Spectator Life | The Spectator

How to bake a no-chocolate chocolate cake

This week’s recipe is for a chocolate cake that is not a terribly traditional chocolate cake. But that is its charm. It uses only one egg, no butter and, most magically, absolutely no chocolate. Instead, it uses cocoa powder and boiling water: the boiling water releases a deeper, rounder flavour from the cocoa, which is enhanced by vanilla, a little strong coffee, and a pinch of salt. The cake’s flavour is a little like that of a packet mix of brownies – which is not to diminish it, but to signal its fudgy darkness. Feel free to swap the sugar for whatever you have: caster, granulated, even dark brown sugar would work here, or a mixture of whatever’s in your cupboards.

10 March 2022

Katy Balls

The hidden victims of lockdown: an interview with the Children’s Commissioner

When schools were closed during lockdown, it wasn’t only education that suffered. The classroom can offer an opportunity to identify children in danger of abuse, with tens of thousands of pupils on the at-risk register. Take away schools and this safety net vanishes. Now and again, stories emerged of just how badly things went wrong: for example, the murder of six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes at the hands of his stepmother. ‘If that little boy had been in school, I do believe there would have been an extra chance to hear him,’ the Children’s Commissioner, Rachel de Souza, tells me, when we meet at The Spectator’s offices to discuss her mission to help the hidden victims of lockdown.

Lara Prendergast

The enduring appeal of school name tapes

I hadn’t thought about Cash’s name tapes for many years. My mother used to sew them into clothes I planned to take to school. Occasionally I find one in a sock or a threadbare T-shirt and feel wistful for the years past. My name tapes were white, with a navy, serif typeface. The other day, I discovered a pair of tights in the bottom of a drawer which belonged (or perhaps still belong) to my school friend Alice. Her name tapes were woven in green, with a sans serif typeface that looked like the Johnston one used on the London Underground. How did our mothers decide what typeface and colour would best suit their daughters? My own daughter Lily has recently started nursery. Clothes will inevitably get mislaid. On the Cash’s website, there are all sorts of options.

Kat Pierce

Why handwriting still matters

I work in learning support at a prep school in the South-East and have started teaching my pupils handwriting. It seems that the future of education, especially for children with special needs, is digital. But why should those who struggle to write legibly be given a laptop instead of extra lessons in handwriting? Faced with the obvious decline in the quality of handwriting, what are teachers to do? When in doubt, consult the English national curriculum. The handwriting curriculum for Key Stage 2 (aged eight to ten) is divided into three levels: working ‘towards expected standards’, working ‘at expected standards’ and working ‘at greater depth’.

Elisa Segrave

School trip: My déjeuner sur l’herbe

In 1966 we were 17 and about to do A-levels and leave our convent school for ever at the end of that summer term. Two girls were having a lesbian affair, another had been tempted to sleep with a boy, dramatically confessing this to our head nun, Mother Benedicta, in Mother B’s terrifying private room halfway up the staircase. Our head girl, Vanessa, had an older sister who would roar down to the school on the back of her boyfriend’s motorbike along with his friends, known as ‘leather boys’. Vanessa was worried about her sister living in sin. ‘The sins of the flesh are not the worst sins my child,’ Mother B wisely told her. (The sister was still married to her leather boy 50 years later while Vanessa married at least twice, and lived in sin.

Gerri Peev

The curious social backlash that comes with private education

‘If this is the top of the class, I would hate to see the rest of them.’ That was the withering verdict of the woman I had just handed over hundreds of pounds to on a hunch that my child wasn’t doing as well as I was being told. Gloria (name changed) is what misogynists would call a battle-axe. Officially, though, she was a formidable retired head of a highly selective pre-prep. She shared her townhouse with a pet chihuahua that was as terrifying. My then seven-year-old had just undergone a battalion of tests in her pristine kitchen. His ‘only’ potential, apparently, was that he had a reading age three years above his chronological one and that his non-verbal reasoning score was ‘relatively high — but we are not talking Mensa levels’.

Harry Mount

From the brainiacs to the bluffers: a guide to public school stereotypes

A Wykehamist, an Old Etonian and an Old Harrovian are in a bar. A woman walks in. The Old Etonian says: ‘Fetch her a chair!’ The Wykehamist gets it. The Old Harrovian sits in it. It’s the oldest public-school joke in the world — and it still has the ring of truth. (Though you might add these days: ‘And then the Old Etonian becomes prime minister.’) But what about the other public schools? Here are the classic characteristics of our most famous schoolboys — and schoolgirls. Charterhouse Artistic, literary, louche, political and on the make… the received wisdom about Old Carthusians was set in stone in the Alms for Oblivion sequence by Simon Raven (1927-2001), who was at the school in the 1940s.

James Kirkup

The march of the middle-class apprentices

Tony Blair used to joke that he could announce the start of a war during a speech on skills policy and no one would notice. Like all the best jokes, it contained more than a grain of truth. Britain — or rather educated Britain — has never been interested in the parts of our education and training system that don’t involve doing A-levels and going to university. Blair did a great deal to entrench the social and cultural dominance of university with his aspiration that half of all school leavers should go into higher education. That was, on aggregate, the right policy for the country and its economy: the expansion of a great higher education sector has done much good for the UK.

Jim Knight

We need more technology in classrooms – not less

The government has rightly identified that improving education will help ‘level up’ Britain. Higher-quality teaching is one tool to get there, but with roughly a third of teachers leaving the profession within five years of qualifying, better teacher training won’t be a quick enough fix to turn things around within its eight-year target. What’s needed is a massive roll-out of educational technology to provide teacher support. When I was a schools minister, I oversaw an agency that advised and procured technology. We had a school rebuilding programme that embedded effective technology in its design. We also managed to get half a million of the most disadvantaged children online at home with the Home Access Scheme. This was more than a decade ago, though.

Debbie Hayton

The confused language of gender identity ideology

‘I think I might be transgender!’ How should schools react to such revelations? By the time they find out, the child may already be convinced that their identity lies on the LGBTQIA+ spectrum. Probably with its own multi-coloured flag. But while social media influencers are quick to dispense answers, schools are left to cope with the consequences, with little understanding of what is really going on. Stonewall and Mermaids — large publicly funded LGBT+ charities — would have us believe that we all have an innate gender identity that determines whether we are men or women, or perhaps neither. But that’s all it is — a belief.

Max Jeffery

The dark art of ‘off-rolling’ unwanted pupils

Sometimes a school wants to exclude a child but can’t. The student might have difficult needs that are costing money or taking too much time to deal with. Or their exam results might be looking likely to damage the school’s standing. But children can’t lawfully be excluded for getting bad grades or for needing more attention. Schools, though, have a way to get them off their books. They ‘off-roll’ them, a practice which is illegal. In 2017, in the first widely reported case of off-rolling, St Olave’s grammar school in London told 16 pupils that their places in Year 13 had been withdrawn because they did badly in their AS-level exams, even though they had reached the sixth form entry requirements the year before.

Andrew Adonis

The case for state boarding schools

My philosophy of education has always been simple and I believe it unites right and left: namely, what wise parents would wish for their child, so the community should wish for all children. It’s a paraphrase of R.H. Tawney, who — being a socialist — said ‘state’ rather than ‘community’. I much prefer ‘community’ since it is an injunction to us all, including to local government, charities and social organisations, as well as to the state and its servants. I feel this intensely personally, since the community — in the form of a local authority, Camden council in London — was my legal parent for the whole of my childhood.

Peter Hitchens

No screens, shared bathwater and ugly food: my life in a 1960s prep school

We were allowed one phone call, faint and crackling along the many miles of copper wire which connected Hampshire with Dartmoor. In those days (this was the early 1960s) the operator had to connect it. I had watched those wires, swooping alongside the train which had borne me all that way, wisps of smoke and steam drifting past the window. Now, with the September evening coming on, there was time for a few stilted words in the headmaster’s study with my parents. It would in many ways have been better not to bother, as it only emphasised the distance and the separation. Then it was term. I don’t want to complain about this. I had begged to go to boarding school because my brother was already there and I would have felt utterly left out and left behind if I had not gone too.

The Spectator

Schools portraits: a snapshot of four notable schools

Colville Primary School Based just off Notting Hill’s Portobello Road, Colville Primary School occupies a Victorian Grade II-listed building that was once a laundry. Today, it accommodates pupils up to the age of 11 who are taught under the school’s ‘three key values’: respect, aspiration and perseverance. Colville also says it believes in the British values of democracy, individual liberty and tolerance. The school’s performance has shot up over the past decade: three years ago, it was rated ‘Outstanding’ by Ofsted. Despite its setting in the heart of London, there’s plenty of area for play — the playground facilities are new, and there’s also a large ball court and running track.

Advertising feature: Preparing our children for a world that has not yet been imagined

It is our belief at Tadpoles Nursery School that if we want the world to change, we must begin with the teaching of the very young. Our early years are the moment when our minds are the most open and the most receptive; when we see the world around us with wonder and without judgement and when we are able to ask questions without fear or embarrassment. Equal Thinking, Ecology and Climate Change, Care and Kindness within our communities — the list goes on — can only be pursued if we educate our children from the very beginning, giving them the imagination, tools and skills at an early age. Allowing them to explore paths not yet taken and ideas without judgment.

9 March 2022

Robert Jackman

The nuclear bunker market is booming

As the spectre of nuclear war returns so does another very modern phenomenon: a spike in interest amongst the paranoid rich seeking to procure their own nuclear bunker. Over in Texas – already home to a vibrant culture of ‘preppers’ who spend their time planning for every shade of apocalypse – one creator of custom shelters, Rising S Bunkers, says it’s had a 700pc increase in interest in the last month. Made from long-lasting plate steel, their bunkers are designed to be buried under the average American yard. Of the five units sold last month, the largest fetched $240,000.

Cressida Bonas

How do we talk to children about war?

Every day when my niece gets home from school she seems angry and frustrated. She wonders why we can’t do more to help the people in Ukraine. She is bewildered by video clips of children saying goodbye to their fathers who are staying behind to defend their country. Since the shocking news of the invasion broke, she has joined her school politics group and wants to learn more about the conflict, why it is happening, and what can be done. She is aware of the contrast between her sheltered life and those less fortunate. I asked her mum (my sister) how she parents in this situation. Her greatest concern is how to preserve her daughter’s innocence when she’s so well informed. ‘Everything is out there, you can’t just hide from it.

Add Sake to Taste – perfect seafood and sake pairings in London

As JFOODO’s ‘Add Sake to Taste’ campaign continues, we want you to continue to enjoy the perfect combination of sake and seafood. London is known for some of the best restaurants in the world and we have paired up with 20 of them for your enjoyment. Each restaurant has created a specific dish that matches with a specific sake to open your palate to umami. Some of these restaurants will continue to serve sake after the campaign. By the time you’ve visited each site, you’ll be an honorary sake ninja and an ambassador to everyone you know. Sake is sophisticated, unobtrusive, delicious and fun. Visit https://sake-jfoodo.jetro.go.jp/uk/taste/index.html to learn more about the restaurants, seafood and sake pairings.

Simon de Burton

Why the characterful Ford Bronco is staging a comeback

The best part of a decade elapsed between Land Rover's unveiling of the 'DC100' concept at the 2011 Frankfurt Motor Show and the first 'New Defenders' hitting the road two years ago just as Covid struck – prompting suggestions that the beefy SUV had arrived 'just in time for Armageddon'. During the interim, thousands of column inches and hours of video were dedicated to predicting what the production version might look like, how it would perform and debating whether or not it could ever truly match the rough-and-ready utilitarian charm of the time-served original.

8 March 2022

James Innes-Smith

Fatherhood is a risk men aren’t willing to take

Recent reports that half of women in England and Wales are now childless by their 30th birthday reveal a worrying new attitude amongst Gen Z. Parenthood, to the younger generation, is the enemy of unfettered frivolity. Young women, we are told, would rather live for the moment than plan for the future. 'Being present' has become the mantra of the 'mindful' generation who see autonomy as the ultimate expression of a life well lived. But how complicit are men in this myopic 'me-only' utopia we have created for ourselves? Are women actively rejecting the sort of men who would like to settle down or have the sort of men who once yearned to settle themselves become cynical about taking the plunge?

Sean Thomas

James Dyson is right to urge us back to the office

I have almost no clue what office life is like. And I really mean ‘almost no clue’. Over several decades of professional work, my entire experience of office life consists of four hours working as a receptionist at a shipbroker’s in the City. I was so bad they sacked me by lunchtime: I didn’t even make it through the first day. Chastened by this trauma, I thereafter vowed I would never do another hour of paid work in an ‘office’, and I have stuck to my principles. I have never been woken by a horrible alarm at 7am; instead, for all my life, I have heroically kept on sleeping until about 10.30.

Jayne Dowle

The art of the reading nook

To add a library to a house is to give that house soul – at least, so said Cicero. Unfortunately we're not all as blessed in the book department as Ernest Hemingway, whose Cuban library boasted a ten-foot long desk 'curved like a boomerang'. Modern living is often short on space. But that does not mean you can't create a cosy corner to hide away from the world with a book. Reading nooks are all the rage – everyone from Sophie Dahl to Nigella Lawson is carving out space for one. Even Jamie Oliver, who has spoken about his childhood battle with dyslexia, has sequestered a fireside armchair, snapped by his wife Jools for Instagram napping with a cookery book across his lap.

7 March 2022

Joanna Rossiter

The trouble with boycotting Russian food

As the war in Ukraine worsens, the horrific scenes filling our screens have prompted a visceral reaction from the British public: 78 per cent now support Russian sanctions – up from 61 per cent in late February. Economic sanctions have undoubtedly hit the Kremlin’s spending power – and that’s to be encouraged. But what should we make of the broader cultural boycott of Russia that is rapidly gaining pace? So far, Britain's boycotts have had a peculiarly culinary bent. While Putin continues his onslaught, British shoppers have been encouraged to shun vodka and caviar. Lockdown revived an intense interest in cooking amongst the house-bound middle classes.

4 March 2022

Theo Hobson

Louis Theroux and the problem with sex scenes

You know the restaurant scene in Notting Hill? The Hugh Grant character defends the honour of his magical girlfriend when she is the butt of some sexist banter from some vulgar brutes, who don’t realise she is sitting round the corner. In many languages, says one, the word for actress is the same as the word for prostitute. Hugh just can’t bear it: he confronts them with an angry eye-flutter, telling them to bloody well shut up, and then Magic Girlfriend appears and tells them that they have small penises. It’s one of those scenes in which Richard Curtis helps us to understand what is good and what is bad these days. Well, at the risk of resembling one of the nasty sexists in this scene, I want to suggest that the new orthodoxy has its limits.

Alec Marsh

What the flight of Russian money means for the London property market

Ever since the early 2000s, London’s luxury property market has been the preserve of foreign investors, many of whom are purported to be Russian. In Chelsea, Highgate and Hampstead, streets of empty mansions quickly became an inevitable part of city life, while the Russian investment phenomenon was dubbed ‘Londongrad’. Thanks to the use of myriad offshore companies and ownership structures, and the practice of buying properties in the names of third parties – so called nominee accounts, it is all but impossible to identify the owners of these houses. Short of posting a private detective outside of each one for weeks on end and hoping the real owner shows up, the exact number of Oligarch-owned homes remains a mystery.

John Sturgis

How a royal disagreement over a penny revealed Edward VIII’s vanity

A rare penny piece goes on sale this month for 20 million times its face value – quite the mark up. But it’s the backstory to the coin’s creation that is arguably the most interesting aspect of the sale – because of the insight it gives into the frosty relationship between George VI and Edward, whose sudden abdication put his brother on the throne. The story begins in 1936 with a dispute over the small matter of a hairstyle. While plunging the government towards a constitutional crisis through his relationship with the American divorcee Wallis Simpson, the notoriously vain Edward was also concerned about how he might look as loose change.

Olivia Potts

The ultimate spaghetti and meatballs

Spaghetti and meatballs is an iconic dish: whether it’s Lady and the Tramp that springs to mind at the name, cosying up over a shared bowl of the stuff, facilitating their canine kissing, or Henry Hill describing the prison meatballs that they make to remind them of home in Goodfellas, while Paulie slices garlic paper-thin with a razor blade, there’s no denying that this pasta dish is one which has taken on significance beyond the sum of its parts.

Stephen Arnell

Ten cerebral superhero films to rival The Batman

With an added ‘The’ for extra gravitas, Matt Reeves’ fresh take on The Batman is picking up generally favourable notices both for the movie and Robert Pattinson’s interpretation of the character, which apparently makes Christian Bale’s dour Bruce Wayne a happy-go-lucky scamp in comparison. The Spectator's Deborah Ross wasn't convinced by yet another dark twist on the superhero but elsewhere the film has received solid reviews. The Caped Crusader has seen many iterations on film, the most recent being Ben Affleck’s constipated billionaire, which never really caught on with audiences.

2 March 2022

Ross Clark

Is the house price boom about to end?

Will the housing market crash? We have been asking the question for two decades now are prices climbed to ever higher multiples of earnings. But apart from a few months in 2008 and early 2009, when prices did slide appreciably, it never seems to happen. Stock market corrections come and go but nothing will seem to dislodge housing from its inflated heights. Having just gone through the most unlikely property boom in history, however – in which prices have surged throughout a pandemic – it is worth asking again. If we really have reached the end of the age of ultra-low interest rates that would remove the engine that has driven the long housing boom of the past three decades.