Features

Thursday

William Cash

Owning an Airbnb is hell

I know it can be difficult to have sympathy for anybody who owns a holiday let, but for me and my wife August is often a war between us and the holiday guests from hell. It’s an open season of refund-seeking, blackmailing guests and wild children whose parents think we operate a kids’ club in our gardens. And it’s only getting worse. We got a flavour the week that schools broke up late last month, when a group of eight adults calmly sat on the terrace in the sun, swilling cans of beer and prosecco as their pack of six children began picking up heavy pebble gravel and throwing the stones at the windows of my elderly parents’ barn.

David Woodgett

Keep algorithms out of care homes

I manage a small, not-for-profit care home in Norfolk. We have tea rounds, hymn singing, hand-holding and staff who know every resident by name and often even their grandchildren’s names. But we also have empty offices: those once occupied by our deputy manager, care manager (the job I now do) and general manager, all of whom chose early retirement within the past two years. They are not alone. According to the charity Skills for Care, the adult social care sector has 131,000 vacancies – the highest on record. Turnover for care-home staff hovers around 25 per cent, and growing numbers of managers are leaving due to burnout. This is the logical outcome of how the care system is built.

Thursday

Robert Hardman

How Princess Anne is celebrating her 75th birthday

When a previous milestone was looming in the life of Princess Anne, her 21st birthday, the late Queen asked her where she would like to have her party. There was Buckingham Palace or Windsor Castle, of course, although, with a mid-August birthday, might she prefer Balmoral? ‘None of the above,’ came the reply. The Princess wanted to hold a ‘discotheque party’ in Portsmouth on board the royal yacht Britannia. And so it is this Friday, as the Princess marks her 75th, that the most nautical member of the family (patron of everything from the Royal Yachting Association to the Mission to Seafarers) will be at sea with a cake for two as she spends her birthday with her husband, Vice Admiral Sir Tim Laurence, sailing their Rustler 44, Ballochbuie, somewhere off the Outer Hebrides.

Peter Frankopan

The real reason Trump’s Alaska summit matters

Donald Trump has never lacked confidence. ‘I’m here to get the thing over with,’ he said last week when announcing the meeting with Vladimir Putin. ‘President Putin, I believe, wants to see peace. And Zelensky wants to see peace. Now, President Zelensky has to get… everything he needs, because he’s going to have to get ready to sign something.’ To many, that sounded like a variation on Trump’s much repeated election claim that he would end the Ukraine war in 24 hours: a grandiose statement that will probably bear little if any fruit this week. Indeed, the smart money is on the Alaska summit resulting in claims of a ‘historic breakthrough’, which will change little on the front lines.

Sean Thomas

Why do so many of us want to be alone?

When was the last time you had a truly classic racist cab driver? Mine was a few years ago, coming out of Victoria Station. On the drive to my home in Camden, Classic Racist Cab Driver had a go at all the normal targets. I sat in the back, wearily trying to screen it out, as you do. The trouble kicked in when he ran out of obvious people to be bigoted about. In desperation, he moved on to Belgians, and then on to scorning ‘anyone who takes trains’ (forgetting, or perhaps recalling, that he’d picked me up at Victoria Station). Sometimes I wonder if he is still out there, cruising down Park Lane frothing about Kazakhs or people who eat biscuits, but if he is I have bad news for him. His days are numbered.

Patrick Kidd

Why is sport so obsessed with Goats?

It was late at night in rural France and Martin wanted to discuss Goats. And he didn’t mean livestock. ‘You write about sport,’ he said. ‘Who is the Greatest of All Time?’ I asked if he was talking about my stunning victory in the village boules competition the previous night, but it turned out he was thinking of a certain Serbian tennis player. ‘Novak Djokovic is the Goat,’ he said, with the certainty that comes from a third bottle of Bourgueil. I conceded that Djokovic’s record was a smidgen better than Rafael Nadal’s, though some might prefer the artistry of Roger Federer – but didn’t Bjorn Borg have an even better winning percentage in the grand slams? This pleased Martin’s Swedish wife.

Lisa Haseldine

Europe is giving up on free movement

Ten years ago on 31 August 2015, Angela Merkel told the German press what she was going to do about the swell of Syrian refugees heading to Europe. With the three fateful words ‘Wir schaffen das’ – ‘We can handle it’ – she ushered in a new era of uncontrolled mass migration, not just for Germany but for the rest of the European Union too. The then chancellor, so often described by her supporters in the press as the ‘queen of Europe’, was adamant that Germany was a ‘strong country’, which had the resources to support the sudden influx of migrants. ‘We will provide protection to all those fleeing to us from wars,’ she insisted. Whether or not other European leaders shared her confidence was immaterial.

Tim Shipman

Can Reform beat the blob?

Shortly after he was elected as Britain’s youngest council leader last month, 19-year-old George Finch of Reform UK had a conversation with Monica Fogarty, the chief executive of Warwickshire county council, about which of them was really running the show. In Finch’s telling, this was a watershed moment: he offered a ‘professional working relationship’ but the relationship quickly soured. ‘I know you’re trying to get rid of me,’ Fogarty said, according to Finch. ‘Well, you can’t get rid of me. The way it works around here is: your councillors play ball.’ Finch allegedly replied: ‘Are you joking? You have to work with us. It’s not the other way around. We’ve been put here by the electorate. You haven’t.

John Power

Labour’s new ‘dark arts’ strategy

Senior Labour figures have given up hope of beating Nigel Farage in 2029. There are two causes for this pessimism. One is the economy. Forecasts suggest living standards will continue to decline over the next four years. The other is illegal immigration, which Keir Starmer will continue to make noises against, but which his human-rights-lawyer instincts prevent him from tackling. Faced with such a grim future, some Labour advisers are speaking about leaving the government to avoid having their reputations tainted by what comes next. Others are more ruthless. They point to another tool: the practice called ‘opposition research’ but known better as the ‘dark arts’.

Wednesday

Owen Matthews

Trump’s Alaska meeting is a gift for Putin 

From the Kremlin’s point of view, holding a US-Russia summit in Anchorage, Alaska is an idea of fiendish brilliance. The venue itself determines the agenda. Literally half a world away from the petty concerns of the European continent, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin can flex the vastness of their respective countries. Anchorage is an eight-hour flight from Washington D.C. and roughly the same distance from Moscow, flying over no other country but Russia for most of the way. By travelling to the point where their countries almost touch in the North Pacific, both leaders can feel justified in prioritising issues that concern just the two of them, from arms control treaties to space cooperation to Arctic mineral rights.

Thursday

Philip Womack

The tragic decline of children’s literature

The other day, leafing through T.H. White’s The Once and Future King, which enchanted me as a child, I was bedazzled all over again. This time, though, it wasn’t the plot and characters that gripped me, but something better: vocabulary. ‘Summulae Logicales’, ‘Organon’, ‘astrolabe’, ‘metheglyn’, ‘snurt’, ‘craye’, ‘varvel’, ‘austringer’, ‘yarak’: all appear, exuding magic, within the first few pages. Ten points if you know what ‘yarak’ means. The Once and Future King (1958) is a masterful retelling of the Arthurian cycle, both comic and tragic, following the young Arthur, known as ‘Wart’, as he grows into the legendary King; and these fascinating words are not pretentious, but appropriate.

Henry Blofeld

Will Ben Stokes be fit for the Ashes?

What a marvellous summer this has been for Test cricket, which is sadly at risk of becoming an endangered species. The dramatic world of the T20 franchise, fuelled by the outrageous success of the Indian Premier League (IPL), has pushed traditional Test cricket uncomfortably close to the margins. The Test matches began with South Africa’s remarkable win over Australia at Lord’s in the World Test Championship final in June. This has been followed by a thrilling drawn series against India. These matches have perfectly illustrated the greater variety and more exciting possibilities the two-innings game has to offer. In two-innings cricket a side can be bowled out for 40 in the first innings and go on to win the match.

John Connolly

Britain is hooked on car finance

It’s unnerving to think how close Britain came to financial disaster last Friday, ahead of a Supreme Court ruling on – of all things – car financing. In October, the Court of Appeal found that motor finance firms could be liable for hidden commission payments to car dealers. If the Supreme Court had agreed, the biggest lenders, including Lloyds Banking Group, Santander, Barclays and Close Brothers, would have been on the hook for some £44 billion, with Lloyds already putting aside £1.15 billion for compensation payments and Close Brothers selling off its asset management arm this year.

Harriet Cullen

How my family loved – and lost – the Telegraph

As the Telegraph moves slowly towards Arab ownership – 15 per cent to start, and who knows what in the future – I must declare my interest. I’m a Berry, the daughter of Michael Berry, who founded the Sunday Telegraph and became Lord Hartwell, and granddaughter of William Berry from south Wales, who bought the Daily Telegraph in 1928 and became Lord Camrose. They owned and ran it, hands on, for a big part of the 20th century – 58 years. My mother, Pamela Berry, daughter of F.E. Smith, Lord Birkenhead, was the political hostess who wielded the Telegraph soft power. My brother Adrian Berry was the paper’s science correspondent and covered the first landing on the moon.

Owen Matthews

Giorgia Meloni’s Italian renaissance

Rome Last weekend, Rome hosted nearly a million young pilgrims to celebrate the Papal Jubilee of Youth. Part Woodstock festival, part giant outdoor mass and all-night vigil, crowds of students from all over Italy and beyond gathered to listen to Christian rock music, sing hymns and receive the blessing of the new Pope. Leo XIV, arriving in a white papal helicopter, was feted like a rock star. The event was orderly, joyous and a sign of a society at peace with itself and proud of its heritage. The way Italians carry on, you’d think the country was booming. The Lombardy and Veneto regions are gearing up to host the 2026 Winter Olympics.

Margaret Mitchell

The Catholic influencers spreading the word of God

Vatican City In an auditorium just outside St Peter’s Basilica, the Vatican’s Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, sat solemnly in the front row as a young crowd sang, danced and hopped around to a pop hymn. The cardinal, who is 70, was widely expected to become the pope earlier this year. Instead, he inaugurated the Catholic Church’s first social media influencer conference. Around 1,000 influencers attended last week’s Jubilee of Digital Missionaries and Catholic Influencers. In his opening remarks, Parolin described social media as not just an instrument of communication, but ‘a way of living in the world’.

Max Jeffery

Inside the Mohammed Hijab trial

Mohammed Hijab sat at the back of the courtroom and ate doughnuts while his lawyer, Mark Henderson, delivered his closing submission. ‘You will have seen that my client is argumentative, can be provocative,’ said Henderson. ‘Some people might think that he is a bit of a smart alec, a bit too cocky.’ Hijab reclined in his chair and licked the sugar from his fingers. Hijab acted like a schoolboy throughout last month’s four-day trial at the Royal Courts of Justice. He laughed and shouted while giving evidence. ‘It’s an unsalvageable case, Greg! It really is!’ he yelled at The Spectator’s legal counsel Greg Callus at the end of his second day in the stand, leaning over the side. Well, he lost.

Tim Shipman

Motherland: how Farage is winning over women

On the campaign trail in the Midlands ahead of May’s local elections, a journalist asked Nigel Farage: ‘Do you have a woman problem?’ The twice-married, twice-separated father of four laughed and said: ‘God, yes. I’ve had 40 years of it.’ His response was characteristic of Reform UK’s leader – a determination not to take things too seriously and a tacit acknowledgement that every political cause he has espoused has been more popular with men than women. ‘Around me there’s always been a perception of a laddish culture,’ he says. ‘Ukip was the rugby club on tour.’ In last year’s general election, 58 per cent of Reformvoters were men. Since May, when Reform seized 700 seats and ten councils, that has begun to change.

Cosmo Landesman

Dinner party talk won’t help Gaza

I’m one of the Silent People who sit on the sidelines of the great political events and debates of the present. We Silent People don’t sign on-line petitions or go on protests to show solidarity with this group or that one. We don’t tweet our outrage, or blog our bile. We prefer to keep what we think to ourselves. When a verbal punch-up erupts over Gaza or trans rights at a dinner party, I stay silent and wonder what’s for pudding. The thing we Silent People are most silent about is our silence. It’s easy to see why: the silent are suspect The thing we Silent People are most silent about is our silence. It’s easy to see why: these days the silent are suspect.

Thursday

Lara Brown

Why Generation Woke loves romantasy

When the willowy human Feyre meets the faerie Tamlin in A Court of Thorns and Roses (known as ACOTAR by fans), he is a ‘snarling gigantic beast with golden fur’. Drama ensues when Tamlin, with his ‘elf-like horns’ and ‘yellow fangs’, kidnaps Feyre. He keeps her in captivity, then claims her: turning up in her room at night and clamping his teeth down on to her neck against her will. Two hundred pages later, the pair finally have sex and Feyre marvels that while ‘his claws were out’ they are ‘devastatingly gentle on my hips as he slid down between my thighs and feasted on me’. She moans his name and he ‘sheathed himself inside me in a powerful, slow thrust that had me splintering around him’.