Society

Thursday

Tanya Gold

‘The food is not the point here’: Carbone reviewed

People say that Carbone is Jay Gatsby’s restaurant – Gatsby being the metaphor for moneyed doomed youth – but it is something more awful and, because people are asleep, no London restaurant has been this fashionable since the Chiltern Firehouse a decade ago. It lives in the basement of the former American embassy in Grosvenor Square, which is now the Chancery Rosewood Hotel. I thought this building would smell of fear, of why-can’t-I-have-a-visa-please? The truth is that it does, but that fear is now a commodity: you can be the person saying no-visa-for-you. (‘Uniquely yours,’ says the advertising copy. It means it.) And now, if you are rich enough, you

Dot Wordsworth

What makes money ‘short’?

I heard on the wireless a reference to the growing number of small political parties getting funds from short money. I’m afraid I let it slide past me as one of the many things about money that I don’t understand. Short is an extremely productive element in English vocabulary. Shorthaul journeys preceded by decades the invention of aeroplanes. The unlikely-sounding shorthorn carrots have been with us since the 1830s. The lightweight Americans favour short hundredweights, which are only 100lb instead of the Imperial and godly 112lb; worse, their standard ton is consequently a short ton of 2,000lb, a long way off the metric tonne, to which British tons approximate. The

Philip Womack

How the hyphen turned political

When Buckingham Palace announced that its errant prince, Andrew, would be known as boring old Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, some surprise arose at the initial omission of the hyphen from his surname. The hyphen is, unlike King Lear’s whoreson zed, a necessary thing; without it, names float, unmoored, unsure whether they are attached to first name or surname. The hyphen, despite Lord Tennyson’s ‘idiotic’ hatred of them in his younger years, is a bringer of joy. It joins disparate parts, meaning, as it does, ‘under one’, from the Greek ‘huph’ hen’. It is the most comforting of punctuation marks, despite its ephemerality, slipping, fawn-like, in and out of usage. Who now

Lloyd Evans

The art of having no friends

Apparently it’s easy to make money on YouTube by teaching a course in your specialism. Mine is having no friends. And I share my aversion to humanity with a number of very distinguished names. Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Emily Dickinson and Howard Hughes were all solitary creatures who didn’t allow social frippery to dilute the focus of their ambitions.  Psychologists tell me I have ‘autism’, which is promoted so widely in our society that we ought to call it ‘taughtism’. But I take issue with these experts. I don’t believe I have a neurological disorder. And I’m not some crazy hermit who lives in a cave or a ditch. I

Luke McShane

Fide World Cup

The biennial Fide World Cup underway in Goa is a feast for chess fans. Lasting nearly a month, more than 200 participants are whittled down to a single winner through a series of knockout matches, starting with two games of classical chess, followed by rapid and blitz tiebreaks if necessary. Stakes are high, with a $2 million prize fund, and the top three finishers qualifying for the prestigious Candidates tournament (to be held in Cyprus in the spring), whose winner will challenge for the world championship.    The game below was an early highlight. The queen sacrifice is not new, and Harikrishna was probably aware that computer evaluations slightly favour

Melissa Kite

Why is Westminster Cathedral leaving Jesus in the dark?

Sitting beneath the looming darkness of the unfinished ceiling of Westminster Cathedral, I found myself praying. I didn’t even know why, but I was walking past during a trip to London and I decided to go in, and I sat down, and then a priest came and began to say mass so I stayed, not knowing what was about to happen back in Ireland to the builder boyfriend, and not having any real feeling that you could call premonition – unless you count an overwhelming urge to be sitting in a cathedral praying, when I have passed there many times on similar trips and never once gone in. It was

Luke McShane

No. 877

Donchenko-Liem, Fide World Cup, Goa 2025. Donchenko’s next move forced a decisive material gain. What did he play? Email answers to chess@spectator.co.uk by Monday 24 November. 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 Bf7+!! After 1… Kxf7 2 fxe3 the queen was lost and White won. No better is 1…Qxf7 2 Qxe5+ or 1…Ke7 2 fxe3 Qd6 3 Rad1 etc. Last week’s winner Tim Nixon, Heptonstall, West Yorkshire

Charlie Brooks

Only the Tote can save British racing 

For the past 30 years Robin Oakley has taken you through the front door of the horse-racing world and kept you in the best of company. There’s not a chance of me lasting that long, and more often than not when I try to shine a light on the sport’s brilliant mix of heroes, narcissists and geniuses it will be via the back door. Alex Frost falls firmly into the genius category, so I went to see him in London last week – and I arrived bang out of sorts. My Oura Ring informed me that I had 26 low blood oxygen incidents during the night and my sleep apnea

Victoria Lane

Spectator Competition: Here and there

Comp. 3426 was inspired by Stephen Vincent Benét’s 1927 poem ‘American Names’ (see Charles Moore’s Notes, 1 November): I have fallen in love with American names, The sharp names that never get fat, The snakeskin-titles of mining-claims, The plumed war-bonnet of Medicine Hat, Tucson and Deadwood and Lost Mule Flat.     You were invited to submit poems to do with place names. It was hard to whittle down the very good entries (too many runners-up to single any out) though certain places kept cropping up so I tried to avoid too much repetition. The £25 vouchers go to the following. Morning! After downing booze, Have a fryup, come the dawn

Janet de Botton

Bridge

I first met Susanna in 1987 when Ed Victor, the late literary agent, invited both of us for lunch at the recently opened River Café. It was love at first sight as she chatted hilariously about her up-and-coming blind date with a rather well-known politician and people we knew, all of whom had something in common: they played bridge. Ed and his wife Carol had been taking lessons and were properly hooked. It was typical of Susanna’s generosity that she frequently played with them, not minding at all that they were newbies and she was already a very good player. She asked me if I played and I told her

Doc

2730: Herrlines

The unclued lights, (when taken as an individual, three pairs and one trio), are of a kind, verifiable in Chambers (13th edition). Across 10    Father Gold froze thematically (4) 12    Awkward bra stealer can be nicked (10) 14    An indefinitely large number of alcaics – not odd! (3) 15    OK turning west, pulled along and grovelled (8) 19    Two journalists admitting half the article has been blue-pencilled (6) 22    Anger cut short in pursuit of peace (6) 24    Australia’s Khawaja is chap from the States (5) 26    Metal ring for Jamaican musicians (5,4) 27    Cutting grass and tidying up after start of summer (9) 29    In France it is a

Michael Simmons

The greatest threat to the economy? The Employment Rights Bill

On Monday night, former England manager Gareth Southgate joined MPs and philanthropists for an event in Westminster described as ‘the Oscars of the charity world’. Cabinet ministers Lisa Nandy and Bridget Phillipson joined the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) in handing out prizes to five charities that help those who fall through the cracks. Across the winners, a single theme stood out: the transformative power of a good job. But Britain is running out of those jobs. Vacancies are falling, unemployment has risen to 5 per cent, while a deeper crisis sits beneath both: nine million working age people are economically inactive, including more than four million on out-of-work benefits

The Spectator

2727: On track - solution

The unclued lights are F1 RACE TRACKS which include the pairs at 15 & 16 and 36 & 26. First prize Christine Rees, Cowlinge, Suffolk Runners-up Dorothy Mulvenna, Bay Horse, Lancaster; Richard Lawn, Coventry

Rod Liddle

It’s not Starmer’s fault that everyone loathes him

Finding someone who ‘likes’ Sir Keir Starmer is a terribly enervating quest, and I have given up on it without success. It is true that I have not contacted Sir Keir’s close family members, or indeed canvassed inside the walls of Broadmoor hospital, so it may be that some tiny reservoirs of affection remain. Less reservoirs than sumps, really. But the generality is that people seem to loathe him – the responses I get when I accost people in the street and say, ‘What do you think of Sir Keir Starmer?’ are largely unprintable, except in London, where for some reason the most common reply is to invoke the name

The Spectator

It’s not science if you can’t question it

Follow the Science. The Science is settled. Two phrases which invoke the power of open inquiry to close down open inquiry. Science is not a body of unalterable doctrine, a chapter of revealed truths. Science is a method. It is a means of arriving at the best possible explanation of phenomena through thesis, testing, observation and revision. Science depends on a culture of doubt, as one of the greatest scientists of the last century, Richard Feynman, continually argued. Its conclusions, by definition, are provisional models which are subject to future revision as new data and better explanations arrive. The story of science is a chronicle of old models being superseded

Richard Dearlove

Britain’s national security must not be sacrificed to net zero

Those who, like myself, experienced life behind the Iron Curtain understand instinctively that centrally planned economies beholden to an ideology do not bring benefit to the majority of the population on whom they are imposed. A few top-level individuals prosper, but the citizen finds himself and his aspirations crushed by the diktats of central government. The state itself is similarly confined by a set of ideas which are presented as self-evident truths which constrain its policy–making and exclude challenge. That Iron Curtain model describes pretty accurately the UK’s energy policy, driven as it is by the ideological pursuit of net zero and the diktats required to implement it. Thus: I

Charles Moore

What my pyjamas taught me about China

About seven years ago, I bought two pairs of pyjamas, one British, the other Chinese. At the time, they seemed of roughly similar quality, the important difference being that the Chinese ones were half the price of the British. Given that they have the same ‘lived experience’, I can make a direct comparison. The British ones, by Peter Christian (‘gentlemen’s outfitters’ accompanied by an image of two hares boxing), show few signs of the passing years. Their reddish colour with green and yellow stripes holds fast. There is very little wear and no tear at all. The Chinese pair (labelled ‘sleepwear’) tells a different story – the drawstring disappeared, the

Peter Jones

Aristophanes would have loved Zohran Mamdani

Mr Zohran Mamdani, the 34-year-old elected mayor of New York, who has described the police as ‘racist, anti-queer and a major threat to public safety’, says that his top policy priority is implementing free universal childcare, taxing the wealthy, freezing rents, running buses for free and heaven knows what else. How very Marxist! The Greek comic writer Aristophanes (d. c. 386 bc) would have loved it. It was he who invented communism, after all, and had his audience in hysterics. His comedy Ecclesiazusae (‘Women Running the Assembly’) was produced in Athens in 391 bc. The women of Athens decide to seize power for themselves. They disguise themselves as men, enter

Anthony Seldon

I regret my intolerance over Brexit

Cannabis smoke lingering along the sidewalks of Washington D.C. was the most palpable fruit of liberty since my last visit to the US capital. I’m in town to give a talk at Britain’s dazzling Lutyens Residence about the evergreen ‘special relationship’ ahead of the US’s 250th anniversary next July. Acting ambassador James Roscoe has stepped up with aplomb to fill Peter Mandelson’s big shoes, aided by his renaissance wife, the musician, author and broadcaster Clemency Burton-Hill. America’s anniversary will fall on the watch of its 47th President. The Republic’s first four incumbents, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, inspired by some of the greatest minds of their

Wednesday

Philip Patrick

Scotland’s win showed the beauty of international football

Scotland have qualified for the World Cup for the first time in 28 years. I can hardly believe that I have just written that sentence, so fantastical did this eventuality appear at times, and how specialised in failure Scotland’s once proud national team had become. But it is true. I’ve checked the score, and pinched myself several times.  We beat Denmark 4-2 last night (the classic World Cup scoreline) in what may well be the greatest Scotland international match ever played. As someone who was there in France 10,000 days ago the last time we qualified, it was a euphoric occasion and one that underscored that the true heart of