Will Heaven

Thursday

Will Heaven

Was there a gap in Parliament’s defences?

From our UK edition

Yesterday's appalling Islamist attack in Westminster was not just an attack on Parliament. It began on Westminster bridge, where foreign tourists and members of the public were indiscriminately targeted as they made their way over the Thames. But the attack ended at the Palace of Westminster itself, when the assailant was shot dead by police in New Palace Yard, after he had stabbed to death an unarmed police officer. Parliament's defences are designed to resist this kind of attack, even if there is a gate that is necessarily open at times for MPs' cars. But as Theresa May told the House of Commons this morning, 'the whole country will want to know... the measures that we are taking to strengthen our security, including here in Westminster'.

Will Heaven

Cherry blossom

From our UK edition

In what I like to think of as The Spectator’s back garden — most people call it St James’s Park — the cherry trees are in blossom. There’s a group of six or seven of them, clouds of bright pink, in the corner nearest 22 Old Queen Street. They’re worth a look, even if you think blossom’s a bit of a girlie interest. There are more dotted around. A little grove of white cherries on the south side of the lake is ranked among the best in London, according to one website: ‘A simple point-and-shoot photo of these trees somehow transforms itself into an impressionist painting.’ But we shouldn’t rank blossom, or feel compelled to photograph it (the blossom hashtag on Instagram has five million posts), or think of it as girlie.

Tuesday

Will Heaven

This fake story made me feel sympathy for Donald Trump

From our UK edition

There was a great commotion in central London last night. A police helicopter hovered over The Spectator's office making a din, police sirens sounded and thudding music rattled the windows. I found out why when I left the office and walked via Parliament Square to Whitehall. There was an anti-Trump protest outside Parliament – #stoptrump was the theme – coinciding with the (non-binding and pointless) debate inside Westminster Hall, about President Trump's state visit to the UK later this year. The protest was a very slick affair. There was a massive TV screen broadcasting anti-Trump videos, and speeches blared out over a speaker system. But there was just one thing missing: a crowd to match the scale of the event.

Thursday

Will Heaven

Five points from Donald Trump’s bizarre press conference

From our UK edition

For sheer entertainment value, you couldn't beat it. Donald Trump's sprawling – and first solo – press conference was a glimpse of the US presidency as reality TV. Here was a man utterly unsuited to the task at hand, bluffing and blustering his way through it on live television. It was like watching Howard Beale’s meltdown during the evening news – just too gripping not to watch. What, if anything, did we learn? 1. He loathes the BBC. Not surprisingly. Maybe it was Laura Kuenssberg’s pointed question at the joint press conference with Theresa May last month, maybe some other slight. But no – he’s not a fan. ‘Here’s another beauty,’ Trump said sarcastically when Jon Sopel, the BBC’s North America Editor, introduced himself.

Thursday

Will Heaven

South Africa

From our UK edition

There are plenty of places to fly to for winter sun, but only one place that offers five-star hotels for the price of a B&B in Lyme Regis. South Africa has always been good value for British visitors, even five years ago when there were 11 rand to the pound. Now that figure is closer to 23 rand. For visitors, an entire country is half price. This freak situation may not last; so there might never be a better time to visit. The choices are almost overwhelming — safaris, Anglo-Zulu battlefield tours, scenic drives in the Drakensberg mountains — but Cape Town is a wonderful place to start. There’s a comfortingly British feel to the city: the surfer dudes and the beachside bars and restaurants of Camps Bay wouldn’t look out of place on Cornwall’s north coast.

Thursday

Will Heaven

Britain’s educational empire

From our UK edition

Late last year Britain’s independent schools received a wake-up call. Andrew Halls, headmaster of King’s College School in Wimbledon, delivered it. Far too many of them, he said, have become the ‘finishing schools for the children of oligarchs’ because of an ‘apparently endless queue’ of wealthy foreigners who have pushed fees sky-high; there’s a ‘fees time bomb ticking away’ and one day, when it explodes, a lot of these schools are going to be screwed. It really was that blunt. Cue cheers from struggling parents all over the country, and squeals from school governors, who’d rather no one asked too many questions about the £30,000 price tag on a child’s yearly education.

Thursday

Will Heaven

With retakes and crammer courses, no student’s chances are beyond redemption

From our UK edition

Every year — according to Fleet Street legend — the Telegraph prints a lovely photograph on its front page after the A-level results are published. It shows happy, bright young ladies clutching important letters and leaping into the air with glee. These lissom blondes are, of course, the students with straight As. ‘Yessss!’, they have just got into their first-choice university: ‘OMG this is, like, the Best Day Ever!’ What you don’t see is a photograph of the students who fall short of their predicted grades. There will be no leaping, no Daddy buying a bottle of champagne for this lot. They’ll be in hiding, blubbing over the letter or pathetically phoning their director of studies to ask him to perform a miracle.

Saturday

Will Heaven

Vocal support

From our UK edition

 When I last watched the Heaven family home videos, a striking trend emerged. In every clip from the early 1990s, one of my siblings or I was being encouraged to sing. We babies were bounced on daddy’s knee, and he sang ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’ over and over again until — looking goggle-eyed and faintly hypnotised — we joined in. Little did we know it was the start of a cunning plan: my parents moulded us into mini-musicians, then sent us to be cathedral choristers, and finally to audition for music scholarships at our various secondary schools. It worked beautifully: ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’ saved an absolute fortune in school fees. OK, it’s unlikely that my parents planned that far ahead.