Books and Arts – 15 August 2019
From our UK edition
The Spectator
Thursday
to 2418: Sweet
From our UK edition
Unclued lights are all sweet wines. WESTERNISED, an anagram of DESSERT WINE, was to be highlighted.   First prize Erin Barrack, Beeston, Nottinghamshire Runners-up Jane F. Adongo, Canterbury, Kent Kiran Parekh, Wayne, Illinois, USA
Wednesday
The Spectator, the oldest magazine in the world, to launch US edition
From our UK edition
The Spectator, which has published weekly out of London since 1828, will launch a US edition this fall. Spectator USA has had a successful digital-only presence in America since the spring of 2018. It will publish its first monthly US print edition on October 1, only 191 years after the launch of the London edition. ‘Better late than never,’
Full text: Boris Johnson’s ‘People’s PMQs’ debut
From our UK edition
Good afternoon. I’m speaking to you live from my desk in Downing Street for the first-ever People’s Question Time, People’s PMQs, and at the moment I’m afraid MPs are all still off on holiday. But I can take questions unpasteurised, unmediated from you via this machine. So I’m going to go straight away to Luther
Tuesday
A US trade deal is good news for Britain
From our UK edition
Now that America is offering a trade deal – or as John Bolton says, a series of mini deals – can the Brexiteers handle it? And ought the internationalist Remainers to welcome it? The topic tends to send leading figures from both sides into a spin, raising questions as to how prepared they are for what
Thursday
Letters | 8 August 2019
From our UK edition
We don’t cut God Sir: The Revd Dr Peter Mullen suggests (Letters, 3 August) that Boris Johnson told him my BBC Great Lives programme had cut from our broadcast treatment of Samuel Johnson an extended discussion of Christianity’s role in Dr Johnson’s life. Boris J championed Samuel J for our programme, and your correspondent has been
Trading places | 8 August 2019
From our UK edition
Comments by the former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers this week, claiming that Britain will come off poorly in negotiations for a trade deal with the US, should not be surprising. He has previously declared that Britain’s vote for Brexit was ‘the worst self-inflicted policy wound that a country has done since the second world
Portrait of the Week – 8 August 2019
From our UK edition
Home If the government lost a confidence motion when parliament sits again in September, it could call an election for after 31 October, by which time Britain would have left the European Union, according to a briefing attributed to Dominic Cummings, the special adviser to Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister. Opposition MPs plotted to prevent
Barometer | 8 August 2019
From our UK edition
Dams, lives and statistics The town of Whaley Bridge, Derbyshire, was evacuated after heavy rainfall caused the partial collapse of a reservoir slipway. No one has been killed in a dam collapse in Britain since 1925, but the worst incidents up to that date were: — Dale Dyke, Sheffield, 1864. Puddle clay core of dam
Books and Arts – 8 August 2019
From our UK edition
to 2417: Six nations
From our UK edition
The unclued lights are LAND OF (25A): MILK AND HONEY (11A), CAKES (12A), HOPE AND GLORY (39A), ENCHANTMENT (7D), MY FATHERS (9D) and BEULAH (29D). First prize Adam Hughes, Liverpool Runners-up Richard Stone, Barton under Needwood, Staffordshire; J.P. Green, Uppingham, Rutland
Spectator writers on the UK’s best beaches
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Tom Holland Trevone, Cornwall Pretty much every summer, my family and my cousins head for a farm in north Cornwall, strategically situated for visits to our favourite beach: Trevone. A beautiful cove with breakers, cliffs and an unobtrusive shop, its chief appeal is the opportunity it provides for building colossal sandcastles. Each year, our
Thursday
Barometer | 1 August 2019
From our UK edition
Growing fanbase A photograph of the Queen meeting Boris Johnson revealed that she uses a Dyson electric fan. How many of us own fans? — Sales of electric fans rose from 471,403 in 2008 to 648,829 in 2017, according to Prodcom figures collected by the Office for National Statistics. — The retailer AO.com reported that sales
Letters | 1 August 2019
From our UK edition
Poppycock Sir: Last week’s lead article (‘Boris begins’, 27 July) suggested that if we leave without a deal, ‘the Johnson government will have another huge challenge on its hands — how to avert large-scale economic damage’. I have some experience of the conduct of economic policy, and I hope you will forgive me for saying that this
Sterling effort
From our UK edition
In his first week as Prime Minister, Boris Johnson has shocked those who had assumed that he is a joker incapable of making any more progress than his predecessor. During his leadership campaign, he said that he would not settle for a modified version of the Brexit deal that Theresa May agreed and Parliament rejected
Portrait of the week | 1 August 2019
From our UK edition
Home The Conservatives’ poll ratings went up and the pound went down after a week of the prime ministership of Boris Johnson, as the government reiterated its commitment to leaving the European Union by 31 October. David Frost, the Prime Minister’s chief Brexit negotiator, told his EU counterparts of the commitment and Rishi Sunak, the
Books and Arts – 1 August 2019
From our UK edition
to 2416: Silence
From our UK edition
Each unclued light contains a SILENT letter (with 11 containing two). First prize P.L. Macdougall, London SW6 Runners-up Sir Graeme Davies, Farndon, Newark; Hugh Schofield, Paris
A poll of the people
From our UK edition
The Need For A Poll Of The People, 2 August 1919: ‘It is not to be wondered at that during the anxious public discussions about nationalisation, proposals should have been made that the great issue should be decided by means of a Referendum or, as we prefer to call it, a Poll of the People.
Sunday
How Boris can silence his critics again
From our UK edition
It’s hard to think of a prime minister who has reached No. 10 with lower expectations. Boris Johnson has been dismissed as a philandering clown, a joker calamitously miscast as prime minister in a moment of national crisis. Obloquy has been hurled at him every time he has taken a new job — from mayor
