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State vs private? A parent’s dilemma

by
Fraser
Nelson

8 september 2018 [ £4.50 www.spectator.co.uk [ est. 1828

The two Europes

Macron, Salvini and the battle for a continent
By Christopher Caldwell

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The rise of Sajid Javid
S
ince being appointed Home Secretary,
Sajid Javid has taken a series of bold
and overdue decisions. On immigra-
tion, he understood that most people would
like skilled doctors and nurses to come and
work for the National Health Service, so he
removed them from the cap that Theresa
May had imposed on skilled workers com-
ing to this country.
In his response to the case of Billy Cald-
well, the severely epileptic boy whose fits
were eased by cannabis oil, Javid brought
political nous to a department that all too
often lacks it. He recognised that if heroin
could be prescribed for medical purposes
without further undermining prohibition,
the same could be true for cannabis. The
oil’s efficacy is an open question, but at least
Javid stopped the original plan: arresting the
child’s distraught family at the airport, on
charge of smuggling a banned substance.
His latest project is to make it easier for
the police to stop and search people they sus-
pect of carrying acid, for the purposes of a
street attack. For too long, the debate over
this matter has turned into one about race.
This is despite the fact that Home Office
officials had research showing that stop and
search isn’t used disproportionately against
minorities when you take into account who is
actually on the streets. Javid’s willingness not
to shy away from the issue but rather give
the police the powers they need is welcome.
In all three of these cases, Javid has
refused to follow the bureaucratic dogma
inherited from May’s time in the Home
Office. Given the close — some might say
suffocating — interest the Prime Minister
takes in her old department, this shows a
refreshing independence of mind.
One of Javid’s advantages is that he does
not owe the Prime Minister anything. It is
the spectator | 8 september 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk
established 1828
well known in Westminster that he would
have been sacked from the cabinet if she
had won the convincing victory that her
advisors expected when they opted for an
early election. May only promoted Javid to
Home Secretary after Amber Rudd’s resig-
nation because it was the most effective way
of keeping the Windrush scandal from her
own door.
Javid’s behaviour during the May ascend-
ancy marked him out. Hard as it is to remem-
ber now, there was a time when she was the
most popular prime minister since records
began. She was politically dominant and
determined to change the whole nature of
Conservative economic policy. She wanted
One of Javid’s advantages is
that he does not owe the Prime
Minister anything
to adapt huge chunks of Ed Miliband’s agen-
da and return the party to something close to
the stultifying corporatism of the Heath era.
While several other cabinet ministers
avoided speaking up about this, Javid con-
sistently argued against it in cabinet and its
committees. He was not deterred by any
threats from May’s aides that this would cost
him his job. His willingness to speak out in
these circumstances showed that he is a poli-
tician of conviction.
Javid has been talked about as a poten-
tial Tory leader. Under David Cameron
and George Osborne, he was fast-tracked
into ministerial office and his own person-
al backstory — his father arrived at Heath-
row from Pakistan in 1961 with just £5 in
his pocket — distinguished him from the
Tory pack. He became a vice-president at
Chase Manhattan bank aged 25, and credits
his success not just to the country but to the
Conservative reforms that brought liberali-
sation and opportunity.
He is a far more formidable politician
now than he was when he first made cabinet.
He has begun to focus on why he is really in
public life. Losing the patronage of the lead-
ership has clarified his position. He has made
his share of mistakes: he was seen to have
wavered over Brexit and mishandled the
crisis over the Port Talbot steel works. But
having held six jobs in six years, such turbu-
lence is normal. He can expect to be defined
by the changes he is now making.
Before long, there will be a Tory lead-
ership contest. As this magazine revealed
last month, even those closest to May now
accept that she won’t lead the party into
the next election. The job of the next prime
minister should be far bigger than Brexit. It
should concern itself with addressing the cri-
sis of capitalism that has still not been prop-
erly dealt with ten years on from the crash.
It should also be about confronting a politi-
cal environment where even thoughtful peo-
ple like Justin Welby end up reaching for the
soak-the-rich language of class war.
There is plenty for the Tories to say, if
they could find someone with the requisite
wit, verve and plausibility. Conservatives
could, for example, point out that the tax cuts
have — paradoxically — seen the 1 per cent
pay 28 per cent of income tax, a figure that
has never been higher. This ought to warm
the heart of the most ardent redistributionist.
But if they vacate the field of argument,
unable to discuss anything other than Brexit
or each other, they should not be surprised
if Jeremy Corbyn wins over archbishops and
others with his tax-and-spend arguments.
Brexit was always a means to an end. The
question is: what comes next? If Javid can set
out an answer, he will be worth listening to.
3
 I brunch, you brunch, p62
An American in Paris, p38

Becky Sharp rides (yet) again, p44

THE WEEK BOOKS & ARTS

3 Leading article 12 The two Europes BOOKS
6 Portrait of the Week Macron, Salvini and the battle 30 Jesse Norman
for a continent John Law, by James Buchan
9 Diary No whisky for breakfast? Christopher Caldwell
But this is Scotland! 33 Philip Hensher
Gary Shteyngart 13 Mike Bedford What’s Your Type, by Merve Emre
‘Dice’: a poem 34 Andrew Taylor
11 Politics The spectre of no deal
is receding — probably 14 The Pope’s cardinal errors Paris Echo, by Sebastian Faulks
James Forsyth Francis is facing his biggest crisis Travis Elborough
Damian Thompson Theatre of the World, by
17 Rod Liddle Thomas Reinertsen Berg
The lunatics have landed 18 Trust me, I’m a Scotsman
The myth of the ‘trustworthy’ accent 36 James Bradley
18 Ancient and modern Paul Burke An American Story, by
Salmond’s fishing Christopher Priest
20 Bleak House
19 James Delingpole I’m up with The House of Commons encourages Jason Burke
memes and down with the kids MPs to be dysfunctional Lords of the Desert,
24 Barometer Wonga’s beginnings, Isabel Hardman by James Barr
shrinking economies, and papal visits 22 The world the crash made... 37 Olivia Williams
25 Mary Wakefield Why don’t we Did Lehman give rise to populism? The Lady in the Cellar,
care more about child abuse? Liam Halligan by Sinclair McKay

27 Letters China in Africa, our failing 23 ... but it wasn’t just the crash 38 Duncan Fallowell
railways, and a defence of ragwort There’s more to it than economics Orphic Paris, by Henri Cole

28 Any other business Why can’t the William Galston 39 John Jolliffe
UK hang on to its best companies? 24 On bended knee Till the Cows Come Home,
Martin Vander Weyer Nike’s cynical marketing move by Philip Walling
Simon Barnes Brian Martin
Aftershocks, by A.N. Wilson
Charles Moore is away

Cover by Morten Morland. Drawings by Michael Heath, Castro, Robert Thompson, K.J. Lamb, Bernie, Grizelda, Percival, Jonesy, Nick Newman, RGJ.
www.spectator.co.uk Editorial and advertising The Spectator, 22 Old Queen Street, London SW1H 9HP, Tel: 020 7961 0200, Fax: 020 7681 3773, Email: editor@spectator.co.uk
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© The Spectator (1828) Ltd. ISSN 0038-6952 The Spectator is published weekly by The Spectator (1828) Ltd at 22 Old Queen Street, London SW1H 9HP
Editor: Fraser Nelson

4 the spectator | 8 september 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk

 Our bovine friends, p39
The art of protest, p40

Marvellous maps, p34

LIFE
ARTS LIFE All I want to do is have a
40 Tom Slater 53 High life Taki
delicious haggis and follow it
The dissent of man Low life Jeremy Clarke
up with coffee and whisky for
42 Theatre 54 Sally Festing breakfast. Is that so wrong?
Othello; Pericles ‘Out of Bounds’: a poem
Gary Shteyngart, p9
Lloyd Evans 56 Real life Melissa Kite
43 Proms Bridge Susanna Gross Liberal Catholicism appears to
The gentle side of Bruckner 57 Wine club Jonathan Ray have been hijacked by ‘Francisism’,
Richard Bratby
a cultlike devotion to this pontiff
44 Television AND FINALLY . . . that absolves him of all his sins.
Wanderlust; Vanity Fair; Press 48 Notes on…
James Walton
Damian Thompson, p14
Cannock Chase
45 Cinema Richard Bratby
Many affairs between married
The Seagull 58 Chess Raymond Keene
Deborah Ross
MPs start on a Monday night,
Competition Lucy Vickery
when they are all cooped up in
46 Interview 59 Crossword Fieldfare Parliament waiting for late votes.
The legend of Lawrence
Michael Hann 60 No sacred cows Isabel Hardman, p20
Toby Young
47 Radio Battle for Britain
Kate Chisholm Michael Heath
The YouTuber
Monkey Tennis and tarot 61 Sport Roger Alton
Ian Sansom Your problems solved
Mary Killen
62 Food Tanya Gold
Mind your language
Dot Wordsworth

CONTRIBUTORS
Paul Burke is a journalist and
copywriter who specialises in
radio commercials. On p18, he
reveals why people no longer
trust a Scottish accent.
William Galston is a
Wall Street Journal columnist
and a former advisor to Bill
Clinton. On p23, he argues that
there was more to the financial
crisis than economics.
Jason Burke, who writes James Bradley is an Tom Slater is deputy editor
about western intrigues in Australian novelist and critic. of Spiked. On p40 he enjoys
the Middle East on p36, is His most recent book is Clade. some ancient Egyptian smut at
a world expert on Al Qaeda He reviews Christopher Priest the British Museum.
and author, most recently, on p36.
of The New Threat From
Islamic Militancy.

the spectator | 8 september 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk 5

 Home
M ark Carney kindly said he would
stay on as governor of the Bank
of England if it helped the government
‘smooth’ the Brexit transition. Lord King
of Lothbury, Mervyn King, a former
governor of the Bank of England, said that
‘incompetent’ preparation for Brexit had
left Britain without a credible bargaining
position. Paul Pester announced his
resignation as chief executive of TSB
after seven years, following the computing
failure at the bank. Chris Evans announced
on air that he would be leaving the Radio
2 breakfast show at the end of the year;
he is to host Virgin Radio’s equivalent.
David Watkin, the architectural historian,
died aged 77. Lord Melchett , the former
chairman of Greenpeace, died aged 70.
W ith the return of Parliament after the
summer recess, Brexit entangled all.
Theresa May, the Prime Minister, declared:
‘I will not be pushed into accepting
compromises on the Chequers proposals
that are not in our national interest.’
Nick Boles, a former minister, said: ‘I am
afraid that her policy has failed and I
can no longer support it.’ Boris Johnson,
the former foreign secretary, said that
‘in adopting the Chequers proposals, we
have gone into battle with the white flag
fluttering’. Michel Barnier, the chief EU
negotiator on Brexit, said of the Chequers
plan: ‘I strongly oppose the British
proposal.’ Another former Conservative
minister, John Whittingdale, went to visit
Mr Barnier and reported back that the EU
‘just can’t accept’ the Chequers plan, but
6 the spectator | 8 september 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk
that Mr Barnier had instead been open
to a free trade deal of ‘unprecedented
closeness’. The summer of 2018 was as hot
as those of 1976, 2003 and 2006 in the UK,
the Met Office said, but in England this
summer was even hotter than in 1976.
L abour’s National Executive Committee
adopted the International Holocaust
Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-
Semitism, but decided to add a rider on
anti-Israel statements. Jeremy Corbyn,
the Labour leader, had favoured allowing
members of the party to describe ‘Israel,
its policies or the circumstances around
its foundation as racist.’ The JC9 —
candidates on the Momentum slate – were
all elected to the Labour NEC, including
Peter Willsman, who had apologised after
suggesting that Jewish ‘Trump fanatics’
were behind accusations of anti-Semitism
in Labour. Sian Berry and Jonathan Bartley
were elected joint leaders of the Green
Party of England and Wales after its MP,
Caroline Lucas, decided not to stand.
Alastair Cook, England’s highest Test run-
scorer, announced he would retire from the
international game after the current Test
series against India, which England took
after a victory by 60 runs in the fourth Test.
Abroad
P resident Mauricio Macri of Argentina
said that half the country’s ministries
would be abolished in an attempt to stem
the economic crisis as the peso slid. In
Turkey, inflation rose and the lira fell. South
Africa’s economy went into recession for
the first time since 2009. Officials from
13 countries met in Quito, Ecuador, to
discuss how to deal with the emigration of
tens of thousands of Venezuelans fleeing
economic collapse. About 32,800 migrants
have reached Spain since the beginning of
the year, the International Organization for
Migration said, most of them by sea, with
602 sub-Saharans managing to get over or
through the fence at Ceuta from Morocco.
About 8,000 protesters demonstrated at the
weekend in Chemnitz in eastern Germany,
for and against immigration. Emily O’Reilly,
the EU Ombudsman, cited four instances
of maladministration in the appointment of
Martin Selmayr as the Secretary-General of
the EC in February.
R ebel-held positions in Idlib province
were bombed, reportedly by Russian
planes, as Syrian government troops
gathered for an offensive. In Libya,
hundreds of families fled a week of
factional fighting in Tripoli. ‘The French
navy is ready to step in if more clashes
break out’ between French fishermen and
British boats over scallops, said Stephane
Travert, the French agriculture minister.
S teve Bannon, Donald Trump’s former
chief strategist, was disinvited from the
New Yorker’s annual literary festival. Sony
ended its repair service for the PlayStation
2 console, 18 years after it first went on sale
in Japan. Passengers ran for cover as glass
fell from the roof of Kyoto railway station
during the most severe typhoon for 25
years, which left tens of thousands without
electricity. Fire destroyed the National
Museum in Rio de Janeiro, said to have
held 20 million artefacts. CSH
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I begin my 87-day reading tour of the
US, UK and Canada on a BA flight
that will take me to Edinburgh for the
book festival. I catch up on my Ab Fab
and Peppa Pig and eat some back bacon.
I land around 10 p.m. and take a walk
through the city. I love Scotland! The
young people seem so ebullient: ‘Feck
this. Feck that. Feck you.’ I stumble
around the old town and new town
taking in the endless adverts for all the
plays. Should this much art exist in any
one city? I guess so. I mean, why not?
Probably it’s OK.
I wake up with a twofold mission in
mind. Haggis and whisky. Look, I love
haggis. It’s Scottish, but there’s something
desperately Eastern European about it,
something sultry, sickly and taboo. All I
want to do is have a delicious haggis and
follow it up with coffee and whisky for
breakfast. Is that so wrong? Apparently.
The server at the Arcade Haggis and
Whisky House in the old town tells me
she can’t serve me alcohol before 12.30
p.m. I look at her with shock. What part
of ‘Scotland’ does she not understand?
I’m about to bring up Irvine Welsh’s Wiki
page to show her what I mean, when she
returns: ‘I’m sorry. Whisky for breakfast is
a lovely idea, I just can’t serve it to you.’
We look into each other’s eyes, centuries
of Russo-Scottish understanding between
us. The haggis, blood pudding and beans
are terrific, even without alcohol. I should
have brought my own flask.
L ater, I meet up with some writers,
editors and agents at Fishers in
the City, where I eat some spectacular
Orkney scallops and drink the better
part of a bottle of Sancerre. Now I’m
ready for my first reading, which takes
place in one of the sweetest bookshops
I’ve ever seen, the Golden Hare. Barry
Cohen, the hedge fund bro who is the
hero of my new novel, Lake Success, has
a strange hobby. He’s a watch collector.
And full disclosure: so am I. Look, I’m
middle-aged, life is almost over and
there’s not much to hope for. So I collect
watches. Want to do something about it?
Anyway, an Edinburgh collector shows
up at the signing and we geek out about
his mid-1960s Zenith and my Rollie
GMT 1675. Now it’s time to drink a lot
of whisky, which I do and have a lobster
at the Kilted Lobster with my editor.
the spectator | 8 september 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk
Gary Shteyngart
I do a 10 a.m. reading from Lake Success,
possibly the earliest I’ve ever read. Also,
possibly the earliest I’ve ever got up in the
morning (I’m a writer). The audience is
lovely and people seem to get my stupid
jokes. No watches at the signing, though.
I spend the day chugging whisky, eating
various interpretations of scallops and
sea bass, and just seeing where my feet will
take me. For some reason, I end up at the
docks in front of the royal yacht Britannia.
25 September – 7 October 2018
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Maya Selway
My evening reading at the festival goes
very well. Seventy-eight per cent of jokes
are well-received, including the one
about the haggis.
L ondon! Since Brexit, this town feels
a little different, not as intimidating
as before, no longer the capital of the
universe. At breakfast at my nice hotel,
a Russian is screaming to his business
partner back home: ‘Well, they got this
fucking democracy here. It’s hard to
do business.’ I tweet that dialogue out
and am told to watch my tea and sushi
consumption. Tonight’s reading is at
the London Review Bookshop with the
writer Adam Thirlwell, who happens to
be my OBF, or oldest British friend. At
the book signing, a watch geek brings
me a watch strap to sign. Also, a young
man tells me I’ve won a prize. It’s a
series of yellow envelopes stuffed with
information, including something called
‘Gary Shteyngart’s early retirement
worksheet’. A quick scan of the materials
includes a dense meditation on my
tweets, Jews, cricket, the number 666 and
Ben Stiller. He bought two books over
the course of two readings (the next day
he showed up in some kind of cricket
get-up), so this bloke is OK with me.
I love walking around London because
I don’t get to my native Russia much,
and it’s fun to hear Russian as the
primary language on the streets. This is
my last day here, and it’s a suitably grey
one. The reading is at King’s Hall or some
such place and the audience is lively and
terrific. London’s watch cognoscenti are
out in force tonight and pretty soon I’m
ass-deep in Omegas, Rollies and some
truly funky old Seikos. I get back to my
hotel and have a dream of turning into
an Orkney scallop. I wake up feeling at
peace for the first time in my life.
W ell, time to head back for the
American portion of my tour.
Economists and social scientists agree
that the UK has a super-interesting
future ahead of it, and I’m glad to have
seen it in its moment of transition. I will
miss it terribly and I hope to return soon
— if they let me.
Gary Shteyngart is the author of several
novels including Absurdistan and Super
Sad True Love Story.
9

The spectre of no deal is receding – probably
O
ver the summer, a no-deal Brexit
became less likely. Eurosceptic
ultras have been forced to be less
blasé. The return of Steve Baker to the Euro-
pean Research Group, the lead Brexiteer
bloc of MPs, has injected more realism into
their discussions on the subject. Baker was
involved with no-deal planning in govern-
ment and has made clear to colleagues that it
would present significant challenges.
Those intimately involved in the nego-
tiations on the British side say that the EU
is also more concerned about the talks fail-
ing. As deadlines approach, the focus is on
the sheer logistical complexities that would
come with Britain crashing out of the Euro-
pean Union. Senior figures on the EU side
are alarmed at the challenge of helping Ire-
land through a hostile no deal. The Euro-
pean Central Bank’s discussions with the
Bank of England have been a reminder of
the close relationship between the eurozone
and the City of London.
One of the EU’s priorities has been to
prevent any alternative economic model
emerging in Europe. A no-deal Brexit would
almost certainly do that. Britain would either
opt for the Corbynite approach of heavily
subsidised industry or try to turn itself into
a western Singapore, in a bid to regain com-
petitiveness. Both would damage the EU’s
interests.
Despite this concern, there have been
no breakthroughs in the negotiations. I
am told that the UK government is ‘by no
means there yet’ when it comes to per-
suading the EU member states to change
Michel Barnier’s negotiating position.
Barnier is arguing with ever greater ferocity
against Theresa May’s Chequers proposal.
Not all member states share Barnier’s
hostility towards Chequers. Some are even
interested in what it proposes. But there is
nowhere near the kind of momentum behind
May’s proposals that would lead to the EU
being prepared to break up the single mar-
ket in the way that Chequers envisages.
Pragmatically, one might think that a British
proposal that would see it essentially stay in
the single market where it has a trade deficit
with the EU and leave where it has a surplus
would seem attractive to the EU. But this is
to ignore the fact that the EU is far more a
political construct than an economic one.
What happens next? One option would
be for May to make further concessions to
the spectator | 8 september 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk
POLITICS|JAMES FORSYTH
help make Chequers more acceptable to
the EU. But she has very little room for
manoeuvre. As one MP — on whose loyalty
she depends — warns, if May concedes on
either the customs union or free movement,
it would be ‘an act of self-immolation’.
The Tory reaction to Chequers, which
has been far more hostile than Downing
Street expected, means that May is boxed
in. So while neither the UK government nor
the EU 27 want ‘no deal’, Chequers isn’t
going to happen in its present form. This
revives the possibility of a Canada-style free
trade agreement.
The EU has long said that it is prepared
to do a tariff-free, quota-free trade deal with
the UK. This would please Brexiteers, since
it would see the UK unambiguously leave
the single market, the customs union and
the jurisdiction of the European Court of
The negative Tory reaction to
Chequers has been far worse
than Downing Street expected
Justice. As Jacob Rees-Mogg mischievously
pointed out after a meeting with Barnier on
Monday, Eurosceptics and the EU’s chief
negotiator agree with each other more than
the British government does.
One can see how May could sell a Can-
ada-style deal to her party and the country.
She could say that she tried to negotiate a
closer economic relationship with the EU
than a simple free trade deal, but that was
not possible without making concessions
which would have compromised the ref-
erendum result. She could argue that the
choice was now between this agreement and
the chaos of no deal, and that there was no
time left to negotiate anything else. Indeed,
seeing as the government doesn’t intend to
introduce the withdrawal act until January
next year, this will be part of May’s argu-
ment whatever agreement is reached.
But a Canada-style arrangement runs
into two problems straight away. The first,
and most important, is the so-called back-
stop. Given what the UK agreed to last
December, such a deal would quickly cre-
ate checks on trade between Northern Ire-
land and the rest of the UK. Even if Tory
MPs could be persuaded to accept this, the
Democratic Unionist Party — upon whom
the Tories are reliant for their majority —
would almost certainly not. So this scenario
relies on the EU allowing the UK to at least
soften what it signed up to in December.
The other reason that May has not cho-
sen a Canada-style deal is that No. 10 fears
what it would mean for those UK industries
with complex, Europe-wide supply chains.
Even if the Irish border were not an issue,
there would still be many figures in the cabi-
net who would argue for a closer economic
relationship with the EU than a Canada-
style deal would allow for.
May is no longer able to make many
more concessions. She has already lost two
senior ministers over the Chequers pro-
posals and, since quitting the government,
Boris Johnson has recovered his mojo. At
Tory conference, he will be the star of the
fringe once more. His address to a thousand-
person rally will easily overshadow the main
conference programme on Tuesday.
There are still formidable obstacles to the
former foreign secretary becoming prime
minister. For one thing, it is hard to see how
he would get through the parliamentary
rounds of any Tory leadership contest. But
his renewed popularity with the grassroots
is a reminder of May’s vulnerability.
For all these reasons, one of those who
has acted as a go-between for No. 10 and
Tory Brexiteers thinks that Canada is
becoming a likely option. But as another
Tory cautions: ‘If anyone tells you they are
sure of how all this is going to play out, they
are lying.’
BREXIT: DEAL OR NO DEAL?
A Spectator debate, 29th October,
Emmanuel Centre, Westminster. Book now
at www.spectator.co.uk/nodeal
11
 Macron vs Salvini
An ideological battle for Europe’s future is under way
T
he first sign that Matteo Salvini was
destined to do battle with Emmanuel
Macron came in June, a few days
after he was named Italy’s interior minis-
ter. Salvini, whose party, the League, wants
to cut immigration drastically, announced
that a German-registered rescue ship carry-
ing 629 aspiring migrants from Africa would
not be allowed to dock in Sicily.
Macron reacted with disgust. ‘The policy
of the Italian government,’ a spokesman for
his political movement announced, ‘is nau-
seating.’ Salvini responded that if the French
wanted to show their open-
heartedness, they might make
good on their unfulfilled pledge
to feed and shelter some of the
100,000 African migrants Italy
had until recently been receiving
each year.
This week, what had seemed
like a personal antipathy between
the two men revealed itself as
an all-out battle for European
hearts and minds. When Libyan
rebels attacked government posi-
tions in Tripoli, threatening the
agreements Italy has made with
the Libyan coast guard to limit
departures of migrants from
the shores of North Africa, Sal-
vini mused aloud to reporters.
‘There’s someone behind this,’
he said. ‘Someone who started a
war [in 2011] that should never
have been started, someone who
calls for elections without sounding out his
allies and the people on the ground, some-
one who tries to force the issue by exporting
democracy, which never works.’ He urged
journalists eager to know what he meant by
that to ‘ask Paris’.
Days earlier, Salvini had invited the
Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán to
Milan to issue a manifesto. It was Orbán who
exhorted Europe to harden its borders dur-
ing the great overland migration from war-
torn Syria and points east in 2015. Standing
under the awning of a pizzeria in Milan,
Orbán singled out Salvini as ‘my hero and
my comrade in destiny’. And he singled out
Macron as his nemesis. ‘There are two camps
in Europe,’ Orbán said, ‘and one is headed
by Macron. He is at the head of the political
12
CHRISTOPHER CALDWELL
forces supporting immigration. On the other
hand, we want to stop illegal immigration.’
Orbán is right. Salvini’s nationalism and
Macron’s globalism are the two competing
visions of Europe’s future. A year ago, it
appeared that the newly elected French pres-
ident might inherit Angela Merkel’s mantle
as Europe’s unifier. He would give a new élan
to a European Union demoralised by Brit-
ain’s threatened departure. It even seemed
possible that Donald Trump’s episodes of
boorishness might discredit the cause of
immigration control in Europe altogether.
But voters have not forgiven their
leaders’ opening of the immigration flood-
gates in 2015. Border-defending govern-
ments have come to power in Italy, Austria
and the Czech Republic, and Trump’s quon-
dam adviser Steve Bannon is now working
to foster co-operation between nationalist
movements, including Salvini’s, in the run-
up to next May’s European elections. Much
as prisons can be places where convicts
hone their criminal skills, the EU Parlia-
ment has become a clearing house for Euro-
scepticism, even with Ukip due to depart the
scene. Salvini envisions a ‘league of Leagues’
sitting in Brussels.
Who can Macron rally against them?
Even the European left is showing signs
of questioning its commitment to open
the spectator | 8 september 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk
borders. In Germany, the Marxist Sahra
Wagenknecht of the Left party has started
Aufstehen, a popular front meant to woo
back working-class voters turned off by
the globalist dogmas, including free-and-
easy immigration. Denmark’s Social Dem-
ocrats have rallied behind a stern plan to
impose on migrants the Danish language
and Danish values. Their counterparts in
Sweden, who admitted a quarter of a mil-
lion migrants over two years after 2015,
have recanted, tightening asylum policies
in the run-up to this weekend’s nationwide
elections. The nationalistic and
bluntly anti-immigration Swe-
den Democrats are set to make
big gains nonetheless.
Salvini is picking up momen-
tum. The coalition government
that his League formed with
the antic Five Star Movement
has won the allegiance of more
than half of Italians, doubling
the League’s support from 17
to 32 per cent since the spring
and turning it into Italy’s most
popular party.
Macron, meanwhile, has had
a bad summer. It began with a
scandal involving his 26-year-
old bodyguard (and skiing and
bicycling companion) Alex-
andre Benalla, who seemed
to have a taste for wreaking
physical violence on people
who disagreed with his boss.
At a May Day demonstration Benalla was
captured on mobile-phone videos wear-
ing a police helmet (although he was not a
policeman), pulling one protester across the
Place de la Contrescarpe by her neck, and
then cold-cocking another as he struggled
on the ground. In the ensuing uproar over
why Benalla had barely been disciplined,
Macron was reduced to telling reporters
that Benalla was not his lover. Macron’s
summer ended with the dramatic resigna-
tion on national radio of the charismatic
environment minister, Nicolas Hulot, who
explained, ‘I don’t want to lie to myself any
more.’ Macron’s popularity, which has been
falling for more than a year, now stands at 34
per cent. ‘Macron’s main opponent,’ Salvini
jibed, ‘is the French people.’
 The spectacle of two men who had never
sought office becoming heads of major states
on their first try — Donald Trump in 2016
and Macron the year after — may have led
some people to assume that all one needs for
success in politics is a ‘knack’ for it. On the
contrary, making it as a politician requires
mastering a lot of arcana. Trump’s enemies
have been able to use their understanding
— and his ignorance — of American govern-
ment procedure to tie his whole presidency
up in an investigative knot from which it will
not soon escape. Late in Silvio Berlusconi’s
career as Italy’s premier, his opponents were
able to do the same, and Salvini’s foes hope
to repeat the trick. In August, after Salvini
refused for ten days to allow migrants on a
rescue boat docked in Catania to disembark,
a magistrate in Agrigento moved to charge
him with kidnapping.
Salvini is an extraordinary politician.
Macron is not, or at least not yet. Politics
requires a patient training in discernment,
something that Macron, though he is a fast
learner, has not had the time to acquire.
Macron has dismissed Salvini as someone
who is always trying to be provocative, with-
out considering why a politician might want
to be provocative. Salvini’s most notorious
Salvini is good with language.
He has managed to reframe
humanitarianism as criminality
remark in the days after he came to power
was that, for migrants, la pacchia è finita —
roughly: ‘The party’s over.’ This may be an
appalling way to describe the lot of people
who have risked death from thirst in the
Sahara and death from drowning in the
Mediterranean, but in the eyes of voters it
hurt Salvini’s detractors much more, because
it goaded them into inveighing against any
immigration restrictions at all.
Salvini can tell an impregnable position
from a vulnerable one. The French president
is still learning. Every boat that appears on
the southern horizon casts a sinister shadow
on Macron’s invocations of European soli-
darity. ‘There is no such thing as a real Dane,’
Macron mused, on a recent trip to Copen-
hagen. Surely that not only irked Danes, but
also scared some of Macron’s own voters.
Dice
Sometimes a whole life hangs on a single moment of stupidity.
Twitch in a trigger finger, a car driven too fast into a corner,
Rolling it over into a crowd, or coming to rest injury free,
A blow to the temple causing bruising, or cerebral injury and coma,
The measure between prison, guilt, or interesting story.
Intent, random chance, and consequence, regularly meet.
The die is cast almost always in our favour, but occasionally
The blind roll of probability intervenes, and in such defeat
Everything can be lost: years of liberty, family, self-respect.
The savagery of a single instant. Who could say truthfully,
That if from one of our own stupid acts the worse possible effect
Had come to pass, we would still be reading this so comfortably?
— Mike Bedford
— comes under scrutiny. What was an asset Salvini’s goal is to expose Macron as
for the establishment turns into a liability, a the kind of politician who favours wide-
sign of hypocrisy. open immigration. No European leader can
Salvini is good with language. He has afford to be seen as a soft touch, though
managed to reframe humanitarianism as many seek a friendlier-looking way to carry
criminality. He colourfully describes the non- out hardline policies. Danish prime minister
governmental organisations that transport Lars Løkke Rasmussen, for instance, lately
migrants at sea as being bound up in the same suggested that Europe attack the ‘causes’ of
‘business’ as the mafiosi who guide them on migration.
land. A would-be African immigrant no long- That won’t work. The cause of the pre-
er needs to hire a boat that can get him to sent wave of trans-Mediterranean migration
Europe — all he needs is a boat that can get is not poverty or anything that is within the
him to the charitable rescue ship, funded by power of the EU to correct. It is, ultimately,
some billionaire, that you can see from the population growth. The population of Africa
North African coast. ‘They won’t see Italy has almost tripled since 1980, and it is going
unless they see it on a postcard,’ he promises. to double again between now and 2050.
Salvini has relished confronting the bil- While Europe’s population shrivels and
lionaire George Soros, accusing him of using shrinks over the next generation, the conti-
his charities ‘to fill Italy and Europe with nent to its south is going to add — add, not
migrants’. Attacking the Hungarian-born have — 1.25 billion young people. Already
Soros is a rhetorical gambit that Orbán has there are millions of potential migrants
long relished — but what appeared a fringe stacked up in the dosshouses of Tripoli and
issue when it was confined to Hungary takes Tunis and Istanbul and on the roads behind
on a wider resonance when it enters the them, ready to converge on the first country
politics of one of the founding EU states. that offers a hint of the welcome that Euro-
American complaints about the ‘meddling’ pean leaders gave in 2015.
of other countries in the US election system How Europeans react to this population
invite scrutiny of the many billionaire-run explosion will depend on whether they see
foundations whose political activity abroad it as bringing more helping hands or more
is subsidised (through tax deductibility) by mouths to feed. Salvini has found a set of

J ust as immigration begets immigration,

populism begets populism. When nation-
alist parties enter parliaments, the issues
the US government.
they raise there change the whole context of
political discussion. Almut Möller, a policy
analyst at the European Council on Foreign
Relations in Berlin, astutely told Le Monde:
‘Paris underestimated what it would mean
when Alternative for Germany entered
the Bundestag.’ The multicultural cant that
binds political establishments together —
for instance, using the word ‘refugee’ to
describe an ambitious person intent on set-
tling permanently in a European country
the spectator | 8 september 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk
‘With all these sex pests about,
I’m not taking any chances.’
nationalist arguments that win at the polls.
But the institutions of the global economy
remain powerful and persuasive, and Macron
speaks for them in a fresher way than it is
possible to do in the US or Britain or any
country where the agenda of neoliberal
deregulation has reigned since the 1980s. In
eight months, the EU’s parliamentary elec-
tions will show us which of these two paths
Europeans are inclined to take.
SPECTATOR.CO.UK/PODCAST
Christopher Caldwell and Sophie Pedder on
the future of European politics.
13
 The Pope’s cardinal errors
Francis is now facing the biggest crisis of his pontificate
T
he Catholic Church is
confronting a series of
interconnected scan-
dals so shameful that its very
survival is threatened. Pope
Francis himself is accused of
covering up the activities of
one of the nastiest sexual pred-
ators ever to wear a cardinal’s
hat: his close ally Theodore
McCarrick, the retired Arch-
bishop of Washington, DC.
Popes John Paul II and
Benedict XVI are also
implicated; they did noth-
ing, or almost nothing, while
Mc Carrick was seducing
every seminarian he could get
his hands on. (‘Hide the pretty
ones!’ they used to say when
he visited seminaries.) Yet
powerful cardinals kept quiet
and are now suspected of
lying their heads off after Mc-
Carrick’s crimes were recently
made public.
McCarrick is the world’s
only ex-cardinal. He was
forced to resign in July when sexual abuse
allegations against him were found to be
‘creditable and substantiated’ by Ameri-
can church authorities. But now the Pope
is also being urged to step down — by his
own former apostolic nuncio to the United
States. Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò says
he told Francis in 2013 that McCarrick had
‘corrupted generations of priests and sem-
inarians’. The Pope ignored him and lifted
sanctions that Benedict, who’d been told the
same thing, had imposed.
It’s not clear what these sanctions were:
they don’t seem to have been as severe as
Viganò claims and in any case McCarrick
ignored the enfeebled Benedict. What’s
certain is that Francis rehabilitated this
disgusting old man, sending him swanning
round the world as his emissary. Viganò also
claims that McCarrick — a sanctimonious
‘progressive’ who, when he wasn’t unbut-
toning cassocks, was wringing his hands
over climate change — persuaded the Pope
to promote his liberal protégés.
14
DAMIAN THOMPSON
Meanwhile, last month a Pennsylva-
nia grand jury lifted the lid on hundreds
of abuse cases. Most of the accused priests
are now dead. You could argue that things
are different now. Since the US bishops
issued new guidelines in Dallas in 2002, the
incidence of abuse has fallen sharply. But
The US bishops let a sexual
abuser write their guidelines
on dealing with sexual abuse
there’s a catch. Bishops were exempted
from the so-called Dallas Charter. Which
was convenient for its author: Cardinal
McCarrick — or ‘Uncle Ted’, as he invited
his victims to call him as he groped them in
his beach house.
If you’ve read all this in the newspapers,
you must have been keeping a pretty close
eye on the story: the coverage has been frag-
mentary, to say the least. Cardinals close to
the Pope are terrified, waiting for bombs to
the spectator | 8 september 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk
go off. For the time being, how-
ever, they are one step ahead
of media outlets — not dif-
ficult, given that (for reasons
we’ll come to) the media aren’t
chasing them.
Here, then, is my attempt
at a brief overview of the two
main issues.
First, there’s the collapse of
the moral authority of the US
bishops. They let a sexual abus-
er write their guidelines on
dealing with sexual abuse — at
a time when, we now learn, he
had already faced scandalous
and serious accusations.
Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the
current Archbishop of Wash-
ington, says he knew noth-
ing of his predecessor’s serial
abuse. That’s odd, given that
even his janitor could have told
him. And what about Cardinal
Joseph Tobin, given a red hat
by Francis before his surprise
appointment as Archbishop of
Newark? In 2016, the Vatican
journalist Rocco Palmo reported that
McCarrick got Tobin the job; Viganò agrees.
Yet McCarrick’s sins were news to Tobin.
Cardinal Kevin Farrell, who previous-
ly worked for McCarrick, told the press he
was ‘livid’ that he, too, was ‘kept in the dark’.
For six years he shared an apartment with
Ted in Washington and he didn’t suspect a
thing. Such naivety is touching, but perhaps
a handicap if, like Farrell, you’re running the
Vatican’s department for family life. Indeed,
Farrell’s claim is so implausible that Italian
journalists are openly mocking him. It’s also
been noted that when he acquired a coat of
arms, Farrell incorporated a tribute to Ted
McCarrick into it.
Second, there are Viganò’s allegations
against Francis. His testimony has its con-
tradictions and hyperbole — but when,
on his flight back from Ireland, the Pope
was given the chance to deny that Viganò
told him about McCarrick, he refused to
comment. As a result, Catholics don’t know
whether the Vicar of Christ willingly revived
the career of a sexual predator, thus putting
idealistic seminarians at risk. Perhaps they
should be reminded that Francis invited the
disgraced Cardinal Danneels of Belgium to
his synod on the family. In 2010, Danneels
was recorded telling a young man to shut
up about being abused by a bishop who
was also the young man’s uncle. Three years
later, Danneels was also one of the cardinals
who lobbied to make Jorge Bergoglio pope.
There are other cases of Francis ignoring
gross allegations about his allies. Moreover,
the duplicitous pontiff depicted by Viganò is
instantly recognisable as the cynical, back-
stabbing Bergoglio in Henry Sire’s book The
Dictator Pope, which — though profoundly
hostile to its subject — is based on first-hand
testimony from Argentina and Rome. Every
Catholic should read it. Why do so many
churchmen who knew Bergoglio regard
him as a backstabbing cynic? And why does
he refuse to set foot in his native country?
Forthcoming revelations may enlighten us.
Finally, hardcore papal loyalists known
as Team Francis are engaging in Nixonian
black ops intended to discredit Viganò and
anyone who believes him. Their task is made
easier by the fact that the Pope’s critics
include anti-gay conspiracy theorists; these
can be hard to distinguish from non-bigoted
Catholics who quite reasonably suspect that
‘When we discussed his
heart age he had a coronary.’
predatory gay clergy conspired to protect
each other.
But the team’s one priceless asset is the
mainstream media. Since editors no longer
employ religious correspondents, and tend
to be secular in their outlooks, they are
Hard-core papal loyalists known
as Team Francis are engaging
in Nixonian black ops
happy to believe that the negative stories
against the ‘progressive’ Francis are part of
a right-wing conspiracy because he has said
kind things about gays and divorce.
Where are the Catholics who support a
gentler line on divorce and homosexuality
but who, having reviewed the evidence,
think Francis is unfit to occupy the See of
Peter? Liberal Catholicism, for now, appears
to have been hijacked by ‘Francisism’, a cult-
like devotion to this pontiff that absolves
him of all his sins, rather as he absolves those
of his allies.
Team Francis are confident that their
man won’t resign. He’s basically a Peron-
ist, and they don’t go quietly. And even if
conservatives forced him to announce his
departure, church law says popes can’t be
compelled to resign. ‘It would take only one
or two diehard Francis cardinals to refuse
to accept a successor on those grounds, and
we’d be back to popes and antipopes,’ says
a canon lawyer.
On the other hand, if Francis’s opponents
reluctantly agree to sit out the reign of ‘a bad
pope’, there are many ways of pulling up the
drawbridge. They’ll pray for him at Mass but
otherwise ignore his directives. The number
of priests and, increasingly, bishops ready to
do this is growing all the time. In that respect,
the pontificate of ‘The Great Reformer’ has
already ended in failure; whether it also ends
in disgrace remains to be seen.
SPECTATOR.CO.UK/PODCAST
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presented by Damian Thompson.

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Monday 24 September 2018, 7 p.m.
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the spectator | 8 september 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk 15

A DV E RT I S I N G F E AT U R E
Autumn
Budget: the
importance
of UK spirits
UK spirits are key to our economy. Take, for
instance, Scotch; sold in 200 markets worldwide,
it supports 40,000 jobs and is our single biggest
food and drink export, with 39 bottles exported
each second.
Or how about gin? The UK exported half a billion pounds
of gin in 2017; a figure that could top £600 million this year,
with markets including the USA, Australia, and Europe
growing rapidly. The UK accounts for 67 per cent of all gin
traded around the world, in what is a booming category.
At Pernod Ricard, we employ more than 2,000 Britons,
exporting the likes of The Glenlivet, Chivas and Beefeater to
160 countries globally, and selling to pubs, bars, restaurants and
retailers across the UK. We’re part of a broader spirits footprint;
£30 billion of economic activity; 170,000 jobs; one in every
seven bottles traded globally. The government should be
backing this industry. Instead, it’s taxing it to the hilt.
Just under three-quarters of the price of a typical bottle
of Scotch whisky and 70 per cent of the price of a bottle of
gin is taken in alcohol duty and VAT. As a nation, the UK
pays 37 per cent of all alcohol duties collected in the EU, with
one of the highest rates anywhere in the world.
What’s more, this burden is increasing. Over the past
decade, spirits taxation increased 41 per cent. On an average
bottle at £14, almost £10.50 goes to the Treasury. That doesn’t
leave much for the producers, retailers, or the wider supply
chain that works so hard for it; literally the last few drops.
We’ve seen this year that a freeze in alcohol duties not
only benefits hard-pressed consumers, it also helps an
important UK industry to grow. Building a domestic market
is key for brands, before they can go on to export. That’s
why wine-producing economies such as France, Spain, Italy
and Portugal have a zero rate of tax domestically. The same
principle applies to the UK. At a time of uncertainty, a freeze
in alcohol duties would help UK producers to invest, grow
and export — key objectives for the government.
What’s more, it would help public finances, too. Alcohol
duties were frozen in the last autumn Budget, with effect
from February 2018. This resulted in a £270 million increase
in tax receipts in just six months.
Whether it’s Scotch whisky or British gin, this success
cannot be taken for granted. Spirits production is a resource-
intensive business. Breathing new life into old distilleries
and investing in state-of-the-art bottling is expensive. Just
look at the £50 million bottling facility we’ll be opening
in Dumbarton, or the £20 million expansion of the
Glenlivet distillery.
With distilleries from the North of Scotland to Plymouth
in the south-west, and Beefeater in the heart of London,
ours is a truly UK footprint. And at Pernod Ricard, we’re
committed to seeing UK spirits flourish — after all, they
represent 40 per cent of our core, strategic
global brands.
However, we’d like to see
this commitment matched by
the Chancellor. For this reason,
we — together with our trade
associations — are calling for
the government to freeze duty
at this autumn’s Budget, to
benefit business, consumers,
and public finances.
Let’s stop the super tax,
and let’s back UK spirits —
an export powerhouse, and an
engine for future growth.
Laurent Pillet, managing director of
Pernod Ricard UK

The lunatics have landed
I
remember the moon landing very well.
I was nine years old. I can remember too
my sense of outrage and disillusion. ‘This
is a blatant violation of the moon’s dignity
and sovereignty,’ I told my parents, as the
astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong
attempted to secure the US flag to the lunar
surface. ‘An act of imperialistic, Zionist bar-
barism and a statement of intent from the
American government that it intends to
export its white supremacy throughout the
known galaxy. You will note that no people
of colour were chosen as astronauts, nor
women, nor people with fibromyalgia.’
A day or two later, when I had been let
out of my bedroom, I informed them that
the whole thing had not actually taken place,
but was a sham filmed on a Hollywood
lot for the benefit of Nasa, the industrial-
military complex and Mossad. ‘Did you see
the angles of the shadows cast by the astro-
nauts? Klieg lights, you credulous fools.’ So
young, and yet so woke.
Hollywood has just made another film
about that moon landing and it seems to
have been scripted by someone with a
very similar mindset to the one I had then.
It could not be otherwise, I suppose, these
days. First Man purports to be a biopic of
the aforementioned Armstrong, but omits
entirely the second most important thing he
ever did. There is footage of him landing on
the moon, with Aldrin, but the film makers
quite deliberately omitted to show the flag
being planted on the dusty surface. This was
because, according to one of the cretinous
stars of the film, Ryan Gosling, the moon
landings were not about American trium-
phalism, but something that was good for
the whole of humanity. And so they excised
the bit about the flag, including showing the
astronauts saluting the flag, because it did
not fit in with their political agenda and,
being liberals, they think that what actual-
ly happened, i.e. history, isn’t important and
if it offends them it can be rewritten or sim-
ply expunged.
Aside from anything else, this is cheat-
ing the moviegoers. My guess is that people
who want to watch something about one of
the US’s greatest triumphs probably possess
a scintilla or two of patriotism. They may be
the kind of people who would have enjoyed
the spectator | 8 september 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk
ROD LIDDLE
the film made of Tom Wolfe’s fabulous book
The Right Stuff, which covered similar terri-
tory (and with a rather better cast, not least
Ed Harris and Sam Shepard). Gosling and
co clearly want the large audience which
would be attracted by such a project, but
wish to gloss over the inconvenient politics
of the time and the political feelings of the
audience.
In truth, the moonshot was quintessen-
tially about American triumphalism and
almost nothing else — the good of human-
ity was not a consideration, except insofar
as more successful rocket technology at
last put the US ahead of the Soviet Union,
behind which repulsive country it had lagged
alarmingly, well into the 1960s. It was two
In truth, the moonshot was
quintessentially about American
triumphalism and almost nothing else
fingers to the Russkies and a reminder to
the rest of the world that the US was the
greatest country on earth. In short, as Pres-
ident Kennedy knew, it was the only thing
which could trump Sputnik, Laika and Yuri
Gagarin. It won the space race.
And forgive me, because now I’ve just
used that word: Trump. That’s also some-
where in the mix, somewhere lurking in the
muddled, murky potage these asinine liberals
call a world view. It’s bad enough to be patri-
otic at the best of times, but to do so when
that fascist is waving the Stars and Stripes
around would be unconscionable. Mean-
while, the actual benefit to ‘humankind’ as
a consequence of the moon landings was
ephemeral, fleeting and slight. Nonstick
frying pans, anyone?
‘He’s on the artistic spectrum.’
We are in the Tyranny of Now. A time
when the liberals in Hollywood or at the
BBC or on our university campuses will
rewrite or eradicate history according to
their own manifestos, and where every-
thing that happened in the past is subject to
a Manichaean divide. In a film about slavery,
the black people will be uniquely good, the
whites uniquely bad, conveniently avoiding
the issue that black Africans instigated the
slave trade and continued it long after we’d
been pricked by our honky consciences.
Attempt to suggest that not everything that
came from colonialism was uniformly bad,
as one Oxford professor did recently, and
you will be subjected to a moronic inferno
of howled abuse — even though, palpably,
nothing is quite so black and white as the
liberals see it.
The Tyranny of Now, with its weird non-
sequiturs: it is perfectly OK for a man to
identify as a woman, but once his breasts
have been stapled on don’t — for God’s
sake — allow him to wear a kimono, because
that would be cultural appropriation. It is
cultural appropriation for supermarkets
to sell curries, but not cultural appropria-
tion for your local Chinese restaurant to
offer pie and chips. Perhaps we in the West
should cavil if the rest of the world embrac-
es democracy, sanitation, an independent
judicial system, tolerance, gender equality,
decent table manners and an appreciation
of fine literature, art and music — cultur-
al appropriation! Fortunately, or other-
wise, most of the rest of the world seems
to have resisted these temptations so far.
More of these non-sequiturs, drawn from
the Tyranny of Now. It is fine — no, more
than fine, absolutely marvellous — for the
new version of the BBC’s Daily Politics to
kick off with six women on the panel and
not a solitary man. The reverse would be
unthinkable, wouldn’t it? Why is one form
of gender imbalance worse than another?
Why do we not worry about the scarcity of
male speech therapists, but agonise over the
lack of women heart surgeons?
Buzz Aldrin responded to the film I
mention above by tweeting a photograph of
himself saluting the American flag on the
moon. ‘Proud to be an American,’ he said.
Oh, you dinosaur. Die quickly, be gone.
17
 ANCIENT AND MODERN
Salmond’s fishing
The ex-leader of
the SNP, Alex ‘Five Pensions’ Salmond,
has scrounged nearly £100,000 from
the people to help him in an impending
legal case. How shameless can you get?
In the ancient world, it was
commonplace for the wealthy
to massage their reputations by
magnanimous public gestures —
providing the cash to build a library or
a school, for example. The 5th-century
bc thinker Democritus reckoned that
there was nothing like the rich giving
to the poor to produce concord that
strengthened the community.
For politicians, it was essential. The
Greek orator Hyperides (4th century
bc) argued that the Athenians allowed
statesman and soldiers to make large
‘personal profits’, provided they ‘are
used in the people’s interests, not
against them’. A Roman working
his way up the greasy pole would at
one stage become an aedile, one of
whose responsibilities was to organise
and oversee both public and private
games — chariot races, gladiatorial
contests and the like. An ambitious
aedile would use it to his own ends.
Julius Caesar, aedile in 65 bc, borrowed
millions to spend on public banquets,
stage productions, wild beast shows
and 320 pairs of gladiators to keep the
voters happy.
The pressure to spend privately
was equally severe. A politician, said
Cicero, needed to work up a large
clientele to support him, and that
required expenditure in the form of
favours. Normally, this would result
in a reciprocal favour from the client,
but in the case of a politician, that was
not what he wanted: he wanted clients
to be in debt to him. So the favour
had to be one that the client could not
possibly reciprocate. The only way
to repay it, therefore, was to do his
patron’s political bidding.
The Latin ambitio, source of
our ‘ambition’, meant going round
canvassing for votes. In Salmond’s case,
it meant going round canvassing for a
handout. Perhaps this champion of the
TV channel Russia Today thinks it is
his ‘right’ that others should save him
money. At least he might have waited
to plead destitution after the case had
been settled. And what if he loses? Will
he pay it back? That is what is known
as a rhetorical question. — Peter Jones
18
Trust me, I’m a Scotsman
The myth of Britain’s most ‘reliable’ accent
PAUL BURKE
T
here was once a belief that for TV
and radio commercials, a Scottish
voice was more ‘trustworthy’. This
was particularly the case for financial ser-
vices ads. It was, however, a belief entirely
without foundation. ‘We made it up,’ a bank-
ing executive once told me. ‘We’d moved our
call centres up to Scotland, so we decided to
use Scottish voices on our adverts.’
The ‘trustworthy Scot’ myth quick-
ly gained currency. From the late 1990s
onwards, you could hardly turn on the radio
or television without hearing a Scottish
voice telling you about mortgages, loans,
terms and conditions. Soon the demand for
Scottish voices moved beyond the financial
sector: they began advertising everything
from mobile phones to DFS sofas.
Then things began to unravel, starting
with Gordon Brown. His spectacular mis-
handling of the UK economy put a large
dent in the Scots’ reputation for fiscal probi-
ty. Further damage was sustained as financial
scandals engulfed RBS and HBOS, Scot-
land’s two biggest banks. The charges of cor-
ruption and mismanagement were so serious
that HBOS manager Lynden Scourfield was
sentenced to 11 years in jail and the CEO
of RBS — Paisley’s own Fred ‘The Shred’
Goodwin — was stripped of his knighthood.
Still, Scottish voiceovers remained on
air. After all, Gordon Brown and Fred the
Shred were hardly representative of the
wider Scottish populace.
Then came the independence referen-
dum. For the first time, English advertisers,
who’d always championed the use of Scot-
tish voices in their commercials, heard a
lot of Scottish people saying quite unkind
things about England. Even though the
nationalists lost the vote, they were the more
voluble side, so the die was cast. It’s only got
worse with Nicola Sturgeon’s sour steward-
ship of the SNP.
Last month, a further nail was ham-
mered into the Scottish coffin with reports
that Alex Salmond, whose entire political
career has been predicated on his ‘Profes-
sional Scotsman’ persona, is facing claims
of sexual misconduct.
It is the recent World Cup, however, that
may have done the most damage. As Eng-
the spectator | 8 september 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk
land progressed to the semi-finals, many
Scottish fans refused to support them. In
fact, they took pride in supporting anyone
but England. To the English advertiser, a
Scottish voice now sounded more treacher-
ous than trustworthy. News International,
BT, Guinness and the Co-op are among
those who appear to have dropped Scottish
voices from their advertising.
Of course, they won’t admit to los-
ing faith in the Scottish burr. They’ll say,
quite truthfully, that the greatest popula-
tion density is in the south-east, so it makes
commercial sense to use voices from this
To the English advertiser,
a Scottish voice now sounds more
treacherous than trustworthy
region. They’ll also acknowledge that, with
an ever-increasing number of listeners
whose first language is not English, a neutral
south-east accent — somewhere between
Danny Dyer and A.N. Wilson — is the most
accessible and easily understood.
Scottish voiceovers, however, will still
thrive; because of talent, not accent. Good
voices, clear diction and impeccable timing
will never fall out of favour. As a radio pro-
ducer, I can honestly say that David Ten-
nant, Lewis MacLeod and Aline Mowat
rank among the finest voice artists I have
ever worked with. But Scottish accents are
not — and never have been — any more or
less trustworthy than those of other Brit-
ons. Claiming otherwise was a cynical false-
hood — and to quote that proud Scotsman,
Sir Walter Scott: ‘Oh, what a tangled web we
weave/ When first we practise to deceive.’

I’m up on memes and down with the kids
B
oy and I have been driving the Fawn
mad by singing the ‘Johny Johny
Yes Papa’ song. It goes (roughly to
the tune Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star): ‘Johny
Johny/ Yes, Papa/ Eating Sugar?/ No, Papa/
Telling Lies?/ No, Papa/ Open Your Mouth!/
Ha Ha Ha.’ In the likely event that you don’t
know it, you’ll probably find it as irritating
as the Fawn does — especially the misspell-
ing of Johnny and the bad Indian accent.
But in the unlikely event that you do, you’ll
be congratulating yourself on your pop
cultural credibility. This is because for a brief
period peaking around last weekend —
‘Johny Johny Yes Papa’ was the world’s
most fashionable meme.
Even if you’re not exactly sure what a
meme is, you’ll be familiar with a few. Down-
fall — aka ‘Hitler reacts to’ — has become a
stalwart of the genre. The scene (lifted from
the 2004 movie starring Bruno Ganz) shows
Hitler in his bunker gradually losing his rag
as his nervous generals break the news on
how badly the war is going. The subtitles to
the German soundtrack have been endlessly
recast to explore amusing anachronistically
topical themes. More than 1,000 variants
have appeared since its first usage in 2006,
including one earlier this year where Hitler
discovers Germany has been knocked out
of the World Cup in the early stages, and
another — pop will eat itself — in which
Hitler is outraged to learn that there are
numerous Downfall parody videos.
Another meme you’ll surely have
glimpsed on social media is the one known
as ‘Distracted boyfriend’. Taken from a
stock image database, it shows a man admir-
ing the rear of a passing woman while his
girlfriend looks at him in obvious disgust.
Again, through the use of captions — a
throwback, almost, to those 19th-century
cartoons where, say, a bear is labelled Russia
and a lion Britain — the opportunities for
political and social commentary are limitless.
Its first known appearance in captioned
form was in a Turkish Facebook group in
January last year where the man is labelled
‘Phil Collins’, the newfound object of his
admiration as ‘Pop’ and the appalled girl-
friend as ‘Prog’. Quite an odd subject for
incisive topical comment, given that the for-
the spectator | 8 september 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk
JAMES DELINGPOLE
mer Genesis drummer made that controver-
sial musical transition nearly 40 years ago.
But memes move in mysterious ways. Since
then, it has grown a lot more sassy and rel-
evant. An early classic (emerging at about
the time all the kids were starting to chant
‘Oh Jeremy Corbyn’) was one where the
man labelled ‘The youth’ looks longingly at
‘Socialism’ — while ‘Capitalism’ is properly
aghast. In the most recent variant, both the
man and his girlfriend are looking ahead,
completely uninterested, as they pass the
girl labelled ‘New centrist party’.
The word ‘meme’ was coined by Richard
Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene
to explain the way cultural information
spreads like a disease — hence ‘going viral’.
The best memes are those that cannot
be understood without reference to,
say, an obscure children’s TV show
It was a shortened version of ‘mimeme’ (as
in the Greek ‘mimesis’) and was, Dawkins
declared, to be ‘pronounced to rhyme with
cream’. Now — just like they were always
supposed to do — memes are constantly
mutating and they are absolutely everywhere.
A meme can be anything from a hashtag
or catchphrase (often involving a misspell-
ing or mistranslation — ‘HODL’; ‘all your
base are belong to us’) to an image or a
video. Often what gives them their virality
— the quality that makes them shareable
and which thus turns them into memes —
is a certain recondite knowingness or sly
‘Congratulations and welcome
to our internship scheme.’
wit, or sheer bizarreness. By sharing them
you are signalling that you are not a mere
normie but one of the internet’s in-crowd.
Meme connoisseurs are a snooty bunch.
They hate it when you come to a meme
late (‘Oh that one. Yeah that was around
a month ago’). And they loathe having
to explain what a meme is about. Basical-
ly if you don’t get it, you weren’t meant to.
The best memes are those that cannot be
understood without reference to, say, an
obscure children’s TV show you only saw if
you were exactly the right age in the mid-
Noughties — or to an earlier, similarly
incomprehensible meme which the uniniti-
ated can never hope to crack without a trip
to Knowyourmeme.com.
Which is why I felt so flattered and privi-
leged when Boy decided to show me ‘Johny
Johny Yes Papa’. It features a Sims-style ani-
mated family with a dark secret: they are all
junk food addicts. Johny (a disturbingly mac-
rocephalic baby) is addicted to sugar; Dad
(with his T-shirt and moustache he looks
western and possibly gay; yet, like his pale-
skinned, red-headed wife, he has an Indi-
an accent) scoffs cakes; Mum is into pizza.
When caught indulging their addiction, their
first response is to lie. But on being forced
to open their mouths — revealing the half-
chewed food therein — they laughingly
admit their crime. Then, in an even stranger
coda, the entire family, dog, cat and all, cel-
ebrate the vital lesson they have supposedly
learned by feasting on the stuff that was sup-
posed to be bad for them.
It comes from the website of Dubai-
based Billion Surprise Toys and was made
originally as a behavioural instruction video
for young children, more than a billion of
whom have watched it (and its earlier vari-
ants) since it appeared in 2009. Then one or
two passing adults noticed how arrestingly
bizarre it was — and because they happened
to be key influencers, the meme went viral.
By now I imagine you’ll be dying to see
what the fuss is about. But it may be too
late. Search for it now and all you’re likely
to come up with is the message ‘This video
has been removed in response to a report
from the copyright holder’. That’s memes:
you just had to be there at the time…
19

The Commons encourages MPs to be dysfunctional
I
t takes seven years to know your way
around Parliament. That’s what I was
told when I arrived in the Commons
press gallery seven years ago, but I am still
none the wiser about how to get from the
Snake Pit to the North Curtain Corridor,
and have only recently discovered the loca-
tion of the Yellow Submarine. As a building,
the Palace of Westminster is a confusing,
contradictory rabbit warren of underground
corridors, secret briefing rooms at the top of
towers and rooms with strange names. The
very fabric of the building is dysfunctional,
with pieces of masonry falling onto cars, and
mice creeping through kitchens.
Winston Churchill famously said that
‘we shape our buildings, and afterwards
our buildings shape us’ — which perhaps
explains why the inhabitants of one of the
best-known buildings in the world lead such
dysfunctional lives. Marriages disintegrate
within years of an MP entering the House
of Commons; addictions are easy to develop
and just as easy to hide; mental illness is so
prevalent that Parliament has had to set up
a special treatment service.
Research I carried out for my new book
found that of the 666 MPs elected between
2010 and 2015 (some in by-elections), 12 per
cent got divorced while serving in Parlia-
ment. Of the 307 Conservatives, 32 saw their
marriages end, as did 9 per cent of Labour
MPs. For the Lib Dems, it was 12 per cent,
and of the six SNP MPs elected in 2010, four
split up with their spouses while serving. The
SNP’s marital troubles were particularly
complicated by the fact that two of its MPs
— Angus MacNeil and Stewart Hosie — had
been having affairs with the same female
journalist, though not at the same time.
This isn’t particularly out of step with the
general population, but what is significant is
how many people cite parliamentary life as
the cause of their split — and how quickly
after getting elected their marriages tend to
collapse. After just three years in the job, 25
of the Tory MPs first elected in 2010 were
heading for the divorce court.
Most are surprised by quite how damag-
ing parliamentary life is, even for those who
thought that things were going well with
their other half. But if your family is in the
constituency and you are in Westminster
half the week, then the time apart is inevi-
20
Bleak House
ISABEL HARDMAN
tably going to place a strain on your rela-
tionship. One MP whose marriage broke
down within a couple of years of him get-
ting elected says: ‘I thought my marriage was
rock-solid. But I had so many people warn-
ing me that you should absolutely not do
this unless your spouse is 100 per cent sup-
portive. I thought, well, mine is about 90 per
cent supportive, when in reality she was 50
per cent and that went quickly down to 30.’
Many affairs between married MPs start
on a Monday night, when they are all cooped
up in Parliament waiting for late votes. Then
there are the parties, where quite middle-
aged characters can still end up surrounded
by adoring young researchers, press officers
and think-tank staffers. One spouse of an
MP told me she wouldn’t be surprised if her
husband did cheat on her at some point,
‘If you have a predisposition
to alcoholism, Parliament
will accelerate it’
given the number of ‘groupies who fling
themselves at him, even when I’m present’.
Another remarked: ‘Some stop when they
find out that he’s married. Others don’t care
at all. There are a lot of women in Westmin-
ster who are not my sisters.’
Former Ilford North MP Lee Scott had
already seen the toll Parliament had taken
on his friends when he entered the Com-
mons in 2006: ‘I had a lot of friends who
were MPs and I had seen that in 60 per cent
of cases their marriages had broken up. You
sort of thought to yourself, “Why is that?”
And then you realise that you’re with a lot
of people and you can be quite lonely. Vot-
ing late, sitting in your office on your own.’
That loneliness manifests itself in other
ways too. Colleagues of the late Charles
Kennedy suspected that his alcoholism grew
out of being a lonely and unusually young
MP, while the husband of Fiona Jones, the
Labour MP who died of liver failure aged
just 49, said that ‘nobody cared if she drank’
in the House of Commons. In 2012, the
Commons doctor Ira Madan told a staff
meeting that she was concerned about
the proportion of MPs she had seen with
alcohol-related problems.
Labour MP Liam Byrne, whose father
had a drinking problem, points out that
the spectator | 8 september 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk
many of his colleagues were also children of
alcoholics, which makes them far more likely
to develop an addiction themselves. Indeed,
politics itself is addictive, with MPs locked
into a cycle of dopamine hits from gain-
ing power and praise. A surprising number
come from broken or dysfunctional homes,
and some admit that their drive comes part-
ly from trying to show an absent or abusive
parent that they were in fact worth loving.
Perhaps these sad backstories also
explain why so many MPs keep reading
abuse on social media. A common charac-
teristic of mental ill-health is seeking con-
firmation from others that you really are as
useless as you personally feel. And there’s
a ready supply of anonymous trolls on Twit-
ter who’ll offer just that.
Tory MP Charles Walker, who has spo-
ken openly about his obsessive compulsive
disorder, believes it isn’t so much that Parlia-
ment makes people unwell as that it exploits
existing weaknesses. ‘If you are predisposed
to having a weakness or a condition, Parlia-
ment will expose it,’ he says. ‘If you have a
predisposition to alcoholism, Parliament
will accelerate it. If your marriage is weak,
it might have failed in ten years, but Parlia-
ment will ensure it falls apart in five. If you
have an underlying disposition to a mental
illness, which may never have developed,
Parliament will ensure that it does.’
MPs do choose to put themselves
through these ordeals. But their children do
not. One MP recalls his son’s primary school
teacher saying that when she asked him if he
wanted to be an MP like his daddy, he told
her, ‘No, I could never do that to my family.’
The son might, like many political children,
grow up and find he has changed his mind
about wanting to enter the Commons. But
he put his finger on something that many
gifted people who choose to avoid going
into Parliament cite as a major factor: they
don’t want their family to suffer.
Given what I’ve seen, I think they’re
right to worry. But what a loss to democ-
racy that normal, well-balanced people stay
away not because the job itself is hard, but
because the life it demands is almost impos-
sible to live.
Isabel Hardman’s Why We Get the Wrong
Politicians (Atlantic) is out now.
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 The world the crash made
Ten years on, banks and governments seem to have learned nothing
W
ith September marking a dec-
ade since the Lehman Brothers
implosion, stand by for a slew of
economic retrospectives. Any meaningful
analysis, though, needs to get beyond histor-
ic balance sheets and plunging share price
graphs — however dramatic the data.
For the most significant impact of the
biggest financial and economic upheaval
since the Great Depression has been the
growing loss of faith in western liberal cap-
italism. Politics has been upended by the
2008 crisis — doing much to explain Trump,
Corbyn and the broader shift away from
centrist parties towards extremes.
The demise of Lehmans, a once-impreg-
nable investment bank, exposed a US finan-
cial sector riddled with chronic debts and
fraud. That sparked a peak-to-trough plunge
of more than 40 per cent across western
stock markets — the deepest since the 1929
Wall Street crash.
The ensuing recession saw global trade
shrink by a fifth, costing the world economy
some $10 trillion (over a sixth of 2008 global
GDP). In 2009, total world output contract-
ed in real terms, after inflation, for the first
time in history.
Unlike previous meltdowns, the ‘sub-
prime’ collapse was an economic trauma
of the western world’s own making. There
was no external oil embargo, no emerging
markets crisis, no all-consuming war. It was
caused largely by reckless bankers on both
sides of the Atlantic taking advantage of
increasingly lax regulations. The money men
were facilitated by politicians who were, at
best, misguided and often chasing campaign
donations from an increasingly powerful
financial services industry.
During the run-up to 2008, by allowing
banks to hold less capital against their assets,
while setting interest rates too low, policy-
makers encouraged big financial institutions
to take on huge debts and pile in to ever
more risky assets. Old-fashioned, prudent
bankers were sacked, replaced by young-
sters who were happy to bend, and in some
cases break, the law.
To keep the party going, regulators then
permitted large banks to parcel up loans and
sell on the exposure, creating markets for
asset-backed securities, credit derivatives
and other deliberately opaque financial
22
LIAM HALLIGAN
products. Able to offload credit risk, such
banks no longer cared who they lent to —
sparking an orgy of speculation that spread
exposure to a bloated, crash-prone US hous-
ing market across the globe.
That, in turn, threatened the integrity of
the entire western banking system, includ-
ing the cash balances of ordinary firms and
households — not least because, after par-
ticularly intense Wall Street lobbying, Presi-
dent Clinton had ditched the Depression-era
rule that kept taxpayer-backed deposits
out of the hands of risk-taking investment
banks. Once that vital divide was breached
with the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in
1999, a crash was inevitable. Further Bush-
era deregulation, copied in London and
elsewhere, just added fuel to the fire.
Although the 2008 collapse was serious,
the crash alone hasn’t caused such wide-
Unlike previous meltdowns, the
collapse was an economic trauma
of the western world’s own making
spread political anger, provoking so many
moderate voters to question ‘the system’.
Financial crises aren’t unusual, happening
every 10 to 15 years or so. What has grated
about the sub-prime debacle, the really gall-
ing aspect, has been the weak and deeply
counter-productive policy response — which
not only prolonged the post-2008 economic
fallout but has also left us far more vulner-
able when the next crisis comes.
The combination of continuing lax reg-
ulation and the endless central bank mon-
ey-printing we’ve seen means that banks
remain too big to fail and those owning
assets, including the same bankers and insti-
tutions that caused havoc, have effortlessly
become even richer. That tears at the social
fabric. Capitalism stands or falls on broad
public consent. And, as wealth inequal-
ity has spiralled since 2008, with the finan-
cial behemoths and corporations generally
becoming more not less powerful, such con-
sent has started to slip.
It’s a source of widespread public out-
rage that while the crisis destroyed count-
less businesses and millions of jobs, the fraud
that preceded it has gone largely unpun-
ished. We’ve seen some convictions, but
the spectator | 8 september 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk
many more cases remain outstanding. The
banks, meanwhile, have generally reached
out-of-court ‘settlements’, paying fines that
sound hefty, but are just a fraction of the
massive state bail-outs they received.
There is much public dismay, too,
about quantitative easing. The US Fed-
eral Reserve, the Bank of England and
the European Central Bank have driven
a worldwide QE expansion totalling more
than $20 trillion, injecting money into banks
and financial markets with no democratic
checks or balances.
While drastic action was justified in the
months after the Lehmans collapse, such
emergency measures soon morphed into a
lifestyle choice. Ongoing QE has powerful
friends, pumping up financial markets and
other asset prices. But the related ultra-
low interest rates — negative in real terms
— have seen pensioners and other savers
suffer badly.
QE-driven house price rises have put
home-ownership beyond the reach of mil-
lions of young professionals — not least in
the UK, causing a decisive swing towards
Corbyn. Outrage at the Fed’s money-print-
ing fuelled the rise of the right-wing popu-
list Tea Party movement, paving the way
for President Trump. The ECB’s QE pro-
gramme sparked the creation of Alterna-
tive für Deutschland, the far-right party that,
despite being founded only in 2013, now
forms Germany’s biggest opposition party.
And instead of promoting a surge of
lending to firms and households, much QE
cash has remained dormant, with mori-
bund banks using it to shore up their bal-
ance sheets. So the growth QE was meant
to generate has barely happened. The US
economy spluttered for years after its post-
Lehmans downturn, with the UK registering
its slowest recovery from recession in more
than a century.
Many western governments imposed
post-crisis ‘austerity’ measures to ward off
financial ruin. The combination of stagnat-
ing wages, and some targeted spending cuts,
drove much public discontent. Despite the
rhetoric, though, both public and private
borrowing actually ballooned.
There is now $63 trillion of sovereign
debt outstanding across the world, with
total debt at $237 trillion — a full $70 tril-
lion above pre-crash levels. The US public
debt ratio has rocketed from 65 per cent of
GDP in 2008 to 105 per cent today, with the
UK equivalent up from 40 to 87. In the euro-
zone, Italy’s public debt now exceeds 130
per cent of national income, a third higher
than in 2008 — and is threatening to cause
a eurozone implosion, which would prompt
further populism on the Continent.
M any new economic challenges have
arisen over the past decade, of course.
The ‘advanced’ economies’ share of global
GDP has shrunk from more than 70 per cent
to well below 60 — a long-term trend, accel-
erated by the sub-prime crisis, that has inten-
sified global competition. Technological
progress is threatening mass unemployment,
just as the western world’s demographic
transition puts public finances under fur-
ther strain.
But the 2008 financial crisis, and the
policy response to it, have radicalised mil-
lions of mainstream Western voters, as the
ultra-rich have prospered at the expense of
the ‘squeezed middle’ — with many previ-
ously comfortable families now fearful. The
crisis appeared to embolden the financial
The same bankers and institutions
that caused havoc have
effortlessly become even richer
elite, demonstrating its control over west-
ern governments.
Since then, big businesses have become
even more powerful — and not just banks.
From airlines to energy companies, tele-
coms to house-building, many sectors have
become more concentrated. Consumers
have faced less choice, poorer service and
high prices — adding to the ‘them and us’
grievances that drive broader discontent.
Global stocks markets, pumped up by
QE, are soaring, with valuations flashing
red. Current ‘late-stage, credit-cycle dynam-
ics’ and ‘investor excesses’ are worryingly
reminiscent of 2008, according to the Inter-
national Monetary Fund. Yet, with interest
rates at rock bottom and state debts histor-
ically high, when the crash comes, there is
scant scope to soften the blow.
Of the 30 too-big-to-fail banks before the
crisis, three-quarters are now significantly
bigger, according to Standard and Poor’s
rating agency. Bank regulation remains
weak and there is still no reinstatement of
the Glass-Steagall separation of commercial
and investment banking — so when reck-
less investment banks fail, ordinary depos-
its will be vulnerable, ensuring governments
come running once more. There has been
righteous populist anger since 2008 — and
there’s much more to come.
Liam Halligan writes a weekly Economics
Agenda column in the Sunday Telegraph.
the spectator | 8 september 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk
But it wasn’t just the crash
There’s more to populism than economic discontent
WILLIAM GALSTON
W
e often hear it said that
the financial crash created
populism. It is now a familiar
story: that the Lehman Brothers
collapse and the Great Recession
exposed a shocking and colossal failure
of economic stewardship in general.
Ordinary families suffered, while
bankers were bailed out. This led to
people losing confidence in mainstream
parties and established institutions. And
this, in turn, fuelled the populist upsurge
that upended American and British
politics — with Donald Trump and
Brexit being two of the results.
While this account is not wrong, I
now believe that it represents only a
portion of the truth. There are many
other cultural and demographic trends
at work. Take, for example, the way
in which most cities are now thriving
but most smaller towns are not. Once,
the fortunes of large cities and their
hinterlands were linked. Now, cities
are like black holes, absorbing skilled
labour and resources — but failing to
emit either wealth or opportunities
to surrounding areas. Compounding
this trend, we have the rise of higher
education which has created new
cultural divisions. A degree not only ups
potential salaries, but also reshapes an
individual’s entire outlook.
Smaller towns tend to have lower
levels of education. As a result, they’ve
had a harder time competing in the new
global economy. Many rural regions are
facing economic stagnation, and end
up losing ambitious young people who
move to the cities. Populist parties —
from the US and Britain to Hungary
and Poland — have found their greatest
support in these left-behind areas.
National capitals and other large cities
have become anti-populist bastions.
Such demographic changes offer a
better explanation for recent political
drama than any talk about the crash
or falling wages. In the US presidential
election, white voters without college
degrees gave their overwhelming
support to Donald Trump — in large
part because of his strong stance
against mass immigration. In the EU
referendum, voters tended to support
Leave because of similar concerns about
demographic trends.
When the definitive history of Brexit
is written, Tony Blair’s 2004 decision to
make Britain one of the few countries
in Europe that opted not to phase in
migration from eastern Europe may
well be viewed as pivotal. Waves of
immigration, in Britain and throughout
the West, created fears that national
identities were being irreversibly altered.
And that politicians didn’t care much
about the ‘old stock’ citizens, who feared
losing both their status and culture.
The collapse of Lehmans was a
seismic event. But so was Angela
Merkel’s noble yet ill-judged decision
Populist parties have found
their greatest support in
the left-behind areas
to admit more than a million refugees
in 2015. This allowed Viktor Orbán to
position himself as the leader of illiberal
Europe hawking what he calls ‘illiberal
democracy’. Even in Germany — which
many believed would have an historical
aversion to populism — the Alternative
für Deutschland has become a serious
political force. In Italy, the League
(formerly the Northern League) has
transformed itself into a tough anti-
immigration party and become the
guiding force of the new coalition
government.
The populism we see today across
Europe and America is politically
nationalist and culturally traditionalist.
It is seeking to dial back the recent
globalisation, embodied by international
organisations such as the European
Union and the United Nations. The
Brexit vote was a reminder that
no country is obliged to open its
doors to all newcomers, regardless
of the consequences. Unfettered
internationalism will breed its antithesis:
unfettered nationalism.
It is not economics alone that has
fuelled the rise of populism, but rather
the coming together of economic,
demographic, cultural and political
resentments. So don’t just focus on the
crash. This problem runs far deeper.
23
 BAROMETER
On bended knee
Origins of Wonga Is Nike’s Colin Kaepernick advert a brilliant marketing move?
The payday lender Wonga has gone into
administration. How did ‘wonga’ come to SIMON BARNES
be used as slang for money?
— The term is believed to have derived
from the Romany word ‘wangar’ which,
although used as a term for money, in fact
means ‘coal’. This in turn has Indo-Iranian
origins.
E
very so often sport bursts its banks,
— In English, too, ‘coal’ or ‘cole’ were spills from its usual courses and goes
used as slang for ‘money’ in the 17th and flooding incontinently onto the news
18th centuries, when the possession of coal
pages. This year we’ve already had Austral-
really did equate to wealth.
ian cricketers doing unspeakable things with
Shrinking economies sandpaper, Gareth Southgate’s World Cup
waistcoat and the return of Serena Williams
The Venezuelan economy is estimated to Wimbledon a few months after an emer-
to have shrunk by half over the past five gency caesarean.
years. How does that compare with the And now we have Colin Kaepernick. He
most severe economic crises of the past is currently an unemployed quarterback of
150 years? America’s National Football League. He
Shrinkage of economy from peak to trough famously — heroically if you like — refused
Chile, 1920s -46.6% to stand for the pre-game national anthem, in
Uruguay, early 1930s -36.1% protest against social injustice and police treat-
Spain, early 1930s -34.6% ment of black people. Many other footballers
Peru, 1983 -32.0%
followed suit. Last season at an NFL game in
Mexico, 1929 -31.1%
London between the Baltimore Ravens and
Canada, 1923 -30.1%
US, 1929–33 -28.6% Jacksonville Jaguars, around two dozen play-
Australia, 1893 -28.0% ers ‘took a knee’ during the American anthem.
Source: American Economic Review The protest has caused great angst in
the United States. Donald Trump called the
Where popes go kneelers ‘sons of bitches’ and demanded that
they be sacked from their NFL teams. Cer-
Pope Francis visited Ireland. No pope left tainly Kaepernick can’t find a job, though
Italy and the Vatican City from 1809 until some say that is because he is a second-rate
Pope Paul VI travelled to Jordan and Israel quarterback. Martyr or sporting chuck-out?
in 1964. Which countries have received the Nike has made up its corporate mind
largest number of papal visits since then? — and chucked another cartload of newts’
Poland 11
eyes and baboon blood into the cauldron by
US, France 10
putting Kaepernick at the centre of its new
Mexico, Portugal 7
Germany, Spain, Switzerland 6 campaign. The slogan: ‘Believe in something,
Israel, Jordan, Turkey, Cuba, Philippines, even if it means sacrificing everything.’ What
Brazil, Austria, Czech Republic/ does that mean, exactly? Kaepernick hasn’t
Czechoslovakia, Malta 4 given up everything: he is after all a very
well-paid brand ambassador for Nike.
Snipping the civil service Let’s flashback 30 years, to when Nike
built its advertising around the great basket-
Brexit secretary Dominic Raab said he ball player Michael Jordan. His nickname:
was looking to increase the number of civil Air Jordan. The name of his shoes? Nike Air.
servants working on Brexit from 7,000 to Man and product had become one. Jordan
9,000. Which government departments played it resolutely apolitical — never got
employ the most civil servants?
involved in a single controversy. Just don’t do
Department of Work
it. Why was that? ‘Republicans buy sneakers
and Pensions 78,740
Ministry of Justice 65,370 too.’ Jordan says he never said that, and per-
Ministry of Defence 48,110 haps he didn’t: but it might have served as
Home Office 27,830 the motto for his political life.
Foreign and Commonwealth Office 4,390 Now Nike has gone the other way. It has
Department for Education 3,350 deliberately sought to alienate Republicans,
And what areas do they cover? at least those of the far-right. There may be
Operational delivery 177,130 fine and noble causes at stake — racial jus-
Policy 20,370 tice, the end of police brutality, and so on. At
Tax 16,740 bottom, however, the advertising campaign
Project delivery 12,710 is about selling sneakers. The company has
Science and engineering 11,640 found controversy because it sought contro-
Digital, data and technology 10,410
versy. Its campaign has made it into every
24 the spectator | 8 september 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk
organ that covers sport or politics, and eve-
rybody is talking about the rights and wrongs
of Colin Kaepernick’s genuflection.
Trump’s comments that this is ‘a terrible
message, a message that shouldn’t be sent’
plays right into Nike’s hands: sucked into the
whipped-up controversy, the President is now
also in the business of selling sneakers. But he
was careful to tone it down just a little, saying
that Nike’s exercise of its freedom to make
this choice was ‘what this country is all about’.
Which can also be taken as an endorsement
of Nike: even that Nike has forced the Presi-
dent to see sense on the matter. In publicity
— if not yet in sales — it’s a masterstroke.
It’s also what ethologists call distraction
display. Stories about Nike’s sweatshops in
the developing world have dogged the com-
pany for decades, but while Nike are being
heroic good guys, people are less likely to want
tales of ill-treated workers: Vietnamese less-
than-minimum-wage slaves don’t make for
cool branding. What would happen if every-
one in their factories chose to take a knee?
Nike are celebrating the 30th anniversary
of their famous slogan ‘Just do it’. Trump sup-
porters are already making a public fuss of
setting their Nike gear alight and tweeting
#JustBurnIt to each other. So Nike equals
righteousness — right? This is sport, remem-
ber: a world in which we instinctively prefer
binary judgments to moral ambiguities.
Perhaps it will turn out to be the most bril-
liant marketing move of all time: one appar-
ently based on the notion that in a global
market, people will go out of their way to
support an organisation that annoys Trump.
Sport dramatises issues: Kaepernick
tapped into that eternal truth with astute-
ness, audacity and style when he first made
his own protest. At the Mexico Olympic
Games of 1968, the American sprinters Tom-
mie Smith and John Carlos raised black-
gloved fists during their national anthem, to
demonstrate equivocal feelings about their
nation. This is now the classic example of the
way sport can dramatise non-sporting issues:
and — belatedly — it has become an emblem
of American courage and freedom.
The take-a-knee protest is from the same
stable: free speech as enshrined in the Amer-
ican constitution, expressed in the drama
of sport, before the sporting audiences of
America and the world. So far, so democrat-
ic. What Nike have done is monetise it. It’s a
fascinating development.

Why do we care so little about child abuse?
A
busing children is one of the most
terrible things men do. We all agree
about that. And I think we’re all
aware, as Sajid Javid announced on Mon-
day, that it’s a growing problem. The same
technology that allows millions to share vid-
eos of romping kittens has created an awful,
expanding market for images of children —
mostly very young girls.
There has been a 700 per cent rise in
reports of child abuse images since 2012,
said Javid: an average of 400 arrests a month.
Police think that there are now 80,000 people
in the UK who pose a serious threat to kids.
Javid is shocked by the scale of it, he says,
but what has surprised me over the past few
years is how little people really seem to care.
Consider Facebook. A fair percentage
of the images paedophiles pass around are
stolen from Facebook photo albums. Face-
book’s sister sites Instagram and WhatsApp
serve as hunting grounds for child molesters.
But when did you last see a Facebook friend
insisting that Facebook or government
confront the rising tide of child abuse?
Migrants? Yes. Maltreated horses? Yes. Plas-
tic straws? Absolutely. I’ve lost count of the
number of tearful petitions I’ve been asked
to sign about straws. Zip about the kids.
It’s not as if nothing can be done. AI
creeps forward year by year. It surely
wouldn’t take much for the Silicon Valley
whizz-kids to outwit the world’s paedos.
Facebook prevaricates, insists it’s just a
humble platform and it can’t help who uses
it. But then, both Facebook and Google
insisted there was nothing they could do to
prevent Isis recruiters from posting video
nasties. Earlier this year, a brilliant British
company, ASI Data Science, worked with
Amber Rudd’s Home Office to develop an
AI program that can detect Islamic State
propaganda online with a 94 per cent suc-
cess rate. ASI’s program analyses the audio
and images of a video file during the upload-
ing process, and rejects the jihadi posts.
If Sajid Javid really does plan to take on
the whole unbearable problem, if Monday’s
speech was a beginning and not an end, he
should employ ASI to invent a similar pro-
gram for paedo images. I’d start a Facebook
campaign — if anyone would share it.
I don’t think they would. But why? Until
the spectator | 8 september 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk
MARY WAKEFIELD
relatively recently, my working theory was
that people kept quiet about child abuse
for fear of racism. Some of the most recent
and most widespread abuse in the UK has
been committed by Pakistani men targeting
young white girls. Rotherham, Rochdale,
Oxford, Telford.
The Quilliam think-tank claims that 84
per cent of people convicted of child groom-
ing offences since 2005 have been Asian. If
there are no protests or petitions signed by
the marching classes, perhaps it’s because
they’re worried about Islamophobia.
But then why no outcry about the Potts
family? That was a whole backwoods white
trash nightmare set in the West Midlands.
Not an Asian grooming gang in sight. Six
I’ve lost count of the number of
petitions I’ve been asked to sign about
plastic straws. Zip about the kids
members of the Potts family (women and
men) abused very young children for three
decades. The first victims tried to alert the
police back in 1989. In 2015 three more vic-
tims tried and failed to tell the cops. The last
disgusting Potts was convicted and put away
just last week, but there was not a peep on
social media. No demands for transparency
or enquiries into why on earth the police
ignored the victims for so long.
Is child abuse just too widespread, too
sad and too sick to think about? That might
be part of it. Last year Chief Constable
Simon Bailey said that there were so many
men looking at child porn that the police
shouldn’t even consider trying to catch them
all. Let’s focus on the psychos who actu-
ally harm kids, he said. Leave the voyeurs
be. Needs must, but ‘you can look but don’t
touch’ seems a very weird message for law
enforcement to send. On my way to work in
‘What did you do in the Scallop War, Daddy?’
wet weather, I sometimes see police horses
draped in high-vis blankets printed with the
words: ‘Online child protection unit’. It sums
up the futility of it all.
There is a less noble explanation for
the failure of the influential middle classes
to give a monkey’s about the world’s most
distressing and genuinely evil crime. I think
they — we — don’t want to be tainted by
association with it. Share a story about
unhappy dolphins, and your friends assume
you’re an animal lover. Share a story about
children suffering at the hands of a paedo
network, and a little cloud of suspicion inevi-
tably unfolds around you,
There’s a brilliant charity called Stop It
Now!, a helpline that offers support to men
who feel sexually drawn to underage girls
and boys. It enables men with paedophile
inclinations to live without ever offending.
If what its users claim is right, it genu-
inely saves children. Stop It Now! is overrun
with calls. It needs cash and volunteers. But
would I do a sponsored run for it? Would I
jolly about at work explaining the charity’s
business and asking colleagues to stump up?
Maybe I’ll give it a go. A 5K for the sad
souls encumbered with this blight but big
enough to realise it’s wrong, which is quite
an achievement in itself.
One of the problems with paedophilia,
and why it’s so prevalent, is that abusers
persuade themselves that they’re somehow
OK; that the kids ask for it and that they (the
adults) are somehow the real victims here.
In 2008, The Spectator ran a story about an
academic, Professor Roger Took, a paedo-
phile who had been protected by his well-
connected friends.
Took had been convicted of horrible
crimes but he wrote to us repeatedly after
the story ran, absolutely sure that he, not any
child, was the victim here. His clever mind
simply set itself to work concocting clever
reasons for why he wasn’t to blame.
As Sajid Javid pointed out, perpetrators
come from all walks of life. They’re in Chel-
sea and Westminster just as much as in the
Pottses’ world. After all, Europe, which ima-
gines itself so civilised, is now the world’s
child abuse centre — we produce more than
half of all the awful images out there. We
think it’s not our problem, but it is.
25

Chinese burn
Sir: Your leading article last week ended up
saying ‘It is unrealistic to expect that we can
achieve what China has in Africa over the
past decade.’ If we were to have done that,
I for one would wish to resign my British
nationality. What they have done there for
the past 30 years is to systematically rape
and pillage the continent.
China has insidiously worked its
way into Africa by establishing ‘private’
contractors who then bid for building work
and underbid all local opposition by being
state-funded. Many local firms were thus
put out of business.
Their ‘aid’ projects — starting with the
ill-fated TanZam railway — were funded
not by grants but by loans accepted by
weak and venal governments. One more
recent such project was the complete
relaying of the railway through Botswana.
This was carried out using Chinese designs,
Chinese engineers, Chinese machinery,
Chinese labour and Chinese materials.
Even the stone ballast was brought in from
China. When it was completed, it was found
that the lines had been laid some 100mm
too high for the full 600+km length. The
Botswana government then had to relay
every level crossing at their own expense.
The costs of these ‘aid’ projects remain as
loans to be repaid by the governments, who
thus become trapped in debt to China.
In Sudan, the Chinese government
bought hundreds of square kilometres
of arable land — a scarce resource. The
Chinese then used the land to grow food
using Chinese farmers, seed, fertiliser and
machinery. All the produce was exported
to China. None of the above provides any
benefits to the general African population
— only to a few corrupt leaders.
Geoff Neden
Diddlebury, Shropshire
Off the rails
Sir: Christian Wolmar is right to call for a
restructuring of our railways (‘The great
British train wreck’, 1 September). As an
employee of BR/Railtrack/Network Rail,
I witnessed the creation of a system set up
to fail because it pitted the three major
groups in the industry against each other,
with heavy financial penalties payable
to the other parties for non-delivery of
objectives. It also compromised safety. It
was a ‘back of a fag packet’ plan for disaster.
Outright renationalisation would simply
return things to the grim lack of investment
and customer focus which characterised
British Rail. Network Rail, the organisation
created by a Labour government when it
took Railtrack back into public ownership,
the spectator | 8 september 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk
LETTERS
produced the recent disastrous new
timetable. Conservatives need to engage
in some urgent imaginative thinking to
combine private and public investment
and create a railway of which the country
can be proud.
Sandra Jones
Old Cleeve, Somerset
Missionaries position
Sir: As a British citizen who lived in Delhi
for seven years, I was intrigued by Peter
Parker’s review of David Gilmour’s
fascinating new book The British in India
(Books, 1 September), in which he calls
for ‘objectivity’ and ‘even-handedness’
in approaching Britain’s legacy in India.
It seems that either he — or the author
— are anything but even-handed in their
assessment of British missionaries. From
its inception, orthodox Christianity has
been a missionary movement, and while
mistakes have been made throughout
the world, there can be no doubt that
innumerable benefits resulted from the
missionary movement in India. Even today,
much of India’s health care is provided
by mission hospitals and education by
Christian schools: all the more remarkable
given that Christians make up only around
2 per cent of the country’s population.
Countless lives were saved by the abolition
of the practice of ‘suttee’, and it was and
is Christians who are at the forefront of
caring for lepers and orphans. Surely an
‘even-handed’ evaluation of the legacy
of William Wilberforce and those he
supported in going as missionaries to India
would acknowledge that it was far greater
than that ‘they spread venereal disease’
by abolishing brothels.
Revd Robin Weekes
London SW19
Wild about ragwort
Sir: I very much enjoyed Melissa Kite
(Real life, 1 September) on the subject of
her correspondence from a sanctimonious
ragwort fanatic. I am also rather a fan of
ragwort, whose myriad benefits there isn’t
space to cover here. I would recommend
reading Isabella Tree’s superb book
Wilding, which is an absolute epiphany and
covers ragwort in some detail. While on
the topic I would also recommend Michael
McCarthy’s Say Goodbye to the Cuckoo.
Read the depressing latter first, and the
optimistic former second, and then pray
that Michael Gove has done the same.
Andrew Stibbard
Ramsbury, Wiltshire
Chocs at the Coq
Sir: Like Tanya Gold (Food, 25 August) I
wouldn’t normally visit Coq d’Argent, but
unlike her I did feel particularly welcome
when I dropped in a couple of years ago.
During a sightseeing visit to London on a
chilly day, I and several other unfashionable
middle-aged provincials, eager to see how
the other half lives, took the lift to the
roof garden of the famous Coq. We seated
ourselves at a table, admired the view and
opened our packed lunches. While we
were eating our homemade sandwiches,
a waiter approached and, concerned that
we might be cold, fired up the patio heater.
We basked in the warm glow, and a few
minutes later the same waiter presented us
with a platter of posh chocolates. Perhaps
this generous welcome is extended to all
or perhaps we were mistaken for wealthy
bohemian eccentrics. Who knows —
but we enjoyed it.
Gill Warner
Gravesend, Kent
WRITE TO US
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London SW1H 9HP
letters@spectator.co.uk
27
 ANY OTHER BUSINESS|MARTIN VANDER WEYER
Why can’t Britain hang
on to its best new companies?
C
osta, in my opinion, sells a decent
cup of coffee. It employs polite
youngsters who seem happy in their
work. If you’re desperate for caffeine, even
its petrol-station vending machines are not
too bad. And unlike the UK operation of
Starbucks, whose coffee is vile, it pays tax on
its profits at close to the full rate of corpora-
tion tax. Founded by two Italian brothers in
London’s Vauxhall Bridge Road in 1971, it’s
a triumph of brand development — and a
credit to its current owner Whitbread, which
acquired Costa as a diversification from its
own traditional brewing business in 1995.
Now Costa has been sold to Coca-Cola for
a handsome £3.9 billion: no wonder Whit-
bread chief Alison Brittain called the deal
‘absolutely stonking’.
But is there a downside? Having pros-
pered selling nutritionally worthless bev-
erages to the world’s poor, Coca-Cola is
an authentic monster of capitalism — but
has also been a benign owner of Innocent
Drinks, the smoothie maker that was once
a hip London start-up, and there’s no rea-
son to expect it to damage the Costa for-
mat. More troubling is the point I’ve made
before, that much as we’d like to boast of
our native entrepreneurs building giant dig-
ital technology companies, they generally
don’t: instead, they build and sell the likes
of Costa, Innocent, Tyrrells Crisps, Dorset
Cereals and the Pret A Manger and Eat
sandwich chains. Kings of the snack econo-
my we may be, but will that save our bacon?
Walking the plank
So farewell Paul Pester, the TSB chief exec-
utive who has finally walked the plank in
the wake of the IT failures that afflicted his
bank in April and reportedly have not gone
away. Pester’s initial response to the fiasco —
prickly, defensive, insensitive to customers’
woes — hit all the wrong notes. Even though
much of the blame lies with TSB’s Span-
ish parent Banco Sabadell, which has been
accused of insisting on the transfer of TSB
accounts to its own computer platform
28
without adequate preparation, Pester might
have won some respect if he had said from
the start ‘I’ll go as soon as this is fixed’, rath-
er than so obviously trying to cling to his
job. As for Sabadell, regulators should hold
it under the fiercest scrutiny: if it continually
leaves TSB customers in the lurch, is it a fit
and proper owner for a UK bank?
Warning signals
I’ve been cheerleading for Crossrail ever
since its then chairman Terry Morgan led
me deep below Bond Street in 2013 to
watch diggers clawing at a cliff-face of Lon-
don clay. A stupendous and transformative
feat of engineering was afoot; I was eager to
believe it would be finished on time within
its £14.8 billion budget, and I’d be whizzing
across the capital on it by the end of this
year. But chief executive Andrew Wolsten-
holme left in May to join BAE Systems and
Morgan left in July to take command of HS2
just as a £600 million overrun of Crossrail
costs, rumoured for months, was confirmed;
and whenever I walked past the Bond Street
site this summer I observed that work had
slowed almost to a halt.
Sure enough, we now learn that the cen-
tral section of the Elizabeth Line, to use its
proper name, will not open until at least
next autumn — with additional costs yet to
be revealed. Just when we need affirmation
that the UK is capable of delivering some-
thing more ambitious than an artfully deco-
rated flat white coffee, we have a colossal
infrastructure cock-up on our hands. Having
stuck my neck out in support, I’m personally
very upset about it.
But what went wrong? Crossrail’s first
champion Lord Adonis blames transport
Secretary Chris Grayling, not least for mov-
ing the veteran Morgan to HS2 when Cross-
rail most needed his skill as a fixer between
funders and contractors; London Tories
tried to blame Mayor Sadiq Khan, though
it’s not clear why. Engineers say the key is in
Crossrail’s talk of software issues and time
needed ‘to complete the full range of inte-
the spectator | 8 september 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk
grated tests’ — a reference to the line’s reli-
ance on a combination of three signalling
systems built into the trains that must inter-
face with existing Network Rail kit on the
outer sections. ‘The computing power of the
train brain has to be enormous,’ observed
Andrew Wolstenholme before his depar-
ture. ‘It’s probably as complicated as intro-
ducing a new Boeing or Airbus.’ Tunnelling
through clay turned out to be the easy part.
The proposed £16 billion Crossrail 2,
incidentally, will use just one signalling sys-
tem along its entire length from Surrey to
Hertfordshire. But if affrighted ministers
take it off the drawing board after extended
teething troubles on Crossrail 1, I doubt I’ll
live to travel on it.
May’s greatest folly
As the political season kicks off, a contest
to name Theresa May’s greatest folly would
attract colourful entries. Leaving aside the
general election call, the holding of Trump’s
hand, the Chequers deal and the African
dancing, some would say the most misguided
of all her initiatives has been her consistent
hostility to foreign students — who repre-
sent both a major source of export earnings
and an important channel of UK influence
or ‘soft power’ around the world. University
leaders this week called for a change in visa
rules to allow overseas graduates to work
in the UK for two years — but Mrs May
has been deaf to all such pleas. So here’s a
couple of killer facts: growth in internation-
al student enrolments in the UK grew by
0.7 per cent between 2012 and 2015, com-
pared with an average of 28 per cent for
Australia, Canada and New Zealand; and
the UK has just lost its position as the coun-
try that educated the largest number of serv-
ing world leaders: the US claims 58 graduate
monarchs, presidents and prime ministers to
our 57, with France a fast-rising third at 40.
The moral of this week’s column, if you
like, is that if we can’t do the software and
the soft power, we’re just a nation that digs
holes and makes coffee.
 SIMON ANNAND
Olivia Williams enjoys
another gruesome Victorian
murder mystery, involving a
female corpse in a
Bloomsbury coal cellar
Philip Hensher plays the
Myers-Briggs parlour game,
and finds to his relief that
he’s an ENTP
Travis Elborough reveals
how one faulty map led to
Columbus’s discovery of
America
Tom Slater discovers that
ancient Egyptian builders
were as keen on sexual
commentary as modern-day
ones
James Walton wonders if
the extras in ITV’s Vanity
Fair were given lessons in
screen cackling
Deborah Ross waits and
waits and waits for The
Seagull to deliver
emotionally

Brilliant: Sheila Atim

as Emilia in Othello at
Shakespeare’s Globe
Lloyd Evans — p42
the spectator | 8 september 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk 29
BOOKS & ARTS
A law unto himself
The gambler who created the first stock market crash and became the
richest citizen in Europe was no one’s hero, says Jesse Norman – until now
John Law: A Scottish
Adventurer of the 18th Century
by James Buchan
MacLehose Press, £30, pp. 513
John Law was by any standards a quite
remarkable man. At the apogee of his
power in 1720, he was the richest private
citizen in Europe and controller-general of
finance in France, responsible not merely
for the country’s income and expenditure
but for its commerce, navigation, agricul-
ture and industry.
He created and presided over one of
the earliest and greatest of all stock mar-
ket boom-and-busts, that of the ‘Missis-
sippi Company’, and inspired another, the
South Sea Bubble. And he pioneered ideas
about banking, monetary policy and finan-
cial markets that were revolutionary in
his own time, and retain their importance
three centuries later.
Yet Law was not French, not a noble,
not an intellectual. On the contrary: he
was a Scot, the largely self-educated son
of an Edinburgh goldsmith, and a brilliant
gambler. Oh yes, and a convicted murder-
er, who had escaped from jail days before
his execution, fled Britain and gone on
the run across Europe with his common-
law wife.
The story is no less remarkable than
the man himself. But both have almost
been lost to view. The evidence is scant
and scattered, Law himself something of
an enigma, his era caught in a turn-of-
the-18th-century limbo between the more
familiar territories of the so-called ‘Age
of Revolutions’, Glorious, American and
French. And he is no one’s hero.
Until now, that is. For into this gap steps
the polymathic figure of James Buchan:
writer of fiction, history and reportage,
and author among much else of an excel-
lent life of Adam Smith.
Buchan tells the story and portrays the
man with enormous sweep and brio. He
has clearly done a vast amount of research
among the primary sources, yet somehow
manages to combine the historian’s sense
of the wider picture with the epigrammatic
wit of the novelist, and the antiquarian’s
delight in curios.
Of the now forgotten Banbury Peer-
30
BOOKS
age case, for example, which first came to
the House of Lords in 1661, was renewed
in 1883 and may not quite be settled even
today, he drily remarks that it was ‘a law-
suit beside which Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce…
is an instance of judicial panic’.
This all makes for a heady mixture,
which gives a slightly disjointed feel to
a complex narrative on occasion, espe-
cially in the early chapters. There are few
moments of summary and repose in which
the reader can gather their thoughts and
work out who everyone is, what exactly
is going on and what is at stake. But once
Law has settled in Paris in 1714 — having
absorbed Dutch finance in the Hague and
developed his ideas on banking (and made
a fortune) in Genoa — then the story real-
ly takes off.
Rarely can an entry have been bet-
ter timed, for the death of the Sun King
Louis XIV the following year created tur-
moil in France. Politically, it led to a power
He was not French, not a noble, not an
intellectual, but a self-educated Scot.
Oh yes, and a convicted murderer
vacuum, soon filled by the Duke of Orlé-
ans acting as regent for Louis’s five-year-
old great-grandson Louis XV. It also laid
bare the true extent of France’s deplet-
ed finances. The most powerful nation in
Europe was broke. Decades of warfare
had exhausted the public coffers and run
up huge debts, while the king — and so
the state — was forced to divert income
to support a huge rentier class of office-
holders.
To make matters worse, what taxes
there were fell most heavily on the poor.
Desperate attempts were made to cut costs
by annulling the value of traded debt; the
result was a rapid drop in trade and social
uproar met by vicious repression.
France needed liquid capital, and it need-
ed it fast. Little wonder, then, that Law’s
banking scheme was taken up with enthu-
siasm by the Duke. In 1716 Law founded
the General Bank — soon nationalised
as the Banque Royale — which issued its
own banknotes, paper money redeemable
by coin.
the spectator | 8 september 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk
But this was merely the start. Law
soon turned his attention from finance.
For him, the true purpose of money was
not as a store of value but as a means to
stimulate trade. Without new sources of
revenue, France could never escape the
merry-go-round of debt and devaluation.
Accordingly, in 1717, he set up the Mis-
sissippi Company to build up trade in the
vast new territory of Louisiana. Buoyed
by favourable subscription terms, inves-
tors flocked to buy shares, which rocketed
in value, fuelling a wider mania.
In due course, however, Law found
himself consumed by his own creation:
Company revenues were wildly overesti-
mated and slow to grow, while supporting the
Company’s shares with purchases funded
by the issuance of banknotes broke the
link with coin, leading to a bank run and
a huge devaluation.
Yet this was no simple story of swin-
dling, boom and bust. Unlike its South Sea
counterpart, the Mississippi Company was
a very serious commercial undertaking.
In his brief period as controller-general,
Law sought a radical simplification of the
corrupt, complex and regressive French
tax system.
His General Bank was an important
innovation, which prefigured modern
fractional reserve banking, and many of
Law’s insights into money, political econ-
omy, monetary policy and banking remain
profoundly important today. In effect, he
sought to modernise France; to create what
Adam Smith would later call a ‘commer-
cial society’, and turn its rentiers into inves-
tors at risk. The irony is that his efforts set
back France’s commercial development
and ultimately compounded many of the
problems he sought to solve; problems
that would later set the scene for the
French Revolution.
Law himself was no self-dealing Gor-
don Gekko: if anything, he was naive in
his personal dealings to a degree. When
the bank failed, he and his family were
reduced to near poverty, the kindness of
others and his own flickering prowess at
the gaming table. It is a fascinating, poign-
ant, almost heroic story, and we must
thank James Buchan for giving us this
masterly account of it.
 THE BRIDGEMAN ART LIBRARY

Engraving of John Law in 1720, at the height of his power: adviser to the king of France and controller-general of finance
the spectator | 8 september 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk 31
 The ultimate intelligent read for curious children

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An unusual relationship: Katharine Cook Briggs with her daughter Isabel
The couple who
conned the world
Philip Hensher
What’s Your Type? The Strange
History of Myers-Briggs and the
Birth of Personality Testing
by Merve Emre
William Collins, £20, pp. 307
The other day in the Guardian’s Blind Date
column, two participants, or victims, finished
off an account of their frightful encounter
by dismissing any chance of a future rela-
tionship: ‘I’m sure two ENFPs might wear
each other out.’ The acronym is perhaps not
familiar to everyone, but that, coming from
a couple of young people steeped in human
resources gibberish, would have been the
point. The woman involved was showing off
her Myers-Briggs personality type.
Myers-Briggs is an American analysis
of personality first used in the 1940s, which
gained huge success in the 1950s. It was a
decade in which, as Merve Emre poetically
says, ‘the stench of political paranoia was
accented by cheap gasoline and apple pie’.
The test asks its applicants a number of ques-
tions about their general preferences in life.
‘Do you (a) very much enjoy stopping at
soda fountains; or (b) usually prefer to use
your money for other things?’was one rath-
er culturally specific inquiry. The answers to
the questions allow the analyst to plot the
the spectator | 8 september 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk
subject along one of four axes: Introvert or
Extravert (the irregular spelling indicates
a supposedly technical meaning); Sensing
(using basic information) or Intuition (inter-
preting); Thinking (logic and consistency) or
Feeling (relating to people and particular
circumstances); Judging (making decisions)
or Perceiving (staying open to new options).
The combinations of these eight possibili-
ties create a total of 16 character types into
which, in theory, the whole human race falls.
Of course, by now, it is merely a parlour
game; I just did it and was pleased to dis-
cover that I’m an ENTP. Human civilisation
has, from time to time, entertained itself by
sorting human beings into separate innate
character types. Much of the pleasure of
this seems to come from analysing external
indicators which individuals will be quite
unaware of. Aristotle’s pupil Theophrastus
wrote a set of characters which have been
periodically imitated ever since, letting us
know that a boor will wear a cloak that is too
short, and then sit down in it.
From time to time some means of inter-
preting character from externals will seize
the popular mood. The Swiss writer Kaspar
Lavater in the 18th century sought to cate-
gorise characters by their facial peculiarities,
a belief that you still find here and there. A
character in an Elizabeth Taylor novel states
very firmly that a fold of flesh under the eyes
indicates sensuality; and who among us has
never been tempted to think of a face as
saintly, criminal or miserly? In the 19th cen-
tury, a mania for reading characters from
their handwriting emerged. It’s not that any
of these are exactly wrong, any more than it’s
wrong for a novelist to read character from
home décor or from a choice of clothes. But
they are incomplete in various degrees, and
liable to err in individual cases to a spectacu-
lar extent.
They were a mother and daughter, Kathar-
ine Cook Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers. The
story behind the Briggs-Myers tests proves
an interesting one, and is told with consider-
able relish, vim and some savage comedy by
Emre. Her previous book is Paraliterary: The
Making of Bad Readers in Postwar America,
which puts her on the right side of all sorts of
arguments. Setting out on her research, she
was assured by the university that holds the
Myers papers that permission would never
be granted. ‘The staff is very invested in pro-
tecting Isabel’s image,’ she was warned. Niall
Ferguson only had to undertake a handwrit-
ing analysis before he was allowed to write
the biography of the graphological obses-
sive Siegmund Warburg. Emre had to go on
a $2,000 Myers-Briggs accreditation session.
The experience, I suspect, contributed to the
fizz of the final product.
Katharine Briggs was an intelligent
woman, over-invested in her daughter’s scho-
lastic achievements; Isabel was a very recog-
nisable American type, the over-achiever
who passes every exam with flying colours
and starts spouting total nonsense once there
are no further lecture notes to take. The unu-
sual tone of their relationship is captured by
Katharine writing to her new son-in-law (a
communist) on their wedding day, urging
Even Jung was alarmed when
Katharine abducted a disturbed
teenage girl and started ‘treating’ her
him to make love to Isabel that very evening
‘on the overnight train they would take from
Washington DC to Memphis, Tennessee’.
With Isabel’s education, ‘once the hope of the
world’, now ‘an old, dead project’, Katharine
sank into aimless depression. What turned
up was Carl Jung’s notoriously insane book
Psychological Types, with exactly the alterna-
tive possibilities that were going to underlie
the test.
In the richly entertaining story that fol-
lows, it’s worth remembering that neither
Katharine nor Isabel had the slightest psy-
chiatric training, and hardly any interest in
empirical truth. Even Jung was alarmed
when Katharine abducted a disturbed
15-year-old girl and started ‘treating’ her.
Isabel’s qualifications consisted in hav-
ing written two terrible thrillers, the sec-
ond of which, Give Me Death, is about a
large white American family, members of
which start committing suicide after their
wedding night, having discovered they
have ‘Negro blood’. Katharine started up
a study group with some ladies of the neigh-
33
BOOKS & ARTS
bourhood, cataloguing their dreams on index
cards (‘Phallus’, ‘Eczema’, ‘Nakedness’,
‘Garage’).
Their genius, if that is the word, was to
realise that Jung’s character alternatives
could be successfully sold to American busi-
ness enterprises, to allow them to filter out
unsuitable applicants in the job market. The
Myers-Briggs categories have been a pillar
of half-witted human resources executives’
presentations ever since, who I suppose have
to justify their existence somehow through
the magic of PowerPoint.
Systematic analysis of personality types
is always funny in retrospect. Both Briggs
and Myers emerge as slick saleswomen
for themselves. ‘Although [Isabel]’s career
as a writer of mystery novels had ended
with little fanfare after Give Me Death, she
told Edward N. Hay that one mystery had
continued to preoccupy her: the problem
of the intelligent division of labour.’ The
Myers-Briggs categories continued to run
amok through American society for dec-
Who among us has never been
tempted to think of a face as
saintly, criminal or miserly?
ades. The Home Life Insurance Company
in New York used it both to choose among
job applicants and to calculate whether
a life insurance customer should pay a larg-
er premium on his insurance, since certain
types were supposed to exhibit risk-taking
behaviour.
A small industry rose up explaining how
you could game the questionnaire. Isabel,
convinced that it was impossible to fake a
response, went on to encourage its use to
found the American system of examina-
tion for further education, the SATs. By now,
a whole raft of money-making instruments
of personality assessment tests had risen up:
‘Harrison Gough’s California Psychological
Inventory…Sylvan Tomkin’s Picture Assess-
ment Test…which Tomkins later disavowed
as pure nonsense; and the Guilford-Zim-
merman Temperament Survey.’ Isabel was
hanging round, bossing the drones of the
Educational Testing Service, who habitual-
ly referred to her as ‘that horrible woman’.
By the 1960s, she was living on a self-invent-
ed mixture of mashed-up Hershey bars dis-
solved in milk and brewer’s yeast.
Her test lives on, though it has been dis-
credited by academic research and empiri-
cal analysis. Years ago, Theodor Adorno
argued in The Authoritarian Personality
that the search for unchangeable personal-
ity types was precisely what made Fascism
possible. The idea that we are more what we
are born as than what we attempt, however
incompletely, to turn ourselves into, is one
that any thinking person will reject. This is
a very funny book, and properly angry about
the stupidity of the entire exercise.
34
A meditation on history
Andrew Taylor
Paris Echo
by Sebastian Faulks
Hutchinson, £20, pp. 298
It is a truth universally acknowledged
that a serious novel must be in want of a
theme. Paris Echo soon makes it clear that
it has several. It’s about the shifting nature
of history and the mysterious footprints of
the past in the present. It’s also concerned
with the myriad and biased interpreta-
tions that we place on past events. Another
preoccupation is the ambiguities of spoken
and written French.
Modern Paris, the novel’s main set-
ting, allows Sebastian Faulks to explore
his themes through two main viewpoints.
There’s Tariq, a precociously self-aware
18-year-old Moroccan from a middle-class
family in Tangier, who comes to Paris in
search of himself, his mother’s French fam-
ily and an obliging woman who will help
him lose his virginity. His favourite exple-
tive is ‘frozen fireballs!’
Tariq’s story is soon entwined with that
of Hannah, a glum American academic
studying the lives of the women of Paris in
the second world war. Hannah is weighed
down by her own baggage — ten years ear-
lier, as a young exchange student in Paris,
she had an affair with a caddish Russian
playwright which has left her both wary
and emotionally scarred.
Despite this trauma, Hannah is suffi-
ciently trusting to let the chance-met Tariq
live rent-free in her flat. Tariq finds a job in
a sleazy fast food joint run by two Algeri-
ans (whose different colonial experiences
allow Faulks to examine the bitter human
consequences of France’s withdrawal from
North Africa).
Hannah renews her acquaintance
with Julian, an English academic in Paris.
Everyone except Hannah can see that
Julian fancies her rotten. Her work consists
‘Books about architecture?
Certainly, they’re on the 457th floor.’
the spectator | 8 september 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk
of the leisurely and emotionally fraught
transcription of audio interviews with
women who lived in Paris through the war.
These form self-contained (and perhaps
unreliable) narratives, and are so marvel-
lously effective in themselves that they are
in danger of detracting from the rest of the
novel.
Tariq, meanwhile, learns about the his-
tory of Paris with the help of Metro station
names, Wikipedia and an elderly eccen-
tric named ‘Victor Hugo’, who appears to
have wandered out of the pages of a Tintin
story. After a failed encounter with a Chi-
nese prostitute, Tariq conducts a curious
relationship with ‘Clemence’, probably a
dream figure inspired partly by Hannah’s
stories of wartime women and partly by
smoking some remarkably strong dope.
In this city of echoes, the two protagonists
blunder along different paths, hoping to
find at least a provisional form of happiness.
Each of them is in search of the same thing:
a way of living.
The problem at the heart of this
often brilliant novel is that the clank-
ing machinery of its themes can drown
out the fiction. Fortunately, thanks to
Faulks’s skill as a novelist, the fiction
frequently becomes so immersive that
the din of the machinery recedes. In a
perfect world, though, it would have
been nice to have had less clanking and
more frozen fireballs.
There be dragons
Travis Elborough
Theatre of the World:
The Maps that Made History
by Thomas Reinertsen Berg, translated
from the Norwegian by Alison McCullough
Hodder& Stoughton, £25, pp. 367
Reflecting on the genesis of Treasure Island,
the adventure yarn that grew from a map of
an exotic isle he had drawn to amuse a bored
schoolboy on a rainy day, Robert Louis
Stevenson observed: ‘I am told there
are people who do not care for maps,
and I find that hard to believe.’ It’s fair
to say that Thomas Reinertsen Berg
cares very deeply about them, and his
book, sumptuously produced with lots
of full-colour images, is a kind of potted
treasury of cartographical history that
gleams with pieces-of-eight-like snippets
of information.
With a title that tips its hat to Theatrum
Orbis Terrarum, the first modern atlas pro-
duced by the Flemish cartographer Abra-
ham Ortelius in 1570, Thomas Reinertsen
Berg’s approach is both impressively global
and touchingly parochial, as his native Nor-
way and Scandinavia in general often and
unashamedly take centre stage in the nar-

PICTURE CREDIT ALL CAPS
‘Islandia’: map of Iceland , complete with sea monsters, from the
16th-century Theatrum Orbis Terrarum by Abraham Ortelius
rative. (A note in the foreword explains
that the book has to a certain extent been
de-Norwegianised for the English edition.)
But it is, in a sense, a work of thought-
fulness that could only really come from
someone who hails from a part of the
world that was either off the global map
entirely or the victim of some decidedly
wayward speculations by cartographers.
He notes, for instance, that if the Her-
eford Mappa Mundi, created in about
1300, contains possibly the first con-
vincing representation of a ski trail, cer-
tain areas at the northern extremities
are still shown to be inhabited by ‘people
with dog heads’.
Norway, you come to appreciate, has
in any case been a tricky country to map.
For a start, there’s its basic geography, the
coastline and all those mountains, rivers
and fjords. And then it was a Danish col-
ony for more than 400 years and after that
spent close to a century shackled to Swe-
den. In more recent times, the discovery in
the 1960s of (potentially) oil- and gas-rich
deposits of sedimentary rock off its coast
caused its government to extend the coun-
try’s sovereign boundaries out into the
ocean, claiming precious seabed and sub-
soil in the process. It perhaps says as much
about the particular importance accorded
maps by Norway that the first survey in
a scheme to chart the nation’s economic
activity geographically, initiated in 1964,
was only completed in 2002.
Maps, though, as the author illus-
trates, are always as much about the peo-
the spectator | 8 september 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk
ple and the societies that produce them as
the terrains they depict. This also makes
determining whether or not some of the
earliest examples we have are actual-
ly maps such a thorny issue. He cites the
ongoing disputes over the 9,500-year-old
cave painting excavated at Çatalhöyük
in Turkey in 1967 and described in some
The globe which placed Japan
where Mexico should be encouraged
Columbus to cross the Atlantic
quarters as ‘the oldest town plan in exist-
ence’. Too little is known about the prehis-
toric culture that produced it to definitely
say if it’s a map or merely a nice painting
of the local scenery to brighten up a dull
cave wall.
Like language in Wittgenstein’s view,
use is largely the determining factor with
maps; and necessity, inevitably, the mother
of their invention. Whether to help assign
property rights in Ancient Sumeria and
Babylon, or to work out compensation
payments for flood damage by the Nile in
Egypt, or looking to invade Persia if you
are the Spartans, or running much of the
world if you are the Roman Empire, or
hoping to maintain Christ’s rule on earth
as the established church in the Middle
Ages, some sort of map is necessary, as
Reinertsen Berg diligently outlines.
He also proffers some choice examples
of how those with better maps triumphed
over those with poorer ones. In the 15th
century, secretive Span-
ish and Portuguese impe-
rial navigators, hoarding
information about their
maritime routes like
Incan gold, clung on to
their hand-drawn nau-
tical charts. They were
duly to be out manoeu-
vred by the free-booting
Dutch, who sailed with
the latest and most up-
to-date maps, usually
internationally crowd-
sourced, and expert-
ly printed in Antwerp.
Still, cartographical mis-
takes have also helped
expand our horizons;
it’s likely that Columbus
may never have set off
to the New World if he
had not plotted his voy-
age using a globe by the
German mariner Martin
Behaim. Created in 1492
on principles derived
from Ptolemy’s only
recently rediscovered
Geography, Behaim’s
globe is the oldest sur-
viving example in Europe; it is also flawed,
as he underestimated the size of the earth
and ‘placed Japan around where Mexico is
located’. But this error encouraged Colum-
bus to believe that Asia could ‘easily be
reached by ship from Europe’.
Equally, innovations in mapping were
frequently resisted; Mercator’s famous
projections and his Atlas, we learn, were, if
more accurate, initially flops as they were
too austerely drawn for their times. An
earlier series he published on the Balkans,
Greece and Italy featured just ‘one mon-
ster and two ships across a total of 21 maps.’
It was only posthumously that sales rose,
after Hondius the Elder larded Mercutor’s
Atlas with ‘extravagant, baroque illustra-
tions of people in national costume’ and
‘more ships’.
Inevitably in a book that moves briskly
from prehistoric stone carvings to Goog-
le Earth, there are omissions. Curiously
there is nothing here on transport maps
or the humble A-Z, but then that might
say more about my own geographical
biases. The theatricality in the title also
extends to rendering scenes from the map-
makers’ lives quasi-novelistically in the
present tense (‘With her brush, Anne Ortel
carefully applies light-green paint to an
area of woodland’).
But, all in all, this is an enthralling book,
and joins the likes of Simon Garfield’s On
the Map and Jerry Brotton’s A History
of the World in Twelve Maps in the field
of popular reaffirmations of the
ingenuity of geography.
35
BOOKS & ARTS
A whiff of paranoia
James Bradley
An American Story
by Christopher Priest
Gollancz, £20, pp. 311
In the immediate aftermath of 9/11 many
writers spoke of feeling immobilised. The
scale of the attacks and the world’s shared
experience of the media event seemed to
demand a response; but simultaneously
writers such as Ian McEwan, Martin Amis
and Jay McInerney described a sense that
the tools at their disposal were inadequate
— that the reality of what had taken place
exceeded fictional representation. These
three all recovered from their shock rea-
sonably quickly, contributing to the flood of
9/11 fiction that poured into bookshops dur-
ing the 2000s.
In recent years this torrent of novels
and stories has slowed, but as Christopher
Priest’s eerily powerful An American Story
demonstrates, it most certainly has not
stopped. Set a couple of years in the future,
in a world that may or may not be our own
(electric cars have become standard and an
independent Scotland is part of the EU),
Priest’s novel is narrated by Ben Matson,
a freelance journalist who earns his living
writing for science magazines. As the book
opens, Ben is living in Bute with his partner
Jeanne and their two sons. It’s a happy life,
but that changes when Ben notices a news
item mentioning the death of the Russian
mathematician Kyril Alexeyevich Tatarov.
The announcement of his death, together
with the discovery of the wreckage of what
seems to be an airliner off the east coast of
the United States reopens Ben’s long-stand-
ing obsession with the question of what real-
ly happened to his former lover, Liv, who
was supposedly on board American Airlines
Flight 77 when it crashed into the Pentagon.
Priest unravels Ben’s efforts to discover
the truth about Liv’s disappearance with
the deliberate, almost icy precision that is
his trademark — a precision made the more
uncanny by the gradual unstitching of the
reality it so carefully describes. For as Ben’s
narrative bounces back and forth in time,
far more disturbing possibilities begin to
suggest themselves. Who, for instance, is the
woman with whom he finds himself brief-
ly sharing his company’s flat in London?
Is she simply an employee from another
division as she claims, or is she somebody he
has met before?
And how is it that so many people he
knows have been touched by 9/11? Jeanne’s
lawyer father died in mysterious circum-
stances while working on reparations for
the victims, and her increasingly confused
mother claims to recognise people from that
time. Was Liv really who she said she was, or
was she involved in something more clan-
36
destine? And what is the real agenda of her
ex-husband, Martin Viklund?
These concerns converge in the fig-
ure of Tatarov, whose work has led him to
believe it might be possible to reshape real-
ity by altering our consensual understand-
ing of it. Or, as Tatarov puts it at one point:
‘If people define situations as real, they are
real in their consequences. In other words,
the interpretation of a situation causes the
action.’ These words take on a sinister ring in
an age when our understanding of the world
is almost entirely mediated by technologies
such as social media.
Simultaneously, the novel suggests that
something is seriously amiss in the official
account of what happened on 9/11. Exact-
ly where Priest stands on this question is
not clear: while in the book’s acknowl-
edgements he distances himself from what
he describes as the ‘crackpot conspiracy
stuff’, he admits that ‘some of the material
is undeniably intriguing’. In a world where
the question of what news is real or fake
is increasingly difficult to divine, the whiff
of paranoia this produces lends An Ameri-
can Story a distinctly queasy edge. Yet, in
one of the many ironies contained within
this profoundly odd and unsettling novel,
it also goes some way towards demonstrat-
ing its point about the power of consensus
to shape reality.
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Lines in the sand
Jason Burke
Lords of the Desert: Britain’s
Struggle with America to Dominate
the Middle East
by James Barr
Simon & Schutser, £20, pp. 401
One of the many pleasures offered by Lords
of the Desert, which narrates the rivalry
between Britain and the United States in
the Middle East from the end of the sec-
ond world war through to 1967, is the quo-
tations that are liberally strewn across its
pages. They have been culled from mem-
oirs or official documents unearthed in
British or US archives and testify to the
research that has gone into this dense but
consistently fascinating account.
Some reveal the deep complacency of
influential individuals. Ralph Brewster, an
American senator who undertook a round-
the-world tour in August 1943 to investi-
gate the progress of the war and report to
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, was mis-
trustful of too much knowledge, telling
a colleague:
I don’t think one day is enough to really give
you the hang of a country. And if you spend
much more than a day or two there, you’re
likely to become a prejudiced native… But
two days is just about right to make you a
real expert.
Others are beautiful examples of
the ancient art of the diplomatic put-
down. A British official stationed in Teh-
ran described Mohammed Mossadeq
— the Iranian prime minister committed to
reclaiming his country’s oil revenues, oust-
ed in 1953 in an operation executed jointly
by British and US intelligence services —
as ‘a sort of Iranian Mahatma Gandhi, but
less rational’.
Several illustrate perfectly the mind-
set of British decision-makers. Naturally,
this evolved over the lengthy period that
the book covers. But from the end of the
second world war, through the final years
of the British mandate in Palestine and
the establishment of the state of Israel, the
coming to power of Nasser in Egypt, the
Suez crisis, and on to Britain’s retreat from
the region at the end of the 1960s, one ele-
ment is constant: a failure to comprehend
quite how far and how fast the balance of
power had shifted away from Britain.
When, in 1958, President Eisenhower
deployed marines to Lebanon against the
express wishes of London, Rab Butler,
then home secretary, described the deci-
sion as ‘quite a blow to our prestige’. The
year had already seen the collapse of the
Hashemite regime in Iraq, the last British
ally in the northern Middle East. Pales-
tine, Egypt and Jordan had already been
lost. Understatement can mask delusion,

MARY EVANS PICTURE LIBRARY

it seems.
The US officials described by Barr were
motivated by a mixture of commercial real-
ism, prejudice, fear of communism, igno-
rance and over-confidence. They do at least
appear more competent than their British
counterparts, whose shambling amateur-
ism and self-importance repeatedly pro-
voked Washington’s contempt and anger.
The American opposition to British impe-
rialism was not simply the reflex of a for-
mer colony or the competitive instincts of a
rising power; it was also fuelled by frustra-
tion at what was perceived to be systematic
maladministration. Americans who visited
Egypt when it was still run by the British
were revolted by the poverty in Cairo. They
blamed the small number of senior admin-
istrators sent from the UK to run the cha-
otic but strategically crucial country, and
mendacious policy-makers in London. This
may not have been unjustified. Speaking of
the soon to be independent Kuwait in 1961,
Harold Macmillan admitted to his cabinet
secretary that ‘what we are doing is getting
the oil out of these territories for as long
as the inhabitants remain fairly primitive’.
Beyond that, the prime minister admitted,
there wasn’t really a plan.
There is much else of value in this
book: accounts of the secret machina-
tions of spooks; pen-portraits of a series
of fascinating characters both famous and
obscure, and reminders of how many of the
dilemmas facing decision-makers today
also faced their predecessors. To send
troops to Lebanon to prop up a distaste-
ful ally and prevent civil war in 1958 might
provoke a ‘wave of anti-western feeling in
the Arab world’, the CIA director Allen
Dulles warned. But to do nothing would
show that the US was not willing to stand
by her allies — a failure Moscow would
certainly exploit. The central image is of the middle-aged Matilda Hacker and her sister Amelia, strolling on the
A decade later, a British foreign secre- seafront in Kent. Dressed identically in flounced skirts, lace shawls and gaudy sashes, they were
tary made a reluctant journey to Washing- referred to as ‘the Canterbury belles’. Cover of The Illustrated Police News, 7 June 1879
ton to explain shamefacedly why a phased
withdrawal from the Gulf had to be accel-
erated. Somewhat ironically, given their
efforts to reduce British influence (and
profits) in the region over previous dec- in Bloomsbury and, just as they are spruc-
ades, the Americans, mired in Vietnam,
Something nasty ing it up to welcome their latest in May 1879,
were ‘profoundly dismayed’ by their cash- in the coal cellar a mystery corpse is uncovered in their coal
strapped ally’s weakness. Barr gives us the cellar.
reported reaction of Dean Rusk, the US Olivia Williams It would not spoil anything to say that
secretary of state: ‘For God’s sake, act like the Bastendorffs turn out to be a pret-
Britain.’ The Lady in the Cellar: Murder, ty kooky bunch, headed up by Severin,
But that Britain was long gone. Quite Scandal and Insanity in Victorian the paterfamilias who started life in rural
what it left behind is still being debated. Sir Bloomsbury Luxembourg. Thanks to Severin’s her-
Richard Turnbull, the UK’s penultimate by Sinclair McKay itage, we skip past the well-worn Dis-
high commissioner in Aden, told a visiting Picador, £14.99, pp. 256 ney Victoriana of gas lamps and sooty
Denis Healey in 1965: urchins and into the more unusual terri-
Literary non-fiction demands that a respect- tory of London’s burgeoning Germanic
When the British Empire sank beneath the
waves of history… it would leave behind only
able household is not really a respecta- subculture. Our ingenious detective hero,
two monuments: one was the game of Asso- ble household — and the Bastendorffs of despatched to investigate the crime, is
ciation Football, the other was the expression 4 Euston Square fully oblige. The family Inspector Charles Hagen, also of Ger-
‘Fuck off’. take in lodgers at their elegant townhouse man descent, who uses the victim’s gold
the spectator | 8 september 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk 37
BOOKS & ARTS
watch and a missed dental appointment to
great effect.
However, the scene-stealer — no mean
feat for someone who is dead — is Matil-
da Hacker, the eponymous lady in the cel-
lar. Sinclair McKay artfully pieces together
the life of the rambunctious spirit who
used to inhabit the grisly remains. Wealthy
and eccentric, with no need of work,
sixtysomething Hacker was a keen boule-
vardière. She took to striding long distances
every day in ‘costumes of extraordinary pat-
tern and grotesque style’, her skirt hitched
up to show her high-heeled boots and silk
stockings, and her dyed auburn hair in ring-
lets ‘like a girl of 18’.
Hacker gets into umpteen scrapes with
the police and pops up around London
under the guises of a Miss Sycamore, a Miss
Bell and a Miss Uish. We are her compan-
Our ingenious detective hero uses
the victim’s gold watch and a missed
dental appointment to great effect
ions around the upmarket spare rooms of
Bloomsbury, Chelsea and Marylebone as she
moves on with her strong box full of jewels,
trunk of satin dresses and copy of Napole-
on’s Oraculum. She liked to use this ancient
mystic text, discovered by Napoleon’s forces
in Egypt, to make celestial prognostications
of an evening. With her supply of ginger bis-
cuits, her congenial company and Tarot card
readings, she beguiled her fellow lodgers
and her landladies — until she made her ill-
fated move to Euston Square.
Another magnetic character is the
Bastendorffs’ disgraced maid Hannah
Dobbs, who has arrived from Devon and,
like Hacker, is hoping to reinvent herself
after a tumultuous personal life and run-
ins with the law. After the trial she sells
the ‘real story’ of Hacker’s murder and
of her life as the Bastendorffs’ maid to
a news agency.
With the gusto of a penny dreadful,
The Lady in the Cellar dodges any stodgy
courtroom testimony that can weigh down
true crime stories and sticks to the juicy
details. It is hard to avoid the comparison
with Kate Summerscale’s The Suspicions
of Mr Whicher and it has similar histori-
cal richness and plot twisting. However, the
Netflix box set-style cliffhangers at the end
of so many chapters become a little con-
trived, as does the liberal seasoning of rhe-
torical questions. In one particularly dense
concentration, I found myself exasper-
ated and thinking, ‘you’re the author, you
tell me’.
As a compelling crowd-pleaser that
requires minimal factual recall ability,
a television producer is bound to read
this and wonder whether old Cumber-
batch could be coaxed into playing anoth-
er Victorian sleuth. Its drama potential is
38
not meant disparagingly. What could have
been a tweedy tick-box Miss Marple mur-
der mystery grows into something more
curious and considerably more complex,
without losing sight of its duty to keep
moving and to entertain. Read it now, or
catch it in that Sunday night drama slot.
Pondering the flowers
Duncan Fallowell
Orphic Paris
by Henri Cole
NYRB, £10.99, pp. 176
This new book, from the NYRB’s publish-
ing arm, is in a non-fiction genre I love: short
entries dedicated to an integrating purpose;
approaching a subject via concentrated, sep-
arated stabs rather than extended unfolding
text. In philosophy this is called the aphoris-
tic technique. In wider literature, it can range
from the concise notebook to prose poetry.
It is a genre whose masterpiece in English
is Cyril Connolly’s The Unquiet Grave, but it
is more often found in continental literature;
and the French especially have made it their
own, where its progenitor is usually said to
be Baudelaire’s Le Spleen de Paris, described
as prose poems and published in 1869 after
the author’s death. Baudelaire, however, is
preceded by Gérard de Nerval, whose urban
observations, collected in Les Nuits d’octobre
(1852), are perhaps even more luminous.
It is a form which no American has pulled
off. Americans have been much more effec-
tive at the diary: The Paris Diary of Ned
Rorem is an enormous pleasure. Or report-
age: Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast, for
example, also published posthumously.
The caveat here would be that Heming-
way in his notes reminds posterity that the
contents are fiction — by which he means
that his reportage has taken considerable
liberties with actualité.
When Americans do attempt the genre,
the result has been a peculiar mixture of the
portentous and the trite — as in the works
of Charles Simic, for example. And here is
Henri Cole on blue hydrangeas:
This week, pondering the flowers — with
their complex shadings of blue — in all the
flower shops of Paris, I was reminded of how
‘Oh dear, I appear to have strayed
into a rough neighbourhood.’
the spectator | 8 september 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk
short life is but also of how tough and durable
humans are.
Not good enough. The form demands greater
penetration and originality.
Its appeal lies in its possibilities for exper-
imentation and surface variety. Max Jacob’s
astonishing Le Cornet à dés (1923) was the
great leap forward here. Cyril Connolly made
considerable use of quotations. The prewar
surrealists introduced photographs, blotch-
ily printed within the text, something lately
repopularised by W.G. Sebald. Cole avails
himself of both quotations and blotchy
photographs. The thing about quotations
is you must make sure your own contribu-
tions are not upstaged by them — Cole’s
problem. As for photographs, don’t use
them as padding. So despite appearanc-
es, this is a difficult form. Its apparent
generosity is a trap. It’s not a matter of any-
thing will do.
In the case of Orphic Paris, I was dis-
couraged early. On page 13, Cole writes:
‘When I am in a foreign country, I am most
at home near the shelf of books in Eng-
lish.’ He is telling us that he is not a travel-
ler, not an adventurer. But he also tells us
he is a poet; indeed, it is his main thing, to
tell us he is a poet. So — a poet who dislikes
adventure?
Also grating are his frequent lapses into
‘info’ in a work which should exist beyond
that: ‘Montagne Sainte-Geneviève, a hill on
the Left Bank of the Seine in the fifth arron-
dissement’; ‘I crossed the Seine into Les
Halles (once the central market, or “belly”
of Paris)’; ‘the taciturn English author
Graham Greene’; ‘Pindar, the ancient Greek
lyric poet from Thebes’. It’s as though he’s
addressing a public meeting, not writing inti-
mate reflections. The last is the exact opening
of Pindar’s Wikipedia entry.
One becomes increasingly aware that the
book has no centripetal force. Nor centrifu-
gal force. I was trying to establish its ration-
ale, something which would enable me to
engage with it more positively (I prefer not
to write negative reviews). Could it be Da-
Da-ist? But there’s nothing comedic or
absurd here. Or random? Warmer. Ran-
domist? No, no, that would imply ‘anar-
chist’, and Cole is not a violent man. In his
frisson-free pages we are aware of a gentle
soul on the mooch-about: listlessness search-
ing for life.
When I came to the acknowledgements, it
all fell into place: ‘The essays that comprise
Orphic Paris originally appeared in the New
Yorker’s Page-Turner.’ In other words, these
are magazine fillers. Nothing wrong with that
in itself. Those Baudelaire and Nerval books
began as filler journalism too. But they
didn’t stay that way. As for calling his entries
‘essays’, that’s naughty; and finding Harold
Bloom comparing the book to Valéry — and
others wildly over-puffing — produces a
curious sinking of the spirits.

Man’s true best friend
John Jolliffe
Till the Cows Come Home:
The Story of Our Eternal
Dependence
by Philip Walling
Atlantic, £14.99, pp.373
This unusual book begins with an account
of the author’s ten-year love affair with
dairy farming and an attempt ‘to give a fla-
vour of what our cattle do for us’. It then
turns into a survey of the various British
breeds of cattle.
After poor A-levels, Philip Walling
took odd jobs in his native Cumbria, such
as building dry-stone walls, until he man-
aged to acquire a small farm of his own.
With great determination, he ran this
single-handed, keeping both beef and dairy
animals and raising poultry and a couple
of pigs. They were, in retrospect at least, ‘ten
years of almost undimmed joy’. But aged
30, discouraged by the daily grind, which
included a milk round, and feeling he
had missed out on a proper education,
he gave it all up.
The story of cows is one of the oldest
in the world. Even before the flood, Jabal,
the son of Lamech, was ‘the father of such
as have cattle’, and later, when Abraham
went into Egypt to escape famine, he
became ‘very rich in cattle’, with herds-
men to look after them. Skipping the cen-
turies down to recent times, in 1946 there
were 200,000 individual dairy farmers in
Britain selling through the Milk Market-
ing Board, but by 2016 these had dwin-
dled to 9,500; and although the number of
cows nationwide had fallen from 2.5 mil-
lion to 1.5 million in 2016, milk produc-
tion increased by a third.
Walling quotes many other statistics,
which are sometimes heavy-going for
non-farmers, but he adds lively details
from his own hard-won experience of the
general friendliness of the farming com-
munity (though there are exceptions, and
stories of sharp practice).
He refers to most of the principal
breeds; Shorthorns, ‘the Black and White
Revolution’, Herefords, Red Devons, the
Channel Island breeds and the black cat-
tle of Scotland, Aberdeen Angus and Gal-
loways. What these British breeds have
given to the world is incalculable. The
Black Angus is the most popular beef
breed in America; and in Australia they
make up a third of the bulls sold at breed-
ing sales. They are also found in South
Africa, Brazil, Scandinavia, Spain and
Germany. Scotland, it seems, prepares you
for anywhere.
Dairy farming in England also has
a long history. The Earls of Berkeley had
a substantial dairy in the 12th century,
the spectator | 8 september 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk
Pippin Star, a heifer from the
Wampler herd in Virginia
and today cheese and yoghurt are made
under the arches outside London Bridge
station and sold in the adjoining Borough
Market.
The reader is given many details of how
regional breeds affected farming, with ups
and downs along the way, and we learn fas-
The Texas Longhorn’s horn-span can
reach nine feet, but it is amazingly deft
at negotiating small entrances and exits
cinating stories of the achievements of great
breeders such as Robert Blackwell (1725–
96) and Thomas Coke. The latter, as well as
his many agricultural improvements, was
responsible for introducing Red Devons
to Norfolk.
Away from the analysis of cow life in
Britain there is a digression on the appall-
ing slaughter of millions of buffaloes in
the American midwest, and another on
the intensive breeding of Texas Long-
horns, whose horn-span can reach nine
feet, but which are amazingly deft at nego-
tiating small entrances and exits. Walling
also covers the monstrosity of a recent
rewilding scheme in Holland, which ruth-
lessly insisted on leaving nature alone.
In a large enclosed area, no cultivation
at all took place, creating a futile famine:
a large number of cattle died of starvation
as a result.
The many excellent colour photo-
graphs add greatly to the story, and there
is a useful glossary for the uninitiated.
The contributions of cows to our lives are
endless: veal, beef, milk, butter, cheese.
yoghurt, leather, horn, and not least the
manure which enriches the pastures on
which they depend. What other creature
gives us so much?
All shook up
Brian Martin
Aftershocks
by A.N. Wilson
Atlantic, £16.99, pp. 275
The polymath writer A.N.Wilson returns
to the novel in Aftershocks, working on
the template of the 2011 earthquake which
devastated Christchurch, New Zealand. He
protests that the setting is not New Zea-
land but, as he admits, there are many rec-
ognisable similarities.
This is a novel about true love, its ago-
nies, ecstasies, and eventual fulfillment,
told in the voice of a young woman, Ingrid
Ashe. She is the daughter of the female
local radio broadcaster, Cavan Cliffe; and
the mother/daughter relationship is almost
unhealthily close. Ingrid’s is a lesbian love
story in which her passion cannot devel-
op until the earthquake upsets the struc-
ture of the city, destroys the cathedral and
causes an all-round upheaval in personal
relationships. The double life, as priest and
classical scholar, of the cathedral’s Dean
Eleanor, an English expat whose marriage
has failed, is destroyed. Her infatuated
admirer, Ingrid, is then free to pursue an
obsessive relationship with her.
Wilson is witty, erudite and artful. Early
on, Ingrid refers to ‘a gossipy person like
me’, yet later she says: ‘Like I say, I’m not
the gossipy type.’ Ingrid’s storytelling is
enigmatic and tricky. She denies ‘that this
narrative has been arranged to trick you,
like Nabokov’s Pale Fire’, but also admits:
‘You’ll probably think I’m just construct-
ing a silly narrative for the hell of it.’
There is a trick; but it’s ingenious rather
than silly.
Wilson possesses a wide intellectual
range, expanding on church history, clas-
sical tragedians and the Anglican tradi-
tion of English poets, and Ingrid displays
a wealth of learning. Yet in her more col-
loquial register, she gives a commentary
on the way we live now; as when a teenage
girl becomes wracked with anorexia and
guilt after her parents separate. In the end,
Aftershocks stands above all as Ingrid’s
confessional paean to lesbian love, both
moving and intense.
39
BOOKS & ARTS
Ian Hislop’s potted history of dissent at the British Museum shows that the impulse
to do a two-finger salute is universal, says Tom Slater
‘I
f liberty means anything at all it means
the right to tell people what they do
not want to hear,’ wrote George
Orwell in his preface to Animal Farm.
It is a line that has gone down as one of
the great capsule defences of dissent, made
all the more prescient by the fact that the
preface, an attack on the self-censorship of
the British media during the second world
war, wasn’t published until the 1970s.
But the lines that follow it are too often
overlooked. ‘The common people still
vaguely subscribe to that doctrine and act
on it,’ Orwell goes on, ‘it is the liberals who
fear liberty and the intellectuals who want
to do dirt on the intellect’.
When we think of dissent today, we think
of the intellectuals, the liberals, the learned
revolutionaries, the cultivated minds willing
to ‘speak truth to power’ against state tyr-
anny or the tyranny of the mob. We think,
most often, of those who attacked the estab-
lishment from within it.
To its credit, I object, a new exhibition
at the British Museum, co-curated and
fronted by Private Eye editor and satirist
Ian Hislop (a man as much of the establish-
ment as a thorn in its side), reminds us that
the irreverent, rebellious instinct was never
limited to those of good education and sup-
posedly superior breeding. The history of
dissent is as much about the rabble as the
rabble-rouser.
In a similar fashion to former British
Museum director Neil MacGregor’s much-
celebrated 2010 book and Radio 4 series
A History of the World in 100 Objects, His-
lop tells his global potted history of dissent
through a series of objects and artworks —
large and small, familiar and unfamiliar —
gleaned from the museum’s enviable archive.
The first piece that catches the eye is
40
ARTS
Object lesson
not a flame-licked copy of some revolu-
tionary tract, but a 6th-century BC Babylo-
nian brick stamped with the name of King
Nebuchadnezzar — an attempt to remind
people of his greatness long after he, and
his buildings, were gone. But look closer
and you see another name, ‘Zabina’, carved
above Nebuchadnezzar’s in Aramaic. It was
the name, historians believe, of a bricklay-
er, keen to make his own mark on histo-
ry; a cocky workman insisting he, too, was
deserving of posterity.
As Hislop notes in the final instalment
of the exhibition’s accompanying Radio 4
series, we have a tendency today to think of
ordinary people of ancient eras as reduced
The irreverent, rebellious instinct
was never limited to those of
good education
to drone-like obedience by autocratic ter-
ror. But gazing on many of the objects here
makes clear that the impulse to do a two-fin-
ger salute, even if it is as the tyrant’s back is
turned, is more universal and transhistorical
than we might usually think.
As is the human delight in smut. Close
by Zabina’s brick is a shard of ancient
Egyptian stone, cast aside by the men work-
ing on the tombs in the Valley of the Kings.
On it, another cheeky craftsman has drawn
two people going at it Anubis-style, and
inscribed the words ‘A satisfied foreskin
means a happy person’ in hieroglyphs. ‘It
seems builders on construction sites have
always been keen on sexual commentary,’
writes Hislop, in one of many speech bub-
bles scattered across the exhibits.
Later, as the exhibition explores the
great, scurrilous caricaturists of 18th- and
19th-century Britain, we see how crucial
the spectator | 8 september 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk
low humour has been to dissent, and how
it was as relished by our most fêted sati-
rists as it was by the builders of antiquity.
James Gillray’s 1792 print ‘A Voluptuary
under the horrors of Digestion’ caricatures
the future King George IV, then the Prince
of Wales, as fat, tightfisted and stricken by
piles. He picks his teeth with a fork, and
behind him is an overflowing chamberpot
pinning down various unpaid bills.
Scatalogical humour brought royalty low,
insisting they were no better than the rest
of us, and quite often far worse. Caricatur-
ists of the age were a particular thorn in
an HRH’s side: unlike pamphleteers, who
traded in sincerity and bombast, they were
much harder to prosecute, their seditious
and treasonous messages were buried in
irony, nods and winks. George Cruikshank
was eventually bribed £100 by George
IV ‘not to caricature His Majesty in any
immoral situation’.
The potency of such satire lay in its —
often graphically illustrated — lack of defer-
ence to authority. There was immense power
in simply blowing raspberries at tyrants, or
depicting their bodily fluids. It was liberating
and dissident in itself.
Yet satire has also helped to push
for real reform. One of the most striking
works here is a beautifully intricate bank-
note, drawn by Cruikshank in 1819, depict-
ing a row of people hung by the neck. It is
‘signed’ not by the governor of the Bank of
England, but by Jack Ketch, a notoriously
incompetent executioner. Forgery was an
offence punishable by death at the time,
and the bank’s roll-out of hastily made £1
and £2 notes led to a wave of forgeries met
by a vicious clampdown. Many were strung
up simply for handling the fakes.
The satirical note hit a nerve, and the law

© THE TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM
was soon changed. Cruikshank — somewhat
immodestly — took full credit.
Dissent-by-currency is a recurring theme
here. In 1968, one anonymous engraver hid
the words ‘SCUM’ and ‘SEX’ in the illus-
trations surrounding the portrait of Queen
Elizabeth on the Seychelles’ — then still
a British colony — new 10- and 50-rupee
banknotes. Elsewhere, a £20 note, defaced by
the artist David Blackmore in 2016, declares:
‘Stay in the EU.’ But it’s a protest that feels
far less anti-establishment given that it sits
next to a €5 note daubed with the figure of
the Grim Reaper by the Greek artist ‘Stefa-
the spectator | 8 september 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk
nos’ in 2014, at the height of the EU’s eco-
nomic battering of Greece.
Indeed as the exhibition looks to objects
from the past few years — the pink-cat ‘pussy
Cruikshank was bribed £100 by
George IV ‘not to caricature His
Majesty in any immoral situation’
hats’ from the anti-Trump women’s marches,
or pro-EU badges — a certain paradox arises.
When is dissent no longer dissent? How can
a pro-EU protest be anti-establishment, given
the EU is beloved by the establishment?
‘A Voluptuary
under the
horrors of
Digestion’,
1792, by James
Gillray
How can the anti-Trump movement call itself
the Resistance, when its figureheads range
from former FBI director James Comey to
Hillary Clinton? Have the politics of dissent
been co-opted by the establishment? Hislop
leaves these questions dangling.
I object is fascinating, nevertheless, and
reminds us that the history of dissent does not
belong to the intellectuals. The little people
object, too. And as the past two years remind
us, they don’t always object so quietly.
I object: Ian Hislop’s search for dissent is at
the British Museum until 20 January 2019.
41
 BOOKS & ARTS
SIMON ANNAND
Star quality: Mark Rylance as Iago at Shakespeare’s Globe
Theatre
Less is Moor
Lloyd Evans
Othello
Shakespeare’s Globe, until 13 October
Pericles
Olivier Theatre
It’s intelligent, enjoyable, beautiful to look at
and funny in unexpected places, yet Othello
at the Globe didn’t quite meet my sky-high
expectations. The star should be the Moor
but André Holland, from Alabama, can’t
rival the magnetism of Mark Rylance (Iago).
Holland’s diction is a strain for British ears.
We’re used to hearing consonants bashed
out — rata-tat-tat — like a rifle range, but
42
his looser southern accent made some of
his lines indistinct. Stately Jessica Warbeck
lacks Desdemona’s impulsive streak and
she plays her as a mature and self-possessed
recipient of several Businesswoman of the
Year awards. It was strange to see this matri-
archal figure meekly assenting to Othello’s
The star should be the Moor but
André Holland, from Alabama, can’t
rival the magnetism of Mark Rylance
announcement, in Act V, that he was about
to strangle her on the basis of fake news. I
wanted Desdemona to punch him. I expect
Warbeck wanted to as well.
The director Claire van Kampen, wife
of Mark Rylance, has explored all kinds of
minor details and come up with new solu-
tions. In the opening scene, it’s clear from
Iago’s body language that he’s concealing
the spectator | 8 september 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk
himself from Brabantio. When Roderigo
arrives in Cyprus, he emerges from a trunk
that stinks after the long voyage. Iago’s cos-
tume is an enjoyable confection of hints and
clues. The grenadier’s cap and the tooth-
brush moustache suggest ‘the Austrian cor-
poral’. The trousers are cut too high at the
waist and too short at the ankle — a nod to
vaudeville, perhaps.
Physically, Rylance presents Iago as a
hyperactive ringmaster, scampering around
the stage, stooping like Groucho, fine-tun-
ing his plan and keeping its tattered details
in order. What the performance lacks is any
sense of Iago’s inner life or psychology. He
deploys none of the charm, merriment or
cordiality that an actor can use to human-
ise Iago and to make his deceitfulness plau-
sible. Rylance plays him cold, as a capering
automaton, a nerveless unit of evil pro-
grammed to pursue its destiny. Perhaps he
was so disenchanted with the character that
he decided not to give him a human pulse.
He’s well matched by Emilia (brilliant
Sheila Atim) who, like Desdemona, is fully
aware of her forcefulness and intelligence.
Her astonishing saffron robe woven from
rectilinear panels of swaying gold deserves
to be exhibited in a museum. Some of the
casting choices work against the play. Cas-
sio should be a weak, handsome yuppie
but he’s played by a wardrobe-sized body-
builder, Aaron Pierre, who doesn’t look
like the kind of excitable twerp who loses
his cool after two glasses of Valpolicella.
And because Pierre is black his presence
destroys one of the play’s essential themes:
Othello’s racial isolation in a white-dom-
inated world. Other decisions are simply
eccentric. Catherine Bailey plays Bianca
(a prostitute), and the Doge of Venice.
Having a female Doge ruins the moment
when Othello strikes Desdemona in front
of his peers. The blow is far more shocking
if Desdemona is the sole female at an all-
male gathering. That’s how Shakespeare
conceived the scene and this interpreta-
tion, less powerful, cheats the viewer of its
full and peculiar horror.
Pericles, Prince of Tyre, is a much-
shunned classic. Having seen it once, in
1984, I might claim to be a world authority.
The story follows a wandering prince who
loses his family during a shipwreck and
eventually finds happiness in a surprise end-
ing that’s no surprise at all (reunion with his
missing daughter).
Director Emily Lim convinced the
National to give her the Olivier for a pag-
eant involving 233 actors, musicians and
members of community groups. Chris Bush
adapted the script, which remains faithful
to the original while allowing space for a
few modern flourishes. Useful idiot boards
at the side of the stage help viewers to keep
abreast of the occasionally garbled line.
The atmosphere on-stage is informal and
welcoming, more village hall than Shaftes-
bury Avenue, and the show has so many dis-
tractions that the distractions become the
show. There are gymnastics displays, Indian
drummers, gospel singers, a ska band, the
London Bulgarian choir, a hip-hop expert
doing Michael Jackson routines, and a kid-
die group of kazoo players who seem barely
old enough for primary school.
How about the budget? Enough, I’d
guess, to fund a moon shot or a new mater-
nity suite but this represents great value
because the National has stumbled on an
Rarely have I seen the Bard
received with such natural and
unforced pleasure
undiscovered genre: a blend of Shakespeare,
music hall and the all-comers talent show.
Rarely have I seen the Bard received with
such natural and unforced pleasure. And
the youngsters who witnessed this will —
thank God — forever view Shakespeare as
an amusement, not a punishment.
Two minor quibbles. At nearly two hours,
the show needs an interval. And more use
might be made of the star, Kevin Harvey
(Boult), whose amused hauteur and purr-
ing voice evoke the shade of Noël Coward.
Let’s hope this nutty but brilliant experi-
ment becomes a permanent fixture in the
NT’s calendar.
Off the Radar
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William Packer
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the spectator | 8 september 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk
Music
The Bruckner effect
Richard Bratby
Prom 61: Rotterdam Philharmonic/
Bronfman/Nézet-Séguin
Royal Albert Hall
Prom 66: Berlin Philharmonic/
Wang/Petrenko
Royal Albert Hall
The lady behind me on Kensington Gore
clearly felt that she owed her friend an apolo-
gy: ‘It’s Bruckner. I don’t know how that hap-
pened.’ I felt for her. ‘It’s Nézet-Séguin and
the Rotterdam Phil,’ I’d told a succession of
my own musical friends. They’d seemed inter-
ested. Since the youngish Canadian conduc-
tor Yannick Nézet-Séguin took over at the
New York Metropolitan Opera, he’s vault-
ed on to the A-list, and while the Rotterdam
Philharmonic isn’t a super-orchestra, exactly,
people do dimly recall that it was conduct-
ed by Valery Gergiev, back when that was
still something to boast about. So, the inevi-
table question: what are they playing? And
with one word — Bruckner — the shutters
slammed down. I was going to this one alone.
It’s genuinely odd, the effect Bruckner
Jean Cooke (1927-2008), Springtime through the Window, circa 1980, oil on canvas, 28 ½ x 23 ¼ inches
has on some music-lovers — even hard-
core Germanophiles who collect Gurrelied-
ers like they’re Pokémon cards, and argue in
all seriousness that no, you really can’t have
too much Mahler. You either feel that Bruck-
ner wrote the profoundest symphonies since
Beethoven, or that it’s all just blunt inarticu-
late noise and unbearably long, to boot. Any
middle ground is vanishingly rare. It’s as if
Bruckner generates a sort of cognitive disso-
nance: that a symphonist can simultaneously
be as tender as Schubert and as oceanic as
Wagner. Does not compute. And yet there
are pieces by Bruckner — the Seventh Sym-
phony, the String Quintet — that flood the
heart with their very first notes.
The Fourth (Romantic) Symphony is
almost an entry-level example. Out of silence,
shimmering violins open up limitless vistas:
a solo horn calls yearningly in the distance. ‘At
no time ought it to have been possible not to
recognise that the opening of the Romantic
Symphony is a thing of extraordinary beauty
and depth,’ wrote Donald Tovey back in the
1930s, to which I can only respond: yes, a hun-
dred times yes. So perhaps Nézet-Séguin and
his team will have made some converts. Cer-
tainly, the Royal Albert Hall appeared full,
and it’s unlikely that anyone will have made
the trip for the sake of Liszt’s creaky Second
Piano Concerto, even with the pearlescent
sound of Yefim Bronfman as soloist.
43
BOOKS & ARTS

No, this was about the Bruckner, and

Nézet-Séguin clearly grasps one essential
truth: that Bruckner’s real power lies in his
gentleness. It’s easy enough to let the brass
blaze in one of his massive, cliff-face tuttis,
though I suspect that’s precisely why some
listeners perceive Bruckner as cold or bom-
bastic. Nézet-Séguin must have realised that
it wouldn’t suit the narrow-bore, pewter-
like tone of his Dutch trombones and trum-
pets either. Instead, he let the big climaxes
rise gradually out of a rolling landscape: the
result was that they sounded more than ever
like congregational hymns.
No one could call this a virtuosic perfor-
mance, but the Rotterdam strings breathed
and phrased together, and their scuffed, lived-
in ensemble sound had an autumnal warmth.
They built a space for quiet confidences —
bass pizzicatos as soft as heartbeats, and ques-
tioning, meltingly sweet woodwind solos that
created that peculiar Bruckner sensation of
intimacy amid a vast solitude. This wasn’t a
roof-raising Romantic Symphony, but it was
a very human one. Sufficient to convince the
Brucknersceptics? ‘Just. Don’t. Get. It,’ wrote
one listener on Twitter afterwards. I don’t
know what I expected.
The Berlin Philharmonic, of course, deliv-
ered exactly what was expected, on one level
at least: a luxurious, all-enveloping depth
and breadth of tone that demonstrated, with
the first glowing string chords of Dukas’s La
Péri, that even under their inscrutable chief
conductor designate Kirill Petrenko they’re
still the classiest act in the business. Simon
Rattle’s legacy to the BPO — transparen-
cy coupled with needlepoint precision — is
still very audible, and Petrenko and his play- Sharp practice: Olivia Cooke and Claudia Jessie in Vanity Fair
ers matched Yuja Wang phrase for neon-lit
phrase in Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto.
Wang’s forearms hammered like pistons; with
swipes of the right hand she sent top notes
flashing off into the roof of the Albert Hall.
Petrenko finished with the Fourth Sym- a male colleague pleasuring himself — pre-
phony by the cult Austrian composer Franz
Television sumably rather nostalgically — over the lin-
Schmidt, who played in the Vienna Court Let’s talk about sex gerie section of a mail-order catalogue.
Opera orchestra under Mahler and whose Both masturbators, though, had the same
memoirs of that experience detail how utterly James Walton reason for their actions: they weren’t having
horrible it was. Opening with a desolate trum- sex with their spouses any more. And from
pet solo and spun from recognisably Viennese This week was bad news for fans of good there it was soon apparent that Wanderlust’s
material — slow marches, unravelled waltzes, television drama series — mainly because central theme would be the death of sexual
curly little scraps of Wagner — the symphony’s there’s now three more of the things to keep desire in marriage.
melancholia slowly wells up and overflows up with if you don’t want to feel left out of Joy and husband Alan, for example,
into a series of progressively more anguished office conversations. are faced with the realisation that while
collapses. Petrenko met those moments with a The one that stirred up the most advance they’re still in love and want to want to
torrential, wrenching intensity of sound. media excitement was Wanderlust (BBC1, have sex with each other, they don’t actu-
Mostly, though, he reinforced the impres- Tuesday), on the traditional grounds that ally want to have sex with each other. Not
sion he gave with his Bavarian orchestra in it promised to be unusually explicit about that they don’t try. In one particularly —
London earlier this year: of a conductor on sex. And in that, it certainly didn’t disap- and brilliantly — excruciating scene, Joy
an inward journey, making chamber music point. The first episode began with a flurry (Toni Collette) welcomed Alan (Steven
on a heroic scale. For now, that’s compel- of masturbation (not a phrase I can remem- Mackintosh) home from work wearing her
ling enough, and Petrenko’s quirky choice ber using in a TV column before). First, Joy, best man-pleasing underwear and making
of programme suggests that he’s assimilated a middle-aged therapist, slipped a hand a highly creditable stab at sashaying seduc-
Rattle’s most significant lesson in Berlin — beneath the morning bedclothes — until her tively, only for him to react with a mixture
that this orchestra is too good, and too teenage son came in to ask where his shoes of horror, embarrassment and something
important, to confine to the so-called core were. Then, a female teacher at the school approaching pity.
German repertoire. where Joy’s husband works stumbled across Wanderlust has been adapted by Nick
44 the spectator | 8 september 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk
Payne from his own stage play and those
origins do show in the almost pathological
degree of middle-class articulacy and can-
dour displayed by all the characters. (Even
the teenage son flirts with the school hot-
tie by demonstrating his impressive knowl-
edge of the works of Jonathan Franzen.)
At times, in fact, Joy and Alan feel a bit
implausibly civilised, as they respond to
each other’s crucifying honesty with a
stroke of the metaphorical chin. Never-
theless, this is an absorbing and intelligent
exploration of its bravely awkward subject
matter — if perhaps not ideal viewing for
long-married couples.
Meanwhile on ITV, Becky Sharp rides
(yet) again in the latest adaptation of Van-
ity Fair. Of course, it’s not hard to see why
Thackeray’s novel is such a popular TV
choice: unlike most Victorian heroines,
Becky doesn’t really need to be updated to
suit contemporary tastes, with no drippiness
to be glossed over or lack of assertiveness to
be remedied.
Thanks to joint-funding from Amazon,
this version is strikingly sumptuous. The
scene in Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, for
example, contained any number of extras
dressed as the lower orders (and clearly the
budget also extended to giving them lessons
This absorbing exploration of bravely
awkward subject matter is not ideal
viewing for long-married couples
in screen cackling). Otherwise, it’s pret-
ty much costume-drama business as usual,
complete with such old-school qualities as
trust in the source material and an extreme-
ly strong cast.
Playing Becky, Olivia Cooke has a neat
line in dangerous twinkling, and an almost
Sergeant Bilko-like ability to show her inner
scheming flit briefly across her face. And
although she definitely dominates proceed-
ings, that doesn’t prevent the other thesps
present from making sure we notice them
too. Martin Clunes turns Sir Pitt Crawley’s
gruffness up to at least 11. David Fynn puts
in a memorably repulsive turn as Jos Sedley.
Even so, the most shameless scene-stealer
at this stage is Frances de la Tour, who tears
into the part of the drunken Aunt Matilda
with infectious relish (and several pounds of
make-up).
Finally in TV’s back-to-school week,
there’s Press (BBC1, Thursday), the new
series from Doctor Foster writer Mike Bar-
tlett. Admittedly, we journalists tend to be
suckers for dramas about us journalists,
but this is already looking like an especial-
ly fine one.
Charlotte Riley plays Holly Evans, dep-
uty news editor on the Herald, a crusading
leftist paper much concerned with Syria and
sexism. (And just in case that doesn’t ring
any bells, it started as a northern paper and
has a propensity for misprints.) On the other
the spectator | 8 september 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk
side of the same London square lurks the
Post, whose own campaigns prefer to feature
Love Island contestants wearing crop tops
with slogans on them.
As the two papers tackle the same
stories, Bartlett shows us their differ-
ent approaches in a way that’s both fully
embodied in the drama and surprisingly
even-handed. The Herald may be kindlier,
but its virtue is not always distinguishable
from self-regard. And not only is the Post
more fun to read, it’s also far better at prop-
er journalistic sleuthing — even if its staff
seem unaware of how cruel its methods can
be. The stories themselves are gripping too,
with most of them strong enough to carry
a drama series on their own.
All in all, then, that’s another three hours
of the week that won’t be spent catching up
on odd jobs or reading a book.
Cinema
Sensation seeking
Deborah Ross
The Seagull
12A, Key Cities
This adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s play is
handsomely mounted, as they say, and fea-
tures a stellar cast (including Annette Ben-
ing, Elisabeth Moss and Saoirse Ronan), but
it won’t be setting the world alight. It is not
a waste of 90 minutes, and Bening is superb,
as if you even needed me to tell you that.
But it doesn’t especially distinguish itself
otherwise and I kept waiting for it to deliver
emotionally. I waited and waited and waited,
but no, nothing.
The film is, of course, set on a country
estate just outside Moscow, because if it
weren’t set on a country estate just out-
side Moscow it plainly wouldn’t be Chek-
hov. The basic deal, if you don’t already
know, is that everyone gathered at the
estate is in love with someone who is in
love with someone else. Medvedenko
(Michael Zegen), the schoolteacher, is in
love with Masha (Moss), the estate man-
ager’s daughter, who is in love with Kon-
stantin (Billy Howle), the aspiring writer,
who is in love with Nina (Ronan), the ingé-
nue from the neighbouring estate, who is
in love with Boris (Corey Stoll), the suc-
cessful writer who is, in turn, the boyfriend
of Irina (Bening), Konstantin’s mother and
a fading actress. There is a dog, but we
never get to know if the dog is in love with
the bitch that’s in love with that other dog,
the one from the next village, although I
would fully expect this to be the case.
Directed by Michael Mayer (A Home
at the End of the World, but otherwise
a theatre director), with a screenplay by
Stephen Karam (author of the Tony-award
winning stage play The Humans), the film
opens with a scene from near the end of
the play, when Irina is summoned to Sor-
in’s bedside. (Forgot to mention Sorin. He
owns the estate and is Irina’s brother. He’s
not in love with someone who is in love
with someone else, but is dying, which is
also tough.) The action then spools back to
show us how we got here. Playing with time
in this way does not distract from the busi-
ness in hand but, I have to say, I couldn’t
see how it added much to it either. From
here on in, it all feels implacably straight-
forward even if, unlike theatrical produc-
tions, we can roam the lake and we can
roam the woods where Konstantin stages
his avant-garde play — the one he has writ-
ten starring Nina, which his mother laughs
at so cruelly although, in her defence, it
does seem a truly shit play.
The performances are mostly first class.
Moss is superb as vodka-sodden Masha, who
is a tragic character, but Moss finds the com-
I kept waiting for it to deliver
emotionally. I waited and waited
and waited, but no, nothing
edy that is usually so often lost. Meanwhile,
Ronan plays Nina as grand and melodra-
matic and bold on the one hand, and hope-
lessly naive and a bit of an idiot on the other,
which is absolutely right. But it is Bening’s
Irina who steals the show. Bening is an older
actress who has lately specialised in playing
older actresses (Film Stars Don’t Die in Liv-
erpool, Being Julia) because she can convey
all the layers required. Her Irina is cruel and
vain and selfish and stingy and attention-
seeking but we never lose sight of the vul-
nerability and fear and sadness underneath.
If there’s a weak link, it may be Howle,
whose Konstantin should be fuelled by
Oedipal rage, but here often comes across as
just a silly, sulky, pouting boy given to writ-
ing truly shit plays.
The Seagull itself is essentially a play
about mood. It’s not so much what the char-
acters are saying specifically, more what’s
not said, and the mood that’s being created,
and this somehow fails to capture that mood.
That may be because it’s too frantic. The
camera rarely stays still. It’s always going
this way or that — sometimes cutting char-
acters off at the neck while they’re speak-
ing — and this did drive me slightly insane.
(‘Just stay put!’ I wanted to cry.) The text has
also been abridged (it runs to well over two
hours in the theatre) so it feels rushed, as
if we’re watching a highlights reel. Conse-
quently, you simply aren’t given sufficient
time to connect with the characters at an
emotional level, let alone understand what
this might be saying about love, art, jealousy
and hopes destroyed.
Still, it’s not a catastrophe, not a complete
waste of 90 minutes (Bening, remember?).
And there is a gun.
45
BOOKS & ARTS
The legend of Lawrence
Michael Hann talks to the critically acclaimed musician who has
been trying (and failing) to become a pop star since 1979
PP HARTNETT
‘I’m unusually disaster-prone’
‘I could still be a pop star,’ says Lawrence,
sitting on a footstool in his council flat,
high up in a tower block above London EC1.
‘I know I’m not going to be a person who
has a million hits on the internet. Do they
call them hits? Views, or streams, whatever
they are. I’m not going to be that person,
but I still think I could have a hit record. For
me a song like “Relative Poverty” is a song
for this generation, and I don’t know why it
shouldn’t be an anthem for today.’
Lawrence is now 57, and he has been try-
ing (and failing) to become a pop star since
1979. First there was a decade with Felt, the
gorgeous wordy group — as if Bob Dylan
and the Velvet Underground had spent their
time in provincial libraries — who made ten
albums and ten singles in ten years and then
split, and whose newly reissued back cata-
logue is the reason for our conversation.
Then there were Denim, the arch 1990s glam-
rock revivalists who both foreshadowed and
despised Britpop, and who sang of a 1970s of
‘lots of little Osmonds everywhere’ and pub
bombings and Hughie Green and the Black
Panther rapist. For the past 20 years, there
has been Go-Kart Mozart, described by
Lawrence as ‘the world’s first B-side band’,
whose music is, approximately, what you
would get if ice-cream van themes offered
social commentary.
Lawrence is beloved of a certain gen-
eration of music fans, especially music writ-
ers — those who were in their mid-teens in
46
the 1980s when Felt were at their very best.
The editor of Q magazine adores him, and
the chief pop writers of the Guardian and
the Times do, too. There has been a film
about him, Lawrence of Belgravia. His pro-
file is out of all proportion to the number of
records he has sold. He is perhaps a geni-
us, perhaps a savant. It’s harder to pin down
who he is because he seems less like a real
person than someone who decided to create
a persona — the pop star — only to find the
persona had superseded reality.
The legend of Lawrence is beset with
catastrophic failure (‘I’m unusually disas-
ter-prone, absolutely’). There was the Felt
show in London in 1987, to which all the
major labels came, wondering if they should
sign him. Lawrence had taken acid before-
hand, and was stricken with terror on tak-
ing to the stage. He demanded the lights be
turned off, ordered people not to look at him
and fled (‘In my naivety, I thought it would
give me a little lift. I didn’t think it would be
a grand mal experience’). Then there was the
moment when he finally achieved his dream,
and Denim were signed by EMI. Their sin-
gle ‘Summer Smash’ was the Radio 1 break-
fast show’s single of the week, but EMI
kept postponing its release. Then Princess
Diana was killed in a car crash and a song
called ‘Summer Smash’ became unreleas-
able (‘That affected me big time. I fell into
a downwards spiral’). The downward spiral
included mental illness and heroin addiction
the spectator | 8 september 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk
though he doesn’t want to talk about either
— with his fallen-in cheeks and missing and
discoloured teeth, he has not lost the look of
the serious addict.
The real tragedy, though, is that Felt were
never hailed as one of the greatest English
groups of the 1980s. The simple reason for
that is that John Peel never played them, and
his patronage meant life or death to inde-
pendent bands. Beyond that, when Felt were
featured in the music press, it tended to be in
terms of Lawrence’s eccentricities: not letting
visitors use his toilet, or having a blow-up sex
doll for a girlfriend, or picking band mem-
bers for the quality of their haircuts (‘Those
things were true, but it was very annoying to
be reduced to a caricature’). Neverthless, Felt
were brilliant — Forever Breathes the Lonely
Word, reissued this month, is an almost flaw-
less record. ‘I had an inkling it wasn’t going
to happen in our decade, it was gonna be
much later on,’ Lawrence says. ‘I did think
a lot about that. It’s all about being a forerun-
ner. Forerunners are fêted after the event.
I was disheartened to find there was nobody
like us, because if you can form a movement
you get everybody’s attention immediately.
To be a forerunner, and out on your own, like
the Velvet Underground were in the 1960s, is
a long, lonely journey.’
I suggest that it must have been awfully
disheartening for Lawrence to have spent
every moment since he first saw Marc
Bolan on TV wanting to be a pop star, with-
out ever becoming one. ‘It is,’ he says. ‘It’s
The real tragedy is that Felt were
never hailed as one of the greatest
English groups of the 1980s
very dispiriting. It’s completely overwhelm-
ing sometimes. I comfort myself thinking
about painters who never made it, but made
incredible paintings and they were dead
before they got famous. I comfort myself
with those kind of things: it’s not just me.
Film directors who have an oeuvre of amaz-
ing films but no one’s ever heard of them.
I’m in that world.’
But why does he so badly want to be a
pop star? ‘I think the reason I like it so much,
the idea of it, is because you remove your-
self from reality, and that’s what I want to
do. That’s the way I want to live. I don’t want
to go on a bus. I don’t want to go on a Tube.
I want to go on private jets. We’re going to
Germany on Friday, and I’m already think-
ing about that horrible queue where you
have to take your shoes and your belt off.
And on the Tube everyone’s staring at you,
and if you’re a pop star you’re removed from
that reality. I genuinely believe I could be
that kind of pop star and still have my feet
on the ground. It wouldn’t go to my head.’
It’s time for him to show me down in
the lift. We reach the bottom and exit to the
street. ‘Oh, just one thing,’ he says. ‘Please
don’t use my surname.’ Is the eternal
absence of a surname part of the art project
that is his life? ‘That’s right. I had thought
about changing my name. But then I thought
I’d just drop the surname.’ He waves good-
bye, puts on his sunglasses, pulls down the
brim of his trucker’s cap, and strides off to
continue trying to become a pop star.
Five Felt albums, including Forever
Breathes the Lonely Word, are re-released
on 14 September on Cherry Red.
Radio
Lives less ordinary
Kate Chisholm
To have been a black lawyer in the deep
south of America in the early 1960s would
have taken a level of courage well beyond
the ordinary. Chevene Bowers King was
just such a man. He could have worked in
the desegregated north, but instead chose
to risk his life in Georgia, defending black
people imprisoned on trumped-up charges
and organising non-violent demonstrations
to end segregation. David Morley’s two-part
play on Radio 4, The Trials of CB King, took
us through the blatant racism, the every-
day brutality and dangerous reality for the
black citizens of Albany, Georgia, where
the sheriff encouraged the police to beat up
the innocent purely because of the colour
of their skin. Those who dared to befriend
black people or fight their cause could also
end up literally under fire. King’s black sis-
ter-in-law loses her unborn child after being
beaten in the stomach by the police for dar-
ing to visit young demonstrators who were
being held without charge in the county jail.
Another black man is accused of pulling a
knife on the sheriff while in handcuffs and is
then badly beaten. In spite of King’s efforts,
he’s declared guilty by the all-white jury.
This kind of radio play, retelling history
through drama, can be very effective, breath-
ing life into the narrative arc. There’s no need
to create a stylised tableau or a pageant of
figures in period costume; the focus is on
what people are saying, how they behave,
and how as listeners we can connect with
their stories. How could such hatred have
taken root? And, perhaps more significantly,
how could King have remained so restrained
in the face of such unreasoning hostility.
‘Never lose your bearings,’ says King
(played with measured dignity by Leo
Wringer) to the young white privileged Yale
student who goes down south as a civil-rights
activist but has yet to understand how to
survive in a town where such ignorant dog-
matism operates as the rule of law. ‘Now is
not the time for us to vent our spleen.’ King
has education, as the play makes clear; the
sheriff is virtually illiterate. He’s the charac-
ter without hope. The black community, in
the spectator | 8 september 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk
contrast, is sustained and uplifted by faith,
stronger than those who take up arms and
demand violent action.
Marc Beeby’s production created real
atmosphere, mostly through the discreet use
of music — a bluesy guitar riff, a short line
from a gospel hymn — to evoke the steamy
heat of Georgia, those tired days when tem-
pers fray. Nothing was overstated. King
always keeps his cool. When asked wheth-
er there will ever be a ‘negro’ president, he
replies: ‘Electing one man is not going to
change a culture.’ (King died in 1988.)
Laurence Grissell’s programmes usually
play with ideas about listening, how radio
taps into your innermost thoughts, your
mind’s eye. How that direct connection is
made. His new series on Radio 4, In My
Head, uses binaural stereo (only achieved
with headphones) to create a more immer-
sive experience, taking us right inside the
experience of being someone else, almost as
if we are thinking their thoughts for them.
The series gives us monologues by various
people with out-of-the-ordinary occupa-
tions, talking us through the details of their
day: the bomb-disposal expert in Bosnia
who listens, oxymoronically, to heavy-met-
al music on his way to the next job, feel-
ing the ground tentatively for what might
lie underneath and then teasing the redun-
dant ordnance to explode under his delicate
direction. Or the deer-stalker who takes us
right on to the moor (we can almost smell
the heather in the air), where he shoots a
stag and then eviscerates it before dragging
it back off the hill to his Land Rover.
Less visceral, but no less vivid, was our out-
ing with George, No. 1 among the paparazzi
of London, who was on his way to Padstow
in the hope of catching a shot of Fern Brit-
ton in her bikini. She never showed up. Sec-
ond best would have been an appearance of
the former PM, David Cameron. Accord-
ing to George, if Cameron had turned up on
the beach in his swimming trunks clutching
a surfing board and with his wife Samantha
he could have made ‘an easy three grand’ by
selling his pictures to the Mail.
I only caught one episode of the new
Book at Bedtime on Radio 4 (produced by
Eilidh McCreadie) but was hooked straight-
way. Kate Atkinson’s latest novel, Transcrip-
tion, is set in postwar London where Juliet
Armstrong works for the BBC as a producer
of children’s radio, a job that somehow seems
humdrum after her work for the war effort.
On her way out to lunch from Broadcasting
House she bumps into someone she knew in
that past; someone from MI5 who refuses to
acknowledge that he once knew her. Why?
Who is he working for now? And what was
Juliet really up to as she typed up perfect
transcriptions of the conversations held in
the next-door flat at Dolphin Square by the
fifth columnists under surveillance. Fenella
Woolgar reads, cleverly catching Juliet’s more
youthful voice as she recalls that past life.
THE YOUTUBER
Monkey Tennis and tarot
Alas, the great Alan Partridge never
got to make Inner-City Sumo, despite
his famously desperate pitch to BBC
TV commissioners. ‘We take fat
people from the inner cities, put them
in big nappies, and then get them to
throw each other out of a circle… If
you don’t do it, Sky will.’ Nor did we
ever get to see Cooking In Prison.
Arm Wrestling with Chas and Dave.
Youth Hostelling With Chris Eubank.
Or — the ne plus ultra — Monkey
Tennis. Some ideas, it seems, are just
too strange for telly.
Fortunately, there’s a place for
them on YouTube. Plenty of people
have uploaded videos of themselves
playing tennis with monkeys. You’d
be surprised at what prisoners
are cooking in prison. Chris
Eubank made an online advert for
Hostelworld. And where I live, lots
of people use their cameras to film
endless variations on Inner-City
Sumo every Friday and Saturday
night. But if you’re looking for
a real treat, something entirely
unexpected and suitable only for the
internet, just type ‘Tarot’ into your
search engine.
Once you’ve waded through
a couple of hundred charlatans,
shysters and bona fide nutcases
spouting absolute nonsense, you
will eventually come to a series
of online tarot readings currently
being uploaded on an almost
daily basis by none other than
Alejandro Jodorowsky, the Chilean
filmmaker responsible for El Topo
(1970), The Holy Mountain (1973),
and half a dozen other films that
might charitably be described as
‘exuberant’.
Jodorowsky, it turns out, has been
studying the tarot for more than
half a century. He’s conducting the
YouTube tarot readings for people
who helped to crowdfund his most
recent film, Endless Poetry. I haven’t
seen the film, and have no intention
of doing so, and I can absolutely
guarantee that it’s nothing like as
good as his tarot reading for, say,
Kate in answer to the question: ‘What
do I need to know about my purpose
in life?’
What Jodorowsky instinctively
understands is that online video is
not broadcasting in the traditional
sense at all. It’s more intimate. Like
a peep show. Or a conversation.
— Ian Sansom
47
 NOTES ON …

Cannock Chase
By Richard Bratby

C
annock Chase is the long, low range rear up before you in a woodland clearing.

ALAMY
of hills that’s visible to your right as Tales of UFOs and mysterious big cats
you drive north up the M6 beyond come as standard round here (the talk in my
Birmingham. If you’ve travelled by train Lichfield local was of a ‘Staffordshire Sas-
between Euston and Crewe, you’ve prac- quatch’, though you’re more likely to col-
tically brushed its cloak. Soon after Ruge- lide with a red deer). But the historical facts
ley the landscape closes in, and a palisade are haunting enough. During the Great War,
of dark pines presses down the slope before troops trained on the Chase and in 2013
your Pendolino ducks into the tunnel that archaeologists uncovered a scale model of
Lord Lichfield made Robert Stephenson dig the trenches around Messines, dug out of
in 1846 so as not to spoil the landscape of his peat to help familiarise officers with the
Shugborough estate. You don’t see much of Pye Green tower looms over the landscape Front. The south-western edge is dominated
the Chase, but you certainly sense it. by the hulking Pye Green telecoms tower
It’s an Area of Outstanding Natural But generally, Cannock Chase rebuffs — built during the Cold War to withstand
Beauty, but that feels rather an effete romanticism. It’s bounded to the south by a nuclear blast — and a war cemetery for
description for something so unexpected- former colliery towns, and if you climb to Germans who died on British soil.
ly primal: an isolated upland wilderness its highest point, the hill fort at Castle Ring, Compared with Commonwealth war
between Wolverhampton and Stafford. you’ll find yourself staring down the cool- graves, their grey headstones look particu-
Of course, when the sun shines, the Chase ing towers of Rugeley power station. There’s larly sombre. Zeppelin pilots, drowned sail-
really is beautiful. Milford Common, at its not much literature of its landscape, though ors and prisoners who died of the 1918 flu
northern fringe, attracts dog walkers and Tolkien lived at Great Haywood, where an rest beneath silver birches. It’s said the loca-
ice-cream vans (for added retro charm, it’s Elizabethan packhorse bridge crosses the tion was chosen because of its similarity to
also got a drive-in Wimpy bar). From child- River Trent at its prettiest and most play- Lüneburg Heath or the Teutoburger Wald.
hood visits to my grandmother in Stafford ful, and with the Chase rising grimly behind Cold comfort, but Cannock Chase shrugs off
I remember sunlight sloping through Scots landscaped parkland, Shugborough Hall human concerns. When you’re lost at its cen-
pines, and catching black beetles in the could easily be his ‘last homely house’. The tre, forested ridges roll away to every hori-
bracken. The name evoked Joan Aiken’s great Jacobean mansion of Beau desert zon, and the words that come to mind aren’t
The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, and on once reigned over the southern Chase, but Tolkien’s, but Thomas Hardy’s description
winter afternoons it’s fun to imagine hun- it was demolished in the 1930s. Its bricks of Egdon Heath: a landscape ‘slighted and
gry packs swarming down to pick off unwary went to London to repair St James’s Palace, enduring; and withal singularly colossal and
pedestrians in Colwich or Upper Longdon. and the surviving ruins are eerie when they mysterious in its swarthy monotony’.

Events

PAINT FROM
See the full list at LIKE A
nationalgallery.org.uk/events AND JON
Juan de Zurbarán, Still Life with Lemons in a Wicker Basket (detail),about 1643–9
© The National Gallery, London
SNOW

48 the spectator | 8 september 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk


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See the film at polroger.co.uk
I can only wonder – how did the bread,
safe in its basket, escape this English
breakfast pogrom?
— Tanya Gold, p62
High life
Taki
Some jerk know-nothing writes in an
unreadable American newspaper that
Greece is back — Athens, actually. He would,
he’s an American who probably thinks that
the lack of starving beggars in the streets
à la Calcutta in the 1920s means we’re back.
Have another hamburger, asshole, and stick
to Trump-bashing. I knew Athens before it
went down, and the city’s not back, just we
rich, who are back for the summer.
Take my friend Irene Pappas, wife of
a Golden Dawn Member of Parliament,
who edits a national newspaper. She has
three children, all doing brilliantly in their
schools, but lives on her salary of €1,050
a month. I wish that some of those people
I hear complaining about their lot lived
on such a sum. How does one do it, when
one has three children who need to be
clothed, fed and provided with books and
other school necessities? I had a drink with
Irene, who did not complain once. She was
positive about the future, and asked only
for fair coverage — there is none — by the
powers that own the private channels of
Greek television.
I walked around the city looking for
my old haunts, which are all gone. There
are still some streets in the old part where
the scent of jasmine creepers and orange
trees mixes headily with that of car fumes
and honeysuckle. But the old tavernas and
their owners (all good friends) have disap-
peared, replaced by slicker joints catering
to tourists who are both a curse and a life-
line for a place strangled by Franco-Ger-
man banks. I prefer the hundreds of stray
dogs and cats sunning themselves around
the Acropolis.
In The Spectator two weeks ago, Martin
Vander Weyer pointed out that the new era
for Greece is nothing new, given that the
Greek public debt has gone from 100 per
cent when the crisis began to the present
180 per cent of the GDP debt. Perhaps this
is an improvement if one works at the Min-
istry of Truth in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-
the spectator | 8 september 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk
Four, but I don’t. Do these crap bankers
and EU shills take us for idiots? There have
been eight years of economic strangulation
in order to pay the German banks, and half
of the middle class of doctors, engineers
and scientists have gone abroad, but the
extreme left-wing clowns and charlatans
who have run the place since 2015 are say-
ing that the chaos is over and everything’s
hunky dory. String them up with wire and
I’ll gladly watch.
Yet Greek spirits are up, especially dur-
ing summer. I was driven down to the Pelo-
ponnese where a fast boat was waiting. We
arrived at a private island of a childhood
friend in a jiffy. Throughout the trip I joked
with hard-working Greeks who never com-
plain and have only positive things to say
because they’re employed and treated fair-
ly. Once on the island, I spent five days and
nights cracking jokes and asking the staff
to put a strong laxative in visiting royals’
drinks, but they refused. So I did the next
best thing. James Marlborough and I told
visitors that their drinks were spiked with
laxatives, only to watch the King of Holland
not blink an eye and down six gin and ton-
ics in a row. His queen, Maxima, didn’t do
badly either in the drink department, but
she and I did not agree on some past his-
tory. I remained polite so as not to embar-
rass my hosts. My own king, Constantine,
could not have been nicer, even if he did
bring up my recent birthday, an obviously
embarrassing subject.
There were friends galore staying on the
island, including two Austrian ladies, one
a Habsburg widow, who are friends of my
son-in-law. So when I informed Jamie and
Edla Marlborough that my daughter’s
new home makes their Blenheim look like
a doghouse, they roared with laughter. After
all, if one has Blenheim, one can take even
a ridiculous joke like mine. I spent time
teaching their boy, Caspar, how to punch, so
he hit me at least 50 times as hard as he could
in the stomach, and by the end of five days
I began to feel it. Caspar is eight.
Never mind. Greece is so wonderful in
summer; the water and beaches pristine, the
people friendly and unspoiled, the food and
wine fantastic. But I’m sad when I see what
most are going through, and realise how
lucky I am. On my last day I went down
to the old part of Athens to see a 91-year-
old barber who used to be junior to Dem-
osthenes (the one who used to shave my
father daily; gentlemen back then had their
barbers shave them.) Old George knows
how to cut hair like no one on earth. He
gave me a short-back-and-sides haircut
that had young girls whistling at me when I
emerged. (Just kidding.) But why is it that
old barbers know how to cut hair? These
modern so-called hair stylists should be
arrested for false advertising about mat-
ters tonsorial. Old George talked about
my dad and about Demosthenes, and then
mentioned the woman who worked in that
beautiful barbershop, one who used to give
me enormous erections without me realis-
ing what was happening because I did not
know the facts of life. I thought it had some-
thing to do with the ice cream they used to
give me while I watched old dad getting
spruced up. What fools the young are.
Low life
Jeremy Clarke
I’d missed the train, and the next was due
in 45 minutes, so I popped into the nearby
salon for a haircut, two months since the
last one. Half Price Monday for Students,
it said on a board outside. Inside, three
women attended to three female heads in
a spacious salon with the doors and windows
flung open to the warm air and the view of
the long-stay car park. I was directed to
53
LIFE
a chair, and presently a woman came
bounding through a door, exuberantly, like
a chat-show host bounding down the stu-
dio steps to wild applause. She was slim and
tanned with strong-looking legs, aged about
50. ‘And how are you today?’ she yelled, as
if I were deaf as well as old. Gawd help me,
I thought. Here, clearly, was the loud-
est, chattiest and most socially confident
woman on the firm. And I guessed that I
was about to be expertly questioned and
that my foolish inconsistencies were about
to be exposed to everyone within ear-
shot, including the ticket collector over at
the station.
‘Are you local?’ she began, undeterred
by my downcast statement that I mustn’t
grumble. I told her I lived in France but
had come to Exeter for the day to see an
accountant. And did I travel here every
year to see my accountant? No, I said. I was
up shit creek without a paddle and it had
been an exploratory first interview to see if
he would consider taking on the role of the
paddle. And what did I do for a living? I am
a student, I said.
Everyone in the shop had been listening
with anticipation, respect and appreciation
I now sensed that the position of
temporary salon philosopher and
guru was open to me
to their sauciest interviewer turning it on
for the girls, and everyone laughed, includ-
ing her. Her laugh was a short sharp shout
and very alarming.
It was kind of her to fit me in and
I hoped I hadn’t interrupted her lunch,
I said. I mustn’t worry, she said. She had fin-
ished her sandwich. Not that she ate much
anyway. She didn’t need to. She hadn’t
room in this body of hers for more than a
small sandwich. At which point she snaked
her hands sinuously over her body to dem-
onstrate how spare the frame was and how
mouse-like the cavities contained within it
must be.
She changed the subject to gin. It had
plenty of room for that, she said. Oh yes.
In fact, gin was all she lived for and she
didn’t mind admitting it. Now everyone
else in the salon — including a previously
mute woman under the drier — suddenly
came to life and agreed that they lived for
gin too. And when I said that I liked gin,
I sensed that my approval rating within
the salon had shot up to a virtually unas-
sailable height. There followed an open
debate about fruit in gin and tonic. A slice
of grapefruit went surprisingly well, I con-
tributed. The interest this aroused was pro-
found and I now sensed that the position of
temporary salon philosopher and guru was
open to me should I want it.
The rough clippering of the back and
sides of my head was now completed. She
laid the clippers aside and resumed her
54
work more circumspectly with the scissors. public stage. And a slight drop in air pres-
I was still considering claiming the half- sure suggested that she was touching on an
price student discount and I asked her if issue of consuming interest to all three of the
many students took advantage of Half hairdressers, which was second only to gin.
Price Mondays. The Asian students were I credited her sophistication by giving
the only ones with enough money to spend an equally oblique answer. And I’m now
on their appearance these days, she said. tired, in any case, of the arguments put up
Then she said: ‘But we’ll be alright won’t by both sides, which are otiose because
we, when we leave? We’re always alright in ideologically based and fundamental-
the end, aren’t we?’ ly unbridgeable. I think I said something
In other words she was telling me she about the EU project being doomed to
was a Brexiteer and we could talk about that failure anyway, whether we stayed or went.
next, if I liked. The dog-whistle delicacy of But it was a pleasant enough thought that if
her overture surprised me, given the cour- civil war did break out, we Brexiteers, like
age and volume with which she projected the Wehrmacht, would be fighting to the
her personality and other opinions on to the last with smart haircuts.
Out of Bounds
For Sale. The Sunday Times displays a honey-coloured pile
and yet I know the stonework’s Portland. Grey.
We wore grey hats to match.
Midnight I led illicit troops onto the roof.
Mornings, snitched sugar from the tray
outside the dreadful Study (paying for sins).
Leo, Regent, Stucco, Princess, Cornflower —
our dormitory windows framed the pampas
pluming in new-crushed grass.
Mozart spilled through the Italian Gardens,
our songs shuddered the chandeliers,
cartwheels hardened lawns beneath the portico.
Sunday afternoons I lay behind the 15th-century church
with a book and lakeside view.
Did walking round that lake help me escape
the palace where our fathers paid so handsomely
to place our promise in someone else’s hands
or was it the appeal of out of bounds?
Once a cormorant flew to the lake.
It was under a long time searching for fish.
I knew what it meant to find myself lost
in a blear of the flow. The building isn’t gold,
it’s grey. And grey rain washed
my long hikes past the boathouse.
— Sally Festing
the spectator | 8 september 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk
 Don’t think alike.

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LIFE
Real life
Melissa Kite
Leaving Norton, the antivirus software
package, is a bit like trying to leave the EU.
You may think, once you have decided to
click the ‘X’ button in the box that says you
don’t want to subscribe to this expensive
protection outfit any more, that you have
left. You may think that it was your decision
to make, and now you’ve made it, you’re
free. You’re right if you hold your nerve. But
then there is the whole issue of Norton’s
feelings on the matter, which are only mar-
ginally less difficult to deal with than Jean-
Claude Juncker’s feelings about Brexit.
Like Juncker, Norton 360 antivirus soft-
ware wants you in a way that you didn’t real-
ly grasp the potency of until you decided to
say goodbye. I mean, you had some inkling,
but you didn’t quite understand it fully.
Even though it’s a big outfit, you still half
expected them to say something along the
lines of: ‘We’re sorry to hear you’re going.
Thanks for all the loyal years you’ve been
with us. Take care and do let us know if we
can do anything for you in the future.’
It’s not as if they didn’t play their part
in you having to leave. Like the EU, Norton
was costing me so much money to do some-
thing so convoluted that in the end I decided
I would rather run the risk of encountering
whatever complex catastrophes it was claim-
ing to be keeping me from by going it alone.
It has been taking my money on an auto-
matic subscription renewal for years and
I have been too confused about what it actu-
ally does, and who else might do it cheaper,
to do anything about it. But they must have
an old credit card number because a month
ago they started asking me to put in my pay-
ment details again, in advance of the sub-
scription running out.
And in an act of defiance that surprised
even me, I didn’t put them in. There then
began a month-long process of daily warn-
ings about my protection expiring.
When the last day came, I was given my
last warning, and I clicked the X again. And
the subscription expired. I thought that must
be the end of it.
But from that day forward a new warning
flashed up daily on my computer: a red box
informing me that my protection had ended,
and that I needed to restart it or fall prey to
cyber attacks. There appears to be no way
to remove this red box. Ever. It comes up
every time I start my computer and then at
regular intervals.
56
So I don’t have Norton protection any
more but I can’t remove Norton’s presence,
its personality, from my computer. If I right
click on the Norton icon it just gives me the
option to renew.
But I must stick to my guns. As a point of
principle, I don’t want to be involved with
anyone or anything that tries to frighten me
into thinking I can’t do without them.
This is why I become more adamant-
ly pro-Brexit the more I am told I am not
allowed to be because it will mean the end
of everything.
Every Brexit voter I know feels the
same. Mad for it, we are. Whereas before we
weighed up the pros and cons and thought
that on balance we would prefer to leave,
now we would back Brexit in defiance of
any evidence that could be presented to dis-
suade us.
In a second referendum, I’m sure more
people would vote Brexit, spurred on by the
magnificent bloody-minded truculence that
binds us Brits stubbornly to the idea of free-
dom even while a tide of fashionable minor-
ity opinion is urging us to sell boring old
I don’t have Norton protection any
more but I can’t remove Norton’s
presence from my computer
freedom down the river or risk being seen
as stupid and outdated.
At around the same time as the warnings
from Norton began, I heard the dogs bark-
ing at the door and when I got there a hand-
written letter had been pushed through it. I
recognised the careful writing immediately.
It was a letter from the ex-builder boyfriend
in which he spelt out his feelings on the mat-
ter of our estrangement. The general thrust
of the letter was a sort of grudging apology
coupled with a reminder that I will be need-
ing him soon enough, so I might like to give
him a call now.
He noted that I had managed to get the
front of my house repointed and painted in
one line of faint praise, which he tempered
by citing this as evidence of me being the
sort of survivor who battles on regardless,
against all odds, as impending ruin bears
down on me.
But the point he’s missing is that some-
times even ruin is worth entertaining as the
price of being free.
the spectator | 8 september 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk
Bridge
Susanna Gross
Anyone who doubts that bridge keeps your
brain sharp in old age should have a game
with Bernard Teltcher. Bernard recently cel-
ebrated his 95th-and-a-half birthday (very
touching, I thought), but don’t be fooled by
his frail demeanour or his wheelchair. He’s
a formidable opponent. Not only is he one
of the best high-stake players at the Port-
land Club; he also can’t seem to stop win-
ning matches and tournaments.
His biggest result came last month, when
he won the Summer Festival Swiss Teams. I
couldn’t have been more pleased for him;
indeed, I felt a benign rush of hope that he’d
keep it up until his next half-birthday and
beyond… All of which just goes to show
how little I know myself. Because I’d forgot-
ten that his team was due to play mine in the
‘Hubert Philips’ — a knockout tournament
we actually managed to win last year. Yup,
you guessed it: they’ve just knocked us out.
And as I shook Bernard’s hand at the end,
my benign feelings vanished: all I saw was a
merciless assassin willing to mow down any-
thing in his path with his weaponized wheel-
chair.
Here he showed his ruthless precision:
Dealer East None vulnerable
z 10
y A K 10 4
X A Q 10 6 5 4 2
w6
zQJ 9 8 76 zK
N
4 2
W E
yQ9 6 5
y – S XK J 9 8
X3 w 10 9 8 2
wQ J 7 5
zA5 3
y J 8 7 3 2
X7
wAK4 3
West North East South
Pass 1y
4z 4NT Pass 5y
Pass 6y all pass
West led the z Q. Bernard won, and
a heart to the yA revealed the bad news.
But he had a chance. He cashed the XA and
ruffed a diamond. Next he cashed w AK
and ruffed a club low. Another diamond
was ruffed and another club with the y10. A
fourth diamond was ruffed, and finally Ber-
nard played a spade and ruffed it with dum-
my’s yA. East had to underruff! And now,
when Bernard led a diamond from dummy,
East had to play either the yQ or y9 — giv-
ing Bernard a 12th trick with the yJ.
 SPECTATOR WINE JONATHAN RAY
W
e were going to run an entirely
French offer this week courtesy
of FromVineyardsDirect, but I
couldn’t resist the 2017 Esterházy Estoras
Grüner Veltliner (1) from Austria. I used
to drink buckets of GV with my late god-
mother, the novelist and sometime contrib-
utor to this magazine, Sarah Gainham. I’ve
never lost my taste for it.
This example, produced for the Ester-
házy princes in Eisenstadt by the celebrat-
ed Joseph Pusch, is well up to snuff and my
godmother — who single-handedly (apart
from my occasional help) kept her local
winzer Josef Pimpel in business — would
have loved it. It’s crisp yet creamy with a
whisper of pepper, spice and nuts, and is
delectably food-friendly. It whisks me right
back to happy days by the Danube. £11.45
down from £11.95.
Regular readers will know that I’m a
slave to white Rhône wines and — brazen
pushover that I am — I was all too eas-
ily seduced by the 2016 Secret de Famille,
Paul Jaboulet Aîné (2). A scrumptious
blend of Grenache Blanc, Marsanne, Viog-
nier and Bourboulenc, it has all the quality
and style that one might expect from one
of the region’s most august producers (they
make Hermitage La Chapelle after all). It’s
beautifully rounded with enticing notes of
honeysuckle and fresh white-stone fruit
and I couldn’t get enough of it. £11.95 down
from £12.95.
The 2016 Saint-Véran, Pierre Janny ‘Mer-
loix’ (3) is an old favourite and I remember
that when we offered a previous vintage
many moons ago — the 2012 I believe —
it promptly sold out. This current vintage is
a cracker and shows what great value the
wines of Saint-Véran can be. It’s FVD’s
best-selling white burgundy and easy to see
why: great purity of fruit, hints of honey,
crisp mineral core and an extremely reason-
able price. £13.95 down from £14.95.
Talking of reasonable prices, how about
the 2017 Reserve de l’Aube, Père Anselme
(4)? Yes, I know it’s just basic Vin de France,
the lowest of all the quality classifications,
but it’s about as easy-going and potable a
French red as you’ll find. A blend of Syrah
and Merlot from family-owned vineyards in
the Languedoc, it’s fresh, fruity and lively;
soft and smooth on the palate and blessed
the spectator | 8 september 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk
with a surprisingly long finish. If you ordered plenty of bramble fruit and a teasingly
the house red in some sun-dappled Carcas- savoury finish, there’s still a touch of tannin
sonne bistro and were served this, you’d here but nothing that a quick sluice into a jug
hug yourself with glee and rush off in search or decanter won’t remedy. £11.95 down
of a dozen bottles to take home. £7.45 down from £12.95.
from £7.95. Finally, the 2017 Coteaux Bourguignons
Made entirely from Merlot, the 2014 ‘Le Renard’ (6), a Pinot Noir/Gamay blend
Ronan by Clinet (5) is really very classy, of quite some breeding from vineyards in
Burgundy owned by the Devillard family.
Six stunning wines We all know how ridiculously overpriced
of impeccable pedigree burgundy can be and so what a treat it is
to find something tasty that I can darn well
and appealing price afford. I’m told that it’s the house red bur-
gundy at Chez Allard, the famous Parisian
from the same winemaking team who pro- bistro owned by the great Alain Ducasse,
duce the celebrated grand vin of Ch. Cli- which ain’t a bad reference. 2017 was a stel-
net, one of the finest of all Pomerol estates. lar vintage in Burgundy and this has plen-
The fruit comes from just outside Pomerol ty of ripe — yet carefully restrained — red
and the wine is thus classified as AC fruit, subtle tannins and a refreshing finish.
Bordeaux rather than anything grander — £14.95 down from £15.95.
and has a very approachable price tag as The mixed case has two bottles of each
a result. Silky smooth and luscious with wine and delivery, as ever, is free.
ORDER FORM Spectator Wine Offer
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FromVineyardsDirect.com, 2 Square Rigger Row, Plantation Wharf, London SW11 3TZ
Tel: 020 7549 7900; Website: fromvineyardsdirect.com
Prices in form are per case of 12 List price Club price No.
White 1 2017 Esterházy Estoras Grüner Veltliner, 13% £143.40 £137.40
2 2016 Secret de Famille, Paul Jaboulet Aîné, 13.5% £155.40 £143.40
3 2016 Saint-Véran ‘Merloix’, 13% £179.40 £167.40
Red 4 2017 Reserve de l’Aube, Père Anselme, 12.5% £95.40 £89.40
5 2014 Ronan by Clinet, 12.5% £155.40 £143.40
6 2017 Coteaux Bourguignons ‘Le Renard’ 13% £191.40 £179.40
Mixed 7 Sample case, two each of the above £153.40 £143.40
Total
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57
LIFE

Chess
Peaceful solution
Raymond Keene
In the recent super-tournament in St Louis,
Magnus Carlsen, Fabiano Caruana and Lev
Aronian opted to share the laurels. According to
the regulations, any tie for first place should have
been resolved by a playoff. But the three
co-victors decided that they would prefer to share
the trophy. This peaceful solution was in line with
the tournament as a whole, where no fewer than
six of the ten contestants remained undefeated,
with two of them, the former world champion
Viswanathan Anand and Maxime Vachier-
Lagrave, drawing all their games. A staggering 82
per cent of the games were draws. As noted in
this column last week, if this state of affairs
continues, classical chess among the elite will die
a natural death, with games at fast time limits, full
of thud and blunder as they may be, taking their
place. It is clear that rapid and blitz games, though
possibly anathema to the purists, are far more
exciting than the stolid fare served up in St Louis.
This week some highlights from those games
which did end with a decisive result.
Competition
Living dangerously
Lucy Vickery
Diagram 1 In Competition No. 3064 you were invited to
supply a newspaper leading article exposing
rDbDrDkD the hitherto unsuspected corrupting influ-
0pDWDp0p ence of a seemingly innocuous everyday
item. This assignment was inspired by the
WDWDWDWD revelation, in a recent letter to the Times,
that patent leather shoes were outlawed at a
DWDqDWDW British girls’ public school as recently as the
WDp)nDWD 1980s, lest they reflect undergarments and
‘excite the gardeners’.
GW)WDW)W It was a smallish field with a narrow
PDQDPDB) focus. You divided fairly equally between
those who consider fruit (bananas, in par-
$WDWDRIW ticular) to be the Devil’s work and those
who reckon that the real threat to vulner-
able young minds is cutlery. As usual with
Diagram 2
this type of challenge, the entries that stood
WDWDWDWD out were those that retained a crumb, how-
ever small, of plausibility. Nicholas Stone
4WDWDWiW was good but his piece was written as a news

Aronian-Grischuk: Sinquefield Cup, St Louis

2018 (see diagram 1)
In the last round Aronian absolutely had to win
to gain a share of first prize. In the following
position he gambled everything on a rook
sacrifice of dubious validity, banking on his
opponent’s shortage of time. 18 Rxf7 Kxf7 19
Rf1+ Bf5 19 ... Kg8 fails to 20 Bxe4 Qxe4 21
Qxe4 Rxe4 22 Rf8 mate. Meanwhile 19 ... Kg6 20
Rf4 Bf5 21 g4 also leaves White winning. 20 g4
g6 21 Qc1 Kg7 Here 21 ... Re6 casts doubt on
White’s sacrifice. 22 gxf5 gxf5 23 Bxe4 fxe4
24 Qf4 h6 25 Qc7+ Kh8 26 Bd6 Rg8+ 27
Kf2 Rg6 28 Be5+ Kg8 29 Ke3 Rd8 29 ... Re8,
to prevent White’s next, was essential. 30 Qe7
b5 31 h4 The advance of this pawn causes a
fatal disruption to the black camp. 31 ... a5 32
h5 Rg5 33 Rf6 Rxe5 34 Rg6+ Black resigns
Carlsen-Nakamura: Sinquefield Cup, St Louis
2018 (see diagram 2)
Rook and pawns endings of four pawns against
three, all on the same side of the board tend to be
drawn. In this case, also from the last round, the
significant factor is that White’s h-pawn is both
PUZZLE NO. 522
White to play. This position is a variation from
Caruana-Karjakin, St Louis 2018. Can you spot
WDWDW0WD
DWDW0W0P
WDWDPDPD
DWDWDPIW
WDW$WDWD
DWDWDWDW
protected and passed. The world champion
now embarks on a lengthy manoeuvre with his
king in order to drive home his advantage. 75
Kf2 Kf7 76 Ke2 Rb7 77 Rd3 Ra7 78 Kd2
Ke6 79 Kc3 Ke7 80 Kc4 Rc7+ 81 Kb5 Rc1
82 Rb3 Kf7 83 Kb6 Rc2 84 Kb7 Rc1 85
Kb8 Kg8 86 Rb6 Kg7 87 Rb7+ Kg8 88
Rc7 Rb1+ 89 Kc8 Rb3 90 Kd7 This is the
key to White’s plan. He is unconcerned about
losing a pawn or two as the combination of his
hyper-active king, rook and h-pawn win the
game easily. 90 ... Rxf3 91 Ke6 Rf4 92 h6
Kh8 93 Rb7 Kg8 94 Rg7+ Kh8 95 Kf7
Rxe4 96 Kg6 Ra4 97 Rh7+ Black resigns
After 97 ... Kg8 98 Re7 Ra8 99 Kxf6 Black will
lose all his pawns.
WhWdW4Wi
report rather than a leading article and so I
reluctantly disqualified it.
Bill Greenwell takes the bonus fiver. His
fellow winners earn £30 each.
It cannot even be decided in polite society what
species it belongs to. Its pronunciation is cause
for dissent. Its name derives from a word for
‘swelling’. What kind of right-minded authority
would permit the tomato to be part of a young
person’s diet? Its skin is glossy, and a cheap bright
red; it leans against the lips, curvaceous; it spurts
seeds; its flesh is thick and rich. Everything about
the tomato reeks of decadence. We desire for
our young people a more edifying range of
comestibles than something the colour of lipstick
and the hue of shame: the firm, upstanding leek,
for instance, or the more aggressive lemon. We
have seen where tomato worship has led: to the
use of recreational drugs, to the prevalence of
fast food, to the fondling of mobile phones.
A tomato is nothing more than a bordello of
suggestibility. Let them eat potatoes.
Bill Greenwell
This newspaper calls on the government to ban
spoons with immediate effect. Every day, at
educational establishments the length and breadth
of Britain, otherwise healthy children and
adolescents are being rendered introspective from
gazing at their distorted — perverted would not
be too strong a term — reflections in the bowls or
on the backs of spoons. How can our young have a
correct apprehension of themselves — and, by

White’s classic mating finish? Answers to me
at The Spectator by Tuesday 11 September or
via email to victoria@spectator.co.uk. There is a
prize of £20 for the first correct answer out of a
hat. Please include a postal address and allow six
weeks for prize delivery.
Last week’s solution 1 Qf5
Last week’s winner Iain Chadwick,
Edinburgh
58
DWDWDW0p extension, others — while being consistently lied
to by proletarian utensils incapable of reflecting
WDWDQ0WH naturalistically the faces so casually entrusted to
them? It should not surprise that our hospitals
DW4W0WDW are crammed with young people — variously
pDW1WDWD obese, anorexic, depressed and in search of the
remedies of the cosmetic surgeon — as a
)WDWDW)W consequence of these traumatic experiences. It is
time we quite literally stopped ‘spooning’ — that
WDWDW)W) antique verb always connoted sexual depravity —
and confined our children to the dexterity-
DR$WDWIW inculcating world of knife and fork.
Adrian Fry
the spectator | 8 september 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk
 LIFE

The proposed banning of the sale of books in the

UK is to be applauded. We think people in this Crossword
country have had enough of ideas. If the Good
Lord had intended the British people to think,
2375: 2
He would have given them brains. Books are a
dangerous corrupting influence. Their appeal is
by Fieldfare
subtle, deceptively seductive. Unsuspecting
readers might start with something placing no
demands on critical functions, then move on from
Dan Brown to God knows what subversive
ideology, and before you know it, democracy will 2 describes a pair of unclued
be in crisis. The privileged metropolitan quinoa- lights (three words altogether),
consuming elite are already brainwashing our which in turn include the others.
children with Summer Bloody Reading
Challenges and subliminal Europhile references Across
to Madame Gazelle and Pedro Pony. Eventually 12 Single by pop group: ‘Go
the adult population would have deserted the for violent crime’ (8)
Great British Celebrity Burger-Off, Darlington’s 13 Beast’s sardonic-sounding
Got Talent etc, and would be wasting time in refusal (5)
Waterstones, Brontë in one hand and skinny latte 14 Wing and tail feathers
in the other. God help us. missing one month (8)
David Silverman 16 Book I inscribed for
myself? (4)
It is always unfortunate when blameless 20 Will’s to resurrect a year’s
innocence becomes tainted by a disagreeable work (6)
association. But that, it must be said, is the present 21 Dealer’s only rule:
fate of the humble bicycle clip. This inexpensive concealing clubs (6) 5 No time for funeral A first prize of £30 for the first
but practical device had a previous quite 22 A positive plan backfires, ceremony? That’s charming correct solution opened on
unexceptionable moment of symbolic significance that’s plain (5) (3) 24 September. There are two
when Philip Larkin, in ‘Church Going’, took off 24 Not long before one 6 Striking miner acting runners-up prizes of £20. (UK
his cycle-clips ‘in awkward reverence’. But articles pleasure of paradise? (5) against property (5, two solvers can choose to receive
of restraint have now to be seen in a different 26 Most merciful end, laid out words) the latest edition of the
social context. Whilst a sprung clip is plainly not in coffin (7) 7 Stab light red and yellow Chambers dictionary instead of
a handcuff, its manacle-like form shades 27 Manages to secure suitable chaffinch (4) cash — ring the word
suggestively into an object of that kind. It speaks, instruction for Christian 8 Sap in cherry, say, short on ‘dictionary’.) Entries to:
tout court, of masculine control. So when put to society (7) nurseryman’s last check (6) Crossword 2375, The Spectator,
use it is likely to appear objectionably provocative. 28 Security organisation 10 Slight suspicion sanitary 22 Old Queen Street, London
As such it has no more place in a modern street seizes Catholic roughly (5) fitting needs engineers in SW1H 9HP. Please allow six
than a wolf whistle. And, we may add, it is not 32 Maintain unity, staying (6) weeks for prize delivery.
as if trouser bottoms may not, at minimal constant (5) 15 Flatten and dry piece of
inconvenience, be tucked into the tops of socks 34 Nelson, for example, plant, one for the
with offence to no one. travelled round to secure scrapbook? (12, two
W.J. Webster what’s needed (6) words)
36 Swept-back peak: it’s a 18 Have not gone out,
The Guardian has never favoured proscriptive hairstyle (6) keeping active forcefully Name
legislation where the voluntary consent of civil 41 Snug? I am, in cloth (5) (5)
society can resolve contentious issues. 42 Big noose prepared for 19 In trouble, prophesy about Address
Nonetheless, the principle of a hands-off beggar (8) church’s response (11)
libertarian modus vivendi must be balanced by 43 Governor’s office for 25 Navy fuss over deck (5)
a recognition that, where communal accord is instance fitted with bunker 26 Fried dough hard to settle
absent or unavailing, a resort to legal coercion (7) — thrown up (5)
may be the pis aller. 44 One held to get on with 29 Unnamed woman’s fizzing
Not everyone will instantly see the application army (7) energy once amazing (6)
of this carefully calibrated approach to soft 31 Composer’s short scarf (6)
furnishings. Yet as our loyal readers often remind Down 35 In to rabbit, take mate (5)
us, the Guardian’s vital role in exposing hidden 3 London pride rather 37 No amateur accepted in
or under-reported sources of malfeasance has Email
looked down on by sailor’s boat (4)
driven forward exciting and responsible girl (11, hyphened) 40 Low emotional state never-
journalism. We are not citing the encouragement 4 Tax heartwood, from this? ending (3)
of idleness and bad posture or the harbouring of (9, two words)
dust mites alone. Though exact figures are difficult
to come by, recent studies indicate that the
‘Othello syndrome’ — smothering by cushion or
pillow — is on the increase. In short, our homes SOLUTION TO 2372 : SPOT-ON
are packed with inviting murder weapons.
Basil Ransome-Davies
The key phrase is LIKE A TANSY (39). The scientific name
of the tansy is TANACETUM VULGARE (4A 12);
NO. 3067: HOLIDAY HELL remaining unclued lights are synonyms of tan (4D, 34), ace
(25, 33) and tum (3, 19).
Once upon a time the Observer ran a column
entitled ‘My crap holiday’. You are invited to First prize Eileen Robinson, Sheffield
provide a tale of travel misery on behalf of a Runners-up Peter Moody, Fareham, Hants;
well-known traveller from the fields of fact Mrs L. Ashley, Shoreham-by-Sea, West Sussex
or fiction. Please email entries of up to 150
words to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on
19 September.
the spectator | 8 september 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk 59
LIFE
No Sacred Cows
The neo-Marxist takeover
of our universities
Toby Young
A
ccording to Greg Lukianoff
and Jonathan Haidt, Amer-
ica’s universities have suc-
cumbed to ‘safetyism’, whereby stu-
dents are protected from anything
that might cause them anxiety or dis-
comfort. In their book The Coddling
of the American Mind, published this
week, they attribute the spread of
‘trigger warnings’, ‘safe spaces’ and
‘bias hotlines’ on campus to a mis-
placed concern about the psychologi-
cal fragility of students. In their view,
millennials aren’t ‘snowflakes’, but
imagine themselves to be on account
of having been surrounded by over-
protective parents and teachers. The
fact they are the first generation of
‘digital natives’ hasn’t helped, since
it has left them marooned in echo
chambers, unaccustomed to chal-
lenge. In addition, students’ familiar-
ity with social media and their abili-
ty to whip up outrage mobs to shame
university authorities into doing their
bidding has shifted the balance of
power in their favour.
No doubt there is some truth in
this, and from a tactical point of view
it may be the most sensible way of
getting university authorities and stu-
dents to engage in a dialogue about
free speech. It enables Lukianoff and
Haidt to draw on a wealth of research
showing that the suppression of dis-
senting views is, in fact, bad for stu-
MICHAEL HEATH
60
dents’ psychological wellbeing. That’s
more pragmatic than complaining
about left-wing bias or a culture of
political correctness, which is likely to
result in the authors being dismissed
as ‘alt-right’ or, worse, ‘white suprem-
acists’. By focusing on mental health
— a big concern of millennials — they
will at least get a hearing.
But reading between the lines, it’s
clear that the real problem on col-
lege campuses is not the whiny, neu-
rotic students, but the post modern
neo-Marxist professors who are
manipulating them. After all, the peo-
ple being no-platformed are not dis-
ciples of crackpot post-structuralists
like Jacques Lacan, whose psycho-
analytical theories about castration
are weird enough to disturb even the
most robust students, but mainstream
conservatives such as Heather Mac-
Donald and Ben Shapiro.
The domination of US universities
by the left, particularly in the humani-
ties and social sciences, is well docu-
mented. In 2016 a survey carried out
by Econ Journal Watch looked at the
voter registration of faculty mem-
bers at 40 leading US universities in
the fields of economics, history, law,
psychology and journalism/commu-
The real nications. It found that Democrats
outnumber Republicans by an average
problem on of 11.5 to one. In psychology, the ratio
campuses is is 17.4 to one; in history, 33.5 to one.
not the whiny, This helps explain a phenomenon
identified by the French economist
students, Thomas Piketty whereby universi-
but the ty graduates have drifted to the left
neo-Marxist over the past 50 years. In a paper last
professors February, he analysed post-electoral
surveys from 1948 to 2017 and found
manipulating that, from the 1940s to the 1960s, the
them more educated voters were, the more
the spectator | 8 september 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk
likely they were to vote Republi-
can. Today, the opposite is true, with
70 per cent of those with a master’s
degree voting for Hillary in 2016.
This phenomenon has coincided
with the growth in the number of
Americans attending university. In
1948, just 6 per cent of voters had
a university degree; by 2016, 13 per
cent had a master’s degree or a PhD.
Piketty also looked at British and
French election data and found the
same developments there: a drift to
the left among university graduates
that went hand-in-hand with a large
increase in the percentage of the
population obtaining degrees. ‘The
trend is virtually identical in the three
countries,’ he wrote.
If more people are going to uni-
versity in Britain, France and Amer-
ica, and graduates are more likely to
vote for left-wing parties, why have
right-wing parties continued to win
elections in those countries? The
answer is simple: Piketty discovered
that voters without university degrees
have moved in the opposite direction.
They used to skew to the left, but now
skew to the right. To a lesser extent,
the same pattern is discernible among
high-income and low-income voters,
with the two groups switching their
political allegiances over the past
50 years — something that Piketty, a
socialist who believes in redistributive
taxation, finds baffling.
My take is we owe the survival of
western capitalism, and the fact we
haven’t been bamboozled by socialist
snake-oil salesmen, to the innate good
sense of the ordinary working man. As
Bertrand Russell said: ‘Men are born
ignorant, not stupid; they are made
stupid by education.’
Spectator Sport
Hail to the Chef
S o many runs, of course — more
than any other Englishman will
score in our time — but of all his
the programme has shown to men’s
cricket in recent years.

Roger Alton innings, one special favourite of mine

was his extraordinary 263 against
Pakistan in the unwavering heat of
Abu Dhabi: the perfect place for
‘the man who can’t sweat’ to ply his
trade. The innings lasted 836 minutes,
N ow, whether there’s anything in
the tank or not, Cook will get an
immense and wholly deserved send-
off at the Oval. It might even put
Henry Blofeld’s pastel-hued retire-
ment lap of honour at Lord’s into the

I
first became aware of Alastair
Cook in the Ashes summer of
2005 when he was named the
Young Cricketer of the Year by the
cricket writers’ association following
some epic performances in the coun-
ty game, not least taking a double
hundred off the touring Australians.
The assembled brains on our table,
including Mike Brearley, agreed that
the boy would go far. And how…
The greatest of current English
players, Cook — happily married
and impeccably polite — set a per-
fect example. There were no night-
club brawls, no pedalos, not even any
light aircraft. Blessed with incred-
ible stamina and single-mindedness,
he knew what worked and kept at it.
He wouldn’t clear the bars when he
went out to bat, but without his hard
work the showier players would not
have had a platform to build on. He is
still young, the Chef — only 33 — and
his mentor Graham Gooch scored a
shedload of Test runs after the age of
34. But he seems to have felt the well
was running dry, or as he put it him-
self: ‘There is nothing left in the tank.’
just a touch under 14 hours, and to
judge by the pictures Cook looked
as immaculately turned-out when he
left the field as when he walked out
to bat. Think of that: total concentra-
tion hour after hour. These days Test
cricketers get lavishly praised if they
can hold things together for a cou-
ple of hours — like Ben Stokes who
knuckled down for more than 100
balls for his 30 in Southampton last
week. Well done, Ben; but it’s not in
the same league as the Chef.
W ill Cook be the last of the great
England openers? You sus-
pect so. Nobody has the patience any
more, or the mental strength. Haseeb
Hameed (remember him?), a former
opening Test partner of Cook’s and
once tipped as the new Boycott, can’t
buy a run these days and has been left
Will Alastair out of the Lancashire squad. What I
Cook be would like to see is the BBC putting
the last of the Cook up posthumously, as it were, as
a candidate for the Sports Personality
great England of the Year. This would not only be a
openers? You fitting tribute but a slight correction
suspect so to the appalling lack of respect that
shade. But isn’t there a tiny bit of us
that yearns for the quiet dignity of
Michael Atherton’s farewell in 2001?
He was dismissed cheaply as England
followed on in the final Ashes Test,
and the crowd, suspecting it might be
his last game, applauded as he left the
field. Atherton turned and raised his
bat to all parts of the ground: he had
not said anything, but this was his last
moment in international cricket. Then
he disappeared into the pavilion.
I’m not a huge fan of sportsmen
announcing they are retiring from
international matches. If you get the
privilege of playing for your country,
it’s your country that decides when
it doesn’t need you any more, rather
than the other way round. In football,
Gary Cahill and Jamie Vardy have
now both joined the ranks of those
who can claim it was their decision
to go, when they mightn’t have been
be picked anyway. And if there isn’t
anything left in the Chef’s tank, the
Oval might have been a good chance
to blood a new opener. Rory Burns,
for example. In a dead rubber. On his
home ground. Just saying…

DEAR MARY YOUR PROBLEMS SOLVED

Q. I am in my mid-sixties and
have started to suffer from
nominal aphasia. At a recent
wedding in the Highlands, two
very familiar faces came towards
me and I couldn’t put a name to
either. Worse, at a wake following
a funeral, one old friend was very
upset when I failed to recognise
her, she claimed wrongly that it
must have been because she had
aged since we’d last met. I seem
to have the rest of my faculties
intact, so I wouldn’t want it to get
around that I am ‘losing it’.
— Name and address withheld
A. As a general rule, at large
events you should always make
a beeline for the seating plan and
scan it thoroughly. You will then
be more able to match the familiar
names with faces. If you are still
at sea when someone comes up to
you, greet them warmly, then ask
in conspiratorial manner: ‘What’s
your news?’ Listen intently. This is
such a common dilemma among
all age groups that it makes a
nonsense of the snobbery against
name badges, which are so useful
at corporate events and which
could also bring huge confidence
to a social event. All too often
people complain afterwards that
they had no idea X or Y was also
there and would love to have
talked to them had they known.
Q. When at the departure gate
waiting to board a seven-hour
flight, I was informed I had been
upgraded for free to business
class. Having just the previous
day completed a 17-hour flight, I
was delighted. Unfortunately, my
wife, who had booked separately,
(and had not endured the l7-hour
flight) was not upgraded. She
took the point of view that if she
could not be upgraded, then I
should not be either. I was given
the option by the airline to (a)
take the upgrade myself (thereby
annoying my wife), (b) give the
upgrade to my wife, or (c) for
neither of us to take the upgrade
and to let it go to a stranger. I was
forced to choose the third option.
Which was the right choice and
how could I have got away with
enjoying the upgrade myself?
— Michael, Dubai
A. In assuming that the airline
would automatically upgrade
the wife of someone who was
being upgraded, your wife played
her cards badly. Once it was
established that only one business-
class seat was available, common
sense decreed that your wife — in
recognition of your flight the day
before — should have graciously
waved you through the curtain.
However, childish competitiveness
plays a part in many marriages.
Therefore what you should have
opted to do was let it be decided
by the toss of a coin. In that way at
least one of you could have been
better rested when you arrived at
your destination.
Q. May I pass on a tip to readers
who are still on holiday? When
snoozing on a lounger, a sleep
mask is more comfortable and
safer than a pair of sunglasses.
— P.W., Santa Margherita, Italy
A. Thank you for sharing this tip.

the spectator | 8 september 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk 61

LIFE

brunch.’ It is illiterate PR-speak — that is a bitter place for any innocent

Food brunch is not a verb, it is an abomina-
Crimes against breakfast tion — and perhaps soon it will be the
only newspaper left.
Tanya Gold Inside there are four restaurants.
There is the Lecture Room and
Library, which has two Michelin stars
and asks its diners to dress ‘art smart’
as if trapped in some nightmarish and
eternal Frieze art show. Beachwear,
the reader is told, is not permitted,
as if the punters of Southend have
just popped into Sketch for chips and
neglected to remove their flip-flops.
There is the Gallery, which is ‘Modern
knick-knack to end its life in.
Again, I am here at the wrong time.
Sketch is an after-midnight destina-
tion, ideal for gurning and — is the
prelude to sex still called flirting? I am
sure that if you are drugged, it is ideal
— the loos look like Alice’s palace, but
black, mirrored and pornographic —
but in mid-morning the parlour seems
in partial recovery from the night
before. Art-smart Londoners wilt in
tepid London air.
I order an English breakfast and
quite soon it comes. It is not like any

S
ketch is a restaurant and art
gallery in Conduit Street, May-
fair. There is a photograph of
the Queen in the lobby. It is a won-
derful photograph of her because she
is covered in white fur and her eyes
are closed, as if she just can’t bear to
look at us any more. She looks like
a tired rabbit human rebuking God.
Sketch, then. Its website shows a
video of a rotating floral egg. It lives
in the former atelier of Christian Dior
in a house by James Wyatt — what is
grander than that? It is a white minia-
ture palace with three bays, which is a
lot in this particular housing crisis, in
which other restaurants must make
do with only one bay, or even no bays.
The effect of preening Age of Enlight-
enment Italianate man cave is ruined,
very slightly, by the presence of a stone
cat — or maybe it’s a dog, it’s not clear
— walking down the outside wall of
the building, as if considering a visit to
Vivienne Westwood opposite, so it can
dress up as a tartan dog-pirate. There is
a fake newspaper — the Sketch Times
— posted outside instead of a menu.
It says: ‘I brunch, you brunch, they
European gastro-brasserie’ (is there
another kind of brasserie?) which is
very pink, and the Glade, which is very
In mid- floral. Then there is the Parlour, which
is decorated as the inside of Damien
morning, Hirst’s brain, but in the 1990s, before
Sketch seems he moved to the Cotswolds to spend
in partial time with cows. It is raging whimsy
with neon and florals; there is, for
recovery instance, a stag’s head on the wall, with
from the a light fitting instead of a throat. It’s
night before a cocaine dream with no cocaine, and
‘Seriously babe — I have my own island!’
English breakfast I have had before.
An English breakfast is quite hard to
get wrong, especially with Michelin
stars burning in the fake library
upstairs. You need only a reputable
butcher, a conscious chef and a stove.
What you must not do to an English
breakfast is muck about with it.
Sketch does not know this. It
delivers a gloopy mass, which I am
sure is not mine, until I realise with
horror that it has chopped up every
element of the English breakfast —
bacon, sausage, egg, tomato, mush-
room — and stirred them into a foul
£15 English breakfast stew. What it
has tried to do, I think, is to make an
English breakfast into a salad, and
it joins the list of the worst crimes
against food, to be judged in some
future gastro-brasserie court. It is com-
pletely inedible, and I can only won-
der — how did the bread, safe in its
basket, escape this English breakfast
pogrom? Once fashionable, Sketch
deserves no such attention nowadays.
Sketch, 9 Conduit St, Mayfair, London
W1S 2XG, tel: 020 7659 4500.

MIND YOUR LANGUAGE

Optics
If you’d like to buy a copy of
Newton’s Opticks: or, A Treatise
of the Reflexions, Refractions,
Inflexions and Colours of Light,
published in 1704, there’s one on
AbeBooks for £131,245.03, plus
£12 P&P. Do people just click on
such items, I wonder, and wait
for the book to plop through the
letterbox a few days later?
Anyway, there is a meaning
of optics now being heavily used
that Newton wouldn’t have
understood. It is not the first time
this has happened, because, for
pub-going folk, optics are the
measures attached to upside-
down bottle of spirits to dispense
reliably mean doses. Optic in this
sense began as a trade name and
has been in use only since 1926.
Newton did not invent the
term optics for the science of
visible light. It had been brought
into English from Latin in 1579
by Leonard Digges (not to be
confused with his grandson
Leonard, the translator of the
nicely titled romance Gerardo,
the Unfortunate Spaniard). Optics
was originally regarded as plural
in English, since it derived from
the plural Greek word optika,
‘optical matters’. But optics has
been construed as singular since
the 19th century.
The overused new sense
of optics is most commonly
found in political contexts, for
it simply means ‘appearances’,
which are professional life or
death for politicians. ‘The optics
were important for Turnbull,’
explained a piece in the Guardian
on Australian politics, ‘Addressing
the nation with Scott Morrison
and Mathias Cormann by his
side sent a strong message to his
internal foes.’ It’s all to do with
what people perceive (a word that
has acquired a connotation of
mistaken perception).
Oddly enough appearances
long ago found a place in the
theories of astronomy, in which
optics played such an important
part. To save (or, earlier, salve)
the appearances meant ‘to
accommodate a hypothesis
to observations’, such as the
movement of planets.
The earlier form of the
phrase was save the phenomena,
transferring the Greek word
directly into English. But in
parallel (as in John Florio’s
translation of Montaigne),
save appearances also bore the
sense of keeping them up, like
Hyacinth Bucket. Optics meant
a lot to her. — Dot Wordsworth

62 the spectator | 8 september 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk

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