The Spectator

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters: My childhood memory of the Queen

From our UK edition

Majestic memories Sir: The sad news of the death of Queen Elizabeth II took me back 70 years to my earliest memory. I was three years old; the location was the Fleet Review at Spithead and the date was 15 June 1953, 13 days after the coronation. Some 325 ships of the Royal and Merchant Navies, including vessels from many other countries, were lined up at anchor between Gosport and Ryde. The assembled fleet was reviewed by HM Queen Elizabeth and many members of her family on board the ‘stand-in’ royal yacht, HMS Surprise. There was a 21-gun salute and cheering from the ships’ crews as the Surprise proceeded up and down the rows of vessels. My father was second officer of the Shell tanker Velletia and I was on board with my mother and older brother.

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Portrait of the week: The death of Queen Elizabeth II – and the accession of King Charles III

From our UK edition

Home The body of Queen Elizabeth lay in state at Westminster Hall, in a coffin draped in the royal standard on which were placed the orb and sceptre, before her funeral in Westminster Abbey on 19 September, declared a bank holiday. She had died at Balmoral on the afternoon of 8 September, two days after appointing Liz Truss Prime Minister there. The new King took the name Charles III. In a televised address the next day, he said: ‘As the Queen herself did with such unswerving devotion, I too now solemnly pledge myself, throughout the remaining time God grants me, to uphold the constitutional principles at the heart of our nation.

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The Queen’s act of Union

From our UK edition

In death, as in life, Elizabeth II has been a unifying force for her country. For all the political rancour of recent years, this week has revealed a country at ease with itself. People of all political persuasions have come together to show their respect – in Scotland just as much as in England. It has been a reminder of what a force for good a monarch can be when he or she devotes their life to service. After the Queen’s coffin was transferred from Balmoral Castle to Holyroodhouse, up the Royal Mile to St Giles’ Cathedral, members of the public lined up to see it as it lay in state. Nicola Sturgeon was as effusive in her tributes as any Westminster politician. The new King was heard by the Scottish parliament with respect.

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2570: Short story – solution

From our UK edition

Arthur C. Clarke (31/45) said that Ernest Hemingway (35/12) won a bet from fellow writers for the shortest story: FOR SALE. BABY SHOES. NEVER WORN. (30/14/15). First prize Nicholas Grandage, London W11 Runners-up Magdalena Deptula, Eton, Berkshire; R.P.

Friday

Thursday

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Liz Truss can’t ignore the issue of NHS reform

From our UK edition

It’s hard to think of any Prime Minister who has entered office surrounded by such low expectations. Liz Truss was backed by just over half of Conservative party members and secured barely an eighth of MPs in the first ballot. Her critics dismiss her as a lightweight, wholly unsuited to tackling the problems now facing the country. The presumption is not just for trouble, but calamity: the fastest drop in living standards in living memory, followed by prolonged recession and worse. So if Truss manages to send inflation into reverse and makes a noticeable cut to taxes by Easter, it will be seen as quite an achievement. She has also been helped by Rishi Sunak’s somewhat wild exaggeration of the risk her tax cuts posed to the public finances.

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How much can Boris Johnson earn on the speaker circuit?

From our UK edition

In they come, out they go Liz Truss is the 15th prime minister to have served under Queen Elizabeth II, and her appointment was the 15th time the Queen has overseen a change of prime minister during her reign (Winston Churchill was already PM when she became Queen but Harold Wilson served twice). It would require political turmoil, however, for Elizabeth II to catch up with Queen Victoria on the latter score. While only ten different prime ministers served under Victoria, she oversaw 19 changes of prime minister. On five occasions the PM she appointed lasted less than a year. William Gladstone was appointed for his third spell on 1 February 1886, but six months later, on 20 July, he had to visit the Queen in order to resign.

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Letters: Why we obeyed lockdown

From our UK edition

Why we allowed it Sir: In her article ‘Why didn’t more people resist lockdown?’ (3 September), Lionel Shriver partially answers her own question. Priti Patel told us it was our public duty to shop our neighbours if they had three friends to tea, and our previously invisible police force started to patrol parks and beaches with unprecedented vigour, with a threat of £1,000 fines for malfeasance. There was no eagerness, but the public were glued to the nightly broadcasts from No. 10, where the PM told us we would be little better than murderers if we didn’t obey the diktats. The fear all this created is still evident as I walk round Sainsbury’s every week and see masked shoppers disinfecting their trollies as if their life depended on it.

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Portrait of the week: Truss in, Johnson out and Nord Stream 1 off

From our UK edition

Home Liz Truss, the new Prime Minister, said in a speech outside 10 Downing Street: ‘Boris Johnson delivered Brexit, the Covid vaccine and stood up to Russian aggression. History will see him as a hugely consequential prime minister.’ For her part: ‘I am confident that together we can ride out the storm.’ Earlier, on being elected leader of the Conservative party, she had said: ‘I know that we will deliver, we will deliver, we will deliver.’ She had been elected by party members ahead of Rishi Sunak by 81,326 votes to 60,399 (57.4 per cent to 42.6). Turnout was 82.6 per cent.

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2569: Anadad – solution

From our UK edition

The quotation was ‘I WAS BORN TO SPEAK ALL MIRTH AND NO MATTER’ from Much Ado About Nothing (II.i.321) by WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. BEAT/RICE (23D/17) is the speaker and BENE/DICK (12/31) the sparring partner. Title: Much Ado About Nothing in cryptic form. First prize R.R.

Tuesday

Thursday

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School portraits: snapshots of three notable schools

From our UK edition

Trinity School, Croydon Headmaster Alasdair Kennedy says he wants students to leave the school ‘without any sense of entitlement, but with a humility that acknowledges the fact there is always more to learn and others to learn from’. The former grammar school, which accepts boys from the age of ten, now offers a co-educational Sixth Form, in a state-of-the-art building opened by Boris Johnson in 2012. More than half of parents do not pay the full fees of £20,437 per year due to scholarships and bursaries. This summer, 84 per cent of students got into their first choice university, with almost half of all grades awarded being A*s.

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What would you make all children learn? A Spectator curriculum

From our UK edition

Matthew Parris My father was an engineer. As a child I enjoyed ‘creative’ writing: stories, poems and so on. Dad said: ‘Try writing something useful. You know how to mend a bicycle puncture. Write for me, on one page, instructions for mending a puncture, to be read by someone who knows what a bike is, and what things like “spanner” and “puncture repair outfit” mean, but has never tried to do the job themselves.’ To my own and Dad’s surprise, I really enjoyed this exercise, which demands not just an ability to write clearly, but the mental exercise of putting yourself into a different person’s place, so you can explain. It is really an exercise of the imagination.

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The Oxbridge Files: which schools get the most pupils in?

From our UK edition

Oxford and Cambridge have released figures showing how many offers they gave to pupils from schools in the 2021 Ucas application cycle. We have combined the figures in this table. It shows how well state grammars and sixth-form colleges compete with independent schools. Over the years, both universities have increased the proportion of acceptances from state schools: 69 per cent, up from 52 per cent in 2000. Of the 80 schools, 35 are independent, 21 grammar, ten sixth-form colleges, seven selective sixth-form colleges, six comprehensives or academies, and one is a further education college. (Schools are ranked by offers received, then by offer-to-application ratio.

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Letters: Lockdown saved lives

From our UK edition

Lockdown saved lives Sir: Rishi Sunak presents an alarming picture of what happened during lockdown (‘The lockdown files’, 27 August) – and one echoed by lockdown sceptics who claim that Covid policy was a disaster, stoked by fear and based on questionable scientific advice. Worst of all, they cry, the trade-offs were not even discussed. But none of this is true. I know because I sat around the cabinet table as politicians, scientists, economists and epidemiologists agonised over the extent to which lockdown would devastate lives and livelihoods. It was not an easy decision for anyone. Looking back, it’s clear that the biggest mistake we made wasn’t locking down, but doing so too late.

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Portrait of the week: Gorbachev dies, Gibraltar becomes a city (again) and Meghan’s Mandela moment

From our UK edition

Home Liz Truss, the contender for the Conservative party leadership who is expected to become prime minister next Tuesday, resisted temptations to say what she would do about the national energy price crisis. But she was said to have in her pocket licences for new drilling in the North Sea. Nadhim Zahawi, the Chancellor of the Exchequer for the time being, said that even people earning £45,000 a year would need help with their energy bills this winter. The price cap for energy set by the regulator Ofgem will rise by 80 per cent in October, with electricity going up from 28p per kilowatt hour to 52p and gas from 7p to 15p, making a typical annual energy bill currently £1,971 rise to £3,549.

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What did Nasa achieve last time it visited the Moon?

From our UK edition

Of mice and Moon What did Nasa achieve last time it visited the Moon? Apollo 17, in December 1972, involved putting two astronauts, Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt, there for 75 hours. They used a lunar roving vehicle to collect 254lb of rock and dust samples from areas up to 4.7 miles from the landing site. Among them was some orange dust believed to have originated in a volcanic eruption 3.5bn years ago. Experiments were also conducted into the flow of heat from the centre of the Moon to the surface, into minor changes in gravitational force, and the effect of cosmic rays on mice. At the end, Cernan said that he thought humans would return ‘not too long into the future’. North Sea hopes Can the North Sea avert the energy crisis?

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Russia, Ukraine and the legacy of Gorbachev

From our UK edition

In her memoirs, Raisa Gorbacheva recalls the moment when her husband turned from bureaucrat into reformer. ‘I’m in my seventh year of working in Moscow,’ he told her as they were walking together one evening. ‘Yet it’s been impossible to do anything important, large-scale, properly prepared. It’s like a brick wall – but life demands action. No, we can’t go on living like this any more.’ It was the first time, she wrote, she heard him say such words. ‘That night, a new stage began that brought big changes.’ Mikhail Gorbachev’s death this week has led to much analysis of his legacy. He is admired more in the West than in Russia.

Thursday

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What’s Helsinki’s nightlife like?

From our UK edition

Finnish lines Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin said she had taken a test for illegal drugs after being filmed at a party at which some people were shouting ‘flour’ – Finnish slang for cocaine. What’s Helsinki’s nightlife like? — The Hostelworld website identifies a Helsinki venue, Kaiku, as one of its 20 top clubs in the world. — Insider.com names Helsinki as the second best city in the world for socialising. — However, Finder.com rated Helsinki as the 16th most expensive city in the world in which to buy a pint, although it did come out cheaper than Oslo and Stockholm. Screen out Cineworld was reported to be on the verge of filing for bankruptcy, following Covid and what it said was a lack of blockbusters this year.