Melanie McDonagh

Ever willing to exploit my children, I asked them yesterday just how many actual English children there were in their class at school – one’s at primary, the other, secondary. What, English-English, they said reasonably? You mean, both parents, plus born here? Yes, I said, which meant they couldn’t count themselves – they were born in Dublin. They thought about it for a bit. The elder said, counting on his fingers, that five out of 27 were English-English, with another three more half and half. My daughter counted 10 out of 27, if you include pupils from Guernsey and Northern Ireland, which I unwillingly conceded might count as British from some perspectives; a child whose granny is from Sierra Leone counts as English. The rest were a ragbag.

Not surprisingly, feminists lost no time this week weighing in behind Emily Lucinda Cole, a Virgin Trains passenger who took great exception to being addressed by a rail employee 'with that hideously patronising word women shudder at in contexts such as these: ‘honey’'. And indeed, the episode she complained about did suggest that the term wasn’t altogether friendly. When she told her ticket inspector she took exception to the brusque way he checked her ticket (and yes, I’m wondering about that), and that she’d be complaining to the bosses, he told her: 'You go ahead, honey'. He may have been an overworked Virgin employee fed up with middle-class girls getting uppity with him or he may have been a bad tempered so and so. It's difficult to tell.

Is there anything more evil than Dry January as an unchristian abomination and a conspiracy against Baby Jesus?  Unless it’s Veganuary. It’s part, you know, of the war against Christmas and indeed against a sane approach to the seasons. Look around you, folks: this is a bleak month if you cut out decorations, tinsel, candlelight, hot wine punch and saturated carbs, satsumas and pudding. Nature didn’t intend us to be giving things up at this time of year. Giving up drink when it’s grey and cold is a rubbish idea. And doing it is a modern way of screwing up the seasons by extending the New Year’s resolutions idea into New Year, New You programmes to do with diet…bang in the middle of the 12 Days of Christmas.

The Church of England being what it is, it was pretty well inevitable that the new Bishop of London should be a woman and as it happens the woman in question is Sarah Mullally, 55, at present suffragan bishop of Exeter. I spoke to her this morning before Downing Street made the announcement – wouldn’t you just love to know if the PM added her mite? – and the bishop designate gave every impression of being a nice and decent person, and a committed, almost certainly evangelical, Christian. Very much in the mould then of another evangelical, the Archbishop of Canterbury. She’s also a former Chief Nursing Officer who worked in the Department of Health for five years and was educated in a comprehensive (the last, a very good thing).

Thank God for the proprieties. This magazine's editor, Fraser Nelson, rattled a few score Anglicans today when he declared in his Radio 4 newspaper roundup at Broadcasting House (pleasingly paired with the FT’s Lionel Barber, BTW) that Meghan Markle and Prince Harry were to share a bedroom when they stay with the Queen at Sandringham over Christmas. This was on the back of a piece by Rachel Johnson, sister of, in the Mail on Sunday, deploring the fact that Meghan was to glad hand the crowds after the Christmas service, even though she’s only engaged. It was the bedroom-sharing arrangement bit that scandalised me.

‘The thing is,’ said my friend, after the broadcast of the engagement interview with Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, ‘you can’t imagine actually bowing or curtseying to her, can you?’ That is pretty well the crux of the engagement issue: can you see yourself doing either in the case of the newest prospective member of the Windsor family? Personally, I would curtsey to the Queen and I have done to Prince Philip; I would draw the line at Camilla, and I wouldn’t dream of curtseying to Meghan. My friend was in fact A.N. Wilson, biographer of,  inter alia, Queen Victoria.

It may be churlish to be unkind about a young couple who have just announced their engagement but needs must. Someone has to say it, though let me say at the outset that the engagement has made lots of people very happy. Not least journalists. Prince Harry is fifth in line to the throne so constitutionally it doesn’t matter a hoot who he marries because neither he nor his children are going to become monarch, but, for what it’s worth, Meghan Markle is unsuitable as his wife for the same reason that Wallis Simpson was unsuitable: she’s divorced and Harry’s grandmother is supreme governor of the CofE. The last person who made any personal sacrifice for that particular principle was Princess Margaret, and you could argue it didn’t end terribly well.

The oddest thing about the Dickin medal awarded to a dog called Mali today, and given to animals from carrier pigeons to horses for 'conspicuous gallantry or devotion to duty while serving or associated with any branch of the Armed Forces or Civil Defence Units', is that it was instituted in 1943. Back then, there were umpteen examples of animals doing useful war work, including pigeons such as Winkie and Tyke (six of the first seven citations were to them) who helped rescue stranded airmen, and a mongrel called Tyke who sniffed out a number of Blitz victims. Naturally, there are bonds of affection and gratitude between the humans who used the creatures, and the animals.

There has been an equivocal reaction, wouldn’t you say, to the Church of England’s pronouncement that little boys should be allowed to wear tiaras and high heels at school, while issuing a helpful form to encourage teachers to report transgender bullying; the new rules, it says, are designed to 'challenge homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying'; (the second is new to me). Stonewall – which has changed its remit quite a bit from the old days when it campaigned just for gay rights – has welcomed the move. But as you’d expect, Christian evangelicals have taken a more dusty view. It’s hardly new for the CofE, though.

We all know, I think, what we’re meant to make of the Cambridge don who sent round a memo to his students to tell them they’ve got to do some work only to find the snowflake undergraduates calling his remarks 'extremely damaging' with mental health activists getting especially worked up. Most sensible people will feel that he deserves some sort of award. Personally, I’m with the students. Anyway, to flesh out the details, Professor Eugene Terentjev, plainly a scientist of the old school – he’s Russian – has sent an email to his undergraduate natural science students at Queens’ College to tell them that: 'You can ONLY do well (i.e.

Brian Sewell once wrote an article about abortion headlined: ‘Women, the killers in our midst.’ He got an awful lot of flak for it, which he took in his stride. He came to mind during the screening of Abortion On Trial, the documentary hosted by Anne Robinson and screened this week to mark the 50th anniversary of the passing of the 1967 Abortion Act. In it, one of the participants described abortion as murder. ‘Are nine of us here… murderers?’ asked Mrs Robinson with a flourish, to which the only tactful answer was no, of course not. Brian would unhesitatingly have said yes. Abortion is one of those issues about which dissent is not normally socially permissible right now; see what happened to Jacob Rees-Mogg.