London

Thursday

Dot Wordsworth

What exactly is a narwhal?

A point that many people mentioned amid the horror and heroism of the attack at London Bridge was the enterprising use of a narwhal tusk taken from the wall of Fishmongers’ Hall to belabour the murderous knifeman. I am surprised to find that the first person known to use narwhal in English was good old Sir Thomas Browne, in the discussion of unicorns’ horns in his Pseudodoxia Epidemica or Vulgar Erroures, where he correctly declares that ‘those long Horns preserved as pretious rarities in many places, are but the teeth of Narhwales’. Narwhal tusks are spirally grooved, and Browne observed that the long horn preserved in his day at St Denis in Paris ‘hath wreathy spires, and chocleary turnings about it’. That was in the edition of 1650.

Rod Liddle

Who are we kidding – of course terror is a political issue

It was pleasing to see that old clip of Gerry Adams endorsing Jeremy Corbyn re-emerge, just before the acts of carnage were carried out at London Bridge. It reminded us all, should we have needed to be reminded, of Jeremy’s genial relationship with terrorists who murder British citizens (or indeed Israeli citizens). The question, I suppose, is: will it sway any opinions? You would doubt it, such is the kind of deranged certitude in which the his supporters bask, where everything bad about Mr Corbyn has actually been made up by Boris Johnson, or people like me. Even as the first reports of the atrocity were coming in, Corbyn’s Momentum acolytes were all over social media suggesting that it was an establishment plot to scupper Labour’s chances at the election.

Thursday

Peter York

The man who built Britain’s first skyscraper

In 2011 Britain’s first skyscraper was finally given Grade I listing. The citation for 55 Broadway — the Gotham City-ish home of Transport for London, which sprouts up from St James’s Park Station — said that the building was important in a number of ways: its architect Charles Holden, the designer of Senate House and a range of breakthrough modernist Tube stations in the 1930s, was increasingly recognised as major. The building’s scale and structure were pioneering for London in 1929. And the sculpture on its otherwise plain façades was by important artists including Jacob Epstein, Eric Gill and the young Henry Moore (his first work on a public building and a rare figurative human-in-motion figure).

Thursday

Damian Thompson

In his new piano concerto Thomas Ades’s inspiration has completely dried up

There’s nothing like a good piano concerto and, sad to relate, Thomas Adès’s long-awaited first proper attempt at the genre is nothing like a good piano concerto. Not in the version we heard at its UK première in the Royal Festival Hall, anyway. What a disappointment! Perhaps Adès can rescue it, but he’d have to hack away at the score as ruthlessly as Bruckner dismantling his Third Symphony. That work wasn’t necessarily improved by its revisions but, honestly, almost anything would be an improvement on the first two movements of the 21-minute concerto performed by Kirill Gerstein and the LPO conducted by the composer. You knew there was something wrong after ten seconds.

Friday

Spectator Life

Where to buy property in London

With prices in many parts of the city already beginning to fall, buying in London is a minefield. Striking a balance between liveability and getting a good return on investment is the trick we should all be aiming to pull off. Afterall, buy somewhere that’s already got too many tattooed men selling flat whites and you’ll end up paying the price later when you realise values in the neighbourhood have topped out. Equally, buy somewhere that’s cheap, but far below the radar for cool hunters and you could end up with the same problem. We’ve picked out some areas in the north, east, south and west of the city that have that perfect trade off between up and coming property prices and great liveability.

Thursday

Joan Collins

Joan Collins: why I love London taxi drivers

Percy and I have seen quite a few movies recently and enjoyed many of them, which is rare. But the most enjoyable was Judy, for the performance of its star, Renée Zellweger. I met Judy Garland many times when I had just arrived in Hollywood as a young starlet and I can tell you that Renée resembles her uncannily, both physically and emotionally. Judy was fragile and birdlike, but her voice was strong and magical. I watched her sing at a party given by the legendary songwriter Sammy Cahn, who accompanied her on the piano. Apart from Miss Garland’s brilliant voice, it was fascinating to watch the audience. People who were great stars in their own right — Frank Sinatra, Rosalind Russell and Billy Wilder — were entranced by her performance.

Thursday

Martin Vander Weyer

Are Boris’s hedge-fund pals conspiring to ‘short the UK’? I doubt it

Minding my own business at 67 Pall Mall — the private members’ club favoured by oenophile West End hedge-fund managers that will serve as this week’s restaurant tip — I’m watching two tieless but well-tailored gents at the next table sampling different vintages of Château Pichon Longueville. And I’m thinking: ‘Bastards! These must be the friends-of-Boris who are conspiring to reap billions from a no-deal Brexit!’ It was former chancellor Philip Hammond who wrote recently of Johnson being ‘backed by speculators’, citing the PM’s sister Rachel who had spoken of the influence on him of ‘people who have invested billions in shorting the pound and shorting the country’.

Friday

James Kirkup

Four reasons Rory Stewart could struggle in London

Could Rory Stewart become Mayor of London, disrupt the main political parties and strike a historic blow for humane centrism and political compromise? Possibly the best reason to bet against him is that quite a lot of people like me will be arguing – and hoping – that he can win. By “people like me” I mean the commentator-class. I know what I am. I run a think-tank at Westminster and I write about politics for newspapers and magazines. I don’t belong to any political party and have voted for at least five of them in my 43 and three-quarter years.

Thursday

Tanya Gold

I’ve had my fill of brasseries: Moncks reviewed

If you review restaurants professionally you would not think Britain wanted to leave the EU. You would think she wanted to live happily in the twinkling golden stars of Europe like Emily Thornberry’s neck fat, eating, semi-eternally, at a European-style brasserie. British restaurants are a silent acknowledgement that native food is not very good unless you really like cabbage. Please don’t write to me about fungus from Maidenhead. I don’t care. Our cities reflect it; every-where I see European-style brasseries glinting with the promise of European--style bliss. Where is the courage of our seething psychological imperatives? Why don’t we put our madness where our mouths are? I daydream about a new Brexit-themed restaurant in Britain, but I have yet to see it.

Monday

Spectator Life

The 10 best London boroughs for families

New analysis of house prices and schools across London shows that, out of London’s 32 boroughs, Sutton and Richmond upon Thames are best for families. When comparing size of property, the amount of green space and, most importantly, quality of schools, Sutton soared to the top of the rankings with an average house price of £508,679 for a semi-detached property – not bad considering the average house price in London is £485,830. For this price, families will be getting approximately 100 square metres of property, in an area with the lowest crime rate in all of London. When it comes to giving the kids a chance to let off steam, 32 per cent of Sutton is comprised of green space, meaning there’s plenty of areas for children to run around in.

Thursday

Martin Vander Weyer

An oil price spike doesn’t mean a recession is on the way

An oil price surge from $60 to $72 per barrel, as happened after the drone attack on Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq refinery caused a sudden 6 per cent cut to global supply, would once have been taken as a sure signal of economic troubles ahead. A 1990s study of postwar oil prices plotted against employment and other data by Professor Andrew Oswald of Warwick University showed that every spike in energy costs had shortly been followed by recession. The theory still held in 2008: even though the ‘Great Recession’ was attributed to financial mayhem, it came soon after a speculative oil peak of $147.

Thursday

Rory Sutherland

Why no one ever moves back to London

In last week’s Spectator, Martin Vander Weyer replied to a couple with a baby who had sought his advice on accepting a low offer for their cramped London flat to buy a house in commuterland. Their fear was that, if Brexit led to a property crash, they could face negative equity. Should they call the whole thing off? Emphatically not, said Martin. ‘Buying a family home is a long-term choice, rarely regretted, in which fluctuating value matters far less than whether you love the house.’ He’s right, I’m sure. But I’d like to add a further thought experiment which may reaffirm their decision. I recently heard of a different property dilemma: two married London teachers in their early fifties owned a small house now worth just under £1 million.

Thursday

Henry Wilkins

The six best commuter villages close to London

Staring into a stranger’s armpit on a rush-hour tube train can often lead to thoughts of moving to a tiny village. We imagine that, there, we might find the space to be ourselves. As a description of Louis de Bernieres’ fictional Surrey village, Notwithstanding, reads: it is a place where, “a lady dresses in plus fours and shoots squirrels, a retired general gives up wearing clothes altogether… and people think it quite natural to confide in a spider that lives in a potting shed.” Perhaps it’s just me, but as a Londoner, that all sounds rather liberating. In the interests of bucolic fantasies, we’ve put together a list of commuter villages near the capital.

Tanya Gold

Like Twitter, but with food: Market Hall Victoria reviewed

The Market Hall Victoria is an international food shed opposite the station terminus. I have long hated Victoria, thinking it the most provincial part of central London. It longs for the provinces, it impersonates them, it summons them. It is odd because the station itself is beautiful: a grimy Edwardian fantasy with tall grimy chimneys and a fantastical clock. But the rest of it is painful: the ugly road to parliament; the immense new blocks with their hideous restaurants; the sad and stripy Roman Catholic cathedral, which searches for grandeur but just looks weird; the Queen’s back wall, which I marvel at, because it tells so much. Victoria is a disappointment to itself. It sags and gasps. It is a stage with the scenery removed; a road out of town.

Thursday

Bruce Anderson

Summer in the city

Foolish me. I could have been writing this by the shore of Lake Trasimene, with only one problem: how to transmit it to London. Last time I stayed in the delightful house there, the technology was still in the era of Hannibal’s victory. There was no wifi, only spasmodic mobile-phone reception, and the nearest English newspapers were 50 miles away. ‘Where ignorance is bliss…’ Instead, I stayed in London to work out what was happening. As I say, folly. After two fruitless weeks, I have not even identified the questions, let alone the answers. There have been compensations: one great Test match, and very likely more to follow. Steve Smith — the Australians are fortunate that his extraordinary stance was not coached out of him.

Thursday

Edmund West

Great and small

‘I’m not going to your place, it looks like a crack den.’ It’s not exactly a vote of confidence when your mother describes your home that way. Admittedly, the bedsit I have lived in for ten years is tiny. There is no central heating. The white blinds have faded to yellow. It’s not much good for house parties: I could fit four people, five if I sat between the sink and the microwave. However, I would like to defend living in bedsits. Whenever I hear people complaining about housing in London, I wonder whether they have considered a bedsit. I’m autistic and work as a part-time carer, but even on my salary I was able to go on holiday abroad four times last year, thanks to my living arrangements. In London, rent is my biggest expense by a huge margin.

Thursday

Rory Sutherland

Why has London Bridge station been shortlisted for an architectural prize?

London Bridge station has been shortlisted for the Riba Stirling architects prize. The jury said its "impressive" new concourse had "significantly improved the experience of those who use it daily". That's nonsense, says The Spectator's Wiki Man, Rory Sutherland: In the shadow of the Shard, not far from Borough Market, is a £1 billion public artwork, an allegorical sculpture entitled ‘What is wrong with the world today’ by the reclusive wunderkind Netwór Krail. It was officially unveiled by the Duke of Cambridge last year. The reason you may not have read about this monumental piece is that most of the press coverage failed to notice this structure was a landmark in experiential art. They mostly used its banal official name: the new London Bridge station.

Thursday

Mary Wakefield

Stop posturing over stop and search

It was somehow inevitable that shortly after Met Police Commissioner Cressida Dick announced a fall in violent crime, there would be an absolute horror-show of death across the capital. The ‘weekend of bloodshed’ began on Friday 14 June with the murder of 18-year-old Cheyon Evans, knifed by teens in Wandsworth. A few minutes later Eniola Aluko was shot dead in Plumstead, then three men were hospitalised in Clapham, another dead of knife wounds in Tower Hamlets, and another an hour later in Enfield. In Stratford the next day, by the Westfield shopping centre, more than 100 young men attacked and injured a handful of police officers.

Thursday

Christopher Priest

Darkness visible | 9 May 2019

With his first novel about looking after an engineered wood floor, and a second novel about what it is like to stay in a chain hotel, Will Wiles seems determined to corner the market in unpromising literary subjects. His latest novel, Plume, is about a chap who lives in a rented flat in London and who works in an office. Hooray! — the sainted few who are already Wiles fans will learn this with their hearts pumping with anticipatory happiness. Mine certainly did. A quick summary is appropriate, as Wiles’s novels remain, for now, under-regarded. Care of Wooden Floors (2012) was exactly what it said on the tin. The narrator flies to a European city to house-sit an apartment of an absent friend called Oskar.

Thursday

Tanya Gold

The dark side of Soho

Each suburban soul yearns for the Soho of their youth. It isn’t that Soho was better in the 1990s when I invaded the Colony Room, twitching, and took a fag off Sarah Lucas. It is that I was. This was the view of a friend after I last wrote on Soho restaurants. We once ran holding hands through the sprinklers in St James’s Park laughing at Peter Mandelson, who was passing with his dog, and that is my memory of the Blair years. So Soho, which is thick with metaphor anyway — its very name is a hunting call: death for one and ecstasy for another — is a district to measure your age. The new buildings barely matter in this reasoning, even if I hate them. The stones — and the possibilities — remain. You can’t erase the energy of that much bad sex.