Society

Thursday

Olivia Potts

The secrets of sachertorte

My theory is that sachertorte is a victim of its own success. Over the past 150 years, it has become an Austrian icon and, as such, can be found throughout Vienna. And that’s the problem: its ubiquity means that inferior versions abound. It has developed an unfortunate reputation for being dry, dull, tasteless – a pale imitation of a chocolate cake. It is often described – even by its supporters – as a ‘grown-up’ chocolate cake or an ‘elegant’ chocolate cake, but I feel like this does it a disservice. Both feel a little like euphemisms for ‘not that nice’, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. It has

Lucy Vickery

Spectator Competition: Right to reply

For Competition 3421 you were invited to submit a reply from Slough to offset Betjeman’s rude lines on the subject. The poet Ian McMillan got in there first, springing to Slough’s defence in 2005 with ‘Slough Re-visited’: ‘Come friendly words and splash on Slough!/ Celebrate it, here and now/ Describe it with a gasp, a “wow!”/ Of Sweet Berkshire breath’. But perhaps he needn’t have bothered; a year later, on the centenary of his birth, Betjeman’s daughter Candida Lycett-Green apologised for the 1937 poem, saying her father ‘regretted ever having written it’. Commendations go to Paddy Mullin, Joseph McCann and D.A. Prince. The £25 John Lewis vouchers are awarded to

Cheesecracker

2725: Tandemonium?

Eight unclued lights comprise four pairs. Across 1 Doubling my carbon in low country (7) 12    American sanctimonious state at the top (6) 13    Geological fold running nicely round north east of south (8) 15    Treatise outline includes pretentious odds and ends (8) 17    General Secretary holds back brief register on new retailers (12) 18    Ingesta, put another way? (7) 20    Yemen fighting spread by unknown catalyst (6) 21    Extremely deceptive curt tightwad’s failure (6) 22    Biased head of personnel wants skilled worker (8) 29    Marine mammals, not large, catch marine gastropod (3,5) 30    The Spectator objectively embraces wise customs (6) 32    Reliable team at first out of practice (6)

The Spectator

2722: Victim - solution

‘SWEAR’ ( 31D) is uttered thrice by the ghost of King HAMLET (3D) who was the victim of ‘MURDER MOST FOUL’ (37A/34D/9D) where his FRUIT (14A) grew (his orchard). His son, whose tragic friend was OPHELIA (36A), addresses the ghost as ‘OLD MOLE’ (18D). See Hamlet I.v.145-162. First prize Cathy Staveley, London SW15 Runners-up Mick O’Halloran, Floreat, Western Australia; Raymond Wright, Wem, Shropshire

Toby Young

Why I pity the poor eco-zealots

An email popped into my House of Lords inbox last week from Lt Gen. Richard Nugee with the subject line ‘National Emergency Briefing’. Ooh, I thought. That sounds interesting. Will it be about the pitiful state of our armed forces? The threat of war with Russia? The penetration of Britain’s deep state by the Chinese Communist party? Nothing so sexy, unfortunately. The ‘emergency’ in question is our old friend the climate emergency, with the usual suspects being wheeled out in Westminster Central Hall next month to tell us how little time we have left to avert the looming disaster. This seems a little tin-eared. The past 12 months have witnessed

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: Should I leave a tip for my hard-up friend's imaginary daily?

Q. My son’s new girlfriend is really sweet but my husband and I find it annoying how she puts her hand in front of her mouth when she’s eating. A friend has told me that a lot of that generation do it for some reason. Any clever ideas as to how we could stop her, Mary? – Name withheld, Oxfordshire A. Gen Z (aged 13-28) often instinctively cover their mouths when eating for fear of social media consequences if photographed. However, the habit must stop now the girl has entered civilised society. Enlist  a compliant child, aged roughly six, to join you at the table and cover her own mouth

Bruce Anderson

A sip of Israeli history

We were drinking Israeli wine as the talk ranged from frivolity to seriousness: from Donald Trump to the tragic paradoxes of the human condition. Some would claim we were discussing the same topic, yet this may not be the time to disrespect the US President. I once described Ariel Sharon as a bulldozer with a Ferrari engine. It was one of the many tragedies to have afflicted Israel/Palestine that just when he had decided to bulldoze for peace, he should have been stricken with a massive stroke. One reason I love being in Israel is that one is never more than 50 yards from an argument Now a new and

Charles Moore

The government is too concerned for the tender feelings of China

Poor old Hamas, losing all those dead Jews. The BBC reports that Hamas ‘could not locate the remaining hostages’ bodies’, of which there are 28. One can understand the problem. When you have been starving and torturing so many for so long, you may not necessarily remember where you left them when they died. In the words of the Balliol student who called for it this week, you have ‘put the Zios in the ground’. Why do more? Don’t your critics know there is (or was) a war on? Sniping westerners and Zio-sympathisers might wonder why, if Hamas did not know where the bodies were, they still used them as

Emma Park

Britain’s glassmaking tradition is fracturing

We live in a strange era in which much of our day-to-day experience is constructed for us digitally on a screen. Even in the ‘real’ world, many objects that inhabit our homes will have been designed on a screen, made by computerised machines, and have that flat, wobble-free digital aesthetic – not only electronics, but furniture, tableware, toys, clothes and books. It is probably impossible to resist this digital colonisation of our physical space altogether but, in some cases, there is an antidote: choosing objects that have been designed and made by hand, or by tools intended to assist humans rather than replace them. I am not talking about fine

Dot Wordsworth

What's in a place name?

‘Oh, no!’ cried my husband from the other room in the tones of one who has upset the goldfish bowl on to a rare book. I rushed in, despite previous experience, and found the problem was that the BBC had just referred to ‘Princess Catherine’. To take his mind off it, I told him about Bedfordshire putting its foot down on the spelling of one of its villages. In future, when a road sign needs replacing, it will refer to Yelden – not Yielden or even Yieldon. There had been an attempt to resolve the uncertainty in 1998 when villagers were asked what they thought the village was called. Thirty

Peter Jones

What did the ancients consider a 'just war'?

Since the UN does not provide a definition of the ‘just war’, it is interesting to see the ancient take on the matter. The Greeks contributed little. For Plato, war was necessary for the creation and survival of the city, but it was not its ultimate purpose: that was peace. For Aristotle, life consisted of three arenas of activity: war for the sake of peace, work for the sake of leisure, and necessary and useful activities to demonstrate one’s worth. But Cicero (d. 43 bc) understood war in ways that have shaped our own understanding. His starting point was that there were two ways of settling an issue: by discussion,

Rod Liddle

The ECHR will never be reformed

It is more than nine years since I was suspended by the Labour party for – I think – a comment I made about Palestine. I had written: ‘If you handed over Israel to the Palestinians they would turn it into Somalia before you could say Yom Kippur.’ I remember having worried about the sentence a little – not because of its meaning, but because I wasn’t sure that ‘Yom Kippur’ was quite right in that context. I thought, and still do, that ‘Allahu akbar!’ might be better, but there we are. Anyway it was either that or a following sentence where I wrote: ‘For many Muslims the anti-Semitism is

Gyles Brandreth

The day ‘Hitler’ was captured in Tottenham

Given the way the world is right now, I am avoiding it in the main. For the sake of my mental wellbeing, I require less bad news and more fun company. Just as George V collected postage stamps and Rod Stewart collects toy trains, I have been collecting theatrical dames since the beginning of the 1970s when I first worked with Dame Peggy Ashcroft. It’s an odd hobby, but it has proved hugely rewarding. From Dame Flora Robson (who gave me a very useful book on window boxes when I bought my first flat) to Dame Joan Plowright (who bequeathed me her husband Laurence Olivier’s favourite sun hat, which I’ve

Wednesday

Alexander Larman

What’s the point of remaking Amadeus?

At the close of Milos Forman’s Oscar-winning film, Amadeus, the central character, the terminally envious court composer Salieri, declares: ‘I speak for all mediocrities in the world. I am their champion. I am their patron saint.’ It’s one of the many memorable lines in the film, adapted from Peter Shaffer’s play, which revolves around the relationship between the decorous, respectable, well-connected Salieri and Mozart, who is portrayed as a near-insufferable upstart who has been given – unfathomably, in Salieri’s eyes – a musical talent that dwarfs everyone around him, not least the older man. There is every chance that Amadeus will be rubbish, a classic cheapened by identity politics and made

Robert Colvile

Thatcherism shows where Britain went wrong – and how it can go right

It is a hundred years since Margaret Thatcher was born. Fifty years since she took over the Conservative Party. Thirty-four years since she was forced from office. Today’s voters are Thatcher’s grandchildren – even great-grandchildren. So why do we still care? Thatcher warned that the great temptation in politics was to ‘lose sight of the eternal truths and choose the popular, quick fix’ The last couple of weeks have seen a parade of Thatcher-philia. At Conservative Party Conference there were Thatcher portraits, a Thatcher mosaic, even an exhibition of her dresses. There have been cardboard cutouts, a gala dinner at the Guildhall in her honour, even an AI Thatcher-bot. No

Alexander Larman

No, Meghan: your Netflix deal isn't a sign of 'strength'

The Duchess of Sussex has been largely absent from the public eye since the release of the second series of With Love, Meghan, which came and went without anyone – save sarcastic journalists – bothering to pay it much attention. However, Meghan Markle is nothing if not indomitable. And so, shortly after she and her husband were honoured as the Humanitarians of the Year in New York last week, Meghan has argued that her new, reduced deal with Netflix is not a reflection of her waning commercial appeal, but instead represented a sign of strength. Really? Meghan argued that her new, reduced deal with Netflix is not a reflection of

Andrew Tettenborn

Human rights busybodies should keep out of the trans toilet row

The problems with the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and the bureaucracy behind it aren’t limited to the spanners they push into the wheels of immigration enforcement. They also now appear to be meddling over hard-won sex-based rights. A letter from the Council of Europe’s Human Rights Commissioner, Michael O’Flaherty, is likely to be seized upon by the trans lobby to further their cause. An urgent ECHR exit just became a great deal more plausible – and rightly so The missive suggests that any serious government effort to implement the landmark ‘For Women Scotland’ Supreme Court ruling – which held that the legal definition of ‘woman’ in the Equality

Jimmy Nicholls

Trigger warnings don’t work

As trigger warnings became fashionable over the last decade, many argued that they were artistically stifling, patronising, and even redundant given the fame of many of the works targeted. But it turns out there is a simpler objection: trigger warnings don’t work. Amazon branded the Bond franchise with a range of cautionary messages That is the finding of a recent study from Australia, which argues that the advisories are worse than useless. Not only did the authors find that a trigger warning failed to persuade 90 per cent of participants to consistently avoid potentially traumatic content on social media, in some cases it may have actually piqued their interest –

Chas Newkey-Burden

Strava is ruining running

When I first started running 25 years ago, it was the simplicity that captured my heart. There were no complicated techniques to master, no ghastly membership fees or extortionate equipment to shell out on. You just needed to buy a pair of shoes, get out there in the fresh air and put one foot in front of another, more swiftly than usual. Strava is basically a cult In return for this modest outlay and effort, you were treated to an avalanche of physical and emotional health benefits. As you ran, you could truly live in the moment, bask in the solitude and enjoy the connection with nature. It felt like