Spectator Life

So, the Met Gala has rolled around again, with the predictability of death, taxes and the knowledge that some of the world’s most tedious celebrities will be photographed wearing some frankly bizarre outfits. As with the Oscars, the gala is a display of how deeply unfair it is to be a woman at these events. Men turn up, traditionally, in inoffensive displays of black tie, although this year’s theme of ‘costume art’ saw Colman Domingo appear in what looked like a Wetherspoons carpet and the 32-year-old Bad Bunny decided to anticipate old age by dressing like a man in his late seventies, complete with silver hair and grandfather make-up. God knows why.

This week has seen Prince William and Catherine Middleton celebrate 15 years of marriage, with the occasion marked by a suitably heartwarming family photograph of them and their children on holiday in Cornwall. Theirs has been a union that has generally received a good press, bar the odd salacious rumour about what William gets up to in Norfolk and near-constant speculation about Kate’s weight and appearance. However, her revelation two years ago that she was suffering from cancer led to a wave of public sympathy that has suggested that she, not Meghan, is the true heir to the compassionate, grounded legacy of Princess Diana.   If only the same might be said of the rest of her family.

To my mind, there can be few more perfect games than backgammon. Equally at home in an Iraqi teashop or played atop a fur in a plutocrat’s ski chalet, it is a game punctuated with bitter glares, bemused chuckles, and outrageous reversals of fortune. For those not yet initiated, the aim is to race all your men (pieces) to your home section and off the board first, avoiding their being knocked off the board and sent back to the beginning, while delaying your opponent’s men as much as possible. It blends luck and skill, and is at times infuriating, but always fun.  The name we know dates to 1635, but it has been played under other names and variants for at least 1600 years – 5000 if you think The Royal Game of Ur is close enough.

In recent years it’s become a hackneyed truism that Nordic nations have found the key to happiness. The Danes, who often take first place in global rankings for mental wellbeing, pride themselves on hygge, that feeling of cosiness evoked by wrapping oneself in blankets and being surrounded by candles. The Swedes promote lagom, the concept of the optimal medium. And while the Finns also appear to be satisfied with their lot – Finland came first in this year’s World Happiness Report for the ninth time in a row – they have no well-known term that encapsulates their attitude to life. In the spirit of Nordic oneupmanship, however, that could be about to change.

A farmer in Derbyshire is going to make his cows uglier to try to deter  modern agricultural impostors. These impostors are neither foxes nor badgers but social media influencers who keep showing up to film content with his animals.   They arrive in waves. On one occasion, dozens surrounded Alex Birch’s herd at the edge of a field. Another time, a yoga teacher unfurled her mat and filmed a class beside the cows, as though they were props in a bucolic stage set. Wearied by the intrusion, Birch now speaks of crossbreeding his Highland cows to make them ‘less photogenic’.

Bullfighting season in Spain began earlier this week at Seville’s huge annual fair, known as the Feria de Abril. A couple of days before the fair began, at a corrida de toros (‘running of bulls’, translated into English as ‘bullfight’) in the Andalusian capital’s beautiful 18th-century bullring, one of the country’s best-known bullfighters (toreros) was badly gored in the rectum. The reaction from anti-bullfighters, pouring out on social media and in comment threads, was entirely predictable: he deserved it.   This sort of hateful, knee-jerk reaction to bullfighting can be ignored as the ranting of morons.

Is any tourist attraction on earth really worth enduring a madding crowd to see? My mother, denied international travel for half her life by the Soviet state, made up for this deprivation by becoming the world’s most fanatically rigorous tourist. A major site left unseen or portion of a museum unexamined was, to her, as morally repugnant as leaving food on the plate or abandoning a book half-way through.   I, spoiled frequent flyer that I am, find crowds the ultimate holiday buzz-killer. Nowhere is this more true than in Rome, which clocked a record 52.92 million overnight visitors for the Papal Jubilee year of 2025 and, according to pre-bookings tracked by the local tourist board, is expecting even more tourists this summer.

‘Citrus marmalade?’ Well, that’s a tautology, if ever I’ve heard one. I’ve been making marmalade for a long time and written about it extensively. I wouldn’t quite paint myself as a marmalade obsessive (I’ve met them, and I know that I cannot literally or figuratively compete), but I’m certainly a marmalade fangirl. They line my cupboards and are a breakfast non-negotiable. I seek out unusual citrus fruit, and pore over old preserve cookery books. January is officially marmalade-making season in our house and, for the full month, every window is steamed up, every surface is slightly tacky from over-zealous jarring.

‘It won’t last,’ my schoolfriend Albert told me, as we staggered down Embankment one summer evening in 2018, a few pints into his birthday pub crawl. I wasn’t sure as to what he was referring. The evening twilight? His youthful good looks? Our ability to walk in a straight line? He expanded: ‘Harry and Meghan. She’s not right for him. They’ll be divorced within five years. Just you wait.’ Then he burped. I was surprised by Albert’s comments. I, like tens of millions of other viewers, had been taken in by the royal wedding weeks before. Yes, the presence of Oprah Winfrey and an over-enthusiastic American preacher had been a little gauche.

When I was a child, I always wanted to watch television during supper, but my dad wasn’t keen. He preferred family conversation and as we chatted over a meal he would try to gently steer us towards more pleasant subjects rather than the vulgar or provocative topics I tended to propose. ‘A meal is a sacred thing,’ he’d tell me.  I spent my secondary education at a bizarre school run by a quasi-Vedic cult, where table manners were also important. Before lunch, we chanted a Sanskrit mantra. The organic vegetarian food was to be offered, not grabbed. We sat upright, our backs as straight as any Himalayan yogi. We were told not to eat more than we needed. Naturally, I sneered at much of this as angrily as any teenage Clash fan would.

First things first, as this is an article about toilets, we need to establish if the word ‘toilet’ is an acceptable word. Here at The Spectator, editorial opinion on this crucial point is deeply divided. Some have expressed a preference for ‘bog’. Others opt for 'john', 'jakes', or lavatory.

Over ten years ago years ago, I made the transition from auction house ‘expert’ to antiques dealer. And it came as a rude shock. Nothing like a healthy dose of comeuppance; deference vanished overnight.   Auction houses are open to the public for consultation, even the grander ones in London’s West End; or that is how it was in the early 2000s. Back then, anyone could turn up (without an appointment) and ring a buzzer on the front counter. And, as an auction specialist, you played the part. Keep ‘em waiting for ten minutes, then a star-like descent down to reception, where a forelock-tugging hopeful awaited with Tesco bag and fake Fabergé frog in ‘resin’ — a useful auction house term to describe plastic.

At long last, hardback books, it seems, are finally drifting into, if not obsolescence, then at least abeyance. It turns out that punters are chary of buying hefty tomes, and so publishers are considering putting books out in paperback first. For once, this is a literary development that I will be applauding.  For centuries, hardback books were the only thing you could buy. In the 1920s, it was impossible to stroll along with a paperback of Woolf’s To the Lighthouse in your pocket to impress the ladies, since paperbacks of that sort did not exist. They are a relatively new beast on the literary scene. It was Allen Lane who brought the sixpenny paperback into the world in the 1930s, a feat for which he should be lauded, on a par with Alexander Fleming.

Dear old Coutts, the private bank used by the King, now requires clients to have £3 million in the kitty before they deign to allow you to open an account. The £3 million minimum deposit is the biggest single jump of the bank’s wealth test in its illustrious 333-year history, designed to attract ‘ultra-high-net-worth individuals’ apparently. Whoever they are, I am not one of them.   I had an account at Coutts opened for me by my mother when I was 15 at a small, rather cosy little branch it used to have on the corner of Sloane Street and Cadogan Square.  As I went in and out, I got to know the cashiers who greeted me by name, which made me feel I’d really arrived, although where I wasn’t quite sure.

When we think of the Renaissance, our minds naturally drift to figures such as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo – and rightly so. These are individuals who transformed our understanding of art, science and human potential. What we tend not to consider, however, is how close we might be to another cultural revolution.  That is the argument now circulating on parts of the internet: that after a prolonged period of digital saturation – defined by algorithms, passive consumption and an overabundance of content – we are approaching a point of correction. Just as the original Renaissance followed a period of stagnation and upheaval, this new phase will be marked by a renewed emphasis on creativity, craft and intellectual depth.

You set off on a spring morning, windows down, full of hope. Sunglasses, flasks of tea and a picnic rug are packed. You are ready to experience the freedom of the road, leave your worries in the rear-view mirror, put pedal to the metal (and every other optimistic road trip cliché). Follow the brown signs to the Pembrokeshire Coast 200, South West 660, Wales Way, Antrim Coast Road or any of the other curated, promoted and hash-tagged routes now crisscrossing the UK.

After three years of theatrical um-ing and ah-ing, the Prince and Princess of Wales have seemingly acceded to the obvious: Prince George is apparently going to Eton. Despite their perennial posturing at being a ‘modern’ royal family (is there such a thing?) there was really only one option. Eton is after all – somewhat paradoxically – the only place capable of offering any semblance of a normal adolescence for George, as well as mentally preparing him for kingship. To an outsider, this sounds ridiculous. How can prancing around in tailcoats while speaking unique slang (teachers are ‘beaks’; Year 9 is ‘F Block’) have any bearing on normalcy? Yet normal is relative. One of the first things you realise at Eton is that the exceptional is unexceptional.

Last week I dreamt I was a cowboy. My name was Billy ‘Toothpick’ Pickett, and I was the fastest pistolero east of Whiskey Row. I dreamt of robbing stagecoaches. I dreamt of playing three-card monte with Toothless Dan down by Granite Creek. I dreamt of owning a Smith & Wesson and shooting buffalo. I dreamt of riding a buckskin stallion named Tex. I dreamt of vintage Americana. And then I woke up.  This was the third cowboy dream in a fortnight. Once again, I had fallen asleep watching videos of cowboys on Instagram and paid the price. For months, my algorithm has been inundated with visions of a neo-Wild West. Videos of Monument Valley and the sandstone rocks of Utah. Young men with mullets camping in the Sierra Nevada.