poison the art, architecture, literature and music which it has inspired. Nor does it poison the hospitals and other charitable benefactions which it stimulates. As for the Bible, my brother was on record, more than once, praising the power and beauty of scripture. In one essay, 'When the King Saved God' in 2011, he wrote 'A culture that does not possess this common store of image and allegory will be a perilously thin one.' I can personally bear witness that, at our father's funeral, he chose to read the following passage from St Paul's Epistle to the Philippians: 'Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.' Far too soon afterwards, I read the same verses at his memorial gathering.
Peter Hitchens
London W8
---
---
Call that cricket?
Sir: Jim Lawley's entertaining review of 1864: The Year That Changed Cricket, with its instances of archaic eccentricities (Books, 22 September), reminds me of a slightly unusual match I once took part in between a local team and members of my English Civil War re-enactment group. We used a curved bat, such as I have seen in the Long Room at Lord's, and two stumps rather than three. The locals wore cricket whites, boots and club caps; we had knee-length breeches, flat-toed latchet shoes, Montero caps and in one instance a lobster-pot helmet. They followed MCC laws, we the rules of 17th-century engagement; I
shall never forget the surprise on the face of their opening batsman when, going for his first run, our corporal rugby-tackled him to the ground.
Tom Stubbs
Surbiton, Surrey
---
---
Remembering Frestonia
Sir: Patrick West's piece on Micronations (Notes on..., 26 September) and his mention of Piddington's independence bid brought to mind the precedent set by Heathcote Williams's and David Rappaport's Free and Independent Republic of Frestonia in west London in 1977. With its own flag and stamps, it was supported by various luminaries including Sir Geoffrey Howe. Its purpose was a serious one: to find permanent social housing for the homeless in the area, in which it succeeded.
Neil McArthur
Hastings
---
---
Not a scratch
Sir: Rupert Hawksley's article ‘All bets are off’ (26 September) makes no mention of the National Lottery or the extraordinary expansion of its scratch cards. When the Lottery was introduced, these were highly controversial, yet parliament permitted them within the established framework. They have since become ubiquitous, available in virtually every convenience store. It is curious that, while Labour’s proposed restrictions on traditional bookmakers are being scrutinised, scratch cards receive no attention whatsoever. If the concern is the accessibility and normalisation of gambling, why is the National Lottery apparently exempt from the discussion?
Alan Pedder
Bury, Manchester
---
---
The dog in the night-time
Sir: In response to Keith Johnson's Notes on... Dogs barking in the distance (19 September), the most chilling polar opposite must be from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in Silver Blaze, with the dog in the night-time remaining silent.
Geoff Pratt
Nuneaton, Warwickshire
---
---
Whim-woms again
Sir: My dear late mother-in-law, when asked what was for dinner, always replied ‘whim-woms with gooses’ bridles’ (Letters, 26 September). Never did find out what she meant.
Sue Mason
Long Sutton, Lincs
---
---
Building the future of UK aerospace together
BOEING
Shelfield Fabrication
Over the last 10 years, we’ve partnered with the UK to invest more than £300 million in aerospace innovation and infrastructure. Together, we are strengthening the country’s aerospace capabilities for generations to come.
---
---
Led by science, driven by returns.
Polar Capital Global Healthcare Trust invests in the innovative leaders of healthcare – from disruptive biotechnology to global pharmaceuticals.
The diversified portfolio combines defensive growth with emerging innovation, capturing multi-decade themes while navigating near-term volatility.
Discover the specialist Trust backing the future of healthcare.
polarcapitalglobalhealthcaretrust.co.uk
---
---
Capital at Risk.
This is a marketing communication. Investors may not get back the original amount invested. This advertisement should not be construed as advice for investment. Important Information: This announcement constitutes a financial promotion pursuant to section 21 of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 and has been prepared and issued by Polar Capital LLP. Polar Capital is a limited liability partnership with registered number OC314700, authorised and regulated by the UK Financial Conduct Authority ("FCA").
ANY OTHER BUSINESS | MARTIN VANDER WEYER
---
---
Healey should slash fuel taxes to avert a winter diesel crisis
Chancellor John Healey's ‘new age of industrialisation’ was one of the catchier soundbites of the Labour conference. But (to adapt Humphrey Bogart) it won’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world during a winter of soaring diesel prices, round-the-block pump queues and rationing to protect priority users. Which is all possible if President Trump enacts a 90-day block on diesel exports ahead of November’s midterm elections in a desperate move to ease US domestic fuel prices, which have surged since his crazy Iran war began.
Four in ten engines on British roads are still diesel-fuelled, despite the hype for electric power. Besides ten million cars, the diesel fleet includes the vast majority of emergency vehicles. A full tank for an average family car or tradesman's van already costs £31 more than it did at the start of the year. It could rise by the same again before Christmas – not least because the UK holds barely six weeks' worth of diesel stock, having closed most of the refineries that had large-scale storage capacity.
We rely for fuel imports on the Netherlands first and the US second, but the Dutch in turn buy from the US and every wholesaler in Europe will wade into a bidding war if shipments diminish. A vision looms of a return to September 2000, when a truckers' blockade of refineries in protest against fuel taxes brought the economy to a standstill.
And there's no supply solution in sight, other than a vague hope that Trump pretends not to remember he said last weekend that he's ‘thinking about [a diesel export ban] very seriously’. Even if he resiles, he has shaken the market in the wrong direction.
If he carries the threat through, Healey won't be able to halt panic-buying or a plunge in business and consumer confidence; but he can suppress pump prices by temporarily reducing the 53p-per-litre fuel duty and the 20 per cent VAT rate, which would account for another 38p in a £2.30 litre. Has any Labour chancellor ever had the wisdom to slash tax to keep the economy alive? Diesel could be the test case.
---
---
Where's my cheque?
It so happens that my diesel Audi, nicknamed ‘the fat cruiser’, was recently written off (while parked) by a lunchtime drunk-driver, and its replacement is a petrol-powered Skoda. So for all the hassle involved, at least my fuel costs should be lower pro tem. The oddity in an otherwise efficient digital claim process was that the insurance company eased its own cash flow by sending a cheque for the write-off value by snail mail. For ten unnecessary days I’ve been left in the last-century position of Billy Bunter awaiting a postal order.
---
---
Football's hot leg
In my distant youth, I was an occasional denizen of the Shed at Stamford Bridge. No longer an active Chelsea fan, these days I watch instead the financial games of leading clubs and owners. So I'm keen to hear the ‘irrefutable evidence’ Manchester City says it will bring forward to rebut the 114 alleged breaches of Premier League rules of which it's reported to have been found guilty.
Charges dating from 2009 to 2018 relate, inter alia, to not providing accurate financial information and not disclosing full details of player and manager remuneration. The appeal process will drag on as opposing legal teams rack up colossal fees. Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester United and Spurs have signalled that they will each seek compensation of £100 million-plus if City is judged to have unfairly disadvantaged them. The big bucks at stake overshadow the fact that expulsion or relegation as a sanction on England's most garlanded club would be traumatic for the loyal supporters who are its real long-term stakeholders. Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan of Abu Dhabi, City's ultimate owner since 2008, is probably too rich and distant to be perturbed.
Meanwhile, the other big football story of the week – the Prime Minister's plan to reverse a 1985 anti-hooliganism ban on fans drinking alcohol during matches – stirred another youthful memory: of packed terraces cascading with urine and the related shame of going home with pungent soaked trousers. The Manchester City case is the reputational equivalent of what we used to call a hot leg for the entire venal milieu of top-flight football.
---
---
Capitalism's song
Charlotte Church has castigated Ed Sheeran for choosing ‘consumerism and capitalism over doing the right thing’. I’m not sure I’d recognise either of these British songsters if they sat next to me on a bus. But as this column believes capitalism generally is the right thing, Church’s broadside – at her ‘End Times Pop Dungeon’ gig in Cardiff, described as ‘part euphoric rave, part total Dadaist carnage’ and which I’m sorry to have missed – demands further enquiry.
Sheeran's US tour is in a pickle following the sacking of the pro-Palestinian rapper Macklemore as a support act under pressure from venue owners; the withdrawal of other musicians in solidarity; and the cancellation of two more shows. Sheeran's emotional (if scripted) apology at a concert in Philadelphia, presenting himself as a naive artist drawn into the maelstrom of Israel-Palestine anger, provoked mixed reactions, including Church's.
But she’s not wholly wrong about Ed: there’s another Sheeran behind the sad ginger with a guitar. At 35, he has systematically amassed a portfolio of business interests, including rental properties across London, besides the tightly controlled operation of his recordings and tours. The Sunday Times estimates his fortune at more than £400 million. And you wouldn’t want to tangle with him on anything to do with music copyright, a field in which his lawyers have won or settled a series of high-profile cases.
In reality, Sheeran is a poster boy for the hard-nosed mode of capitalism that sometimes pervades the music biz. Whether his on-stage tears were sincere or crocodile, we certainly don't need to feel sorry for him.
---
---
A Rather Beautiful View
As a child, I would disappear down to the beach in Cornwall and spend hours investigating rock pools. From above they looked empty. Get down on your knees and suddenly there were fish, crabs and entire worlds. The UK stock market is rather like that.
The ice cream in Cornwall was pretty good too.
Years later, I met Edward Hugo. Smart, relentless and the sort of man you trust. He was waiting in a coffee shop. The rain was biblical. London was miserable. And yet I had spent years dreaming about this moment. Now I just needed Ed to say yes.
In 2019, we founded Kernow: a contrarian investment manager specialising exclusively in UK equities.
The timing was terrible.
Everyone seemed to agree about Britain. Unloved. The UK stock market had become the financial equivalent of a seaside town in November. We thought this was wonderful.
Human beings have always struggled to distinguish an unpopular thing from a bad thing. Our job is to work out where the market has confused the two. We hunt for good businesses hiding behind bad stories.
“Human beings have always struggled to distinguish an unpopular thing from a bad thing. Our job is to work out where the market has confused the two”
Why go to all this trouble?
Mediocrity is now almost free. Imagine being back at school and being told everyone will receive the average mark of the class. Why would anyone bother revising? The average falls and everyone shares equally in the decline.
Our bet is that nobody grows up dreaming of being average. So we chose something else. To invest our family's capital alongside a group of wealthy and wise clients. Preferably both.
We cannot promise to always be right. We can promise to work tirelessly.
Cornwall taught me something I later rediscovered in markets: the view is usually better when the crowd is somewhere else.
If you believe in thinking for yourself.
If you believe Britain is worth a closer look.
If you still enjoy finding what others miss.
By Alyx Wood
Take a look
Professional investors only. Capital at risk. Issued by Kernow Asset Management Limited which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.
CULTURE CLUB/BRIDGEMAN VIA GETTY IMAGES
kiaoliug
jupaiik
Αλημε Αιμίζυ 4.
Engraving of the Emperor Charlemagne, after Albrecht Dürer
BOOKS
---
---
The father of Europe
David Crane explores the complex character of the Emperor Charlemagne – reformer, educator and savage warlord
---
---
Charlemagne's Dream: The Rise and Fall of the Carolingian Empire by James Palmer Basic Books, £25, pp. 352
I don't know if it is still the case, but there was a time in London when the ring of a doorbell on Saturday morning could only mean the Jehovah's Witnesses and another copy of Watchtower. They all made for some pretty dotty reading in those days, but there was one article that has stuck in the memory – a piece that asked, and predictably answered, the question: 'How Great was Charlemagne?' The article concluded: 'Though then known as Charles the Great, he was great neither in God's eyes nor in the eyes of those whose standards are set by God's Word.'
If it is not an attractive judgment, it is one that needs thinking about, because if anyone is equipped to enter into the mind of 8th- and 9th-century Man it is very possibly the Jehovah's Witness. There are certainly aspects of the Carolingian age that seem only too familiar, but neither Putin nor even the imminent destruction of humanity at the hands of AI can inch most of us close to a world when Gog and Magog were on the horizon, the Last Days looming and the retributive hand of God seen in every plague, famine or Arab victory.
The Dark Ages might not have been quite as dark as was once thought, but they really were very, very strange. It was a period in which the corpse of the mighty Charles 'the Hammer' Martel might be found incinerated by a dragon in his St Denis sepulchre; a time of signs, warnings, omens and prophetic dreams. James Palmer writes of one such dream that came – or did not come – to the Emperor Charlemagne:
In it a mysterious man approached him with a sword engraved with four ominous and mostly untranslatable Germanic words; raht, radoleiba, nasg, and enti. The meaning seemed immediately clear to him because he was also a would-be philosopher... There would be four ages of his dynasty; one of abundance, one of sudden failure, one of great disorder, and then? Enti clearly meant either that the end of his line would come or the end of the world.
It didn't quite work out like that – the Carolingians would stumble on deep into the 10th century and the world did not end – but it was close enough to give Palmer his title and his book its narrative trajectory. It falls naturally into three parts. The first is devoted to Charles Martel and the rise of Pippin the Short; the second to the extraordinary career
---
---
It was an age when genuine piety could happily coexist with appalling brutality
of his son Charles; and the last and longest to the endless, internecine struggles of his warring successors.
While it might be argued that it was all something of a sideshow, that the important stuff was happening a long way to the east, what a sideshow it was! It is hard to think that anyone in the early 8th century would have given the last Merovingians the time of day; but within two generations that had all changed and the ‘backwater barbarian kingdom’ of the Franks had transformed into a ‘mighty cosmopolitan empire that stretched from northern Spain to the River Danube and from the rich ports of the North Sea to the eternal City of Rome’.
The central figure here is, inevitably, Charlemagne, and the one date everyone knows, Christmas Day 800, when he was crowned ‘Augustus’ by Pope Leo in Rome’s St Peter’s Basilica. There is no question that Charlemagne towers over his age in a way his great father never did, but Pippin deserves a due that he rarely gets; and if there is one other date we all ought to recognise it is 754, when another pope crossed the Alps to anoint Pippin king and cement a symbiotic compact of papacy and power that would rumble on through the succeeding centuries.
It was not the sole legacy of Carolingian rule either, because if Charlemagne can be hailed as ‘the Father of Europe’, his successors might well be branded the inadvertent fathers of Europe’s historic rivalries. On Charlemagne’s death in 814, Louis the Pious succeeded as sole emperor; but he would be the last of the line to do so and as son turned on father, brother on brother and half-brother, uncle on nephew, and east on west, Charlemagne’s empire broke up along fault-lines all too familiar from many a future war.
If it seems a lot to pack into 270 pages of text, Palmer makes a terrific job of it. A week from now and half of it will probably be forgotten; but for the next few days at least, before Clement, Adelbert and their fellow heretics slip back into the darkness of the Dark Ages and all those Louis – the Pious, the German, the Younger, the Stammerer – once more blur into a single, composite Carolingian, this wonderful cast of saints, sinners, popes and ranting churchmen will make for hugely entertaining company.
Pitched somewhere between Janet Nelson's King and Emperor and Simon Wilder's Lotharingia, this is serious but popular history writing at its best. Palmer is more confident than Nelson that one can ‘know’ Charlemagne, and it is a convincing picture he presents. It was an age when genuine piety could happily coexist with appalling brutality, and renaissance stirrings with the darkest fears. The reformer and educator who brought the Anglo-Saxon scholar Alcuin to the Aachen court (a man who was as aware as any Jehovah’s Witness could wish of the coming judgment of God) was also the savage warlord who could have 4,500 Saxons beheaded in a day. To get some sense of that first Charlemagne, one should visit Aachen; to understand something of the whole man one could do a lot worse than take along Palmer’s Charlemagne’s Dream.
Portrait of the artist in his own words Ariane Bankes
---
---
Claude Monet: A Life in Letters edited by Teresa Krasny et al Thames & Hudson, £30, pp. 552
For a painter we acknowledge as a master of atmospheric effects and ever-changing light, whose early work ‘Impression, Sunrise’ sparked the artistic revolution that became Impressionism, Claude Monet (1840-1926) spent an awful lot of time complaining about the weather. He was obsessed by it, cowed and crushed by it, inspired by it to flights of genius, and its vagaries would become the intrinsic focus of his art: ‘I have just returned, covered in mud and soaking wet, the weather is so awful it is impossible to do any work’ is a constant grizzle. He seethes with frustration as he is
forced to make constant changes as everything keeps growing and getting greener... In brief, because of these changes, I am following Nature without being able to capture her... Each day I find it harder, and then there is the river, which falls, then rises, green one day, yellow the next, now nearly dry, but it will become a raging torrent tomorrow after the terrible rain we are having.
He takes us right there to the river bank, his letters often reading as a litany of anguish, a record of unremitting struggle with the elements and so much else.
Given his battles with the climate, let
'Self-portrait with beret', by Claude Monet, 1886
PHOTO 21/UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP/GETTY IMAGES
alone the grinding poverty and nagging self-doubt that beset his early career, it is remarkable that he never gave up. His obsessive commitment to painting, his wild ambition and courage – even arrogance – in overturning convention, and his shrewd management of his career and profile, are all on display in this newly translated selection from his correspondence: 417 letters in all, including some never previously published, to friends, family, dealers, patrons, fellow artists and statesmen. Selected (and authenticated) to
---
---
He constantly importuned friends and dealers, hustling for money, initially with little hope of success
chart the trajectory of Monet's life as a painter and family man, they provide a scholarly and volatile portrait of the artist in his own words on the centenary of his death.
His volatile nature affected his writing as much as his painting. If there are glimmers of brilliance to be savoured, there is also the prosaic business of just getting along. The personal letters chosen here, covering some seven decades, are the most compelling, veering from elation to despair, with little middle ground.
In early adulthood, the provincial boy from Le Havre was fired by excitement at works he saw in ‘this dizzying Paris’ – by Delacroix, Corot, Courbet, Daubigny, the Barbizon School – and dazzled by the range of painterly possibilities. But his father’s disapproval and lack of financial support condemned Monet to penury from the off, and he scrabbled to sell enough to house and feed himself, let alone his first wife Camille and his growing family. He was constantly importuning friends and dealers, hustling for work or money, initially with little hope of success.
Desperation tinges every line of his begging letters: ‘I am being punished now for being too ambitious... I am on the verge of having everything seized and sold: all my studies would be taken,’ he writes to Courbet while completing his monumental ‘Luncheon on the Grass’ (now a star exhibit at the Musée d’Orsay). Sometimes he could not work for lack of paints even, and cursed his fate. He lashes out to his friend Frédéric Bazille:
I have nothing left to do but bang my head against the wall, for I have no claim to an instant fortune, and if everyone who said the same thing as you sent me 50 francs or even 40, I would certainly not be in this situation.
Then the sun would come out, and he would be working again, hope renewed.
Monet was a plein-air painter at heart, and his moves, first to Argenteuil on the Seine, then to a riverside house at Vertheuil, marked his transition to a painter of effects, or the vaporous effects of weather. But life was no easier, and the art market no more receptive to this experiment, and he sank to new depths of despair during the 1870s, as his wife ailed and the debts built up.
What a relief, then, to see him gradually emerge from self-laceration in the 1880s, as his efforts finally bore fruit – adverse weather notwithstanding – and he achieved domestic happiness in an unconventional ménage with Alice Hoschedé, the estranged wife of his former patron. They pooled their eight children, two sons from Monet's marriage to Camille (who had died in 1879), and six of Alice's, and defied social opprobrium to live together, initially at Vertheuil and then from 1883 at Giverny, the house of Monet's dreams.
His letters to Alice in their early years together betray a tentative, cautious sensibility; he addresses her as ‘Dear Madame’ until the eventual day of their wedding in 1892, and plainly has to manage fluctuating expectations on her part, threats of separation and fears of abandonment until their relationship settled into one of absolute trust and intimacy, and he could confidently address her as ‘My dearest darling’. She was his first port of call, and he wrote to her daily – sometimes twice daily – whenever his frequent painting forays separated them.
His solicitous courtesy to Alice and a wide circle of friends sets a different tone from his correspondence with dealers and collectors, with whom he could be crisp. He bares his inner steel even to the faithful and endlessly proactive Parisian gallerist Paul Durand-Ruel, his prime dealer and champion from the early 1870s. Despite signing
---
---
Monet's Broom
If he'd had students, he'd have said always have a broom at hand
to sweep out all the readymade images of your subject which come to mind;
he'd have said this is the hardest part, harder than putting paint on canvas.
He'd have said the broom's handle should become smooth from use
and the day you think you don't need it is the day memory has won.
Look at the results of his encounter with that iris – he's eighty-four
and it's as though
he's never looked at one before.
-Helen Farish
Helen Farish's fifth collection, Monet's Broom, will be published by Bloodaxe in November to mark the centenary of the artist's death
off ‘Your devoted’ or ‘Yours devotedly’, he regularly hounds Durand-Ruel for money and upbraids him for lack of better promotion and visibility. And he openly gives his work to other dealers, calculating that the resulting rivalry will boost his prices, which it does. The financial breakthrough came with Durand-Ruel’s exhibition in 1891 of the first of Monet’s acclaimed series paintings, ‘The Grainstacks’. Thereafter, his market grew not just in France but in Germany and America, and by the end of the century Monet would be a millionaire.
Wealth did not mellow him. He remained a beady curator of his newfound celebrity and still suffered almost suicidal bouts of artistic despair. Grief, too, after his beloved Alice died, followed by his elder son Jean, in middle age. Each of these was enough to stop him temporarily in his tracks; but his pool at Giverny, shimmering with waterlilies, rescued him, offering him one last project in which to invest his all. Conceived during the first world war as a ‘retreat for peaceful meditation’ from the fray, in which his son Michel was fighting and friends were dying, these magnificent studies on canvas were Monet’s apotheosis, his retort to the barbarity and destruction of war.
He had always been generous to fellow artists, campaigning for their recognition and legacy (he masterminded the bequest of Manet's shocking ‘Olympia’ to the Louvre), and his warm friendship with Georges Clemenceau now paved the way to lavish gifts of his own to the state, notably the 22 ‘Water Lilies’ panels that found a permanent home in the Jeu de Paume.
We learn from the Introduction that the 417 letters presented here were selected from 3,642 identified by scholars to date. Organised into six chronological chapters, with introductory essays to give context, they certainly narrate a life of rare struggle and fulfilment, but I wonder if every one earns its place: some are, frankly, dull business notes, and the youthful pleas for funds to all and sundry become wearyingly repetitious. I wished for more of the warmth and humour so evident in the letters to Alice and friends, vivid with anecdote and observation – how Monet nearly lost his life when engulfed by a huge wave in Etretat, or bunked down miserably on a sodden painting trip between rats (above) and a pig (below) with only a tallow candle to read by; or his ecstatic reaction to Bordighera on the Riviera. 'One would need a palette of diamonds and precious stones' to do it justice, he declared.
As he confessed to his beloved step-daughters, ‘writing is not my forte’, and why should it be, when painting so evidently was? But cumulatively, with their well-chosen illustrations, these letters give us a granular portrait of a life of ceaseless striving and self-criticism in which the personal and painterly were inextricably braided. As he recollected in 1917, Monet ricocheted between ‘moments of great discouragement and of courage, but such is my life’.
---
---
The futility of terrorism Alan Judd
How To Think About Terrorism: Reflections on Philosophy, History and Politics
by Quassim Cassam and Richard English OUP, £25, pp. 272
This book begins with rueful comments on the absence of philosophy from terrorism literature. The phenomenon is frequently analysed through psychological, religious, political, economic, sociological and military perspectives, but rarely from the philosophical. Yet questions such as how and why terrorists opt for violence, how they justify it to themselves and others, how they regulate it and why they stop, all have philosophical ramifications. As do questions about counter-terrorism, particularly with reference to retributive terror, running agents in terrorist organisations, interrogation and torture.
Quassim Cassam and Richard English, philosopher and historian respectively, avoid the easy route of exploring such questions via abstract thought experiments. The best known of these frequently features in discussions of possible justifications of torture: if your prisoner had concealed a nuclear device in London timed to explode later this afternoon and was refusing to say where, would you be justified in torturing him? Instead of agonising over such hypothetical scenarios, the authors focus on actual examples of what they call lived experience, showing that in real life such issues are surrounded by the messy complexities of timing, truth, error, falsehood, motive and efficacy.
They also resist the temptation to reach for some ultimate definition of terrorism applicable in all circumstances at all times. As we know, one man's terrorist may be another man's freedom fighter. Overly precise definitions can lead to arguing that Ukrainian resistance to Russian occupation is terrorism (as the Russians would claim, of course), or that the destruction of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie in 1988 was a justified response to American military action. Instead, the authors opt for a descriptive and interpretive approach, outlining what characterises terrorism and stressing the importance of context, motive and intention. Their emphasis is on what works, and they conclude that the legal definition offered in the Terrorism Act of 2000 will ‘suffice for most practical purposes’.
Nearly all modern discussions of terrorism assume and focus on non-state terrorism as conducted by terrorist groups, some of which may be state-sponsored. However, there is also state terrorism, as openly advocated in the Terror following the French Revolution. This is terror ‘systematically embedded in the state’s structures and identities’, such as in the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany – or, arguably, in today’s China. The book’s summary of the differences between Hamas and Israel in this respect is succinct and persuasive.
It is non-state terrorism, however, that the authors find ‘emblematic of terrorism as a whole’. In discussing its various aspects, particularly methods, motives and purposes, they encouragingly cite the groundbreaking research by the US academic Audrey Cronin, who concluded that terrorism nearly always fails. She examined 450 campaigns and found that only 4.4 per cent achieved their strategic aims, that 6.4 per cent had some limited success and that 87.1 per cent were complete failures.
This is relevant to any philosophical assessment of a terrorist group's justification of its actions: if your aims are in practice unachievable – the universal adoption of Islamic Sharia law, for example, or the extinction of the human race, or the expulsion of Northern Ireland from the UK against the democratically expressed wishes of its majority – this must surely torpedo any attempted justification for murdering people in order to (not) achieve it.
Such considerations, along with evaluation of means and ends, are the meat and drink of philosophical analysis and should be deployed in any attempt to persuade terrorists of the wrongfulness and futility of their ways. Much has been written about preventing people becoming terrorists, usually emphasising something called the radicalisation process. Cassam and English argue that this is an assumption by policy-makers who need generalisations in order to secure predictability.
Particularists, on the other hand, claim there is no single path to radicalisation and that it is pointless to strive for generalities when human beings are all specificity. Cassam and English favour a hybrid approach, while inclining towards the particular; profiling terrorists, they reckon, is about as useful as profiling farmers. But ‘the Devil alone knoweth the heart of man’ pronounced a medieval judge, and they concede that, ‘with the best will in the world, we might still be unable to make sense of the excesses of an Emwazi [the sadistic IS executioner, Jihadi John] or a Breivik [the Norwegian mass murderer]’.
Assessment as to whether terrorists are mad or sane, and whether terrorism is rational or irrational, leads to the conclusion that most terrorists are fanatical rather than mad, and that although terrorism can be rational it is inherently neither one nor the other. This illustrates why philosophy should be part of terrorism studies: how we see terrorists affects how we treat them, and how we treat them can affect whether or why they do it. There are no complete answers, but this approach, like the book that endorses it, is a worthwhile endeavour.
---
---
[Doing unto others Chris Mullin] The Boy with the Knapsack: An Extraordinary Life from the Kindertransport to the House of Lords
by Alf Dubs
Ithaka, £25, pp. 320
For all that it is an anachronism, the House of Lords contains some remarkable specimens, not least Alf Dubs. The child of a mixed marriage – his father was Jewish, his mother not – he arrived in this country from Prague on one of the kindertransports organised by Sir Nicholas Winton, with his possessions in a knapsack and a luggage label on his coat identifying him. Many of his Jewish compatriots were not so lucky and perished in the death camps.
He was fortunate in another respect, too. Unlike with many of his companions, his father had already made it out and was there to greet him. His mother eventually managed to join them, arriving in the UK just four days before the outbreak of war. Her first application for an exit permit resulted in her being thrown down stairs by the Gestapo officer in charge. Luckily, he also threw her passport after her, which enabled her to escape.
Initially they lived in Northern Ireland, where Dubs's father had found work in a textile factory; but he died within a year and young Alf and his mother moved to a bedsit in Manchester. There she, a trained nurse, found work scrubbing floors in a restaurant and later as a school meals supervisor. Alf, meanwhile, progressed via a primary school for Czech exiles and Cheadle Hume grammar school to the LSE. His interest in politics was sparked by the discovery of the death camps as they were liberated by the Allied armies: 'I believed that if evil people could do such terrible things, they could be countered by others doing something good.'
After national service and a spell as a supply teacher at a rough secondary school in Hackney, Dubs ended up working for an advertising agency, in due course becoming a councillor in Westminster. Among the controversies of the day were plans to drive a dual carriageway through Piccadilly Circus and demolish the old Covent Garden, both which were seen off by the public outcry.
Dubs was lucky to be elected to parliament for Battersea in 1979, not a good year for Labour, and he retained the seat against the odds in 1983, an even worse year, only to be defeated four years later. A highlight of his seven years in the Commons was the struggle to save Battersea power station from demolition by developers. He also describes a mentally ill constituent turning up at his surgery, first with a knife and later with a hammer, intent on killing him. Death threats to MPs are nothing new.
Out of parliament, Dubs eventually found work as chief executive of the British Refugee Council, helping to assimilate successive waves of refugees from places such as Vietnam and Bosnia. In 1994, he was appointed to the Lords, where he flourished, first as a minister in the Northern Ireland office and later as a campaigner for the more humane treatment of refugees, particularly children. The Dubs amendment to the 2015 Immigration Bill obliged the government to admit 3,000 unaccompanied minors living in destitution in European refugee camps. After initially accepting it, the government eventually reneged, but not before 480 impoverished children had been rescued. Although Dubs received much public encouragement, not everyone was happy. 'A pity you survived the Holocaust,' wrote one anonymous correspondent. 'They will become terrorists like you,' wrote another.
Having visited the camps in France, Jordan and Greece and looked the damned in the eyes, Dubs writes:
It is the lack of hope that so appals me about the plight of refugees today… I have found desperate people, including many lone children, who have no prospect of finding a new life. They may have survived the terrible experiences that led them to flee, but just surviving has become their lot… It is my hope that we will also remember the humanity that was shown to children like me – and honour that humanity by standing together and once again welcome those persecuted by war so they too can have hope for the future.
The Boy with the Knapsack contains no great revelations. Dubs's causes will not be everyone's cup of tea, but his energy, sincerity and integrity shine through. He writes: 'I shall always want to say thank you to this country. Lifelines were provided for me and, in turn, I have tried to provide them for others.' Aged 93, he is still going strong.
The Auditorio de Tenerife Adán Martín, designed by Santiago Calatrava and completed in 2003, made primarily of reinforced white concrete
---
---
So ancient, so new Stephen Bayley
Concrete
by Stephen Parnell
Bloomsbury Academic, £9.99, pp. 192
The Iron Curtain, or at least its most visible symbol, was not metal. Berlin's Antifaschistischer Schutzwall (Anti-Fascist Protection Wall) was concrete. Its ugliness of form and function seemed to many proof of the evils inherent in this ancient building material. But for every hideous Berliner Mauer, you have a glorious Roman Pantheon. The dome of Hadrian's incomparable temple is, after nearly two millennia, the largest unreinforced concrete structure in the world.
In our own era, concrete has allowed the best architects to do their best work. Witness Le Corbusier's Ronchamp chapel. And who would argue against Denys Lasdun's National Theatre as the best late-20th-century British building? The shuttering used to contain the poured concrete has acquired the grain of its wooden construction – proof of concrete's ability to absorb textures and colours to emotional effect. So much care was taken, the architect said, that it would have been cheaper to clad the theatre in Carrara marble – and he confessed to finding the smell of concrete an aphrodisiac.
The cases both for and against concrete are nuanced, as Stephen Parnell, the editor of the RIBA Journal, explains in a very clever book which is neither an apologia nor an attack, but a well-balanced appraisal of this most familiar yet misunderstood composite. One indisputable thing about concrete is its superabundance. According to the US Geological Survey, global annual concrete production is the equivalent of two metric tonnes for every person on the planet.
The Guardian has called concrete ‘the most destructive material on Earth’. But this is a misunderstanding. True, the manufacture of concrete creates nearly 10 per cent of year-
---
---
Concrete may be dirty to produce, but you can't use bamboo or flax to create dams, tunnels and bomb shelters
ly carbon emissions, which comes from the burning of limestone to produce cement, one of concrete's constituents along with water, sand and aggregates. But concrete itself is blameless – at least until someone decides to do something stupid and ugly with it.
Miracles of construction technology apart, it's the metaphors of concrete that fascinate. Building materials lend themselves to imagery: steely resolve, a heart of glass, a wooden expression and a few bricks short of a load. John Betjeman thought of concrete as ‘creeping grey’. And concrete poetry? It's the very opposite of lyrical.
The case for concrete is simple and clear. It is strong and adaptable. Almost indestructible in compression, its weakness in tension can be relieved by inserting metal rods as reinforcement, known as ‘rebar’. It may be dirty to produce, but you cannot use bamboo or flax to create flood walls, dams, bridges, foundations, tunnels and bomb shelters.
The word ‘concrete’ has a 1553 citation in the OED as ‘a cohesion of particles’. A British patent of 1824 for ‘artificial stone’ defined the modern material. But the French were the energetic pioneers of concrete in contemporary architecture and it became the defining medium of Modernism. However, Le Corbusier’s beton brut (‘raw concrete’) is ironically sourced from Ruskin’s High Victorian moralistic truth-to-materials trope. And this is just one of the complexities in coming to terms with a substance both ancient and modern, as well as enabling and disturbing.
Referring to Le Corbusier, the term ‘Brutalism’ was coined by Reyner Banham in 1955. Never meant to be derogatory, it was intended to describe the Modernists’ preference for expressive raw materials. But Brutalism and concrete became conflated, the one term being used to condemn the other.
It is routine for traditionalists to detest concrete in any form, even streetlights: 'When all our roads are lighted/ By concrete monsters sited,' Betjeman wrote. But concrete is a supremely malleable material and can be coloured, polished, textured and moulded to achieve delightful effects. Stained underpasses are caused by bad design and municipal neglect, not by concrete itself.
Donald Trump reveals the ambiguities of the material. In his early fever dream about containing Mexican narcos and rapists, he spoke of a ‘beautiful’ concrete wall, suggesting the rhetoric of power. In fact the wall is composed of steel panels filled with concrete. Then, in a 2020 Executive Order, the President, intent on beautifying federal buildings, condemned the use of ‘exposed poured concrete’.
Although Brutalism has now been accepted into the canon of architectural history as a good thing, concrete buildings still attract spiteful responses. In 2016, John Madin's superb Birmingham Library was demolished. It was only 42 years old. Last year, Stephen Hodder's excellent Centenary Building in Salford, the winner of the very first Stirling Prize in 1996, was pointlessly razed. These were notably stupid destructive acts. One answer to the environmental problems concrete causes is to restrict production and intelligently re-use what already exists, but that demands more vision and creativity than the Salford and Birmingham authorities possess.
Of course, concrete enthusiasts sometimes get it wrong. In New York, Rafael Vinoly wanted his super-tall 432 Park Avenue to be more white, but the pigment he added to the mix degraded its structural integrity and billionaires are now running scared from terrifying cracks on the 96th floor. Just a few years earlier, rusting rebar in Riccardo Morandi's poorly maintained Genoa bridge caused a catastrophic collapse. Concrete in itself is neither good nor bad: it's artificial and morally neutral. It can cause delight or horror depending on the design.
Parnell's father was a concrete professional, and the expertise has been inherited. But this is not a dogmatic book, rather an instructive and amusing one. Concrete prose is more entertaining than concrete poetry.
---
---
For better, for worse Adam Begley
The Bridge
by Colm Tóibín
Picador, £12.99, pp. 128
A small, beautiful book about betrayal, the cost of isolation and the persistence of human decency, Colm Tóibín's The Bridge is set in the 1950s, in a remote Catalan village high in the Pyrenees, among people cut off from the modern world. Cut off for now. A bridge across the river threatens to speed the advent of paved roads, telephones and electricity.
Miquel and his father live in an old stone dwelling on a hardscrabble farm, attended by an orphaned houseboy, Manolo, and haunted by the reverberating absence of Miquel's mother, who was caught in a sudden snowstorm and died. Her corpse, buried under ice, lay undiscovered until a spring thaw. Since her death, Miquel and his father have taken to smuggling goods out of nearby Andorra. The latest cargo consists of items emblematic of creeping modernity: styluses for recordplayers and a load of condoms, ‘enough for an army for a year’.
Consider the condom. It facilitates contact of a certain kind and also acts as a barrier – an equivocal function perfectly suited to a novel where the unequivocal is exceedingly rare, where silence is both blessing and curse, where ice both kills and preserves and where a stranger is both threat and promise.
Tóibín's 12th novel is a sequel to A Long Winter, a novella he tacked on to a collection of stories called Mothers and Sons (2006). He has said that when planning the novella, he aimed for a style that would be ‘slow, immersive, third-person intimate’. That’s exactly what we get in The Bridge, which would be a bleak book if it weren’t for the loving – I want to say exciting – attention to detail, and the sombre gorgeousness of the prose.
It's not a happy story. Miquel's father sees the newly constructed bridge as an opportunity for more convenient, modernised smuggling ('smuggling was, for many, a game, like hunting'), and rushes to take advantage, trading Miquel's beloved donkey, along with his own, for a jeep. The Pyrenees is not a part of the world suited to haste. Halfway through the book, on the bridge itself, the police stop father and son; their contraband is hidden under a pile of stones in the back of the new jeep. They have been betrayed – by the father's foolishness, and by a supposed friend's perfidy, with dire consequences. Miquel, who is passive to a fault, accepts his fate with an animal-like (donkey-like) placidity.
Gay in a world where the very idea is an abomination, Miquel is doubly cut off. Lying awake at night, he comes to believe that his ‘isolation was nothing new, that he had always been far away even from those to whom he had been closest’. His next thought is sadder still: ‘He was closer to his mother in the months... when he was searching for her body than he had been when she was alive.’ Furtive embraces with Manolo dilute his essential loneliness, as does an erotic encounter in the town where the bridge has been built – a meeting explicitly detailed yet somehow prudishly veiled by Miquel’s innate reticence.
The beauty of the novel lies not in the dramatic mountainous landscape or even in the slow, immersive style, but rather in the person of Miquel, whose gentle, uncomplaining, totally unselfconscious goodness is a kind of miracle – the triumph of virtue over fear and want and malicious manipulation. He knows better than to reveal himself – ‘the rule was you kept your thoughts to yourself’ – or to expect a happy ending. Indeed, his situation is never promising. Yet he will endure, sustained by ‘memories and imaginings’ and something else – not hope but ‘a kind of brightness’.
---
---
Hopes and regrets Leyla Sanai
Partita
by Barbara Kingsolver
Faber, £20, pp. 352
Barbara Kingsolver's bestselling novels tackle political and social issues and win prizes, among them the Pulitzer and Women's Prize for Fiction (twice). Subjects she has covered include colonialism; environmental issues (preserving ecosystems and flora and fauna, and punishing polluting companies); the validity of extended family approaches to child-rearing in Cherokee Nation communities; the art of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera and their friendship with Trotsky; and the McCarthy era and the House UnAmerican Activities Committee. She has also explored parallels between 19th-century struggles for rationalism in the form of Darwinism and economic hardships under despotic leaders and their echo in today's US; the desolation wrought by the loss of industries such as timber and coal, and the subsequent vulnerability of deracinated youngsters to opiates sold as safe.
Sometimes her liberal sensibilities collide with her wish to defend her Appalachian community, held back by economic hardship and traditional farming methods practised for generations despite making a loss. In her novel Demon Copperhead, ‘Demon’ chides those who label such people ‘deplorables’ – but Kingsolver has said that she loves Hillary Clinton and thinks her ‘basket of deplorables’ comment about half of Donald Trump’s supporters was ‘taken out of context’.
Partita concentrates on social and family issues – class impacting on confidence, and the corrosion of self-esteem by an abusive parent. It also has a strong feminist message. In the farming background from which the protagonist Livia Cable comes, women never have careers outside the community. The novel is also a gorgeous exploration of classical music. Livia, an unusually talented pianist, wins a scholarship to a prestigious music school. Needing to be better than others to overcome snobbish prejudice, she works her fingers almost literally to the bone. But then distraction arrives.
Kingsolver astutely describes the irony of rich kids dressing like the homeless while members of Livia's grindingly poor community take pride in looking smart; the mistaking of sexual intimacy for love; and the emptiness of heartbreak. The prose is stuffed with imaginative similes and metaphors. Occasionally some are strained ('We honoured our dead attachment like a corpse between us') or too obvious: Livia burning everything in her mother's house is clearly an ablation of past regrets. But this is an enthralling novel, full of pathos, wisdom and humour.
Bishop Odo presides over the pre-battle feast, blessing the food and drink
---
---
Hic Odo episcopus Sean McGlynn
The Bayeux Tapestry
edited by Sue Brunning, Lloyd de Beer,
Michael Lewis and Naomi Speakman
British Museum, £45, pp. 272
It makes for a good pub quiz question: what has 632 people, 202 horses, 55 dogs, 41 ships and only six women? Along with the UK's heatwaves came Bayeux Tapestry fever as the Canterbury Embroidery returned to England for ten months after something approaching a millennial sojourn in France. The British Museum was barely able to cope with the demands on its website for the first tranche of tickets to visit the exhibition.
It is easy to see why. The Tapestry depicts, in an abundance of endlessly fascinating detail, that most famous date in English history: 1066. In popular perception, the doughy Anglo-Saxons narrowly lost to that bastard Duke William and his land-grabbing Normans at the Battle of Hastings, consequently being forced to submit to the Norman yoke. It was a true revolution in politics, religion and society. William all but swept away the upper echelons of magnates to reward his followers; Norman saints vaulted over English ones in newly erected stone churches; and a vast castle-building programme stamped the authority of the new power across the land. Eadwig and his missus Hildgyth among the peasants would also have noted the changes.
All this stemmed from William's success at Hastings in October of that fateful year. But had the duke, born illegitimate, now, by force, become a legitimate king? He could point to his victory on the battlefield as a God-given judgment on his claim to the English throne. However, he and
---
---
Never backward in coming forward, Odo is all over the narrative
others clearly felt this was insufficient proof – hence the Tapestry. The magnificent, 225ft-long monument of shameless propaganda is lucidly explicated in a superb accompanying book from the British Museum, in which a host of distinguished medievalists re-examine this most iconic relic from the past.
For all that it has been studied, there remain uncertainties. We know that, technically, the Tapestry is an embroidered textile (don't ask me to explain its stem-, laid-and-couched- and satin-stitch techniques: the book does that). On other matters, we rely on speculative, if often challenged, consensus. Displaying ‘strong affiliations to both sides of the English Channel’, it was ‘likely designed in Canterbury' (the English were renowned for their needlework), its creation dating to somewhere between 1067 and the 1070s. The earlier date is gathering favour, being 'a time when the newly crowned William the Conqueror still hoped to rally the English to his cause and forge a united Anglo-Norman kingdom'. If so, it did not prevent widespread rebellion in 1069.
Readers of this impressive book and visitors to the exhibition will have their attention drawn to key scenes. An early one shows Earl Harold swearing a pledge before William, almost certainly in acknowledgement of the duke's ‘rightful’ succession to the throne of England, ‘despite Prince Edgar [Ætheling] by now being prepared to succeed’ Edward the Confessor. William liked to present – or even fabricate – such oath-taking ceremonies to vindicate his landgrabs. The appearance of Halley’s Comet soon afterwards is a ‘disquieting’ omen, underlining Harold’s subsequent sacrilegious oath-breaking.
And, in the most famous depiction of an English royal death in history, is King Harold really killed by an arrow in the eye? Written sources claim he was hacked to pieces. The two figures under the inscription ‘Here Harold is killed’ – one struck by an arrow, the other by a sword – are totally different, but we ‘cannot rule out the possibility that they represent the same person’.
The book, interestingly, suggests that in addition to its overt propaganda purposes, the Tapestry may have been a transportable artwork, unfolded at gatherings ‘as the basis of a spoken performance’, with a narrator expanding on the story. One can easily envisage an actor hamming it up, embellishing the scenes with dramatic flair. After all, ‘history’ was a form of entertainment at the time.
William's half-brother Bishop Odo of Bayeux is considered the Tapestry's probable patron. Never backward in coming forward, he is all over the narrative, most notably presiding over a pre-battle feast, administering a Christ-like benediction, and rallying the troops at a critical juncture of the combat, wielding his club (or is it a baton of command?), reminding William of his debt to him.
Splendid as the book is, at its hefty price one might have hoped for glossier paper. Still, the large-scale reproductions of the whole Tapestry allow for endless perusal of the fascinating details which reward constant revisits with new discoveries each time. The undisputed importance of the Tapestry explains the spate of new and revised books devoted to it. Especially worthy of mention is the update of David Musgrove and Michael Lewis's The Story of the Bayeux Tapestry (Thames & Hudson, £12.99).
The temporary return of the Tapestry deserves all the hype surrounding it, and the accompanying exhibition book adds further to the excitement.
---
---
Bare essentials
ARTS
---
---
Daisy Dunn tells the story of the all-powerful but naughty goddess Aphrodite, the subject of a new Ashmolean show
A phrodite – talk about a difficult birth. Her father the Sky (Ouranos) had come to resent the fertility of his wife/mother the Earth (Gaia). They’d had 18 children already – a game-some brood that included Titans, Cyclopes, and the 100-handed Hecatoncheires. The last of these were so hateful that Ouranos convinced himself that he would be murdered by one of them and usurped as ruler on high.
Ouranos's way of coping with his complex was to keep on having sex with his wife so as to hole up his offspring in the birth canal. Gaia urged her sons to save her, but only Kronos, the youngest of the Titans, was brave enough. While his father was still at it, Kronos went in and lopped off his genitals with a sickle. The divine bits plopped into the sea, and from the resulting froth emerged the goddess – beautiful, fully formed and, for a time, impervious to her family's dire dysfunctionality.
It was popularly believed that Aphrodite was named after that amniotic sea foam – aphros in Greek – but the debated etymology has also been linked to the Hebrew-Phoenician Ashtoreth, which the Greeks rendered as Astarte. Astarte was the name of Aphrodite’s forebear, an ancient Near Eastern deity who, like her associated goddesses Inanna and Ishtar, served as patroness of beauty, sex and war.
Astarte was sometimes worshipped as a Queen of Heaven; a beautiful double-statuette survives from the 2nd century showing a grey marble Aphrodite Ourania ('Of the Heavens') dressed in a star-spangled gown, alongside a more plainly dressed white Aphrodite Pandemos ('Of all the people'). The sculpture comes from Cyprus, Aphrodite's island. Having bobbed up on the sea, the goddess was said to have floated towards Kythera before arriving in Paphos – she would for ever be associated with seafaring as well as love.
She stepped ashore gracefully, tentatively, as though treading ice. A number of enig-
---
---
The ‘Capitoline Venus’ was so realistic a man ejaculated over it in the 4th century BC
matic sculptures survive showing her placing one foot on a tortoise or turtle. Other pieces, often made of terracotta, show her emerging from a shell of her own. You see the influence of these on Botticelli's 'Birth of Venus' (c.1485), in which the golden beauty glides ashore atop a scallop shell, blown in on the exhalations of Zephyrus and Aura. Shells, doves, mirrors and dolphins remained her favourite things.
People had begun to worship a fertility goddess on Cyprus as early as the Neolithic period. Hundreds of stone and terracotta figurines, dating from 4000 to 2500 BC, have been uncovered, and it is clear that pilgrims visited her sanctuaries on the island from at least as early as 1000 BC. Some of the offerings left to her are shaped as mothers holding children; Aphrodite would later acquire the epithet ‘Kourotrophos’ (Nurturer of Children) to complement her role as protectress of wives and prompter of child-making.
It was on Cyprus that the mainland Greeks learned her appeal. Absent from the surviving Mycenaean clay tablets, which name Hera, Athena, Persephone and other chief goddesses, Aphrodite made her mark as a distinct Greek goddess with a Greek name only after the collapse of the Bronze Age. (On Cyprus she would continue to be known as Kypria – ‘Cyprian Goddess’ – or Astarte until the end of the 4th century BC.)
The new era brought many more mainlanders to Cyprus and its religion. The sex goddess is first attested as both ‘Aphrodite’ and ‘Kypris’ in the 8th-century BC epics of Homer. In the Odyssey, she is presented as the unfaithful wife of Hephaestus, the lame-footed god of metallurgy. Their marriage, though unhappy, made perfect sense, for Cyprus was associated chiefly with the mining and export of bronze.
A copper alloy figurine from Cyprus of an Astarte/Aphrodite-type goddess, dated to the end of the Bronze Age, stands on a base shaped like one of the island's export ingots. Nude, with apple-like breasts and owl-alert eyes, she places her hands firmly around her stomach.
Look at it closely and you'll also discern a long plait hanging over her right shoulder. Aphrodite's hair – and her fondness for touching it – enthralled the Greeks and Romans, who worshipped her as Venus. She was often depicted wringing it out on the shore. Artists went in for modelling and painting her as she rose from the sea, dripping wet, her breasts riding up her ribcage as she stretched, as she does in a lovely 5th-century BC marble panel found in the grounds of Villa Ludovisi in Rome. Botticelli had Venus touch her hair, not to dry it, but to cover her pudenda. There’s a similar coyness to some of the most celebrated ancient statues. There is the ‘Crouching Aphrodite’, whose position artfully conceals her nudity, and the ‘Venus de’Medici’, who hovers one hand over her breast and the other over her vagina. Then there is the ‘Capitoline Venus’, a Roman version of a Greek original by Praxiteles, which was said to have been so realistic that a man ejaculated over it in the 4th century BC. Being caught in the nude – too slow to cover herself up – evidently made Venus only more desirable.
Michelangelo Pistoletto's ‘Venus of the Rags’ (1967, 1974), which you may have seen at the Tate, riffs on the goddess's unlikely modesty. His garden-centre statue of her has her back to us as she stands before a heap of laundry as if to say, ‘Get me some clothes!’
Why did Aphrodite become so shy? She does not look shy in those very early figu-
---
---
Roman politicians embraced Aphrodite as if she were their glamorous old granny
rines. She is not shy in Homer, where she embarks upon a steamy affair with the war god Ares, only to be caught in flagrante in a web of her husband's invention. It is even recorded that a temple was built for her in 6th-century BC Athens using the proceeds of a tax on brothels.
Her bashfulness must be a reflection of the feelings she engendered in those who carved and wondered at her. It was a complicated thing to embrace the lustiness of an adulterous goddess while praising the chastity of mortal women. Artists, seldom timid about baring flesh, knew what the authorities wanted to see. An apocryphal tale of a courtesan and artist's model escaping prosecution by baring her breasts to the jury was told with one part opprobrium to two parts titillation. Love, marriage, sex, children – all things to pray for, but what was acceptable for the gods was to be watered down for mortals. That was just the order of things.
Aphrodite's sexiness was not, in the end, an insurmountable problem. Roman politicians still embraced her as if she were their glamorous old granny. Lucius Cornelius Sulla, a dictator of the late Roman Republic, viewed Venus as his familial patron and gave both her name and his own to the Roman colony of Pompeii (Colonia Cornelia Veneria Pompeianorum).
'Venus', c.1490, by Sandro Botticelli and his workshop
More directly, Julius Caesar claimed descent from Venus via her grandson Iulus, child of Aeneas, hero of the Trojan War. The dictator even erected a temple to Venus Genetrix in his forum at Rome. There's evidence that Caesar's recent ancestors had courted the same divine connections. Whether or not the plebs took him at his word, the association lent a dash of humour and charm to Caesar's otherwise scandalous seduction of other senators' wives. What else to expect of a man with the love goddess's blood coursing his veins?
Given the history, you can see why the suffragettes took umbrage. ‘I didn’t like the way men visitors gaped at it all day long,’ said Mary Richardson of Velazquez’s ‘Rokeby Venus’, into which she’d sliced gashes worthy of sickle-wielding Kronos. Man Ray’s reassemblage of the goddess in his ‘Vénus Restaurée’ of 1936 involved enwrapping her defenceless torso in rope which, even to the most sympathetic female eye, cannot fail to evoke the strains of female bondage.
The Greek philosophers would have enjoyed unravelling the psychology of this. Who are we punishing, the all-powerful but naughty goddess or the naughtiness we struggle to keep power over in ourselves?
Aphrodite: The Making of a Goddess is at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, from 8 October until 11 April 2027.
---
---
Dance Martial art Rupert Christiansen
English National Ballet: Rhythm Riot
Sadler's Wells
The only problem with presenting a blazing masterpiece such as Balanchine's Symphony in Three Movements as a curtain raiser is that it will make anything that follows it look pallid or insignificant. And that's what blights English National Ballet's new triple bill, which starts with a massive blast of electricity and ends in a big slow yawn.
Symphony in Three Movements formed part of the astonishing festival that George Balanchine masterminded in 1972 as a homage to his close friend and artistic inspiration Igor Stravinsky, who had died the previous year. Presented in one week were 31 ballets to the composer's scores, 21 of them new, ten of them by Balanchine himself. The dancers of New York City Ballet, enthralled to the cult of Balanchine, were worked like slaves to the point of exhaustion, nowhere more so than in creating the large-scale Symphony in
Three Movements, set to a brassy and extravert neoclassical score composed from 1942 to 1945 and described by Stravinsky as his ‘war symphony’.
Balanchine picked up on this martial edge in his choreographic vocabulary. The ballet evokes a battlefield, a parade-ground, military manoeuvres: the corps moves urgently in straight lines that divide and reunite, as if under fire, and the three electrifying pas de deux are wary duels rather than amorous courtships. One dancer described the ferocious energy level required as comparable to 'being shot out of a cannon', and at this first performance, ENB's plucky cast still look shy of the challenges. They need to shock and awe: to be more predatory, more aggressive, more ruthless. Precision is all, right up to the magnificent final tableau that presents arms to the audience. A for effort all round, however, and gold stars to Ksenia Ovsyanick and Rentaro Nakaaki in particular for their scrupulous execution of the intricate central section.
What chance have two new pieces by young choreographers in the wake of the matchless genius sparked by Balanchine and Stravinsky's partnership? Micaela Taylor comes off better with her Bow Out, an amiable and audience-pleasing compendium of American jazz dance, freewheeling from lindyhop and tap to breaking and popping, danced in tuxedos with terrific verve and charm. The blot is a protracted and pretentious final section in which the dancers one by one discard their jackets in front of a microphone stand. A statement of something, but God knows what.
The final item in the programme, Auguries of Innocence, by the Korean choreographer Jae Man Joo, was a real downer. Marked in its flailing and wailing by the baneful influence of Pina Bausch, it uses a dreary drone of a score by the Latvian mystic minimalist Peteris Vasks, interspersed with a recording of beopgongyang drum music played by a monk, the Venerable Gogeum Sunim; reference is also made to the poems of William Blake. Stop that snickering in the back row, please.
A witchy and hairy lady (gamely incarnated by Sangeun Lee), described as ‘The Weaver of Souls’, presides over a coven of acolytes who roll around on the floor in thrall to her incantations. It’s all very dark, but things cheer up a bit with the appearance of ‘The Caller’, ‘The Conduit’, and ‘The Vessel’, before everyone takes their clothes off (flesh-coloured body stockings mercifully remain) and engages in chaste embraces. I sensed some sort of Adam and Eve vibe, as well as the familiar hope that peace and harmony with nature will triumph over all the bad stuff. If only. Those susceptible to this sort of hippie thing may find rich spiritual pickings here, but I will not be alone in finding it dreadfully earnest and deathly dull.
---
---
Exhibitions With Bells on Hermione Eyre
Quentin Bell
Charleston in Firle, East Sussex, until 7 March 2027
Marlow Moss: Space, Movement & Light
Ward Moretti, until 30 October
Every visitor to Charleston Farmhouse will know the work of Quentin Bell even if they don't realise it. He made the distinctive clay colander lights there, and many of the zany sculptures and ceramics. The son of Vanessa Bell, he grew up at Charleston, and later, when he was of great age – and even greater beard – he led a campaign to ensure the place was properly preserved. But what was Bell's work really like?
This exhibition gives us about 100 examples so that his singular vision emerges, and guess what, for all the progressive modernism of his background, he had a taste for Victoriana, fairground illusionism and the Belle Époque. His reliefs are dancers out of Degas, his figurines dressed like Manet's bar attendant. He was fascinated by Maupassant, De Sade and 'the darker currents of fin-de-siècle French culture'. There's a memorably creepy sculpture of an 'invisible' clay man and woman, which are merely empty, rutting clothes.
Art was his way of life. Aged six, he was scooping blue clay out of the Charleston pond and baking it in the nursery fire. Soon he was adding sand to make the finished tea-cups stronger (two are on display). He loved to paint on clay but, as he got better at making pots and plates, his mother and Duncan Grant would often swipe them to decorate themselves. He and his aunt Virginia Woolf worked on in-house newspapers with the mischievous aim of ‘giving the utmost pain to everyone concerned’, his drawings paired with her distinctive handwriting. There’s also his childish sketch of a man who came to tea, which looks to be Lytton Strachey.
Quentin, deemed unfit for military service due to TB, spent the second world war digging vegetables and writing a fantasy novel The Upheaval, 2,000 pages long; the illustrations, though done in Biro, look wonderful. It could have become escapist literature like Peake's or Tolkien's, maybe, but David Garnett told him to give it up.
Alongside his teaching career, and his writing, he made beautiful birthday cards for his children, illustrated stories, and created 3-D ‘goggleboxes’, sort of toy theatres. When you peep into the one here, it reveals a saucy parody of a modern art gallery. He made about 17 of these during his lifetime, amusing and sui generis, for sure, but it’s not hard to see why relatively few survive. His biggest achievement is probably the lifesize levitating lady in fibreglass painted to look like bronze. There is one at Charleston by the pond, as well as at Leeds, where he was professor of fine art. But I prefer 'Horseplay', in which a terrible accident has befallen a smug Staffordshire couple familiar from the Victorian earthenware mantelpiece-topper. The horse is bolting, the lady's legs are akimbo, and the gallant is manifestly failing to save her.
‘Blunderhead’, 1966, by Quentin Bell
Marlow Moss (1889-1958) was the opposite of Bell. Her work was pure abstraction, mathematics guiding her practice, which was precise and ritualistic. She would paint her geometrical shapes seven times, letting each layer dry for seven days. Rejecting the hautbourgeois Jewish Kilburn family she was born into, she swapped Marjorie for Marlow, and got an Eton crop and jodhpurs. She was hanging out with the cubists in Paris seeking
---
---
Scholars assumed Mondrian taught Moss, but their relationship has recently been reassessed as two-way
rhythm in ‘pure geometric figures’ when she met Mondrian.
Scholars assumed he taught her, but their relationship has recently been reassessed as two-way. It is now believed that the neoplastic double-line – tram tracks running across the canvas – was her innovation, not his. Art-world fortunes are made of such distinctions. Moss's ‘White, Yellow and Black’ (1953) sold for £1.2 million at Sotheby's in June. You can see it, glowing and profound, at Ward Moretti, alongside a carefully curated show of 35 works.
Both Bell and Moss designed interiors for new ways of living. In 1937, at Evreux in Haute-Normandie, Moss and her partner Netty Nijhoff designed and created a modernist home of ‘unsurpassed cleanliness and harmony’, wrote the designer Max Bill. ‘Everything was bright, fresh, transparent.’ Moss had to escape to England by boat in 1940. She settled in Lamorna in Cornwall, but effectively had to begin again. Everything of that modernist paradise, including most of her pre-war work, was looted and went up in a Nazi firestorm.
'The art is more clever than the artist'
---
---
Richard Bratby talks to Evgeny Titov about the stupidity of German directors and why Wagner was wrong about Parsifal
E vgeny Titov has landed at the Royal Opera, and he has good news for Britain's beleaguered opera scene. 'It's the best place to work,' he declares, leaning forward with enthusiasm; and already he's thrown the interview off course. Usually with overseas artists there are courtesies, and then a tactful acknowledgment that British companies work under unavoidable pressures of time and money. But this actor-turned-opera director, whose career has taken him from St Petersburg to the Salzburg Festival, has seen a few things, and he means what he says. He likes it here.
‘Everybody told me before I came, “You will love it,” he says. “Oh, is that so?”, I thought: I visited a few times for preparation and I was, like, “Yeah, it’s good,
---
---
'I'm very crazy, absolutely free, six years old!'
but I don't see the difference." But when you start rehearsing, it's amazing. Amazing! Because of the people, because of the working conditions, because of how they take care of you, and how quickly they react. Everything's prepared, everything's thought through. Honestly, I'm not the kind of person who goes to Zurich, and then Vienna, and tells them all that they're best. No, the Royal Ballet and Opera is definitely the best organised place I've ever been, and the most supportive. Really! It's impressive.'
He sits back, beaming. Titov has just completed a full day's rehearsal on the Royal Opera's new production of Parsifal, but you wouldn't guess it. Wagner's final opera is a work apart, as vast and as beautiful as
Tristan und Isolde or Götterdämmerung, but freighted with a philosophical complexity that can daunt even the most devoted Wagnerite. Wagner didn't even call Parsifal an opera; to him it was a ‘Bühnenweihfestspiel’ – a ‘consecrational stage festival’ – and the Nazis, troubled by its Christian symbolism, discouraged performances. There’s enough here to put any director through the wringer.
Titov, however, has a reputation as a livewire, and right now he seems far from tired. ‘I work very passionately, and I’m very emotional,’ he says, and his collaborators across Europe (his operatic credits range from Enescu’s Oedipe in Berlin to George Benjamin’s Lessons in Love and Violence in Zurich) testify that his is the kind of energy that rubs off. Parsifal, though – surely this is different; a special case. Isn’t it draining to immerse yourself so completely in this, of all operas?
‘No. I would say everything from Monteverdi onwards requires a different approach. If you do Sir George Benjamin: the same. And Tchaikovsky is Tchaikovsky: I’m directing The Queen of Spades this winter and that’s also something completely different. It’s almost as big as Parsifal, in some ways, but with a completely different energy. Everything, if you do it right, requires a special treatment, because every piece is its own world.’
---
---
'I'm not doing propaganda theatre – writing slogans on the wall. That's too easy'
And Titov knows all about moving between worlds. Raised in Ust-Kamenogorsk, Kazakhstan, he trained at the St Petersburg Theatre Arts Academy and spent the early years of his career as an actor. 'I was successful – I was doing films in Russia, and getting good stage roles; Jason in Medea, Jim in The Glass Menagerie. I was doing Ostrovsky. But I realised that I needed to be out in the world. I hadn't seen London or New York or Rome'. With only the sketchiest grasp of German, he applied to study directing at the Max Reinhardt Seminar in Vienna, was rejected, and then, a year later, on his second attempt, accepted – all while holding down a repertory job in Russia.
‘I was flying back to Russia twice a month, to perform. My biggest and worst fear, every time, was that afterwards I would get to border control at the airport and they would not let me go back to Vienna. They would not let me out.’ After fobbing off his employers with a story of a lost passport, he burned his bridges and settled in the West. ‘I haven’t been back to Russia since 2014, and I definitely don’t want to go now. I don’t want to find out what would happen. In Vienna I found that I could be free, and learned the most important thing, which is to really understand who you are. This, you have to learn.'
So go on, then: who is Evgeny Titov, as he makes his British debut with his first ever Parsifal? ‘I’m very crazy, absolutely free, six years old!’ Well, he said it, and there’s no ignoring the boyish exuberance that Titov projects both in person, and (by all accounts) in his working methods. That’s one reason why companies across Europe are so keen to work with him. Titov’s uninhibited energy and directness has a way of breaking familiar works wide open, of releasing fresh insights and surprising perspectives.
Still, ‘It’s very hard for me to talk about my own work,’ he admits. ‘The critics are always saying it’s existential, it’s deep, it’s going into characters. I don’t know. In Germany directors are interested in “concepts” where Parsifal takes place on Mars, or in a factory where they kill chickens. That’s not a concept. It’s nothing – just a very, very bad staging. So I try to go deep into the play.’ His own ideas about Wagner’s Grail legend centre on the twin figures of Parsifal – a redeemer who stands in need of redemption – and Kundry, the cursed, undying woman and the opera’s only female protagonist. Early reports suggest that the setting will be post-apocalyptic.
‘No spoilers!’ laughs Titov, and he is anxious that audiences should let his – and Wagner’s – work speak on its own terms. He has said that in theatre direction, ‘intuition plays a bigger part than knowledge’; his productions, he insists, have no personal agenda. ‘I’m not doing propaganda theatre. I’m not this political director who’s doing, “Women should be liberated,” or whatever – writing slogans on the wall and saying, “Look, look, this is what I’m doing.” I think that’s too easy. I think it’s too simple. I’m not saying, “Oh, I’ll show you, this stupid Wagner.” I don’t want to destroy anything.’
‘I believe the art is more clever than the artist,’ says Titov, and few would dispute that Parsifal is very clever indeed. It’s just that Titov believes that – like any enduring art work – it might not necessarily mean what its creator said it meant. ‘Maybe Wagner is not as free and as right as he thought, because wherever there is certainty, you are in danger.’
To art, then, its freedom. Certainly, Titov accepts that his own work might escape his imagination, to reveal a life and meaning of its own. In fact, for a director with roots in conventional theatre, the discipline of opera – where so much of the performance (and our response to it) is dictated by music that is beyond the stage director's control – is itself a sort of liberation. That's not merely a backhanded compliment to the conductor (Titov is a big fan of Covent Garden's Jakub Hrusa. 'In my opinion, he's really a wall of passion – he just doesn't show it'). It's an acceptance that creative freedom can take many forms, and Titov thinks often about freedom.
‘Yes, we have to think about what is behind the music, and not be anaesthetised by it. But you can only be free if you have very clear borders; because real freedom only comes when you know that not everything is possible. If everything is possible, that’s not freedom. You can find it if you really squeeze; if you ask questions about a work of art. Then you can discover what the work means to you. If you just reject the questions, that’s not freedom. It’s a salad. You need the shadow, to see the light.’
Parsifal is at the Royal Opera House until 17 October.
[Pop A star is reborn Michael Hann] Echo & The Bunnymen Regent's Park Open Air Theatre
---
---
Good Kid Roundhouse
No one ever joined a rock band because they didn't want to be recognised. Being adored matters to stars, sometimes too much, but that only makes those who love them care even more. That could be heard in the cries of 'We love you, Mac!' at a glorious night in Regent's Park. Echo & The Bunnymen's singer Ian McCulloch – who was once famous for pronouncing on how much better his band was than any other – has not had an easy time of it in recent
---
---
Over 17 songs, McCulloch got what he needed: proof that he was still a rock star
years. Unlike his peers in the Cure and U2, he's not playing to 50,000 people at a time, though his band were regarded as every bit their equals – perhaps their betters – in the early 1980s.
Fans had in fact noted that McCulloch had recently been physically incapable of performing onstage. He’d appear slumped in a chair and let the crowd do all the singing – to say he likes a drink would be very much an understatement (almost all of a recent round of press interviews were conducted over several pints in favoured Liverpool pubs). But from apparent disaster he has pulled a victory.
The new Bunnymen album, Apples for Isaac – the first in more than a decade – was not only surprisingly good, but actually good. And the show last week was wonder-
---
---
THE PERFECT CHRISTMAS GIFT
At Forman & Field, we create hampers brimming with artisan treasures. From the elegant Smoke & Bubbles duo - smoked salmon paired with English sparkling wine - to magnificent wicker hampers filled with premium hams, caviar, foie gras and fine spirits. The essence of Christmas, delivered with love to those who matter most.
10% OFF ANY FORMAN & FIELD HAMPER
Enjoy a 10% discount off our festive range of hampers which you can pre-order for Christmas delivery. Offer applies to products in the Hampers section of our website with orders over £100 placed before the end of October. Use code: SPECCY10 at checkout.
Discover more inspiration and explore our complete range of Christmas delights at formanandfield.com
10% OFF
OUR FESTIVE
RANGE OF
HAMPERS
THE BOLNEY
Estate
CUVÉE NOIR
NV BRUT
FST 1956
PULBROOK & GOULD
LONDON
ful. We call them Bunnymen but it's really just McCulloch, four hired hands who stood in the shadows and guitarist Will Sergeant, who played on only four songs and didn't write any of them. So it was McCulloch's show to throw away.
It must be said that his between-songs chatter was far too long and often incomprehensible. But his singing was good enough – though a lifetime of smoking and drinking have worn away his croon – and he has a catalogue worth wielding. Obviously the oldies were what roused the audience – ‘The Cutter’, ‘Seven Seas’, ‘The Killing Moon’ – but the three new songs, ‘Brussels Is Haunted’, ‘An Unstoppable Force’, and especially the unexpected motorik glam of ‘Lab Rats Ran’ stood proudly alongside them. Over 17 songs, McCulloch got what he needed: proof that he was still a rock star.
The Gen Zers at the Roundhouse couldn't have been more excited for Good Kid. It was febrile. But I couldn't help wondering whether either band or audience would care about each other in 40 years. They're a Toronto quintet, playing jittery punky pop
---
---
Good Kid is the first truly digitally native rock band: all of them work in tech
– like the Strokes if they were wholesome – and the crowd sang everything back at them at full volume.
Playing in a band appears to be just content creation for them. The gig was streamed live on Twitch, with the chat thread scrolling on a screen onstage, and before they went on, two members interviewed fans in the front row with a camera crew. Those fans had been won from Reddit and the gaming communities, rather than through radio and touring; this is the first truly digitally native rock band: all of them work in tech.
They even look like video-game characters – all in different primary colours, leaping around. They also resemble the Australian children's entertainers the Wiggles (their manner onstage is very kindergarten teacher). It looked like an impersonation of a rock band but then I grew up in a different age.
My irritation with them turned to rage on getting home and doing some Googling. Good Kid's singer Nick Frosst doesn't just work in tech, he's a bona-fide tech bro. He co-founded an AI company called Cohere, which is apparently valued at \$7 billion. Setting aside my chippiness about very-high-net-worth individuals, all I could think of was: why is he doing this? What visceral need is there in him to prove himself? I couldn't find an answer. I don't think rock music needs be the sole preserve of the outsider, but I'm just not sure I want it in the hands of people who want to control the way we think.
---
---
Theatre Sting in the tale Lloyd Evans
The Last Ship
Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, until 3 October
Table 17
Kiln Theatre, until 24 October
The Last Ship, a musical written by and featuring Sting, is touring Europe, Australia and America. The show is a class-war parable set in Newcastle during the 1980s. A team of shipbuilders are about to complete a new vessel, the Utopia, when a bossy government minister, Baroness Tynedale, arrives at the docks to deliver bad news. With her brightblue suit and posh hectoring voice, she's a pantomime Mrs Thatcher and she announces that the yard will be seized and flogged to private investors.
The shipbuilders establish a Marxist committee and plot to overturn her evil scheme. A gripping start. Plucky Geordies pitted against yuppie scavengers from London. The show even features a song about the competing merits of collectivism and monetarism.
Then it all implodes. The story takes off on a two-hour detour that explores the lives of various characters with emotional problems. Teenage Ellen dreams of starting a new life in London. Jackie the foreman (played by Sting) contracts a lung disease of unknown origin. The beautiful but prickly Meg can't decide between two dreadful boyfriends. Will she choose wet blanket, Freddy, or faithless drifter, Gideon, who impregnated her and promptly ran away?
These sob stories mean nothing to the audience because they don't affect the mutiny at the yard. Bad storytelling. Barney Norris's clumsy script is an updated version of two earlier attempts by various writers. After 120 minutes of waffle, the story gets back on track. Security staff occupy the shipyard. The rebels devise a plan to kick them out. Baroness Tynedale shows up to take personal charge of the battle.
Then a surreal touch. A chorus line of militant feminists arrives dressed in matching jeans and tartan scarves. They look like fans of the Bay City Rollers. Perhaps they can break the deadlock. The ending, when it finally emerges, takes ages to unfold because it has to wrap up the stories of Ellen, Jackie, Freddy, Gideon and Meg, plus a couple of other figures.
The show seems to overlook its chief asset, Sting. He's a decent actor (far better than Bowie or Jagger) and he plays the role of Jackie with rugged, hard-nosed sincerity. But he barely gets to exercise his vocal cords. Why did he not give himself a big crowd-pleasing number at the close of Act One? The probable answer is that a dramatic work is a collective enterprise, like class war, and the individual has to subordinate his ego to the interests of the group.
But that ideal doesn't work in musical theatre, which usually centres on a single personality whose transformation delights and thrills the audience. This story has no lead character. And the design suffers from its own good intentions. The goal is to make the audience feel the dispiriting and oppressive atmosphere of a shipyard. A vast skeleton of metal girders has been constructed over the phallic prow of a ship that thrusts obtrusively on to the stage. It's horrible and it stays in place throughout the action. This is a decent show but hardly a classic. Some audience members may have wondered why Sting didn't just deliver a medley of hits and then hold a whip-round for the rainforest, like in the old days.
Table 17 is a romantic comedy that turns into a public tribunal or a bear-baiting session. At the start of the show, the crowd are invited to shout out comments
---
---
Rishawn is a dazzlingly gifted comedian who makes this a five-star show
and advice to the characters. We open with Jada getting ready for an inappropriate date. She's so anxious about the meeting that she can't even share the details with her therapist.
Her date, Dallas, is a handsome stud with a nerdy streak who always wears green corduroy trousers. They meet at a chic restaurant staffed by snobbish narcissists. The barman fancies himself as a stud. 'I get laid hard and often. That's not a cocky statement it's simply da truth.' To demonstrate his technique, he leaps on to the bar and humps away at an imaginary girlfriend.
His colleague River runs the table bookings and he gets far too involved in the personal lives of his customers. When Jada and Dallas show up, we learn that they were engaged to be married but broke it off. Both want to see if the spark is still alive. Of course it is.
But will they snuff it out or feed the flames? The audience had their say. Shouts of ‘he’s lying’ or ‘don’t do it’ pealed out from the stalls. It’s rare to see a show where the crowd are so involved that they barrack the characters. Marisha Wallace plays Jada as a kittenish flirt who always wants more than she has. Multi-rolling Michael Rishawn impersonates the restaurant staff and a seductive airline steward who tempts Jada away from Dallas. Rishawn is a dazzlingly gifted comedian who makes this a five-star show. A hilarious night out.
---
---
Television Parting shots James Walton
War
Sky Atlantic/Now TV
Colin from Accounts
BBC2
In his ruefully funny 2012 novel The Man Who Forgot His Wife, John O'Farrell compares the increasingly uncivilised process of divorce to war: 'In 1939 the RAF thought it was immoral to bomb the Black Forest to deprive the Germans of timber. But by 1945 they were deliberately creating firestorms to kill as many civilians as possible.' As the title suggests, the starry new divorce-based drama War makes a similar comparison – except that here the unhappy couple are cutting straight to Dresden.
The show began as it meant to go on: which is to say, glitteringly. At a London awards ceremony of ineffable poshness, Morgan Henderson (Dominic West) was named Pioneer of the Year for creating one of the world's biggest yet nicest social media platforms. In his impressively oily acceptance speech, Morgan declared that ‘we need as much accountability online as there is IRL’. Ironically for him, though, accountability IRL was about to land him in a whole heap of trouble.
During his speech, a young hottie had caught his eye and when it turned out they were staying at the same hotel, it wasn't long before they were doing the customary clothes-tearing, vertical-foreplay thing against his bedroom wall. The following morning as he slept, the hottie then took a selfie of them in bed together and forwarded it to his wife Carla, with the accompanying text, 'It's done.'
Continuing the commitment to glitter, when the message arrived, Carla (Sienna Miller – I did say it was starry) was in Paris where, as a world-famous movie star, she was plugging her latest film. Even so, she found time to summon her London lawyers and issue the unambiguous legal instruction, ‘Take this photo, take this case and take him for every fucking penny he’s got.’
At this stage, Carla was hoping her plans for divorce would stay secret, but Morgan soon had his suspicions and decided to lawyer up too. He opted for a team from a rival firm, who gleefully took on what was ‘likely to be the biggest divorce case in British legal history’. Once they had, it was clear that the eponymous war applies at least as much to the couple’s lawyers as to the couple themselves. Both firms promised to ‘fight dirty’ – and both proved as good as their word in ways I’d better not spoil given that this first episode goes out on Friday.
What I can say is that the result is enormous, dark fun. Viewers who like a goodie or two to root for should probably look elsewhere. Yet, while the characters may be uniformly mean, the programme-makers are unfailingly generous in making sure we have a good time, as the twists and one-liners pile up, and the lawyers' dirtiness is accompanied by large dollops of the best kind of soapiness.
Granted, dramas that allow us to simultaneously ogle at and despise rich people have become somewhere between a TV staple and a TV cliché. Nonetheless, War is shaping up to be one of the most entertaining (although maybe not weightiest) examples since Succession.
On a sadder note, this week we said goodbye to the brilliant Colin from Accounts, written by and starring Patrick Brammall and Harriet Dyer, who are husband and wife IRL. Right to the end, it achieved that rare feat for a comedy drama of being both comic and dramatic.
As you may (and possibly should) know by now, the title comes from the name that the main characters Gordon and Ash gave to the mild-mannered dog that he ran over at the start of the first series after she
---
---
War is shaping up to be one of the most entertaining examples since Succession
flashed her nipple at him. From there, their shared love of the dog turned into a shared love of each other – which in classic rom-com style, they were intermittently aware of but that we never doubted for a minute. Series two ended with Gordon making an embarrassingly drunken public proposal at a friend's wedding that kyboshed the relationship for three years. This third one duly saw them edging their way back together.
Throughout its run, perhaps the most impressive aspect of the show was its perfect control of tone: one that constantly undercut the essential sweetness with lots of rudery, yet never undermined it. But there was also a terrific line-up of supporting characters – each of whom got a chance to shine, or receive their richly deserved comeuppance, in this week's concluding two episodes.
And in the final one of all, Colin from Accounts stayed true to its ideals, as the bracing lack of soppiness only gradually (and very satisfyingly) gave way to the full Richard Curtis. Despite its now-global success, it also remained uncompromisingly Australian, with the last of the many obstacles in Gordon and Ash's romantic path provided by his ill-advised decision to have a ‘pash’ at a ‘bucks’.
---
---
THE LISTENER Dudamel's Schumann
Grade: B
These are strange days in the recording industry. Heaven alone knows why Platoon – an Apple subconglomerate with all the charm of the Borg – has decided that this is the moment to release a cycle of Schumann symphonies recorded live by Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2018. But I’m not complaining. No conductor records these four misunderstood masterpieces for the glory.
No: it has to be love; and while you can draw any number of conclusions from Platoon's decision to give the recordings away for free via streaming and download platforms, the real value is in the listening. If perceptions of Dudamel as a hyperactive ex-wunderkind were ever really justified, they aren't now. Like any maestro, he's as good as his last performance, and his Schumann symphonies are polished and audibly sincere – big on colour, but unafraid to follow Schumann into the shadows in (say) the Beethoven-inspired slow movement of the Second, or the fourth movement of the Rhenish, Schumann's high-gothic evocation of Cologne Cathedral.
In truth, the only serious problem is that Dudamel's Schumann isn't fantastic enough. He has a slightly foursquare way of sitting back on the rhythms. You long for more intimacy in the Fourth's caressing violin solo, and less self-consciousness at the magic moment when Schumann the dreamer suddenly, impossibly, halts his Spring symphony to float away into a cadenza for horns and flute. This is music of pine forests and dew: with the Dude, you never quite get off the freeway. Still, there's a lot here that's good, and if you don't like it, you can always ask for your money back.
– Richard Bratby
NOTES ON...
---
---
Pickled onions
By Chas Newkey-Burden
In the 1970s and 1980s, pickled onions lurked in dubious-looking jars on the counters of fish-and-chip shops, and behind the bar in pubs. There would often be a jar of them at a Christmas buffet, while posh households kept a spring-loaded pickled onion fork in the kitchen drawer.
Back then, they were one of just a few foodstuffs capable of giving British mouths a thrill. But as supermarket shelves began to groan under the weight of harissa, wasabi and chilli sauce, the humble pickled onion fell out of fashion. In 1997, Alan Partridge summed up the mood when he was offered a pickled onion by ‘Geordie Michael’. ‘Erm, no – I hate them!’ he replied with scorn.
It was a shameful damnation of something with such an illustrious history. Mesopotamians are thought to have developed the technique of pickling around 2400 BC, when they began soaking cucumbers and other foods in saltwater brine and vinegar to preserve them through harsh winters. The method caught on when people realised that it was also a convenient way of adding new tastes and textures to the plate.
The Romans introduced onions and pickling to Britain following their invasion in AD 43 and by the 1700s, pickled onions were taking off. Sarah Harrison's 1739 cookbook, The House-Keeper's Pocket-Book, advised aspiring picklers to ‘take your small Onions, lay them in Salt and Water a Day’ before pickling them in a mixture of ‘White Wine Vinegar, Cloves, Mace and a little Pepper’. By the 20th century, the darker flavour of malt vinegar had become strongly associated with the British pickled onion, which was often eye-wateringly strong.
WE'VE HADA FEW...
Other nations, however, had the impertinence to produce versions of their own. So in 1959 British scientists in a laboratory in Leatherhead, Surrey, set out to create the perfect pickled onion. As British Pathé explained, the project was a matter of ‘national prestige’ because nearly all the best pickling onions came from abroad, chiefly Holland and Egypt. ‘Why, pray, shouldn’t the cold roast beef of old England be served with English pickled onions?’ the narrator asked.
Why indeed? The researchers, in tweed suits, used a huge revolving drum to peel the onions without bringing tears to their eyes. This was serious work: the team, said Pathé, had a ‘breathtaking responsibility to the public’.
Now, having survived both the culinary revolution and several decades of neglect, the pickled onion is back. Red onions spearheaded the revival, becoming a fermented feature of tacos, burgers, sandwiches, salads and Middle Eastern dishes, their sharp acidity cutting through rich foods. The Gibson cocktail adds a pickled onion to its blend of gin and dry vermouth. Pickled Onion is every serious person's favourite flavour of Monster Munch crisps.
In Britain, the revival has coincided with our renewed enthusiasm for fermentation. About 8.5 million UK households bought pickled onions in the past year, and in the 12 weeks to August, sales rose 12 per cent year on year. Data from Ocado showed that the pickles, gherkins and olives category is up 30 per cent. Earlier this month, London held its first major festival dedicated to pickling and fermentation: the Big Brine. As chefs embrace pickling as a way of using more of certain ingredients and reducing food waste, it seems the pickled onion has managed to win favour with the sustainability crowd and find itself on the right side of history.
SPEECH WRITING
Bringing together Britain's leading restaurants & private clubs with exclusive privileges extended discreetly to members and not publicly available elsewhere. www.luxuryrestaurantguide.com
John Richard Roberts mixed and patented MelRose Skincare from 1880 until the factory was bombed in a night raid in 1941.
The family and factory relocated to Holton Mill, Oxon, remaining there until the 1950's. Production moved to Birmingham. Melrose has continued in family hands, controlling this high quality multi-purpose skincare, as effective today as it was in earlier years.
We supply nationwide wholesalers which supply local pharmacies.
Chateaux, Manoirs, Country Houses and Villas in South
West France, Provence, the Côte d'Azur and Italy.
www.anglofrenchproperties.com
+44 (0)1258 817 110
Please Scan
---
---
HOME & GARDEN
Join us online at GreenThumb.co.uk
Autumn has its own kind of beautiful. Keep yours looking its best.
Lawn Care, Autumn Tidy, Hard Surface Cleaning & More.
Always greener. Always GreenThumb.
GreenThumb PART OF KEYTO GROUP
Travel
TRAVEL
---
---
TRAILFINDERS THE TRAVEL EXPERTS
WHEREVER AND WHENEVER, TRUST TRAILFINDERS TO TAKE CARE OF YOU...
\- AWARD-WINNING SERVICE
INDEPENDENT TRUSTED TRAVEL ADVICE
UNRIVALLED CARE & PROTECTION
WINNER BEST TOUR OPERATOR
Trustpilot ★★★★★
SCAN HERE FOR OUR LATEST OFFERS
The Times & The Sunday Times
TRAVEL AWARDS
2025
No.1 TOUR OPERATOR
for 12 consecutive years
ALL YOUR TRAVEL ARRANGEMENTS TAKEN CARE OF IN ONE PLACE
Call TRAILFINDERS on 020 7938 0250, or visit your local Trailfinders Travel Centre
FINE CLOTHING
EDNERAT
16 CROSS STREET ABERGAVENNY
07780 483467
WWW.EDNERAT.COM
BESPOKE
& READY
TO WEAR
CUT, MADE
& FINISHED
BY HAND IN
LONDON
WESKIT
WWW.WESKIT.CO.UK
Advertise in The Spectator classified, email fsloan@mediaconcierge.co.uk or call 07971 086438
FINE CLOTHING
PETER CHRISTIAN
100% COTTON
---
---
County Cords
£75 buy 2 for £140 SAVE £10
A gentleman's classic, our pleated front county cords fit in everywhere from the pub to the paddock. Expertly tailored in the finest quality thick, 8-wale corduroy. Hard-wearing and comfortable, retaining their colour and shape wash after wash—these cords are built for decades of wear, growing softer and more full of character with every season.
\- 100% cotton corduroy
\- Single pleat with a French bearer fly front
\- 2 buttoned hip & 2 deep side pockets
\- Hidden, expanding comfort waistband allows for 2" of flexibility
\- No Quibble Money Back Guarantee\*
Colours: Denim, Charcoal,
Rose, Emerald, Conker, Corn,
Purple, Moss, Navy, Burgundy,
Sand, Toffee, Pine, Poppy,
Black, Royal Blue
Waist: 32 34 36 38 40
42 44 46 48 50 52"
Leg: 27 29 31 33"
FREE
DELIVERY
& RETURNS\*
Enter
46W40
at checkout
Trustpilot ★★★★★
"Your corduroy trousers are unbeatable. Excellent quality, I don't look anywhere else." Lady Scott, Shetland, Scotland
Readers Special Offer
MT08
Burgundy
Use code 46W40 for FREE P&P to order County Cords (MT08)
peterchristian.co.uk
24hrs Online Assistance
01273 493 393
Weekdays 9-5pm – Weekends 10-3pm
Trustpilot Rated Excellent
Based on 2,000+
County Corduroy
5 STAR REVIEWS
Order by Post — Cheques payable to Peter Christian. Quote 46W40 and send to: Freepost PETER CHRISTIAN
Go Online or Call for a Free Catalogue
\*Free UK delivery offer (save £5) ends midnight 03/12/26. £75 minimum spend applies. Free returns within UK only, see our full T&Cs online. A Division of Hills of Bramley Ltd. Co Reg No 04767802
---
---
CLASSIFIEDS Fine Clothing
FINE CLOTHING
The Non-Iron Twill Shirt.
Magnificently Understated.
CHARLES TYRWHITT
JERMYN STREET LONDON
Before you despair that this column has gone woke, it's worth considering the distant origins of orange wine. Declan Lyons, p59
---
---
Best life Rachel Johnson
September makes serious demands of your Best life columnist, what with book launches, birthdays and the birth of Mona Leda, daughter of my darling niece Lara (which means Boris beats me to grandparenthood and bumps our father, Stanley – who is off-grid in Tibet researching his 30th book – up to great-grandfather).
Significant launches included my sister Julia Gray's excellent Kitty and Mary, an epistolary extension of Pride and Prejudice (the launch was in Highgate, Mrs Gray wore a Regency muslin and there was a communal bonnet); Victoria Hislop's The Wine-Dark Sea in Marylebone (slinky gold slip); and Marina Hyde's What A Time to Be Alive! in Victoria (stunning white cut-out revenge
---
---
Seeing Niall again was a bit like returning to your old prep school or childhood bedroom as an adult
dress to celebrate leaving the Graun after 26 years). But I want to tarry at Simon Sebag Montefiore's party, as it was there I saw Niall Ferguson for the first time since we were at university together, when we had such a calamitous contretemps it made headlines (well, the splash in the Oxford Mail).
He was standing in front of a ziggurat of Sebag's new bestseller, The Cauldron, a history of the Middle East. There was nothing for it.
'Hello Niall,' I said, reaching past him and plucking a copy for the author, holding court behind me, to sign. Seeing Niall again was a bit like returning to your old prep school or childhood bedroom for the first time as an adult. He seemed smaller than I remembered. 'Are we friends?' I continued, which was bold.
At this point, I suppose I should explain the casus belli. I'd once commissioned the illustrious Niall to contribute a chapter to a book I was putting together. I thought it would be a doddle. I'd just ask all my clever student friends to write 8,000-word essays for beer money, pocket the small advance for The Oxford Myth from Weidenfeld & Nicolson, and wait for the admiring reviews and royalties to roll in.
I'd asked my fellow undergrads Toby Young to write on class, Boris Johnson to do student politics, Allegra Mostyn-Owen to do drugs, Aidan Hartley to tackle town and gown, Sebastian Shakespeare on Oxford eccentrics, Niall Ferguson on ambition... ten chapters in all.
Niall's essay came in first, via pigeon post. It was typewritten, and as lucid as you would expect from the top scholar (a demyship from Magdalen) but to my untutored eye it didn't have quite enough snap, crackle and pop, so I returned it with some editing marks. This did not go down well. That was 1986.
Fast forward to Sebag's. I've just asked Niall if we're friends. 'Well, you're the only person I've ever sent a note to that just says,' he began, and then we chanted the contents of his note to me: 'Dear Rachel Johnson, Fuck off, Yours, Niall Ferguson', and how we laughed.
Writing that list of contributors today, by the way, I feel quiet pride that I was a precocious spotter of such journalistic talent. The reviewers of The Oxford Myth, however, were not so indulgent. It was the worst reviewed book of the year. I got a royal flush of vicious notices from grandees you'd have thought were far too busy and self-important to bother with such a sophomoric debut.
Chippy Welsh screenwriter Andrew Davies (it made him ‘want to throw up’), loved and lauded novelist William Boyd (it was ‘routine and uninspired’) et al couldn’t wait to pan the book. What stuck in my craw, though, was the nasty big piece in the Mail, bylined ‘Campbell Ferguson’ and headlined, ‘Just a banal degree of snobbery!’
As you might have guessed, that was Niall. Instead of turning the other cheek, I escalated, and snouted to the Oxford Mail the fact that he, an erstwhile contributor to the book, had semi-anonymously trashed it (a ‘singularly worthless volume’).
And here we both were, nice as pie, chatting about how Ayaan (Hirsi Ali, his wife) replies to neither of our texts, as if none of the Oxford blue on blue had ever happened.
And then a voice: 'Are you going to pay
---
---
LIFE
for that?' It was Penguin supremo Venetia Butterfield, next to Sebag. I'd been standing with the copy of The Cauldron without moving straight to the bookseller table while I parleyed with Niall.
Such was my deep pleasure in settling the ancient feud that I felt no flare of annoyance at the insinuation that I was a thief who'd come to Nobu for the canapés, and to walk off without paying for The Book; nor indeed when Emily Maitlis, resplendent in white, told me she was nipping off to the Venice Film Festival to interview George Clooney on stage; and not even when Cliveden's glam blonde châtelaine Natalie Livingstone buzzed over to embrace Maitlis as if I weren't there. All I could do was smile, benign as a Buddha, trying to manifest my grandchildren, as yet unborn, with no wish to start a 40 years' war with anyone ever again.
---
---
Real life Melissa Kite
The hysterical passengers at Larnaca airport were screaming and crying uncontrollably.
‘There’s a Wizz Air flight to Luton tomorrow!’ shouted one girl next to me, looking fit to pop out of her pink skin. ‘What?’ I said, appalled. I don’t know much, but I do know I never want to get a Wizz Air flight to Luton, unless in a full-blown wartime evacuation, and this wasn’t that.
When I tried to scan my boarding pass and it said ‘Flight cancelled’, I just thought ‘Good.’ As the hordes of panicking chavs bombarded the easyJet counter, I turned on my heels and began pulling my wheelie case back towards the exit.
I'm a big fan of budget airlines and hotels. Luxury frightens me and too much choice gives me panic attacks. But there are limits. A Wizz Air flight to Luton? I don't think so.
I marched to the taxi point, calling the driver. ‘Come back,’ I said to Ersin. ‘What happen?’ ‘Flight cancelled.’ ‘Flight cancel?’ ‘Where you go?’ he shouted as I walked towards him. He was now hysterical for no good reason, except I think the IVF clinic pays him to look after me, so if I don't get home safely he may be in trouble.
I climbed back into his people-carrier with disco lights on the ceiling. I looked at the panicking sunburnt chavs stampeding from the terminal to get taxis to take them to the nearest hotels and said: 'I'm coming back to Lefkosha with you.' For ever, if I can arrange it.
Ersin didn't look happy and after a long queue for the border into the Turkish republic, he barked at me for a hundred euros as he offloaded me outside the Hotel Sun. But I had the cash and he was then all smiles and insisted on pulling my case to reception.
While in the taxi I had managed to crack the enigma code of the easyJet rebooking to
Maybe I could just live here in this tiny room, I thought, as I set out all my books and toiletries and clothes again
get the next flight they could offer me. It was six days later. All the screaming pink chavs were on their iPhones prodding the rebooking options.
So I had six more days stuck in northern Cyprus. The hotel checked me back in – €260 for six nights, cheaper than living at home in Ireland for a week. I couldn't do anything in West Cork for that. I asked for my old room back – 527 please.
Maybe I could just live here in this tiny room, I thought, as I set out all my books and toiletries and clothes again.
The next day easyJet offered to pay me €450 not to get the rebooked flight, because they didn't really have the planes for everyone they'd said they had. It was tempting.
I had left the BB with two bookings. An Italian couple that night and a French couple checking in the night after that. He was texting me updates in real time. When the French arrived, he said they asked him, 'When do you think the rain is going to stop?' 'Nine months' time,' he replied. Then they started lecturing him about climate change, and he told them what he thought of that.
I blocked the rest of the days off on Airbnb so he wouldn't clash with anyone else. Still I was toying with the idea of never returning, or not returning for a long time.
I had my thyroid pills and my hormone pills to take. I had two months to try to get my numbers perfect after the last blood test.
My cardio was tip-top, according to the surgeon who listened to my heart. My kidney function was slightly down, but I wasn't surprised given the amount of drowsy antihistamine I guzzle with Lemsip every night to try to knock myself out because I'm frightened of sleeping pills.
I stopped dosing myself up for insomnia, and had six more days lying by the pool listening to country and western music. Then
I reluctantly called Ersin to come and pick me up.
At Larnaca airport, I managed to get my case pulled to pieces as the Greeks looked for a tube of Aussie hair miracle I'd forgotten was in there.
When I got out at the other end, I had to check into one of those £160-a-night sleeping kennels at Gatwick and, after that, as they didn't have a connecting flight to Cork for days, I set off for my friend's flat in Pimlico. Re-entry to the world of mindless pettiness then began in earnest.
On the packed train to Victoria the doors opened to reveal a few people on the platform at East Croydon and a voice squawked: 'Move down – selfish!' A twenty-something blonde girl with a voice like she'd inhaled helium was trying to get on.
‘Sel-fish!’ she squeaked, as though she also wanted to shout ‘Raaacist!’ and ‘Sexist!’ and ‘Just stop oil!’
Old ladies tried to move up by flattening themselves and bending in two, so I shouted: 'Listen Karl Marx, before you start spouting The Communist Manifesto, maybe consider it's you who's being selfish trying to squeeze onto a packed train when you should wait for the next one!' I should have called her Karla Marx, of course, but I didn't think of that until just now.
Back at Gatwick a few days later to get my Cork flight, the Ryanair woman wouldn't let my carry-on through. She measured it in that stupid holder thing, then made me repack the front pouches into my handbag, so I boarded the plane with an overflowing display of bikinis and knickers. She then waved through a girl with a camping pack on her back half the size of her, virtually with pots and pans hanging off it, and various bulging bumbags strapped to her waist, followed by two very large men with long pink hair wearing dresses, pulling cases larger than mine and snogging each other.
My neat carry-on had been unpacked and repacked twice by fools, and the result was that when I got back to Ireland, I couldn't find my treasured new, freshly re-read holiday copy of Tender Is The Night, complete with turned-down pages at the bits that made me cry.
If it weren't for the thought of all the medication I've got to remember to wake up and take each day, I'd pull the covers over my head indefinitely.
‘Let’s talk about your hoarding and concealing food issues.’
---
---
Dolce Vita Nicholas Farrell
Dante's Beach, Ravenna
I opened the WhatsApp message and read: 'Massed missile and drone warning. About eighth since I've been here. I'm deep underground.' It was from my old friend James. 'They organise camping stools in the metro,' he added.
He was in Kyiv, where he had first gone in 1997 with his acoustic guitar and electronic keyboard and where he had met his future wife, Svetlana, who lived in distant Kharkiv. Their romance blossomed in Gurzuf on the Black Sea, where Chekhov had a house, and where they met up four times that summer.
They moved first to Bratislava on the Danube where he founded a magazine. They then moved on to a small town just over the border in Austria, where he dabbled in property and they still live. They have three children.
Later that day, he sent me another message: ‘Saturday night – the beautiful people massed in the pavement cafés of Yaroslaviv Val, Kyiv. There’s an ongoing massed drone attack. Do they care! Life is to be lived. Just an extraordinary atmosphere.’
I was at school in Canterbury with James. After university we lived in a squat together off the Walworth Road. He had been a choral scholar at New College, Oxford and I had read history at Gonville & Caius, Cambridge, and yet there we both were like Withnail and I, deep in the heart of nowhere.
Years later, I was his best man when he married Svetlana in Canterbury Cathedral and in my speech at the reception I did my best to shout the traditional Ukrainian wedding toast ‘Гірко!’ which is the order for the bride and groom to kiss and turn what is bitter sweet.
From south London, James went first much further south, to Sienna, and then Madrid, and from there to Toulouse, but found neither love nor success so he changed direction and went east to Kyiv. Back in the 1990s Kyiv was like a frontier town in the old Wild West, where anything was possible. There, he found ‘joy’ perhaps for the first time.
These days James goes back there frequently to hand over medical supplies he has crowd-funded to the resistance against the Russian regime and because he is writing a biography of the mighty Dnieper that cuts through the heart of the country he loves. I edited the first draft and it is bloody good.
Three short bits of writing about his trip this time soon reached me by email. The first described the train journey to Kyiv. His eldest daughter had refused to let him take the usual train across the border from Poland because of the recent drone attack that had narrowly missed the train carrying foreign dignitaries such as Boris Johnson. So he crossed from Slovakia instead. Due to a threatened drone attack, his train stopped just outside Kyiv to wait for the all clear.
He writes: ‘09.00. Everyone in our train abruptly stands up, hands folded in front of them. Over the speaker, an electronic clock chimes the seconds. An image – a lighted candle – appears on my Telegram channel tracking ongoing attacks. Every morning, the whole nation pauses for one minute of silence. We remember the fallen. We honour the victims of this war. Forty minutes later we edge into the central station.’
Incroyable! Such passion, such patriotism. I was also struck by his use of the word ‘we’. I’ve lived in Italy for nearly 30 years and am married to an Italian. But I do not feel Italian. Yet he feels Ukrainian. Then again, wouldn’t I feel Italian if Italy were under similar attack?
In his second piece, he says that once inside his hotel bedroom in central Kyiv, he vows to evacuate to the metro as soon as the next missile/drone attack alert arrives with a ‘ping’ on the dedicated app on his phone.
He writes: ‘PING. I’m out of bed and dressed in 20 seconds, out of the hotel in 45 seconds… On a concealed bench, lovers kissing, entwined. It’s Saturday night – they defy the curfew – they’ll defy the missiles. I make it to the metro, skip down the stairs to the first level of safety – almost no one there – just a cleaner. She indicates to me to descend the escalator.’ He goes back to the hotel and ignores subsequent alerts. ‘I dream through them all, wake up to the ongoing drone attack, but I’m damned if that’s going to stop me going out for a hearty breakfast.’
In his last piece, he describes the death-defying devil-may-care defiance of young Ukrainians as he joins them in the packed pavement bars and restaurants of central Ukraine on a late summer's Saturday night. 'For now, no one's checking their Telegram alert channel. What's the point? There's an ongoing alert. Only question is: are they drones or missiles? Cruise or ballistic? Whichever way, the young crowd thronging the streets don't care. Damn the war!'
He wonders why he keeps coming back to this ancient city and answers: ‘Threading through the Saturday evening throng, drones prowling nearby streets, I feel it, the ultimate rush; life in the raw to be lived, loved, treasured, grasped for a fleeting instant like a wild bird trembling, momentarily stilled in flight, then let go.’
But then James fell silent. I began to fear the worst. And so after three days, one evening last week, I rang him on WhatsApp. He answered and I said: 'Where are you?' 'Back in Austria,' he replied, cool as a cucumber. So we then spent five hours, 32 minutes and 25 seconds talking about this and that with the help of a drink or two.
The Turf
Charlie Brooks
With the recent passing of Johnny ‘The Fish’ Ferrand and Graham ‘Brad’ Bradley, racing lost two of its most loved and colourful characters. I was in business with both of them – one more successfully than the other.
I remember one time when Johnny the Fish and I thought the chef of our pub, the Pheasant Inn, was in the small, grotty kitchen. But when we walked in, there was no sign of him. Then we looked behind the serving counter and saw him sitting on the floor, injecting heroin into his arm. The Fish's eyes got bigger and more watery than normal, he puffed his cheeks out and dryly observed: 'Well that's a bit strong... before lunch.'
At St Michael and All Angels church in Lambourn last week, trainer Nicky Henderson regaled us with tales of the Fish.
‘You can imagine how naughty he must have been at Cheam, where the King was captain of his dorm,’ Nicky suggested. The packed church certainly could. For the last quarter of a century, they’d all fallen in love with the kindest and most irresponsible of human beings, while drinking with him.
Before we bought the Pheasant, with the aim of making it the racing pub around Lambourn, I thought he was called Johnny the Fish because he used to be a fishmonger, and he looked like a fish. But I discovered fairly quickly that it was because he drank like one.
It was a questionable acquisition. The building, if that's what you could call it, was a complete dump and had parking for only four cars. Or three, if the chef turned up. But we were proud of our new project, so when the Hendersons invited us to lunch to shoot the breeze with the Queen Mother, we persuaded her to stop in at the Pheasant on her way back to Clarence House for a large pink gin. Then I got slightly cold feet. We were having a problem with obscene graffiti in the ladies' loos, and I hadn't whitewashed some pretty fruity stuff over that morning.
‘Pink gins at the ready,’ I advised Her Majesty as we poured her into her chariot. ‘One thing though… probably best to “go” here before you leave. The loos aren’t great at the Pheasant.’
Johnny was wicked company. Every trainer and jockey in the area would stop on their way home from the races and have a skinful with him. The trouble was he drank more than everyone else put together and never really cottoned on to the idea that the customers were meant to be buying him a drink, not the other way around. He was also known as ‘the Ferret’ to his oldest mates, such as Bill Wiggins, who was unfairly nicknamed ‘Bungalow Bill’ when he was Joan Collins’s romantic partner.
Two girls were brave enough to marry Johnny, and happily the first marriage produced Suzanna, who was duly packed off to Stonar, from where he always picked her up at the back door – until he finally got a treble up at Cheltenham. On his next visit, he boldly walked up to the front door, with the swagger of a man of means. ‘Mr Ferrand, you are three terms in arrears,’ the bursar, who was lying in wait, growled. With a certain flourish, the Fish thrust a rather tatty plastic bag full of bookmakers’ £50 notes towards him with a triumphant, ‘I think you’ll find I’m now three terms in credit.’
Johnny the Fish's service is one of my happier memories of St Michael and All Angels church. So many friends from a distant past, so many boozing mates around the village – and an acceptance that there was more speed than stamina in his pedigree, which made his departure from the pubs of the Lambourn valley at the age of 76 seem like the end of a life well lived.
Brad's departure, on the other hand, after a horrible time with dementia, felt brutal and premature. He was one of the most stylish jockeys of his generation, who famously led home the five Michael Dickinson runners on Bregawn in the 1983 Cheltenham Gold Cup, and won the 1996 Champion Hurdle on Collier Bay, after getting ‘jocked-off’ the more fancied Alderbrook because he overslept and missed a morning gallop.
He also won the 1997 Hennessy Gold Cup for me on Suny Bay, two years after I cost him another victory in the same race. Although he was my first jockey, I asked him to ride Black Humour, who jumped like a drunk, and so he missed out on winning the race on Couldn't Be Better. But such was the bigheartedness of the man, he was genuinely delighted for our team and our second jockey, Dean Gallagher.
Sometimes he was too kind – or perhaps naive. Telling a judge in the High Court that the reason why another ex-jockey, Barry Wright, had a load of cash under his bed was because he’d passed on inside information on races to a punter, as they all had, as opposed to selling a barrowload of cocaine, was akin to throwing himself under a bus. It was certainly the end of his involvement in racing.
His service in Wetherby, a few days before Johnny's, was extraordinary. Every jump jockey I can think of from Britain and Ireland in the 1990s had travelled to the northern town to pay tribute to a guy who had their backs when times were hard.
I hope both men got to look down on us to see how much they were loved. 'Shouldn't we have memorial services before we die?' Simon McNeil, who rode Katabatic to win the Queen Mother Champion Chase, pondered before we sloped off to the pub.
---
---
[Chess] Samarkand Olympiad Luke McShane
‘O’zbekiston’, they chanted, as I weaved my way through the scrum of fans and cameramen. The host nation, Uzbekistan, had just won gold at the 46th chess Olympiad, held in Samarkand. It was clear from the start that their team, led by Nodirbek Abdusattorov and Javokhir Sindarov (both in the world’s top ten) was capable of winning. They had already won at the Chennai Olympiad in 2022, when their players were far less experienced. But to play at home, and overcome fierce competition from top seeds USA, and second seeds India (the winners in Budapest 2024), was a huge challenge. The pivotal moment, at least in hindsight, occurred in the sixth-round match between Uzbekistan and India. Nihal had played a strong game, but in the diagram position his last move, 37…Nd6-f5? was a blunder that met with a spectacular refutation. It was better to abandon the h4-pawn and retreat the king to g7.
---
---
Nodirbek Yakubboev-Nihal Sarin
Fide Olympiad, Samarkand, 2026
White to play, position after 37...Nd6-f5
38 Ne6+!! Rxe6 39 gxh4+ The knight's sacrifice has ensured that the Qc7 is undefended, so this wins. Nxh4 40 Qxc7 Nf3+ 41 Kg2 Nxe1+ 42 Rxe1 e2 43 Rxe2 Rxe2+ 44 Bxe2 Rxe2+ 45 Kg3 Bd3 Hoping for 46 Qxb7? Bb5, with hopes of a fortress defence. Yakubboev plays accurately to break that coordination. 46 Qg7+ Kh5 47 Kf4 Re4+ 48 Kf3 Rh4 49 Kg3 Re4 50 b5! Now 50...Bxb5 51 Qh7+ wins, so White will
---
---
PUZZLE NO. 919
White to play. Duda-Grandelius, Fide Olympiad, Samarkand, 2026. Duda soon won, but missed the strongest move in this position. Which move wins the game in style? Email answers to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 5 October. There is a prize of a £20 John Lewis voucher 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 Bf3! Then 1...Kxf3 2 Nd4#, 1...Kxg5 2 Ne4#, 1...Ke5 2 Ne8# or 1... gxf5 2 Rfxf5#
Last week's winner John Roaf, Enfield
---
---
soon get a passed pawn. axb5 51 Qh7+ Kg5 52 Qxb7 b4 53 a6 Bxa6 54 Qg7+ Qg7-h7+ will win the rook after either king move, so Black resigns
Uzbekistan won that match 2.5-1.5 and never relinquished their lead, while India's team of young stars ended up with the silver medals.
It was unusual to see the world champion, Gukesh Dommaraju, playing on board 4 for India, since at the previous Olympiad he had earned an individual medal on top board. His recent form has been poor, and he may have wished to avoid a pairing against Sindarov, his challenger for the forthcoming world championship. Still, his excellent score of 8.5/11 earned him an individual silver medal, and perhaps a boost to his confidence.
The bronze medals went to Germany, who were the only team to beat Uzbekistan. They had chances to beat India too, as Donchenko stood well earlier, but Gukesh had turned the game around and finished with a flourish.
---
---
Alexander Donchenko-Gukesh Dommaraju Fide Olympiad, Samarkand, 2026
Black to play, position after 51 Bd1-e2
51...Nf4!! Unexpected and strong, since 52 Qxc1 Nxe2+ wins a piece. 52 Rxf4 52 Bd1 Ne7 prepares Ne7-g6 with mounting threats. Qxc3 Black's attack is decisive. 53 Bd1 Qe3+ 54 Kh1 Qd2 White resigns
---
---
Competition Bad romance Lucy Vickery
Competition 3469 invited you to submit seriously misguided love poems. This proved a popular challenge but the standard was patchy. The £25 vouchers go to those below.
Your personal sparkle
more Merkel than Markle,
more Dobbin than Arkle,
more glum Pagliacci
than fun mariachi,
more prickly than roses,
more commandments than Moses,
more Plain Jane Sans Merci
than bedtime with Circe.
And as fun as a rum-free lukewarm hot rum toddy
or a night in a whore-house with Big Ears and
Noddy.
But divorce would be costly and hard to arrange And we've done 30 years and I'm wary of change And inertia's a glue that is hard to undo; So stay stuck to me and I'll stick fast to you. Martin Parker
How do I love you? When you got in touch my screen glowed, as rekindled with desire. You'd sought me out; I'd never gone out much (shy country mouse!) but you knew how to fire all that I yearned for. So your emails came, faster and faster, sharing your rich life through photos (that Ferrari!), and your name opening so many doors. Your tremulous Wife? sent my heart racing, so that when you asked – A temporary loan? Of course, my sweet. A token that our love affair will last. And you'll return it, when at last we meet. Send me the date, and soon, and we'll agree
Send me the date, and soon, and we'll agree how well you understand the inner me. D.A. Prince
Hiding in the bushes,
I caught a glimpse of you,
and knew at once your tush is
the tush I wish to woo,
so shapely and so curvy, and in-the-right-spots plump. My heart went topsy-turvy, ensorcelled by your rump.
I heard the songbirds singing a soft, erotic sound, and somewhere bells were ringing. But then you turned around.
The songbirds all went mute,
but love, what can I say?
You're not perfect, but you're cute,
so I'll stalk you anyway.
Robert Schechter
I know you're playing hard to get, I've therefore built a shrine reminding me that I am yours, reminding me you're mine.
Your washing line provided me with skimpy underwear,
and from your favourite salon, I procured locks of your hair.
They're on the altar, neath your served and framed restraining orders; a tribute to our love that has impressed the prison warders.
And when I am released, my love, your bins will warrant trips to sift through scraps and morsels that have brushed against your lips.
Paul Freeman
Live with me and be my larva,
Gleaming cockroach of my heart,
I will be your grease-trap charmer,
Fated, baited from the start,
Like a stinky bin you draw me,
Warm as pipes or toaster wires,
Swarm close, creepy-crawly cutie,
Love me like humidifiers,
Scavenge for my love, you vermin,
I'm your soap scum, take your fill,
Fingers brush like twitching feelers,
Being apart is Rentokil,
Scurry, scuttle, leggy lurker,
Stay as near as flatworm fluking,
If your head fully was severed,
Our love would outlast a nuking.
Janine Beacham
You're not physically repulsive, not to me,
Though you channel chimpanzees when slurping tea,
Your hands are often clammy,
And your wardrobe's too Miami –
No man alive would wish to see your knees;
And your drab attempts at whoredom
Prompt a melancholy boredom,
As I shut my eyes and wonder what to squeeze
But your Queen Anne house, with carriage sweep's a pleasure,
Your daughters are enchanting beyond measure,
Your Zoffanys and Turners
Might be useful little earners,
I'll inspect your ample cellars at my leisure.
And my storm-tossed barque is broaching
And the loan sharks are approaching,
So – be Grimsby to my whaler, there's a treasure.
Nick Syrett
I'll love you till the car parks are no longer full of cars,
Till all the seas are dry and jam no longer comes in jars,
Till all the works of Edward Elgar end up in the bin,
Till every tin of biscuits simply has no biscuits in,
Till we have no more bananas and we have no sailing ships,
Till all the fish and chip shops sell you neither fish nor chips,
Till the fox won't chase the rabbit and the cat won't chase the mouse,
I would go on but then again I see you've left the house.
John Dredge
---
---
NO. 3472: BRING UP THE BODIES
You are invited to submit a sonnet inspired by a well-known contemporary figure's characteristic feature. Email entries to competition@spectator.co.uk by midday on 14 October.
---
---
Crossword 2772: Museum piece by Fire
Unclued lights can be arranged to form the first line of a poem and the initials and surname of the poet.
Across
3 Places to live are scant with visa changes (7,5)
10 Bank of Scotland returning a hammer? (3,4)
11 Promoting the Yorkshire excursion? (7)
13 Force Celtic out with own goal about to cross the line (2,3,3)
16 Last of rooibos tea reportedly off giving strong dark brew (5)
18 Look! Half of France eats margarine (5)
19 He wanted a salad and got to work (4,5)
24 My face is friendly (7)
25 From start of autumn, mild temperature dropped (2,2)
26 Plain pastry dish has essentially dry character (7)
32 Runs from snitch in special new stretchy Levi's (7)
33 Get on stage backwards (3)
35 Maybe Gabriel's gone to get flags (6,3)
37 Aggregate retains chestnut colour (5)
40 Signs lead to permanent or temporary homes (8)
41 Lack of atmosphere or warmth in airport gathering (4,3)
42 Pop duo age very well (7)
43 Spent time on leave, initially in German town over start of Easter (8,4)
Down
1 Clothes store workers skip over promises (8,4)
5 A distinct lack of ego in unconventional antihero (7)
17 Considering British English around US and Europe (7)
20 Investigator in a large town displays sharpness (7)
21 All the best women adore drinking vermouth at start of holiday (4,4)
23 Mayflies turn up in record time over Spain (9)
27 Soldier catches fresh conch for something to eat (7)
29 Voted for Romania to produce dance music (7)
31 Assistant's blunder knocking out IT in capital (7)
35 Topple over into abyss (3)
36 Appreciation of teacher diminished (5)
A first prize of a £30 John Lewis voucher and two runners-up prizes of £20 vouchers for the first correct solutions opened on 19 October. Please scan or photograph entries and email them (including the crossword number in the subject field) to crosswords@spectator.co.uk, or post to: Crossword 2772, The Spectator, 22 Old Queen Street, London SW1H 9HP. Please allow six weeks for prize delivery.
Address......
Email
---
---
SOLUTION TO 2769: ORDER
The SPEAKER (6A) of the HOUSE OF COMMONS (1D) has been BEHEADED (23D) seven times: BUSSY (15A), THORPE (1A), TRESHAM (12D), CATESBY (22D), EMPSON (5D), DUDLEY (41A), MORE (18A) – each are shown in the grid without their initial letter to indicate their fate.
First prize Vicky Walmesley, Exeter Runners-up Peter Tanner, Hertford Kenny Mills, Londonderry
---
---
THE VINTAGE CHEF | OLIVIA POTTS Cannoli
A criticism often levelled at cookery writers is: 'I could just buy that at the supermarket', which is an apparent slam-dunk counter to the time and effort needed to make the thing yourself, i.e. why would you bother? With such people, I find myself stutteringly defending cookbooks, recipes and the practice of cooking as a whole.
My defence is both obvious and compelling: I can make it better, I can make it cheaper, I know exactly what's going into it if I've made it and, crucially, cooking is one of life's pleasures. I actively enjoy kneading and proving and waiting and peeking in the oven and stirring and whisking and slicing. Making the thing is often the whole point – the end result a delightful by-product.
However, living in 2026, I am rarely able to respond to the core argument as the item that I'm making is almost always available
---
---
Filled just before eating, freshly made cannoli are unmatchable: elegant, indulgent and unique
in the supermarket. You can get anything nowadays. That is, apart from cannoli.
In its homeland of Sicily, cannoli abounds: you cannot walk into a café or a bakery without being accosted by pyramids of ricotta-filled cigars smelling of nuts and lemons and cinnamon. But it is absolutely impossible to get good cannoli from the supermarket and, unless you live in Sicily, it's incredibly hard to find cannoli anywhere else.
A cannoli should be a perfect contrast of a crisp shell, robust enough to hold its creamy filling but tender and brittle enough that it gives way as soon as you eat it. It is nearly impossible to achieve this if you want the cannoli to last beyond a couple of hours.
Food writer Nicola Lamb calls cannoli ‘the mayfly of pastry’, which really does capture its ephemeral nature. A cannoli more than a few hours old is a tragic cannoli: filled in advance, the creamy ricotta makes the shell soggy and sad, while attempts to prevent this lead to thick, firm shells. Also, if you are leaving the cannoli hanging around, they need refrigerating to preserve the ricotta, which makes the whole thing unpleasantly cold and the shells feel greasy when you eat them. So, no, you can't just buy these in a supermarket.
The dough is unlike any other dough I've tasted or worked with: flavoured with just a little cocoa and cinnamon, moistened with red wine and enriched with lard, it is worked until smooth, and then rolled repeatedly until it is very, very thin. During this rolling, the dough is folded over on itself, creating tightly pressed layers which, when fried, bubble up into those distinctive cannoli blisters. Wrapped around metal moulds and sealed with egg white, the shells form perfect tubes when fried, which slip eagerly off their moulds, ready to be filled with sweetened ricotta, often flavoured with pistachio, hazelnut, chocolate or citrus. I keep mine simple, folding through a palmful of candied lemon and orange peel, diced so finely it's less of a flavour and more of a perfume.
But, oh boy, is it an undertaking: food processors, kneading, a pasta machine for rolling, cannoli-specific moulds, deep-frying and piping bags. None of it requires particular skill, but it's certainly a production. If you don't fancy a project, cannoli is not for you, but if you do, this one pays dividends.
There are always ways to make things easier for yourself: while all of this can be done by hand, it takes longer and is harder. Instead, I bring my dough together in a food processor, which makes the whole thing clean and simple, as well as kick-starting the gluten development in the pastry. Using a pasta machine to roll out the dough means that you are quickly able to get the thinness needed for the shell, which is much harder by hand.
I also tend to spread my cannoli-making over two days: on the first, I strain my ricotta and make and chill my dough, and on the second I roll and fry the dough, and fill the shells.
Filled just before eating, freshly made cannoli are unmatchable: elegant, indulgent and unique. Just hold on to that thought when you're frying your third batch of shells. Don't say you weren't warned.
Makes: 12-16 cannoli
Hands-on time: 1 hour
Cooking time: 20 minutes
For the shells
200g plain flour - 1 tbsp caster sugar
1 tsp cocoa powder
½ tsp ground cinnamon
30g lard or butter - 1 egg
50ml red wine
1 tbsp white wine vinegar
Neutral oil, for frying
For the filling
500g ricotta - 90g icing sugar
50g candied citrus peel, finely diced
50g shelled pistachios, finely chopped
1. Place the ricotta in a sieve lined with muslin and leave to drain for as long as possible.
2. Put the dry ingredients in a food processor, add the lard/butter and pulse until it resembles breadcrumbs. Stir the wine, vinegar and egg yolk together (reserve the egg white for later) and add, pulsing until a dough forms. Turn out onto your work surface and knead until smooth. Wrap in clingfilm and refrigerate for at least two hours.
3. Divide your dough into four pieces. Take one and roll it using a pasta machine on the widest gauge. Fold the dough in half, and roll it again. Work down through the settings, folding the dough over each time. It's possible to use a rolling pin.
4. Lay out the dough and stamp out 11-12cm circles. Wrap a circle around each cannoli mould, using the egg white to seal it.
5. Fill a deep pan halfway with oil and heat to $180^{\circ}$ C. Lower the wrapped cannoli moulds into the oil and cook for one minute, then lift and place on kitchen paper. Slide the shells from the moulds carefully. Repeat with the rest of the dough.
6. Before serving, beat the ricotta, icing sugar and candied peel together and decant into a piping bag with a large star nozzle. Pipe into each cannoli shell, then dip each end in the chopped pistachios.
Drink
Orange revolution
Declan Lyons
Orange wine is on my mind. On a recent stroll down Westbourne Grove, and with a bit of time on my hands, I stopped into Franklin's – a sea of tranquillity in the bustle of nearby Portobello market. This local wine bar is run by two wonderful chaps, Luigi and Lucio. The former is from Naples and the latter from Valencia, so they know their wines. And when I asked to try something unusual, I was presented with a glass of orange wine.
Their choice was the Bodegas Verum Ulterior Naranja 2024 – as is evident from its name, an orange wine produced in Spain. Rich and creamy, what sets it apart from other orange wines is that it is a blend of red and white grapes: mostly Albillo Real, an ancient Spanish white variety, which is mixed with a little Moravia Agria, a rare indigenous red grape. My interest
It's bottled
to resemble
a premium
rosé and is
heavy on the
nose and then
surprisingly
light on
the palate
piqued by its organic freshness, and tales of how orange wine is all the rage with London's hipsters, I trotted off into the night determined to see what else this stable had to offer.
Now, before you despair that this column has gone woke, it's worth considering the distant origins of orange wine. Perhaps as long as 8,000 years ago the good folk of Georgia developed a method of wine production that created an unmistakably orange hue.
The key to this art is the qnevri, a giant clay pot used to ferment, store and age traditional Georgian wine. Instead of taking the juice out of the grapes, they would put them, with skins on, in the qnevri and bury it for months. The result of that skin contact is the distinctive orange colour. Obvious to some, but maybe not to others, there are no oranges in orange wine.
And while that history lesson might sound like a sidetrack, there are Georgian wine-makers who to this day use the same process to produce excellent orange wines. The first to recommend is made by the Dugladze family, with white Rkatsiteli grapes grown in the Kakheti region. After three months' storage in a qnevri, their Ranina Kakhuri is delicious and full-bodied with a distinctly dry finish. If you're looking to sample what's out there, at roughly £15 a bottle it will be hard to beat as a value proposition.
For something a little more complex, and about an additional £10 a bottle, the same family produces a Qvevri Kisi 2023. Comprised entirely of Kisi grapes, this has a darker hue than the Ranina, as it spends six months in the qvevri. It’s bottled to resemble a premium rosé and is heavy on the nose and then surprisingly light on the palate; a real treat. If the orange wine movement can seem trendy today, these two wines pay homage to thousands of years of tradition and the almighty qvevri.
Because of orange wine's surging popularity, producers across Europe are experimenting. Italy and Slovenia have both turned out excellent examples in recent years. The final one that grabbed my attention, however, is French. Made with Soleil grapes in Languedoc, Château Vieux Moulin's Le Soleil is a lightly sparkling delight with the same tint from skin-contact fermentation. This is the one to serve if you have a guest you'd like to impress and can spare the £25 price tag.
It might be too soon – or, given the drink’s long history, too late – to say that orange is the new white. But when the sun is still shining, yet without summer heat, these wines offer something different: lighter than red and more full-bodied than a dry white. Even the colour matches the leaves soon to adorn the garden. In drinking them, you’ll be saluting both the ancient Georgian method of production and the fact that it’s a continuing story of innovation.
---
---
DEAR MARY YOUR PROBLEMS SOLVED
Q. If flirting is out of the question, is there another way to show someone you like them? My situation was a lunch at which a really attractive girl was on my right, but on her right was a man who obviously fancied her too. Because this man had shown interest in investing in my start up, I didn't want to compete with him and wreck the chances of his coming on board. So I played it cool and she left without any idea I was interested in her. How could I have handled this better? – Name and address withheld
A. When the other man had safely turned, you should have made up a fictional book title and asked the girl e.g. 'Have you ever read "Bertha" by Deirdre Squill?' Still wearing an unflirtatious expression, continue coldly, 'It's an obscure book, but the character of Bertha is fascinating – very much in the same way as you are. I happen to have a spare copy. Can I get your address from our host and I will put it in the post to you?' Later send a card saying you are so sorry, the book seems to have disappeared, but would she like to meet for a drink?
Q. I feel you ought to do some kind of public service announcement regarding Save the Date alerts. I am 28 and, in the course of planning my own nuptials, I have found that older generations don't realise that Save the Date is now an invite. In the past they marked the date down with a pencil in their diary and waited for the invite without RSPV-ing. But now, if you can come, you respond by sending your postal address so the proper invitation can be sent. My generation, of course, don't have our friends' land addresses. You have to give them the date months, if not a year, in advance, as people get so booked up.
– O.E., London SE5
A. Thank you for drawing this to readers' attention. Traditional wedding invitations would have gone out no earlier than 12 weeks beforehand. Today, due to friend inflation and the death of spontaneity, bridal couples are forced to seek acceptances much further in advance.
Q. Some friends who come shooting ask us to dinner but it's always just us and one other couple, the de Koonings (fake name). We think they always ask the de Koonings with us because they don't know many other 'smart' people. We don't want the de Koonings. We would much rather it was just the four of us. How can we achieve this? – Name and address withheld
A. One of you should confide that you have taken on ‘what’s called a side hustle. But I’m not allowed to talk about it yet. The only problem is that, tragically, it means we won’t be able to have dinner with the de Koonings as that could infringe the non-compete rules I’ve signed up to.’
Write to Dear Mary at
dearmary@spectator.co.uk
---
---
No sacred cows Happiness is a warm rifle Toby Young
Earlier this week, I made my annual pilgrimage to the Cairngorms National Park to go deer stalking, an activity I was introduced to in the 1990s and quickly fell in love with. There are few better feelings than seeing a stag in your rifle's telescopic sight, his antlers silhouetted against the skyline, having stalked the beast for several hours, much of it on your belly. It's a challenging sport and not just because of the physical discomfort. Red deer can see, hear and smell you from thousands of yards away, so there's no alternative but to sneak up on them downwind.
Some people will recoil at the thought of deriving pleasure from shooting such a majestic animal, but if they're not killed by the ‘guests’, they'll be shot by the professional stalkers employed by the estates or the park rangers. In 2020, the Deer Working Group, which was set up by the Scottish government, recommended that there should be a maximum of ten red deer per square kilometre over large areas of open range, and an estimated 200,000 are culled every year – more now that the SNP government has scrapped seasonal restrictions, making it possible to shoot stags all year round. Visitors like me account for a tiny fraction of the total, but it's a storied tradition that has inspired some of Scotland's finest paintings (see the Landseers in the National Gallery of
It's hard to dismiss the suspicion that the real motive is a hatred of the sports associated with the landed gentry
Scotland in Edinburgh) and provides employment to an army of stalkers and gillies, with the trade being passed down from one generation to the next. The large sporting estates are also responsible for a lot of Highland tourism, sustaining thousands of small businesses.
But stalking is under siege and is gradually dying out. The principal cause is the lucrative carbon credit market, making it more profitable for landowners to embark on large peatland regeneration schemes at the expense of traditional Scottish sports. It’s particularly profitable because this ‘rewilding’ is paid for by the Scottish taxpayer, with Holyrood having committed £250 million to restoring 250,000 hectares of peatland by 2030. The landowners happily fill in the drainage ditches that, 60 years ago, they were paid to dig in the hope of improving the grazing. They sell the carbon credits each year to businesses that want to offset their emissions, and watch their land rise in value thanks to the carbon gold rush.
According to the stalker that took me out on Monday – a 65-year-old who was the fifth generation of his family to take it up – a neighbouring estate was sold recently for £19.5 million, triple what it’s worth as measured by how many deer and grouse are shot by paying guests each year, which used to be the way sporting estates were valued. Since the purchase, grouse shooting has been stopped altogether and stalking is being phased out, with the new owners aiming to keep the number of deer down to two per square kilometre. It’s safe to say he was unimpressed.
‘There are no teachers in the schools, no nurses in the hospitals,’ he said, ‘but the Scottish government can find £25 million a year to fill in some ditches that will have little or no effect.’ As we passed various pools of water, he scoffed at the idea that the uplands would benefit from being even wetter: ‘At the end of today we’ll be absolutely bloody soaking.’
One argument conservationists make is that peatland regeneration will reduce the risk of wildfires, but that is disputed by those who make their living on the land. You now need a licence to carry out a controlled burn and NatureScot is parsimonious about granting them, not wanting the carbon to be released into the atmosphere. In addition, the declining number of grouse shoots means fewer gamekeepers, so fires are less likely to be nipped in the bud. My stalker pointed out that the largest fire in the Cairngorms this year was on land that had been ‘rewilded’ by the RSPB.
Given how threadbare the evidence is that these regeneration schemes will have any impact on climate change, it's hard to dismiss the suspicion that the real motive of the SNP is a hatred of the sports associated with the landed gentry. Instead of just banning them, which would be difficult given their importance to the rural economy, they've filled the landowners' mouths with gold. Alas, most of the large estates are only too happy to embrace the carbon cash giveaway.
My visit to the Cairngorms was bit-
tersweet. As we returned to the lodge
in a Hilux with a dead stag in the back,
my sense of wellbeing was tempered
by the knowledge that this may be the
last stalk I'll ever do. Like so much
of what makes Britain such a civilised
place to live, this fine tradition won't
be with us much longer.
MICHAEL HEATH
THE SPECTATOR | 3 OCTOBER 2026 | WWW.SPECTATOR.COM
Sport
---
---
Pep and his players should be celebrated, not dissed Roger Alton
When the sonorous voice of Clive Myrie describes something as the ‘biggest sports story of the century’ in tones normally used for events in Kyiv or Gaza it’s probably time to sit up and listen. Or maybe not. The City saga – at root claiming that the club breached financial rules to pay its way from 2009 to 2018, when they won the Premier League three times – has been going on for eight years after all, and if Ferran Soriano, the chief executive, and the unfeasibly wealthy chairman, Khaldoon Al Mubarak, know what they are talking about, it’s got plenty more time to run. God help us! And they do seem pretty bullish. None of this, ‘OK guv, you got us bang to rights, we’ll come quietly’ stuff.
Personally, I find it difficult to get worked up about this story. After all, the rules were designed to stop anyone bringing down the big boys of the Premier League. Those who want the book thrown at City argue that they cheated: they were able to turbocharge their recruitment to catch up with the rest of the major clubs by overspending and hiding that spend, amid a bit of sponsorship here and a bit of investment there.
I prefer to think of what City have given us: some of the most sublime football the Premier League has ever seen
Well, who knows? Would they have been able to do it without sailing close to the rules, just by relying on Pep's genius? We'll never know. Would Pep have even joined, argue City's opponents, if they were just a mid-table club? Would Haaland have followed suit? And none of us have ever brushed up against the rules. Have we?
That admirable Mauricio Pochettino, now the US team manager, expressed the bafflement of many when he remarked, 'It is a huge sadness... We get into a situation where what got celebrated wasn't that real; what seemed good maybe wasn't so good, what didn't look good maybe was good but couldn't be good because of what happened.' Well, you know what he means...
I prefer though to think of what City have given us: some of the most sublime football the Premier League has ever seen. It wasn't bags of money running around playing football, it was some of the finest footballers ever to play in Britain: Haaland; Rodri – for years the best midfielder in Britain and the best player at the last World Cup; Bernardo Silva, the club's player of the year in 2019; Vincent Kompany, one of the most electrifying players I have ever seen; Kevin De Bruyne, footballing perfection. We have never seen players like this, and we should celebrate it.
Any argument that the trophies are tarnished seems to me to be pretty rubbish. I agree with Rodri, now at Barcelona but absolutely central to City's dominance, who insisted: 'I can tell you everything was deserved, and I'm glad I could live through one of the best eras of English football.'
We know Andy Burnham enjoys his rugby league at Everton's Hill Dickinson stadium, and he particularly likes the fact that he can sluice down a pint while watching, whereas he can't when it's his beloved football team. Now he wants all football fans to be allowed to drink at the game rather than just before or at half-time. How much drink do people need? The joys of Twickenham are cited where you can watch rugby and drink endlessly. But has he ever been? It is an ordeal. There are enough pubs and bars at the ground to keep a navy afloat, but once the game has started and you're sitting down, you're endlessly up and down as a stream of boozers shuffle past with trays of beer and then head off to the loo. No fun, Andy. Stick to the triple lock.
L est we forget, it was good to see Warwickshire going berserk as they celebrated their victory in the County Championship, showing that at least the players think it's something worth celebrating, even if cricket's administrators don't really agree. By way of compensation, poor Somerset, who finished second, saw three of their batsmen – Abell (307), Lammonby (229) and Banton (126 – batting for England) – complete innings totalling 662 runs on the same day. Hope for next year? Perhaps... Somerset have never won.
---
---
ANCIENT AND MODERN Family first
Princess Diana's brother, Earl Spencer, appears to be out for revenge for the treatment of his sister by the King, particularly for a phone call in which he claimed that Prince Charles, as he then was, said: 'Rest assured, we'll forget her soon enough.' Aristotle would have been delighted at how precisely the Earl's reaction matched his analysis of the angry man.
The emotions, said Aristotle, especially anger, alter one's judgment, causing both distress but also pleasure. At this point Aristotle quotes Achilles who in the Iliad (the epic of Achilles's destructive wrath)
acknowledged anger as ‘far sweeter than oozing honey, spreading in a man’s heart and expanding like smoke’ (what an image!). Aristotle then defines anger as a desire for revenge in response to being belittled by someone with contempt, spite or insult. It is those feelings that Spencer nourishes in response to Charles’s ‘Rest assured’ comment. But it is perfectly possible that Charles was clumsily reaching out for one of the oldest clichés in the world in an attempt to console the Earl. Likewise, Diana's comment about Charles being in ‘love with his valet’ probably meant nothing more than a Geordie saying her man is in love with Alan Shearer. But a man on a revenge mission will brook no retreat. We seek revenge, says Aristotle, because we believe the offender wronged us; we want to cause him pain so that he will not wrong us a second time. That will teach him a lesson and bring us a degree of pleasurable satisfaction.
Spencer clearly felt that Charles's reaction at that time was an insult to himself, his sister and the whole family. The common ground is that no institution was of more importance to Greeks than the family: everything they held dear centred on it. Since nothing had greater potential for tragic consequences, the family was at the heart of Greek tragedy. The tragedians therefore fastened onto the vast range of myths centring on the family and explored what it took for a man or woman to misread so obsessively what was most precious to them as to destroy it – and themselves.
— Peter Jones
Seen elsewhere
Full English
Red Squirrel
As seen on $X$
'A nother,' I say with a belch, letting fork and knife fall to my plate. 'Pork belly this time, I think.' The waiter scuttles off to the kitchen of our local Greene King pub. This will be my fourth roast dinner of the afternoon. Beef, chicken and gammon have come and gone – each with heaps of crispy roast potatoes, lashings of gravy, golden brown yorkies, steamed cabbage and carrots piled high. I wash them down with Aenglish ale.
I'll have to put in a double session at the gym to work it off. Romanian deadlifts and kettlebell swings. But it's worth it. Because there is an active intelligence operation to subvert the British Sunday roast. Two ‘conservative’ publications, the Spectator and the Telegraph, have each recently (in the past two years) published articles bashing the nation's favourite meal. It is quite literally impossible not to enjoy melt-in-your-mouth beef and cauliflower cheese, so we must conclude
By the time I'm done, Dad has accepted that his own inaction led directly to the atrocities in Rotherham
from this latest development that the centre-right press has abandoned all pretence of opposing immigration and has instead rowed in behind the Great Replacement.
I relay this to Dad, who is sitting opposite me in an almost comatose state. Spurning my offer of a roast dinner, he has instead elected to spend the afternoon sinking pints; the empty glasses now form a sort of cairn around him. He bobs his head up and down in silent assent. But, as ever, he doesn't seem entirely convinced. Typical Torygraph boomer. 'Wake up and smell the coffee, Dad,' I say gravely, as the latest heaped plate is set before me, leading him to stir.
‘Would ya mind eating that up as quick as you can, lad – the footie’s on in a half hour.’
I snort. ‘Panem et circenses, as the Romans used to say, while the barbarians were at the gate. That’s you, Dad.’
My paterfamilias sighs. ‘Look, I’ve been thinking. D’ya think maybe it’s time you got a place of your own? You’ve got the money now, with this job of yours in IT… You could move in with Fran.’
‘Dad,’ I say, crunching on a piece of Anglo pork crackling. ‘Dad, I’m literally trying to build generational wealth here, and now you’re telling me to move out and fend for myself. Saturn devouring his own children. Atomised liberal individualism at its worst.’
‘Here we go,’ says Dad.
I continue. ‘We Anglos have a history of individualism, true – but this is a collectivist age. The English ethnicity has got to tribe up like the Italians.
Generational living, dynasty building. You must be the capo, with me as your consigliere. And a roast every Sunday.'
‘Not really in the mood for one,’ Dad says, apparently unmoved. ‘Might pop out later for a curry…’ He looks up, face going white. But it’s too late.
'THE GROOMING GANGS!' I half-shout, half-scream.
‘Calm down!’ He glances round the pub apologetically, before whispering: ‘I know you like your politics, but…’
'BUT WHAT?'
‘Well. Well, you know. Chicken tikka masala. It’s our national dish.’
I properly lose it then, and terrible is my wrath. My prophecies of death and downfall. Eat your curry, Dad – but some day curry will be the only legal food and you will be partly responsible. I fulminate. I harangue. I beat my breast. I analogise events to the Siege of Vienna of 1683, with myself cast as the Polish ‘Winged Hussars’ who carried the day for Christendom. Then I slam him with the philosophers. Evola, Nietzsche and a bit of Carl Schmitt as a garnish. My hundreds of hours spent half-digesting YouTube essays by alternative historians prove too much for my father, who is mute in the face of my barrage.
By the time I'm done, my plate is empty again, and Dad has been thoroughly cowed, having accepted that his own inaction led directly to the atrocities in Rotherham. He's reduced to begging me to leave the pub with him. 'Another,' I say to the waiter.
If only Rupert Lowe could see me now. If only Rupert Lowe were my father.
---
---
[MIND YOUR LANGUAGE] Rude names
Would you blush to admit you lived in Crotch Crescent in Oxford? Once again, newspaper stories have sprouted about rude-sounding place-names. It all seems rather artificial.
What happens is that a company seeking publicity (this time a financial products outfit) finds a list of place-names that could be taken as rude. They get a survey company to show the list to innocent bystanders, who say which they find rudest. Newspapers obligingly publish the graded list as though it were news: Fanny Avenue, Crotch Crescent, Titty Hill, Wetwang,
Shitterton... down to Jackass Avenue and Great Snoring. (Are those two even rude?)
In truth, Crotch Crescent is named after a child prodigy and composer, William Crotch (1775-1847). He had a terrible time as a child being led about like some musical bear. Then at 21 he was appointed Professor of Music at Oxford, a post he held until his death.
I'd assumed that Crotch was connected in origin with cross; a street in the City of London is called Crutched Friars, after an order with a cross on their habit. But crotch is of unknown origin according to the OED.
If crotch is irresistibly funny only to Finbarr Saunders in Viz comic, what of Wetwang? To my surprise its meaning is given as ‘field of summons for the trial of a dispute’ (from Old Norse vetvangr) by Victor Watts in the Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names. The -wang is definitely ‘field’, though the OED lists the word under wong (in which form it appears in Beowulf).
But Tolkien, who knew of such matters, uses Wetwang as the English equivalent of the Sindarin (elvish) Nindalf, where nin- means ‘wet’. The Yorkshire village of Wetwang has a pond and is distinguished from Driffield nearby, which is the ‘dry field’ – though again Watts gives a different derivation, from drit (‘dirt’).
My husband has just told me that I've spoilt the joke, but I'm not sure there was much of one in the first place.
— Dot Wordsworth
---
---
Spectator Writers' Dinner
with Lord Young of Acton THURSDAY 19 NOVEMBER | 6.30 FOR 7PM | £175
Join us in the boardroom for the next in our series of Spectator Writers' Dinners with Toby Young, The Spectator's associate editor and No Sacred Cows columnist. His books include How to Lose Friends and Alienate People and The Sound of No Hands Clapping.
Over a fine dinner, accompanied by wines from Château Léoube, Toby will chat to The Spectator's features editor William Moore about politics, journalism and the fight for free speech.
To book tickets, visit spectator.com/tastings
SPECTATOR
CLUB
---
---
SECURE AFFORDABLE ELECTRICITY
STARTS AT
HOME
It's time to upgrade Britain's electricity system.
We have the natural resources to generate more secure, affordable electricity at home.
That's why we're investing £33bn in homegrown energy, upgrading the grid and connecting more renewables to strengthen energy security, power growth and deliver reliable electricity across the country.
