Economy
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The Spectator
Friday
Map
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Letters | 28 December 2012
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Distinguished Wardens Sir: Contrary to Dennis Sewell’s statement (‘Assault on the Ivory Tower’, 15/22 December), Wadham College did not ‘elect’ John Wilkins to be Warden in 1647 after Parliament’s victory in the Civil War. Rather, Parliamentary Commissioners sacked the royalist Warden and almost all the Fellows and Scholars and imposed Wilkins as the new Warden, followed by new Fellows and Scholars. Since Wilkins is by far the most distinguished Warden in the College’s history until the election of Maurice Bowra in 1938, his appointment is an uncomfortable example of state interference in university affairs actually doing good. Wilkins would, as Sewell suggests, have felt at home among the media-types of modern Oxford.
Barometer | 28 December 2012
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Counting the years 2013 might look an uninteresting number for a year but it is in fact a mathematical rarity: a year whose digits, when rearranged, can form a simple arithmetic progression: i.e. 0,1,2,3. — The last such year was 1432. The next will be 2031, after which we will have to wait until 2103 for the next one. — The good news, for those who believe in ominous dates, is that nothing terribly bad happened in 1432. Florence defeated Siena at the Battle of San Romano, there was a civil war in Lithuania and a small revolt against the Ottoman Empire in Albania.
Portrait of the week | 28 December 2012
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Home Banks should erect a protective ring-fence round their high-street operations, the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards recommended, and moreover it should be ‘electrified’. The metaphor meant that regulators should have the power to break up banks that misbehaved. The ten members of the commission included the next Archbishop of Canterbury, the Rt Revd Justin Welby, and ‘Nigella’s Dad’, as one paper put it, Lord Lawson of Blaby. Mark Carney, the next governor of the Bank of England, suggested that economic growth should be a target, rather than inflation. The government had to borrow £17.5 billion in November, £1.
Unholy war
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To attend midnight mass on Christmas Eve in parts of Nigeria is to take your life in your hands. For the last three years, Islamist militants have been attacking churches but last week, when gunmen moved on a church in Potiskum, they found the military waiting. On their retreat, they came across a smaller unprotected church in the nearby village of Peri and opened fire, killing the pastor and five parishioners. A separate attack on the First Baptist Church in the village of Maiduguri took Nigeria’s Christmas death toll to a dozen, and the overall casualties of its new sectarian war to 1,400. There was no condemnation from London. The idea of Christians being persecuted is one that the Foreign Office seems to find confusing.
Hunting with the Heythrop
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In this week's issue of The Spectator, Melissa Kite joins David Cameron's local hunt, the Heythrop, to find out what its members think of its recent drubbing in the courts from the RSPCA, and the Conservative Party's troubled relationship with fox hunting. She meets former huntsman Julian Barnfield, who was fined £1,000 in the case, and chats to him about the recent admission from the Tories that a free vote on the hunting ban isn't on the cards for the new year after all: To understand fully the sense of grievance, you need to cast your mind back to the way the Conservatives campaigned at the last election. Then, the party was happy to cosy up to people like Mr Barnfield. This is because he was pounding the streets putting leaflets through doors in marginal seats.
The Spectator’s books of 2012, pt 2
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2012 is very nearly finished. Here is a selection (published in the magazine last month) of the Spectator's best books of the year. Matthew Parris There’s been a fad for publishing ‘biographies’ of entities that are not human beings: everything from longitude to the mosquito, and the format can prove forced. But Robert Shepherd’s Westminster, A Biography: From Earliest Times to the Present (Bloomsbury, £20) chooses a subject with a beating heart. Westminster has developed a most distinct personality since its birth as a swampy Bronze Age island, and Shepherd explains, describes and charts it with great scholarship, of course, but with a smile and a quizzical eyebrow. I love learning how little I knew.
Thursday
The Spectator’s books of 2012, pt 1
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2012 is drawing to a close. Here is a selection (published in the magazine last month) of the Spectator's best books of the year. A.N.Wilson Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death by James Runcie (Bloomsbury, £14.99). At last, an Anglican Father Brown. Runcie has sensibly set his detective stories in the 1950s, before the boring era when DNA and science spoilt the poetry of crime investigation. Canon Chambers, a self-effacing, clever clergyman with a taste for pubs and shove-halfpenny, and an agonised capacity to fall in love with women, is surely a bit as Archbishop Runcie must have been when he came out of the Guards and took orders? Each tale is beautifully crafted and surprising. I hope for many more volumes.
Wednesday
Washing up is therapeutic and dishwashers are socialist
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It's Boxing Day. Your kitchen worktops are groaning under piles of plates, roasting dishes, pans and champagne glasses. If you're struggling to persuade anyone in your house to fill the sink with hot soapy water, you should first hand them a copy of Mark Mason's piece in the Christmas issue of the Spectator, 'The tao of washing up'. Mark writes that washing up is 'therapeutic', a 'Zen-like state where troubles disappear and inspiration thrives', threatened only by 'evil' dishwashers. He also details how to get the most satisfaction from a session at the sink: Like all truly noble endeavours, washing up has time-honoured rituals. ‘Washing as you cook’ is a particular pleasure, allowing regular hits of the drug amidst your peeling and boiling.
Monday
The man behind the Alpha Course
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Christmas is one of the few times of year when those unaccustomed to attending church feel prompted to join their local congregation for a few carols. But what will they find when they walk through those church doors? In the Christmas issue of the Spectator, Damian Thompson profiles Nicky Gumbel, vicar of Holy Trinity Brompton. HTB pioneered the Alpha Course, which has now been taken by 20 million people across the world, both in the Anglican and Catholic churches. Thompson also visits HTB, writing: At the 11.30 service at HTB last Sunday, the Christian rock anthems were performed by professional musicians.
Friday
The great books Spectator writers and others hate
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Find out which books PD James, Sam Leith, Susan Hill, Mark Amory, Barry Humphries and many more hate, then tell us about yours in the comments section. Craig Brown Which classic work do you think this comes from? ‘Her teeth were white in her brown face and her skin and her eyes were the same golden tawny brown. She had high cheek-bones, merry eyes and a straight mouth with full lips. Her hair was the golden brown of a grain field that has been burned dark in the sun but it was cut short all over her head so that it was but little longer than the fur on a beaver pelt.’ Jeffrey Archer? Jackie Collins? Lee Child? I’ll give you one more clue.
Wednesday
Children’s books for Christmas
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If you're still struggling to find a present for the inscrutable toddlers and children in your life, fear not for behold we bring you good tidings of great joy: Juliet Townsend's annual selection of the best children's books on the market, published in the Spectator a few weeks back. My 20-month-old granddaughter totters into the room. Her eyes are shining with the fervour of St Bernadette. She has caught a glimpse of the divine. Two small stuffed pigs are clasped in her arms. Clearly she has been in heaven. Actually she has just returned from a visit to Peppa Pig World, the most exciting experience of her short life. Anyone who has contact with very small children today will be all too familiar with Peppa, the toddlers’ Harry Potter in her universal appeal.
Wednesday
Santa
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Bedtime
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Dogs
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Jumper
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Boot
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Dalek
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Fishing
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