Spectator Life

Being in possession of a well-kept secret is every wine-buyer’s goal, not least because uncorking an unusual find impresses even the snootiest of guests. English wine-makers have long been trying to break up any residual secrecy about the worthiness of their wines. Not quite new world, not quite old world, English wine was always going to fill an odd space in the market.  Confession: I never buy wine from the British isles. Almost anything else has always struck me as both better value and nicer to drink. And then I met Matt Hodgson. Hodgson runs Grape Britannia, a modest but expert shop and bar in Cambridge that sells only English wine (plus some Welsh and one from the Scottish borders).

Even if you don’t like Christmas, it’s hard to deny that Christmas dinner is one of the best meals of the year. But for Parisians in 1870, the Christmas meal took an unexpected and macabre turn. While we may think of Paris as being the city of light, good food and fine wine, it’s also the city that once produced a Christmas Day menu of stuffed donkey head, elephant consommé and roasted camel – all courtesy of the Jardin des Plantes zoo. In the late stages of the Franco-Prussian war, Paris found itself surrounded by enemy forces. The Germans aligned themselves with Prussia with a plan to bombard and starve Parisians into submission. All supplies to the city were cut off, meaning there was no meat, fresh vegetables, butter, milk or cheese to be found.

On Christmas Day 1942, the German battlecruiser Scharnhorst, along with five destroyers, left its Norwegian base and headed for a series of Arctic convoys, the British fleets transporting material and support to the Soviets. The townclass cruiser HMS Belfast, used to escort the convoys through some of the most dangerous seas in the world, played a vital role in the Royal Navy’s clever game of bait-and-blast that resulted in the destruction of the Scharnhorst, a monster that had already sunk a British carrier and two destroyers. Belfast, the most powerful cruiser in the Navy at her relaunch in 1942 (she hit a mine in 1939 and needed three years of repairs), now sits in the Thames by City Hall, a visitor attraction operated by Imperial War Museums.

Today, shortly before 3 p.m., there will be a collective heave as backsides – weighed down from turkey and roast potatoes – are prised from dining chairs and plonked on to sofas to tune into the King’s speech. So I very much hope. For the royal Christmas broadcast is important, and this year’s of course marks a new era. This afternoon our televisions will bring us not only the first Christmas message from the new King, but indeed the first from any King. For while the tradition of the Christmas message began in 1932 under King George V, the first Christmas broadcast to be televised was not until 1957, and that of course was by Queen Elizabeth II.

Many of the elements of the Christmas spread have more detractors than admirers. Turkey can seem an undistinguished bird thrust into an undeserved limelight: bland and unwieldy, it’s a far cry from a rich goose or even a regular, moist chicken. Carrots and parsnips – uninspiring. Bread sauce resembles the gruel ladled out to Oliver Twist. Christmas pudding – dense and gluey. And Brussels sprouts, well, enough said. Every year, Christmas dinner-haters crawl out of the woodwork to air their disgust at the traditional meal and find themselves given a surprisingly sympathetic hearing. A 2020 YouGov poll indicated that only around half of us, for example, consider turkey part of our ideal Christmas dinner (it hardly needs saying that for Gen Z the figure is even lower).

The Randox Grand National at Aintree is more than three months away but I can’t resist a couple of bets on the race now. At this stage, it is important to bet on a horse that is being targeted at the race but that will not go up in the ratings/weights significantly between now and the spring, thereby hampering its chances of winning. You also need a strong stayer and a sound jumper, ideally one that has run well over the Aintree fences before. Like all antepost bets, it’s best to have a horse too that is not ground dependent so it can handle whatever the going is on the day. Lucinda Russell knows what it takes to train a Grand National winner having done just that with One For Arthur in 2017.

Why is Jeremy Clarkson in trouble so often? Is it because he often appears arrogant, entitled or untouchable? Or is it for a much simpler reason: he’s called Jeremy? This week, in a column for the Sun, he suggested a rather unsavoury Game of Thrones-style punishment for the Duchess of Sussex. The article prompted 20,000 complaints to Ipso – more than the press regulator received in the whole of last year – and led to 64 MPs signing a letter of complaint to the paper’s editor. Clarkson has made a grudging non-apology and persuaded the paper to remove the article from its website, but unsurprisingly this is unlikely to satisfy the lynch mob already digging out those pitchforks ready to march on his well-publicised farm.

Claire Keegan’s Booker-shortlisted Small Things Like These this year revived the tradition of Christmas short fiction. It’s a deftly done parable about cruelty and kindness in the run-up to Christmas, with actual snow – and tears.   Although Keegan’s novella eventually lost out to Shehan Karunatilaka for the Booker, it perhaps served a greater purpose than prizes: it was a reminder of the value of stories that connect us with our humanity, particularly around this time of year.  It was also a reminder that cultural consumption at Christmas needn’t merely be about overloading on films.

The email landed in my inbox one afternoon, as I frantically sandwiched work in between feeding the dog and doing the school run, its subject saying: ‘A quick reminder for you, Antonia Hoyle.’ Oh God, what now? Had I forgotten to pay a bill? Missed a deadline? It was worse. I hadn’t left a review for a company I’d purchased skincare supplements from – and six days after their initial request, they sounded disappointed, adding reproachfully: ‘We would like to remind you that writing a review of your experience will help us improve our customer satisfaction.

When you’re sitting on the sofa in the week ahead, stupefied into submission by food and alcohol and relatives and God knows what else, you’ll be tempted to watch something that will divert you from the gluttony. And, yes, the likes of Elf, It’s A Wonderful Life and Love Actually are all available, as they were last year. But maybe you’ll want to watch something that is not just entertaining but that makes the viewer think. Something that also has a provocative religious theme that is, if not quite the three wise men and the star of Bethlehem, as relevant this time of year as it ever is. Step forward the third series of His Dark Materials, all eight episodes of which became available on BBC iPlayer last night.

For an industry so dependent on glitz and glamour, the West End has never quite mastered the celebrity debut. While big names might be a surefire way of shifting tickets, they have an unfortunate knack for ending up in mediocre plays – even when they’re as famous as Madonna. The problem is partly structural. A-listers aren’t exactly cheap, and their schedules are notoriously tight. Faced with those constraints, theatreland has developed an unfortunate habit of putting box office names – John Malkovich, Damian Lewis, even Lindsay Lohan – into derivative three-handers by David Mamet. They might be easy to make, but they rarely deliver. But are the days of celebrity mediocrity finally over?

The likeable Joe Tizzard was a talented jockey and he is proving equally adept as a trainer. His father, Colin Tizzard, retired at the end of last season after a hugely successful training career so this is Tizzard Jnr’s first season with only his name on the licence. Tizzard has already trained 32 winners this season, with an admirable 17 per cent first-past-the-post strike rate. However, he would love a big-race winner over the Christmas period to boost his CV and he has a couple of good chances of doing just that. ELDORADO ALLEN is a relatively lightly-raced eight-year-old gelding who has run some big races over the past two seasons, including winning the Grade 2 Betfair Denman Chase at Newbury in February.