Society

Thursday

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

Matthew Parris: I’ve been living with a miracle for 60 years

This is probably the most self-indulgent column I’ve written. I hope not to make a habit of it. It’s an ode to — and something of a lament for — my own right arm. I was six when I fell off a small cliff above a disused railway embankment in Nicosia, Cyprus. The blue bicycle I was wheeling was new: a birthday present and my first bike. A novice, I let the back wheel slip over the edge — and if you’re holding the handlebars and the back wheel slides, a bicycle moves in counter-intuitive ways. Mine pulled me with it. I refused to let go. I came to in

Harry Mount

Notes on… Motoring in Greece and Italy

‘Buy on the bullets’ is the cry of the most ruthless stockbrokers — invest just before a war, after the stock markets dive, before the recovery kicks in. In the same way, now is the time for us heartless continental drivers to head for poor, battered Greece. Maybe it’s not quite war-torn yet, but driving around the Peloponnese this autumn was like touring a post-apocalyptic ghost town. Once you get out of the sun-bleached concrete sprawl of Athens, the splendid motorway to Kalamata is eerily empty at all hours of the day. Rocketing along at 80 mph, I could afford to stare for several seconds at the Corinth canal below

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

The man who made it OK to talk about immigration

It takes a lot to make the subject of immigration respectable for liberals, at least if you’re pointing out its problematic aspects. But Paul Collier, an Oxford economist specialising in the world’s bottom billion, has, in the 270-odd pages of his new book Exodus, opened up the issue for the left — well, for all comers, actually. Which, for a book suggesting among other things that, left to itself, there is no natural limit to immigration, is quite something. ‘The overwhelming reaction I’ve had,’ he told me, from his Oxford berth at the Centre for the Study of African Economies, ‘is that people thank me for making the subject discussable.

Roger Alton Roger Alton

If Carberry doesn’t open for England, the world should split asunder

In sport, as in life, you just don’t know where you stand any more. Look at the Premier League: no club knows where they stand except for Crystal Palace, who are being stood on by all the others. Everyone else can beat everyone else. Manchester City, who must be one of the best teams, are eighth; Southampton are good for the Europa League but currently could end up in the Champions League. But it’s all good for business. The England football team are about to find out exactly where they stand after two friendlies and the World Cup draw next month. The England rugby team are about to find out

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Soldiers aren’t social workers, Mr Cameron. Remember that before taking on hopeless wars

The ghost people, the letter people. The ones we hear about in court but never call by their real name; instead, Baby P and Girl A. And now Marine A. They remain hidden from us for reasons which are, one supposes, rational and sensible, but somehow this non-naming magnifies our shame or abhorrence at whatever has befallen them, or what they have done. It must be bad if we’re to strip them of their identities, no? Eventually they shuffle off the stage, after some sort of justice has been dispensed, still in some cases anonymous, shrouded. Shuffle off, indeed. Marine A dispatched a Taleban insurgent with a bullet to the

Thomas Eaton

St. Petersburg: Off Nevsky Prospect

‘On the shore of desolate waves / he stood, full of lofty thoughts / and gazed afar.’ So begins Pushkin’s epic poem ‘The Bronze Horseman’, with the legend of Peter the Great founding his new city in 1703. A remote and inhospitable swampland in north-western Russia was transformed into his ‘window on the West’, a Baroque and neo-classical masterpiece. I came to St Petersburg to learn Russian. Enrolled for an intensive course at a private language school, I opted for full immersion and stayed with a local family for the two weeks. At Pulkovo airport I was met by a representative and politely but firmly reminded that we would now only communicate in Russian.

Michael Henderson

Berlin: The best bar in the world

‘You were at the Fish, I hear,’ a Berlin friend told me. ‘I didn’t know you were an old hippie.’ Reputations can cling to places as they do to people. Zwiebelfisch, the Berlin inn he was referring to, has not been a haunt of hippies — radicals, more like, ‘the class of ’68’ — for at least two decades. Now it is a home for all-comers; because, in the eyes of some of us who have spent years staring through a glass darkly, it is the finest bar in Christendom. Sited on the northwest side of Savignyplatz, west Berlin, it may not strike the person wandering along Grolmanstrasse as a

Alex Massie Alex Massie

George Galloway’s one-man mission to save the Union

George Galloway is unhappy. One of his interlocutors on Twitter has told him to ‘Fuck off back to England’. Gorgeous George is in Glasgow for the first in a series of roadshows in which he sets out his case for Scotland remaining part of the Union and he’s not going anywhere. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever. Not even to England. This will disappoint his many critics. But Galloway has a new, higher calling: saving whatever remains of the British left. To do that he must first save Britain. Which means persuading his fellow Scots they should remain a part of the United Kingdom. Like a latter-day Othello, he loves

William Cook

Tangier: Hidden treasure

‘I remember you from last time,’ said the young man on the promenade. It was my first night back in Tangier. I was alone and tired and lonely. I liked the idea of meeting someone who knew me, if only from a brief encounter a few years before. ‘Yes, of course,’ I said, though I didn’t recognise him. In his cheap suit he seemed anonymous, like a policeman in plain clothes. It was nearly midnight, but the esplanade was still crowded. On the beach below, shrieking children were sprinting across the sand. Out to sea, over the Strait of Gibraltar, the bright lights of Tarifa were winking in the darkness.

Jack Wakefield

Venice: A feast of great art

Venice is a 10,000-carat jewel set by the greatest ever goldsmith pinned to the breast of the most beautiful woman to have lived. Built out of a need for security in the turbulent world of late antiquity, it was protected by the lagoon, which also gave it political stability, and with political stability came riches, conservatism and trade. The great longevity of the serene republic and the restricted space of the island made it a mishmash of styles and architectures. The exuberant frontage plastered along the canals gives the sensation of being immersed in a grandiose opera set. It is a fabulous and wonderful and totally pleasurable explosion of culture.

John Gimlette

New York: Literary ghost tour

Deep below West 52nd Street is a massive stash of booze. The cops never found it during Prohibition, and it belongs to the 21 Club. Famous for its sumptuously New Yorky dishes (like filet mignon with kumquat vinaigrette), 21 is a real boys’ den. Dark and plush, the subterranean rooms are festooned with intriguing junk: footballs, helmets, a model torpedo boat given by JFK, and a smashed racket from McEnroe. There are even 25 paintings by Remington, left by debtors during the depression. But oddly it isn’t a club at all. Anyone can go there, provided they’ve got a fat wallet and hollow legs. You just need to book (www.21club.com;

Lucy Vickery

Pet project

In Competition 2823 you were invited to submit a school essay or poem written at the age of eight by a well-known person, living or dead, entitled ‘My Pet’ . Those of you who chose to step into the childhood shoes of well-known writers faced the tricky challenge of pulling off an element of pastiche while at the same time producing something that could plausibly have been written by an eight-year-old. Emily Dickinson, a famously precocious child, was a popular choice. Gordon Gwilliams’s entry revealed the stirrings of educational-reformist zeal in the young Michael Gove, while Richard Hayes’s brought to life Russell Brand, budding Narcissus. I also liked Susan McLean’s

Robert Gray

Andro Linklater by Robert Gray – obituary

For 24 years Andro Linklater, who died aged 68 on 3 November, reviewed books in these pages. Always an enthusiast, with wide sympathies and of genial disposition, he wanted others to share his pleasures, so that, while he could spot a dud author as well as anyone, he much preferred to dwell on the positive side, in literature as in life. As the youngest of the four children of the novelist Eric Linklater, Andro might seem to have been born to a life of letters. His father, though, never subscribed to the sensitive school of paternity. ‘Reprimand was unstinted,’ remembered Andro’s sister Alison (‘Sally’). ‘My father never lifted a finger

Wednesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Farewell to the Little Master: we will not see the likes of Sachin Tendulkar again.

As you know, only seven batsmen have scored more than 50,000 first-class runs. Hobbs, Woolley, Hendren, Mead, Grace, Sutcliffe and Hammond are untouchable. We shall not see their like again. The game changes and old records written on parchment are left unmolested, gathering dust. Comparisons between the great players of a single era are troublesome enough; fashioning them between the cricketers of the prelapsarian past and those of today is an exercise easily considered futile. And yet the hunger to do so is a craving that can never be wholly pacified. The 50,000 run mark is an arbitrary figure, for sure, but if you add-up all the runs scored in

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The economy is booming, says the Bank of England. So why won’t it raise rates?

Yet another survey suggests that Britain is booming – this time, it’s from the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee. They’re the guys who kept interest rates too low for too long – creating the last boom. It sees another boom now.”For the first time in a long time you don’t have to be an optimist to see the glass is half full,” said Mark Carney, the new BoE Governor. “The recovery has finally taken hold.” Citi has crunched latest BoE figures (pdf) and says this envisages real GDP growth of a stonking 3.4 per cent next year and 2.8 per cent the year after, which it says is one

Kamal Alam

General Kayani leaves a gulf at the head of the Pakistan army – and Pakistan

Pakistan’s Army chief general, Ashfaq Kayani, has announced that he will retire on 29 November. In doing so, he put an end to the rumours running from D.C. to Delhi about the stability of the region. It is no secret that talk of Afghan settlement and a negotiated pause to the war is contingent on the Pakistan army. Over the last six years as army chief, and previously as ISI Chief and Director-General of Military Operations, General Kayani has been one of the foremost figures in the Afghan War. Western defence chiefs – particularly General Sir David Richards and General Stanley McChrystal – forged extremely close relationships with Kayani. They

David Blackburn

Sir Bruce Keogh denies that he is proposing two tier A&E

Sir Bruce Keogh’s anticipated review into accident and emergency has been published today to a chorus of praise and boos. The Mail describes it as a ‘sticking plaster’. The Independent is cautious. The Guardian is critical. And the Telegraph and the Sun are more positive. Sir Bruce Keogh gave a masterly performance on the Today programme, which may go some way to calming fears in the press. He said that the current system, which was designed in the 70s for the 70s, is unsustainable. At the root of his analysis is the belief that the present system is inefficient because patients have to go to the NHS to receive attention,

Tuesday

Benny Peiser

Global warming isn’t to blame for the disaster in the Philippines

According to news reports, Typhoon Haiyan, which struck the Philippines a few days ago, is now overshadowing the UN climate summit in Warsaw. Some delegates and climate campaigners have been quick to suggest that global warming was to blame for this disaster. Nothing could be further from the truth. When it comes to cyclones and tropical storms, something quite remarkable has happened this year. The 2013 Atlantic hurricane season, which forecasters had predicted would be more active than normal, turned out to be a complete washout. For the first time in 45 years, no major hurricane made landfall. This year has also been marked by the fewest number of hurricanes since

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The Spectator wins the top gong at the 2013 BSME awards

Last night, The Spectator won the top gong from last night’s British Society of Magazine Editors awards. It’s a thrill for us here at 22 Old Queen Street – ours was the last of 24 awards and each of them showed the incredible vitality of the British magazine industry. To win the final gong, in such illustrious company, was a real honour. Newspapers are having a horrid time of it, but magazines are holding up rather better – as was demonstrated by the quality and range of entries last night. The full Condé Nast stable was well-represented, as were the magazine supplements of the national newspapers. There were trade magazines

Alex Massie Alex Massie

When 50,000 Irishmen gathered to commemorate the First World War

As I wrote last week, I had not thought commemorating the centenary of the First World War need be a matter of controversy. But one of the reasons why it is worth doing – and worth doing properly and on a large scale – is that the First World War is complicated. Consider the photograph at the top of this post. It was taken on Armistice Day in 1924. In Dublin. Yes, Dublin. The Union Flag is flown. The National Anthem – ie, God Save the King – is sung. A Celtic Cross is erected on College Green prior to its transportation to France where it would serve as a