Spectator Life | The Spectator

The story of architecture in 100 buildings

One recent estimate claims there are 4.732 billion buildings on Earth, but it’s difficult to establish a credible methodology to count them. Is Manhattan’s Rockefeller Center, created out of swaggering pride and ambition, in the same category as a shanty hut in an Algerian bidonville? Unless you live in a desert, buildings are unavoidable, making architecture not just a necessity for survival but the art form most pregnant with meaning. When I was a boy I wanted to be an architect. Not because I was interested in drain schedules, load paths, wrangling with local authorities or designing kitchen extensions but because architecture seemed the most powerful expression of style. We know and judge cultures by their monuments, not their facility for credit default swaps.

23 November 2022

Alec Marsh

The lost art of the bow tie

Whatever you think about Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab – whether you think he’s bully or a tomato-thrower, and whether you couldn’t care less if he is or isn’t – there is something you ought to know about him. Apparently, he can’t do up a bow tie. That’s according to the Financial Times journalist Sebastian Payne and his forthcoming book about the last days of Boris Johnson’s government. He tells the story of Raab arriving to counsel the Prime Minister during his last hours in Downing Street, dressed in white tie. ‘Raab awkwardly told Number 10 staffers he had to attend a white-tie dinner at the Mansion House in the City of London that evening, but required assistance with the outfit. An attendant was found with the skills to fix his bow tie.

Alex Barton

The environmental cost of vaping

A few months ago I wrote a piece for The Spectator about the surge in popularity of Elf Bars and the potential health risks of these colourful e-cigarettes. But disposable vapes are now posing a different kind of problem – for the planet. These single-use devices, which last for around 600 puffs, head straight to landfill after users suck out their smoke. The vapes which don’t make it to the dump can be found lining the gutters of our cities, having been cast aside. In Britain an estimated 4.3 million people use vapes today, up from around 800,000 a decade ago, according to YouGov data.

22 November 2022

Julie Burchill

In praise of straightforward men

When the Queen’s granddaughter Zara Phillips married the rugby player Mike Tindall in 2011, the shallower among us wondered what she saw in him. We’re not wondering now. Watching the monstrous regiment of muppets and divas competing in the latest series of ITV's I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! and seeing Tindall's equable nature – highlighted by the incompetent creative men who surround him, be they pop stars, actors or alleged comedians – makes it clear that the uncomplicated man is the smart woman’s choice. Tindall seems tremendously capable – an overlooked virtue in a romantic partner, and one that comes to the fore during the hard times.

Robert Jackman

Which appliances are pushing up your energy bills?

With the Chancellor confirming that the energy price cap will rise in April, it seems we won’t be taking our eye off our electricity usage any time soon. But while energy saving tips have become a staple of breakfast television shows and small talk, how many of them really add up in practice? The Spectator’s data team has crunched the numbers to see what typical household devices actually cost to run. And the answers are quite surprising. Perhaps you’ve heard the warnings over the past weeks of so-called ‘vampire devices’ – those pesky contraptions which carry on costing you money when you’re not actually using them. You may even be among the almost half Britons who say they’re already making an effort to switch off their gadgets at the plug for that reason.

21 November 2022

John Sturgis

The curious case of the Asian Maradona

When England line up against Iran in Doha today, the VIP seats should be studded with former players from both sides. But one who almost certainly won’t be present is a player with a solid claim to having been the greatest Iranian footballer in history. Because Ali Karimi is a wanted man. The 44-year-old is hugely influential in Iran – he has 13 million social media followers there. But he has positioned himself as such an overt critic of the country’s regime that he’s now living in exile, threatened with arrest – and worse – should he return to or be forcibly taken back to Iran.

John Sturgis

How to spend a long weekend on Cyprus

At breakfast time we were contemplating the catering options at Gatwick. The 1,406 calorie fry-up at Wetherspoonswas £12.99, pint of lager optional – with only a half-hour wait for a table. By lunch we were looking down at the birthplace of Aphrodite, eating grilled sea bream and sipping a chilled Xynisteri white. Petra tou Romiou is located both in myth, as the birthplace of the Greek goddess of love, and also in reality, just off the dual carriageway that links Paphos and Limassol in the southwestern corner of Cyprus. Her birthplace isn’t quite the dainty scallop shell depicted by Botticelli, though – it looks more like Durdle Door might if it were located in the azure waters of the eastern Mediterranean rather than the grey English Channel.

Ed Mead

Why now could be the time to buy a bigger house

The vast majority of people who move home do so because they need more space. In the good old days, the late 1970s, people moved often – on average every three years. The average is now nearer two decades (you can thank stamp duty for that). The same time period has seen a growing obsession in Britain about the value of our homes. If the value’s going up it feels good; if it’s going down we despair. But this has led to something of a blind spot about the advantages of a falling market to those wanting a bigger home. My experience is that many miss out on this advantage as they attempt to ‘call’ the market and wait for the very best deal to fall into their lap A tough market is the best time to trade up.

19 November 2022

John Sturgis

What happened to my secret snap of David Beckham?

There is one footballer who will be under particular scrutiny at the Qatar World Cup – but not because he’s playing in it. David Beckham retired as a player, aged 38 in 2013, but nine years on his stature has continued to grow. The former England captain's profile is so high that those tasked with the tricky job of getting positive publicity for Qatar agreed to pay him a reported £10 million to plug the tournament. This is the story of my role as a cog in the wheels of the media machine that helped propel Beckham to this position – and of one particular incident, involving surreptitious snaps of him sitting on a sun lounger. But first some context.

18 November 2022

Olivia Potts

The rich pleasures of millionaire’s shortbread

When I was at university, there was a cafe nearby that made the millionaire’s shortbread of dreams: slabs as big as your hand, with soft caramel that only just held its shape, and would yield when bitten into; a thick layer of chocolate, and a base that somehow defied physics by being impossible crumbly and yet offering the structural integrity required for the top two layers. My waistline and student bank balance suffered accordingly, but these treats saw me through finals and essays, hangovers and heartbreak, rain and shine. It’s not surprising that millionaire’s shortbread tends to be a hit with almost everyone: it combines three crowd-pleasers into pleasing layers in a portable square, perfect for parties and picnics (or the privacy of your student digs).

James Innes-Smith

In defence of the Brummie accent

‘It is impossible for a Brummie to open his mouth without making some other-accented Englishman hate or despise him.’ I am misquoting George Bernard Shaw, of course – but maybe the great man had the much-maligned Birmingham accent in mind when he made his famous pronouncement. In a recent study more than 2,000 people were asked to listen and react to 15 British accents. When they were asked which they would consider the most trustworthy, Birmingham ranked bottom. Yorkshire came out on top, with 60 per cent considering it trustworthy, while RP (Received Pronunciation) came in second at 57 per cent. The Edinburgh Scottish accent was third, with Welsh and Geordie rounding off the top five.

digital

An ode to the potato

Potato, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways. There are great buttery mountains of mashed Yukon Golds, and then there are oven-roasted wedges with lime, dill and black pepper, or baked russets with their innards extracted and mashed with sour cream and chives, stuffed back into their jackets, topped with a little grated Parmesan and then toasted under the broiler until golden. Then there are potatoes peeled, chopped in half, bathed in olive oil, salt and lemon, and baked with a little garlic. Fried potatoes are rather nice too. Baby potatoes seared in butter in the Instant Pot are tasty – and can anyone really take exception to a potato roasted in duck fat? Oh dear. That sounds positively gluttonous. I mean in moderation, of course.

17 November 2022

Tanya Gold

Another wasteland lost: Battersea Power Station reviewed

The rude fingers of Battersea are repointed, and barely rude at all. The power station by Giles Gilbert Scott and J. Theo Halliday is no longer a wasteland to contemplate as you sit on the Waterloo to Shepperton night train. It has become a small town with shopping centre, restaurants and a pier on the river, so a middle-aged woman can get on an Uber Boat by Thames Clippers and pretend to be Cardinal Wolsey without others knowing it. I have only ever known it as a ruin and so approaching it from its Underground stop feels subversive, but then all subversion ends. It is glossy, tinny: a dinosaur skeleton painted in glitter with glass apartments stacked on the head and satellite glass apartments all around for fellowship.

16 November 2022

Alec Marsh

The power of the dog

We live in a dog-crazy land. You know it’s true. There are 12.5 million pet dogs in Britain, and no fewer than one in three households have one. Which is, by any measure, a lot of dogs, especially when we’re confronting a cost-of-living crisis. Most people, of course, will already know why we have quite so many of them: they’re cute when they’re young and beautiful or handsome when fully grown; they provide companionship, yet they don’t do passive aggression or sarcasm. Most of us already have siblings, parents or a spouse for that.

Emma Wells

Eric Sykes, Spike Milligan and the house with comedy value

Part of an 1890s terrace of Arts and Crafts buildings, 9 Orme Court, off the Bayswater Road in W2, is at first glance simply the kind of grand red-brick townhouse you’d expect to find in the area. Look up beyond the elegant entrance canopy to the ornate first floor balcony, however, and above it you’ll spot a pair of blue plaques that single out its seminal role in the birth of British alternative comedy – and a place from which peals of laughter would ring out across the sedate street.

Roger Kimball

What to drink at Thanksgiving

This is a tricky column. It’s still hot and humid where I am, which inclines me to tell you about some summer wines. But you won’t be reading this until just before Thanksgiving, which means something robust and cockle warming is in order. A fork in the road rises up before me. Which path should I take? Both! Why be an either-or sort of chap when both-and are available? Let’s start in Sicily, on the slopes of Mount Etna, one of the world’s most active volcanoes and, as it happens, a splendid igneous spot for growing grapes, especially Nerello and Grenache. I split a bottle of the 2019 SRC Etna Rosso Crasà with a couple of serious thinkers and we were all delighted. The small family-owned winery lies a thousand windswept meters above the Mediterranean in eastern Sicily.

15 November 2022

James Jeffrey

The joys of combat food

Combat food seems to prove particularly divisive. It is the Marmite of culinary preparation:you either love it or loathe it. I’m firmly in the former camp. Combat food isn’t specifically military, though there is a link. It refers to simple, no-nonsense, hearty fare, whose ingredients – typically from tins – can easily be thrown into a pot and quickly mixed, cooked, then poured into a large bowl (combat food doesn’t tend to work with delicate plates). As I said, apparently divisive stuff. I once made the mistake of getting in touch with a then recent ex-girlfriend, thinking there was a chance of patching things up.

William Cook

North star: Berwick-upon-Tweed is the ideal winter weekend away

What’s your favourite railway journey? Mine is the journey from London to Edinburgh, and my favourite moment on that journey is when you cross the Royal Border Bridge, which straddles the historic frontier between England and Scotland. As the train glides across this graceful viaduct, high above the River Tweed, you look down upon my favourite seaside town. Despite its stunning maritime location, where the Tweed meets the North Sea, Berwick-upon-Tweed is hardly a typical seaside holiday destination. The town has been knocked about a bit, the high street has seen better days, the weather is unforgiving and there are none of the Kiss-Me-Quick amusements you find in Blackpool or Skegness. So what’s the big appeal?

14 November 2022

Mark Solomons

For my 60th birthday, I’m taking up smoking

Next month I will be 60. It’s an unwelcome landmark birthday as far as I’m concerned but they say that taking up a new hobby or pastime is a good way to combat the advances of old age. So I’ve decided to take up smoking. It was either that or something physical such as cycling or jogging or walking football but, to quote Ronnie Barker in Porridge: ‘What, with these feet?’ Besides, older cyclists look ridiculous, serious runners tend to look ten years older than they really are and as for walking football… what’s the point? No, smoking is easier, more pleasurable, more relaxing and even allows me to multi-task. I can enjoy a Camel Blue while birdwatching, walking the dog or listening to Northern Soul – all of which I also plan to do more of in my sixties.

Ruth Bloomfield

House of cards: why are so many property sales collapsing?

Moving house is said to be one of the most stressful life experiences, right up there with bereavement and divorce. But what about the stress of not moving? Amid the upheavals of the past few months increasing numbers have seen their property ladder dreams collapse around their ears. According to market analyst TwentyCi there has been a ‘sharp increase’ in the number of deals falling through. More than 90,000 agreed sales disintegrated between July and September, an 18 per cent increase on the same period in 2019. Wendy and William Waterton know exactly what it feels like to be on the sharp end of a collapsing sale. In the past two years it has happened to them twice. The couple bought their one-bedroom starter flat in Woolwich, south-east London, for £320,000 in 2017.

James Bartholomew

If Sister Nijole can be happy, so can you

In the past five years I’ve met many people who’ve had direct, sometimes horrific, experience of communist rule. But I was more excited about doing a recent interview than I had been about any of the previous ones. It was going to be with a nun in a convent in Lithuania. I had imagined the scene: we would enter a large, gloomy, medieval stone convent. We would be cautiously admitted into a cavernous hallway and then ushered by a silent nun into a small, bare room for visitors. Then, dressed in black nun’s garb, Sister Nijolė Sadūnaitė would enter the room, head bowed, and sit in a plain wooden chair, her face lit only by a candle.

12 November 2022

Ameer Kotecha

The pomp and pageantry of the Lord Mayor’s Show

The Lord Mayor’s Show is a mix of traditional buttoned-up pageantry and let-your-hair-down carnival. A bit like the state opening of parliament without all the MPs, and Notting Hill without the jerk chicken. I am a Freeman of The Worshipful Company of Merchant Taylors, one of the ‘Great 12’ livery companies of the City of London. The Lord Mayor’s Show is an occasion in which the City’s livery companies – there are some 110 in all – have prominent place. What’s more, the incoming Lord Mayor has a special link to the Merchant Taylors as a member of the Company’s Court. Which is all a roundabout way of saying: I have been roped into today's show to ride atop a camel.

11 November 2022

Marianna Hunt

London’s best jazz bars

When jazz music arrived on our shores in 1919, with the first British tour of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, it received a frosty welcome from many. Other performers tried to get the group kicked off theatre bills, and the tour ended abruptly – with the Original Dixielanders being chased to Southampton docks by a lord who had just found out the lead singer had been trying to seduce his daughter. Happily, in the subsequent 100 years or so, jazz has gone on to earn a firm place in our hearts and record collections. With the return of London Jazz Festival, which runs from today until 20 November, we hunted down the capital’s best jazz bars where you can dine and dance the night away.

A.S.H. Smyth

How we’re marking Remembrance Day in the Falklands

Last Saturday was pure sunbathing weather. I mention this because a) I’m writing from the Falkland Islands, where such occurrences are not exactly regular, and b) I spent the whole beautiful day, with two or three dozen other volunteers, drilling through rock to stake out a couple of hundred 6ft metal figures. I even had to wear a hat. This wasn’t the first time I’d attempted such a challenge. I lent a hand twice last year – first when we put up 100 Tommy silhouettes commemorating the centenary of the Royal British Legion. In the main these were set out on the sloping banks around the Stanley Cemetery and its first and second world war Cross of Sacrifice.

James Innes-Smith

The curious story of Ann Summers

I always thought that 'Ann Summers' was one of those made-up names created by corporate brains, like Dorothy Perkins and Ted Baker. But it turns out that Ms Summers was an actual person. The store's founder Michael Caborn-Waterfield named his first shop after his 19-year-old secretary Annice Summers. 'Dandy Kim', as he was known, had been a roguish figure around post-war London, a gentleman adventurer who'd smuggled guns into Cuba, dated Diana Dors and served time in a French jail.

10 November 2022

Damian Reilly

Why I couldn’t wait to buy a Twitter blue tick

I’ve just given Elon Musk $8 a month to get a blue tick by my name on Twitter. The fact I haven't been able to secure one of these ticks on merit like so many other nonentities has been a source of near-constant irritation for the past half decade, particularly given how much time I spend on the site. My assumption had been that a Spectator-reading Twitter employee would eventually accept my brilliance – perhaps after reading something rude I'd written about Meghan Markle – and press the required button to make it happen. But when I finally accepted this wasn't likely, about two years ago, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I began filling out the website's online verification request form.

Olivia Potts

The ultimate American comfort food: how to make meatloaf

Meatloaf has some obstacles to overcome: it has an unprepossessing appearance, and an uninspiring, slightly off-putting name, which it shares with the famous singer. And it wasn’t a compliment when it was given to him: the singer’s father took one look at his newborn son and said he looked like ‘nine pounds of ground chuck’, before persuading the hospital staff to put the name ‘Meat’ on his crib (which is real commitment to a joke). I can’t speak for baby Meat Loaf, but when it comes to the dish, the name is at least an extremely accurate description. Meatloaf is made up of ground meat (often beef, sometimes pork, occasionally veal, or a mixture thereof), cut with bread or other carbs, and bound together with egg.

Bruce Anderson

The wartime roots of Italian Pinot Noir

Wine-making can have a tragic dimension, and rarely more so than with Italian Pinot Nero: that is, Pinot Noir. It is often made amid blood-soaked landscapes, where tragedy regularly arose out of pretensions to grandeur. If you wish to read an overview of modern Italian history in order to understand why, the place to start is David Gilmour’s The Pursuit of Italy. Despite the quality of the prose, mention Sir David’s book even to thoughtful Italians, and you might be surprised by the lack of enthusiasm. He applies a revisionist scalpel to national myths, without benefit of anaesthetic.

Graeme Thomson

The joy of B-sides

Paul Weller releasing a collection of solo B-sides is cause for mild celebration. After all, the Jam were one of the great B-side bands. ‘Tales From The Riverbank’, ‘The Butterfly Collector’, ‘Liza Radley’ – all A-list songs, relegated to the subs’ bench. Remember the B-side? That bijou, creative safe space which didn’t merely permit but positively encouraged artists to write parallel narratives of exploration, experimentation and extemporisation. I still remember the first B-side I fell in fascination with. It was called ‘Christ Versus Warhol’, a queasily psychedelic, wilfully odd indulgence on the wrong side of the Teardrop Explodes’ determinedly poppy ‘Passionate Friend’. I felt like the protagonist in Gregory’s Girl.