Douglas Murray

I was recently reading the works of the 17th-century antiquary John Aubrey, who at one point mentions a ghost craze that had broken out in Cirencester. The ‘apparition’ was reported to have disappeared with ‘a curious perfume and most melodious twang’. Reading this I unconsciously got ready for a man as wise as Aubrey to pooh-pooh the whole thing, pouring scorn on such superstition. But no; while Aubrey does indeed have a correction, it comes via his friend — one Mr W. Lilly — who ventures that the common view is wrong, for he ‘believes it was a fairy’. One of the most familiar joys of reading is the moment of recognition, when a hand seems to reach out across the centuries and a voice seems to say: ‘I was there too.

I’m not sure how many readers know the name of Anthony Smith, who died on Sunday aged 83, but a fair number will. He spent almost a decade at the BBC, helped start Channel 4, directed the British Film Institute, chaired many committees and for 17 years was president of Magdalen College, Oxford. But while not every reader will know him, you are lucky if you know the type: that rare person whose passion is helping other people — the type, in other words, who makes the world work. I first met him when I was a precocious schoolboy of 16. I had asked permission from Magdalen’s librarian to look at some manuscripts for a book I was researching. Tony was clearly alerted to this and made the effort to introduce himself and take me for a walk around the college grounds.

A report by MPs into the spread of the coronavirus has concluded that the government’s approach constituted one of this country’s worst ever public health failures. The MPs say the early fondness for herd immunity plus the delay in locking the country down ended up costing thousands of lives. What makes this worse is that everything the government did was done at the suggestion of its leading scientific advisers, Whitty, Vallance and Sage. And so one feels another slippage of faith. On this occasion relating to the imperium not of government, but of scientists. I know some people will be amazed that I should have any remaining trust in government scientific advisers. But everybody has to trust somebody, and I tend to trust people who know about things I do not.

So farewell then, Stephen Toope. The undistinguished Canadian lawyer who has spent recent years trying to run Cambridge University into the ground has just sent an announcement to all faculty, alumni and students. In it he informs them that he has decided to step down from his position as Vice-Chancellor at the end of this academic year. The reason he gives is that he has decided to spend more time with his family. You do not have to read between the lines to realise that Toope is leaving because his brief tenure at Cambridge has been an unmitigated disaster, a fact that has become increasingly clear. Among the highlights of his career at Cambridge have been: Overseeing the trashing of academic freedom.

There were two remarkable things about Emma Raducanu’s wonderful win at the US open last week. The first was the win itself. The second was the reaction to it. For the fact that Raducanu happens to be of Romanian-Chinese descent and was born in Canada meant that her triumph was immediately spun through the same political cycle as everything else. Mayor of London Sadiq Khan proclaimed that the star’s story is ‘London’s story’ and showed the virtue of ‘diversity’. Other politicians and hacks joined him.

It was quite the handover at Kabul airport this week. The last American troops to exit Afghanistan reportedly left facing an ‘elite unit’ of the Taliban. In a season finale that the most dystopian screenwriter would have struggled to invent, the elite Taliban unit was itself bedecked in US military kit. That is, they were not only wearing uniforms and protective kit provided by the fleeing US army, but were parading the airport with US-provided guns in US-provided vehicles. This was the culmination of a fortnight that the White House is still trying to present as a success. One of the biggest airlifts in history, they insist. In reality the Biden administration has pulled off a feat few of us thought possible.