Features

Wednesday

Sophie Winkleman

‘The Middlesbrough Shakespeare’: Why I loved Rod

I met Rod 22 years ago this month. We had been selected as team-mates on a gameshow pilot, and, halfway through the morning’s filming, we went for a fag break. He said to me: ‘This is crap, shall we go to the pub?’ We scarpered and spent the rest of the day in a Covent Garden pub, working our way through the drinks list and chatting away like chipmunks. He would tell me that all the best people treat their bodies like bins (and all the worst like temples) I’d never been starstruck by anyone before I met Rod. However famous or talented actors are, their job is to say stuff written by other people. Rod, however, was a legend to me. I began reading his Guardian columns at university.

William Clouston

Rod had one great regret

In 2019 I had to explain to Iain Dale – live on LBC – that Rod Liddle’s suggestion in his Spectator column that elections should be held on Islamic holy days to deter Muslims from voting was not a serious proposal. Neither was his idea that students be drugged by their parents to the same end. It was humour, and they were jokes. When he was in hospital a few weeks ago, I visited Rod with some cake. While he munched away, he expressed a sense of regret that he could have been a great writer. Rod always thought his true calling was writing fiction, rather than journalism, and always wondered if he’d sold his soul by following the money. He was right – he did have the makings of a British Houellebecq.

Fraser Nelson

‘I asked for a substitute for the f-word. He suggested the c-word’: the joy of editing Rod

It was in Westminster Magistrates’ Court, where I was sitting waiting for the judge’s verdict, that I decided I needed a better way of handling Rod Liddle’s column. As editor of this magazine, I had inherited one of the greatest writers; a force of nature loved by his readers for his bravery and candour. But it sometimes led to difficulties: in this case, criminal prosecution. The judge had a choice: prosecute our owners, the editor, or the magazine. The magazine was fined. ‘Rod was right,’ I was told by Aidan Barclay, who as proprietor had nearly ended up in the dock himself. ‘But truth is no defence. Not any more. You need to spot these things before they blow up.’ Our lawyers were kept busy, too.

Titania McGrath

Good riddance, Rod

When a famous right-wing, straight white male dies, if your first instinct isn’t to gloat and trash his reputation then you clearly have no idea what it takes to be a progressive. The death of Rod Liddle is currently being celebrated by all of us on the right side of history. And because we announce our pronouns and wear keffiyehs, we can refer to him as a scumbag who deserves to burn in Hell and everyone will know that we’re actually incredibly compassionate. It’s a matter of simple mathematics. The population is divided into two factions: those who are good and those who are evil. Every time an evil person dies, the proportion of good people increases. Ergo, by dying, Liddle has made the world a gooder place. Being kind is largely about efficiency.

Boris Johnson

Rod’s genius? Driving his enemies nuts

There is a reason the death of Rod Liddle has provoked such a swirling tide of grief among his millions of followers, including readers of this magazine, and that is that in the last 25 years Rod came to occupy a crucial position in journalism, and indeed in our country as a whole. His columns became a haven, a refuge, in which he gave us permission to think things that are in fact common sense, but which have for some reason become taboo. He gave us a renewed permission to laugh – at him, at ourselves, at our collective absurdities – at a time when laughter is increasingly controlled and often suppressed.

Michael Gove

To be a Spectator reader was to love Rod

Since becoming Spectator editor there was one observation I heard more often from readers than any other: ‘Rod is the first page I turn to every week.’ Whatever people’s politics, background or other interests, to be a Spectator reader was to love Rod. Rod did his best, of course, to be unloveable. At least in print. Nothing, and no one, apart from possibly Millwall, was spared from his criticism. Savage, foul-mouthed, merciless. But also hilarious, superbly well-informed and honest. Above all honest. There are all sorts of enlightened souls in and around journalism who pretend to that virtue.

Lara Brown

Jason Arday has exposed Cambridge’s corruption 

The story of Jason Arday is so brilliantly illuminating of the rottenness of our Establishment that it seems – literally – fabulous. He seems to be almost too fantastic a figure for conventional fiction; rather, he is a character from fables of old – an archetype exposing the sins and hypocrisy of our times, a modern Till Eulenspiegel or Robin Goodfellow. In Arday’s frictionless ascent to academic eminence from a background of apparent disadvantage we see apparently elite institutions eagerly suspending their critical faculties in order to virtue-signal on race, disability and hardship. By studying Arday’s biography we can begin to understand just how in hock to progressive guilt our top universities are – and how damaging this is for real scholarship.

Lucas Chancellor 

Love lessons from my grandfather, Alexander Chancellor

After a lovely 25th birthday trip to Vienna, I returned home to face the reality of my quarter-life circumstances. I had been happy with my milestones to date – a degree, a stint of modelling on the European and New York runways, a couple of relationships and some encouraging writing contracts – but was then told by my mother what my grandfather Alexander Chancellor had pulled off by the time he was my age. Having moved to Italy to work for Reuters news agency, he spoke Italian fluently and had married my grandmother, Susanna Debenham; he had two children, he had bought a house and even had someone iron his shirts from time to time, which Susie was definitely not going to do. By the time he reached 35, he was editing this magazine.

Flora Watkins

The great hay shortage

For the connoisseur, pushing your nose into a bale of new-season hay is one of life’s small but glorious pleasures. As the peasant poet John Clare wrote in 1835, the ‘breath of flowers and grass and happy cow/ Fling o’er one’s senses streams of fragrance now’. Green and gold and sweet-smelling, first-cut hay is headier than marijuana, more complex than a Meursault. When the last bale was stored in the barn, you’d inhale deeply one last time, then close the doors with the quiet satisfaction that your horses were taken care of for the winter. Horses and livestock used to eat grass in the summer, with hay kept for the dead months.

Harry Mount

Never sue!

Don’t ever sue anyone! That’s what I would have told Prince Harry, Elton John and their fellow claimants, on the hook for a £34.4 million bill after losing their disastrous privacy case against the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday. I trained as a libel barrister in 5 Raymond Buildings, the same chambers as Sir Matthew Nicklin, the judge in the case, and David ‘Orange Sherbet’ Sherborne, Prince Harry’s lawyer. In every libel case I saw as a pupil barrister, I thought it was crazy to sue. Clients risked fortunes for the possibility of minor moral victories. The barristers were certainly affable and bright. Sherborne got a First in Classics from New College, Oxford; Nicklin a First in Law from Newcastle. But, still, it isn’t worth risking millions to avenge an insult.

Wednesday

Lara Brown

Schools out: the dissolution of private education

St Joseph’s College in Reading survived two world wars, the Great Depression and a pandemic. But it could not weather two years under this Labour government. Next month, its 500 pupils will be among thousands across the country who do not return to the schools from which they broke up for the summer holidays. These are the casualties of the government’s decision to impose VAT on private school fees and remove business rate relief – a policy ministers promised would not have such consequences. We still haven’t seen the full effects of Labour’s recklessness. The true damage will take time to set in.

Patrick Kidd

The curious history of sporting superstitions

My father had been waiting his entire life for that whistle. After 75 years, the curse was over. Mayo were Gaelic football champions having overturned the second-biggest deficit in the history of All-Ireland finals. The county hadn’t seen such a miracle since Father Horan got the taoiseach to fund an international airport near the shrine of Our Lady of Knock. Three months before Dad was born in Castlebar, Mayo won the 1951 title. Their celebrations on the way home were exuberant and, so the legend goes, disrupted a funeral in Foxford. The furious priest (some versions blame the widow) cast a curse on them, saying Mayo would never again lift the Sam Maguire Cup while any of those players lived. Nonsense, right? Except that Mayo then lost 11 finals, four by one point.

James Heale

‘He’s either the Messiah – or the Antichrist’: on the campaign trail with Nigel Farage

‘We love you, Nigel!’ In Clacton-on-Sea, there is little sign that the Reform leader’s star has waned. Campaigning with Farage here is a burst of cackles, quips, nicotine and selfies: a march through sun-kissed streets with a cast of canvassers, aides and minders. A child clasping a teddy bear dances around, Reform’s rosette pinned to her top; a groaning assistant clutches two dozen poster boards. On the doors in Seawick, there is near-universal support, with variations on the theme which Farage has made his campaign slogan: ‘I’m with Nigel.’ In the middle of silly season, Clacton is hosting one of Britain’s most bizarre by-elections.

Nicky Dunne

We have a true book-loving Queen – and she is a marvel

Shepherd Market, W1, has many ghosts, some of whom are literary. In the shadow of Patrick Leigh Fermor’s former digs – the scene of ‘wild and continuous’ parties in the summer of 1933 – Heywood Hill has just celebrated 90 years of bookselling. In today’s Republic of Letters, we have a true book-loving Queen and she is a marvel. To mark Heywood Hill’s anniversary Her Majesty graciously toured our tiny shop. She talked about her love of all kinds of books (The Cazalet Chronicles in particular) and gamely joined Jerry Vinalon and Jay Lomot, our splendid professional book-packers, in helping them gift-wrap parcels. She signed a postcard which one lucky book subscriber should find in their next package. Not every customer is so fortunate.

Tali Fraser

The grim rise of the ‘death positivity’ movement

It was the day after The Spectator’s summer party and I was on my way to something called a death café. After an unknown quantity of Pol Roger the night before, I was already contemplating my own mortality. This death café was being held in a Gail’s in Horsham (after closing time, mercifully for its customers). The coffee tables were shoved awkwardly together in the middle of the shop floor. Eight of us, all women, sat: a healthcare worker, a retiree, a lawyer, two death doulas (we’ll get to them later) and me, at 26, three decades younger than anyone else present. We were there because ‘death positivity’ is having a moment. There are death cafés, death doulas and funeral celebrants who’ll narrate your cremation like a wedding DJ.

Matt Ridley

The unspoken truth about wildfires

Bordeaux and Madrid are threatened by flames. In Sicily, arsonists tied burning rags to the tails of cats to spread fires. Here in Britain the Cairngorms and Peak District national parks are ablaze. It’s the climate Armageddon, say the greens. If only we had built more wind farms and eaten fewer cows this would not be happening. Hot, dry spells undoubtedly make fires more likely, but awkwardly for those blaming climate change, wildfires are getting less frequent worldwide, not more, as the globe warms. The acreage burned has decreased steadily since 2000, according to Nasa’s satellites, and is thought to have almost halved in a century.

Paul Wood

Burnham cannot solve Labour’s Gaza problem

Prime Ministers usually wait until they have been in office a little while before issuing apologies. Andy Burnham made one before he even got to Downing Street – about Gaza. But whatever he’s planning, it won’t be enough to solve Labour’s Gaza problem. After his by-election campaign, Burnham called Gaza ‘a scar on our collective conscience’ and posted a video on X saying Labour’s initial response to Israel’s actions there had caused ‘huge’ hurt. ‘We got it wrong and I am sorry for that.’ The apology did demonstrate the sure political touch that has propelled him to No. 10. It was in stark contrast to flat-footed remarks by Keir Starmer before he took office – retracted a week later – in which he said Israel had the right to cut off food and power to Gaza.

Andrew Lambert

Make the Royal Navy great again

It’s all very well for Andy Burnham and John Healey to say they want to fund defence, but are they aware of just what a perilous situation the Royal Navy is in? Policy failure by successive governments, more focused on election appeal than security, means the state has lost sight of the basics. Ensuring the free movement of global shipping has been a priority for centuries because Britain cannot produce enough food, fuel or raw materials for itself. Along with the nuclear deterrence, shipping routes form the existential core of our national security. These routes – vital in world wars against Napoleon, the Kaiser and Hitler – depended on a powerful, globally deployed navy. The current force is not up to the task.

Wednesday

Freddy Gray

The radical left-wing takeover of the Democrats is nearly complete

Tuesday 4 August could prove to be a turning point in American political history. If Democratic primary voters in Michigan choose Haley Stevens, a moderate, as their Senate nominee, the party establishment should stagger on, perhaps up to and beyond the presidential election of 2028. It’s more likely, however, that the Democrats will elect Dr Abdul El-Sayed, a pro-Palestine radical who supports Medicare for All and the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. El-Sayed’s victory would confirm that the hard left is the coming force in national politics, and suggest that the long-anticipated socialist takeover of the oldest party in the US – the party of Andrew Jackson, Harry Truman and Bill Clinton – is finally under way.

Joan Alexander

Not all boorish or lecherous behaviour is sexual assault

In the late 1990s, the rules for unwanted advances in a nightclub were clear. The first line of defence was your own. Only you could decide if the advance was unwanted or not – and if not, you could apply words or force, depending on the context. ‘You’re not made of glass,’ as my Scottish granny used to say. If the advances persisted, your male friends or a chivalrous stranger could be deployed. Occasionally, if a lech was so drunk or so unable to read the room, the situation could be escalated to a bouncer. I was a barmaid at the Liberty club in Bridlington for the summer after my A-levels, and I watched the bouncers make the sort of careful and immediate judgments we wish social workers and police could make now.