Features

The man who walked up the stairs was the embodiment of the cartoon image of a paedophile. Grey, thinning hair, a couple of days’ stubble and a gabardine raincoat. He had come to persuade us that the age of consent for sexual activity should be reduced to four years old ‘because that’s when children have the ability to express themselves’. The group managed to fool many liberals into thinking free love for children was the logical next step The ‘us’ was the small collective who worked for Release, a charity that helped young people who had got in trouble with the law, usually over drug use. This was 1976, a time when liberation was in the air and social mores had changed more rapidly in the past two decades than in the previous two centuries.

Things used to cost approximately what you expected them to cost. Now, the price of almost every item is eye-wateringly, gasp-inducingly more than you expect it to be. The nation is reeling from a month of crippling generosity. The new cashless existence anaesthetised us a little from the financial violence as we went through Advent visiting actual shops, discovering that almost no item cost less than £50, and trying not to feel physical pain or to look at the numbers on the screen as we heard the transactional beep. Now, in January’s glare, bank statements are regurgitating our crazy Decembers.

This Christmas, a Royal Navy Trident submarine will be quietly prowling the seas as part of the Continuous At Sea Deterrent mission. She will have slipped out of HM Naval Base Clyde in Scotland in late August. Her location is a secret, known only to a handful of officers aboard. Even the highest ranks of the navy, such as the Chief of Defence Staff and the First Sea Lord, remain unaware of where their ‘bomber’ is. For the rest of the crew, the submarine’s whereabouts are a mystery, with only the temperature of the water against the hull offering them a vague sense of geography.

Many people today feel an ambivalence towards the history of the Christmas festival. They sense that it has deep pre-Christian roots and yet are also aware that most of the actual customs associated with it are relatively modern. The problem is that both views are correct. Most of the current trappings of the season are Victorian inventions or importations: the cards, the tree, the stocking, the turkey and Father Christmas with his reindeer and his sack of presents. Even local seasonal activities which look genuinely primeval have turned out not to be.

Rick Rubin is a legendary American record producer who co-founded Def Jam records, which helped popularise hip hop. He has worked with everyone from Johnny Cash (whose career he is credited with reviving) to Paul McCartney and Kanye West. He sat down with The Spectator’s Rory Sutherland to discuss creativity, Bach, Sherlock Holmes, JFK assassination theories and more. RORY SUTHERLAND: It’s a huge pleasure to see you again. Just for the benefit of older Spectator readers, it’s probably worth defining what a music producer does because it’s ambiguous. People might imagine someone sitting there, adjusting the levels on one of those enormous mixing decks. In fact you never touch any of that stuff. You don’t really play an instrument. And you don’t read music. (No shame in that.