Trump in space Christopher Buckley O The mad genius of Nikola Tesla Christopher Priest

30 june 2018 [ £4.50 www.spectator.co.uk [ est. 1828

MY FIRST GUN IN DEFENCE MELISSA OF FIFA KITE TIM BUILD WIGMORE BETTER MOSQUES ED HUSAIN Angela’s ashes Merkel’s authority is collapsing, says Fredrik Erixon BAHRAIN BD3.20. CANADA C$7.50. EURO ZONE €6.95 SOUTH AFRICA ZAR84.90 UAE AED34.00. USA US$7.20.

established 1828

An unhappy birthday

hen Nye Bevan launched the NHS strokes compares very poorly with that of owned monopoly. Every time anyone pro- on 5 July 1948, most of the British other developed countries. poses an innovation involving the private Wpopulation could not expect to An international comparison last year sector, even in a limited capacity and one celebrate a 70th birthday. Life expectancy by the US healthcare charity the Common- which would fully preserve the principle at birth for men was 66 and for women 71. wealth Fund says it all. The NHS came top of healthcare being free at the point of That this has since grown to 79.1 years and out of 11 countries on measures of ‘equity’ delivery, it is killed off by the unions, who 82.8 years respectively is in part — though and ‘care process’. It was third on ‘access’ begin to wail about ‘creeping privatisation’. far from entirely — thanks to the NHS. and — a surprise to many, especially after Opponents of reform have even managed to Many insist that Bevan’s description of the fiasco of the £10 billion abandoned NHS damn the concept of the ‘internal market’ — the service as the ‘envy of the world’ remains IT system — ‘administrative efficiency’. Yet despite the fact that many users of the NHS true. For Lord Lawson, a former editor of when it came to ‘healthcare outcomes’ it appreciate the limited choice it has provided this magazine, the NHS is ‘the closest thing slipped to second-bottom place. As a safety in how, when and where they have an opera- the English people have to a religion’ — an net for those who cannot afford cover, the tion or other procedure. The days when we assertion confirmed during the opening cer- NHS is second to none — which is why it were offered only a take-it-or-leave-it option emony of the London Olympics, when NHS comes to be used by so many health tourists at our local hospital are easily forgotten. nurses jumped joyfully up and down on old- Out of political fear, the government has fashioned hospital beds. Moreover, public When it comes to saving your life, made its latest injection of cash dependent affection for the NHS seems impervious to an NHS hospital would not only on a handful of efficiency measures, scandals such as Mid Staffs and, as revealed be your first choice needlessly limiting innovation through tap- last week, a fatal policy of over-prescribing ping a wider source of healthcare provid- opioids at Gosport Memorial Hospital. who are not strictly entitled to its free care. ers. Yet what surely matters to NHS patients Yet the accolades awarded to the NHS But when it comes to saving your life, an is whether they can get the treatment they are only half-deserved. The principle that NHS hospital would not be your first choice. need when they need it, not whether every underpinned its foundation — that health- Some insist that the NHS’s shortcomings clinic is owned by the state and every hos- care should be available to everyone, could be overcome simply by funding it bet- pital doctor in the government’s pay. There equally, regardless of the means to pay — is ter. It is true that, as a share of GDP, Brit- ought to be room for the NHS to learn from rightly valued. No one wants to go back to ain spends a little less on healthcare than its other health services, many of which make the days when parents would avoid taking neighbours — 9.7 per cent compared with use of competing health providers. sick children to see a doctor for fear of being 11.3 per cent in Germany and 11 per cent No amount of money will ever be enough unable to pay the bill. But when it comes to in France. The lower level of funding means for a health service, especially one which the quality of care, the NHS does not fare so British hospitals have fewer doctors, nurses, many users have come to think of as a health well. A joint report this week by the Health CT scanners and MRI machines per capita. insurance policy without limitations. As The- Foundation, the IFS, the King’s Fund and Yet few really believe that the extra £20 bil- odore Dalrymple once observed in this mag- the Nuffield Trust puts it bluntly: ‘The UK lion a year which the government has prom- azine, if every NHS patient were to be offered appears to perform less well than similar ised the NHS by 2023 will end the perpetual every treatment which could possibly benefit countries on the overall rate at which peo- sense of crisis or, on its own, raise cancer sur- them, all other economic activity would have ple die when successful medical care could vival rates to those of other countries. to cease. Yet the NHS could and should be have saved their lives.’ The problem the government has is that able to improve without vast increases in While the NHS is good at managing some it has become politically difficult to enact budget. Misplaced sentiment is keeping the conditions such as diabetes, the UK’s mor- reforms which involve anything other than NHS in the form it assumed in the 1940s. On tality rate from cancer, heart disease and the NHS remaining a state-run and state- its 70th birthday, it really deserves better. the spectator | 30 june 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk 3 @HUWBBC

I spy, p30

A new Huw, p9

Kind of blue, p62

THE WEEK BOOKS & ARTS

3 Leading article 12 Angela’s ashes BOOKS 6 Portrait of the Week The end of the Merkel project 30 Rodric Braithwaite Fredrik Erixon The Secret World, 9 Diary The north-south divide, by Christopher Andrew ‘fizzy’ horses, and men on diets 13 Lachlan Mackinnon Sarah Sands ‘From the Hampshire Chronicle’: 32 Jeff Noon a poem on recent crime fiction 10 Politics May’s cruellest month Emily Rhodes James Forsyth 14 The return of walls Mass immigration has destroyed Crudo, by Olivia Laing 11 The Spectator’s Notes hopes of a borderless world 34 Sara Wheeler The NHS’s cold-hearted ways Tim Marshall The Crossway, by Guy Stagg Charles Moore 18 A cry for help 35 Jonathan Mirsky 17 Rod Liddle It’s harder than ever to find a nanny Blessings from Beijing, Save me from Red Hen Syndrome Tanya Gold by Greg C. Bruno 18 Barometer Nursing shortages, 20 Dr Spacelove Michael Beloff goal sprees, defence spending Is Trump’s new branch of the Rather His Own Man, 21 Ancient and modern military such a bad idea? by Geoffrey Robertson Fat was not a Greek issue Christopher Buckley 36 William Cook 25 James Delingpole 22 The Fifa paradox Wild Signs and Star Paths, A bruising encounter with The association is corrupt, but by Tristan Gooley Cambridge cry-bullies it has done wonders for football Patrick Hare ‘Homemade’: a poem 27 Letters Harvard’s racial quotas, Tim Wigmore bitcoin, blackbird song 24 The road less travelled 37 Michael Tanner I don’t have wanderlust – Wilhelm Furtwängler, 28 Any other business by Roger Allen Carmakers are an undeniable and that’s OK Leo McKinstry Yiannis Baboulias voice in the Brexit debate The People vs Tech, Martin Vander Weyer by Jamie Bartlett 38 James McNamara A Weekend in New York, by Benjamin Markovits Christopher Priest Tesla, by Richard Munson

Cover by Morten Morland. Drawings by Michael Heath, Castro, Evans, Robert Thompson, Nick Newman, Jonesy, Percival, Adam Singleton, RGJ, Geoff Thompson. 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 (editorial); [email protected] (for publication); [email protected] (advertising); Advertising enquiries: 020 7961 0222 Subscription and delivery queries Spectator Subscriptions Dept., 17 Perrymount Rd, Haywards Heath RH16 3DH; Tel: 0330 3330 050; Email: [email protected]; Rates for a basic annual subscription in the UK: £111; Europe: £185; Australia: A$279; New Zealand: A$349; and £195 in all other countries. To order, go to www.spectator. co.uk/A151A or call 0330 3330 050 and quote A151A; Newsagent queries Spectator Circulation Dept, 22 Old Queen Street, London SW1H 9HP, Tel: 020 7961 0200, Fax: 020 7681 3773, Email: [email protected]; Distributor Marketforce, 161 Marsh Wall, London, E14 9AP. Tel. 0203 787 9001. www.marketforce.co.uk Vol 337; no 9905 © 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 | 30 june 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk The make-up artist, p44 Why do cats walk sideways? p36

A pilgrim’s progress, p34 LIFE 39 Andy Miller LIFE Nikola Tesla was mad. For Less, by Andrew Sean Greer 55 High life Taki relaxation, he shot 150,000 volts 40 Jonathan McAloon Low life Jeremy Clarke through his own brain on recent short story collections 56 Real life Melissa Kite Christopher Priest, p38 41 Ian Thomson 57 Wild life Aidan Hartley All Gates Open, by Rob Young Bridge Susanna Gross Does Trump’s chief of staff and Irmin Schmidt have an inbox labelled

AND FINALLY . . . ‘What fresh hell is this’? ARTS Christopher Buckley, p20 42 Ed Husain 52 Notes on… The problem with British mosques Feminist children’s literature Melanie McDonagh I once met a Beefeater who 44 Exhibitions Frida Kahlo Martin Gayford 58 Chess Raymond Keene looked like Paddington Bear Competition Lucy Vickery but had guarded Rudolf Hess 45 Opera in Spandau prison Roméo et Juliette; The Abduction 59 Crossword Doc from the Seraglio 60 No sacred cows Tanya Gold, p62 Richard Bratby Toby Young 46 Radio Kate Chisholm Battle for Britain Theatre Michael Heath An Octoroon; 61 Sport Roger Alton The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie Your problems solved Lloyd Evans Mary Killen 48 Television James Walton 62 Food Tanya Gold 50 Cinema Leave No Trace Mind your language Deborah Ross Dot Wordsworth The heckler Antony Gormley Mary Wakefield 51 Live music Taylor Swift Michael Hann

CONTRIBUTORS Christopher Buckley is Tim Wigmore is a sports Sir Rodric Braithwaite Michael Tanner is The Christopher Priest, who a political satirist and former journalist. He is a winner of the was British ambassador to Spectator’s opera critic and reviews a new biography speechwriter for George H.W. CMJ Young Cricket Writer of Moscow from 1988 to 1992. an acclaimed biographer of of Nikola Tesla on p38, is Bush. His novels include The the Year Award and his first He is the author, most recently, Wagner. He reviews a life of the author of many novels White House Mess. He writes book is Second XI: Cricket in of Armageddon and Paranoia: Furtwängler on p37. including The Prestige, about Donald Trump’s new its Outposts. He writes about The Nuclear Confrontation. which featured Tesla. ‘space force’ on p20. the Fifa paradox on p22. He writes about spies on p30. the spectator | 30 june 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk 5 Home cease operations in Britain entirely if there unavailable to readers in the European was no deal. Scotland’s biggest abattoir Union, more than a month after the he Commons voted in favour of a halted operations because of a shortage of General Data Protection Regulation law Tnew runway at Heathrow by 415 carbon dioxide to stun pigs; supplies of keg came into force on 25 May. European votes to 119. Boris Johnson, the Foreign beer for World Cup football fans were also Union leaders held a special summit Secretary, who had previously promised affected. The government had stern words over migration, although Poland, the to lie in front of the bulldozers, absented for fat children, half of whom it plans to do Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary himself from the vote, instead meeting the away with by 2030. did not attend. Migrant arrivals over the Deputy Foreign Minister of Afghanistan Mediterranean had numbered about 43,000 in Kabul. ‘My resignation would have halid Ali, 28, a plumber from so far this year, with another thousand achieved absolutely nothing,’ he said. KEdmonton in north London, who was drowned. Spain and Greece received 30 per Greg Hands resigned as trade minister arrested last year in Parliament Street with cent of the total each and Italy 40 per cent. because he opposed the runway. The three knives, was convicted of preparing Scottish government said it still supported an act of terrorism; he had spent five resident Recep Tayyip Erdogan was the runway even though SNP MPs at years from 2011 in Afghanistan making Pre-elected as President of Turkey, Westminster abstained. Spanish-owned bombs to maim and kill coalition troops. with 53 per cent of the vote; the post of Ferrovial, which operates Heathrow, is to The Supreme Court ruled that mixed- prime minister is now to be abolished. In move its international headquarters from sex couples should be able to enter civil Zimbabwe, two people died in an explosion Britain to Amsterdam because of Brexit. partnerships. Five new residential centres at an election rally addressed by President Friends of Gavin Williamson, the Defence for women offenders were announced in Emmerson Mnangagwa in Bulawayo. Secretary, denied he had threatened to place of new prisons. Uber, which had its In Ethiopia, two people were killed and topple the Prime Minister unless defence licence to operate its taxi-hailing service dozens injured in an explosion at a political spending was increased. After a meeting refused by Transport for London last rally for the new Prime Minister, Abiy between the two, Theresa May had refused September, was granted a 15-month licence Ahmed, in Addis Ababa. In Argentina, to say that Britain would remain a ‘tier one’ at Westminster Magistrates’ Court. unions held a general strike in protest power. Liz Truss, the Chief Secretary to the against the austerity terms attached to Treasury, said during a speech she made a $50 billion loan from the International at the London School of Economics: ‘It is Abroad Monetary Fund. not macho just to demand more money.’ Dozens of houses were evacuated as fire he United States Supreme Court he Duke of Cambridge visited Jordan, spread across Saddleworth Moor on the Truled in favour of the ban by President TIsrael and the Palestinian territories; outskirts of Manchester. Donald Trump on people entering America he met relatives of the late Rachel Cohen, from several Muslim-majority countries: who was hidden from the Gestapo by he EU Withdrawal Bill became law but Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. Mr Princess Alice, the mother of the Duke Tthe cabinet remained bafflingly divided Trump chided Harley-Davidson for plans of Edinburgh, in her house in Greece. In over Brexit. At an event for EU diplomats to produce motorcycles outside America China, more than 5,000 residents in south- in London, Boris Johnson, asked about to avoid EU tariffs, in a continuing tit- east Jiangxi province gave up the coffins corporate anxieties over a so-called hard for-tat over trade terms. American news that they had prepared for their deaths as Brexit, was reported to have said: ‘Fuck sites, including the Los Angeles Times the authorities imposed a new policy business.’ Airbus had said that it could and the New York Daily News, remained of cremation. CSH

6 the spectator | 30 june 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk ECONOMIC DISRUPTOR OF THE YEAR AWARDS

In partnership with

Patience has its rewards

In the last of our series on ‘The Lifecycle the patience to build real success. Eventually of an Entrepreneur’, Martin Vander Weyer they’ll be spoiled for choice.’ talks to serial entrepreneur and investor Finally, we reach the happy end of Luke Johnson, who also chairs StartUp the entrepreneurial lifecycle when that Britain, a national campaign in support choice has been made and a business sale of entrepreneurship. has been completed. Alan Hooks, head of wealth planning at our sponsor Julius Baer, ery few business plans survive their observes: ‘For the serial entrepreneur, a sale first interaction with the real world,’ is simply an opportunity to move on to the ‘V Martin Vander Weyer says Luke Johnson, whose own ven- next venture. But for others it’s a once-in- tures have ranged from Pizza Express to a-lifetime rebalancing — a shift from being fresh fish distribution and the UK’s larg- the discipline of scarcity of capital, relying fully in command of a business to relying on est chain of dental surgeries. ‘Entrepreneurs on retained profits and borrowing, can be others to guide you through the unfamiliar have the advantage that they can adapt positive because it forces the entrepreneur subject matter of investment and tax. swiftly — “pivot”, as they say in Silicon Val- to be more ingenious. Raising a load of capi- ‘As advisers, we have to build trust over ley — to satisfy real demand, or improve tal is no reason in itself to celebrate — and time, earning the right to help clients reset their product and its distribution. Bigger businesses like Tesla that are great at raising their priorities and objectives. We have to companies find it much more difficult to money but have never made a profit, are not understand each client’s needs, and often change course in that way. good role models.’ find the entrepreneurial principles are the ‘I’m a great believer in incubating a busi- As for the right moment to exit, Johnson same for their personal circumstances. These ness quietly: pivoting it until the model says: ‘I never go into a business worrying days the drive is towards simplicity and works. Maybe I’m unconventional, but I obsessively about when to sell. As a private transparency rather than complexity, par- believe raising money too early — through equity investor I offer “patient capital”: I’ll ticularly when it comes to organising your crowdfunding, for example — can be a dan- stay in for ten years if the business is going in long-term affairs: wealth planning that sus- gerous thing. I’ve seen it too often in the the right direction, and I’m unlikely to back tains and incentivises the next generation, chain restaurant business: you open a cou- entrepreneurs whose first question is “How and stands the test of time.’ ple of outlets, raise money, then open a are we going to get out?”. There are many whole lot more before you realise your con- myths in this game, and one of them is the We’re currently selecting the shortlist for the cept doesn’t work at scale. It puts you under myth of overnight success. I want to back Economic Disruptor of the Year Awards. all sorts of stressful obligations, whereas people who care about rising value but have More news soon! www.spectator.co.uk/disruptor

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n this gloriously sunny week, the n Tuesday evening I was at a Icavalry horses are off on their summer Odinner for City UK discussing break to Bodney, Norfolk. They can be whether London helps or hinders seen prancing across Holkham beach, the rest of the country. As a former scattering oyster catchers, pushchairs, editor of the Evening Standard my Cath Kidston picnics and naturists. position was formerly straightforward, Everybody loves to see the horses, some London was all that was best about plunging into the sea, others shying the UK. Since taking up the editorship gingerly from the spray. I am especially of the Today programme, and seeing keen, having watched some of them the rest of the country, I am more Trooping the Colour a couple of weeks as Civilisation set on Love Island. The ambivalent. London’s economic success ago. Charles Moore has already noted reason was that millennials prefer pink is undeniable and its creative spirit approvingly that, when Field Marshal carpets to red ones and drink slightly less wondrous. I walked from the Tate to the Guthrie took a tumble, his horse than their elders, and worse. I am not saying new Bridge Theatre by City Hall the stood immaculately still. It is a slightly there is a London/country divide, but we other evening and the stretch has been equine-centric view of the episode, but take our pleasures differently in Norfolk. transformed. But the capital does not not heartless, since Guthrie is on the Our neighbours were busy organising their understand the simple joy of hammering mend. Major-General Ben Bathurst, stall for the village fête last weekend, with a nail into a log. It is suffering from commander of the Household Division, its celebrated attraction: hammer the nail ennui. And if London has lost its ability drops in to see us in Marham, a little into the log. A few miles away, my brother, to talk to the country, it is a problem. It way between Bodney and the coast, and a parish councillor and cabaret artiste, leads to a regional exasperation. If Boris I question him about the programme was off to his fairy fête, dressed as Game Johnson did say ‘fuck business’, he might notes for Trooping the Colour. His horse, of Thrones meets Widow Twankey. as well have said ‘fuck London’. Atticus, for instance, was described as ‘fizzy’. Is that a euphemism for ‘total ind you, I am told Birmingham nightmare’? One of the jolliest facts I Mfeels the same about Manchester, pick up is that neither the riders nor and Sheffield distrusts Leeds. They are the horses are necessarily experienced. not all so friendly outside London. At If it feels to the audience as if a horse a Today programme broadcast from might take off at any moment, the Gateshead on Saturday, we asked same thought has occurred to the guests to draw their north-south divide. rider. I suspect the Queen, an expert Mark Tewdwr-Jones, from Newcastle horsewoman, enjoys the mischief of this. University, got into trouble for putting Manchester, Leeds and York in the ears ago, I witnessed a cavalry officer south, arguing they were all in London’s Ybringing his troop to wish happy sphere of influence. On our online birthday to his father outside his home comment section, the public drew its in a narrow road in Fulham. It was a own lines. I am sorry to say these maps sweet idea and his father looked out of descended into shapes of male genitalia. his window in delight. His expression changed when a horse began kicking alking of the male body, I notice dents in a row of expensive German Tthat London men are much more cars. That unnerved the other mounts; interested in thinness than are women. one promptly collapsed on the road. The The reverberations of Huw Edwards’s celebratory scene ended with a horse diet continue to ripple through the Fitbit ambulance, winch and a dejected officer set. Photos in the Mail of Lenny Henry’s explaining the destruction to the police. diminished form elicit fresh admiration. The horses deserve their Norfolk holiday. The first truly reduced public figure I remember was the former chancellor e have reached peak summer, Nigel Lawson. I would love to talk to him Wliterally. And the weather is on Today about the long-term effects of probably the Brexiteers’ best argument, his diet, but he has a tendency to wander since it would be madness to go abroad. off the subject. I have lived through an This is the great week of summer parties age where women’s weight has been in London, including the US Embassy discussed ad nauseum. I am ashamed and the FT. Last week was the V&A to say I remember a picture caption summer party, described to its director beneath an actress in my old newspaper Tristram Hunt by one disbelieving guest that read simply: ‘Piling on the pounds.’ the spectator | 30 june 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk 9 POLITICS | JAMES FORSYTH May’s cruellest month

heresa May is about to embark on by those close to May to remember that if ply upbraiding and denouncing the Europe- the toughest month of her premier- Britain can’t get a deal with the EU, the ans for being freeloaders. Rather, they fear Tship to date. Next week, she must per- whole Brexit process could collapse. This is that he’ll go further than that and imply that suade her cabinet to agree a common posi- the inverse of May’s old ‘no deal is better those countries that aren’t meeting the two tion on Britain’s future relationship with the than a bad deal’ line. per cent target can’t be certain that they’re European Union. The following week, she One of the most interesting questions is still covered by the American security will attend a Nato summit which may well what May will do on EU immigration. The umbrella. This would be music to Vladimir shake the foundations of the alliance. Then, EU won’t agree anything more than a fair- Putin’s ears and create the most serious without a moment to catch her breath, she ly plain vanilla trade treaty without some- crisis for the western alliance since France must host Donald Trump when he visits the thing approaching free movement. But Sajid withdrew from Nato in 1966. UK. As if that weren’t enough, she must also Javid, the new Home Secretary, doesn’t want Another worry of senior figures in gov- win a Commons vote on Britain leaving the any compromise over immigration, and a ernment is what Trump might propose to customs union. UK/EU deal that allowed something very promote détente with Russia. One frets It is tempting to predict that the cabinet close to free movement wouldn’t pass mus- that Trump might arrive at the summit meeting at Chequers in the coming days will ter with many Leave voters. and announce that he has secured peace in result in yet another elaborate compromise. However fractious the Chequers meet- Europe through a deal with Putin that will After all, that is what happened when the ing becomes, it should be more harmonious see everyone pulling back their forces from Brexit inner cabinet was last summoned in the border between Nato and Russia. February to her country retreat for a ‘crunch However fractious the Chequers What makes things so awkward for May meeting’. It ended in everyone agreeing that meeting becomes, it should be more is that Trump will fly straight from the Nato progress had been made towards ‘managed summit to this country for a three-day visit. divergence’. One of those present recalls harmonious than the Nato summit This will leave May walking a diplomatic that the drinks before dinner were one of the tightrope, as she is asked repeatedly wheth- few times this government seemed at ease than the Nato summit. Trans-Atlantic rela- er she agrees with what her guest said or not. with itself. Remainers and Leavers were, for tions are already at their lowest ebb in dec- The last great July test for May will come once, content in each other’s company. ades, as the US and the EU engage in a tariff when the Trade Bill returns to the House A repeat of that seems unlikely. Time fight. The summit will give Trump the chance of Commons. Tory rebels are looking for is running out. The government must now to open another front in this war. He’ll be opportunities to keep the UK in a customs make decisions on some of the most con- able to berate — and with some justification union, which they could do by amending troversial issues, such as the customs union. — Germany, and all but three of Nato’s EU one of the Brexit bills. They agreed not to Tensions within the cabinet are far worse members, for not spending the alliance min- hijack the recently passed EU withdrawal than they were in February. The Brexit Sec- imum of two per cent of GDP on defence bill only because May promised that they retary, David Davis, has, in the words of one last year. He’ll be able to ask why the Unit- could have this debate — and vote — when well-connected Tory, ‘been goaded beyond ed States, which accounted for more than 70 the Trade Bill returned to the Commons. So endurance’ by Theresa May’s sherpa Olly per cent of Nato spending in 2017, should Parliament’s big Brexit battle is now just Robbins taking ever greater charge of the devote more resources to the defence of the weeks away. negotiations. Boris Johnson grows more continent of Europe than Europeans do. A defeat would further weaken May’s frustrated. He believes that the government The success of May’s visit to Washington authority and deepen splits within the Tory is stumbling into an unfulfilling Brexit and in 2017 was getting Trump to publicly com- party. It would make it less likely that she that long-term opportunities are being jetti- mit to Nato. As she recently confided to the will be allowed a dignified exit. And it would soned for fear of creating short-term disrup- cabinet, however, in private he still com- further weaken her hand with Brussels. tion. Meanwhile, Greg Clark, the Business plains that other countries are ‘not playing Why should the EU take seriously Brit- Secretary, is advocating a soft Brexit. He their part’. Whitehall’s great fear is that in ain’s proposals on customs, if Theresa May wants his colleagues to listen to the warn- Brussels, Trump won’t be satisfied with sim- can’t win parliament’s backing? What’s ings of business, rather than dismiss them. the point of negotiating with her, when the It is hard to see how the government Commons will deliver what the EU wants: can agree a position that can satisfy both a customs union? sides. I also understand that cabinet Brexi- If May can make it through the next four teers want May to state publicly what she weeks unscathed, she will have earned her won’t accept in the negotiations. They know summer break. She’ll be able to work on her that the red lines she drew in her Lancas- party conference speech with confidence ter House speech in January 2017 have been that she’ll get to deliver it. But if everything rubbed out during the past few months. that could go wrong this month does, her They want to put new ones in place. position will look even more precarious. All the signs are that May is planning to soften her Brexit position still further. ‘Watch your language, trooper SPECTATOR.CO.UK/COFFEEHOUSE Already, influential Leavers are being urged — you swear like a foreign secretary.’ Hourly updates from Parliament and beyond.

10 the spectator | 30 june 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk Charles Moore

ordon Brown, echoing Aneurin getting ‘value’ for the money it foregoes GBevan, says that the greatest in tax relief is ‘wrongly conceived, gift that the NHS brings to people is as well as being morally repugnant’. ‘serenity’. He is surely right that this Charity is a vital social principle, but is what it brought 70 years ago — for not a government one. Britain has for the simple, important reason that centuries been outstanding for ‘the depth people would no longer need to say and quantum of its charitable impulse’. of treatment, ‘I just can’t afford it’. Don’t interfere with it, says Ruffer. But comparable ‘serenity’ is provided, in different ways, in, for example, e went to the perfect midsummer Germany, the Netherlands and Australia. Wwedding of my wife’s god- Defenders of today’s NHS have to daughter in Norfolk this weekend. The explain not why it is more serene than two sides to the story and, if Mr Welby’s service was pure Book of Common pre-1948, but whether it matches the piece is right, the conquest will help end Prayer, omitting only some of the longer current arrangements of comparable the fighting more quickly. Morally, it is not prayers and the woman saying ‘obey’ countries. ‘Serenity’ is not the word one much fun having to choose between Saudi and (I think) ‘serve’. The service states would apply to many British hospitals and Iran, but at least the former is the ally the theological nature of marriage today. In these Notes last week, I of the West. And there, perhaps, lies the (‘signifying unto us the mystical union mentioned the fear felt by the old. I did explanation of the bias. Lazy media will that is betwixt Christ and His Church’), not mention one key reason for it. In a have poor local sources, but strong links and then its purposes. These are 1) nationalised bureaucratic system, each with NGOs whose vested and ideological children, ‘to be brought up in the fear patient is a cost. So the NHS is exactly interest lies in blaming arms-supplying and nurture of the Lord’. 2) as ‘a remedy the opposite of, say, a restaurant or a western governments and their Gulf friends against sin, and to avoid fornication’. plumbing business, which lives by getting for Muslim ills. This gets close to fake news. 3) for ‘the mutual society, help and more customers. A cost is a burden, and comfort, that the one ought to have so the system instinctively identifies new body called the Charity Tax of the other, both in prosperity and in those costs which are most burdensome A Commission has been asked to look adversity’. I found myself checking off and easiest to jettison. These are the into the £3.7 billion tax reliefs given to how many of these concepts would win old. Thus a feeling seeps through the charities. The Financial Ombudsman, the assent of most people in modern machine that the old are to be fobbed Sir Nicholas Montagu, chairs the Britain. None of the religious stuff, of off, sent home, neglected, drugged up commission. He asks, ‘Are the right charities course. No duty (as opposed to desire) or, in the worst cases (if stories like benefiting and should we start asking some to have children, or to have them in that of Gosport are indicative), put to awkward questions about whether there wedlock, or to bring them up godly. death. However great the kindness of might be more to show for the money if we No remedy for fornication, because individual staff, the internal logic of the distinguished between charities?’ He invites it is thought to need no remedy. That system itself is ruthlessly cold-hearted. the views of interested parties. Jonathan leaves only ‘the mutual society, help Ruffer, the rescuer of Auckland Castle, and comfort’, and even this, nowadays, edia bias consists not so much in about whom I have written in these pages, is freely available — at least in theory Mthe exact words of a report, but has sent Sir Nicholas an interesting reply, — just as much to couples unmarried in how it is framed. Ask of any story, based on his experience of giving away as to married. So what’s left? Two lines ‘Who is being put in the dock here?’ £200 million (95 per cent of his post-tax of Larkin, from different poems, seem and you will soon see where the bias income) to charitable causes. He strongly relevant. The first is about each person lies. A current example is the horrible challenges the idea of the ‘right’ charities. discovering in a church ‘A hunger in war in Yemen. The Saudi-led Coalition The principle of charity, Ruffer says, ‘is an himself to be more serious’; the other, of is always in the dock. Until an excellent absolute’. Of course, charities should be course, is ‘What will survive of us is love’. short piece in Monday’s Times by Peter policed to check abuses, and there could be The thought is inspired by a double Welby (the son of the Archbishop of a redefinition, in law, of what a charitable grave (the Arundel Tomb in Chichester Canterbury and an interfaith worker activity is; but once one charity starts to be cathedral), but it is about marriage. in a region where that concept remains officially defined as ‘better’ than another, unfamiliar), I have read or heard nothing the whole principle of charity falls apart. or about 50 years now, men have in Britain criticising the Islamist Houthi The state takes over, prioritising, directing Flong ceded those ‘obey’ and ‘serve’ rebels and their Iranian backers. The and distorting the charitable impulse: promises to women’s rights. So shouldn’t frame of the recent story has been the charities become, in effect, state agencies. women reciprocate and release men terrible prospect of a Coalition conquest This compromises the freestanding nature from the promise (given most good- of Hodeidah. I do not doubt that the of charity and the free-will gift of the donor. heartedly on Saturday), ‘with all my situation there is grim, but there will be For the same reason, the idea of HMRC worldly goods I thee endow’? the spectator | 30 june 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk 11 Angela’s ashes In Berlin and Brussels, Merkel’s authority is collapsing

FREDRIK ERIXON

his is not about whether Mrs Mer- Earlier this month, he staged a press confer- ity. But Seehofer says he is certainly acting kel stays as chancellor next week ence with Horst Seehofer, Merkel’s interi- in solidarity, with Italy and Austria. There ‘Tor not,’ said Xavier Bettel, the or minister, coalition partner and chairman are now two kinds of European solidarity Prime Minister of Luxembourg, as he came of the Christian Social Union (CSU) party. now: the Merkel type and the Kurz type. out of an emergency summit on immigra- Seehofer now wants Germany to turn To survive, Merkel must find a way to tion last weekend. He was joking. That was away migrants who don’t have documents reconcile the two, but she is perhaps the only exactly what the meeting had been about, or who first applied for asylum in another leader in Europe who thinks that is still pos- and everybody there knew it. The summit EU country. Merkel has refused. If the dec- sible. The last few years have underlined the was Operation Save Mutti. Their mission: ades-old CDU-CSU alliance ends over this growing importance many voters place on to stop Merkel’s government collapsing by issue, Merkel’s government would collapse. the nation state and its borders. Recent elec- thrashing out a tough stance on immigra- Until recently, it was assumed that Mer- tions have shown how willing voters are to tion to assuage her critics. It’s quite flock to parties who articulate this a turnaround. Once, Merkel was point, even in vulgar terms. Seehofer queen of Europe, now she’s a beg- is panicked because his CSU is fac- gar. Suddenly, European politics has ing huge pressure from Alternative changed beyond recognition. für Deutschland, the five-year-old Merkel may, by now, regret anti-immigration party, ahead of the standing for re-election last year. state election in Bavaria in October. There was a suspicion that she only AfD has plenty to say about the 1.4 did so to put things right in Euro- million who have sought asylum in land and ensure the history books Germany over the past three years, would commend her open-door pol- and the estimated €20 billion-a-year icy towards refugees. If so, that was cost of managing the issues accom- a catastrophic misjudgment. The panying the influx. The latest scandal tide has now turned on migration in Germany involves the migration — in Germany and across Europe. agency granting asylum — to possi- Those making the case for an open ble criminals — in return for cash. Europe are haunted and chastised. The investigation is ongoing, and They are losing elections. Italy’s concerns only one agency office in new coalition of left- and right- Bremen, but it feeds the general wing populists is a fiesta of politi- idea of things being out of control. cal contradictions, but they share one simple goal: to stop the migra- ountries to the north, south and tion population from growing. They C east of Germany have already have little sympathy for Merkel moved away from Merkel’s vision of and feel no obligation to offer help a European refugee policy. They dif- in her hour of need. As far as the fer on many things, but believe that Italians can work out, the verdict is while open borders worked during in: Merkel was wrong and she’s lost. the late 1990s, when migration flows Italy’s government wants a were far smaller and public concerns European refugee policy that is far lower, they do not work now. The pretty similar to what Austria is advocating. kel would last until the next German elec- Nordic countries are sympathetic to Ber- Sebastian Kurz, Austria’s young and ener- tions in three years’ time. Now, many are lin and to Merkel’s campaign to get all EU getic Chancellor, has begun to talk about ‘an betting that she won’t even make it through countries to accept refugees according to a axis of the willing’ between his country, Italy the summer. Merkel asks for patience, but quota. But they don’t believe it will work and Germany. He has canvassed allies in the CSU can’t afford to be sanguine given and fear that even if migrants are forced Germany for his ideas on migration reform. that it represents Bavaria, where frustration upon countries like Hungary and Poland, Many in the Christian Democratic Union with her migration policy is at its greatest. they will still end up joining the migrant (CDU), Germany’s centre-right party, are Merkel says that Seehofer’s plans to turn diaspora in Germany and the Nordics. tired of Merkel and her centrist style of back any migrant who has claimed asylum Denmark and Sweden reinstated border leadership and now see Kurz as their hero. elsewhere in Europe would hurt EU solidar- controls in 2015 — and they plan to keep

12 the spectator | 30 june 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk them. These border controls are more a From the Hampshire Chronicle response to public opinion than a practical device to stem the flow of migrants. Most An eighteenth-century murder trial, centrist parties in my native Sweden have caught up with the view that the country has heard perhaps in the same Great Hall already accepted too many refugees. Den- mark never cared much for Europe’s lib- as (I think it was there) Judge Jeffreys eral consensus on migration, but what now had whispered silkily Give me names, counts as a middle-of-the-road view in the country was rebuked as borderline xeno- I love names. phobia only a few years ago. I hope he got none. Mette Frederiksen, the leader of the Danish Social Democrats who will likely The woman’s name escapes me, become the country’s next premier, wants to make it impossible to claim asylum on Dan- not the thought of her heart ish territory. If she gets her way, a persecuted Syrian or Libyan refugee asking for protec- hardened against herself tion in Denmark should be sent to Danish or of the muttering creaturely refugee camps in Northern Africa and the Middle East. By Danish standards, she is still compassion of the people watching, a migration liberal. men, women, this example. Viktor Orban in Hungary and Jaroslaw Kaczynski in Poland feel that their views on Beyond all doubt she had killed her baby, immigration have been vindicated — not just at home, but across Europe. And why beyond all doubt her guilty shouldn’t they? Much as their migration policies are flawed, they are winning the bat- singleness had, before that, driven her tle of ideas over border controls and open- stark mad. ness. They have many new allies in European In front of an aghast crowd If Merkel is increasingly seen as a she pleaded guilty. Even the judge busted flush, more voters in CDU heartlands may turn elsewhere was in tears, begging capitals. Slovakia and the Czech Repub- she change her plea. She refused lic, the two other members of the Visegrad four, now have leaders who complain about so she had to be let go hang. Muslim immigration. And yes, Emmanuel — Lachlan Mackinnon Macron’s victory was astonishing — but a third of France still voted for Marine Le Pen. Even a year ago, Orban and Kaczynski could still be dismissed as loonies and fruit- So what to do? Merkel now stands as the European noise coming from CSU leaders cakes. They were irritants, for sure, but lacked charity case, not the powerbroker. Macron in Bavaria. But if Merkel is increasingly seen charisma and had no reach outside their own offers her some respite, saying that he’ll help as a busted flush, more voters in CDU heart- small parishes. Merkel’s view of Europe was her by taking back the few asylum seekers lands may turn elsewhere. If her leadership the consensus. When Macron took the Ely- in Germany who registered first in France. recently took them to their worst election sée, it was hoped that normal service would But far more refugees will have registered results since 1949, what might await them resume and Europe would be purged from first in Italy, and the odds on its new govern- after more years of Merkel in power? grubby thoughts about migrants. Merkel’s ment taking them back are slim. In Austria, Whatever Merkel now chooses to do case for a common European policy on Kurz is focusing on a plan to force refugees will cause her reputation to crumble. If she refugees seemed likely to win. to apply for asylum before they enter the escalates the conflict with Seehofer — and But the elections in Italy and Austria EU. When Austria assumes the EU’s rotat- fires him from government — it may be changed all that. Having populists in for- ing presidency next month, Kurz will make the end of the German centre-right as the mer Soviet bloc states is one thing: having this a centrepiece of his agenda. party of government. If she goes along with them running western European states is Kurz’s stance is unacceptable to Merkel. Austrian and Italian demands to turn back quite another. The balance of power keeps Belgium and the Netherlands are also pro- migrants and create a fortress Europe, she changing, shifting ever further away from testing because they fear that what Austria will be admitting that her open-door poli- Merkel. The incoming prime minister of Slo- and Italy want is a fortress Europe and that cy on migration killed her own vision of a venia, Janez Jansa, is a migration hardliner forcing migrants to apply from overseas cen- Europe that is welcoming to people flee- and, like many others in the Balkan region, tres will lead to inhumane migration deten- ing from oppressive governments. She has he sees Europe’s political future as being tion camps, as seen in Australia. But can she run out of good options, as well as political represented by Budapest rather than Berlin. fight against it? authority. She might limp on in Germany for The nationalist Sweden Democrats are rid- If Merkel wants to stay in power in Ger- a few more years yet, but her long reign in ing high in the polls ahead of the Septem- many, she will need to be wary of the politi- Europe has ended. ber elections. And even they blanch at the cians in her own CDU ranks who are closer asylum policies being proposed by the left in to Seehofer. Yes, many have now come out SPECTATOR.CO.UK/PODCAST Denmark. The reality in Europe is moving in her support — but only because they dis- Fredrik Erixon and Stefan Kornelius on far faster than the political debate in Brussels. like Seehofer’s gaudy style and the anti- Merkel’s prospects. the spectator | 30 june 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk 13 tions in 2016, there was an assumption in the media that Europe had halted the rise The return of walls of the right. This was a complacent attitude at odds with the evidence. In the Nether- Mass immigration has destroyed hopes of a borderless world lands, Geert Wilders increased both vote share and parliamentary seats. The French TIM MARSHALL election in particular was used to show that President Emmanuel Macron’s ‘open socie- ty’ model was triumphing against the ‘closed society’ model of his opponent Marine Le Pen. However, what Le Pen achieved as to almost double the far-right vote to 34 per cent, compared with when her father (Jean-Marie) stood against President Jacques Chirac in 2002. He won 5.25 mil- lion votes; last year 10.6 million voters sup- ported the Front National. Austria’s choice hat kind of a president would Slovenia and Croatia — but many more are of president, the entry of the AfD into the build a wall to keep out fami- being built. To the east, Estonia, Latvia and Bundestag, Hungary’s right-wing landslide Wlies dreaming of a better life? Lithuania are working on defensive fortifi- and Italy’s new government all point to a It’s a question that has been asked world cations on their borders with Russia. These rightward direction of travel in European over, especially after the outrage last week measures are more to do with a perceived politics. In all cases, concern about mass over migrant children at the American bor- Russian military threat than with mass migration is among the driving forces. Vot- der. Donald Trump’s argument, one which migration, but they are part of the overall ers are worried and tend to support parties his supporters agree with, is that the need trend — reinforcing the physical boundaries which voice their concerns. to split parents from children at the border of the nation state — and contribute to the This is true of Trump’s presidential strengthens his case for a hardline immigra- hard border which runs from the Baltic to victory and public support for his wall. To tion policy. Failure to patrol the border, he the Black Sea. an extent we are dealing with psychology says, encourages tens of thousands to cross Saudi Arabia has fenced off its border here. It is not true to say that ‘walls don’t it illegally — with heartbreaking results. His with Iraq. Turkey has constructed a 700-mile work’ — some do, some don’t — but they opponents think he is guilty, and that his wall concrete wall to separate it from Syria. The is a symbol of America closing in on itself. Iranian/Pakistan border, all 435 miles of it, Of all the border walls built since In fact, building a wall would make is now fenced. In Central Asia, Uzbekistan, the second world war, more than half Trump the norm, not the exception. Those despite being landlocked, has closed itself have been constructed this century who denounced as crazy Trump’s campaign off from its five neighbours. promise to build a wall did not appreciate On the story goes, through the barriers do give the psychological impression, via how popular such a policy would be, nor separating Brunei and Malaysia, Pakistan their physicality, that ‘something is being how common. Nation states have start- and India, India and Bangladesh and so on done’. They address concerns about migrant ed to matter again, and people care about around the world. The India/Bangladesh invasions in a way that rhetoric about ‘get- borders — not just on the Texan side of the fence is instructive in showing us how the ting tough’ on immigration does not. Hence, Rio Grande. Today more than 65 countries era of wall-building is not just about peo- despite the evidence, many Americans now wall or fence themselves off from their ple in the developing world moving to the appear to believe still that the wall with neighbours — a third of all nation states. industrialised nations. The barrier runs the Mexico will be built and that it will work. And this is no historical legacy. Of all the entire length of the 2,500-mile frontier and is This belief ignores the fact that there is a border walls and fences constructed since New Delhi’s response to 15 million Bangla- treaty between the two countries in which the second world war, more than half have deshis moving into the Indian border states both agree they will not build on the Rio been built this century. this century. This has led to ethnic clashes Grande flood plain, and that despite (some- It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Thir- and many deaths. what half-hearted) efforts by the President, ty years ago a wall came down, ushering in Wherever this mass movement of peo- Congress has not agreed to fund his plan. what looked like a new era of openness. In ples happens at pace it seems to assist a The headlines afforded Trump’s ‘anti- 1987 Ronald Reagan went to Berlin and retreat into identity. Almost all recent elec- immigrant’ stance detract from the bigger called out to his opposite number in the tion results in Europe bear this out. Concur- picture. It is easier to have the big bad wolf Soviet Union, ‘Mr. Gorbachev — tear down rent is the rise of extremes. to huff and puff against than it is to see him this wall!’ Two years later it fell. In those Following the Dutch and French elec- as part of a global phenomenon. Concentrat- heady times some intellectuals predicted an ing on the Donald’s evils allows the Mexican end of history. History had other ideas. government to quietly get on with deporting This does not mean Hillary Clinton was far more Central Americans from its coun- wrong when in 2012 she predicted that in try each year than does the United States. the 21st century ‘nations will be divided not Granted, the US assists Mexico in this, but between east and west, or along religious last year Mexico deported 165,000 central lines, but between open and closed socie- Americans, while the US expelled 75,000. ties’. Still, so far she is not right either. The tales of hardship crossings, exploitation At the turn of the century migration sped and human rights violations on the almost up and that began to tear down hopes of ignored Mexican/Guatemala border are, if a borderless world. We’ve grown used to anything, more harrowing than those on the the new barriers that European nations border 900 miles to the north. have erected — between Greece and Tur- ‘I know you said you did The walls and fences built this century key, for instance, or Serbia and Hungary, or but I want to make sure.’ mirror the divides which have also grown in

14 the spectator | 30 june 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk political discourse and especially on social walls. We ploughed the fields and didn’t scat- media. A decade ago Mark Zuckerberg ter. Instead we waited around for the results. believed social media would unite us all. He More and more of us needed to build barri- now says ‘the world is today more divided ers: walls and roofs to house ourselves and than I would have expected for the level of our livestock, fences to mark our territory, openness and connection that we have’. In fortresses to retreat to if the territory was some ways he was right — we are more con- overrun. The age of walls was upon us and nected and there are many positive aspects has gripped our imagination ever since. We to this, but what surprised him is how many still tell stories of the walls of Troy, Constan- of us use that connectedness to abuse the tinople, the Inca in Peru and many others. ‘other’. The internet has allowed us to divide The new wall-building is driven by recent into social media tribes howling into a void, events. The cry ‘tear down this wall’ is losing an echo chamber or across the divides at the argument against ‘fortress mentality’. It each other. This level of abuse has crawled rimental to the unity of the People’s Repub- is struggling to be heard, unable to compete out of the worldwide web and into world- lic, so they have extra firewalls around with the frightening heights of mass migra- wide politics — Mr Trump being the best- them. China is probably the world’s lead- tion, the backlash against globalisation, the known beneficiary. er in using new technology to build virtual resurgence of nationalism, the collapse of The Chinese led the way in great wall- walls. The Russians are the leaders in work- communism and the 2008 financial crash. building and are becoming world leaders in ing inside other countries’ social media On the other hand, our ability to cooper- using the internet as a wall. We all know of to sow division and use disinformation to ate, to think, and to build, also gives us the the ‘great firewall of China’, which they call muddy debate. It used to be argued that the capacity to fill the spaces between the walls the ‘golden shield’. This is intended to block internet would undermine the nation state with hope and to build bridges. the outside world from infecting the Middle as citizens of the world simply bypassed gov- However, first must come an acceptance Kingdom with harmful ideas such as democ- ernments in a free-flow exchange of ideas of the situation, and a very open and hon- racy. Less well known are the internal fire- and information. Again, this may come true, est discussion of how we got here. Key to walls within China. but it might also be that as the years pass that is the debate on migration and identity Beijing likes to ensure that people in more legislation will be enacted allowing the and that requires a reaching out across the the restless province of Xinjiang, a Tur- state to control the net. divides on all sides. kic-speaking Muslim state, cannot easi- We seem to have always divided our- ly converse with those in Tibet. Both have selves one way or another. From the Tim Marshall is the author of Divided: Why independence movements, and allowing moment we stopped being hunter-gathers We’re Living In An Age Of Walls, Elliott them to form cybernetworks might be det- about 12,000 years ago, we began to build and Thompson £16.99.

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the spectator | 30 june 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk 15

ROD LIDDLE Save me from Red Hen Syndrome

nxious to find out what food they haps in Iraq or Afghanistan, where they will glorified cook and a front-of-house monkey, served at the Red Hen restaurant receive a fairly sharp lesson in comparative i.e., a receptionist — were both in agree- Ain Lexington, Virginia, I clicked on homophobias. ment that TripAdvisor should be complete- the relevant site and was transported imme- But in truth, the Red Hen was simply ly ignored. Take no notice whatsoever. Do diately to a discount motorcycle website displaying an extremely familiar conceit not engage with it. The second chap to speak entirely in Korean, or Japanese, or maybe which you may recognise if you have eaten went so far as to say that bad reviews were Chinese. I don’t know — I can’t tell the dif- at a restaurant recently: overwhelming arro- good because it meant ‘that kind of person’ ference between those respective hiero- gance. I don’t know of any London restau- wouldn’t be visiting the restaurant again. glyphics. Maybe that was the point: the res- rants which refuse to serve people because They were not challenged on this. Such taurant was weeding out people like me who they hold political opinions which differ breathtaking, monumental arrogance! Trip- have never bothered to distinguish between from their own, but it is the kind of thing Advisor is the public responding to your different oriental alphabets and are there- they might do, so puffed up with their own food and service, you fools: ignore it and fore racist and banned from the Red Hen, importance have they become. you will be out of business, I would suggest. probably for life. More likely, though, is that The restaurant industry in the UK is in It is an invaluable resource for the diner, the site has been hacked by clever and jubi- crisis, apparently. More and more are going too, despite the snootiness shown towards it lant Trump supporters. out of business. Increasingly, people are not by that new thing we have these days, food The Red Hen is where the White House eating out, or not eating out in the num- critics, who also think they know it all. Skim press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, bers that can sustain a healthy turnover. For through 30 or 40 TripAdvisor reviews and took her family for a bite to eat, and from you’ll get that restaurant’s measure far more which she was evicted when the homosex- Liberals were supportive and accurately than by reading the tortuous per- ual staff recognised who she was. Her rude suggested that people associated with egrinations of some hack who has sampled defenestration was supported by the restau- Trump shouldn’t be allowed to eat perhaps two of the main dishes but clearly rant’s owner, citing Donald Trump’s reluc- thinks he’s bleedin’ Escoffier. tance to allow transgender people to serve the country in general, this is good news, of Cooking is not terribly difficult. Nor is in the US military. It is, clearly, a liberals- course, but we’ll come back to that. it an art. It is at best what Orwell referred only restaurant. They should write that on The Food Programme on Radio 4 held to as a ‘half art’, like photography. We have the front door, so that everything is clear, a debate on this crisis last week. The show undoubtedly benefited from the increased but as a sop maybe have a water fountain suggested a few reasons why so many res- prestige conferred upon people who can put out front labelled ‘for conservatives’. taurants were going under: a huge hike in stuff in a frying pan and stir it quite adeptly, This whole incident has energised social business rates, Brexit (this was the BBC, these past 40 years. But latterly it has also media. Liberals were supportive of the res- remember) and social media. Social media bred within the restaurateurs a distance taurant and suggested that people associat- how, exactly? The presenter Grace Dent from and even a contempt towards the peo- ed with Trump shouldn’t be allowed to eat explained that Trip Advisor and other sim- ple they are serving. So that they are now anywhere, ever. One black chap on Twitter, ilar websites might be putting diners off agreed that the feedback they receive from possessed of the great warmth and even- because of hostile reviews. their customers is utterly worthless: they handedness which is typical of Social Justice And it was here that, inadvertently, the know what they are doing and nobody can Warriors, said Sanders was a ‘vile, heartless, panellists from within the industry revealed tell them otherwise. depraved, lying, amoral waste of oxygen. what is probably a major contribution to And because cooking is dead easy, lots of You and your family are pariahs.’ their forthcoming bankruptcies. Red Hen people think — probably rightly — that they But support for the horrible Red Hen Syndrome. The first two respondents — a can do it and have set up restaurants them- was outweighed by about five to one by selves. That’s the other reason so many are enraged conservatives, one of whom advised going bust — again, a point not made on the immigrants that the restaurant was offering Food Programme. It is an utterly saturated free meals to illegal aliens and all they had market. There are 20,000 more restaurants to do was ring the number, which they quot- in the UK today than there were just ten ed in full. My favourite, though, came from a years ago, a rise of 30 per cent in a decade. local bloke who said that people in the area That is one reason why all the useful shops were disgusted with the Red Hen and that have gone: they’ve been converted into a the owner was ‘a New York transplant’ and place selling Bengali tapas or Belarusian related to Meryl Streep. Enough said! sushi. And it may be that we’ve had all we The best possible outcome is that the can take, especially when these outlets are owner of the Red Hen loses her business and suffused with such self-importance. The Red the gay people working for her are forced to Hen Syndrome stretches wider than Sarah find employment in the US military — per- Huckabee Sanders could imagine. the spectator | 30 june 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk 17 A cry for help BAROMETER It’s harder than ever to find any sort of nanny Nursing numbers Was there ever a time when the NHS wasn’t TANYA GOLD in crisis? According to a report by NHS Health Improvement in February 2016, the health service was then short of 15,000 nurses. A year later the Royal College of Nursing was claiming a shortfall of 24,000. But that is a lot less than the shortage of nurses reported in its early years. In December 1948, five months after the NHS was founded, it was reported by the government to be short of 48,000 nurses, here is an au pair drought in the UK. ers might read that as a prelude to kidnap- 30 per cent of the number employed. The Since the 2016 Referendum there has ping but I was comforted. It meant they shortage meant that 53,000 beds were lying Tbeen a 75 per cent drop in applica- wouldn’t harm him. I also liked the ones unused (a disproportionate number in tions by foreign girls to work for UK fam- who said I was a bad mother — I was told women’s psychiatric care). In early 1949 the ilies. Agencies testify that they can’t find off for serving frozen vegetables — for the NHS recruited an extra 4,000 full-time and girls for their clients, who must turn to other same reason. 2,250 part-time nurses. Yet an expansion forms of childcare beyond the rare girl keen This is unprofessional, you may cry, and in services meant the reported shortfall in to ‘learn English’, grandparents, if they can you are right. You are asking for something nurses remained at 48,000. be dragged out of restaurants, and baby-sit- that cannot really be monetised — love — Goal sprees ting apps like Bambino, Bubble and Urban- and professional qualifications are, well, they Sitter. are professional qualifications. I have met What happened to the last teams to score There is a campaign to #SaveAuPairs. Its teenagers I would gladly leave my son with, six or more goals in a World Cup match? web page is illustrated with a cartoon featur- and the headmaster of a prep school I would 2014 Germany beat Brazil 7-1 in the semi ing a ginger child screaming for its au pair and not leave him with for even a moment. final, and went on to win the World Cup. Theresa May washing up plates, which makes The carers are likewise vulnerable. Our 2010 Portugal beat North Korea 7-0 in a me wonder if this campaign is more ambiva- maternity nurse slept on an uncomfortable group stage match but then lost 1-0 to Spain. lent about working women than it says. futon because I had not told my husband to 2006 Argentina beat Serbia-Montenegro 6-0 What will mothers — I mean parents — in a group match to reach the quarter finals. do when au pairs are so scarce parents feel My favourite carers were 2002 Germany beat Saudi Arabia 8-0 in a they have to take any nutter, or give up work group game, and lost to Brazil in the final. young women who pretended 1998 themselves? Spain beat Bulgaria 6-1 but were I am grateful my husband took charge of my son was their baby eliminated from their group nonetheless. 1994 Russia beat Cameroon 6-1 in a group our son’s early years. It wasn’t easy for him: game but failed to make it out of the group. people — usually NHS professionals — con- buy her a bed, and she did not complain. She stantly asked where I was. I am grateful that obviously thought she could not, and I am In our defence my son is now at school, because the search still ashamed of that. for childcare is riven with fear and guilt. Sometimes the worst happens. This week The Defence Select Committee called No option is ideal except perhaps Jacob a London couple were jailed for murdering for the defence budget to be raised by Rees-Mogg’s but very few people inherit a their 21-year-old au pair. In New York City £17 billion a year, from just over 2 per cent nanny outside Jilly Cooper novels — and a nanny murdered two of her charges. You of GDP to 3 per cent. Some £35.3 billion was even there it didn’t work out well. If you are might go to fairy tales to find cases equally spent on defence in 2016/17. How much was rich you might have a Norland nanny, who chilling: to the young girl’s step-mother who allocated to particular operations? is much better at childcare than you are, and seeks to kill her, for jealousy; to the woman Wider Gulf £51m £70m yet is willing to be dressed in the most sex- in the gingerbread cottage with promises of Afghanistan less costume in the history of clothing — the soft beds and food for the lost children in Deployed Military Activity Pool (for unforeseen military activity) £23m ultimate husband repellent. the woods. Fairy tales are evidence of past Counter Daesh £432m If poorer — the 100,000 or so UK fam- crimes. If we need to tell stories to process Conflict stability and security fund ilies who employ au pairs, mostly in the fears, they are reasonable fears. (various peace-keeping activities) £87m south-east — you pay about £15 a day plus But there is another option now: child- EU counter migrant-smuggling ops £3m bed and board for what #SaveAuPairs care delivered to your door by the gig econ- calls, disingenuously in my view, a ‘cultur- omy. I have tried this, with mixed results. Booming and shrinking al exchange’ that is ‘neither work nor holi- One brought him home much later than day’. If it isn’t a holiday, it’s work. Au pairs agreed without explanation. Another left Which industries performed best in the are vulnerable — young, and often lonely. him screaming in his cot. Had I got what I three months to April and which worst? Would you respect someone you paid £15 a deserved or am I, as my husband says, inter- Best day? There are stories of au pairs forced to nalising my own misogyny? Some excel- Coal and lignite +16.3% +6.2% work longer than the usual 25 hours a week, lent people aside, no one really seems to Crude petroleum and natural gas and of being locked in the house. Misery care about childcare in Britain, and a bad Computer, electronic and optical equipment +3.8% runs both ways. A friend’s au pair arrived, situation has got worse. The Spectator ran a Worst cried for a week and returned home. piece about this once. It counselled against Electrical equipment -9.4% You need to trust, based on almost noth- employing a fat nanny. That may be good Waste treatment/disposal -4.3% ing. My favourite carers were young women advice, but it is hardly a definitive solution Textiles and leather -2.7% who pretended my son was their baby. Oth- for parents. I mean mothers.

18 the spectator | 30 june 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk New school coach between London and Oxford every weekend FROM SEPTEMBER 2018 VIA BEACONSFIELD

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Registered Charity No: 309681 Dr Spacelove Is Trump’s new branch of the military such a bad idea?

CHRISTOPHER BUCKLEY

from that most reliable of quarters: himself. ‘You know,’ he told them, ‘I was saying it the other day — because we’re doing a tre- mendous amount of work in space — I said, “Maybe we need a new force, we’ll call it the space force.” And I was not really serious, and then I said, “What a great idea. Maybe

we’ll have to do that. That could happen.” ’ Parse that if you dare. Meanwhile, will it happen? For starters, creating a new branch of the armed services requires an act of leg- islation in the form of a Senate vote. The President cannot simply make it happen by diktat. The Senate is currently Republican and invertebrate; but that could change after the November elections. And as the Penta- gon spokesman has signalled, the ‘deliberate process’ is going to take time with all that ‘input from multiple stakeholders’. Set your phasers on yawn. mericans traumatised by their cur- loyally replied: ‘We got it.’ What else could Chief among those stakeholders is the rent president could be forgiven he say? But oh to have been inside his head air force, which is already doing what a space A for thinking that his demand for a at that moment. The Pentagon press sec- force would do. It hates the idea. A year ‘space force’ was about protecting the coun- retary emailed reporters after the event: try from aliens. Aliens, that is, of extraterres- ‘Working with Congress, this will be a delib- Per the President’s custom, he trial persuasion, not the ones currently hurl- erate process with a great deal of input from ing themselves against the southern bor- multiple stakeholders.’ This is Washington didn’t inform the White House that der. What, really, is implausible these days? mush of the highest order. Translation: ‘We’ll he was going to issue his decree As baseball savant Yogi Berra said when have something for you sometime before told that a Jewish woman had been elected the next Ice Age.’ The air force, the most ago, the secretary of the air force, Heather mayor of Dublin: ‘Only in America.’ recently minted branch of the armed forces Wilson, was declaiming loudly against it: But as it turned out, Donald Trump’s (1947, Truman administration), and the one ‘The Pentagon is complicated enough.’ She demand to have a new sixth branch of most potentially affected by the President’s added, with sub-zero sangfroid: ‘If I had the US armed services is about protecting ukase, pledged to undertake a ‘thorough, more money, I would put it into lethality, America’s satellites and cyber capabilities. deliberative and inclusive process’. Transla- not bureaucracy.’ By all means, let us have A worthy goal. tion: ‘We’ll get back to you some time before more lethality! Per the President’s custom, he didn’t the next millennium.’ The army and navy, similarly already inform the White House that he was going The Wall Street Journal, generally engaged in cyber and space defence, are also to issue his decree. The citizenry may be favourable to Mr Trump, reported that his against it. For whatever it’s worth (unclear), traumatised, but what must life be like for announcement resulted from a fit of pique. Trump’s own Secretary of Defense, James his poor chief of staff, General John Kelly? He had asked the Pentagon to create a Mattis, also thinks the idea is a clunker. Does his inbox have a sign on it saying, space force months ago. When they didn’t, So the argument against is twofold: 1) ‘What Fresh Hell Is This?’ And what must he went — as is his wont — rogue, and sim- Trump wants it, therefore it must be a bad have been going through the mind of the ply announced it as a fait accompli. idea, and 2) the military establishment chairman of the joint chiefs of staff when The Journal noted: ‘If Mr Trump feels doesn’t want it, because they’re already Trump pulled this rabbit out of his hat on appointees are dragging their feet, he may doing it. But — deep breath — one ought 18 June at a public event? suddenly demand action, sometimes in a to guard against Trump Derangement Syn- ‘We are going to have the air force,’ the dramatic and public fashion.’ drome. Just because Trump is for something President said. ‘And we are going to have As the President said admiringly of his doesn’t necessarily mean it is, eo ipso, a bad the space force. It is going to be something new best friend, Kim Jong-un: ‘He speaks idea; and bureaucracies always resist what so important.’ Whereupon he turned to the and his people sit up at attention. I want my they view as turf encroachment. chairman and said, ‘General Dunford, if you people to do the same.’ Quite. 12 January 2007 may some day take its would carry out that assignment, I would be Some months ago, to an audience of place in the annals of Holy Shit Moments very greatly honoured, also.’ Marines — who always sit up at attention — alongside 4 October 1957. On that latter day, Also? General Joseph Dunford, a Marine, Mr Trump revealed that his inspiration came the Soviets launched Sputnik, which soon

20 the spectator | 30 june 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk had Lyndon Johnson declaring that Ameri- the disaster, then pivoted a few weeks later cans would not abide going to bed at night by announcing that America would put a ANCIENT AND MODERN by the light of a communist moon. man on the moon by the end of the century. Fat was not a Greek issue On the prior date, China launched a bal- We’re going to the moon! Suddenly no one listic missile equipped with a second-stage was thinking about the Bay of Pigs, except for ‘kinetic kill vehicle’. It climbed to an altitude the poor sods abandoned in the mangroves. of 537 miles and atomised a malfunction- Is Trump, like Kennedy, trying to redirect our ing Chinese weather satellite. The explo- eyes away from his pig’s breakfast on earth to sion added more than 3,000 pieces of space that most excellent canopy, the air? debris to the existing half-million pieces of Seizing the high ground has been a fun- debris, each larger than a marble, orbiting damental military tactic since men first start- The UK obesity the earth. It’s getting pretty cluttered up ed throwing rocks at each other. In his Art of crisis is again in there, as George Clooney found out in the War, Sun Tzu (an author surely familiar to the headlines, and ‘life-style’ is the opening scene of Gravity. Thinker Wang Chen) advises taking the high culprit. The ancients may have come That elegant bit of Chinese fireworks ground and letting the enemy attack from up with a different analysis. was a chilling, teachable moment. If they can below. Today’s high ground is all those shiny Our word ‘diet’ derives from the shoot down their satellites, they can shoot satellites. Knock them out and we plunge, ancient Greek diaita, which meant down ours. instantaneously and with great whingeing, ‘way of living’ and, medically, a prescribed way of life, or regimen, A year later, the US navy sent a message: into a new Dark Age. Everything comes especially in relation to diet for the ill. Beijing, you (too) have a problem. In a nifty to a stop. It won’t even be with a bang. As But whatever deficiencies are evident bit of marksmanship, it fired an SM-3 missile P.W. Singer, author of Cybersecurity and in the normal diet of the ancients, a at a wobbly US satellite 133 miles up, going Cyberwar has noted, ‘The first shots in a war tendency to promote obesity was not 17,000 miles per hour. The American arsenal between the US and China or Russia, no one among them. Sugar was unknown has ‘hundreds’ of SM-3s. Our powder is dry. would likely hear.’ (honey was the only sweetener), and Russia, meanwhile, has not been idle, Assuming Mr Trump’s call to establish a fats too would have been enjoyed shooting down not only Malaysian Airlines space force is the result of dispa ssionate anal- only on special occasions. Grain- but also successfully completing five anti- ysis, broad discussion, careful deliberation, based food was the staple (wheat, satellite missile tests. barley and emmer) with vegetables Is all this an argument for making the Is Trump trying to redirect our eyes of one sort or another (beans, peas, lentils, cabbage, leek), fruits, cheese ether bristle with weaponry? Recall the ‘mis- away from his pig’s breakfast on earth sile gap’. JFK coined the term in 1958, when and as a treat eggs and fish, all washed down with wine. Daily life — strange as it still sounds — he attacked to that most excellent canopy, the air? was equally non-fattening, consisting President Dwight Eisenhower for being soft mainly of the battle against nature to on defence. As it turned out, the ‘gap’ was thoughtful analysis and… er… uh… Well, grow enough to stay alive; and when entirely to America’s advantage. We had let’s ask two people with deep knowledge of one was not doing that, going to war 57 working ICBMs; the Russkies had … ten. the field. Retired Admiral James Stavridis against neighbours. When president-elect John F. Kennedy was is the former Supreme Allied Commander For ancients it was the life of briefed on the actual facts by Eisenhower’s for Europe. He’s now head of the Fletcher luxury that conduced to obesity. We science adviser, he ‘greeted the news with School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts. hear of a Greek king of Egypt so a single expletive, delivered more in anger He tells me he’s all for it. fat that two people had to help him than in relief’. A year later he was dealing ‘Long overdue. The next logical step to the lavatory; long, fine needles with Russian missiles in Cuba, doubtlessly is a cyber force, which could be combined were required to wake up one vastly again muttering expletives. with the new space force. Much as the army fat Greek tyrant. So it was for the Would the Chinese, or the Russians, dare and navy fought tooth and nail against the rich that preventive medicine came into play. The Roman doctor Celsus to attack one of our satellites, knowing that idea of the air force in the pre-World War recommended running, walking, it would invite retaliation? The principle of II era, the existing services will fight against marching, reading aloud and hand- deterrence has been validated by more than both a space and cyber force. But it’s the right ball, alongside moderation in 70 years of keeping the major powers from thing to do.’ eating and drinking. Massage was annihilating each other. Ken Adelman was head of the Arms thought good for toning up the body. In 2000, a Chinese military thinker Control and Disarmament Agency under Extremes, however, were not helpful. named Wang Chen published an article: Ronald Reagan. He was there in Reykjavik Athletes were not a model to follow ‘The US Military’s “Soft Ribs”, a Strategic when Reagan refused to give up his Stra- since their condition was ‘not natural’ Weakness’. He wrote, ‘For countries that tegic Defense Initiative (missile defence, and led to premature ageing: Galen can never win a war with the United States essentially). He now teaches Shakespeare. condemned them as ‘useless when by using the method of tanks and planes, ‘I’m not big on government organisa- it came to travel or military activity attacking the US space system may be an tion,’ he says, ‘since everyone then focuses and even more so in political life and irresistible and most tempting choice.’ ‘Soft on what desks are moved, parking spots, farming’. Greeks were well aware of certain ribs’ and ‘an irresistible and most tempting org charts, etc. If the administration were feelings that made one act against choice’ sound like a new definition of Chi- competent, which no one even suspects one’s better judgment, and often to nese takeout. Consider, too: Mr Trump made any more, it would tighten security of sat- one’s disadvantage, e.g. anger, sexual his surprise announcement in the midst of ellites by presidential or Sec Def [Secretary infatuation, greed. We cannot decide his detainee crisis, as TV screens filled with of Defense] edict rather than the chaos of to be any of these, but we are aware wrenching images of children separated a re-org. But this administration always pre- that they lurk about. For ancients, from their asylum-seeking parents at the fers chaos to safety.’ pride, sense of honour, shame and border. Was this out of the JFK playbook? There is another possibility. That it’s just reason were all among the means of The Bay of Pigs fiasco took place between an excuse to throw himself another parade. exerting the necessary self-control. 17 and 19 April 1961, months into Kennedy’s Even bigger than Macron’s! More like the — Peter Jones term. Kennedy manfully took ownership of ones in Pyongyang. Rockets on trucks. So big. the spectator | 30 june 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk 21 lessly looking for new members. These coun- tries receive financial support and, through The Fifa paradox playing in qualification tournaments, gain the chance to improve against the best The association may be corrupt but it has done wonders for football teams, even if they never come close to mak- ing the World Cup. TIM WIGMORE Today, there are 211 members of Fifa, but only 193 of the UN. And while the UN is beholden to the five Security Council mem- bers, Fifa is a democracy in which every country has an equal say. The same structure, of one member, one vote, that has facilitat- ed corruption has also helped the game glo- n 1930, Jules Rimet, the creator of the credit this growth to the beauty of football balise at a quicker rate than any other sport. Football World Cup, crossed the Atlan- alone. Yet football has globalised not in spite The day before the 2018 World Cup Itic in a steamship to attend the inaugural of Fifa, but largely because of it. A series of began, the 68th Fifa Congress met to deter- competition in Uruguay. In his bag he car- choices that Fifa has taken — often born mine who would host the 2026 World Cup. ried a small trophy, the World Cup; in his of self-interest and greed — has galvanised North America’s joint bid won. The reason heart he carried the belief that the World the sport across the world. was simple: they promised an $11 billion Cup could unite nations and smooth nation- Havelange was elected and then re-elect- profit for Fifa, twice what the 2018 World alism. ‘Men will be able to meet in confi- ed five times, after pledging to distribute Cup will bring. That could mean $50 mil- dence without hatred in their hearts and more of Fifa’s cash to Asia and Africa, cre- lion for each member association. ‘That without an insult on their lips,’ he declared. ate an U-20 World Cup to help young play- has to sink in,’ the US soccer president said Rimet would have been horrified by ers develop and, most importantly, to expand before the vote. It did. Rimet would not have what the World Cup has become. A tourna- the World Cup. Later, he promised to create approved of the politicking but he would ment that has funded the endemic corrup- an U-17 World Cup and increase the size of have approved of all the new pitches, acad- tion and racketeering within Fifa exposed the World Cup again. If the desire to win re- emies and coaches that members can fund. by the FBI. A tournament whose dubious election drove him to deliver on these prom- There are many arguments against the hosts — Russia this year and Qatar in 2022 expansion to 48 teams: it will significant- — allegedly won the right through bribery; The same structure that has facilitated ly reduce the quality in the group stages, of the 22 members of Fifa’s executive com- reduce sporting integrity (as there are three mittee who awarded the World Cup to Rus- corruption has also helped the game teams in each group, the chances of collu- sia and Qatar, ten have subsequently been globalise at a quicker rate sion are much greater) and it is driven by banned for corruption. And a tournament greed. But while every time the World Cup that has literally killed people — the immi- ises — he remained president for 24 years, expands it is derided as debasing the compe- grant workers who perished while building and reportedly received $1 million a year in tition, the actual tournament becomes only World Cup stadiums in Qatar. expenses from the 1980s — he still shook off more popular, as more countries become Yet he would also be awed at how his the sport’s elitism and geographical exclu- more besotted with the game. concept has been turned into one of the siveness. It later emerged that Havelange With hindsight, what Fifa has done seems world’s greatest spectacles: an event which, was spectacularly corrupt, too. He remains obvious. But consider sports like rugby and, for a month, can make the mundanities of the perfect embodiment of the new Fifa: driv- especially, cricket, which have stuck to a day-to-day life or geopolitical summits irrel- en by gluttony and yet taking decisions that governing structure as elitist as in Stanley evant set against a football competition. accelerated football’s global growth. Rous’s days. Those who lament the 48-team For many years after it was conceived In 1978, the last World Cup to feature World Cup should consider what is worse: the World Cup was run like a snooty Vic- only 16 teams, the 85 per cent of the world expanding a World Cup because of greed or torian club. This was a World Cup for those living outside Europe and South America reducing it because of greed. The majority of who thought only two continents, Europe shared only three places between them. At the International Cricket Council’s members and South America, mattered. From 1934 to this year’s World Cup, there are 13 nations oppose the decision to cut their World Cup 1970, no African nations took part. Europe from beyond Europe and South America. to ten teams but it doesn’t matter, because even provided nearly all the referees. When the World Cup is expanded, once the biggest members, such as England, sup- Then, the rest of the world had its again, to 48 teams from 2026, there will be port it, and the smallest members are voice- revenge. In 1974, Stanley Rous, a bespecta- either 25 or 26 berths for the rest of the less. This could never happen in Fifa, whose cled Englishman who had wanted apartheid world: the first World Cup without a major- governance structure means that a commit- South Africa to remain in Fifa, ran for re- ity from Europe and South America. ment to expansionism runs through its core. election as Fifa president. ‘We want Europe All the while Fifa itself has grown, end- Dreams of the World Cup leading to a to retain the leadership of football,’ Rous world ‘without hatred’ died long ago. But told officials before the vote. But he lost Rimet’s other hope — that the World Cup easily to João Havelange, a Brazilian who would become so popular it would become a vowed to open football up to the world. universal language — has been realised. The years since have been marked by This is the paradox of Fifa. An organi- skulduggery but they have also turned a sation with corruption and cronyism wired European and South American sport into into its core has simultaneously been a shin- one that is almost universal. So far this cen- ing light when it comes to the most funda- tury, football’s worldwide popularity has mental role of any sports governing body: to grown, not just in absolute terms, but rela- grow their game. tive to other sports, according to viewing data from the consultancy Futures Sport. SPECTATOR.CO.UK/PODCAST The instinctive reaction, perhaps, is to ‘Panama weren’t very taxing.’ Tim Wigmore and Freddy Gray on Fifa.

22 the spectator | 30 june 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk

The road less travelled I’ve don’t have wanderlust – and that’s OK

LEO MCKINSTRY

have never been an adventurous soul. ing. But it is not that at all. Despite all the don’t see why. I have spent decades carefully I As an infant in Belfast, I would lie hassle of post-9/11 security, I actually quite constructing my own comfort zone. That is motionless for hours on the kitchen table like the bustle of airports and I am fascinat- where I want to stay, precisely because it is of our family home, devoid of any curiosi- ed with all kinds of aviation, which has led comfortable. ty to wander. On one occasion an anxious me to write three books on the subject. No, I cannot pretend that my dislike of travel neighbour, having spied my immobile pose it is not the journey that is the problem but is the emotional legacy of any terrible early through a window, knocked on the front the destination. experience overseas, though throughout my door to express her concern. ‘Don’t worry. Part of me feels a profound sense of life my primary feeling about almost every He’s often like that. He won’t be moving ennui if I contemplate a visit to a famous trip has been the relief to be home when it is anywhere,’ replied my mother. tourist spot that I know only too well from a over. In this context, it might seem paradoxi- I have carried that inertia into adult- deluge of films and photographs. It is sure- cal that I have a property abroad as well as hood, reflected in my profound dislike of ly impossible to look at the Sistine Chapel one in Kent, my wife — a woman of remark- travel. There is not a shred of wanderlust or the Taj Mahal with unjaded eyes. I must able tolerance — and I having bought a within me. I never fantasise about visiting confess, though, that I can carry this atti- 19th-century house in northern France five distant lands, never leaf longingly through tude to extremes. Once in my youth I had years ago. But this Gallic retreat just empha- the travel supplements. Most people yearn a summer job as an international air couri- sises the point about my foible, for its pur- to explore the world they inhabit, but I could er, taking packages by scheduled flights to chase both gave me another excuse not to not care less if I never see a new place again. travel anywhere else and enabled me to cre- I would prefer a wet weekend in Bridlington ‘Off the beaten track’ is a place of ate another familiar comfort zone. to a fortnight in Barcelona. fear, full of problems with language, ‘To travel is to live,’ wrote Hans Chris- I recognise that my outlook is entirely maps, toilets and car rental tian Andersen. If his words are true, I am against the spirit of our age. We live in a soci- missing out badly. No doubt many seasoned ety obsessed with travel, where people now points in Europe and Egypt. I went to Cairo travellers, planning their next trip to Patago- collect exotic experiences as enthusiastical- via Frankfurt 12 times, but always refused nia, would regard me as hopelessly paro- ly as possessions. Millennials, in particular, to visit the pyramids, even when the repre- chial. More than ever, the urge to travel is seem to believe that relentless journeying sentative of the courier company offered to equated with sophistication and openness. is not only essential to personal wellbeing take to me to the site. ‘No thanks, I saw them A large dose of sanctimony often nestles but also a badge of moral virtue. In an age from the aircraft window,’ I said, remaining in the luggage along with the flip-flops and of globalisation, tourism has become one of firmly ensconced in my airport hotel room. the selfie stick. the biggest industries in the world, made all Yet the idea of venturing further afield, But the globetrotters should not be so the more lucrative by cheap flights and the like a real traveller, terrifies me. ‘Off the smug. The modern addiction for travel caus- internet. It is estimated that one in 11 jobs is beaten track’ is a place of fear, full of prob- es tremendous damage to the planet, par- in this sector, while more than a billion for- lems with language, maps, toilets, money, ticularly the environment. This year, the eign trips are thought to be made every year. internet connections and car rentals. I derive authorities in Thailand had to announce the Well, count me out of this worship of no pleasure from the unknown, only anxiety. closure of Maya Bay, the golden paradise globetrotting. If travel is the new religion, That goes to the real heart of my attitude. A used in the Leonardo DiCaprio hit movie then I am a heretic. I have no bucket list, no born worrier, I like the familiar routines of The Beach, because of the ravages to its must-see destination. My passport is almost my steady existence. It is often said that you ecosystem caused by mass tourism. Accord- pristine. The other evening at a dinner with should step outside your comfort zone, but I ing to marine biologists, 90 per cent of the some friends, one of them told me about the coral has been destroyed by litter, motor oil, house she and her husband had built in Sri the dropping of anchors and the collection Lanka. ‘You must come and visit,’ she kindly of souvenirs. said. I reacted as if she had asked me to join Nearer Britain, Dubrovnik recently the revolutionary communist party. ‘There’s made a drastic cut to the number of visitors no chance of that,’ I replied. I have been on allowed into its historic centre because bru- only four long-haul flights in my life, both tal overcrowding threatened its world herit- times to the US and back, and I hope to reach age status. a ripe old age without undertaking another. The self-righteous backpackers leave a Given our modern addiction to mass carbon footprint like an asphalt spreader’s transit, my insularity could be seen as a per- boot. In contrast, I make only the daintiest sonality defect. When I tell others of this impression. I might be a shallow, stay-at-home travel phobia, they sympathetically pre- philistine, but when it comes to saving the sume that it must be down to fear of fly- ‘I have a fear of frying.’ planet, I am the one entitled to feel virtuous.

24 the spectator | 30 june 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk JAMES DELINGPOLE A bruising encounter with Cambridge cry-bullies

here’s a Tracey Ullman comedy applause. Not at the Labour Club, the Vegan accompanied by at least one female compan- sketch about the extreme and ugly Society or the Zero Carbon Society, maybe. ion and possibly some males too. By now, Tform of political correctness afflict- But this was CUCA, the last outpost of sound- I felt I was in real danger of losing the entire ing the youth. It’s set in a self-help group for ness in a Cromwellian university town other- room. But I soldiered on, making the seri- ‘people who are so woke [i.e. attuned to left- wise swamped with political correctness. So I ous points I’d intended to make, but without wing grievance politics] they are finding it waited, briefly, for the roars of hearty, wine- trying to embellish them with any of those impossible to have any fun at all.’ fuelled, undergraduate approval. awkward things that outside Oxbridge are A newcomer to the class tells his story: But the roars never came. Instead — known as ‘jokes’. ‘It started with the little things — sign- surely this had to be my imagination? — Then we ritually sang the national ing an online petition; going to a march. there was an awkward silence, followed by anthem and ‘Jerusalem’, as is presumably Well, before I knew it, I was writing to the some shuffling as two or three people exited the custom at CUCA dinners, after which Guardian about LBGT representation in the room. I thought: ‘Hmm. Bit rude. Maybe it was all over. Or so I thought. The CUCA the Harry Potter books…’ At this point, they’re desperate for a pee.’ So I ploughed committee members, the president espe- a prissy young woman interjects: ‘Which is gamely on with an analogy I had prepared cially — poor chap, he’d invited me as his shocking by the way.’ The therapist (played earlier. star turn — seemed to want nothing to do by Ullman) calls her to order: ‘Yes, all right, It concerned Jimmy Savile and Rolf Har- with me. Luckily, those members who had Libby. We’ve all read your blog.’ ris, getting into a time machine in the 1970s enjoyed my speech (roughly half the audi- Last week, at Cambridge University, ence, I’d guess) were keen to take me to the I had an encounter with a real-life Libby ‘So you’re saying you don’t believe pub to help me drown my sorrows. and the experience wasn’t funny one bit. It rape culture exists?’ said one girl, As I went to the bar, out of the corner was discomfiting, it was embarrassing, but of my eye I noticed with a shudder the girls above all it was depressing, for it remind- working up to a self-righteous frenzy who had walked out. They glared at me. I ed me just how painfully in thrall some retreated outside with a large gin and a few of our brightest and best are to the toxic, and instead of pressing the button marked male undergraduates, trying to put the ear- joyless, cry- bully creed of Social Justice War- ‘Next week’s Top of the Pops’, accidentally lier events behind me. rior grievance politics. finding themselves in 2018 and discovering But it wasn’t to be. Shortly afterwards, The occasion was a black tie dinner for to their horror that attitudes to celebrities the landlord came up to me. ‘I want you to the university’s Conservative Association and underage girls had changed somewhat. leave now!’ he said. ‘Why? What’s he done?’ (CUCA). I was the guest speaker. And the All right, so the analogy was tortured asked all my companions. theme of my speech — ironically enough — and preposterous, not to mention crass and ‘There’s been a complaint. A young was how we can win the war for real con- tasteless, but that was rather the point. I’d woman says you said something offensive to servative values in an age when a shrill, been worried that the seriousness of my her on my premises about rape!’ he said. This angry, increasingly aggressive left is so deter- underlying theme might cast a downer on went on for ages: the landlord adamant (on mined to close us down at every turn. the evening. ‘This’ll perk ‘em up,’ I thought. this random female customer’s say-so) that I began by outlining how much things ‘God knows, if you’re a Cambridge conserv- I must go; my doughty companions equally have changed since I was at university. In the ative, a bit of shock-jockery must seem like insistent that I must stay. (Thank you, boys. I 1980s, there were no campaigns to ‘decolo- manna from heaven.’ will never forget how you stuck up for me.) nise the curriculum’ (i.e. purge it of dead I had thought wrong. This time, very Later there was yet more grisliness as the white European males), no ‘safe spaces’ to emphatically, a girl stood up and, with a loud two girls came up to harangue me and justify protect us from scary new ideas, and certain- cry of ‘Disgusting!’, walked out of the room, their moral outrage. ‘So you’re saying you ly no awkward compulsory ‘consent classes’ don’t believe rape culture exists?’ said one, in Freshers’ Week. working herself up into a frenzy of cry-bully ‘Don’t you find it insulting?’ I asked my self-righteousness. Not her fault, I suppose. audience. ‘Even if you couldn’t quite make If you’re constantly told — as her generation it into Oxford, you’re clever enough to have of women has been — that you’re the help- got into Cambridge. Yet here you are, the less victim of an oppressive rapey patriar- week you arrive, being forced to attend class- chy and that your holy mission is to avenge es in which blushing second-year students yourself by whatever means, then stuff like are required to tell you why it’s not a good critical thinking, decorum, good manners idea to rape people?’ and a sense of proportion tend to go out of This point seemed so crushingly obvious the window. But it’s an ugly and frightening I was sure it would win me thunderous ‘They’re finally getting fashionable.’ thing to behold. the spectator | 30 june 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk 25

LETTERS

Harvard’s racial quotas the Prix de Rome. Whatever the talent indeed attend university, the LSE, gaining of the competitor, certain candidates will a BSc Econ. I’d like to apologise to Mr Sir: While I largely agree with never be able to place higher than second Spurrier for my sloppy reviewing. I am Coleman Hughes that racial quotas are place, wrote Berlioz. ‘The reason is simple; sure Spectator readers will buy the book counterproductive (‘The diversity trap’, the competition jury is composed almost in droves and make up their own minds. 23 June), he misuses Martin Luther King Jr entirely of Conservatoire professors who Indeed in his email, Mr Spurrier pointed to buttress his argument. King said that he have a considerable interest in the success out that his book is selling extremely well. hoped his descendants would ‘be judged… of their own pupils… It’s unjust, but that’s Long may it continue to do so. by the content of their character’, not by how it is.’ Henry Jeffreys their standardised test scores. The grim Nevertheless, Berlioz figured the system London SE13 pursuit of purely quantifiable ratings for out when he won the music division of the intelligence and achievement in American Prix in 1830, as did Debussy a half-century Great all-rounders schools — by Asians and white Protestants later. However, the list of composers who alike — is an even greater scourge these never won the Prix suggests that the threat Sir: I am sure that you do not want the days than the illiberal goal of ‘diversity’ to music may not be quite as dire as Mr correspondence on great all-round at any cost. Harvard admissions may well Lebrecht suggests. sportsmen to continue indefinitely, but be covertly, and unfairly, anti-Asian, but James Penrose before it closes, the late Bill Shankland by taking into consideration ‘courage’ and London SW1 must be mentioned (Letters, 23 June). He ‘kindness’, they might also be doing the represented Australia at the Olympics in right thing. Mea culpa boxing and swimming, also taking part in John R. MacArthur staged races against Johnny Weismuller New York Sir: If you are going to write a review and playing cricket with Don Bradman. pointing out that a book is badly edited then After moving to Britain, he played rugby The purity of bitcoin you had better make sure that your own league for Warrington, captaining them in copy is flawless. So I was very embarrassed two Wembley finals, before turning to golf. Sir: Martin Vander Weyer (‘The myth and to receive an email from Steven Spurrier He finished second in the British Open at menace of cryptocurrencies’, 23 June) politely pointing out the mistakes in my Hoylake and then coached Tony Jacklin doesn’t see the Hayekian purity of a review of his book Wine: A Way of Life at Potters Bar. I was lucky enough to play denationalised form of money: bitcoin. (Books, 23 June). Most notably, that he did golf with him at Parkstone towards the This is surprising as he claims to be a end of his life, when he was kind enough to Thatcherite. ‘No sensible citizen should compare my swing to that of the late Peter dabble in this dark arena,’ he says. Well, Thompson. When in his eighties he was maybe the electricity usage in mining confronted by two young muggers, he bitcoin is worth it. Terrible monetary surprised them by knocking one out with regimes are plentiful worldwide, despite a single punch before the other fled. ‘stewardship’ by the Bank for International Dr John Millar Settlements. Ordinary Venezuelans and INTRODUCTORY OFFER Cranborne, Dorset Zimbabweans love bitcoin. Scalability issues are also sorted now, thanks to the Subscribe for The missing bust Lightning Network. But what do I know? I’m an ex-Bank of England payments only £1 an issue Sir: In his review of the Napoleonic expert ‘libertarian dopesmoker’. Let’s just exhibition at Les Invalides (Arts, 16 June), stick with TSB making our payments.  Weekly delivery of the magazine Andrew Roberts incorrectly states that of James Hulme  Napoleon’s seven great captains of history Tunbridge Wells, East Sussex Digital editions from the one whose bust is not present is the 1st Thursday morning Duke of Marlborough. In fact, the missing Profs on the panel  Full website access bust is that of Marlborough’s friend and ally Prince Eugene of Savoy. Sir: Norman Lebrecht is concerned about Ciarán Connolly the inclusion of music professors on Raheny, Dublin international competition juries because of the possibility of the quid pro quo trade- Blackbirds sing off (‘You vote for my pupil, I’ll vote for yours’, 23 June). In evidence, he tells us of Sir: I would like to take issue with Simon the exploits of the prominent Russian violin Barnes, who in his otherwise delightful teacher, Zakhar Bron, whose own pupils article about bird-listening writes of ‘the place remarkably well in the competitions laid-back whistling of the blackbird’ (‘The he judges or sponsors. The future of music joy of bird-listening’, 23 June). Blackbirds may depend, Lebrecht suggests, on fair play www.spectator.co.uk/A247A don’t whistle, they sing! A glorious, golden, in competition judging. liquid song. One of the pleasures of English Or maybe not. Almost 200 years ago 0330 333 0050 quoting A247A life is to sit in the garden on a summer in one of his articles in L’Europe littéraire evening, glass of wine in hand, and listen to UK Direct Debit only. Special overseas rates also (12 June 1833), Hector Berlioz described available. $2 a week in Australia call 089 362 4134 or go to the blackbird singing. the same concern about the judging of www.spectator.com.au/T021A Jane Manley the granddaddy of all music competitions, Byford, Herefordshire the spectator | 30 june 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk 27 ANY OTHER BUSINESS| MARTIN VANDER WEYER Carmakers are an undeniable voice in the Brexit debate

he voice of business has been all but Boris’s new slogan extradited, so I gather there’s not much sym- silent in the Brexit debate ever since pathy for him in Dublin. But there’s still a T former Marks & Spencer boss Stuart On which topic did the Foreign Secretary grain of admiration for his chutzpah on the Rose made such a hash of trying to lead the really mutter ‘Fuck business’ in response to matter of the multibillion bailout that effec- pre-referendum ‘Britain Stronger in Europe warnings about the impact of a bad Brexit tively nationalised Anglo Irish in December campaign’. Now suddenly there’s a business on the future of UK manufacturing? I’m 2008. In the now-notorious ‘Anglo Tapes’, cacophony: Airbus, BMW, Siemens and the proud to have been appointed business edi- he was recorded telling a colleague that his heads of the CBI, the Institute of Directors, tor of this magazine by Boris, but I’d have approach to central bank negotiators was: the Federation of Small Businesses, the Brit- to say that the pithy phrase allegedly over- ‘We need the moolah, you have it, so you’re ish Chambers of Commerce and the Engi- heard at a Foreign Office party would have going to give it to us and when would that neering Employers’ Federation, all saying been a fair summary of our former editor’s be?… [Otherwise,] if you want the fucking roughly the same thing: never mind the pol- level of interest in issues affecting business keys now, I can give them to you.’ You might itics, all we ever asked for is clarity, prefer- in the days when I was pitching pieces to even think Drumm’s was a more straight- ably accompanied by ‘frictionless trade’. But him. And as a concise summary of what he forward approach than that of a UK bank this incompetent and dysfunctional negotia- and the rest of Theresa May’s fractious crew I hardly need name: ‘Oh no, we don’t need tion is creating serious uncertainty and leav- are doing to the prospects for UK compa- your money, Chancellor, because we can ing unresolved the issues, starting with cus- nies and inward investment, it would have raise capital on unbelievable terms from our toms arrangements, that you should have made a more truthful slogan on the side friends in the Gulf…’ consulted us about but never did. And now of the Leave bus than that suggestion of it’s almost certainly too late. £350 million a week for the NHS. LNER revived To which Brexiteers chant, ‘They would say that, wouldn’t they?’ And in the case of The bank that partied I wonder what Sir Nigel Gresley thinks of Airbus, the ultimate EU industrial flag car- the adoption of LNER as the name of the rier, let’s be honest — yes, they probably The crash of Anglo Irish Bank — whose state-run operator that took over Virgin would. And yes, the CBI wanted us to join former chief executive David Drumm has Trains’ failed north-east mainline franchise the euro and struggles to shake off a reputa- gone down for a six-year stretch, having this week. Chief mechanical engineer of the tion for speaking first for the corporate fat been found guilty of conspiracy to defraud London and North Eastern Railway from cats. But if you want an undeniable indica- and false accounting — is truly a caution- its formation in 1923 until his death in 1941, tor, listen carefully to the Society of Motor ary tale. Hard to believe that in January 2007 Britain’s greatest 20th-century railwayman Manufacturers and Traders. Investment in the management consultancy Oliver Wyman now stands — as a bronze statue by Hazel the UK automotive industry for the first named Anglo Irish ‘the best bank in the Reeves — just outside the ticket office at half of this year, at £347 million, was just half world’ on the basis of a twentyfold increase King’s Cross. If he looks worried, it may be what it was in the first half of 2017. SMMT in the value of its shares since 2000 and an because he has to watch so many stressed spokesman Mike Hawes speaks of ‘grow- annualised 38 per cent growth in business travellers trying to comprehend the baffling ing frustration’ and a ‘current position, with lending. No one seemed to have noticed that automated ticket machines; or more likely conflicting messages and red lines’ that goes this spectacular performance was based on because he recalls that the original LNER, directly against the interests of his world- high-risk loans to a narrow concentration of despite its stylish image and his magnifi- class sector, which thrived on membership borrowers all chasing Ireland’s ‘Celtic Tiger’ cent engines, never made a profit in its 25 of the single market and customs union. real estate boom. Even when the financial years of existence before nationalisation They’re not making this stuff up, they’re crisis was in full swing in September 2008, in 1948. That was due to a combination of really not. I’ve said before that we’d be Drumm was sending colleagues a message debt inherited from predecessor companies, wiser to accept that Brexit will most likely that ended ‘This is Anglo so there’s only one constant demand for capital investment and make us marginally poorer, while clinging thing to do — party!’ war. But it’s a reminder that even the best to the hope that it will make us marginal- Soon the bank was in terminal trou- railway companies struggle to achieve com- ly happier. It would also help if we stopped ble, and Drumm resorted to what has now mercial viability. No doubt — if we still have accusing business of lying — because it is the been judged major fraud in an attempt to Conservative governments — a succession ingenuity of business that we’ll rely upon to disguise its crippled balance sheet. After- of private-sector franchisees will follow this find a new path to prosperity through the wards, rather than face the music, he fled stopgap LNER revival; but Gresley’s statue chaos wrought by politicians. to the US, whence he eventually had to be will outlive them all.

28 the spectator | 30 june 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk Christopher Priest © PRIVATE describes how Nikola Tesla was so terrified of germs he would never touch another human Michael Beloff notes that Geoffrey Robertson ticks all the boxes of the modern celebrity silk William Cook discovers why his cat Billy approaches other cats side on Lloyd Evans wonders whether he’s a reviewer or a hostage Kate Chisholm is irritated by this year’s chatty Reith Lectures Michael Hann finds himself back in the school cloakroom listening to Taylor Swift and her screaming fans

‘Self-Portrait’, 1948, by Frida Kahlo Martin Gayford — p44 the spectator | 30 june 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk 29 BOOKS & ARTS

BOOKS Knowing your enemy That’s the object of espionage, says Rodric Braithwaite. But amassing facts is not enough. You must understand his fears, ambitions and intentions

The Secret World: taking, intended to restore what Andrew the German military signals before the bat- A History of Intelligence calls ‘the lost history of global intelligence’ tle of Crete too; but they still managed to by Christopher Andrew and to demonstrate ‘the continued relevance snatch defeat from victory. The Germans Allen Lane, £35, pp. 948 of long-term experience to intelligence oper- deciphered British plans for the desert war ations in the 21st century’. almost in real time; but the British neverthe- Espionage, Christopher Andrew reminds us, He starts with the ancient Israelites, less chased them out of Africa. is the second oldest profession. The two con- the Indians and the Chinese, to whom he As for the Russians, they were always verged when Moses’s successor Joshua sent attributes formidable intelligence skills, good at spying. But they were sometimes a couple of agents to spy out ancient Jericho. despite the skimpy evidence. By contrast, too clever by half. They regularly broke There they were sheltered by the madam he believes, the Greeks and Romans fool- foreign cyphers and penetrated foreign of the local brothel. All three are heroes in ishly relied on oracles rather than intelli- governments. Tsar Nicholas II and Sta- Israel today. gence. Here he is too hard. The historian lin read British telegrams with pleasure Generals and politicians have always Thucydides criticises his friend Nicias for and profit. But Nicholas’s secret police- needed secret information to track and out- losing his army and his life because he was men set up puppet trades unions which, manoeuvre their foreign and domestic ene- ‘too much inclined to divination and the alas, promoted rather than curbed revo- mies. So they place spies, suborn traitors, like’. But he also shows that the Greeks lutionary unrest. They recruited Yevno eavesdrop, decipher other people’s messag- regularly and successfully deployed spies, Azef to spy on terrorists. He betrayed the es, subvert their governments, assassinate intercepted messages and brought down terrorists to the police; helped the terror- their servants and sabotage their property. cities by subversion. The intoxicated rav- ists assassinate senior officials; evaded the The technology has changed massively over ings of the priestess were not the only vengeance of both and died peacefully in the centuries; the aims and the basic methods attraction of the oracle at Delphi — which his bed. Stalin’s purges of alleged spies have not. was also the Cold War Berlin of the ancient destroyed some of his country’s most tal- During the 20th century, thanks partly to world, an intelligence bazaar where hard ented people. The Soviet operation against the works of talented British novelists, ‘secret men gathered to bargain information. the Americans’ nuclear programme, the intelligence’ acquired a mystique among the Andrew’s narrative thickens when he Manhattan Project, was one of the most public. Intelligence agencies found that flat- gets to the better documented Renaissance. successful in history; but the intelligence it tering, even useful. But they still had to keep Venice, the Vatican and Spain all had effec- produced was helpful rather than deci- their operations secret. The British govern- tive networks of spies. Elizabeth I’s ruthless sive in the Russians’ development of their ment went further. Until the late 1980s it spymaster Francis Walsingham successfully own bomb. maintained the absurd fiction that it had no brought down Mary Queen of Scots. Welling- Andrew’s story is full of intriguing facts secret service at all. ton ran his own highly successful intelligence and pleasing anecdotes, though some- Christopher Andrew is one of our most networks, though even he was humbugged times burdened with confusing detail. But distinguished and prolific intelligence histo- by Napoleon on the eve of Waterloo. he does not quite engage with the broad- rians. He believes that the historical role of The story gets into its full stride with the er questions he himself raises. How much intelligence is still insufficiently understood: 20th century. All the participants in both influence did intelligence really have on the professionals make mistakes because world wars and in the Cold War which fol- the course of history? How much do you they forget the achievements of their prede- lowed had their intelligence successes and distort the historical record if you omit the cessors; historians fail to pay sufficient atten- failures. The British would have been hard secret world? What are the perennial roots tion to the influence of intelligence on events. put to win the Battle of the Atlantic had they of intelligence failure? The Secret World is an ambitious under- not broken the German codes. They read There are no good answers to the first

30 the spectator | 30 june 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk GETTY IMAGES

Now you see him, now you don’t: Nikolai Yezhov, nicknamed ‘the poison dwarf’, who as head of the NKVD presided over mass arrests and executions at the height of the Great Purge, was airbrushed from Soviet history after his own execution in 1940 two questions. Good intelligence is often stand his fears, ambitions and intentions, governments abandon capabilities that essential, not least to military victory. But and a knowledge of history can help you they have already found useful? Part of some intelligence is inaccurate, untimely do that. But political and military lead- the answer is that an effective intelligence or irrelevant. How far it helped keep the ers are tempted to believe whatever bol- organisation requires the coordination and peace during the Cold War, as Andrew sters their preconceptions. Stalin’s spies continuity of records, methodologies and claims, is debatable. You have to judge gave him ample warning of the impend- networks. As long as it depends on bril- rigorously in every case. It is not easy; but ing German attack in June 1941. It was liant individuals, such as Walsingham, it is there is no longer much excuse for not try- not what he wanted to hear. He refused to vulnerable: the man changes; the organisa- ing. Until the last decades of the 20th cen- allow his army to prepare, and it was nearly tion decays. So you need a permanent pro- tury even official historians were allowed destroyed when the Germans invaded. fessional bureaucracy. But these did not only restricted access to the documents of It’s called confirmation bias, and it’s emerge, in Europe at least, much before intelligence agencies. Knowledge of Brit- endemic in all human endeavour. Intel- the 18th century. ish success in breaking German codes ligence analysts try to aim off it, but the That still does not explain why the became available to ordinary historians Americans, for example, ran down their only in the 1970s. Things are better now. The Russians were always good at infant intelligence agencies after the first The agencies will always need to pre- world war. Money had something to do serve their operational secrets, but thanks spying, but sometimes they with it. But Henry L. Stimson, the secre- to Andrew and others, they — even the were too clever by half tary of state, is said to have found spy- Russians — are more willing to publish ing ‘ungentlemanly’. That is a frivolous selected documents. Intelligence studies pressures are often too great. Ronald Rea- objection, which does not answer gov- have at last become a respectable academ- gan suffered from it too. He came to power ernments’ need for reliable intelligence. ic discipline. convinced that everything the Russians did Ethical issues do, however, arise. In 1844 How useful history can be to policy- was evil. But he had the gift of empathy. the British closed down their highly suc- makers is a question that goes well beyond He realised that, incredible as he found cessful decyphering branch following the secret world. A knowledge of history will it, the Russians really did fear an unpro- a passionate public debate about the con- not enable you to predict the future. But it voked American attack. If that was para- flict between the needs of national security can tell you what traps your predecessors fell noia, as Andrew suggests, there was plenty and the rights of true-born Englishmen. into; what has been tried in the past and what of it on both sides. Leaked American stra- The debate is legitimate, and it con- didn’t work. There are lessons to be drawn, tegic documents, excitable policy discus- tinues today, as we try to find the bal- but policymakers and practitioners regular- sion in Washington, deliberate American ance between preserving our democratic ly ignore them. Most are not stupid — some provocations around the Soviet border: freedoms and letting the government use even have degrees in history — but they are all gave the Russians plausible cause for sophisticated systems of electronic surveil- easily seduced by the argument that ‘this alarm. Reagan was equally disconcerted by lance to protect us from terrorists. time it will be different’. Above all, they rare- the nuclear war plans of his own military; Despite its length, The Secret World does ly have time for reflection; they are always he called them ‘crazy’. But, unlike Stalin, not adequately tackle such matters of inter- under the pressure for what Churchill called he saw the real danger and changed his pretation and judgment. It is not the book ‘action this day’. mind. He reached out to Mikhail Gor- one hoped for: a chronicle rather than a criti- ‘Knowing your enemy’ — the object of bachev. Between them, they brought the cal history. That is a pity: the subject is impor- all intelligence — means more than just pil- nuclear confrontation to an end. tant and perennially fascinating. It awaits ing up facts about him. You need to under- And there is another question. Why do a more thoughtful treatment. the spectator | 30 june 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk 31 BOOKS & ARTS

Crime fiction with the blackmail of a powerful and well- liant. There are gun battles and a murder, known businessman and spirals out from but the novel’s real concern is the strug- Strewn with foreign bodies there to entrap his wife and his friends, as gle of an artist to express that most hid- well as complete strangers from other parts den of all landscapes: the inside of another Jeff Noon of the city. person’s head. It’s always fun to the watch the down- Ghosts of the Past by Marco Vichi (Hodder, fall of the great, but the novel offers many £18.99) is unashamedly nostalgic in tone. The other delights: a tender lesbian love affair; Ways of escape title could not be more apposite. The action a search for revenge by one of the black- takes place in 1967, when Inspector Bor- mailer’s previous victims; and a sensuality Emily Rhodes delli of the Florence police force is called of prose even when it’s describing the bas- to a house where a wealthy industrialist has est of human motives. There’s an underlying Crudo been run through with a sword. Each mem- theme — how to achieve the right balance by Olivia Laing ber of the family is acting suspiciously, as are between freedom of speech, and individu- Picador, £12.99, pp. 176 the various colleagues and associates of the al privacy — but it’s woven lightly through deceased. Bordelli’s life is further complicat- the book, rather than stated outright. Olivia Laing has been deservedly laud- ed when an old friend, Colonel Arcieri, turns And it hints at the deeper truth behind the ed for her thoughtful works of non-fiction up in dire trouble and needing protection. political and the personal. A serious book for To the River, The Trip to Echo Spring and The case unfolds in a slow haze of inter- serious times. The Lonely City. Her first novel, Crudo, views and recollections. Vichi takes his time Gary Raymond’s The Golden Orphans is every bit as intelligent and provoca- to explore Bordelli’s mind, his thoughts (Parthian, £8.99) starts off in classic Brit tive, with a roar of energy that comes from and his feelings, especially concerning the abroad mode as a down-on-his-luck art- having been written, remarkably, in just past and love lost. The book yearns for ist travels to Cyprus to attend the funeral seven weeks. a bygone age. It’s old-fashioned and leisurely, of his mentor and fellow painter, Frances Perhaps the novel’s most unusual ele- but none the worse for that. There are nar- Bentham. The unnamed narrator takes on ment is its narrator: ‘Kathy by which rative tangents galore, and one or two of his teacher’s old job, working for a Russian I mean I’ is a 40-year-old hybrid of the post- them might even loop back to throw light gangster; the artist’s task is to paint the gang- punk icon Kathy Acker and a fictional- on the murder case. But the novel’s central ster’s dreams, or rather one recurring dream: ised version of Laing herself. Acker died in concern is not the solution to the case, but an empty playground swing at night. It’s 1997, but Laing brings her back to life for the reasons why Bordelli solves it, and what a brilliant concept. Raymond expertly leads the politically turbulent summer of 2017. he loses from his own life in exchange for the reader into the island’s secret territories, She peppers her prose with quotations such insight. not least the city of Famagusta, which was from Acker’s writing and merges epi- Kristen Lepionka’s What You Want split in two when Cyprus was separated into sodes from Acker’s life, such as her repeat- to See (Faber, £7.99) has a more practical the Turkish and Greek zones, and has been ed breast cancer and her mother’s suicide, approach to crime-solving. Roxane Weary, abandoned and haunted ever since. with Laing’s recent marriage to the poet a private investigator, takes on what seems The whole thing comes in at just over Ian Patterson. All of this is cloaked in to be a standard surveillance job, tracing 150 pages, the bare sentences layered with a contemporary reality of news stories a woman whose fiancé suspects her of cheat- meaning. It feels a little like John Fowles’s and Twitter. ing on him. But events take a nastier turn The Magus, but condensed into a few days This strange Laing-Acker hybrid is part when the woman is found dead. The police and nights. The pull of the lost city and the of Crudo’s elastic world. Kathy describes are interested in Weary’s involvement, and children who are rumoured to live there is her gender as ‘transitioning; she loved the suspect that her client is the killer. The a thread the hero cannot help but follow, word, with its sense of constant emergence private eye undertakes her own case along- into a world that shifts and turns under the and zero arrival’, and this seems applicable side the official one, discovering that the moonlight. Intense, unnerving and bril- to the rest of the novel, with its fluid sense of woman she has been following held secrets time and place (one minute she is on holiday that had nothing to do with adultery. in Italy, the next recalling a stay in New York, In both style and substance the novel then on a train to London). ‘Other things harks back to the first of the new wave of were going on at the same time,’ notes Kathy, female crime writers, Sara Paretsky and Sue jumping from dozy contemplation of a drag- Grafton, whose work established a fresh onfly, while sunbathing in her garden, to the approach to the female protagonist — snazzy, disaster of Houston being flooded. Her prose professional and kick-ass when needed. Rox- also skips from the domestic to the political, anne isn’t quite in that league, and nothing the mundane to the intellectual — a stream- here ventures beyond the expected progres- of-consciousness not unlike a more radical sion of clues and suspects. But she handles Virginia Woolf. the case well. I really liked her description of Laing shows writing to be a means of surveillance work: ‘Like watching television escaping oneself for various characters and with the sound off.’ different perspectives: ‘On the page the Right from the start emotions burn off I dissolves, becomes amorphous, proliferates the page in Mario Vargas Llosa’s The Neigh- wildly…’ Early on, Kathy compares her- bourhood (Faber, £18.99). It’s written with self to a drone: ‘Perhaps what she was doing, such intensity that the author’s urge to cre- writing everyone down in her little book, ate is felt in every line. The story traces the wasn’t exactly gracious.’ It is ‘everyone’ who outcome of a scandal as it affects the lives of ‘... the non-bio ones with a bleaching agent, good is written down, not everything; in writing to a number of people, from the highest of soci- for stubborn stains, not perfumed, the liquid be someone else, an inescapable empathy is ety to the low. Set in Peru in the 1990s, when gel ones, not the solid capsules or powder. In a bestowed upon the writer. the country was beset by corruption, strikes, green box, or sometimes pink, usually next to the Kathy is aware of the privilege of her blackouts and terrorist attacks, it begins economy own-brand powder boxes...’ coddled existence, in which days pass in lux-

32 the spectator | 30 june 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk Walter of Henley. Crescentiis (Petrus de) Crescentiis (Petrus de) [Hosbondrye], Ruralia commoda, Ruralia commoda, 'HFRUDWHGPDQXVFULSWRQSDUFKPHQW΍LQ ȴUVWHGLWLRQRIWKHȴUVWSULQWHGERRNRQ ȴUVWLOOXVWUDWHGHGLWLRQ6SH\HU French (Anglo-Norman), England, [early 14th agriculture, Augsburg, Johann Schuessler, Peter Drach, [1490-95]. century]. 1471. Est. £20,000-30,000 Est. £10,000-15,000 Est. £60,000-80,000

Mascall (Leonard) Monardes (Nicolas) Hill (Thomas) A booke of the Art and maner, howe to plante and Joyfull Newes out of the newfound world, The Gardeners Labyrinth, JUD΍HDOOVRUWHVRIWUHHV PHQWLRQLQJ&KULVWRSKHU&ROXPEXVWKH second edition, 1586. ȴUVWHGLWLRQ WREDFFRSODQWDQGWKHFXOWLYDWLRQRIUKXEDUEDQG Est. £4,000-6,000 Est. £4,000-6,000 ginger. Est. £10,000-15,000

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The Rothamsted Collection: Rarities from the Lawes Agricultural Library Auction: Tuesday 10th and Wednesday 11th July | The Westbury Hotel, 37 Conduit Street, London, W1S 2YF Bidding and information: [email protected] | +44 (0) 20 7871 2640 | forumauctions.co.uk Buyer’s premium (plus VAT if applicable) applies to all lots at 25% of the hammer price up to £150,000 and 20% thereafter. BOOKS & ARTS

ury: flicking through piles of books while sunbathing, buying orange cashmere socks, admiring her Comme des Garçons wallet and gorging on ‘white peach bellini, squid with chilli, a plate of raw sea bass scattered with pansies, rabbit pappardelle, blue beef, panna cotta like a severed breast, a hazel- nut cake, white wine, red wine, espresso’. Indulgences are piled on thick to show that being ‘wrapped up in five-pound notes’ can- not truly cushion her from the horrors of the wider world. News stories persistently sur- face, including Grenfell, Charlottesville, the migrant crisis. Kathy reflects: The mistake she’d made as so often was to read the news immediately after waking … How could you be happy when you knew the tendencies humans had, their aptitude for cruelty.

Crudo is intensely personal and simul- taneously global in its concerns. It forces us to consider the two together and bind our own immediate dramas to those of the wider world. It is an important novel that shouts to the vastness and the urgency of what it means to be alive, now.

Via dolorosa Sara Wheeler Sickness strikes in the clifftop monasteries of Meteora, and Stagg leaves the pilgrimage route

The Crossway and picks up Turkish en route. Chunks of his- there — it gives his feet a rest, but tear gas by Guy Stagg tory are nicely handled, from the Cathars to isn’t relaxation. Picador, £16.99, pp. 400 Bohemian revolutionaries, and, notably, the Stagg is a fine topographical writ- First Crusade. er — and a new one: this is his first book. Guy Stagg walked 5,500 km from Canter- Stagg travels through 11 countries, if you ‘There was no colour in the sky,’ he writes bury to Jerusalem, following medieval pil- include Britain. He sees the Pope appear in about the glacial winter plains of south- grim paths, and he records the expedition Rome and includes a history of pilgrimage to ern Marne, ‘nor in the bedded fields; noth- in The Crossway. It was a journey from the Eternal City and the meaning of the Sta- ing but starched sheets of white stretching darkness to light, as the author, who suffers tions of the Cross, but gets claustrophobic in from track to horizon, shapeless except for from mental illness, looked for redemption. the crowds and has to leave town. Later, he the earth’s contour like the mound and fold It was also a considerable feat, especially as has an attack of anxiety in Albania and sens- of a human body.’ Tuscan hills are ‘hatched Stagg proclaims lugubriously at the outset: es he is threatened. He then heads to Mac- with cypresses’. He switches skillfully all ‘I’m not much of a walker!’ edonia and Lake Ohrid, once the holiest city the way through the book, from a wide- He stayed in convents, monasteries, in in the Balkans, and has another Easter there, angle to the close-up shot. In a Turkish for- his tent, in disused schools or the homes of this time an Orthodox one. Having battled est his tread sets off a ‘snickering stream of strangers, and, later, in mosques. He crossed the cold, heat becomes his enemy. pine needles’. the Alps in winter in order to make Rome In Greece, he stays in Florina for Civil war in Syria demanded a change of for Easter, and it took him six days to clear a week with an old friend and her family — route. ‘I no longer believed the pilgrimage the Apennines. On the trail, he reflects the only break he has really. An alcoholic epi- would heal me,’ he writes at this point, ‘but a good deal on what he has been through sode leads to a lost weekend in Thessaloniki abandoning the journey would fix nothing.’ — a breakdown, suicide attempts, the nature (booze has been a factor in earlier troubles). The Anatolian plateau turned out to be ‘the of mental illness. ‘Though I hoped to walk Sickness strikes in the cliff-top monasteries loneliest stretch’, but in Turkey he received free of my sickness,’ he says, ‘its memories of Meteora and Stagg leaves the pilgrimage exceptional hospitality. He walks the width still haunted me.’ Good and bad happens on route, a decision he comes to regret. But he of Cyprus, crossing at 1,000 metres to avoid the way; he gets ill, physically as well as men- enjoys Mount Athos and stays in a different the heat. The Templars get a good airing tally. The narrative of the book follows the monastery every night. Sometimes he walks here. In Lebanon, his travels are shadowed modulation of the author’s moods. 42 km in a day. by the ‘threat of war’; he has to take a plane An atheist with a deep sense of the spir- The author questions himself constantly, to Amman, and continues on to Israel, where itual, Stagg several times compares his and often fears that the whole idea of his pil- he walks a chain of footpaths called the Isra- motives for escaping the world for almost grimage is ‘a misguided act of faith’. In Istan- el National Trail, south through Galilee, west a year with that of the monks and holy men bul, he fears another breakdown and decides towards the coast, south again to Tel Aviv he meets. It is a fertile topic. Direct speech to go home — then changes his mind. He and finally inland to Jerusalem. salts many pages and individual stories form gets caught up in the Taksim Square drama The journey as redemptive recovery is a thread that runs throughout the book; it and is gassed several times. He meets a well-worn trope, but there is no glib ending helps that Stagg speaks French and Italian friends and spends three unplanned weeks here. I really enjoyed this book.

34 the spectator | 30 june 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk GETTY IMAGES globalisation and a soft-power war with vard graduate, is only feebly respected; China, are moving on.’ and as Bruno painstakingly shows, many Bruno has never visited Tibet in the Tibetans, already in some despair, fear their many years he has been concentrating on struggle to exist as a special people will alter the ‘blessings’ and the diaspora, but he has or cease when this Dalai Lama is gone. travelled around its borders and throughout What has changed in recent years, Bruno the world to discover the condition of the writes, and has so deeply undermined the refugees and to listen to their opinions and confidence of Tibetans with Tibet and the judgments of their leaders, including the abroad, is the nature of China’s ‘blessings’ Dalai Lama. One of his most striking char- — which I saw in bloodthirsty force in the acteristics is his modesty; he never claims to 1980s. Such violence — always in reserve know a thing about Tibet and the refugees in case of a sudden uprising in Tibetan ter- that he has not learned first-hand. What he ritories, where many devout and patriot- knows and what he suspects are kept dis- ic Buddhists have burned themselves to tinct. But he sums up brilliantly: ‘The Com- death — is now overshadowed by the effec- munist party of China is the source of the tive Chinese pressure on world leaders and Tibetan malaise; but Tibetans’ self-inflicted poor countries either to ignore the Dalai wounds have made China’s strategy more Lama and his champions or lose economic effective.’ From 2010, for example, Beijing ties with Beijing. From Norway to Washing- blocked escape routes from Tibet except ton to the Vatican the Dalai Lama can make for Tibetans rich enough to fly out, and the no high-level contacts. No. 10 declares: ‘We Nepalese king denied them settlement. have turned the page on the Dalai Lama.’ Bruno tellingly describes and details Chi- Blessings indeed. na’s centuries of relations with Tibet, reach- ing back to the seventh, when a powerful Tibetan ruler captured a major Chinese city, The real wizard of Oz forcing the emperor to present a royal prin- cess to Lhasa as a placatory gesture. Over Michael Beloff the years, depending on China’s power, there were sometimes Chinese officials sta- Rather His Own Man tioned in Lhasa; but up to 1911 the Chinese by Geoffrey Robertson emperors and the Dalai Lamas — the pre- Biteback, £25, pp. 480 sent one is the 14th — existed as tempo- The neighbour from hell ral and spiritual equals. From 1911 to 1950, What makes a barrister famous? At one Tibet was essentially independent; and even time, many of the best advocates were also Jonathan Mirsky after Mao took power, he treated Tibet with prominent politicians, whose day job was in some respect for a time, and even negoti- court and who moonlighted in the Commons Blessings from Beijing: Inside ated with the young Dalai — whose person- — think F.E. Smith. But it is impossible today China’s Soft-Power War on Tibet al account of those contacts is fascinating to double up with any distinction. As long as by Greg C. Bruno — before suggesting, almost off-handed- capital punishment survived, public atten- ForeEdge, £28, pp. 240 ly, that of course Buddhism would have tion also attached to those great defenders to be abolished. who rescued their clients from the noose — Blessings from Beijing will inform read- Indeed, as Bruno makes plain, religion think Edward Marshall Hall. But English ers who know little about Tibet, and those remains at the heart of Beijing’s determi- judges no longer don the black cap to pro- who know a great deal will discover more. nation to subdue and transform Tibet. For nounce the sentence of death. Both groups will be surprised. The new- Tibetans, what makes their society and cul- Geoffrey Robertson, the author of this comers especially will be disabused of any ture special and unequalled is the selection riveting memoir, ticks the boxes which guar- belief that Tibetans were always non-violent, and enthronement of tulkus, ‘reincarnated’ antee the reputation of the modern celebrity deeply spiritual and unworldly. lamas. This ceremony, with all its implica- silk: chiefly, a concentration on the fashion- Tibetanists and advanced students will tions, is now being taken over by Beijing. able area of human rights, with a special inter- learn that, decades after the Chinese con- The most spectacular example occurred est in press freedom, making him a hero of quest of Tibet in 1950 and the escape of the in 1995, when the 10th Panchen Lama, the the left-wing media. A prominent member of Dalai Lama in 1959, the diaspora of about second most important religious figure in the Australian diaspora — along with Clive 130,000 Tibetan refugees, battered by Tibet, died. The Dalai Lama announced that James, Barry Humphries, Germaine Greer decades of Chinese oppression and ‘soft’ his successor was a six-year-old boy. Beijing and his wife Kathy Lette (they’ve now sepa- propaganda, is riven by confusion. Some declared this to be spurious: the boy and his rated), the paronomasiac comic author — he cling to their hope that Tibet will again be family have vanished, and Beijing installed has pursued a career unusual in its peripatet- sovereign and they will be able to return to its own Panchen with full traditional reli- ic nature and the variety (and notoriety) of their homeland. gious honours. He has been declared the his clients. Greg Bruno, modestly described on senior religious leader in Tibet — where After cutting his teeth as a student activ- the book’s flyleaf as a journalist, is actu- Tibetans ignore him. ist in Sydney, he joined the defence team in ally an expert on many aspects of Tibet’s Of course Beijing will name its own 15th London of the magazine Oz — which had history, Chinese oppression and persecu- Dalai Lama when the present one dies, been charged with conspiracy to corrupt tion — ironically termed ‘blessings’ by the although he has claimed (even to me) that public morals — and graduated through Dalai Lama — and most of all the condi- his doctors at Harvard predict he will live a series of obscenity trials to represent tions of the Tibetan diaspora and the deep- well past his 100th birthday. But although Julian Assange, Salman Rushdie, the direc- ening despair that rends it. ‘Many Tibetan he has retired as Tibet’s leading political tors of Matrix Churchill, ethnic minority refugees, pushed away by time, boredom, and religious figure, his successor, a Har- Indians, victims of a Fijian constitutional the spectator | 30 june 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk 35 BOOKS & ARTS coup, and, in Hong Kong, refugees in flight possible sexual abuse by a doctor when he countryside — mainly amid the woods and from Vietnamese persecution. As well as was four years old. meadows of his beloved South Downs. taking on demanding death-row cases in In his epilogue to this second volume of Gooley does include the odd aside about the Caribbean, he can claim credit for such autobiography, Robertson, now 71, muses Bedouin tribesmen and Australian aborigi- developments in the law as the protec- on the possibility of retirement, but rejects nes, but his main point is that you don’t need tion of journalists’ sources; the defence of it with mention of ‘the prospect of a gas and to travel far to connect (or reconnect) with provocation for battered wives; the iden- oil arbitration in Paris in the spring’ — a sub- the great outdoors. Indeed, a lot of the ani- tification of the limits of the law of trea- ject even he would be hard put to make into mals he talks about live only a short walk son and of claims to diplomatic immunity. a page-turner. from your front door. And who’s to say these A believer that human rights are glob- His contemporaries at the bar will read creatures are any less remarkable? Wouldn’t al, Robertson served as president of the these memoirs with envy; others with almost you be thrilled to see a fox or badger if you’d UN war crimes court in Sierre Leone, as much enjoyment as his eminent entourage never come across one before? which ruled for the first time that recruit- attests to on the dustjacket. Gooley is full of fascinating facts about ment of child soldiers was an internation- such animals and their habitat; but his book al crime. is mainly about how the whole picture fits Aa an advocate who has fought causes Poetry in the back garden together. He’s learned to pick up all sorts of through cases, his submissions have resonat- clues from the natural world, finding his way ed as much with the press bench as with the William Cook around without a map or compass and antic- bench of judges. On one occasion, he earned ipating what kind of creatures he’ll meet the senior law lord’s reproach that ‘you Wild Signs and Star Paths: along the way. He reckons these are things keep giving us this airy-fairy theory about The Keys to our Lost Sixth Sense we all used to know, and can easily relearn if free speech’ (but he won the case in Stras- by Tristan Gooley we want to. Indeed, now I’ve read this book bourg); on another, the despairing praise Sceptre, £20, pp. 386 I’m seeing all sorts of things I never noticed of Mary Whitehouse, who had brought a before, even on my strolls around the scruffy private prosecution for blasphemy, for his When I read about the author on the flyleaf woods behind my boring suburban home. ‘truly remarkable performance’. Robertson of this book, I must admit my heart sank: Gooley calls this a ‘lost sixth sense’; is a natural raconteur, telling many a good ‘Tristan has led expeditions in five continents but it’s actually entirely rational — a way tale well, with a talent for tweaking cliché and is the only living person to have both of reading how animals interact with the into epigram. flown solo and sailed singlehanded across the topography they inhabit. This would have Generous about his friends, he is some- Atlantic.’ Oh no, I thought, not another gung- been second nature once, way back when we what careless in his references to those ho memoir by some posh explorer, chroni- beyond his liberal orbit. Norman Lamont cling his adventures crossing the Andes on Wouldn’t you be thrilled to see was John Major’s chancellor of the excheq- a pogo stick or paddling up the Amazon a fox or a badger if you’d never uer, not Thatcher’s. And it was Michael in a bathtub. come across one before? Gove, not Andrea Leadsom, who pro- Thankfully, Wild Signs and Star Paths is nounced at the start of the Brexit contro- nothing of the sort. It’s a thoughtful, lyri- were all foragers and hunter-gatherers. The versy that we have had enough of experts. cal book about the hidden connections agrarian revolution destroyed much of this If we have, it would spell trouble for Rob- between flora and fauna, the landscape shared knowledge, and the industrial revo- ertson, who describes himself as a lawyer and the weather, and most of its wise and lution even more, but a lot of it is stuff our who ‘happened to be an expert’ on forum wondrous observations are gleaned from grandparents might have known: how to find non conveniens (used to determine wheth- the author’s rambles around the English your way home by the sun and stars, or the er a case should proceed here or abroad), lichen on a tree. ‘All shapes in nature have as well as ‘something of an expert on con- meaning,’ writes Gooley. His book is about spiracy law’, and even ‘a world expert on Homemade those shapes. censorship’. But at another point he sug- For instance, did you know that gests that he has been ‘nothing more or honeysuckle grows clockwise and bind- less than a jobbing barrister’. I wouldn’t We thought the Misses Dukes weed anticlockwise? Or that you can work agree — and I doubt whether he would Moving round their shop out the age of a tree by dividing its circum- really either. Had rolling pins for legs. ference (in centimetres) by 1.25 in wood- Robertson has been an innovator outside land, or 2.5 in open country? My favourite as well as inside court. In 1990, he founded We watched their hands that dipped is Hooper’s Rule (after the English natu- Doughty Street Chambers, beyond the con- Like penny cranes in the window, ralist Max Hooper) for calculating the age fines of the Temple, appointing a female Nudging the crumbled scones of hedgerows: count the number of differ- senior clerk in that last redoubt of the patri- ent plants in 30 yards of hedge and multiply archy. The firm, starring such as Helena Ken- And picking up only the best. the total by 110. Likewise, you can usually nedy, Edward Fitzgerald and Amal Clooney, At four they closed, dusted work out whether a tree’s indigenous by is committed to a campaigning ethos which, The classic wedding cake seeing how many different insects live in it. in Robertson’s words, ‘has already spawned The foreign sycamore has only 15 while our rivals and imitators’, not least the uber- And made the shelves of glass domestic oak has 284. modern Matrix. As clear as their maiden days. Despite all these stats, Gooley’s book is But he has also led a vivid life beyond Later in the parlour, more elegiac than scientific, and it’s all the the law, as a journalist, television-presenter better for it. It’s a paean to the beauty and and opera aficionado, with a taste, when sin- With Papa in a haloed snap majesty of nature, especially the nature gle, for alpha-female lovers (whose photo- Eternally teasing them we overlook in our back gardens and local graphs intersperse the text), and — though They’d eat the cakes that failed. parks. And so, amid the botany and zool- he’s republican — a fine line in royal anec- ogy and meteorology there are snatches dotes. Ever alert to the latest trends, he has of pure poetry: ‘I let the shadow complete even resurrected a mini #MeToo episode, of — Patrick Hare its journey. The sun clung to the treetops

36 the spectator | 30 june 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk on the hills to the west for seconds before GETTY IMAGES tive and the visible artistic embodi- letting go.’ ment of Nazi Germany’. And like all the best books, it makes the That is a stronger claim than even world around you a lot more interesting. most other writers bitterly hostile to Before I read it I could never work out why Furtwängler have made. The conduc- my cat Billy would approach other cats side tor’s innumerable efforts, many of on. Gooley has the answer: it’s the best way them successful, on behalf of many to hedge your bets. If Billy decides to attack, Jews are glancingly referred to, but it’s easy to turn and face his foe. If Billy overall he is taken as a straightforward decides to flee, it’s easy to turn and run. I was anti-Semite — of the Nazi variety, not terribly impressed by this and I couldn’t wait of the many other kinds pervasive in to share the news with Billy. But Billy didn’t the world at that time. Any statement seem that bothered. I guess he knew about that Furtwängler made to the contrary this all along. is called ‘tendentious’, Allen’s favour- ite word, used so often about his sub- ject’s writings and pronouncements A labour of loathing that one loses one’s foothold. Michael Tanner In fact Furtwängler’s hostility to the Nazi regime was so intense that Speer warned him that the Gestapo Wilhelm Furtwängler: Art and the was about to arrest him; and after Politics of the Unpolitical his last concert in Vienna, in Janu- by Roger Allen ary 1945, one of his greatest perfor- The Boydell Press, £45, pp. 318 mances and amazingly preserved on record, he managed to escape into The titans of the podium, a late 19th- and Switzerland to join his wife Elisabeth. 20th-century phenomenon, a species now This is characterised by Allen thus: extinct, have on the whole been well served ‘The political situation had deterio- by their biographers, with Peter Heyworth’s rated to such a point that it became Otto Klemperer: His Life and Times as the expedient for him to leave Germany.’ ideal. Wilhelm Furtwängler, by far the Wilhelm Furtwängler in the 1920s. The historian Richard Evans, to whom greatest of them all in my and many other His conduct, rather than his conducting, Allen is indebted, similarly charac- people’s opinion, has not been nearly so for- is what obsesses Roger Allen terised Furtwängler’s escape as if it tunate. Partly that may be due to the nature wasn’t a matter of saving his life. of his genius, in that in most of his perfor- Allen rarely mentions any perfor- mances, as can still be heard on innumer- strikingly parallel to that in which Wagner’s mances, and when he does, he writes that able recordings, he seems to have a larger anti-Semitism takes over most attempts to they are ‘esteemed’ or ‘considered icon- part in the creative process than almost discuss his art. ic’. And Furtwängler as composer is given any other performer (only Callas and This new biography by Roger Allen a scornful brush-off, with the claim, taken Sviatoslav Richter, both passionate admirers claims to take the argument further, with over from another of the conductor’s crit- of his, share that feature), and that is consid- a study of Furtwängler’s writings and ics, that ‘his conservative, quasi-Brucknerian ered at least a dubious quality in this time of more cursorily his compositions. He wrote style was now [in the late 1930s] ideologically textual fidelity. Partly too, and perhaps mak- throughout his life, primarily on musical acceptable and consonant with the prevail- ing people now more uneasy still, his record- issues, but inevitably on more general sub- ing spirit of the times’. ings — most of them of live performances jects too. Privately educated to a very high I find it hard to understand how someone — are so overwhelming in their intensity and level, he was an exemplar of Bildung (the with such a lively distaste for his subject can depth as to be unsettling, in a way that makes German for ‘education’ in the broadest devote so much time and effort to it. But it is many listeners suspicious of their effect. sense), founded on study of all the arts, and not an uncommon phenomenon. Unfortunately, that is not the level on of the supreme example of Bildung, Goethe. which most biographers of Furtwäng- By the time Furtwängler performed and ler have operated. What has obsessively wrote, the intellectual atmosphere was full Approaching mild panic concerned them, whether they have been of philosophical speculations on the organ- Yiannis Baboulias admirers or uneasily hostile, has been his ic and the biological — terms and concepts staying in Germany throughout the Third which the Nazi ideologists took over for Reich and, after a two-year enforced silence their own purposes, but which many intel- The People vs Tech: How the Internet from 1945, making a triumphant comeback. lectuals, violently opposed to them, also is Killing Democracy (And How We With his immense prestige, as chief con- used. Furtwängler employed the vocab- Save It) ductor of the Berlin Philharmonic — so ulary of his period to work out the issues by Jamie Bartlett the indictment runs — he could have found which obsessed him, and his writings, both Ebury Press, £8.99, pp. 256 a job anywhere, and been a bastion of the published and in notebook form, are exten- free anti-fascist world. sive and cloudy. Allen’s is the first book in For a brief moment in 2011, standing among That claim, which has been stated and which they have received detailed treat- thousands of people occupying Syntag- reiterated now for 85 years, has been debat- ment. He uses them to build up a picture of ma, the central square in Athens, it looked ed even on the stage, in Ronald Harwood’s the conductor as a participant in Nazi ideol- as though social media would change the fine play Taking Sides, and any attempt to ogy, a willing tool for Goebbels and his ilk, world. A row of laptops set up next to the discuss Furtwängler’s art tends quickly to and reaches, halfway through this labour of subway entrance became the beating heart get sidetracked into an argument about his loathing, the conclusion that ‘Furtwängler of an anti-austerity movement that promised conduct rather than his conducting, in a way became the perceived musical representa- to go well beyond simple protest politics, up the spectator | 30 june 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk 37 BOOKS & ARTS to perhaps reshaping the political culture of his message, in that its vivid imagery and on…And on and on.’ ‘‘‘The first time I a stale Greek parliament. deep reporting at times lull us into a some- had dinner with your family,” [Paul’s part- From Occupy Wall Street to the Arab what false sense of security. And I say false ner] Dana said, “I had to sneak off to the Spring and the streets of Europe, a demand because what is made clear is that — to bathroom and cry”’. Same, I thought. for such new politics and more democra- borrow from John Gray’s The Immortali- Similarly, there’s an aggressively banal level cy made itself known to the wider world sation Commission, which also deals with of detail: through tweets and Facebook posts. Truly it the intrinsic problems of technological uto- The city had recently invested in its municipal appeared that if you gave people the tools to pianism — ‘Science is a tool for problem- spaces… He took plates from the dishwash- connect and actually meet each other in the solving — the best that humans possess. But er (which had recently run)… Rose used an digital commons, a demand for progress and it has this peculiarity, that when it is most air freshener, Woodland Escape…Her knee change would arise almost naturally. successful it creates new problems, some hurt…‘I need to pee’. It’s strange to think about those days now. of which are insoluble.’ This book is an Regardless of ones political leanings, the urgent warning about such potentially insol- Social realism requires close observation, breakdown in communication, civility and uble problems. but the detail must be justified. There’s so nuance are in ample evidence. These same In his epilogue, Bartlett leaves us with much minutia here it obscures any wider lit- tools and technologies, once brandished as ‘20 Ideas to Save Democracy’. No one erary purpose. weapons of democracy and progress in the should think that these urgent actions can Markovits reaches towards a Great face of tyranny, now appear almost sinister. be undertaken without our active engage- American Novel, using the family to com- And they’re only the more visible end of ment with them. It brings to mind some- ment on the national whole. The Essingers a huge wave of change, that includes auto- thing from the Republic, where Plato are shoe-horned into history with Liesel’s mation and self-driving cars, which will dras- speaks of sailors who ‘know nothing about tically change the way we work and live. In navigation’ trying to deceive a shipowner With Trump merrily buzz-sawing the the end, the question is no longer if tech- into naming one of them captain through nological advances will reshape democracy. the ‘use of brute force and clever tricks’. constitution, a Harvard don’s qualms The real question is if democracy can survive That is only possible because the ship- about Obama now seem quite remote these changes at all. owner himself is ‘hard of hearing, poor of In a journey that started with his debut vision, and lacks sea-faring skills’. The People parental backstory in Nazi Germany, box- The Dark Net, Jamie Bartlett — of this par- vs Tech is a vital guide and a call addressed ticked into the American story via their ish and the think-tank Demos, where he has to those who are unwilling to play the part unions with spouses from different cultures. been writing on these issues for years — took of the hapless shipowner in the coming war Markovits adds them to the body politic us through the hidden wonders and horrors for our minds and democracy itself. too, with Nathan debating whether to help of the fringe communities active in the Dark Obama’s justice department legally justify (and Open) Web, before following their drone strikes. graduation to IRL politics with The Radicals Endless petty squabbles But this contributes to a feeling of dat- (the title of his second book). And his out- edness and literary exercise. When Trump look is somewhat less than positive. ‘Over the James McNamara is merrily buzz-sawing the constitution, years,’ Bartlett admits, ‘my optimism drifted how can we empathise with a Harvard law into realism, then morphed into nervousness. A Weekend in New York don’s quibbles about working for Obama? Now it’s approaching mild panic.’ by Benjamin Markovits With America shredding itself politically, With each chapter, The People vs Tech Faber, £14.99, pp. 346 racially and economically, what’s the point pushes deeper through the ways in which of a minute study of a ‘spoiled’ upper- technology will be affecting our lives in the I wrote foul-mouthed marginalia throughout middle class family in 2011? Towards the very (very) near future. From our daily rou- Benjamin Markovits’s A Weekend in New end of the novel, Susie uses the phrase ‘Hey, tines to the world of work, the health of our York. Not because Markovits is a bad writ- what was that for?’. I found myself asking the economies and finally the aforementioned er — he has a deserved reputation for excel- same question. survival of democracy itself, nothing seems lence. But because this study of a privileged to be beyond the scope of companies and American family reaches for a significance it politicians using the latest in data-harvest- doesn’t achieve, and leaves a self-consciously An electrifying genius ing (as seen during a visit to the former HQ literary novel with a surfeit of detail. of Trump’s digital operation) and machine There are admirable qualities. Marko- Christopher Priest learning technologies to influence the way vits’s prose is elegant; his portrait of New we think and conduct most parts of our lives, York is vivid; his characters feel authentic. Tesla: Inventor of the Modern outer and — most importantly — inner. Paul Essinger is a mid-ranked tennis play- by Richard Munson It isn’t pretty. er facing retirement. Over a long weekend, Norton, £20, pp. 306 Bartlett remarks: ‘Secretly designed his donnish siblings reunite in New York for algorithms are already creating data-led his final match. Nathan is a Harvard pro- Nikola Tesla, the man who made alternating bias and invisible injustices, and we urgent- fessor; Jean a producer involved with her current work, wrote to J. Pierpont Morgan, ly need a democratic mechanism to hold married boss; Susie has declined tenure for the industrialist and banker. It was 1902 them to account.’ But as we have wit- more children; their parents, Bill and Liesel, and Tesla was broke. ‘Am I backed by the nessed over the past two years at the very are academics enjoying the fruits of boomer greatest financier of all time? And shall least, the democratic process is not invul- stability. Markovits’s close focus on four days I lose great triumphs and an immense for- nerable to these new tools. And, as the in their lives explores family fault lines, and tune because I need a sum of money? Are book aptly shows, it’s not limited to piv- how their history defines them individually you going to leave me in a hole?!! Finan- otal moments. The platforms that host us and collectively. cially, I am in a dreadful fix.’ This was become monopolies in that way, mono- But the novel lacks discretion. All the not perhaps the best way of approaching polies ‘of not just economics or politics, but dinner-table bickering, every petty squab- a millionaire who had made his fortune in of culture and ideas’. ble, is recounted with mundane specific- the very industry Tesla was setting out to Bartlett’s vibrant writing is at odds with ity: ‘These conversations could go on and transform. It was a time of scientific entre-

38 the spectator | 30 june 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk preneurs and robber barons. Morgan was did over time come up with THE BRIDGEMAN ART LIBRARY a man of many concerns. He did not reply. sponsorship, loans or donations. Begging letters continued to be sent, He lived rent-free for years at and duly ignored. Finally, in desperation, the Waldorf Astoria. Then his Tesla went public, complaining in an engi- patron John Jacob Astor died neering magazine about his lack of spon- in the Titanic — and the new sorship. He concluded that Morgan was owners of the hotel threw Tesla pedantic, stupid and ignorant. J. Pierpont out, demanding three years’ Morgan responded at last in a handwritten back rent. letter: he said no. He was unquestionably bril- Richard Munson’s Tesla: Inventor of the liant. It was the generation and Modern gives us a detailed and vivid glimpse transmission of alternating of the competitive world of electrical inno- current electricity that made vation at the end of the 19th century, and his name and first fortune, but emphasises the duality of his subject. also his first big falling out, this Tesla was born in 1856, a Serb inside time with the heroic Ameri- Croatia who became a naturalised Ameri- can figure of Thomas Alva can, therefore a man of no real country, and Edison. Edison had pioneered given life at the crack of midnight, so also of direct current, but DC was not neither the present nor the future. He never powerful, and either had to be really fitted. He was a man of pyrotechnic generated locally or required intelligence, a genius comparable with Ein- booster stations. DC was pri- stein, Marconi or Edison (all of whom he vate enterprise: a generator berated and belittled), but he also lacked sold to every wealthy home or social skills and strategies. He was stum- street, whereas Tesla’s AC was blingly awkward with all women, and most democratic, pro bono publico. men. He was mad, too, a word which is Edison’s attempt at lighting appropriate for anyone who, for relaxation, New York’s skyscrapers meant Nikola Tesla — a man of pyrotechnic intelligence, shoots 150,000 volts through his own brain. every few floors had to have comparable to Einstein, Marconi and Edison He was planning to boost the power up to a heat-emitting, noisy substa- a million volts, but died before advances tion. Tesla generated his more in his technology could get him there. He muscular AC from a central power station, to the US to kill Tesla. The plot failed, but so that an entire multi-storey building the would-be assassin changed his name For relaxation, Tesla would could be lit from one source. Whole blocks to George H. W. Bush. Just as fascinating shoot 150,000 volts of skyscrapers glowing in the night became is the news that a late supporter of Tesla through his own brain possible, a symbol of emerging American was a director at MIT, John Trump, uncle technological might. of you-know-who. The nephew, campaign- Soon, alternating current was powering ing for high office in 2016, boasted of his did not trust medicines — a self-adminis- streetcars in Pittsburgh and lighting houses, intellectual qualifications: ‘I had an uncle tered electrocution was all the therapy he offices, roads and whole cities. While Edi- went to MIT. A genius. It’s in my blood. I’m seemed to need. son endlessly tinkered with existing tech- smart. Great marks. Like really smart.’ Munson tells us that Tesla was eccentric nology, something of a bad loser, Tesla was in other ways: he always dressed formally, blessed with a fantastic and inventive imag- as if going to the opera, walked with dig- ination. He said his ideas came in visions, Clutching at straws nity, hands clasped behind his back, then sometimes so detailed and ornate that he went to feed the pigeons in the park. He had no trouble making them practical. Andy Miller loved the pigeons, knew them by the affec- Although he patented many new devices tionate little names he made up for them, (some of them as yet still not built and test- Less invited them back to his suite of rooms at ed, 75 years after his death), he dreamed of by Andrew Sean Greer the Waldorf Astoria, creating a constant many more. Abacus, £8.99, pp. 261 noise and pong that drove other wealthy In his lifetime he directly or indirectly guests to distraction. Distances, house foresaw X-rays, electroconvulsive therapy, For someone who is only 47 and has won numbers, hotel rooms — he would have transmission of electrical energy through a Pulitzer Prize, Andrew Sean Greer cer- nothing to do with them if the number the atmosphere, radio transmitters and tainly knows how to get inside the head was not divisible by three. He was terrified wireless telegraphy, splitting the atom, of someone who is 50 and hasn’t. Less is, of germs and would never touch another radar and television, laser beams, radio- among other things, a novel about the aches human: he greeted people with a polite guided boats and submarines, jet engines, and pains of midlife, real and imagined; its bow, his grey-gloved hands folded behind the internet, mobile phones, even the smart hero, Arthur Less, turns 50 in the course his back. watch. But as with da Vinci’s blueprints for of the book. By a happy coincidence — or Throughout Tesla’s life, his weird behav- a helicopter, Tesla was too far ahead of his one engineered by The Spectator’s literary iour and inventive genius competed not time. The social needs did not exist, and the editor — while reading Less I too marked only as career opposites but in the way he ancillary technology to make the inven- my half-century. (Send no flowers.) Read- treated other people. He made fortunes tions possible had yet to emerge. er, I laughed and I cried; this is a hilarious, with his inventions, but lost the money Munson ends his most interesting and heart-warming and thoroughly midlife- repeatedly by giving away his patents, or often amusing book with two tantalising enhancing book. forgetting to renew them, or simply by fall- afterthoughts. He describes a delicious Less is a failed novelist, or at least thinks ing out with his patrons. Many benefactors, conspiracy theory in which a Tesla associ- of himself as one. When we first meet him, sensing the ingenuity of his scientific mind, ate was recruited by Hitler, and returned he is waiting to interview the famous science the spectator | 30 june 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk 39 BOOKS & ARTS fiction author H.H.H. Mandern, onstage ous interest. So talking about the work itself their houses. A retired woman who lives at to celebrate the launch of his new novel: doubles as a precis of ‘The Short Story’ and the very edge of the sea is overwhelmed by ‘In it, he revives his wildly popular Holm- its moment. anxiety about litter on the beach. When she esian robot, Peabody’: Happening around the world — often isn’t out secretly clearing it, she can’t get Why him? Why did they ask Arthur Less? engaged with travelling itself — the ten to sleep for worrying: ‘Where would it all A minor author whose greatest fame was a stories in Mothers take the form’s austerity go, after it had been collected? It wouldn’t youthful association with the Russian River and turn it into something from which rest- really be gone, would it? It would just be School of writers and artists, an author less characters seek to escape. Eva, a trou- somewhere else. It would be somewhere too old to be fresh and too young to be bled Swedish woman who appears in three else, instead of here.’ rediscovered, one who never sits next to any- stories, exerts a pressure on all the others. There’s something which is very Brit- one on a plane who has heard of his books. Well, Less knows why. It is no mystery. A They are often skillfully claustrophobic and ish and colloquial — the young narrator calculation was made: what literary writer tense. In ‘The Crossing’, a darkly comic, of ‘Home Scar’ thinks of his in-and-out-of- would agree to prepare for an interview and crafty tale, a woman has an unsatisfactory work father: ‘Then it would be like that time yet not be paid? It had to be someone terri- weekend of sex and hiking with a potential the hotel management changed and they bly desperate. new partner. After she teases her date for could stick their longer shifts with no extra not taking a daring route over a river, he pay up their arses’ — but nonetheless oth- Less is indeed a desperate man. We soon feels the need to prove himself and falls to erworldly about Wood’s stories. What Daisy learn that he is on the run. His (younger) his death. Johnson’s 2016 collection Fen did for East ex-boyfriend of nine years is getting mar- Someone spends a story worrying that Anglia’s landscape, Lucy Wood has done for ried and he urgently needs an excuse not his partner is going to leave him, and she the south-west. to attend the wedding. So he has accepted does. A rootless young man decides to go to Over the Atlantic and of a different all the invitations on his desk to half-baked Mexico and stop a wedding. He is roundly mould, You Think It, I’ll Say It by Curtis Sit- literary events around the world: interview- humiliated as he discovers he has been the tenfeld is peopled by celebrities, TV lawyers ing a more popular author in New York, plaything of both bride and groom: ‘Reali- and social media stars. One feels this glitz attending a prize ceremony in Italy, a spot sation unfurled in Liam, like a flag catching on the level of subject should threaten the of lecturing in Germany, and so on. the wind.’ literary subtlety with which these characters As the author of five novels and a vol- While being oblique, most of the stories are depicted. But that’s part of the fun of ume of short stories, Greer has no doubt in Mothers follow this staple of short story this collection. experienced his fair share of half-baked convention. They are built around life- Sittenfeld has successfully modelled literary events. On one level, Less is a glo- altering but simple realisations: a change a previous character on Laura Bush. This rious anthology of all the exquisite humilia- in atmosphere or moment of acceptance; collection’s opener seems to be narrated by tions that can be heaped upon a writer (my the locating of a point at which a person’s Hillary Clinton as a presidential nominee, favourite is the interviewer who introduces options diverged and potential lives went who contemplates the ingrained sexism of Less to an audience with the words: ‘We were unlived. The quietness of Power’s approach, a female interviewer. A nifty pathos rather talking backstage about mediocrity’), but it or rather the studiousness of it, can be exem- than presumptuousness is evoked when she is also a lyrical, moving essay on the rewards plary. ‘The Colossus of Rhodes’, explor- ends the narrative imagining her exit inter- of creativity and perseverance in the second ing the unreliability of memory and how view after two terms in office. half of life. Oh, and it is wise, generous of storytelling can be a means of anaesthetis- Sittenfeld’s speakers police their spirit and beautifully written. More! ing trauma, is strong enough to be taught as thoughts in endlessly interesting ways. In a masterclass in the form. ‘Gender Studies’, a professor has an abor- But at times Power’s containedness feels tive hook-up with a taxi driver who admires Short stories slight; too studious. Lesser stories are so Trump. ‘It’s not that she’s unaware that she’s gentle in their sanctioned purity as to feel an elitist asshole,’ she thinks. ‘She’s aware! Life-changing moments impenetrable, then yield less than their sur- She’s just powerless not to be one.’ Dur- faces suggest. As a reader, it’s hard for me to ing their encounter, her snobbery affects Jonathan McAloon know whether this is Power’s fault or mine her internal monologue about her lover: for having not read enough Alice Munro or ‘He uses his hands in a less habitually profi- Mothers Mavis Gallant. Either way, Mothers made cient but perhaps more natively adept way’ by Chris Power me want to ransack Power’s columns, and than her cultured ex. There’s a recurrent Faber, £10, pp. 304 the canon itself, to appreciate fully the col- exploration of the lies we tell people just to lection’s secrets. spare them the humiliation of offending us. The Sing of the Shore Lucy Wood similarly has a steady pre- A woman is addressed as if she is pregnant, by Lucy Wood occupation with the form. The Sing of and doesn’t have the heart to correct this 4th Estate, £14.99, pp. 272 the Shore, in which she constructs a vivid, because she dreads ‘the prospect of what uneasy fictional geography of modern they’d both have to do when Julie had to You Think It, I’ll Say It Cornwall, is her second collection, and she’s reveal she wasn’t’. by Curtis Sittenfeld won a slew of revered awards and prizes. In Two characters in different stories feel Doubleday, £16.99, pp. 256 ‘Home Scar’, three kids, during a summer’s awkward, obliged and responsible when boredom, self-consciously inhabit an empty their married friends try to begin affairs with On a recent Guardian podcast, Chris Power house like adults. ‘We should have a conver- them. The leisurely pace, buzzy dialogue — who has written a short story column in sation,’ one suggests, sitting at a set place of (which can be anything from razor-sharp to the Guardian for a decade — recognises the uncooked food. ‘Soon we have to go and sit woolly) and roominess of these stories make tendency of reviews of the form to begin in the armchairs.’ them seem less disciplined and refined than with ‘an obligatory paragraph on “The Short There’s a pervasive air of the gothic other examples of this noble, sometimes for- Story” in capital letters, rather than talking mundane. The father of a baby imagines bidding art. But when you’re used to, and about the work’. Power’s debut collection voices next door. The ghost of a bother- enjoy, the tight-lipped control this form usu- is itself a love letter to the form, a survey some neighbour allegedly invites his rival ally entails, a collection that withholds little of it and the culmination of a life’s studi- to dig a ditch on the disputed land between can be very satisfying.

40 the spectator | 30 june 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk Hypnotic threnodies Vocalist, street performer Ian Thomson and Jehovah’s Witness: All Gates Open: The Story of Can Damo Suzuki by Rob Young and Irmin Schmidt in 1971 Faber, £25, pp. 572

The tricky term ‘Krautrock’ was first used by the British music press in the early 1970s to describe the drones and industrial kling- klang of difficult German bands such as Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, Popul Vuh, Faust and Can. A British fear and loathing of Germany and the Germans informed numerous New Musical Express Krautrock articles. (‘Kraftwerk: the Final Solution to the Music Problem’, or ‘Can: They Have Ways of Making You Listen’.) The term was made semi-respectable by Julian Cope, the erudite jester of English pop, in his ironical- ly entitled book Krautrocksampler (1995), which commended the strange new music that rose from the moral and material ruins of post-Hitlerite Germany. It is hard now to imagine how star- tlingly new Can must have sounded. David Niven, the matiné idol, was reportedly baf- fled by the ear-frazzling beeps and reverb emanating from Can at a Munich nightclub in 1970. ‘It was great,’ Niven comment- ed afterwards, ‘but I didn’t know it was music.’ (Niven must have gone to the gig ance to the ‘square’ music scene in postwar Duncan Fallowell argues that Can rejected by mistake.) Germany known as schlager, with its Euro- arty rock posturing in favour of an egali- From the start, Can eschewed not only kitsch crooning. The second volume, Can tarian studio experimentation. Appropri- the pseudo-hippie kitsch of Genesis but Kisok, by the band’s founder member and ately, the band’s incandescently beautiful also the mellow denim heaven of Linda composer Irmin Schmidt, offers a collage of Future Days album was dedicated to the Rondstadt and the Eagles. Their abidingly random memories and diary entries on art, Hollywood actress and electronics innova- great 1972 album Ege Bamyasi showed an life, death and music. Born to Nazi parents in tor Hedy Lamarr. Andy Warhol-like image of tinned Turk- Berlin in 1937, Schmidt was part of a genera- Schmidt is now the only surviving core ish food on the cover, and was very far tion who wanted to know about their parents’ member of Can. The band’s ‘tack-sharp’ removed from the tepid, well-mannered wartime past. During the 1970s, Baader- drummer Jaki Liebezeit and bassist Holg- noodlings of Yes and Pink Floyd. Can’s Meinhof terrorists were able to count on er Czukay both died in 2017; Karoli, the signature hypnotic threnodies and percus- a degree of sympathy among Krautrock only Can founder born after the second sive dancefloor grooves owed something devotees because they dared to do what world war, died in 2001, aged just 53. The to the American minimalists Steve Reich two surviving vocalists, the African Ameri- and Terry Riley, as well as to the atonal ‘I wonder if Can will get into the can visual artist Malcolm Mooney, and the asperities of Karlheinz Stockhausen. In top tin,’ chirruped Noel Edmonds Japanese street performer and Jehovah’s 1976, bizarrely, Can appeared on Top of Witness Damo Suzuki (the subject of Mark the Pops in a bill alongside Cliff Richard. on Top of the Pops E. Smith’s song ‘I am Damo Suzuki’), con- ‘I wonder if Can will get into the top tin?’, tribute to Young’s impressive research. It chirruped the presenter Noel Edmonds. Germans had failed to do when it really was Schmidt who steered Can into writing (They did not.) mattered some 30 years earlier: stand up to for films, among them ‘bleak German spa- Formed in Cologne in 1968, Can remain authority. Can’s guitarist Michael Karoli and ghetti westerns’ and Jerzy Skolimowski’s hugely influential. It is enough to listen to his then girlfriend Eveline Grunwald (one of dark, sexy, coming-of-age movie Deep End, Roxy Music’s second album, For Your Pleas- the two pin-ups on Roxy Music’s controver- starring Diana Dors and Jane Asher, set in ure, to see how Can’s atmospheric sound sial Country Life album cover) were routine- and around the municipal baths of north- clusters and loopy synth rhythms overlay ly stopped by police who mistook them for east London. Bryan Ferry’s Cole Porter-like songwriting. Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof. The hedonism of the Swinging Six- A decade later, John Lydon begged to be Young, a former Wire magazine edi- ties had by then given way to the drab Can’s singer before founding Public Image tor, has immersed himself with tremen- reality of Harold Wilson’s first Labour Ltd. Radiohead have covered Can, as have dous zeal in unreleased Can material and government; and Can, as always, caught the New York art rockers Sonic Youth. The bootleg recordings. The repetitive, pro- the moment, with an exhilarating drum- late Mark E Smith of The Fall and Pete Shel- pulsive rhythms on Can’s celebrated 1971 driven soundtrack that still raises the hairs ley of The Buzzcocks idolised Can. double album Tago Mago (still the best- on one’s neck. Krautrock? Such music All Gates Open consists of two books. The selling Can album) ran counter to all defies category. (One may as well call Jimi first, by Rob Young, tells of how Can grew known blues-rock clichés, says Young, Hendrix ‘spaderock’.) Young’s Can-opener out of a spirit of combativeness and resist- while The Spectator’s former rock critic of a book is a real treat for Can fans. the spectator | 30 june 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk 41 BOOKS & ARTS IMAGES COURTESY OF© HISTORIC ENGLAND ARCHIVE. © CROWN COPYRIGHT

One of Britain’s first mosques, the Shah Jahan,Woking, completed in 1889 and financed by the female ruler of Bhopal

ARTS agement committee dominated by a much more politicised and confrontational form of Islam. No loving Mawlid gatherings were permitted because they were considered an Putting our House in order imitation of what the Christian West did. The imams were trained in Saudi Arabia, Britain is crying out for mosques that reflect the reality of the and we regularly hosted leaders of the Mus- Ed Husain lim Brotherhood and Jamaat-e-Islami. Five modern West, says minutes’ walk from Brick Lane Mosque, this was another, rival realm, where reli- gion and politics mixed. I was setting up the mosque library with bookish friends, buying in literature written by Abdul A’la Maududi about creating an Islamic State. Here, youth gathered and in time it became y earliest memory of a mosque is the birthday of the Prophet Mohammed, a mega-mosque with schools, banks, nurser- being with my father in London’s the Mawlid al-Nabi, we children loved the ies, gymnasia, restaurants and travel agents MBrick Lane Mosque. He was a heartfelt collective singing of rhythmic Ara- all being added to what became the Lon- member of its management committee and bic odes with our Bengali elders. The power- don Muslim Centre. At this mosque, I was that gave me, an infant, the right to roam ful unison of melodious voices, with incense taught that it was a religious obligation freely the four floors — including its vast burning in the air, and the aroma of food to join Islamist movements. This was an basement — as I waited for him to finish waiting, Indian biryani dishes sent to the organised and vibrant mosque, ambitious meetings. I remember seeing Hebrew writ- mosque by our mothers. But politics and in its aims to dominate the local area and ing on a plaque on the top floor. There were puberty ended that pluralistic peace. eventually British Muslim identity. mezuzahs on doors, respectfully preserved Architect Shahed Saleem’s marvel- By my mid-twenties, I had returned to my by the Muslim elders. I played with my lous The British Mosque: An Architectural father’s form of mainstream contemplative brother on the second floor amid the dusty and Social History, published by the pub- Islam. Travelling with British Muslim imams ebony pews left over from the mosque’s lic body Historic England, an arm of Eng- and teachers, I visited many of the mosques days as a French Huguenot church. Euro- lish Heritage, is an indispensable guide to Saleem highlights in his timely book. I also pean Judaism, Christianity and Islam were Britain’s approximately 1,300 mosques. ‘We entered places that are not mentioned in it, woven into the historical fabric of Brick shape our buildings; thereafter they shape such as the Markazi mosque in Dewsbury, Lane Mosque. us,’ said Winston Churchill. the European headquarters of the ultra- At weekends, I learned how to recite Aged about 16, I rebelled and turned to orthodox evangelical Tablighi Jamaat. Here, the Quran in Brick Lane. On special occa- the East London Mosque, a purpose-built there were too many sleeping bags belong- sions, such as the annual remembrance of mosque with minarets, domes and a man- ing to travelling door-to-door preachers, and

42 the spectator | 30 june 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk IMAGES COURTESY OF© HISTORIC ENGLAND ARCHIVE. © CROWN COPYRIGHT

The main entrance of Glasgow Central Mosque, an ambitious interpretation of traditional mosque architecture communal eating habits, often from a shared anced and harmonised humans. And in this A Muslim woman financed the Victori- plate in small groups of three, which I found task, mosques and Muslims are struggling. an mosque in Woking. Muslim women give off-putting. Almost all the mosques in Britain cur- money to mosques and partake in every part In parts of Manchester and Birmingham, rently have three major problems: incon- of British life. But why are they second-class there are mosques that are much more eth- gruent architecture, cultural baggage and citizens when allowed, or most often not nically and culturally diverse. Much like gender inequality. Too many mosques are permitted, to enter mosques? This gender London’s Regent’s Park Mosque, the Fri- designed as though they were in the villages apartheid must end. The Prophet’s mosque day congregations at these mosques see and towns of Bangladesh or Pakistan. Bright in Medina in 622 AD had women and men people of all colours and continents come green domes (the Prophet liked green) and praying beside each other for a period of together in worship. Mosques in Edinburgh domes and minarets that were designed by time. Even in Mecca, men and women are and Glasgow have a similar richness in their early Arabs to rival the churches of the Byz- together in the Grand Mosque. composition. Interestingly, when I visit a There are signs of change. In Harrow, the synagogue, there is always a prayer for the Mosques are for creating generations ‘Meeting Place’ (rather than ‘mosque’) is Queen. In my three decades of frequent- of balanced and harmonised humans. a fluid, wave-like building filled with light. ing British mosques, I have yet to hear a In this task, they are struggling In Cambridge, a new mosque is being built prayer for the monarch’s good health and where the architects will ‘synthesise the long reign. antines. Where is the sense in blindly and essential application of geometry with Islam- The Shah Jahan Mosque in Woking, Sur- unquestioningly mimicking the Umayyads? ic and English heritage’. The focus is inward- rey, was built in 1889 and financed by the The early Chinese or later Balkan Muslims facing, with courtyards and the building as a female ruler of Bhopal. In 1887, Abdul- created structures that reflected their cli- calm oasis. Both Cambridge and Harrow are lah William Quilliam, a convert, opened a mate and adapted to their local cultures. radical reinterpretations of Muslim spaces mosque in Liverpool, Britain’s first mosque. Mosque designs in Luton or Gloucester and bear none of the old hallmarks of domes, Saleem has a photo of the entrance to the often lack the imagination of a confident minarets and pointed arches. prayer area with its Turkish-style front and British Muslim identity. The first and second generation of Brit- piano. Dewsbury Muslims wouldn’t dream Too many mosques are suffering from ain’s Muslims built mosques as they knew of having a piano or other musical instru- sectarianism and cultural hang-ups, insist- them to be. It falls upon a new generation ments in their mosques. The puritan culture ing that an imam comes from a particular to adapt to the reality of the modern West. of frowning on fun is growing in the sub- Deobandi or Barelvi sect, speaks in foreign Where Britain’s Muslims lead, American culture of mosques. Too often, this leads to languages, maintains readings of Persian or and European mosques will follow. bipolar behaviour whereby a Muslim man Urdu poetry from a bygone era, while failing will kiss the cheeks of a non-Muslim woman to connect with young British Muslims. Why Ed Husain is the author of The House of at work, but refuse a Muslim woman entry must a boy come home from school and Islam: A Global History (Bloomsbury, to a mosque, much less shake her hand. then change into Arab-style white robes and 2018). The British Mosque: An Mosques are buildings not only for wor- girls cover their hair to go to Quran classes? Architectural and Social History by Shahed ship, but also for creating generations of bal- This is culture, not religion. Saleem is published by Historic England. the spectator | 30 june 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk 43 BOOKS & ARTS © MODERN ART INTERNATIONAL FOUNDATION (COURTESY MARÍA AND MANUEL REYERO)

‘Self-portrait on the border between Mexico and the United States of America’, 1932, Frida Kahlo

Exhibitions work of art’. Kahlo opted for both, and she These pathetic items have the air of reli- didn’t stop there. Though she was a Marx- gious relics about them, her version of the A self examined ist who numbered Trotsky among her many crown of thorns. Of course, Mexico is an lovers, she also channelled the role of saint intensely Catholic culture. Kahlo’s ‘Self Martin Gayford and martyr. Portrait as a Tehuan’ (1943) resembles a She was neater than Francis Bacon, baroque Madonna. Her tears are those Frida Kahlo: Making Herself Up whose studio-floor detritus has also been of a mater dolorosa, and poor Frida, who Victoria & Albert Museum, subjected to zealous forensic analysis — but underwent some 30 operations before until 4 November the clutter Kahlo left behind her was sim- dying aged 47, certainly had lots of sor- ilarly eclectic. Some of the exhibits were rows to suffer. The idea of the artist as holy In 2004 Mexican art historians made a sensa- required because of her multiple disabili- victim and outsider goes back to the 19th tional discovery in Frida Kahlo’s bathroom. ties. Kahlo suffered polio at the age of six century. Van Gogh and Gauguin were fas- Inside this space, sealed since the 1950s, was followed by a near-fatal bus crash in 1925, cinated by it. an enormous archive of documents, photo- which shattered her spine. In addition to this role, Kahlo empha- graphs and personal possessions. This hoard On show are the medicaments she took sised her exotic origins, at least as viewed forms the basis of Frida Kahlo: Making Her- and the plaster corsets she had to wear, from the perspective of Europe or the self Up, an exhibition at the V&A. and, most poignant of all, a prosthetic limb USA. She wowed the gringos of San Fran- Oscar Wilde once remarked that ‘one necessary after Kahlo’s right leg had been cisco on a visit in 1930 dressed in the should either be a work of art or wear a amputated towards the end of her life. costume of a Zapotec woman from the

44 the spectator | 30 june 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk province of Oaxaca, and afterwards adopt- Opera until suddenly, startlingly, his face and voice ed this outfit as a trademark. There is a curdled with hatred as he bent over Tybalt’s gallery filled with the marvellous regional Scent and sensibility corpse. Stephen Barlow, conducting the textiles she wore, typically with an Aztec ENO orchestra, is a master-pâtissier in this necklace as accessory. Richard Bratby sort of high-calorie repertoire. He made the There are, it is true, also quite a few paint- score glint, layering divided string passages ings and drawings on display, among them Roméo et Juliette like a millefeuille, and paced the climaxes some of Kahlo’s best known. But if the show Grange Park Opera, in rep until 6 July nicely, while letting the love scenes breathe had been restricted to her pictures, it would and expand. have been a small one, whereas this is actual- The Abduction from the Seraglio But it takes two to make a love scene, ly one of the V&A’s more ambitious efforts: The Grange Festival, in rep until 7 July and the kindest thing to say about David rambling on for room after room, accompa- Junghoon Kim’s Roméo is that vocally nied by eerie music. Patrick Mason’s new production of Gounod’s he’s a fighter, not a lover: more convincing My first instinct was suspicion. This looks Roméo et Juliette reminded me of some- when powering over an action scene than like an attempt to inflate a smallish quan- thing, but it took a while to work out what. in his shared moments with Juliette, though tity of loans into something grander. But as We saw shiny black walls with chrome Bau- Mason must take some responsibility for the I walked round I had second thoughts. The haus details, and a swirl of mist through which unenthusiastic way Kim shambled about in truth is that as a painter — despite her huge beautiful people moved in black formal wear. his shirtsleeves. Yet as Juliette, Tokar was fame — Kahlo is not outstandingly interest- Then Olena Tokar made her entrance as Jul- a knockout: throwing out jets of colora- ing. True, she was a lot better than her hus- iette, and as she pirouetted about the stage, tura, singing her love music with sensuous, band Diego Rivera, who was much more evening dress sparkling, it clicked. It’s a per- translucent fragility and acting with a sort of famous during their lifetimes and whose epic fume advert. The artificiality, the chic, the super-stylised self-consciousness. She struck sexy little hint of affluence with top notes of classical poses, opened eyes and mouth wide I left the exhibition convinced that fascism: you half-expected billowing curtains in rapture, and darted balletically about the in Kahlo’s case the work of art to reveal a giant bottle of Chanel No. 5. stage. Nothing she did looked natural, but really was herself It fitted right in at West Horsley, where everything was magnetic — as if character the programme book contains adverts for and performer alike were equally aware that political murals now look grandiose, vapid private equity firms and first nights begin they were simply part of some fabulous lux- and dated. In contrast, Kahlo had a sharp with an onstage shout-out to Laurent-Perri- ury product. In this context it was spot-on, sense of design and a knack for strong col- er. If it were an hour shorter, Roméo et Juli- and on the strength of this performance I’d ours that sing together. The limitation of her ette might even be the perfect opera for a hear her in anything. work was that it is all about her. Although certain segment of the country-house circuit. That doesn’t leave much room for only about a third of her output consists of Everyone knows the story and while it has John Copley’s new staging of The Abduc- self-portraits, all of her best-known works its moments the young lovers’ death scene are among them. is certainly no ‘Liebestod’. It’s the product It’s a perfume advert: the artificiality, Having said that, certain painters have of a slightly kinky operatic tradition, rooted the chic, the sexy little hint of long made their personal appearance part in French classicism, that enjoys the sensa- affluence with top notes of fascism of their work. Rembrandt did it. Gauguin tion of emotions within elegantly proscribed — in several ways a precedent for Kahlo — boundaries, and knows that not everything tion from the Seraglio, which is merciful painted himself as a Breton fisherman, then has to be profound. because colleagues tell me he’s a nation- later as an Oriental sage, and also as both Gounod delivers transient pleasures in al treasure, and no one wants to blame a Christ and the devil. sumptuous profusion: whether the Grande national treasure for wobbly sets, drab Kahlo’s remodelling of herself extend- Cuvée sparkle of an anachronistic waltz lighting and a representation of Islamic ed to make-up. The catalogue investigates song, the languishing curves of his melodies culture that, with its funny hats, pointy slip- this with a zeal more usually devoted to, or the way he saturates his score with col- pers and perma-smiling harem girls, had all say, Rubens’s application of burnt umber. It ours that glow from within. And then, grace- the sensitivity of an ITV production of Ali seems that Kahlo strengthened her celebrat- fully, it slips from the memory. Nothing here Baba, circa 1978. The cast seemed uncom- ed conjoined eyebrows — like a bird taking to put you off your picnic. Mason and the fortable with the spoken dialogue (the flight, in Rivera’s opinion — using ‘Ebony’ designer Francis O’Connor handled it with English translation was embarrassingly by Revlon and also a French product, Talika, style, though I’m not sure that having the dated). Only Jonathan Lemalu — playing designed to encourage hair growth. Even Capulets dressed as Mussolini’s Blackshirts Osmin as a teddy bear, but singing nobly more excitingly to contemporary scholars (the setting was a glamourised 1930s Italy) — and the comic couple of Pedrillo (Paul preoccupied with her ‘gendered identity’, didn’t skew the central conflict too heav- Curievici) and Blonde (Daisy Brown) rather than plucking her pronounced mous- ily, or that it was wise to have Tybalt’s ghost really seemed to be enjoying themselves, tache, she flaunted it. appear, Banquo-like, at critical moments though Kiandra Howarth, as Konstanze, Does any of this matter? I left the show later in the drama when everything prior to won cheers for ‘Martern aller Arten’. convinced that in Kahlo’s case the work of his death had seemed basically naturalistic, The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra art really was herself. The proof is that the in a Baz Luhrmann sort of way. was in the pit, and with Jean-Luc Tingaud photographs and films of her, especially the Still, the company carried the concept, drawing sparky sounds from the percussion beautiful colour ones taken by her lover by and large. Mats Almgren as Frère Lau- section there was the consolation that the Nickolas Muray (and probably partly con- rent sang with such enveloping warmth that enterprise was at least redistributing some ceived and directed by the artist), are just as you completely forgot to question the irre- wealth in the direction of an undervalued powerful as the paintings — though the lat- sponsibility of his actions. Anthony Flaum, regional orchestra. Meanwhile, I’m not say- ter dwell more on her suffering and injuries. as Tybalt, had a lip-curling swagger that ing that this opera has to be set in Fallujah Although distinctly over-the-top and was a nice counterpoint to the elegance of but there are ways of exploring its central containing an excess of bric-à-brac, Making Clive Bayley’s Count Capulet, who carried tensions that make it considerably more Herself Up succeeds in making Kahlo more his melodies with the throwaway charm and than just a silly posh panto. Assuming that’s comprehensible and intriguing. tastefully faded tone of Maurice Chevalier what the Grange Festival actually wants. the spectator | 30 june 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk 45 BOOKS & ARTS Radio Reith Lectures (produced by Jim Frank), Theatre has taken war as her subject. In The Mark Imperial measures of Cain she wonders why we find war such Promises, promises an equivocal subject, both disturbing and Kate Chisholm appealing. Her audience was sitting in the Lloyd Evans BBC Radio Theatre, deliberately bombed It’s been a heavyweight week on Radio 4 by the Luftwaffe in 1940 because the corpo- An Octoroon with the start of the annual series of Reith ration was seen by the Germans as so impor- Dorfman Theatre, until 18 July Lectures and a talk on empire by Jan Morris, tant to the war effort. The newsreaders kept and thank heavens for that. We need serious, going as the rubble settled. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie we need facts, we need to think in these try- It’s not helpful to see war as ‘an aberra- Donmar Warehouse, until 28 July ing times, beset as they are by Love Island tion’, argues MacMillan, as ‘an absence of and persistent presidential tweeting. As it peace’. This is not helpful. We need to under- Intriguing word, ‘octoroon’. Does it mean an happens, both talks were given by women, stand it, and to work out why, for instance, eight-sided almond-flavoured cakelet? No, and I can’t help wondering whether their war was a reasonable option in 1914. War it’s a person whose ancestry is one eighth gender has something to do with the way requires a great deal of organisation; and black. New Yorker Branden Jacobs-Jenkins neither of them plugged a definite line but also promotes technological advance and wants to explore this factoid in his farce instead suggested there are more ways than even social improvement. The gap between An Octoroon, which opens with an angry one of looking at things. the rich and poor actually narrowed between African-American playwright delivering a On Wednesday morning Morris looked 1914 and 1960, she noted. comic monologue. He tells us a story about back at Britain’s imperial past in her own This was strong stuff, clearly deliv- ‘my shrink’. Then he tells us that ‘my shrink’ inimitable fashion, calling her programme ered. But the ‘furniture’ around the talk doesn’t exist. Then he talks about ‘my The British Empire: An Equivocation (pro- was peculiar in tone. The introduction was shrink’ again. Right, so is ‘my shrink’ real or duced by Gareth Jones). It was as curious chatty; the questions at the end not from not? Obviously the writer doesn’t care. a half-hour as the title suggests, part-doc- experts and therefore not incisive enough. A second dramatist enters, an Irishman, umentary, part-reminiscence, and almost MacMillan’s story about the grenade she in Victorian costume. This is Dion Bouci- like a Desert Island Discs of empire, with and her siblings used to play with until the cault, a 19th-century writer whose comedies a selection of music inspired by Mandalay, family realised one day that it still had its were enormously popular in London and Shalimar, and the imperial project. Snatch- pin was startling. But when Anita Anand on Broadway. Boucicault’s opening line is es of Elgar, Walton and Vera Lynn were said, ‘One thing I’m dying to ask you,’ ‘Fuck you,’ which he addresses to the black interwoven with Morris’s memories and before MacMillan began her talk, it intro- playwright. ‘Fuck you,’ comes the reply. This reflections. duced an odd tone into the occasion. Was phrase is repeated 20 times between the She was born in 1926 when Britain was this a serious talk or just a conversation? amusing wordsmiths and they try to make still at the heart of an empire that encom- Sue Lawley, who chaired the lectures for their repartee even funnier by screeching passed one third of the world’s landmass years, created a glitzy, crème-de-la-crème and governed one eighth of its inhabitants, atmosphere without compromising the I’d no more see a play by a ‘promising’ heavyweight intent of what was to come. writer than I’d make an appointment Empire has become the epitome of It’s not that the Reith Lectures should with a ‘promising’ dentist political incorrectness but many be maintained in aspic, kept to a fusty for- ‘imperialists’ led worthwhile lives mula with no attempt to reach out to, and the lines at the volume of an exploding bar- draw in, a broader audience. But you can’t rel bomb. After this, the play rather tails off. an astonishing feat for such a small island. be chatty about a subject as serious as war. The writer sets out to examine the issue No doubt it was exploitative and corrupted And a panel of experts providing a dis- of racial imposture on stage but he has noth- by ‘coarse chauvinism’ but, argues Morris, cussion of what MacMillan had just said ing to say about it. He creates a 19th-centu- there’s also something fascinating about its would have opened up the talk much more ry scene in which a black performer dressed enterprise. Her first encounter with empire helpfully. as a white character says ‘Nigger Pete’ to a was in Cairo in the 1940s where she saw There’s been so much fuss about the new white performer dressed as a black charac- both its manifestations — the kindly civil Radio 2 drivetime show combo of Simon ter. Once delivered, the label is discarded servant on his way to work, British through Mayo and Jo Whiley. No one appears to like without comment. What’s the point of giv- and through, but also utterly at home amid their ‘chemistry’. But it was bound to take ing a fresh currency to these extinct slurs? the Egyptian crowds; and the British army time to settle down. Mayo and Whiley have To increase racism, perhaps, although that colonel who kicked the young Arab block- spent years working solo behind the mike, seems a strange ambition for the National ing his way, ‘literally kicked him in the seat building a rapport with their audience, mak- Theatre. The only other purpose is to make of his pants’. ing us feel as though they’re talking just to us feel slightly ashamed of our ancestors. There was an ‘astonishing effrontery’ on us. It was never going to be easy for either Whites were overly brutal, blacks overly the part of the British government in its rule, of them to make a go of working together. subservient. OK. What’s new? particularly of India, yet it had ‘a beauty of Or for Radio 2’s loyal listeners to accept the Two gossiping slave girls appear and its own’ — a contradiction that has fasci- change, Mayo’s fans hating the intrusion of they become entangled somehow in a mel- nated her for years and led to several books, ‘that woman’, Whiley’s wondering why she odramatic pastiche that features a scream- most especially her trilogy Pax Britannica. can’t be trusted to do the show on her own. ing heiress, a stolen baby, a gesticulating Empire has become the epitome of political Maybe that would have been a cleverer bandit, an axe-waving Cherokee and a rich incorrectness but, says Morris, hundreds and move on the part of the controller, swapping fool fumbling with a primitive camera. I thousands of ‘imperialists’ led ‘enjoyable Mayo and Whiley rather than bringing them say the girls ‘become entangled somehow’ and worthwhile’ lives as doctors, teachers, together? But perhaps it was more impor- in a pastiche because the narrative is so engineers, geographers, as well as soldiers tant to create a new kind of show on Radio confused, the performers so enamoured and administrators, in the far reaches of 2, with a male and female host. If they’re not of their over-acting, and the production India, Malaya and Africa. yet perfectly in tune, give them time, I say, so choked with intrusive effects that the Meanwhile Margaret MacMillan, in her give them time. story’s meaning is rendered opaque. Many

46 the spectator | 30 june 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk Prized Possessions dutch paintings from national trust houss

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HELEN MURRAY the play is deliciously poised between sad- ness and laugh-out-loud hilarity. The cast are terrific. Sylvestra Le Touzel is wonderfully grisly as the puritanical Miss Mackay. Rona Morison delivers a puck- ishly intelligent Sandy. Gordon, the silky old lothario (Angus Wright), comes across as a park-bench pervert in a well-cut suit. For Lia Williams the role represents a huge challenge. On paper Brodie is awful, a prig- gish needy sentimental snob whose worship of Italy doesn’t preclude an enthusiasm for Mussolini. But in the flesh, she’s irresist- ible, a born seductress, a mythical she-wiz- ard whose incantations create magic and disaster. Williams blazes forth in the role, fully fledged, a brand-new star, in complete command of her art. Relish every detail: the humour, the charisma, the mischief, the steeliness, the pathos, the technical exacti- tude and the unmistakeable background murmur of eroticism. I confess I’ve seen Williams in two cel- ebrated shows and I barely noticed her. But the roles were duds, not her. She took the lead in Schiller’s coma-inducing Mary Stuart and she played Clytemnestra in a bore-of- the-year version of the Oresteia. But this is something else. If it doesn’t reach Broadway, what’s Broadway for?

Television Coming up Trumps James Walton

Back when his country was controlled by the USSR, the Czech writer Milan Kundera pointed out that ‘Union of Soviet Socialist Republics’ was ‘four words, four lies’. It’s a strike rate that even the current US president Ken Nwosu and Alistair Toovey in An Octoroon at the National Theatre has yet to match. Nonetheless, at one stage in Reporting Trump’s First Year: The Fourth Estate (BBC2, Sunday) we did see him pull spectators struggled with drowsiness as the reader holds me in place, a bemused off an impressive three-sentences, three-lies the chaotic action wore on. And because invigilator, as my sad captors attempt una- sequence in a speech about — inevitably — the house lights were up — always a bad vailingly to amuse their fellow earthlings. the mainstream media, including the New idea — the sleepyheads were openly vis- Such was this ordeal. The Critics’ Circle last York Times. ‘They have no “sources”,’ said ible to their neighbours and to the unfor- year gave Jacobs-Jenkins its ‘most promising Trump baldly. ‘They just make ’em up. They tunate performers. Another hour or two playwright’ award. (Rather a disingenuous are the enemy of the people.’ passed, and on trooped a group of labour- accolade: we never said he was good, only Not that Trump will care, but by then we promising.) I would no more see a play by a already knew how scrupulously the paper in Every moment of the play is ‘promising’ writer than I’d make an appoint- question goes about its reporting. The New deliciously poised between sadness ment with a ‘promising’ dentist. York Times has given the makers of this and laugh-out-loud hilarity The Donmar has hired Polly Findlay to new documentary series remarkable access direct a revival of Muriel Spark’s The Prime to what goes on behind the scenes — which ers who spent several minutes removing of Miss Jean Brodie. The character is an is to say a lot of careful fact-checking and some floorboards from the stage to reveal unorthodox teacher whose encouragement a refusal to publish any story that can’t be a trench into which flammable liquid was of rule-breaking among her pupils leads fully backed up. (Rather disappointingly, poured and ignited. This meant that a boat to tragedy. Brodie is an archetype, a disap- of course, the actual process of publishing was alight. What boat? Why alight? pointed rebel, like the Fonz, who creates a no longer involves the thunderous rolling Every few years in the theatre I suffer a gang of admiring younger acolytes to com- of presses, but clicking on a computer icon weird reality shift and become convinced pensate for her personal failings. Findlay has labelled ‘publish’.) that I’m not a reviewer but a hostage lured produced an unfussy and faithful version of In the first episode, the Times did eventu- into an asylum by deluded exhibitionists. the story which, by some miracle, finds the ally find the sources required to score some Part of me wants to escape but my duty to theatre’s sweetest spot. Every moment of serious scoops. The overwhelming impres-

48 the spectator | 30 june 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk sion, though, was of clever, slightly earnest shell-shocked, they did remain journalists to Israeli capital, Trump urged everybody in newspaper types struggling to understand the core — greeting each fresh Trump out- the region to stay calm. (‘That does it every the new world in which they found them- rage with both dismay and a regular excited time,’ Johnson observed with somewhat selves: a world where the traditional rules cry of ‘What a fucking story!’ weary amusement.) have gone and there’s a president who, as Still, for anybody who does value such In the absence of any diplomatic expe- one reporter put it, ‘is very comfortable not old-fashioned values as balance, Monday rience, Johnson is relying, with unshakea- telling the truth’. night brought us a full-on Trump support- ble self-assurance, on his business skills to In the circumstances, sad to say, the execu- er. Inside the American Embassy (Channel see him through. During a trip to the state tive editor’s continued commitment to ‘inde- 4) is another new documentary series with department in Washington, an earnest under pendent honest inquiry’ sounded almost secretary wondered how the department quaint, although not as much as the publish- We heard the US ambassador boast could help ‘from a cultural standpoint — er’s proud declaration that, ‘We’re not driven that he’s raising his two young sons to arts, photography, exchange programmes’. by clicks, we think in decades’. Quaintest of be ‘just like Donald Trump’ ‘We like music and all that,’ Johnson replied all, these people occasionally even displayed long-sufferingly. ‘But what pays for it is that least fashionable of virtues: self-doubt. unusually close access to its subject — in this the business guys.’ Back in London, he vis- ‘We didn’t have our finger on the pulse of the case, Robert Wood Johnson, billionaire busi- ibly alarmed Sir Alan Duncan with a hymn country,’ said one about the paper’s election nessman, owner of the New York Jets and, of praise to the peregrine falcon, ‘the ulti- coverage, ‘and that was wrong.’ since November 2017, the US ambassador mate in domination’, with its ability to cut a Appropriately enough, the programme to Britain. pigeon’s throat in midair. is pretty old-school itself, determined not Johnson’s appointment was presuma- Johnson applied the same gung-ho to sensationalise, and content to move quite bly linked to the large donations he made approach to Brexit, something he regards as slowly, with plenty of lingering shots of peo- to Trump’s presidential campaign — and at ‘not a major challenge’. (‘How can you have ple looking pensive in glass-fronted offices. one point we heard him boast that he’s rais- this great a country and not be successful?’) Even so, the result provides unnerving evi- ing his two young sons to be ‘just like Donald Unfortunately, his bullishness went distinctly dence of what happens when moral nuance Trump’. But his devotion was by no means unshared by most of the Brits he met. Alan becomes a source of suspicion rather than slavish. Clearly, he’d have preferred it if the Duncan, for example, responded to John- of admiration. (Nowadays, the Times also President hadn’t retweeted videos from the son’s confidence in a rosy British future with comes under attack from the left if it fails to far-right group Britain First — and, ideally, a comedy crossing of the fingers. And as a condemn every aspect of the Trump admin- had also refrained from criticising the cost general rule, the more the ambassador urged istration’s behaviour.) Happily, while the and location of the new American embas- this country’s business leaders not to be so newspaper’s staff spent most of the time sy. Nor was he entirely won over when, fol- nervous about the prospect, the more nerv- looking somewhere between infuriated and lowing his recognition of Jerusalem as the ous they looked.

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the spectator | 30 june 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk 49 BOOKS & ARTS

Cinema call. Tom does not attend school, but learns They’re placed in a small house on a farm from an old encyclopaedia, and her relation- where he cuts down Christmas trees and she Little voice ship with her father is tender, loving, mutually makes a friend, perhaps the first friend of Deborah Ross respectful. They share an intimate, intricate her life, and acquires a toy (a plastic horse; connection conveyed by the way they behave this is one of the film’s bigger events) that is round one another, rather than through dia- perhaps the first toy of her life. They’re soon Leave No Trace logue. We immediately understand their goal on the move again, but we know that some- PG, Nationwide — leave us be! We’re fine! — and immediate- thing within Tom has changed. ly share it. (Let them be! They’re fine!) But Granik trusts us, so doesn’t go in for expo- Debra Granik, the writer-director who made the authorities call — with sniffer dogs; bum- sition or back stories. We aren’t told what quite a splash with Winter’s Bone (which mer — and they’re forced into the system. happened to Tom’s mother, for example. We launched the career of Jennifer Lawrence At this point you will think: oh, it’s that film. don’t know exactly what happened to Will in 2010), has returned with Leave No Trace, It’s the film where the system will eat them in the military, but can see that he has been which is also powerfully compelling. By alive. Or at least it’s the film where the system traumatised. Every time a helicopter flies rights, it shouldn’t be. By rights, this tale of a will try to eat them alive. Or it’s the film where over he doesn’t flinch — it’s never as crude father and daughter who wish to keep them- they enter the system as rebellious individu- as that — but we know the flinch is there selves to themselves (essentially) should be als but come out as zombies. (See Family Life, because Foster puts it there. We can see it in as dull as ditchwater. It is slow. Little is said One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, etc.) But it Will’s eyes. We can see that he can’t endure and little happens — it’s inaction-packed, if isn’t any of those films. Here, you’re never cer- other people simply by his demeanour. This you like — yet it pulls you in and keeps you tain where the narrative is going. You’re only touches on the political — the medicating pulled in. I’m still turning it over in my mind certain that you wish to go with it. of Vietnam vets; the marginalisation of the days later. It will certainly leave a trace in The characters are brilliantly three- poor — but it is far more interested in the you, in other words. dimensional. The drama and tension — and psychological, and in Tom’s growing away. Adapted from Peter Rock’s novel My often it is extremely tense — come not from If anything, this is a coming-of-age film Abandonment, the film stars Ben Foster as without, but within, as desires and goals and McKenzie’s performance is incredible. Will, a Vietnam vet, and Thomasin McKen- shift, especially Tom’s. So it’s not as obvi- She absorbs our attention. She is naturalis- zie as his teenage daughter, Tom. The pair ous as putting others in their path to oppose tic. She is nuanced, adding layer on layer. She deliberately live an off-grid life in a national them. There are no villains, as it’s not that matures in front of our very eyes, because that park outside Portland, Oregon, grubbing for film either. In fact, everyone they meet is is what Tom does. And unusually, we have mushrooms, catching rainwater, building fires, sympathetic and kind, including their social here a girl whose physicality and sexual being practising how to hide amid the ferns and the worker who is well meaning even if Will and count for nothing. It’s her mind that matters. giant evergreens should the authorities ever Tom can’t be allowed to remain ‘homeless’. And only that.

Antony Gormley has replicated again. THE HECKLER riority that Gormley’s trying to invoke Every year or so a new army of his other Antony Gormley evaporates.

selves — cast, or these days 3-D fabricat- CHRISTOPHER FURLONG/GETTY IMAGES Gormley can insist his body-casts are ed, in bronze, iron, steel — emerge from not figures; that a sentimental reaction his workshop. Some lucky clones find isn’t appropriate, but is that in his gift? themselves in wild and beautiful places; If you’re going to state, very clearly, that others are trapped in private collections. the viewer is part of the art form, then his The latest clutch, generation 2018, views matter too, and we’re animists as a find themselves in the new galleries species, incorrigible anthropomorphists. at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge (until 27 We project personality on to cars. The August), one sticking out horizontally Gorms don’t stand a chance. from a wall, another, an airy stack of Take Gormley’s 2015 series ‘Land’, Modern figurative sculpture can work steel bars, staring down through a win- five life-size Gorms positioned in five very well — it’s not the art form that’s dow into town. It’s called ‘Subject’, this different watery locations around the the trouble, I don’t think. Look at the work (also the title of the exhibition), UK. One still stands, contemplating work of a less famous contemporary of and Gormley’s intention is that it acts the Isle of Arran across the Kilbrannan Gormley’s, John Davies, neither knight- as an invitation to each gallery-goer to Sound, thanks to an anonymous donor. ed nor an OBE. Last year, as Gormley’s pause; to become aware of themselves Again, they’re intended as a poke in the cast-iron self left the Ondaatje Wing of as subjects too. These are not figures, so ribs. Like the parrots on Aldous Huxley’s the National Portrait Gallery, a troupe of goes the idea, but representations of, and Island, they remind us citizens to stop, Davies’s near life-size figures material- triggers for, an interior mental state. look, to be ‘here and now’. But if you’ve ised in the Turner Contemporary in Mar- Well, ‘Subject’ has made me aware, travelled to the Kilbrannan Sound, with gate. ‘My Ghosts’ they were called — a but perhaps not quite in the way the art- picnic and a pac-a-mac, aren’t you exact- pantheon of lopsided, shadowy, strange ist intends. I like Antony Gormley. I inter- ly the sort who doesn’t need to be told? figures. Perhaps because they weren’t viewed him once for this magazine and And, isn’t it irritating? aiming to be signposts, or universal sig- found him charming. I admired his Turner Yes, we enjoy the unexpected: a rust- nifiers, but quite particular characters Prize-winning ‘Field’. But I’m increasingly ing robo-man on some unexpected out- from Davies’s personal past, they glowed sure that his big idea works far better in crop. But when the surprise fades, it quite with universal meaning. Interestingly, it theory than it does in practice. In fact, I spoils the more magical feeling of having was impossible to feel sentimental about strongly suspect that the great diaspora of discovered a place oneself. Because it’s them. They had too much personality of Gorms often has the very opposite effect a figure, it becomes company — and in their own. on a viewer than the one its maker intends. company that very sense of lonely inte- — Mary Wakefield

50 the spectator | 30 june 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk PHOTO BY GARETH CATTERMOLE/TAS18/GETTY IMAGES

Taylor Swift, and her adoring fans, at Wembley Stadium

Live music various homes. She’s known for nurturing get so worked up about it. She sang to the her fans — sending expensive gift packag- girls, and the girls screamed their delight Mad about the girl es with handwritten notes to some of them, and recognition: ‘They say I did something out of the blue. One wonders if this, too, is a bad/ Then why’s it feel so good?… Most fun Michael Hann reaction to the lack of normality in her life. I ever had/ And I’d do it over and over and It’s as if she’s made herself into the ideal- over again if I could.’ It was oddly reminis- Taylor Swift ised version of who she might have want- cent of the relationship between Morris- Wembley Stadium ed to be at 18 when, instead of hanging out sey and his fans at the peak of The Smiths, with her friends, she was making albums, except where Morrissey embraced victim- Imagine living Taylor Swift’s life. She has touring incessantly, becoming a star. As we hood, Swift shakes it off. been staggeringly, life-dominatingly famous left Wembley after an extraordinary, bril- The show was a technological mar- since she was 17. Not for a single moment in liant spectacle, my 17-year-old daughter vel, played out in front of giant screens her entire adulthood (she’s now 28) has she asked me of the secret sessions, the gifts: that separated into constituent parts been able to do any of the everyday things and reassembled themselves, like Tetris the rest of us take for granted. No wonder, I’ve seen some exceptional blocks. I’ve seen some exceptional stage then, that so much of what surrounds her stage productions this year but productions this year — from David seems so peculiar. No wonder her last two this dwarfed them all Byrne, Susanne Sundfor, Katy Perry and albums (2014’s fabulous 1989, last year’s more — but this dwarfed them: don’t bet rather less fabulous Reputation) have been ‘Why do you think she does all that stuff?’ against the kitchen sink having been part dominated by songs about how other peo- I don’t know, I told her, but she gets some- of the production. It also papered over ple perceive her life: every thing she does, thing from it, and my bet would be that it’s the main problem with Reputation, which as she is well aware, goes through a filter. all about an emotional reward rather than — unlike the gloriously melodic 1989 — She sings not about her love life — her rela- a cynical attempt to boost sales. was marked by what seemed like a per- tionships with the actors Tom Hiddleston One tangible effect of her loyalty to her verse dedication to shooing away tunes. and Joe Alwyn, the DJ Calvin Harris —but fans is their loyalty in return. Swift is their But at stadium volume, the physicality of about how her love life is reported. It’s a Queen Bee, their glamorous-but-relatable ‘I Did Something Bad’ or ‘Look What You very meta kind of pop stardom: ‘I swear I older sister, the one who tells them their Made Me Do’ was like standing in front of a don’t love the drama, it loves me,’ as she put lives will turn out fine. While Swift’s songs jet engine. And the album’s one undeniably it on the song ‘End Game’. are often commentaries on her life, they great song — ‘Getaway Car’, which sounds Before she took to the stage at Wembley sound less like dispatches from the VIP as though it has existed for ever — was sim- Stadium, the giant screens broadcast foot- area at a club than a school cloakroom the ply gorgeous. The screens had locked back age of ‘secret sessions’ in which groups of Monday morning after that party on Satur- together into giant picture walls, and Swift her fans had been invited to listen to Repu- day night when she snogged that boy from was left alone on the huge stage. Just her tation before its release with Swift at her the other school and, God, people shouldn’t and her fans, locked in mutual adoration. the spectator | 30 june 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk 51 NOTES ON … Feminist children’s books By Melanie McDonagh

friend of mine who commissions ISTOCK anywhere in the world. It’s especially chal- book reviews has added a sub- lenging in some places,’ our author observes. A category to the list of titles coming Yes, in Saudi Arabia; we get that. And possi- up: ‘femtrend’, books about the female con- bly in Saudi the book may be useful. dition from a feminist perspective. ‘Grit lit Femtrend isn’t only non-fiction. One is over,’ she says wearily, referring to edgy treat coming up from Bloomsbury is The books about the marginalised. ‘Now pub- Restless Girls, a retelling of the Grimms’ lishers can’t get enough of the feminist trend The Twelve Dancing Princesses. Except, this about women who for centuries have been is a version in which the brave soldier who airbrushed out of history by toxic masculin- finds out what the girls have been up to is a ity and oppressive patriarchy. Airbrushing ... whoops! Nearly gave the plot away. The the toxic white male. Female tribes. Mod- introduction gives a clue too: this is about ern courtesan. Now it’s draining down into Girl power – or groupthink in written form? ‘keeping a sisterhood alive and observing children’s books too.’ and criticising the status quo’. Of course! It started with Good Night Stories for a Woman — The Inspiring Connections Don’t think that boys are excluded from Rebel Girls, a collection of accounts of inspi- Between the Women Who Have Shaped Our all this. One new title from Walker Books rational role models; Malala, Maya Angelou World. To some extent this is fine, given this for younger readers is Julian is a Mermaid, et al, which was bought by Penguin Random is the centenary of female suffrage. But it’s a boy who encounters mermaids in the House and became last year’s surprise pub- still groupthink in book form. See the pro- company of his abuela, or granny-figure; an lishing sensation. It was immediately appar- motional board with a picture of a feisty tot exciting transgender exercise. Which brings ent to me that what I was looking at was the in a headscarf, her biceps curled, saying: ‘We us to the next version of the genre: Boys contemporary version of the saint stories I can do it.’ The motto is: books to inspire the Who Dare to be Different. So we get Ai Wei- had as a child: modern hagiography, intend- next generation of amazing women. wei and Barack Obama. Good Night Stories ed to inculcate devotion and imitation. The quintessence of the genre is, as you’d for Rebel Boys, then. Every bookshop has its own feminist expect, Chelsea Clinton’s latest: She Per- In other words, what Lionel Shriver shrine: a selection of books commemo- sisted, Around the World: 13 Women Who observed about publishing for grown-ups, rating important women — Great Women Changed History. On the cover there’s one which privileges diversity above actual read- Who Changed the World; Fantastically Great white girl in a wheelchair and two Indi- ability, is equally true of children’s books. Women Who Made History; Rosie Revere, an-looking girls, one with a stethoscope, This is Gramscian cultural hegemony incul- Engineer; Women in Sport; Rebel Voic- another with a plant. A medic and a scientist cated on the get ’em young principle. What es — The Rise of Votes for Women; I Know obviously. ‘It’s not always easy being a girl, it doesn’t promise is a good read.

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54 the spectator | 30 june 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk The British Library should be burned down and replaced by a giant replica of Bamburgh Castle — Tanya Gold, p62

High life look like a semi-detached near Reading. Salieri-like. Worse, however, are the tour- (More about Badminton in two weeks, if ists, the bane of our time, eating and drink- Taki I survive the upcoming party.) ing and clogging up those beautiful streets. My son-in-law, Count Saint-Julien-Wall- God, how I loathe the modern world and its see, is an Austrian nobleman whose fami- non-manners, the lack of style, the horrors ly and title go back some 900 years. (Louis of modern music and modern mores. I might VII rewarded the family after the Second just move here for good. Crusade.) He, his family and I get along At last we’ve come full circle. My pater- like a house on fire, and the night of the nal ancestors came from these parts, I mar- wedding we stayed up far too late and got ried a German whose family went to Austria stinko. Edo is the head of the household, in the 18th century, and now my daughter is and I met all his close friends that first night married to an Austrian. I couldn’t be hap- Schloss Wolfsegg at the schloss. Although I hate to sound pier. Auf Wiedersehen, meine Lieben. I was watching two very old men slowly corny, I have never met such truly old-fash- approaching the open doors of the Pila- ioned gentlemen in all my years of travel- tus airplane I was leaning against when it ling the globe. They were young and titled, Low life dawned on me that they were the two pilots with beautiful wives and beautiful blond who were about to fly me to my daughter’s children. And they all had beautiful man- Jeremy Clarke wedding. The one called Willy extended his ners. In fact, the setting and the place were hand, as did Alex, a short guy who looked straight out of the Sound of Music, without as though he was in his nineties. ‘Ah, Herr the vulgarity of the Von Trapps. Tennisman,’ he said, referring to a match The pomp and pageantry of a long-ago I had won more than 50 years earlier when Austrian empire was evoked in the castle’s I was on the tennis circuit, ‘wie geht es?’ Willy chapel as Pastor Himmelbauer (heaven then told me that Alex had retired from fly- builder) presided over my girl’s marriage ing airbuses 30 years before, and now flew to Edo, a large and immaculately dressed as insurance in case the pilot dropped dead oompah band playing their hearts out after- en route. That was fine by me. The Pilatus is wards in the courtyard. (Incidentally, the vil- I heard the last and final call for flight 6114 my favourite airplane, with six wide seats and lage church the next day, which my wife and to Nice while shuffling forward in the unex- one just behind the two pilots. It has a 1,700 daughter attended as the bridegroom and pectedly long queue for security. My chances horsepower Pratt-Whitney engine, cruises I were far too hung over, was packed, peo- of catching it now looked slim. They looked silently at 250 knots and can fly without refu- ple dressed to the nines in traditional cos- slimmer still when my bag was nudged into elling for close to 2,000 klicks. It can land on tumes, the chorus singing heavenly and the the line of those needing to be searched, and a postage stamp, and there are 1,500 of them 20-man oompah band marching in step out- I despaired at my rotten luck. Eventually, my buzzing around the globe. side. There were even plumed helmets worn bag was placed on the metal search table and We left Saanen, a private airport near by old officers. The Strauss Radetzky March I presented myself as the owner. Across the Gstaad, and arrived in Salzburg one hour was the only thing missing, apart, that is, table, I faced two women, both aged about and 15 minutes later. Alexandra (the moth- from the thing I miss the most — the swag- 60. One was in command, the other subordi- er of my children) had brought all sorts of ger that went with being an imperial officer goodies along, but so had the two pilots, so of the Austro-Hungarian empire. I walked like a dustman, talked like by the time we landed, the champagne was In one of the numerous salons, I noticed a dustman and was proud to starting to take effect. My beautiful daugh- two portraits of good-looking young offic- be a dustman ter, the future Gräfin Saint-Julien, was wait- ers in their cavalry uniforms — Edo’s great- ing for us on her last day as plain Miss Taki. uncles. They were both killed in 1918, aged nate. The commanding one had a smoker’s My first thought on seeing the 23 and 21, in Bessarabia. Their nieces, now face with a touch of the eldritch about it that 1,000-year-old white castle that will be her aged but wonderfully friendly and funny, wouldn’t have looked out of place in a Rich- home from now on was a simple one: at came for the wedding. ard Dadd fairy painting. least she won’t be mugged by some thug The castle, about 35 miles east of Salz- It was immediately clear, however, that called Mohammed as she was in London, in burg, is surrounded by forests of tall fir, pine this woman dealt only in material realities SW10, where her then local MP, one Greg and spruce trees, the Upper Austrian Voral- and that she took no prisoners. If I had told Hands, showed as much interest in her case penland mountains in the distance. It felt a her that the last call for my flight had been as I do when local Burundi elections crop bit like Lampedusa land, a time warp of ele- broadcast ten minutes earlier, and any fur- up in conversation. (The fuzz were polite gance, good manners and the dress of long ther delay would scupper me, I would have but understaffed and there was nothing ago. Human waves of African and Middle got short shrift. She had a job to do and she they could do; the area continues to be ter- Eastern immigrants wash ashore daily, but took that job seriously. I am not, though, rorised by council estate tenants.) So, this this part of Austria is still resisting, just. But someone who despises people who take huge white castle on a hill, surrounded by in Wolfie’s birthplace, the baroque archi- their low-paid job seriously. For five years thick woods and overlooking a hamlet of tecture still the best preserved anywhere, I was a dustman. I walked like a dustman, the same name, makes Badminton House I noticed lots of refugees looking glum and talked like a dustman and was proud to be a the spectator | 30 june 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk 55 LIFE dustman. ‘I’m not taking that,’ I used to say, Each and every item in my bag was in the skirting around the bedroom floor. It officiously, to selected liberty takers. One can removed, inspected and, if it opened, opened. was awesome. I was empowered. In shorts be serious about one’s job or one can be un- ‘Did something show up on the scanner?’ and a manky T-shirt, smudged all over with serious. It’s a choice. And although, inwardly, I said. ‘No. It’s a random search,’ said the grime, my hair scraped back in a ponytail, I was doing my nut about a pointless delay, chief, coldly. Privileged by this concession of I was the Lara Croft of DIY. this woman’s utter seriousness about her an acknowledgment of my human existence, ‘I’ll have the upstairs finished in no time,’ job was so impressive that it made me pause I was emboldened to add, ‘I think I might I told the keeper as I machine-gunned the and speculate about it. Had her decision to have missed my plane because of it.’ ‘Sorry,’ skirting. ‘What’s the next thing? Peeling treat her job with the utmost seriousness burst out her trainee, now on the verge of off the wallpaper? That’s easy. Filling the been taken whimsically to begin with, then tears owing to the strain of it all. ‘Don’t you holes in the walls? What do I do that with? become an ingrained habit? Or had she, in dare say sorry,’ said her chief, angrily, through Cement? Plaster?’ her later years, through poverty, decided to clenched dentures. ‘Not ever.’ ‘Take it easy,’ he begged me. ‘Just do the turn a disillusionment with life, and a cynical skirting, then we’ll see about the walls.’ He disposition, to pecuniary advantage? Or was had that look on his face. ‘It’s not much left it perhaps all an effortless act and in private Real life to do, is it?’ I asked, wanting encouragement. she was actually amusing and fun? Whatev- We both know that I am living in a wreck of er lay behind her decision to take her job Melissa Kite a house and that all being equal I would be as seriously as this, I was respectfully cheer- employing a building firm on a hefty fee to ing her on. But my anxiety about missing my finish it. But my finances being as they are, flight made it two cheers rather than three. I am calling in favours from friends and Her uncompromising nature hadn’t yet tackling an unfeasible amount myself. The openly revealed itself, but it was written keeper sighed, looking around at the gaps right there, all over that hard old face, in and bare bits and things hanging out of spite of the regulation cant of ‘would you other things and said what he always says: mind opening your bag for me, sir?’. It was ‘Yeah. It’s just architraving.’ there in the way she didn’t bother to look He has been saying ‘It’s just architrav- me in the eye when she said it. I was just one Finally, I got my hands on a gun. About the ing’ since the builder boyfriend left with of a thousand other feather-brained British size of a sawn-off shotgun it was, just under the house in pieces, holes in floors, rubble holidaymakers with no ideological intent 20in long, a fine specimen of a weapon. It piled up to the ceiling. True enough, there apart from a spot of duty-free shopping and was surprisingly light and easy to wield. is a lot of architraving missing from around the occupation of a designated cheap seat on I held it and thought of all that I might the windows and doors, but I think we both an orange aeroplane. The crooked timber of now accomplish. Everything I had dreamed know that it’s not ‘just architraving’. He says humanity held no interest for her. Not dur- of could now become reality. I would right all this to comfort me. And at first I believed ing working hours. the wrongs. I would put things in order. Oh, I him. Believed that if we just nailed enough The woman beside her was new and she would do so many things. I stood in front of slices of wood over the gaps it would all be was learning on the job. In marked contrast the bedroom mirror and admired my reflec- fine. But six months down the line, the scales to her chief, this woman had a meek, quiet tion holding the gun unloaded, pulling the and uncertain spirit. The public display of trigger to see how it felt. It felt good. I held the gun and thought of all my personal belongings ran contrary to her I went down to the cellar and rummaged I might now accomplish. I would right sense of decency and she was reluctant to through the boxes of miscellaneous stuff all the wrongs pry among them with her fingers, which and found what I thought was the appropri- trembled noticeably. ate ammo: decorator’s caulk, white, smooth have fallen from my eyes. I know it’s not just ‘Go on then,’ said her supervisor, hard as finish. architraving. nails. Screwing her courage to the sticking Getting the caulk tube into the sealant That doesn’t stop me saying the same place, her pupil reached in and extracted a gun was tricky. I had to phone the keep- thing to all my friends, however. And it sealed, foil-wrapped packet. ‘Be not right- er. He said that he didn’t want to talk me works fine when I’m saying it to male friends eous over much,’ saith the good book. So through cutting the end off the tube as I was but when my girlfriends come to see me they I said, ‘Teabags. Lapsang Souchong.’ sure to slice my fingers off with the Stanley are not amused. Unsure as to whether she should take knife. A few minutes later, as if by magic, he My friend the cellist came for supper the my word for it or investigate further, she appeared. other evening and as I was doing the tour, squeezed and massaged the foil packet with The sound of his Defender sent the span- I bookended the viewing of each battered her fingertips until her chief impatient- iels to the front door barking with delight. room by saying the immortal words ‘It’s just ly motioned her to lay the bloody teabags They love the keeper. He strides into the architraving,’ until finally she looked at me, aside and continue. house bearing the heady odour of assorted a mixture of incomprehension, irritation, Item by item, my belongings were taken creatures — squirrel, crow, rat, pheasant — pity and dismay on her face, and said: ‘I don’t out and inspected. Pants. Socks. Toothpaste- and there is nothing finer to a dog than that. know what architraving is.’ encrusted electric toothbrush. Egg fried He cut the top off the decorator’s caulk Of course she doesn’t. Architraving is not rice. A lady’s summer dress. Nicotine patch- in one terrifyingly swift motion and put it something that any civilised, urbane woman es. Tatty paperback novel. Harmonica case. into the sealant gun, trying to explain what with any kind of grip on reality and normal- This last aroused the old fairy fella’s inter- he was doing. Something about cutting at an ity would want to know anything about. est and she commanded her pupil to open angle to shape the end of the tube so that She might very well have a husband it, which unfortunately proved beyond the blah blah… I know I should listen. It’s just who is conversant with architraving. But poor woman’s capability. For a moment I that every time I have to learn something few women I know exist in circumstances thought her nerve was about to give way. my middle-aged mind glazes over. that require them to make even a nodding My timely offer to assist was accepted and Once he handed me the gun, I was fully acquaintance with architraving themselves, I opened the case and took out the harmon- alert. I aimed it at a gap in the skirting much less to utter the regular incantation of ica. ‘Key of C,’ I said, giving it a double toot around the bathroom door and pulled the the forlorn and futile hope that this is all that then a slide up the scale and back to prove it. trigger. It was sublime. I aimed it at the gaps stands between them and happiness.

56 the spectator | 30 june 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk Wild life no money. I have come to know that accu- Bridge mulating cattle is one of life’s most compel- Aidan Hartley ling joys. A man can never have too many Susanna Gross of them. We are very strict when it comes to selecting animals for the stud. If you see bad feet, a forward hump, narrow behind, squiff When my talented friend Paula Leslie and muzzle, poor mothering or slow breeding I decided to put a team together for the — into the commercial herd she goes. But Hubert Philips Bowl (England’s mixed that’s where the problem starts. I hate to sell teams championship), it was really just an a cow. I cling on for years, dithering, before excuse to see more of each other. Six unde- I give in and call the butcher. feated matches later, and our team has won In recent days, I have had to go through the cup! We’re all elated: we beat Sandra Laikipia the herd again and chuck out anything that Penfold’s team by a small margin, but to A minotaur head glowers at me through fell short for the stud. Then I started prepar- beat them at all is a feather in anyone’s cap. the bathroom window while I am brush- ing all less-than-perfect cattle for market. It Team Penfold, featuring the mighty Brian ing my teeth in the morning. It’s George will improve my herd no end — but I am bro- and Nevena Senior, are a force to be reck- the bull, who wants his ears scratched. After ken-hearted. I used to adore T-bone steaks oned with. Indeed, just the previous day, I get dressed, it’s time to select a cattle stick, on the braai but this has hit me so hard that they had won a Crockfords match in style. known here as a finbo, from an umbrel- I have truly become a vegetarian (though I Funnily enough, it’s a hand from that la stand stuffed with crooks, wands, with- will still consume milk and cheese). There match, rather than my own, that I want to ies, shillelagh-like cudgels and rods that a relate. Brian Senior showed it to me, and it biblical prophet might have forgotten had Regarding me with a disgusted look, demonstrates dramatically how careless talk he come to supper. I choose my favourite, he urinates voluminously across the costs tricks. Brian was South, Sandra North, a finbo that balances perfectly in the hand flagstones and then saunters off and they reached a superb grand slam: like a drum major’s malacca cane. Outside, a Jersey bullock is sprawled on the garden are bills to pay and, just as my friend Mark Dealer North NS vulnerable path, chewing the cud. I open the gate, pass- suggests, the butcher will help us settle them. ing under the skull of a long-horned beast, With all the rain we have had this year, striding out among the paddocks where the the pasture has been abundant and the cattle z A Q J 4 weaners keen for their lost mothers, where are fat. As each animal goes on to the scale y A Q J 8 the stirks and the mavericks are already the men cheer at its weight. We have rare- grazing in the morning. ly seen such numbers. I jot all the weights X A K J 9 At the crush the cowhands are prepar- down and stroll sadly back to the farmstead w A ing mobs of stores and culls to be weighed. to make out the invoices for the animals that z 6 z 10 5 2 Hundreds of cattle are bellowing and the will soon be loaded for slaughter in Nairobi. N y 7 5 4 2 y K 6 3 din is immense. Some of the men are nick- I know one should not be sentimental but W E X S X named after their favourite bulls. Several I have known some of them very well for 6 5 2 Q 10 8 4 3 have been up all night in the boma with the years. Walking back into the house at break- w J 8 7 6 5 w 10 4 herds. Others will stay out tending the live- fast time, I come face-to-face with the Jersey z K 9 8 7 3 stock in the hot sun, guarding against lions bull. He has decided to take up position on y and rustlers. As we begin weighing and dos- the veranda. Regarding me with a disgusted 10 9 ing for worms, I look at the hillsides beyond look, he urinates voluminously across the X 7 the ranch boundaries where my Samburu flagstones and then saunters off. I go inside, w K Q 9 3 2 neighbours are letting their cattle out. sit down at my computer, put my earplugs in Thousands of animals sprinkle white and to stop the sound of the calves keening for brown across the green. We are inhabiting their mothers in the yard outside, and begin West North East South a bloody eclogue. Everybody here loves to write. 2w 2X 2z cattle. It is what an anthropologist once Pass 4NT Pass 5w dubbed ‘udder madness’. Pass 5NT Pass 7z I was always destined for this. A long All pass time ago my ancestors rieved the cattle of the Scots. I am told we were once butch- East’s 2X was the sort of obstructive ers in Yorkshire. My father was a judge bid players make at favourable vulner- at cattle shows. My mother had a herd of ability. West led the X2. Brian won with South Devons. At last cattle have become the ace, cashed the zAQ, and wA, and an obsession for me too, while many of the came to hand with the zK. Next he cashed interests I once pursued have faded. On a the wKQ. Had trumps split 2–2 or clubs recent trip to London, I asked for a bullshot 4–3, slam was cold. Now he had to make cocktail (and was disappointed). While vis- a choice: should he finesse the yK, or iting the art galleries with my daughter Eve, pitch a heart on the XK and take a ruffing I became glued to Poussin’s Israelites ador- finesse? Would East have overcalled with ing the golden calf and I lingered in front of just a queen? Yet West surely held longer Turner’s cow sketches. hearts so, a priori, was more likely to hold ‘A cow is better than a bank balance,’ the yK. Brian thought long and hard, led says my neighbour Mark, one of northern a heart and… West piped up with: ‘Seems Kenya’s great cattlemen. ‘Keep your money like one off.’ At which point Brian confi- in beef.’ After 15 years of ranching, we have dently played the yA, discarded a heart on plenty of cattle — good stud Borans — but the XK, and took the ruffing finesse! the spectator | 30 june 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk 57 LIFE Chess Competition The Caruana conundrum Double vision Raymond Keene Lucy Vickery

In Competition No. 3054 you were invited to Over the course of this year Fabiano Caruana has Diagram 1 compose double dactyls about double acts. scored splendidly in tournaments with classical WDWDWDkD I didn’t include the rules about double time limits, notching up first prizes in the Berlin dactyls as it takes up space and I’ve done Candidates tournament, Baden Baden and 1WDrDpDW it before — and in any case they are easily Stavanger. The first of these triumphs qualified him to contest the World Championship match WDWDr)pD Googled. Most of you seemed thoroughly against Magnus Carlsen, the title holder, in at home with the form, and in a large, live- London in November. In the second and third DWDNDW)n ly and accomplished entry double dactylic Caruana finished ahead of Carlsen himself on WDW$WDWD duos from time present (Trump and Melania, both occasions. Declan and Anthony) and time past (Boney Nevertheless, the worm in the fruit was that DWDWDQDW and Josephine) rubbed shoulders with the Caruana had to fight to the death with the white W)W$WDKD literary (Regan and Goneril), the musical pieces to save himself against Carlsen at Baden (Gilbert and Sullivan, Simon and Garfunkel) Baden while in Stavanger Caruana actually lost DWDWDWDW and the comical (Stanley and Oliver). his individual clash with the world champion, George Simmers and Mae Scanlan are recovering brilliantly to take the overall laurels. Where Caruana has slipped up is in quickplay highly commended. The winners, printed events. In the first leg of this year’s Grand Chess Diagram 2 below, earn £15 each. Tour Wesley So won the rapidplay section while Sergei Karjakin came out on top of the blitz. WhWDWiWD Hackety, rackety, Caruana failed miserably on both occasions, and 4N1bDp0p Donald and Vladimir it has become clear that his most serious Sneer at collusion. ‘It’s weakness is to be found in games played at non- Fake News!’ they say. pDWDphWD classical time limits. As far as the World That’s what they tell us, but Championship match is concerned, Caruana’s DWDW0WDW Megalomaniac Achilles heel would only become apparent were WDWDWDWD Donald’s now ruling the there to be a rapidplay play-off in the event of a USSA. tie in the main match. As it is, I fully expect DW)WDW)W Brian Allgar Carlsen to wrap up the match in his favour well before any tie-breaks might be instituted, hence PDPDW)B) Bardily, hardily, Caruana’s main failing will probably have little $WDQDRIW Gertrude and Claudius bearing on the destination of the title. Killed Hamlet’s father so This week some examples of Caruana’s ‘Vengeance!’ he cried! catastrophes from Leuven. catastrophically exposed. 53 Qc3+ Nf6 54 R7d3 Yet in the end the boy Caruana–Karjakin; Leuven Blitz 2018 White resigns Oversoliloquized, Dithered and dallied till (diagram 1) Everyone died. Aronian–Caruana; Leuven Blitz 2018 Robert Schechter Although White is a pawn up and threatens Ne7+, (diagram 2) his own king is very exposed. 44 ... Re5 Karjakin Sneakily, cheekily, ignores the threat. He is more interested in Black is the exchange down and cannot play 15 Crabtree & Evelyn, getting at White’s vulnerable king. 45 Ne7+ ... Rxb7 16 Bxb7 Qxb7 as the reply 17 Qd6+ named to sound British, a Rdxe7 46 fxe7 Qxe7 47 Rd8+ Caruana tries to and Rab1 wins at once. However, after the Yankee pretence, play aggressively but the circumspect 47 Rg4 extremely logical and obvious 15 ... Bb5 16 Re1 was more to the point. After 47 ... Rxg5 48 Rf2 Nd5, Black is well in the game as the white under the guise of its White’s king is well protected by the major pieces knight is trapped. Instead Caruana lost a fatal nomenclatorial and he should not lose. 47 ... Kh7 48 R8d7 Qxg5+ tempo and suffered an immediate rout. 15 ... bid for distinction, made 49 Kh2 Qh4+ 50 Qh3 Qf4+ 51 Kg2 Rg5+ 52 Kh1 Ke7? 16 Rb1 Bb5 17 Re1 Nbd7 18 Qc1 Nd5 19 dollars from scents. Kg7 White has no threats and now his king is Qa3+ Kf6 20 Bxd5 exd5 21 Rxb5 Black resigns Susan McLean

Avidly-Ovidly, PUZZLE NO. 512 Thisbe and Pyramus, Badly confused by a White to play. This position is from Anand- WDWDWDWD Leonine brute, Caruana, Leuven Blitz 2018. How did Anand DW0WDQ4k Die at the hands of two achieve a winning material advantage? WDW1WDWD Post-Babylonian Answers to me at The Spectator or via email Amateur thespians, to [email protected] by 3 July. The 0WhW0WDp Bottom and Flute. winner will be the first correct answer out of a Chris O’Carroll hat, and each week I shall be offering a prize WDWDWDWD of £20. Please include a postal address and DPDWDWHW Flobadob, flobadob, allow six weeks for prize delivery. William and Benjamin PDWDWDW) Lived for their pot, and on That they agreed. Last week’s solution 1 Rxg7 DWDWDRDK Last week’s winner John Sparrow, Most of their street slang was Padbury, Buckingham Incomprehensible,

58 the spectator | 30 june 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk LIFE

Though you could sense they were Crossword 123 4 5678 91011 Both fond of Weed. Bill Greenwell 2365: Beds 12 13 Schmaltzily-waltzily by Doc 14 15 Rodgers and Hammerstein 16 17 18 Money-spun musicals — Think Carousel; 19 20 21

Iffy, improbable 22 23 24 Counterintuitive Lap-’em-up love stories, 25 26 27 Corny as hell. One of the clued lights below 28 29 30 31 Mike Morrison reveals the theme which Brewer confirms. One of the unclued 32 33 34 Lakey-post-Blakery, lights is not paired as the 35 36 37 William and Dorothy others are. Two successively Saw what they saw and they numbered unclued lights form 38 39 40 41 Knew what they knew. one of the theme words. 42 Those two go walking — gold Flowers do dance moves, then Across 43 44 Prodaffodilian 1 Become angry when Legions ensue deportees sadly lose pot 45 46 Francis Harry (6, two words) 7 Veto in favour of offer (6) Tumpity-Tompity, 13 Leading industrialist Stanley and Livingstone appears in nude, wandering Down Met as a pair in the in Italian city (5) 3 Sharpen Eastenders’ privet 40 Piece of modern African gloom. 15 Posts set in position beside boundary (4) technology mentioned in ploughs (9) 4 See Welsh girl — that’s TripAdvisor (4) Proof of their meeting was, 16 German novelist is skilled delightful! (7) Unsatisfyingly, in situ, regularly (6) 5 Highly regarded European A first prize of £30 for the first Something that Stanley could 20 Judge arrives, eating princely dynasty Levant correct solution opened on 16 Only presume. snack (7) supports (8) July. There are two runners-up Alan Millard 21 A-type Lotus just first at 6 NZ health drink prizes of £20. (UK solvers can the top (6) (6, hyphened) choose to receive the latest Bridery-hidery 22 9, most of 10 and top of 11 9 Jail term for quack, say (8) edition of the Chambers Trump and Melania in disorder (6) 11 Removed from the dictionary instead of cash — Seem rather odd as their 24 Girl takes little boy back in candidacy is choice ring the word ‘dictionary’.) Nation’s First Pair: — that’s saucy! (8) indeed (10) Entries to: Crossword 2365, 26 Perform some chorus in 14 It’s scandalous that Bill The Spectator, 22 Old Queen He’s the quintessence of Gerontius? (4) and Louise are confused Street, London SW1H 9HP. Megalomania; 27 An indefinitely large dropping first of Please allow six weeks for She looks her happiest number of alcaics — not interviews (9) prize delivery. When she’s not there. odd! (3) 17 Charge sheet, when artist is Max Gutmann 35 She of the White Hands is caught up in quarrel (6) playing lute (6) 18 About 20 in 34 in vain get Rollicky, frolicky, 39 Mormon back in Tibet, in out (9) Name Popeye and Olive Oyl, a dream (6) 19 Fraction of round house Spinach for breakfast the 42 Revoked, when intoxicated cleric rebuilt (10) Address Day they were wed. in prison room. Quite the 23 Mean not to enter river (6) opposite (9) 25 Treatments spoken of for Battled all rivals till 43 The right one stopped to estates (8) get up late (5, two words) 26 They may support part- Unwatchability, Not lethal jealousy, 44 What workers do in their timer in less hassled Beat them instead. bloomers? (9) surroundings (8) Orel Protopopescu 45 Sword-shaped tokens only 30 Split found here in tatty half etched away (6) raincoat (not new) (7) Dinafore-pinafore 46 Pleasant spot for the 31 Sort of film in top-class Email Gilbert and Sullivan botanist (6) gallery (7) Musical masters of Upside-down fun. SOLUTION TO 2362: MEN OF NOTE IV Quarrelled on matters pure Flibbertigibberty, The unclued lights are COMPOSERS whose surnames begin Making the lawyers’ lot with the letter D. A happy one. Joseph Conlon First prize E.C. Hynard, Guernsey Runners-up Geran Jones, London SW1 NO. 3057: NET EFFECT R.C. Teuton, Frampton Cotterell You are invited to submit a short story enti- tled ‘The day the internet died’. Email entries of up to 150 words (providing word count) to [email protected] by midday on 11 July.

the spectator | 30 june 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk 59 LIFE No Sacred Cows com is now considered ‘problematic’ is bored by the new version and tells — woke-speak for ‘completely unac- Marge the authors should have left The problem with deciding ceptable’ — because, among other the book as it was. ‘Something that things, it poked fun at one of its char- started decades ago and was applaud- things are ‘problematic’ acters for being an overweight adoles- ed and inoffensive is now politically Toby Young cent. That falls under the banner of ‘fat incorrect,’ she says. ‘What can you do?’ shaming’, one of the deadliest sins in Lisa’s dismissal of Kondabolu’s the woke decalogue. attack on the grounds that it’s apply- Another example: Sex and the City. ing today’s moral standards to cul- controversy has erupted in In the eyes of one critic, the four main tural touchstones of the past is right, A Folkestone over a forthcom- protagonists are ‘largely oblivious to I think. Regardless of whether you ing screening of Zulu, the their own privilege as rich cisgender share the identity politics of the woke classic British war film. A charity has white women with enviable careers critics — and I don’t, obviously — it is arranged to show the film at the Silver living in super-desirable Manhattan nonsensical to condemn the creators Screen Cinema on Saturday to raise apartments’. To rectify this, a Twit- of popular entertainment in the past money for members of the armed ter meme has been created called for not being sufficiently aware of our forces and their families, but the event ‘#Woke Charlotte’ in which one of the present-day sensitivities. To go fur- may have to be cancelled following characters pops up to scold the others ther and suggest that certain films and a letter to the town’s mayor signed whenever they say anything ‘trou- TV programmes should no longer be by 28 locals objecting to Zulu’s ‘rac- bling’ or ‘not OK’. For instance, when shown on the grounds that they might ist overtones’. ‘The film glorifies the Carrie describes bisexuality as ‘a lay- cause offence is ridiculously censori- myth that was created in 1879 after over on the way to Gay Town’, Woke ous. It rests on the assumption that the humiliation of the British military Charlotte is immediately on hand to exposure to this ‘problematic’ mate- defeat at the battle of Isandlwana,’ admonish her. ‘Bisexuality is a real rial is somehow harmful to contempo- they write. ‘The Battle of Rorke’s sexual orientation,’ she says. ‘It’s not rary audiences. Drift was, in reality, little more than “just a phase” and as a sex columnist In reality, no one is so fragile that a footnote after a far more important you have a responsibility to educate they’re likely to be ‘triggered’ by a and far more gory battle earlier in the yourself on queer issues.’ 1960s film or 1990s sitcom. My 14-year- day, 11 miles away at Isandlwana.’ But it isn’t just the pop culture of old daughter and 13-year-old son The Folkestone letter writers may yesteryear that is targeted by woke spend hours watching Friends, in spite not know it, but they are part of a crusaders. Last year, a 35-year-old of being considerably more woke than growing movement to cleanse popu- Indian-American comedian named their father. Like most people, they’re lar culture of its politically incorrect Hari Kondabolu criticised the makers perfectly capable of placing the series content. It is known as ‘the awoken- of The Simpsons for trafficking in in its historical context and enjoying ing’. In America, numerous films and ‘soft racism’ in the form of Apu, the it without approving of it in every TV programmes have been criticised eager-to-please, south Asian conveni- particular. They don’t need protecting for being insufficiently ‘woke’ — that ence store owner. Kondabolu set out from its fat-shaming scenes any more is, failing to advertise their awareness his argument in a documentary called than the resident of a Kent seaside of the systematic biases and challeng- The Problem With Apu, and the writ- town do from the ‘racist overtones’ of es facing marginalised communities. It isn’t just the ers of the show responded in an epi- Zulu. Let’s hope the mayor of Folke- I’m not talking about The Birth of pop culture sode entitled ‘No Good Read Goes stone is as robust in his response to a Nation, D.W. Griffith’s silent epic of yesteryear Unpunished’ that includes a scene these modern-day Mary Whitehouses which has long been condemned for its that is targeted in which Marge reads Lisa an updat- as Lisa Simpson. sympathetic portrayal of the Ku Klux ed edition of a book she loved as a Klan, but much more recent fare, such by woke child but which has been rewritten to Toby Young is associate editor as Friends. The long-running 1990s sit- crusaders expunge its ‘racist stereotypes’. Lisa of The Spectator.

MICHAEL HEATH

60 the spectator | 30 june 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk Spectator Sport or certainly the semi-finals,’ said a Mexico in 1966. Lingard’s contract spokesman. at Old Trafford pays him £100,000 a Never mind VAR – this There are more correct decisions week. By the end of this tournament overall now than at previous World his valuation could be off the scale. is a fabulous World Cup Cups. But do we really want every And if you want to make an Roger Alton decision to be forensically correct impact, wear yellow. The entire popu- and totally sanitised? In Test cricket lation of Colombia appeared to have umpires seem increasingly content to decamped to Russia for the Poland leave all LBW decisions to the third match, but they are even madder for et’s talk about VAR, why don’t umpire. I hope the same won’t hap- it than we are, and the country has a L we? We love the World Cup pen in football. big middle class that can afford the though the football is getting It’s a fabulous World Cup, though, trip; as does Peru it seems, and Pan- bonkers. The scoring of a goal or a so what else have we learned? First, ama and Costa Rica, not to mention penalty decision or just a foul is mere- that Harry Kane takes sensational Senegal and other countries whose ly a starting point for negotiation, as penalties, the best since Gary Lineker populations we might have thought players compete to be the quickest whacked two past Cameroon at Ita- would not have been able to nick off with the ‘check the TV’ hand signals lia 90. You would have had to build to Russia in their thousands. How after every tiny incident. You can pop a brick wall to keep out Kane’s pair wrong we were. Only the Brits have out for a cup of tea and come back to of rockets against the wretched Pan- stayed behind in large numbers. find the whole landscape of the game amanians, and they would probably It’s touching how commentators has changed, with the course of the have blasted through that as well. keep going on about how welcoming match rewritten like Bobby Ewing’s How nice it is to see this team and lovely the Russians are (and they murder in the 1980s. ‘I thought South treating playing for England as an are, of course). ‘Honestly, I haven’t Korea were five goals down?’ ‘No, enjoyable honour rather than the seen anyone poisoned or heard of that didn’t really happen: they’re 2-1 equivalent of being waterboarded, another country being swallowed up now but down to nine men.’ which is how it has seemed at the up by Russia since we’ve been here. Or ‘And in breaking news the judi- last couple of World Cups and, out- Everyone has been absolutely super. cial inquiry into several retrospec- classed and frozen, against Iceland in No sign of unpleasant detention cen- tive penalty claims by Saudi Arabia You would the 2016 Euros. Look at Maguire, the tres for political opponents, or any- in their first group match is expect- have had to sublime Jesse Lingard, Trippier, Dele one being victimised on grounds of ed to be published early next month. Alli, Raheem Sterling… all of them: race or sexual orientation… marvel- The referee’s decision to blow the build a brick this is a modern team, multiracial, lous. What do you think, Lawro?’ final whistle in tonight’s game has wall to keep youthful — a pleasure to watch. Finally, as there are enough men been temporarily rescinded and the out Harry The diminutive Lingard is our on our TVs talking balls about foot- announcement of the final result Kane’s pair of standout player — his goal against ball, there’s no reason why there is still pending. We are confident a Panama was the best by an England shouldn’t be some women as well. firm decision will be reached by the rockets against player at the World Cup since Bobby And they’re not talking balls either, original date of the quarter-finals, Panama Charlton scored that beauty against as even Patrice Evra had to admit.

DEAR MARY YOUR PROBLEMS SOLVED

the power of presenteeism — eventually will. Let him carry on A. We must try to avoid the these people are in the office, he with the offence-giving. temptation to use other guests is not and I worry they will get as human jukeboxes, pressing a him sacked. I’m convinced the Q. I was recently made metaphorical play button and work keeps my beloved genius uncomfortable at a lunch party letting another do all the work. friend alive, so how can I protect when a rather greedy guest Next time counter the selfishness him from himself and force behaved selfishly. He kept piling by a selfless act of your own. Say him to see, as in the Leopard, his own fork high with food and ‘May I join in? I really want to tell ‘for things to remain the same, then, just before popping it into you something relevant to this…’ Q. A close friend is an elderly everything must change’? his mouth, asking the super-polite and then blether away yourself as writer who has contributed, as a — Name and address withheld teenager opposite him and beside both parties load their mouths. monthly columnist, to the same me, questions which required publication for many years. His A. This publication is the wrong lengthy answers. Example: ‘Of Q. I couldn’t find anything powers are undimmed. However, one to come to for advice on all the countries you’ve visited, suitable so I went empty-handed he has not moved with the times gagging. Besides, your friend may which would you say is the one to a lavish birthday party the and will not self-edit. I have had have a hidden agenda which is you’d most like to live in?’ The other night. Mary, is it acceptable it from a mole that the much that, far from wishing to hang greedy guest then enjoyed his to send something later? younger sub-editors on the on to the job, he is deliberately lunch as though he was alone in — J.M., London W11 magazine, one of whom wants pushing the boundaries in the front of the TV while the girl did to write the column herself, hope of going out in a blaze of all the talking. The upshot was A. Quite acceptable. Guests far are claiming to resent the time martyrdom. There can be greater she hardly had time to eat while prefer to receive well-chosen they must spend ‘correcting’ his prestige in being sacked for the oaf managed to wolf down presents delivered later, rather offensive copy. I’ve told him this offensiveness than in being let go his lunch. What should I do if this than something insultingly but he is stubborn and says he after one’s powers have dimmed, ever happens again? impersonal, such as a scented refuses to be gagged. We all know which, of course, they inexorably — C.S., London SW5 candle, delivered on the night. the spectator | 30 june 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk 61 LIFE

Food I love Traitors’ Gate because Eliza- ligence, but I feel generous towards beth I, the early ‘modern Lord Man- Sargeant’s Mess because its loo is actu- A Tudor feast delson, used it for the art of spin. ally inside Tower Bridge. When imprisoned by her sister Mary Otherwise it is a restaurant pass- Tanya Gold she refused to enter by Traitors’ Gate, ing fleetingly through London. One because, she said, she was not a traitor. day it will crumble or float away like She waited until she knew her deni- so many others. I like a passing restau- al would be repeated, which is why I rant as much as I like a lost cause. It is know about it, and also you. Except soothing to sit in a place with no iden- David Starkey says it’s nonsense, and tity and let your dreams move through she entered by Tower Wharf. Tudor PR you. The exception to this rule I have babble is superb. just invented is the British Library, Just along from Traitors’ Gate is which should be burned down and Sargeant’s Mess. It calls itself, in PR replaced by a giant replica of Bam- babble, ‘your new favourite hangout’ burgh Castle, although I accept that argeant’s Mess (2018) is a tour- and it is not as interesting as Traitors’ no one else thinks that. Sist catcher’s net in restaurant Gate although, in Sargeant’s Mess’s The food, which is generic English, form by the Tower of London defence, Traitors’ Gate doesn’t serve a is much better than it needs to be, or (c. 1078). It has views of the wide, fat full vegetarian breakfast. perhaps it is just early days, and the Thames — an old man now, like Fal- It is soothing It has glass walls, a slate floor and Sargeant’s Mess will sink to robbing staff — on its slow journey to South- an atrium; it is as insubstantial as a tourists when the real heat of sum- end-on-Sea. The City of London to sit in a paper bag or balloon. I wonder if the mer comes. Tomato soup, and wedge grows like a glass parasite, but it can’t place with designers knew it could not match its salad, and baked salmon, and toad do anything about the Conqueror’s no identity setting and so did not try to create a in the hole are all good, and care- keep. It is partly made of Norman and let your — who knows? — London Dungeon- fully done by someone who cares, at stone — a joke for historians only? themed restaurant with heads of least for now; the bakewell tart didn’t — and it won’t be gentrified, amend- dreams move Remainers made of sugar on spikes. shame itself, and we ate a great deal ed, or moved. through you The PR babble suggests no such intel- for £70. If I worked locally or could The Tower squats inside those travel here by boat — we don’t use the insanely over-repointed medieval Thames enough — I would come often walls like a dowager abutting a con- and only try not to look at the mayoral servatory. It will never, and I say testicle across the river. this happily, be a block of flats, or an And so if you want to eat eggs ben- Apple shop, or a Starbucks. Henry edict near the remains of the victims VIII added the cupolas, and they are of the Tudors that lie in St Peter ad very gay, but that was it. Vincula on Tower Green — Lady Jane I love this fortress, even if it has Grey and Thomas Cromwell, Cathe- moved from decapitating pretenders rine Howard, Anne Boleyn and Thom- to selling pencils. It looks weird next as More — it’s just the place to do it. to the A100, and that is not the least of it; I once met a Beefeater who looked Sargeant’s Mess, The Wharf, like Paddington Bear but had guarded St Katharine’s & Wapping, London Rudolf Hess in Spandau prison. ‘I’ve heard the new manager’s been brought in to make cutbacks.’ EC3N 4AB, tel: 020 3166 6949

MIND YOUR LANGUAGE Azulejos A friend sent a nice postcard azure, derives from the Persian great etymological dictionary of from Portugal showing the lazhward, meaning ‘lapis lazuli’. Spanish which came out in 1980 outside of a church covered The Persian word was picked as one of the achievements of with old blue tiles. She said it up via Arabic (since Arabic Joan Corominas (1905-1997). reminded her of delft ware. speakers invaded the Iberian That’s the name on the title That word has its own the spelling of the earthenware. peninsula), and the initial l was page, but he is now more often historical peculiarity. We used Anyway, the blue of Portuguese dropped because it was mistaken known as Coromines, the Catalan to call it delf, as you can find in tiles is caught in an even less for the Arabic definite article version of his name, and is a hero Dickens and his contemporaries. likely knot of language. al. The word azulejo, however, of Catalan culture. That is because the town of Tiles in Portuguese are seems to come from the Arabic If you look up azulejo in the Delf was spelt in the same way, azulejos (the same word as in zulug, meaning ‘polished stones’. Oxford English Dictionary, which taking its name from its chief Spanish). When they hear it or It seems that the objects in the defines it as ‘a kind of Dutch canal. The Dutch shared with the read it, the Portuguese cannot Middle Ages were at first more glazed tile painted in colours’, English (though we have largely help thinking of the colour blue, like tesserae of mosaic, not you’d find the origin given as forgotten it) a word delf meaning which is azul in Portuguese and necessarily blue. The -ejo bit azul. But the entry hasn’t been ‘ditch’ — something delved or in Spanish. But, surprisingly, is a diminutive, from the Latin revised since 1885. When it is, dug. But then the town added a azulejos and azul are not directly -iculum. they might abandon their false -t to its name to make it Delft, related. I found this information blue friend. and the English followed suit in Azul, like the English word about azul and azulejo in the — Dot Wordsworth

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