52-page lifestyle magazine with Sarah Vine, Roger Scruton, Freddy Gray, Brendan O’Neill and Andy Shaw

by by Douglas Damian The intellectual dark web Murray President Zuckerberg? Reilly

24 february 2018 [ £4.50 www.spectator.co.uk [ est. 1828

Germany’s nightmare Fredrik Erixon on Angela Merkel’s democratic crisis

AFTER ZUMA Rian Malan

BAHRAIN BD3.20. CANADA C$7.50. EURO ZONE €6.95 SOUTH AFRICA ZAR79.90 UAE AED34.00. USA US$7.20. diary Steven Pinker’s РЕЛИЗ ГРУППЫ "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS РЕЛИЗ ГРУППЫ "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS

established 1828

Corbyn’s useful idiots

he news that Jeremy Corbyn met Brighton bomb in 1984. Yet while there are tion of disadvantaged students at university a Czechoslovakian agent three many older voters who believe him unfit for stands at a record high. The fees system was T times during the 1980s, when the office on the strength of these truths, none of accompanied by an expansion of places at Cold War was still very much in progress, it has rubbed off on the young. English universities, which benefited eve- has come as a shock to some. But it should Those who were brought up after the ryone. And those charging the maximum not come as a surprise. What we have Good Friday Agreement simply do not see £9,000 fee are required to plough a chunk discovered so far fits entirely with every- why there is such a fuss about being pictured of that money back into helping poorer thing we know about Corbyn’s character beaming next to Gerry Adams. After all, Bill students. and his sympathies. He does not appear to Clinton and Tony Blair did the same — it is The university-fee system may not be have sold secrets, or even to be interested too much to expect the under-forties to put popular but it works. Scotland banned in anything venal. To judge by Czech sourc- photographs of Gerry Adams in their cor- tuition fees for Scots. Today, its universities es, he was unaware that the man he was rect historical context. Similarly, this week’s take so few students (and offer such paltry meeting was an agent attempting to recruit revelations mean little to anyone who can’t support with living expenses) that a teenager him. This was at a time when British diplo- remember the Cold War. To them the Czech in a deprived part of Scotland is far less like- mats were trained to work on the assump- Republic is a pleasant weekend destination ly to get into university than their English tion that everyone they met from behind with cheap beer, not a former authoritarian counterpart. But the Tories did not have the the Iron Curtain was a spy: Corbyn seems state. Soviet communism is ancient history. wit to make that point. to have been blithely unaware of what he Instead of making the case for progressive was walking into. Instead of taking the fight to Labour, conservatism, and taking the fight to Labour, But that is the Labour leader all over. He the Tories are offering Corbyn the the Tories are offering Corbyn the terms had, and still has, a naive belief in the good terms of their intellectual surrender of their intellectual surrender. They resort of socialism that blinds him to the reality to name-calling, and then policy-copying: of dictatorships, and to the many millions While Conservatives are fighting the bat- an unedifying combination. For exam- who have been murdered in its name. Still tles of the past, they are losing the battle ple, they derided capping energy prices as he champions Venezuela as an example for the present. This week, the government a crazed idea from the 1970s — then decided to the world — in the face of mass hunger attempted to relaunch its policy on student it was a great idea to be copied in the 2017 and a collapsed economy, he has tempered tuition fees. Because Corbyn grabbed the Conservative manifesto. his position only to say that he believes the initiative last May by committing Labour Socialism, as has been proven in every country made a mistake not to diversify its to abolish such fees in England, the Tories case where it has been tried, is a route to the economy away from oil. The fact that in the are now talking about making arts degrees impoverishment of the masses. It destroys 1980s what was then Czechoslovakia was a cheaper, as if this will win back young vot- incentives, puts capital to chronically inef- puppet regime of the Soviet Union, installed ers. Whatever concession is made after ficient use and distorts the economy to with brute force after the crushing of the May’s year-long review, it will pale alongside the point of creating shortage or surplus. Prague Spring 15 years earlier, will have Labour’s offer to scrap fees, a policy that’s But Corbyn-supporting young voters do not been lost on Corbyn entirely. estimated to cost £100 billion. see him as a revolutionary nor even link his Will this week’s revelations damage him? A semi-competent Conservative party policies with past, disastrous socialist exper- The Conservatives would certainly love to would have argued that Corbyn’s tuition- iments. To them, what he is offering is far believe so, and several of them have tried fees promise is fiscally irresponsible, and more attractive than what the Conservatives to make political capital from the affair. pointed out that it will benefit the middle are offering. If the Tories want to remain in They are likely to be disappointed. Corbyn classes — who are far more likely to go to power, they will have to understand this was thought by many to be fatally compro- university — at the expense of lower income failing. They need to stop fighting Corbyn mised by his association with Hamas and groups. They would argue there is no sign of on his past and start engaging in the battle the IRA — the latter in the wake of the fees deterring students, and that the propor- of ideas in the present. the spectator | 24 february 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk 3 РЕЛИЗ ГРУППЫ "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS

Aid inc, p20

Cutting edge, p42

The loveliness of David Jones p38 THE WEEK BOOKS & ARTS

3 Leading article 12 Germany’s nightmare BOOKS 6 Portrait of the Week Angela Merkel’s democratic crisis 30 Philip Hensher Fredrik Erixon Debussy, by Stephen Walsh 9 Diary My advice for the new president of Harvard 13 Merkel’s crown princess 32 Ruth Scurr Steven Pinker Meet the Chancellor’s new successor The Reading Cure, by Laura Freeman Thomas Kielinger William Leith 10 Politics To spend or not to spend Blood Barrios, by Alberto Arce James Forsyth 14 Wham bam, thank you Ma’am Politeness and violence in America 33 Mike Cormack 11 The Spectator’s Notes Elisa Segrave The Adulterants, by Joe Dunthorne Such an expression of love and loss at a Traveller funeral 18 Wasting away 34 Oliver Balch Charles Moore The NHS internal market has failed Franco, by Enrique Moradiellos Max Pemberton 17 Rod Liddle Why are businesses 35 Oliver Comins so terrified of idiots? 20 Clean water beats social justice ‘A Tired Rose’: a poem Where Oxfam took a wrong turn Nick Lezard 18 Barometer Overcrowded prisons, Aidan Hartley indoor slopes and charitable Britons London Rules, by Mick Herron 22 False flag 21 James Delingpole Anna Aslanyan China, not Russia, is the US’s real worry Book of Joan, by Lidia Yuknavitch Will Remainers ever learn to forgive? Roger Kimball 27 Letters How to save charities, 24 South Africa Notebook housing stats and long evenings ARTS SPECIAL Zuma’s fall and life in the Little Karoo 36 Interview Anthony McCall 28 Any other business Investors were Rian Malan on making light solid right to sell Carillion shares Laura Gascoigne Martin Vander Weyer 38 Exhibitions Journeys with ‘The Waste Land’ Craig Raine 39 Opera Iolanthe; La forza del destino Richard Bratby

Cover by Morten Morland. Drawings by Michael Heath, Castro, K.J. Lamb, Roger Latham, Grizelda, Nick Newman, Wilbur, RGJ, Adam Singleton, Percival, Geoff Thompson, Bernie 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: [email protected] (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]. co.uk; 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/A263A 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 336; no 9891 © 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

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Zuma’s fall, p24 Waste not, want not, p18

Let there be light, p36

LIFE

40 Exhibitions LIFE Is all this leftist agitprop really 140 Years of Recorded Sound 55 High life Taki what the good people of Britain Robert Barry Low life Jeremy Clarke signed up for when they bought 42 Beehives, Bobs and Blow-dries 57 Real life Melissa Kite second-hand dinner jackets Melanie McDonagh Bridge Susanna Gross from Oxfam shops? 43 Theatre Aidan Hartley, p20 The York Realist; The B*easts AND FINALLY . . . Lloyd Evans 50 Notes on… Vienna I realised that if I didn’t say ‘excuse 44 The YouTuber Guy Dammann me’ during an accidental encounter When content-creators fight 58 Chess Raymond Keene in the States, I was considered rude Ian Sansom Competition and aggressive. Anger might flare Dance Lucy Vickery up. It’s a precarious balance. Giselle; A Winter’s Tale 59 Crossword Doc Louise Levene Elisa Segrave, p14 60 No sacred cows 45 Audio description Toby Young The days can be murderously hot An earful of Fifty Shades of Grey Battle for Britain Selina Mills in Van Wyksdorp, but it’s the kind Michael Heath of dry heat that makes a cold beer 46 Television Marcella; Troy 61 Sport Roger Alton James Walton unbearably pleasurable, and at Your problems solved night the stars are blinding. 47 Cinema Dark River Mary Killen Rian Malan, p24 Deborah Ross 62 Food Tanya Gold 48 The listener Mind your language Franz Ferdinand: Always Ascending Dot Wordsworth Rod Liddle Radio Ramblings; Riot Girls Kate Chisholm

CONTRIBUTORS Steven Pinker, whose Rian Malan writes about Ruth Scurr examines an Oliver Balch reviews a new Anna Aslanyan writes Diary is on p9, is a psychology the fall of Jacob Zuma on p24. unorthodox cure for anorexia biography of Franco on p34. about sexless dystopian sci-fi professor at Harvard, linguist His memoir about growing on p32. She is the author He is the author of Under The on p35. She is a journalist, and bestselling author. His new up in Apartheid-era South of John Aubrey: My Own Tump: Sketches of Real Life critic and Russian translator. book, Enlightenment Now, Africa, My Traitor’s Heart, was Life — the autobiography on the Welsh Borders, now out is published by Allen Lane. translated into 11 languages. he never wrote. in paperback. the spectator | 24 february 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk 5 РЕЛИЗ ГРУППЫ "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS

Home investigated by the Food Standards Agency others went on trial in Madrid accused of over use-by dates, went into administration. money-laundering for a Russian mafia omeone called Jan Sarkocy said that, Jamie Oliver closed his Barbecoa steak gang. The Court of Arbitration for Sport Sas a Czech Security Service agent in restaurant in Piccadilly. KFC temporarily formally charged Alexander Krushelnitsky, London under the name Jan Dymic, he met closed more than half of its 900 UK outlets, from the Russian Winter Olympic curling Jeremy Corbyn several times in 1986 and which had run out of chicken as a result of team, with testing positive for meldonium, 1987 and gave him money; Mr Corbyn called its delivery contract with DHL. a banned substance; how it could improve his account false and warned newspapers his performance was not clear. Canada and that reported such allegations ‘change is ritain sold the Royal Navy’s flagship, Germany were in a dead-heat in the two- coming’. Henry Bolton, 54, was removed BHMS Ocean, to Brazil for £84 million. man bobsleigh. as leader of Ukip at a special meeting, and Gavin Williamson, the Defence Secretary, then returned to his girlfriend, 25, whose text called the army’s recruitment process iolence continued in the Democratic messages about black people had caused him ‘unacceptable’ for taking an average of VRepublic of Congo, where more trouble. Theresa May, the Prime Minister, 300 days to complete. Mrs May told the people have been displaced in the past two launched a year-long review of higher Munich security conference that ‘Europe’s years than in any other country. President education, but ruled out abolishing tuition security is our security’, and that Britain is Edgar Lungu of Zambia, during a visit by fees, which Labour promised to do. Oxfam ‘unconditionally committed to maintaining President Joseph Kabila of DR Congo, agreed not to bid for government funding it’. If MPs voted against the Brexit deal Mrs called him ‘a very good president who until the Department for International May negotiated, there would be ‘an election, was loved by more than 60 per cent of Development was satisfied it could show it maybe after that election a new government’, Congolese’. Cyril Ramaphosa became met the ‘high standards’ required. Brendan Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament’s the President of South Africa, as the only Cox, the husband of the murdered MP Jo chief Brexit negotiator, said on the BBC’s candidate nominated by parliament, which Cox, resigned from two charities he set up Andrew Marr Show. William Hill, the is controlled by the African National in her memory after allegations of sexual bookmakers, was given a £6.2 million penalty Congress, the day after the resignation of assault; he denied assaulting a woman at by the Gambling Commission for failing to Jacob Zuma. Iceland’s parliament debated Harvard University in 2015, but admitted meet money-laundering regulations. a bill to make male circumcision illegal. ‘inappropriate’ behaviour while working for Save the Children. Abroad yrian pro-government forces entered the SSyrian Kurd enclave of Afrin, in north- he number of victims of child sexual ikolas Cruz, aged 19, was charged western Syria, which had been attacked by Texploitation in Rotherham between Nwith 17 counts of premeditated Turkish forces. Syrian forces bombarded 1997 and 2013 has risen to more than 1,500, murder after 14 teenaged pupils and three the rebel-held Eastern Ghouta area outside the National Crime Agency said. Barry members of staff were shot dead at his Damascus, killing 100 people in a day. At the Bennell, a former football coach aged 64, former school in Parkland, Florida. Cruz security conference in Munich, Benjamin was jailed for 31 years at Liverpool Crown had bought seven rifles in the past year. Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, Court for 50 counts of child sexual abuse. The FBI was told last September that he waved a piece of shot-down drone and Matthew Falder, a Cambridge graduate aged had posted social media messages about his called Iran the ‘greatest threat to our world’. 29, who admitted 137 charges — including ambition to become a ‘professional school China asked the United States to punish rape — against 46 people and shared shooter’. Thirteen Russians were charged ‘severely’ a man who, after a Christmas images of paedophilia on the dark web, was by the special counsel Robert Mueller ugly-sweater party, broke a thumb from a jailed for 32 years at Birmingham Crown with interfering in the US election in 2016. terracotta warrior on show at Philadelphia Court. Russell Hume, a meat wholesaler A Russian MP, Vladislav Reznik, and 17 and kept it in his desk drawer. CSH

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Steven Pinker

veryone’s mood is affected by the newspaper asked what advice I would Enews, especially bad news. A recent give our incoming chief, and I reiterated review found that heavy news-watchers the counsel I had offered the search show ‘misperception of risk, anxiety, committee: ‘The President of Harvard lower mood levels, learned helplessness, University is not just the steward of our contempt and hostility towards others, institution, but, because of Harvard’s desensitisation, and in some cases … fame, a voice for the integrity of complete avoidance of the news.’ As academia as a forum for free inquiry. someone who has written one book Yet universities are becoming laughing documenting the historical decline of stocks of intolerance, with non-leftist violence (The Better Angels of Our speakers drowned out by jeering mobs, Nature) and a new one documenting editors equate with human-interest fluff. professors subjected to Stalinesque progress in every other dimension of The more effective argument is that investigations for unorthodox opinions, human flourishing (Enlightenment Now: reporting the solutions and improvements, risible guidelines on “microaggressions” The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, not just the failures, contributes to accuracy. (such as saying ‘I believe the most and Progress), my emotional fortunes are More important, it holds the powerful to qualified person should get the job’), even more tightly yoked to the disasters account to a greater, not lesser degree: they students mobbing and cursing a professor of the day, I am apt to take episodes can no longer throw up their hands and call who invited them to discuss Halloween of violence and oppression not just as problems intractable if such problems have costumes, and much else. These incidents depressing developments but as personal in fact been solved in some places. have drawn worldwide ridicule, and affronts and professional rebukes. To damage the credibility of university make news consumption bearable, his week my employer, Harvard scientists and scholars when they weigh I remind myself of my own advisories. TUniversity, announced its next on critical matters, such as climate change. As long as bad things have not vanished president, Lawrence Bacow. The campus Many of these illiberal antics come from from the face of the earth, there will a radical fringe of students, egged on by always be enough to fill the news. Only an autonomous student-life bureaucracy. datasets (which sum the boring peaceful It’s up to the president of a university to places with the photogenic disaster zones) stanch this credibility drain by imposing provide an accurate picture of the state adult supervision on both: publicly of the world. Indeed, the annual reports affirming the sanctity of free inquiry and are more heartening than the hour’s civil disagreement, and reining in the headlines: the upticks in war, terrorism, factions that are assaulting them.’ and homicide of the mid-2010s are being reversed, and even the apparent retreat hough I have no children, a year of democracy looks different in historical Tago I became a grandfather when context. Notwithstanding the backsliding my stepdaughter had a baby boy. Solly in Russia, Turkey, and eastern Europe, and Yael have been living with us while the number of democracies has increased waiting for an apartment, and for the from 31 in 1971 to, at last count, 103. And first time I’ve experienced some of as the economist Max Roser points out, the perquisites of parenthood, such as news outlets could have run the headline being kept up by nighttime caterwauling number of people in extreme poverty and catching a disease from the baby fell by 137,000 since yesterday every day germ pool. As a scientist who for most for the past 25 years. of my career specialised in language development, it was humbling to find have tried to avoid any assault on the how few of his first words I could decode I ‘mainstream media’, but I do call out compared with his more observant its habit of presenting every unsolved mother and grandmother. But my heart problem as a crisis, epidemic, or existential melts whenever he calls me ‘Papa’, threat. Several correspondents who and I am experiencing another gift of advocate a new ‘constructive journalism’ parenthood: the implicit commitment have told me they agree, and that the to the long future embodied in that tiny industry is beginning to reconsider the person. And so with an eye on estimated adage that bad news sells: it’s actually life expectancy at birth, and a conviction positive stories that get the most clicks that the apocalyptic doomsayers are and shares. But these friends advise wrong, I dedicated Enlightenment Now me that it would be poison to suggest to ‘Solomon Lopez (2017- ), and the balancing bad news with good, which 22nd Century.’ the spectator | 24 february 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk 9 РЕЛИЗ ГРУППЫ "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS

POLITICS | JAMES FORSYTH The Tories’ dilemma: to spend or not to spend

hile the rest of the country £4 billion a year just to get back to its usual of choice: the 2010 spending review reduced waits for this spring to arrive, levels of service. In the end, the NHS only direct grants to local government by Win Westminster the talk is all of received an additional £1.6 billion from Phil- 27 per cent) is struggling. Northamptonshire, spring 2019. That’s when the United King- ip Hammond. a Tory run-council, is essentially bankrupt, dom formally leaves the European Union, What Stevens thinks matters, because while the Chancellor’s local council, Surrey, and when a slew of cabinet ministers think one of the reasons that public concern has a £105 million funding gap. the Tory leadership contest will begin in over the health service has skyrocketed in There is also the issue of Brexit to con- earnest. But something else will happen in recent months is that the NHS has essen- tend with. It may well cause some short- the spring of next year that will be almost tially accepted that there has been a winter term economic disruption, leading to a fall as important: the review setting out depart- crisis, cancelling all non-urgent surgery for a in tax revenues. But even if it does not, put- mental spending from 2020 to 2023. month. The Tories might not be able to beat ting in place a new customs system, a new It will reveal how the Conservatives Labour on the health service, but they can’t immigration regime and the like will all intend to fight the next election: do they fight an election with it as an open wound. cost money. plan to take on Jeremy Corbyn with a no- By 2022 they will need to come up with a This analysis might suggest that tax new-taxes pledge or will their strategy be funding package for the NHS its senior man- increases are pretty much inevitable. But to say that they are increasing spending agement can accept. They managed to take this is not straightforward. The tax burden but more responsibly than Labour would? health off the table as an issue in the 2015 is already set to rise to the highest level in When I asked one minister which approach 40 years, according to the Institute for Fis- the cabinet would plump for, I was told: The Conservatives can’t fight cal Studies. Jacking it up still further could ‘That matter is up for debate and is heavily an election with the health service well have a deleterious effect on growth contested ground.’ — politically speaking, it would also cause I understand that roughly a third of the as an open wound the Tories problems. Some would ask what cabinet favours tax rises to pay for increased the point of a Tory government is if it sim- spending, a third favours spending restraint election by committing to funding Stevens’s ply presides over an ever-increasing tax and no new taxes, and another third is unde- five-year plan for the NHS. They’ll need this burden? A Tory government that sees home cided between the two courses. kind of shield again to parry the inevitable ownership rates go down and the tax burden The Office for Budget Responsibility’s Labour attacks on the NHS. go up would be undoing much of the good deficit projections assume that govern- Other Tories, encouraged by the Defence work of the 1980s. Raising taxes would mean ment spending will simply rise in line with Secretary, Gavin Williamson, want to see the Tories couldn’t run on a no-new-taxes inflation, but it isn’t hard to see where and more spent on the armed forces; they want pledge against Corbyn, and voters might why there’s mounting pressure for above- to ensure that Britain can still play a global decide there really isn’t that much differ- inflation increases. The most obvious of military role, as well as contributing to Euro- ence between the two. these is the health service. There is now pean security after Brexit. So, what’s the way out of this for the near-universal acceptance on the Tory side Then there are a sizeable number of Tory Tories? Well, there are some early indications that the NHS is going to need substantially MPs who believe that one of the lessons of that the Office for Budget Responsibility more money in the coming years. It is not the last election campaign is that proposed might have been too pessimistic in down- just Boris Johnson who is banging this drum. changes to school funding really hurt them grading productivity. If this is the case, then Jacob Rees-Mogg, the most fiscally conserv- with parents. growth could be better than expected. This ative of those tipped to run for the leader- The rise in crime might mean a rise in would ease the situation somewhat. A new ship, has gone out of his way to make clear cash for the police, too. Labour’s attempt Tory leader could also do some things differ- that he, too, is sympathetic to the idea of to link the cuts in police numbers and the ently. He or she could embrace proper plan- extra cash for the health service. return of violent crime makes many Tories ning reform, which would give the economy But the amount of money that could end think he party needs a defensive strate- a boost, allowing both more house-build- up being spent on the NHS is eye-popping. gy on this issue. Meanwhile, local govern- ing and the expansion of the most dynamic Simon Stevens, the chief executive of NHS ment (which was George Osborne’s cut cities in the country. They could also pursue England, thinks that another £30 billion — a big tax reform programme: simplifying the equivalent to 6p on the basic rate of income current over-complex system and making it tax — is needed if the UK wants a health more suitable for the modern economy. As system in line with that of other wealthy one minister who favours a radical approach northern European democracies. puts it: ‘The weather is not in our favour. So Even if the government doesn’t go for we need to change the weather.’ anything as radical as that, the sums involved But ultimately the Tories are going to will still be substantial. Before last autumn’s have to decide how big they want the state Budget, Stevens was pitching for that to be. That is the fundamental question. £350 million a week the Leave campaign had supposedly promised the NHS and making SPECTATOR.CO.UK/COFFEEHOUSE clear the health service needed an extra Hourly updates from Parliament and beyond.

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Charles Moore

ev died, aged 61. She was the wife of already entranced by field sports]. It B‘Foxy’ John, kennel huntsman of our was too cold and nothing was about, so local hunt. Bev was the matriarch of the John [their first son] was conceived: a clan, with six children, 14 grandchildren, lamping baby. Soon to follow was Bill. I and other young people in need of help was after a fox and got the message: “Get whom she cared for. Both John and Bev to the hospital. Your baby’s on the way.” have Traveller ‘heritage’. That requires I said, “All right, I’ll just get this fox first.” a Traveller funeral. Only the best would Bev knew that hunting was a big part of do. Bev was laid out for three days in my life and she stood side by side with an open coffin, lined in pink, in their me on that.’ rural council house — the only council house I know which plays host to a hunt surreal in the context. One of Bev’s sons n the late 1980s, John went coursing meet. In the course of the wake, 500 gave an example of his mother’s love. Iand had a car accident. Wayne and guests somehow crammed in. As custom His teacher had shoved him across the two other boys were killed. Devastated, demands, the people of the house did classroom unjustly. Bev was incensed. Bev and he decided to start a country not sleep. As is also the custom, a pyre She punched the teacher so hard that life in Hailsham. John was soon invited consumed her possessions. she broke a finger: ‘I loved her for to help out with the hunt terriers. ‘I came that.’ Once, the same boy, larking on home and told Bev. She said, “That’s n Monday, I drove there. The a motorbike, fell, severely gashing his great news. You’ve got into something O coffin was borne off on a glass- head: ‘When I came home her knock you love.” Unfortunately, we bumped sided hearse drawn by horses with black hurt more than the bloody stitches,’ he into the antis making trouble. The Master plumes and driven by two men in tall recalled approvingly. said, “Deal with them, John, so we can hats. Behind the hearse came several get on.” I beat the men. Bev beat the black stretch limos, and behind them, ohn’s tribute was also read out. Here women. We got arrested and went to two lorries displaying the floral tributes JI amalgamate two versions, one Lewes Crown Court. That did not deter (‘MUM’, ‘LUV U EVERMORE’), delivered at a meet, the other at the us.’ Bev and he were soon back with the and a great heart-shaped balloon with funeral: ‘I first met Bev in Welbeck Road, hunt, and he is still there 30 years on: a picture of John and Bev on it. A huge Carshalton, in February 1978. I’d just ‘Bev would say “When you are together, procession of cars, driving at 7 mph got off a bus when I saw this beautiful you’re strong. Don’t fight each other.” behind the horses, made for Eastbourne girl. Not looking where I was going, I She said this to the kids, and she is right. Crematorium via Hailsham High Street. fell down some steps and was knocked She was the strongest person I know Outside Eastbourne, the cortege was out. I woke up in front of the woman I and with her strength I will keep hunting joined and led by our huntsman-master, knew I was going to call my wife. She and still embrace you all as my family.’ in his red coat with a black armband, and said, “Are you all right?” I looked at The order of service carried pictures of by John and Bev’s daughter Macaylla, on her lovely face and breasts and said, Bev with her big smile and her big family. her coloured pony Daisy. A van coming “I’m great.” She said, “Are you the chap On the back was a Welsh foxhound. the other way stopped out of respect, with the terriers?” “That’s right,” I said. thus holding up the traffic behind him She asked me to find her a Jack Russell. artly because I found echoes of for ten minutes. No one protested. At “No problem,” I replied. That night, I got PJohn and Bev’s life in my own — I the gates of the crematorium, a couple one from my friend Noah. The next day first met my wife in the late 1970s, and of hounds greeted Bev. The journey had I brought it round to Bev. She opened it was a dog which helped me win her slowed East Sussex for an hour and the door with a cat in her hands. The cat over — I found the whole thing very a half. jumped on to the floor. The dog jumped touching. There was also such a sense on to the cat, and that was that. I thought of loss. At that grim moment when the uge crowds, part farmers and I’d blown it, but she said, “I hated crem curtain slides across, great wails of Hcounty people, but mainly that cat”, and I was in.’ grief rose from the congregation. Almost Travellers, quickly filled the service hall, like characters in Jez Butterworth’s play the side hall, and, in steady drizzle, the ohn was 16. Bev was five years older, Jerusalem, John and Bev chose the sort gardens of the crem. Outside, someone Jwith three children, Darren, Wayne of rough rural life which is increasingly released several doves in tribute. Within, and Kelly: ‘People said it couldn’t work. persecuted. They were true to their the family were too overcome to deliver I said, “Rubbish.” I knew it would. choice and to one another. I am not sure their memories, so this was done by the I loved her. I took her for a weekend I have been to a funeral where so many crem official. Her correct tones sounded lamping [although a town boy, he was people expressed such love. the spectator | 24 february 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk 11 РЕЛИЗ ГРУППЫ "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS Angela’s demons How Merkel allowed Germany’s far-right to thrive

FREDRIK ERIXON

ankruptcy, wrote Ernest Hemingway, Their party was punished badly enough for This is all quite new to modern German happens in two ways — ‘gradually its last coalition with Merkel, and its vote politics. Unlike Austria and France, the far- B and then suddenly’. By now, Angela share collapsed to a postwar low. If they right has never been a realistic electoral Merkel will be beginning to fear that her cling to her again, how might voters react force. Nor did AfD start out as extremists: remarkable career is about to move into next time? The opinion of SPD members it began when a group of economics profes- that second motion. Barely a year ago, she matters: the coalition will now be put to all sors set out to defend German economic was being talked about as the leader of the 465,000 in a postal vote. If they reject it, then orthodoxy, protesting against the eurozone free world. Now she is blamed by her own there’s no deal. And, perhaps, new elections bailout of Greece. It later branched into party for upending German politics and, in and a new crisis. migration policy and gradually found its the process, allowing the far-right to become A marriage between the left and the populist voice, helped in no small measure a real political force for the first time since right is seldom happy, but Merkel’s coalition by Merkel’s welcoming of refugees in the the 1940s. The cover of Der Spiegel, Germa- promises to be one of pure misery. She pro- summer of 2015. ny’s main weekly, last week summed it up in poses to run Germany with a government AfD’s views on migration are still fringe: one word: ‘Crisis.’ devoid of any organising principle, and one few side with the party’s ‘zero refugee cap’. It’s a crisis that’s been intensifying for where neither side believes its actions will The real source of its support was Merkel’s some time. It began when the federal elec- do anything to solve Germany’s problems. inability to find not just shelter but jobs, tions last September delivered the worst The two sides are united only by romanti- accommodation and some way of integrat- result for Merkel’s Christian ing the million newcomers into Democratic Union since 1949 society. Germans aren’t anxious — a result so abysmal she was because immigrants are taking lucky not to be ousted. That may their jobs or holding back their yet happen. There is growing pay rises. They worry about law ‘Merkel fatigue’ in the country and order, and curse Berlin for and her centrist theology — forcing them to prefer a less wel- Merkelism — is seen as a cause, coming Germany because poli- not a remedy, for the current ticians have failed to deal with malaise. Her open-door migra- the problems that come with tion policy has been blamed for immigration. They are respond- pushing voters into the arms of ing to a shambolic government. Alternative für Deutschland And this is, now, the shambol- (AfD), and transforming it ic government that refuses to go from a reviled fringe group to a away — or even be voted away. party with 92 members of par- Prepare for the worst: Merkel is liament. Merkel’s latest move is seeking to lead a coalition gov- to give AfD the status its mem- ernment offering continuity at bers crave. By forming a coali- a time when voters are demand- tion with her main opponent, ing change. Except this time the Social Democratic Party, around, the Chancellor and her she has made AfD into the main government allies will have far parliamentary opposition. Or, as the party cism about the Stabilitätskultur, the idea that weaker support in the Bundestag and can- itself would put it, the main alternative for Germany should never have a minority gov- not afford rebellion in critical votes. The Germany. ernment, and fear of AfD. Both parties think CSU, the Bavarian sister party of the CDU, There was not much rejoicing in Ber- they have a civilisational mission and that has a new combative leader with an agenda. lin when Merkel announced her left-right (to quote a Green member of the Bunde- The Social Democrats are already going coalition. ‘It’s the blind leading the blind,’ a stag) ‘opposing parliamentary factions are through a battle for the party’s soul and Merkel supporter in the Bundestag told me connected by a great responsibility to histo- those campaigning for a turn to the left — the same morning that the Chancellor and ry’ to keep the far-right away from any influ- perhaps even teaming up with the hard-left Martin Schulz, the erstwhile SPD leader, ence. But the nobility of such a mission has, Die Linke party— are winning the debate. unveiled their 177-page coalition agreement. of late, been lost on most voters. And even Merkel’s own troops are already prepar- The SPD leadership might be delighted with some political parties: the idea of propping ing to fight the next leadership. Peter Tau- the plum jobs Merkel offered (finance, the up a chastened, tin-eared Merkel did not ber, the party’s general secretary, resigned foreign ministry) but its membership is appeal to the Greens and Free Democrats earlier this week for health reasons. Ever worried that the coalition might be fatal. who walked out of talks months ago. since the election, he has been a foil for Mer-

12 the spectator | 24 february 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk РЕЛИЗ ГРУППЫ "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS kel, a legitimate target for the party’s frus- tration with her failed centrism and electoral repercussions. She was quick to appoint his successor and later this month Annegret Merkel’s crown princess Kramp-Karrenbauer, the premier of Saar- land, will take over this important post. She’s The Chancellor has named her successor a centrist, seen as a mini-Merkel: expecta- tions of change are low. THOMAS KIELINGER And what type of government can Ger- mans now look forward to? Merkel and Schulz have put together yet another con- tradictory agenda: empty on big structur- al changes for the economy, strong on new n Monday, Angela Merkel did So all eyes are now on AKK, the government spending. The only part that Osomething quite extraordinary. abbreviation of the future. But she brings out any passion in either leader is the As speculation about her party’s won’t solve the unanswered question tacit support for Emmanuel Macron’s euro- leadership mounted, she named an of who is to govern Germany during zone reform plans and, in the face of Brexit, apparent successor: the 55-year- the next parliamentary cycle. Whither renewed efforts to keep the European Union old Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, Merkel if the SPD members reject the together. This is a dangerous path in a Ger- appointed as the new general secretary grand coalition? In a sense it would many whose voters are distinctly cold about of her Christian Democratic Union be salutary for Germany if a coalition the type of reforms that Paris and Brussels party. The choice came like a lightning other than the ‘grand’ could be found, long for. strike: AKK, as she is already called, as it would avoid democratic obesity, Merkel’s allies can still make a good case was to leave her job as a successful as it were, where the two parties in the for her survival: that she has kept the Chris- minister-president of the tiny federal middle provide for ‘more of the same’, tian Democrats in power for a long time and state of Saarland and assume the at the expense of a fresh start. knows Berlin politics better than anyone governing position in her party. Now The preferred option for Merkel, else; that she did her best to form a coalition she sits as the CDU’s crown princess, AKK and the rest is coalition with the with the Liberals and the Greens, but was looking to take the throne at Greens. If the SPD’s share of the vote, (or even before) the next German as evinced in the latest opinion polls, A marriage between the left and election in 2021. right is seldom happy, but this coalition So Merkel has answered critics In her 12 years at the helm, promises to be one of pure misery who considered her unwilling or Merkel has nipped one potential unable to refresh her senior team. rival after another in the bud rebuffed, so she had no choice but to go back ‘The Chancellor without an alternative’ to the SPD. There is really no crisis, they say. she used to be called — a phrase that continues to decline — it is already But such excuses ring hollow. Merkel’s looked rather complacent after the near or at the level of the AfD — the big political project has been to move her cataclysmic election where Merkel Conservatives and the Greens might party to the left and delete most of its con- seemed to have single-handedly made combine to come up with a sufficient servative tradition. That’s exactly how she Alternative für Deutschland into a majority over all other parties. In did more than anyone to create the political force in German politics. Germany, nobody likes the idea of a space AfD is now filling. Almost a quarter Elevating AKK was most unlike minority government solution — or of Merkel’s CDU voters went elsewhere in Merkel. In her 12 years at the helm, another election, come to think about the last election — yet her response now is she has cunningly nipped one potential it. Stay tuned. to offer more of the same. And how might rival after another in the bud. Helmut All this should be borne in mind voters react? A clue came in a poll last week, Kohl did the same in his 16 years as by any Brits who are hoping for a showing support for AfD overtaking the chancellor. To name a successor — strong German hand to descend over SPD for the first time. or even build up a potential heir — Brussels at the last minute and sort Merkel has been Germany’s dominant was alien to both Merkel and Kohl’s out a decent trade deal. Ms Merkel political figure for a dozen years. It is her pol- thinking. Their definition of succession has enough of her own woes — and icy — and her style of leadership — that has management was to see off any likely even if she didn’t, no one in Berlin paralysed the country’s politics and threat- successor. seems to have any idea what Theresa ens to see the far-right become the main But Germany is now impatient May wants in future EU relations. opposition. For those who are angry with the with Merkel’s indistinct style — so No details were forthcoming in the German power establishment, there is only into the breach jumps the cool and Prime Minister’s appearance at the one person to blame. unpretentious AKK, who didn’t wait to Munich security conference this week. be called upon but offered herself as Before he became Brexit secretary, the candidate for the recently vacant David Davis said that the real trade post of general secretary. A job Merkel negotiation will take place ‘in Berlin, herself held under Kohl — a fact to strike a deal’. He’d be unlikely to she seemed to have forgotten when say that now. The simple truth is that she erroneously introduced Kramp- Germany cannot even begin to think Karrenbauer by proclaiming that about Brexit. Sorting out its own ‘in her, the CDU has the first woman political uncertainty is the first order general secretary in its history’. The of business. resulting mirth about this slip cast a smile over Ms Merkel’s face, the first Thomas Kielinger is a former London time she’d stopped scowling in months. correspondent of Die Welt. ‘I think you’ll find I’m training for the luge.’ the spectator | 24 february 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk 13 РЕЛИЗ ГРУППЫ "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS Wham bam, thank you Ma’am Why do Americans seesaw between violence and politeness?

ELISA SEGRAVE

love Americans’ kindness, generosity Roxanne sensibly took me into a bird Beach — cheaper than almost anywhere and energy but am often thrown by their sanctuary for a break, but there was an in Key West — an almost servile politeness Iexaggerated politeness and euphemis- undercurrent of death and violence even prevailed when both a waitress and a young tic speech. They use ‘passed’ for ‘died’ and there. The nesting storks were bereft of the manager reacted violently to Roxanne’s always say ‘excuse me’ if they brush against shelter of leaves — the trees unnaturally tactfully worded complaint that we had you in a shop. They sentimentally refer to bare after the hurricane — and Roxanne said been kept waiting 20 minutes instead of ten. ‘your puppy’ when the dog is patently over on one visit she had seen a nestling fall into I started wondering whether this exces- three years old. They refer to a dog’s ‘going the jaws of a waiting alligator underneath. sive politeness is partly out of fear of the to the bathroom’. And why say ‘a grown By way of passing the time, she told me a restless violence that lies just beneath the man’ instead of just ‘man’? Wads of paper story she had heard recently at a Palm Beach surface of American life. After three weeks napkins are handed out unnecessarily in dinner party. It just wasn’t the sort of din- in the States, I realised that if I didn’t say cafés and at parties (where one is sometimes ner-party story you’d ever hear in England. ‘excuse me’ during an accidental encounter, offered ‘a beverage’ instead of a drink). But The Palm Beach lady had been on a diving I was considered rude and aggressive. Anger Americans can also be unexpectedly blood- trip with another woman who, having used might flare up. It’s a precarious balance. thirsty and violent and I find this contrast up most of her oxygen supply out of nerves, What did all this seesawing between disconcerting. had had to surface early, whereupon she’d civility and violence imply? Perhaps, more On my recent visit to Key West, once a had both legs bitten off by a shark and had than in England, survival of the fittest town with a reputation for lawlessness and applies. Apart from fearsome weather such bohemianism, but now, owing to the influx Even in the bird sanctuary, as hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes, of tourist couples in their late seventies and there was the undercurrent America has dangerous predators, both eighties, somewhat twee and overpriced, of death and violence human and animal — alligators, bears and I was shocked by the aggression shown by in some areas, wolves. An older woman I otherwise warm-hearted friends towards died. Her body was put in the boat’s deep know was in a life-and-death struggle with a the wildlife. Iguanas — not indigenous to freeze for the group’s 38-hour journey back rabid raccoon on Long Island. It chased her, Florida — are hated, as they eat garden to the mainland. The storyteller, furious to she locked herself in her bathroom, it start- plants and poo in swimming pools. Betty, have her holiday truncated, complained to ed rattling the door handle. Finally a neigh- raised on a Midwest farm with no electric- Roxanne that such a nervous woman should bour heard her yelling and the raccoon was ity, who now lives in Key West with her hus- not have chosen that trip. shot by police. band six months a year, shocked me and our At Roxanne’s seemingly quiet home, At Key West airport, when it was animal-loving friend, a retired professor, by half-feral cats (abandoned after a neigh- announced that five military persons were declaring: ‘You have to shoot them so that bour’s divorce) roamed outside, causing her to board the plane before the rest of us on they bleed from the belly!’ My friend mur- sister’s terrified indoor cat to lose its fur. our flight to Atlanta, each one (including mured a protest but Betty maintained that That evening at Flanigan’s in West Palm two young women) was applauded sepa- iguanas had no right to destroy her garden. rately by everyone in the departure lounge. Another cheerful winter resident was I don’t think this would happen here. We’re hellbent on killing a tree rat (a squirrel) not so sentimental about violence. who’d eaten left-out food and the strap of Before I left came the news of the her best sandal. frightful school shooting in Florida, which I visited my friend Roxanne. It should left 17 dead. Now, students are going have been less than a two-hour drive to her to march on Washington on 24 March, house from Miami airport, but that morn- demanding political action on gun control. ing a ‘grown man’ had abducted and shot Let’s hope they get satisfaction. his own partner (I’m not sure in what order), Elsewhere, on Big Pine Key, which unlike before driving the wrong way down the I-95, Key West was so badly affected by Hurri- causing at least three accidents. That high- cane Irma that some survivors are still in way was closed, causing motorists to divert. tents, a couple in their fifties who were living Drivers, crazy with frustration, weaved in in a trailer ‘passed’ — violently, I’m afraid. and out of the lanes and once Roxanne had The husband shot his wife and then himself. to slam on her brakes as the car in front of She had a terminal illness, and it appears us, in the middle lane, simply stopped. He that they had no insurance to help repair began swerving and we saw him having a their badly damaged trailer. physical fight with his male passenger before ‘He’s such a gentleman. He always he swerved again, onto the hard shoulder. asks if he can be abusive.’ The real threat to the US – page 22.

14 the spectator | 24 february 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk РЕЛИЗ ГРУППЫ "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS РЕЛИЗ ГРУППЫ "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS

See the film at polroger.co.uk РЕЛИЗ ГРУППЫ "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS

ROD LIDDLE Why are businesses so terrified of idiots?

am boycotting Center Parcs. Admit- one of the newspaper’s columnists, Richard a worker, as follows: ‘You are a slave for tedly, this is not going to have an enor- Littlejohn. The offending paragraph from a very poor wage, 12-hour shifts, one day I mous impact upon my life. It’s a bit like Mr Littlejohn reads as follows: ‘I’d rather off a week. If you are a good worker, your announcing with great pride and fervour children were fostered by loving gay couples management will put more work load on that I am boycotting Clare Balding or Paki- than condemned to rot in state-run institu- you than your other colleagues, creating an stan or goat’s cheese. All of those things I am tions, where they face a better-than-average unhealthy work environment. Customers perfectly able to live without and already do chance of being abused. That said, I still cling pay huge amounts of money to be disap- so. I will never eat goat’s cheese, visit Paki- to the belief that children benefit most from pointed with facilities.’ No kidding, mate, on stan or watch Clare Balding. being brought up by a man and a woman.’ that last point. I did once visit Center Parcs, mind — I suppose there must be some people And a quick suggestion to the SJW about ten years ago. It was excruciatingly in the UK who disagree with that assess- legions who now approve of Center Parcs awful — the kids hated it as much as we ment — my wife, for example, who thinks for its progressive policies, by the way. did. Extortionately expensive, restrictive, kids would be better off in local authority Check out the differences in pay between boring and full of who I can only describe care rather than placed with a gay couple. I men and women at their godawful resorts. as ‘tossers’ cycling along tarmacked lanes Check out how much the cleaners — almost through scrubby faux-woodland with their This is how our businesses act all women — earn. awful children shrieking in kind-of hang- now: oblivious to the views of the But then you can level the same charge ing baskets affixed to the back wheels. A 80 per cent, terrified of the 1 per cent of hypocrisy against the mimsy, boring sta- place for middle-class people possessed of tionery chain Paperchase — hell, here’s no imagination and too much money. The suspect that if you asked the question in an another boycott which isn’t going to spoil awful chain-food slop in the overpriced res- opinion poll, a good 80 per cent would agree my evening — which recently announced it taurants, the supposed attractions which with the thesis: ‘children benefit most from would not be advertising with the Daily Mail resembled the stuff in the brochure in much being brought up by a man and a woman.’ for more generic politically correct reasons. the same way as Theresa May resembles But the 80 per cent do not matter any- And yet this is how our businesses act Margaret Thatcher. The enforced jollity and more. The 80 per cent have no purchase. Far these days: oblivious to the views of the 80 the petty little niggling rules, designed to more important are the 1 or 2 per cent who per cent, terrified of the views of the 1 per screw as much money out of you as possi- insist that not merely is Littlejohn wrong, cent. You can see it in the Christmas advert ble. A confected simulacrum of nature and but that his moderately expressed opinion put out by John Lewis a few months ago. wildness for people who really hate both of constitutes ‘hate speech’ and that any news- Voted the worst of the major Christmas those things. paper which publishes such an unspeakable adverts. Because, in its desperation to be So, no loss then. As a political activist, I vileness must be punished. right on, it featured a mixed-race couple. yearn for the day when I am forced to boy- And so the congenital idiots who run And I suspect that the British people are cott something I actually care about and Center Parcs can swathe themselves in the getting sick of this social engineering being would miss. Such as cigarettes or toad in the glory which attends — briefly, very briefly rammed down their throats at every avail- hole. Or indeed Virgin East Coast trains — — to companies which connive with such a able opportunity. They don’t think there’s which I did in fact boycott for a week when censorious, politically correct closing down anything wrong with mixed race couples, per it announced it would no longer sell or give of debate. They are hip, with-it, right-on and se — it’s simply that increasingly the adver- out copies of the Daily Mail on its dread- virtue-signalling, despite being an organi- tisers and the companies (and the TV shows, ful, deteriorating, bankrupt service from sation which treats its staff, according to especially on the BBC) are insisting that this London to the north-east. This was a real is firstly how society actually is and secondly, problem, as my only alternative to get up if it isn’t, then definitely how it should be. to Teesside was Grand Central, which has And the ordinary viewer recoils, because far fewer services and takes longer. But old he is being force-fed political propaganda beardie Branson caught wind of the flak along with commercial propaganda. All to coming his way and smartly reversed the keep that tiny minority happy. Don’t be sur- decision. So now I’m back with Virgin — prised if next year’s John Lewis ad shows a until it is mercifully nationalised next year. transgendering mixed-race eight-year-old The Center Parcs boycott has been finding a vagina in his stocking. And don’t be similarly occasioned. Its head office has surprised if the British people hate that, too. announced, in pious tones, that it will no longer be placing adverts with the Daily SPECTATOR.CO.UK/RODLIDDLE Mail on account of something written by The argument continues online. the spectator | 24 february 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk 17 РЕЛИЗ ГРУППЫ "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS Wasting away The NHS’s internal market has been an expensive catastrophe

MAX PEMBERTON

he NHS is in dire straits. I never cine. There’s no doubt that when compared ments or doctors prescribing remedies that thought I’d say this but as a doc- with other EU countries, we are not spend- could be bought over the counter. Equip- Ttor, and having seen the extent of ing similar levels as a proportion of GDP. ment such as walking frames that can’t be the current crisis, I’d be scared if a family While we spend about 8 per cent of GDP on returned. Or health tourism or failure to member had to go into hospital. Despite health, countries such as France and Germa- recoup the cost of treating overseas nation- the best efforts of staff, the pressures are ny spend nearly 12 per cent. We have fewer als. Of course, all of these are important. But such that it’s all too easy for mistakes to be beds, fewer nurses and fewer doctors per there is a source of inefficiency that eclipses made. Doctors and nurses are going to work patient than the rest of Europe. all this, wasting billions every year. It is the fearful of the situation they will find. They But rather than throwing more money internal market. know how unsafe it is, and yet they are utter- at the NHS, it makes better sense to ensure This was first introduced into the NHS in ly powerless to do anything about it. the money is being spent wisely. The NHS 1990, when the National Health Service and The predictable response is to call for needs to ensure it is as lean and efficient as Community Care Act put health authorities more money to be hurled at the NHS. It’s in charge of their own budgets. But the NHS all because of cuts, they say. Yet a report last The unintended consequence has really started to embrace market principles year from the National Institute of Econom- been spiralling costs that have no with Gordon Brown’s ‘mixed economy of ic and Social Research found that health care’, which saw the health service open up spending is at its highest level in history, and discernible benefi t to patients to competition to provide services, creating that Jeremy Corbyn’s accusations that the a ‘purchaser-provider split’. The unintend- Tories have presided over ‘deep cuts’ to the possible. Surveys have found that people ed consequence has been bureaucracy on a NHS budget are simply wrong. The annual are wary of yet more money being handed gargantuan scale. And the spiralling cost has spend on the NHS has now reached £2,160 out. While the majority of the public rank no discernible benefit to patients. A recent per person and the figure has continued to healthcare as the top priority for govern- study from the Organisation For Economic rise steadily in terms of a fraction of Brit- ment spending, only about a third are will- Co-operation and Development (OECD) ain’s total income, increasing from 4.7 per ing to pay more in taxes. If more money is suggests that about one fifth of spending on cent in 1997 to 7.4 per cent last year. going to be given to the NHS, it first needs health makes no or minimal contribution to What’s really happening is that demand to demonstrate that it’s making the most of improved health outcomes. is outstripping supply: the increase in money the money it is getting already. Even last June’s Conservative manifesto hasn’t been sufficient to cover the increas- And here’s the rub. There is crippling, acknowledged this, admitting that the NHS ing pressures of an ageing population, shameful waste in the NHS. The kind we internal market can fail ‘to act in the inter- higher expectations and advances in medi- hear about are things like missed appoint- ests of patients and creates costly bureau-

18 the spectator | 24 february 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk РЕЛИЗ ГРУППЫ "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS cracy’. This demonstrates that many within dition each time I see them to record any of senior managers’ time is spent gathering the party have become disillusioned with improvements. This way, the hospital can data to show to commissioners and writing the free-marketers. And disillusioned they demonstrate to GP practices that patients and bidding for contracts. It has resulted in a should be. The introduction of the free mar- are getting better and therefore can argue fractured, chaotic, disorganised system that ket to healthcare was based on ideology and that it should be given the contract again is costly and inferior. has shown itself to be costly, inefficient and when it comes up for renewal. I have to Quite how ludicrous and wasteful the a woefully inadequate system. complete risk assessments, forms relating situation is was demonstrated last month We know from other countries, such as to confidentiality, information sharing and when it was reported that Virgin Care, part the US and Germany, that introducing the consent to treatment. I generally spend part of Richard Branson’s empire, threatened to market into healthcare results in higher of my weekend catching up on paperwork, sue the NHS because it lost out on a contract costs. Putting an exact cost on the internal because otherwise I am unable to see as to provide a three-year, £82 million deal market is tricky, but the Centre for Health many patients during the week. covering health visitors, school nurses and and the Public Interest gives a conservative If it’s bad for doctors, it’s even worse for occupational therapy services for children estimate of £4.5 billion. Others have suggest- nurses. Every admission triggers an ava- in the Surrey area. ed about £10 billion is diverted away from lanche of forms to be filled in. How have we It started high court proceedings against frontline services to administer the complex got to the stage where, according to research six clinical commissioning groups (CCGs), negotiations and contract monitoring that by the Royal College of Nursing, the amount NHS England and Surrey council. The cases the market system requires. of time nurses spend away from patients, have now been settled and are ‘confidential’ What’s more, there are the indirect costs on non-essential paperwork, has doubled, but a finance paper from one of the CCGs due to inefficiency. In 2010, the select com- with 2.5 million hours lost a week? It is in involved states its liability for the case was mittee on health divulged that even under £328,000. Surely politicians should feel sick Labour, the cost of administering the pur- The more providers of healthcare to their stomachs that, while elderly people chaser-provider split was 14 per cent of all there are, the higher the risk of are being denied cataract operations and NHS spending. Some have now estimated crippled pensioners are being told they can’t the cost to be in the region of 25 per cent. duplication and confusion have a hip replacement, bully-boy compa- It’s quite clear that the more providers of nies like Virgin Care are suing and threaten- healthcare there are, the higher the risk of no small part because of the introduction of ing the NHS? duplication, confusion and misunderstand- the market and the resultant commissioning Competition was supposed to be about ings. We were told by the free-marketers and tendering processes. patient choice, the idea being that people that the internal market would push up Countless research, most notably that by would choose the highest performing pro- innovation, reduce costs and result in effi- Professor Allyson Pollock, director of the viders in a competitive market. Thus those ciency savings. The evidence shows this isn’t Institute of Health and Society at Newcastle hospitals that were failing would be less the case. I see this day in and day out in my University, has shown that the introduction popular and standards would be driven up. own practice because I, like every other doc- of the market system into health care does But this model doesn’t work in socialised tor, has to collect data that is essential to ser- not save money, but rather haemorrhages healthcare. vices competing for contracts. cash out of the public sphere. When you’re ill, consumer-led choices Research conducted by the NHS Con- After a Labour government started it, the are simply not practical. If you’re having a federation shows that clinical staff spend process was turbo-charged by Andrew Lans- heart attack, you don’t whip out your laptop, up to ten hours a week collecting or check- ley’s Health and Social Care Act 2012, which go to the NHS Choices website and decide ing data and that more than one third of the made it even easier for private companies where you’re going to go. You dial 999 and work is neither useful nor relevant to patient to bid for contracts. It effectively opened keep your fingers crossed that the near- care. It is estimated that collecting this data up the NHS to companies that could then est hospital isn’t falling down, riddled with alone costs the NHS £500 million. Many cherry-pick the most profitable parts of the MRSA or staffed by morons. people will be shocked that so much time is health service. Far from uniformly pushing up standards, spent on paperwork rather than caring for Far from being the saviour of the NHS, the market has introduced great variation, the sick but, reflecting on my own work, I’m the internal market has been an unmiti- with some hospitals far more productive amazed it is so little. I frequently feel I am gated, costly and wasteful disaster. Hours than others, but, as each trust is considered drowning in forms that demand to be com- an independent business, there is no way pleted, statistics that need to be gathered of sharing this. In his review of efficiency and boxes that need to be ticked. It is the in hospitals in 2015, Lord Carter estimat- least enjoyable part of my job. I trained to be ed that reducing this could save the NHS a doctor because I wanted to work with peo- £5 billion a year. ple, not complete forms that have no mean- Most people simply want a good, efficient ingful impact on the patient. healthcare system that is there for them Every clinician I know feels the same. I when they need it, and that treats them with work in a hospital providing tertiary care to dignity and respect. They want a just system people with severe mental health problems. that looks after everyone, regardless of abil- I will typically see patients for 30 minutes ity to pay or the complexity of their needs. to an hour. For every patient I see, I have My concern is that the public, seeing the at least one hour of paperwork to do, only diversion of scarce resources away from a small part of which has a clear benefit patient care, are losing faith. The introduc- to them. I used to take a relatively relaxed tion of the internal market has been a failure approach to paperwork until a manager and must be abandoned. It is a dangerous pulled me aside and explained that if I didn’t festering wound, which may prove fatal to complete certain forms, the service didn’t the NHS. We need to excise it now. get paid. I now have to ‘cluster’ patients into Max Pemberton is a columnist for diagnostic categories and severity of con- the Daily Mail. the spectator | 24 february 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk 19 РЕЛИЗ ГРУППЫ "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS Clean water beats social justice Oxfam has become too slick for its own good

AIDAN HARTLEY

n the early 1980s when I was a school- by young graduates in suits living on good what Oxfam calls ‘holding governments and boy, my father, Brian Hartley, worked pay. They look like bankers. businesses accountable’ in third world coun- I for Oxfam during a famine in Uganda’s During my visits to these offices, I have tries. Talk to people in Africa and many will Kara moja. Like Dad, the other Oxfam peo- wondered how often many of these aid say this involves harassing private investors ple I remember in East Africa were earnest workers ever visit what they call ‘the field’. and bypassing local elected rulers. Oxfam agriculturalists or engineers who had been They attend workshops, seminars and even says this is about building a fair and just overseas most of their lives. Some of them retreats, but they are not the old technicians world without poverty, but this huge shift were religious or socialist, but they all had in dusty sandals we once knew. in its focus seems to be aimed at exoner- the technical skills to help local farmers Suddenly Oxfam became like a large ating the poor from responsibility, inciting rebuild their lives after wars or droughts. corporation with 19 global franchises — last their resentment against private capital and The focus was on development. Like my year it raised £408 million in donations — blaming the West, stoking guilt and making dad, most were sandal-clad volunteers who and this created its own momentum to raise Africa into a utopian playground for social- worked for the charity for free. They helped yet more money. Fundraising by itself gob- ists from Sussex University. farmers cultivate better crops or breed bled up £26 million of Oxfam annual rev- Land rights, tax havens, forgiving third improved livestock to stop soil erosion, vac- enue, and the media became a key tool for world debt: you might agree with the inten- cinate cattle, plant trees and dig boreholes. mobilising more cash. tions behind these campaigns that Oxfam Since Quakers founded Oxfam in the has pursued, but they are a far cry from pro- 1940s to help civilians in Greece, it has saved The campaigns Oxfam has pursued viding a hand pump for villagers in Congo, and improved countless lives. I admired or vaccinating cattle in Sudan against rin- the charity so much that while at univer- are a far cry from providing a derpest. Oxfam claims that last year more sity I would secretly (because I feared my hand pump for villagers in Congo than £300 million was spent on its core activ- fellow undergraduates might laugh at me) ities of development and humanitarian aid, visit its headquarters in north Oxford to do Meanwhile, there was a gradual shift of but these included projects such as the one odd jobs. emphasis from development work in the field in Zambia called ‘I Care About Her’, which As a correspondent for Reuters in the towards ‘advocacy’ and what Oxfam calls aims to ‘mobilise men and increase their 1990s, I came across Oxfam in Somalia, Cen- ‘influencing’. The year before last, Oxfam role in condemning and stopping violence tral Africa and Ethiopia. Africa’s humani- says it spent an incredible €67 million on ‘a against women and girls’. tarian crises were now known as ‘complex worldwide influencing network’ to ‘support Is all this leftist agitprop really what the emergencies’ or, in the case of South Sudan, progressive movements at all levels’. good people of Britain signed up for when the ‘permanent emergency’: war, famine, These terms describe campaigns to focus they made out their direct debits, or when pestilence and death on a vast scale. Once on ‘social justice’ in the third world to mobi- they bought second-hand dinner jackets again I saw Oxfam technicians doing impres- lise what the charity calls ‘The Power of from Oxfam shops? Surely donors want sive, hands-on work for civilians in refugee People Against Poverty’. Instead of deliv- Oxfam to help the poor with real things: camps, delivering clean water and food. ering clean water and food to poor people, food, clean water and the tools to get back Around the turn of the century, during Oxfam’s literature promises to help locals on their feet and rebuild lives after conflicts Tony Blair’s government, everything sud- ‘exercise their right to have clean water’. or natural disasters. Oxfam claims that it denly changed. UK charities like Oxfam had Some of this ‘social justice’ work involves monitors the effectiveness of its own pro- failed to move on from the cycle of emer- jects so that it can successfully help people gency to sustainable development, and yet in ‘resilient development’. the crises were getting bigger and nastier It was with sadness that I read in the and the do-gooders had never been in such charity’s report for last year that it is carry- demand. Budgets exploded. Aid groups got ing out a great deal of work in Kenya’s Tur- so much money they could hardly keep up kana region, where, it notes, 95 per cent of with the ‘burn rate’, which is what they call people live in absolute poverty. This is exact- the need to spend funds before the end of a ly where my father helped start a number financial year so that donors do not cut the of projects for Oxfam in the early 1980s. In flow of future cash. those days, I recall that people lived simple From the 1980s-era shabby offices in lives, but few lived in the dire poverty of the Oxford and Nairobi, where the staff looked sort we see now. The real discussion people as if they wore the donated clothes sold in should be having about Oxfam and other their charity shops, Oxfam grew into a slick UK charities working in places such as Tur- operation with huge international offices ‘He does a lot of work for charity, kana should be: after all that money, what across Africa and other hotspots, populated but doesn’t like to talk about it…’ went wrong, why, and what next?

20 the spectator | 24 february 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk РЕЛИЗ ГРУППЫ "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS

JAMES DELINGPOLE Will Remainers ever learn to forgive?

hen I mentioned on social media that puts them into the friendship premier adopted by a handful of racists, wife-beaters recently that I’d lost friends league.) Our ideologies don’t align — she, and kitten-stranglers. It was, in fact, some- Wbecause of Brexit, I was quite especially, is more metropolitan fashionista thing the majority of voters — 17.4 million surprised by the vehemence of the response. — but still we have lots in common: geog- of us — supported; and which, surveys tell us, Lots of fellow Leavers had stories to tell raphy, education, artistic sensibilities, mutu- many more people who voted differently or about friends who now cut them dead or al friends. We’ve got on by sticking to these who chose not to vote also support. former clients who would no longer work subjects, while, in the Victorian way, steering How then do we explain this climate of with them. Many said they prefer to keep clear of religion and politics. extreme intolerance by an embittered but secret how they voted in the referendum for Then, after Brexit, the Fawn rang to fix very vocal minority towards the shy minor- fear of the repercussions. up another evening. She got the husband, ity? I think it’s down to a number of factors. This intolerance is especially bad if you’re who sounded somewhat cagey. When she Here are a few of them: a student. One undergraduate described to started proposing dinner dates, he grew cag- 1. Virtue-signalling. This is especially true me how his politics professor had opened a ier still — as though he were being briefed, of the Conservatives who voted Remain. lecture with a slide reading ‘Brexit is shit’ — perhaps through the medium of cut-throat Insecure Tories (i.e. not Jacob Rees-Mogg) apparently ‘to the cheers and adulation of hand signals. The upshot, anyway, was that are forever on the look-out for issues which the entire lecture theatre’. Another student none of the proposed dates was possible. demonstrate that far from being selfish reac- interviewed by the BBC a few months ago, At first we weren’t much worried — tionary Little Englanders they are at least as described how she had overheard two stu- assuming we’d just caught them at a bad modern, open-minded, caring and non-rac- dents talking about her as they left a lecture: ist as any socialist. Campaigning to stay in ‘I just want to punch that Brexit bitch.’ How pathologically warped do you the EU, they have persuaded themselves, If you do what I do for a living, you learn have to be to ditch your mates for no enables them to tick all the boxes and feel to treat this level of aggression and vitriol better reason than they voted Leave? morally superior to those grisly Untermen- as a badge of honour. But non-journalists, schen who just don’t care enough about vital, quite understandably, find it hard to get moment. Then, when radio silence persist- world-changing issue such as the Erasmus used to such unpleasantness. This is why I ed, we moved on to self-recrimination: won- student-exchange programme. so greatly admire the group of academics dering which of the many offensive things 2. Visceral snobbery. Obviously one who have just outed themselves by launch- I’ve said tipped them over the edge. After doesn’t want to be too rude about the dis- ing a website called Briefings for Brexit. that came hurt: how could our nice friends gusting, drooling, knuckle-dragging Nean- One of its purposes is to counter the prevail- decide not to like us when we’re such lovely derthals from places like Sunderland who ing orthodoxy that people only voted Brexit company? Now we’ve settled on wry amuse- voted in their hordes for Brexit. Suffice to if they were really, really thick. ment: how pathologically warped do you say that barely one of them read PPE at I know Professor Robert Tombs, one of have to be to ditch your mates for no better Oxford; nor is one likely to break bread with the two Cambridge dons who founded the reason than that they voted with the major- them at the Fourth of June, or bump into any group. He’s a delightful chap — modest, ity in a national referendum? of them in the interval at the latest David mild-mannered and definitely not the type Let me repeat that ‘voted with the majori- Hare premiere. wantonly to court aggro or controversy. So ty’ because it’s easy to forget. Voting to leave 3. The media bubble. Hardly anyone in it must have required huge resources of the EU wasn’t some sick minority position, TV or newspapers believes in Brexit — and courage and moral principle to stick his that applies not just to the Guardian and the head above the parapet in this way — espe- BBC, but even to many of the right-wing cially when he lives and works in one of papers that paid lip service to it. As a con- Remain’s biggest strongholds. sequence of this bias, ardent Brexiteers are Will his former friends who voted made to look like crazed outliers rather than Remain ever forgive him? Not in my expe- the embodiment of the popular will. rience they won’t. This I find bizarre. I often 4. Thwarted entitlement. The liberal elite take unfashionable positions on conten- who uniformly backed Remain — lawyers, tious political issues — I’m pro-Trump, pro- bankers, corporatists, quangocrats, top civil Second Amendment, sceptical of climate servants, etc — have spent their whole lives change — but none of them has cost me ruling the roost and getting their own way. friendships in the way that Brexit has. Let This was their first taste of being rebuffed, me give you one example. There’s the couple all the more painful for being so unexpect- we used to have supper with three or four ed. They will never forget this outrage — still times a year. (By our antisocial standards ‘It’s his bucket list.’ less forgive it. the spectator | 24 february 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk 21 РЕЛИЗ ГРУППЫ "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS

BAROMETER False flag Never mind Russia – the real threat to the US is China The great indoors ROGER KIMBALL How to get the Winter Olympics experience without leaving England: — The Snow Centre, Hemel Hempstead: ‘London’s closest indoor real snow slope.’ A 160-metre slope with alpine restaurant. — SnowDome, Tamworth: ‘The original and ultimate snow, ice and leisure experience.’ Includes Santa’s Winter Wonderland. — Chill Factore, Stretford: A 180-metre slope with button lift and seasonal moguls. Parents go free in Mini Moose Land. ne of the most memorable moments tion in this indictment that any American of the 2012 presidential debates came had any knowledge’ of Russian efforts to Crowded house Owhen the candidates were asked what meddle in the election. they believed to be the chief national securi- It is worth pointing out that the fact of The government is considering early ty threat facing the United States. Mitt Rom- Russian meddling is not news. The Russians release for prisoners to cut overcrowding. ney said ‘Russia’. Barack Obama thought that (among other countries) have been endeav- How many people do we incarcerate was ridiculous. ‘The 1980s are now calling to ouring to meddle in American elections for compared with other countries? — The UK’s imprisonment rate is 143 per ask for their foreign policy back,’ Obama decades. Just as, I hasten to add, the United 100,000, putting us 109th out of 222 nations. retorted, to the general hilarity of the panel States regularly endeavours to meddle in the highest rate and much of the audience. politics of other countries, including Great Seychelles 738 But that was before Hillary Clinton, the Britain. Remember when Obama warned US 666 candidate whom Obama had anointed to you not to vote for Brexit, on pain of being El Salvador 614 win in 2016, performed the impossible and sent to the ‘back of the queue’? Remem- Turkmenistan 583 lost to Donald Trump. ber when, in 2016, Obama sent $350,000 of Virgin Islands 542 All of a sudden it was Russia, morning, American taxpayers’ money to an Israeli Cuba 510 noon, and night. Donald Trump must have entity to help defeat Benjamin Netanyahu? lowest rate ‘colluded’ with the Ruskies. It was the only Meddling in other countries is something Guinea-Bissau 10 answer to the otherwise imponderable ques- that sovereign nations, especially rich and Central African Republic 16 tion: how could Hillary Clinton lose? Every- powerful ones, do. Guinea 23 one knew that she was a shoo-in, just as The Russians don’t seem very good at it. Congo 27 Democratic Republic of Congo 29 The activities outlined in Mueller’s indict- India 33 Meddling in other countries is ments are partly pathetic, partly comi- Source: prisonstudies.org cal. Beginning in 2014, the Russians took something that sovereign nations, out Facebook and Twitter ads under false On the move especially rich and powerful ones, do names. Some supported Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein. Some attacked Marco Rubio and The IFS reported that homeownership everyone knew that Donald Trump was a vul- Ted Cruz. Much of their effort was directed among 25- to 34-year-olds has fallen from gar buffoon whose candidacy was a bad joke. against Clinton. Someone, for example, built 65 per cent to 27 per cent in 20 years. The only fly in this ointment was that no a cage to house an effigy of Mrs Clinton. Where in Europe should they move to if one could find any evidence that Trump had But the Russians concentrated on Hillary their priority is owning a home? colluded with the Russians. This was not for because they, like everyone else, thought home ownership rate lack of looking. The Democrats managed to she was going to win. Late in the game, they Romania 96% saddle the Trump administration with a spe- sponsored some pro-Trump ads and events. Lithuania 92% Slovakia 91% cial counsel to investigate the charge. Altogether, Clinton and Trump spent Hungary 90% For nearly a year now, former FBI direc- $2.4 billion over the course of their cam- Croatia 89% tor Robert Mueller and his team of 16 paigns. In the pivotal state of Wisconsin, the Bulgaria 86% anti-Trump prosecutors have been moving Russians spent $1,979. In Michigan, it was Source: European Mortgage Federation heaven and earth to uncover evidence of actionable collusion between team Trump Generous Britain and the Russians. So far, they have turned up — nothing. ‘Hey,’ you say, ‘what about The Oxfam scandal has led to worries that that baker’s dozen of indictments against we will reduce our donations to charity. various Russians that Mueller handed down How much do we actually give? just last week?’ — In 2016 Britons gave £9.6 billion of their What about it? As Trump observed in own money, an average of £160 per head. one of his seemingly endless Twitter storms, — The median value of each donation was £18 and the mean was £40. what Mueller uncovered was a Russian — We are at our most generous in May, effort to meddle in the American election, July, October and December, and least not collusion between Donald Trump and generous in June and November. the Russians. About collusion there was Source: Charities Aid Foundation nary a syllable. Quite the opposite. The doc- ument explicitly said there was ‘no allega-

22 the spectator | 24 february 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk РЕЛИЗ ГРУППЫ "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS

$832. In Pennsylvania it was $300. As Trump nological advances. As I write, a prominent observed in one of his tweets, the Russians tech website warns that the US is no longer must be ‘laughing their asses off’ at the spec- guaranteed military technology dominance. tacle of American paranoia and discord. ‘China is rapidly growing its fighter plane For that was always the main aim of their and stealth fighter capabilities,’ it warns. meddling, to sow discord and dissension ‘China has developed competitive air-to-air among the American people. missile capabilities.’ The people seem pretty much immune to China has also become expert at pro- the chaos. Not so our media elites. Respond- jecting soft power. Consider the Confucius ing to Mueller’s indictments, one commenta- Institutes, Chinese government-sponsored tor wrote that ‘Trump is ignoring the worst cultural centres, that have sprung up at uni- attack on America since 9/11’. Another versities across the US. Not only are they scribe said that it was ‘as bad as Pearl Harbor’ ‘I think we all knew he wasn’t a remainer.’ potential havens for spies, they are mouth- (minus, he graciously added, the casualties). pieces for the Chinese government to dis- These statements, I submit, are insane. As piece of opposition research was fed to the seminate the party line. As Peter Mattis, a the Washington Examiner’s Byron York put FBI, which used it to obtain secret court former US intelligence analyst, noted, the it, the entire Russian operation ‘emerges as warrants to spy on people inside the Trump institutes ‘are an instrument of the par- a small, poorly funded operation with a level camp. In other words, the Clinton campaign ty’s power, not a support for independent of effectiveness that is impossible to meas- indirectly colluded with Russian sources, scholarship’. Senator Rubio made the same ure but could be near zero’. first to affect the election and then, when point. ‘It’s a long-term, patient approach,’ There are two ironies surrounding the that didn’t work, to discredit her opponent. he said. But then the Chinese are known for Trump ‘Russian collusion’ story. The first The second irony is that even as the patience. Zhou Enlai, the first premier of the is that the only collusion to have emerged media are running around skirling about the People’s Republic of China, was once asked so far implicates the Clinton campaign, not Russians, China is methodically extending whether the French Revolution was a suc- Trump’s. After all, it was the Clinton cam- its web of influence and power. We have all cess. ‘It is too soon to say,’ he replied. paign and the Democratic National Com- read about its encroachments in the South Politically correct elites in America are mittee who secretly paid for the infamous China Sea. This vast and weaponised man- screaming about Russian interference. Steele dossier, that tissue of salacious gos- made archipelago is a brazen attempt to Meanwhile, a grave, multifaceted threat is sip assembled by former British spy Chris- extend China’s territorial claims and secure coalescing just beyond the horizon of their topher Steele. Where did he get his lurid its hegemony in that part of the world. consciousness. When will they wake up? stories? Why, from a congeries of unnamed Hardly a day goes by without another Russian ‘sources close to the Kremlin’. This news story about China’s military and tech- Roger Kimball is editor of the New Criterion.

David Davis in conversation with Andrew Neil

Wednesday 28 March, 7 p.m. Westminster

Britain is set to leave the European Union in March, 2019. Twelve months before this momentous event, join Andrew Neil as he interviews David Davis, the Brexit Secretary, on what to expect next year and beyond.

TICKETS BOOK NOW Spectator subscriber rate: £22.50 www.spectator.co.uk/brexit Standard rate: £35 020 7961 0044

the spectator | 24 february 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk 23 РЕЛИЗ ГРУППЫ "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS SOUTH AFRICA NOTEBOOK Rian Malan

n recent years, living in South Africa wounded currency recovers some of Ihas been a bit like having cancer. its lost purchasing power. In a way, I The malaise eating us from within am glad Zuma forced me into exile, was corruption and there seemed to because life here is very pleasant. We be no cure, which is why there was no are surrounded on all sides by hundreds dancing in the streets when our dreadful of square miles of mountains and president, Jacob Zuma, was finally eased emptiness. There is a cellphone tower on out of office on Valentine’s Day. For me, the summit of Mount Ararat but it works it felt as if the entire nation was hobbling only sporadically, reducing the influence out of hospital after a long and painful of social media and other forms of self- stay, almost too weak to walk, but very transformation’ campaign was to enable imposed stupidity. The days can be surprised and grateful to discover that Zuma to rid himself of irritants like rule of murderously hot, but it’s the kind of it had somehow survived. So I didn’t law and a free press and turn himself into dry heat that makes a cold beer dance in the streets. But I did spot a local Robert Mugabe. I thought, bugger this, unbearably pleasurable, and at night ANC leader standing in the sun outside time to get out of here, hence my decision the stars are blinding. the general store. I hobbled over and to retreat to the desert, where I planned shook his hand. ‘Comrade,’ I declared. to equip myself with guns and night-vision an Wyksdorp is too remote to ‘Well done!’ We talked for a while about goggles and mount a doomed last stand. Vinterest the gentry. My neighbours the way forward and for once, found are real people with callused hands and ourselves in agreement about almost ooking back, it seems I folded my hand leathery suntans. Many are fanatical everything. The new president, Cyril La bit quickly. Zuma’s campaign did not greens and survivalists, preparing for Ramaphosa, is a good chap. With any go as planned. His first error was to rely on the end of the world. I spent my youth luck, he might just manage to muck out a British PR firm to spread his toxic RET in the company of hippies who talked the giant pile of ordure left behind by his message. That didn’t go down well in South about getting off the grid and going predecessor. Also, he’s so rich already Africa, especially once it emerged that Bell back to nature, but then just smoked that he has no need to steal, meaning Pottinger was being paid by the Guptas, a dope and listened to Dylan records once that government budgets might at last be family of carpetbagging Indians who clearly they got there. Those in Van Wyksdorp spent as intended, on the poor. envisaged that the ripest fruits of economic work the fields with their own hands, transformation would fall into their own and at least one has achieved the grail here are quite a lot of those here in greedy hands. This alienated youthful of ‘sustainability’. His energy is solar, TVan Wyksdorp, an obscure village radicals and forced Zuma to seek support his water from a borehole and his barn perched on the edge of a vast, brutal from Black First Land First, a thuggish stacked with three years’ worth of dried aridity at the eastern end of the Little grouping of Hutu-style radicals who were beans. ‘I’ll have to stop farming for a Karoo, population 833. It hasn’t rained supposed to spearhead the struggle against while,’ he said the other day. ‘I’ve got properly here in years. The grass around ‘white monopoly capital’. But then it nowhere left to store stuff.’ farm dams rustles with thirsty snakes, turned out that the BFL was also financed and baboons are gathering on the by the Guptas, and by mid-year, Zuma had hich is not to say that Van outskirts of town, looking for fields or become a laughing-stock, at least for urban WWyksdorp is paradise. It’s beset by orchards to raid. Farmers are struggling Africans and those with enough nous to see the usual colonial problems of coloured too, but the spring on the mountain through his machinations. Elsewhere in the and white, rich and poor, but here we keeps giving water, so for the moment world, he would have been ousted at this can at least conduct our squabbles in we’re OK. So what prompted me to point, but a web of patronage sustained him a common language, Afrikaans. Most move to a village hardly anyone has until mid-December, when Ramaphosa of us also like rugby, a strong binding heard of? Well, it was Zuma’s fault really. managed to take control of the ruling party. factor as blacks infiltrate the national At the start of last year, our peasant Zuma tried to dig in, but Ramaphosa has a team and cause us to come to our feet president veered sharply leftward, silver tongue and a winning personality, and as one (in the Spekboom, the village’s embracing a dog-Marxist ideology by 14 February he’d somehow winkled the only bar) as they head for the try line that envisaged seizure of land without incumbent out of power. with dreadlocks flying. Ah, South Africa. compensation and other bold blows As all humanity knows by now, we have against what remained of the white- nd so here I am in Van Wyksdorp, a miraculous knack for escaping from dominated economy. I was convinced Awatching from afar while a wave of tight spots before the worst happens. that the true aim of this ‘rapid economic optimism sweeps distant cities and our And now we’ve done it again.

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How to save charities UK will be able to benefit from trade in the choice. But given the feeling among many future. When we use the term ‘international of the citizens of the Commonwealth, Sir: The sexual abuse scandal is merely aid charities’, let us remember that that is at least according to the previously one aspect of the morally compromised a broad umbrella term, and many see the mentioned survey, do the people want a status of large charities such as Oxfam world differently to Oxfam. British royal to follow the Queen? (‘The dark side of charity’, 17 February). Jordan Greenaway This will need to be very delicately Oxfam receives a large part of its income London WC1 handled indeed, as Charles Moore suggests. from the government, which necessarily Perhaps the answer is a rotating presidency makes it a delivery agency for the state. Commonwealth problem without the symbolism of a royal head. It spends a proportion of its income on David B. Collins political campaigns, often critical of the Sir: I was Canadian high commissioner to Hartley Wintney, Hampshire same government from which it gets money Malaysia ten years ago. At that time the and on whose behalf it acts. The self-serving Royal Commonwealth Society surveyed A long, long evening hypocrisy of biting the hand that feeds it the Commonwealth about what we needed seems not to bother its senior management. to do to ensure success (The Spectator’s Sir: Thank you, Lloyd Evans (‘Torture in Oxfam and others also rely on many Notes, 17 February). The survey found that the stalls’, 17 February). I saw Long Day’s small donations, often from people of many believed the Commonwealth to be Journey for the first time a few years ago, modest means. Others work — for free — too British, too London-centric, and too in a production much praised by the critics. in their shops. The money thus raised is dominated by the UK and the old ‘white’ It was terrible, a tedious ‘waffle-festival’, used, in part, to pay six-figure salaries to dominions (which pay 90 per cent of the exactly as he says. The audience, grey of the charities’ senior managers. The chief operating budget). Even the fact that the hair and stiff of spine, clapped politely but executive of Oxfam earns as much as many secretariat is housed in Marlborough House my main feeling was anger at being duped. government ministers and substantially was found to be objectionable for Maybe this play was radical and more than most people could ever dream its symbolism. challenging in its time, but it should have of. The sense of entitlement exhibited by That brings us to the question of been filed away as a historic curiosity long such professional charity managers is more whether the Prince of Wales should or ago. That theatres won’t put it out of its exploitative than charitable. could succeed his mother the Queen as misery matters. Any young person going If the ‘third sector’ is to recover its Head of the Commonwealth. On the to the theatre for the first time in the honour, it needs to be truly independent of surface he is an obvious and acceptable expectation of seeing a great 20th-century government funding and its managers need play and having to endure this would very to show a personal commitment to charity. likely be put off theatre for life. After all, for Anyone who wants to earn a commercially the price of one theatre ticket they could competitive salary should work in a buy nearly a year’s subscription to Netflix. commercially competitive environment. John Swanson Jeremy Stocker Twickenham, Middlesex Willoughby, Warwickshire INTRODUCTORY OFFER: Housing stats They’re not all bad Subscribe for Sir: Contrary to Matthew Parris’s Sir: Harriet Sergeant’s criticism of aid hits figures (‘There is no housing shortage’, the mark for many overseas charities, but only £1 an issue 10 February), government statistics show there is a risk here of tarring many worthy that last year there were 154,220 new-build organisations with the same brush. 9 Weekly delivery of the magazine completions compared with 246,000 net There is a branch of international aid migrants, the latter being far down and the which seeks to support the development 9 App access to the new former up on previous years, suggesting of local economies through investing in issue from Thursday that over a long period there have been the recipient country’s entrepreneurs. At 9 Full website access significantly fewer homes built than people the smaller end, there are microfinance coming into the country. Along with rising organisations which provide ambitious divorce rates, the demand for housing entrepreneurs, especially women, with has increased drastically and prices have small loans to create life-transforming followed. Mr Parris asks for a free market

Iran is our natural ally The National Trust in trouble Boris in Libya businesses. There are also various forms Can you forgive her? answer, and I suggest making it more of Isabel Hardman and Matthew Parris on Theresa May’s fate

MY DATES WITH DIANA of so-called venture philanthropy, where TAKI a free market. As with most things, it is investments are made into local businesses government interference in planning, or UK/American businesses that are taxation and incentives that has had developing transformative products; for The Houstonlesson of adverse consequences. The freeing up of example, sanitary products or clean energy greenbelt land on the edge of cities where devices which are especially designed for the infrastructure can cope and people the unique difficulties of rural life in Africa www.spectator.co.uk/A152A want to live would work wonders. or elsewhere. Unlike Oxfam and other aid Tim Coles charities which seek to provide open-ended 0330 333 0050 quoting A152A Carlton, Bedfordshire support and, in many senses, trap people UK Direct Debit only. Special overseas rates also in poverty, these organisations attempt to available. $2 a week in Australia call 089 362 4134 WRITE TO US do the exact opposite. By supporting the or go to www.spectator.com.au/T021A The Spectator, 22 Old Queen Street, London creation of vibrant economies abroad, the SW1H 9HP; [email protected] the spectator | 24 february 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk 27 РЕЛИЗ ГРУППЫ "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS

ANY OTHER BUSINESS| MARTIN VANDER WEYER Investors were right to sell Carillion shares when they spotted trouble ahead

he fallout from Carillion’s bankrupt- Common sense says the latter — and whose social impacts are more easily meas- cy spreads in slow motion — just the code itself makes clear that compli- ured, then so much the better. Tas the outsourcing and construc- ance ‘does not preclude a decision to sell tion giant’s finances gradually stretched to a holding, where this is considered in the Deep fried breaking point over the months before it best interest of clients or beneficiaries’. So went down in January. The company’s audi- I doubt even an old warrior like Frank Field This week’s funniest parable of capitalism tor, KPMG, was rightly under the spotlight can make mileage out of that one. unravelling was the news that KFC had run this week. But the impact on the ground As for the bankers, they had the same out of chicken — or at least 550 of its 900 seems to have been less disruptive than information to hand as the investors but UK outlets had done so. In the way of the early reports predicted. Receivers have carried on lending for fear, one assumes, modern world, an immediate search began made 1,000 redundancies but have re-let of hastening a collapse if they cut off Caril- for someone to blame, and the finger of guilt many contracts, securing thousands of other lion’s credit lines. Loan write-downs were swiftly pointed to DHL, the parcels busi- jobs. Construction of the £335 million Royal expected to pass £1 billion this week, with ness that took over KFC’s supply contract in Liverpool Hospital — one of the overrun- RBS, Barclays, Santander, Handelsbanken November. DHL is owned by Deutsche Post, ning contracts that contributed to Carillion’s and Lloyds already on the list; the City at which is not only German and privatised but cash crisis — won’t now be completed this large will be hit where it hurts most in com- also a ruthless competitor to our own highly year, but outsourced services in many other ing weeks. ‘Not amused,’ emails one bank- unionised Royal Mail, facts which no doubt places have been seamlessly reorganised. er, ‘that Carillion write-off could have dire prompted Mick Rix of the GMB union to The attention of politicians who regard impact on bonus pool.’ Our hearts bleed. weigh in by calling conditions at the DHL outsourcing as Satan’s work has accord- distribution centre ‘an utter shambles’. ingly focused less on the plight of workers After Oxfam Meanwhile, let me be first to thank DHL, and service users and more on which set of which promised to set ‘a new benchmark’ in capitalist lackeys to lambast: the overpaid Some time ago I labelled Oxfam ‘the sustainable fresh-produce delivery, for doing bosses, the eye-off-the-ball accountants, anti-capitalist lobby group which is also so by imposing a brief but healthy respite in the easy-lending bankers or the footloose a part-time aid charity’: this column has Britain’s high-salt, deep-fried diet. shareholders. Among the last, the likes of repeatedly highlighted the fact that donors Standard Life Aberdeen turned out to have have unknowingly funded a hard-left think- No option for Barclays been ‘fleeing for the hills’ well ahead of the tank (recent publisher of a list of ‘the eight crash, Labour MP Frank Field observed people who own as much wealth as the ‘The Serious Fraud Office wants a word’ was with asperity this week; MPs on the House poorest half of the world’) as well as a Third a message that caused my past City life to of Commons Work and Pensions Commit- World relief operation that has now been flash before my eyes. But the prosecutor of tee he chairs aim to find out whether Caril- tainted by allegations of sex abuse. I also corporate sin was calling to point out, in a lion’s institutional investors had ‘complied objected to the plague of its 650 charity courteous way, that my item on Barclays last with the Stewardship Code’. shops, cannibalising the trade of established week contained a misunderstanding of the That’s an interesting line of inquiry, small businesses in struggling high streets. way the law operates these days. Since Bar- but surely not a fruitful one. The Steward- So I have scant sympathy for Oxfam’s clays has already been charged with ‘unlaw- ship Code (promulgated by the Financial embattled boss Mark Goldring. But I would ful financial assistance’ and other offences Reporting Council) makes clear that direc- not want the current witch hunt for disre- in connection with its 2008 Qatari financ- tors carry primary responsibility for compa- specters of women (and worse) to lead, as ing, the bank no longer has the option (as I nies’ ‘long-term success’ but that investors some wealth managers have predicted, to suggested it did) to negotiate a new-fangled also have duties which include ‘monitoring a fall-off in philanthropic giving. Britons ‘deferred prosecution agreement’ which and engaging… on matters such as strategy, donate almost £10 billion a year to good might incur a fine but avoid a courtroom performance, risk [and] capital structure’. causes, and the fragile fabric of a society in drama. So we must wait to hear whether Does that mean an investment manager who which public funding is increasingly scarce Barclays pleads guilty or not guilty; the next thinks a company in which he holds shares is depends upon us continuing to do so. hearing is on 23 April, and the trial itself is going down has a duty to stick around and But if the result of the Oxfam scandal scheduled for January next year. Either way, persuade its executives to change course, or is to divert cash from big, smug, misman- the bank’s standing in the eyes of customers a more pressing duty to sell as quickly as he aged multinational charities to smaller local and shareholders can only get worse before can and protect his own clients’ savings? projects that are easier to scrutinise and — and if ever — it gets better.

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‘In Your Dreams’, 1955, Oliver Balch finds that William Leith reveals that Ian Sansom refuses to by Ken Russell, part of modern Spain has the capital of Honduras is believe YouTube is beneath Beehives, Bobs and Blow-dries effectively shrugged off 20 times as murderous as him simply because its Melanie McDonagh — p42 Franco’s memory London content isn’t very good Ruth Scurr is impressed by Selina Mills explains how Craig Raine finds beautiful Laura Freeman’s reading audio description can be rats and belly-button emojis cure for anorexia dangerous at a new show in Margate the spectator | 24 february 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk 29 РЕЛИЗ ГРУППЫ "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS BOOKS & ARTS

BOOKS Music for my own pleasure That was Debussy’s guiding principle – and his music has been a lifelong pleasure for Philip Hensher, too

Debussy: A Painter in Sound ed immediately and then never returns, for pianists to play — even the showy ‘L’isle by Stephen Walsh like a plant growing at terrific speed. It joyeuse’ is much easier to get round than Faber, £20, pp. 368 was a huge favourite with the avant-garde most of Ravel. Nor is he difficult to listen 40 years later, and has remained a talisman to. He was the first composer I really loved At the end of his study of Debussy, Stephen of highly advanced taste — surprisingly, when I was a boy, and I don’t think there’s Walsh makes the startling, but probably considering that it’s an idiotic ballet about anything in his work that would challenge accurate, claim that musical revolutionar- a tennis match. any open-minded 12-year-old. He wrote to ies tend to be popular. We generally think Hardly anything in Debussy’s work is give pleasure, and the depth of the pleasure of radicals as being primarily like Sch- obviously indebted to a predecessor. The he gives is immense. oenberg, Charles Ives and Pierre Boulez, hunt for influences on him is a favour- Walsh’s biography deliberately focuses whose works, after decades, still mainly ite game of musicologists because it is so on the music rather than the life. Debussy appeal to a small group of sophisticates. perverse; once you have mentioned Mus- was perhaps not a very likeable per- But if one takes the larger view, there is sorgsky in the first orchestral nocturne son, so this approach serves to remind us no doubt that most composers who trans- what we most admire about him. Mary formed the art of music were almost always The women in Debussy’s life had a Garden, the first Mélisande, said that he immediately popular. Monteverdi, Bee- dreadful time. One wife shot herself was a ‘very strange’ man; and it does some- thoven, Chopin and Wagner commanded times appear as if he had no real sympathy substantial audiences, with often beguil- in the stomach when he left her for, or interest in, other people. ing surfaces and revolutionary substance. The three women he was connected with Schumann said that Chopin’s music was and Wagner’s Parsifal in Jeux, there is sur- had a dreadful time: the first was a profes- ‘a cannon buried in flowers’. prisingly little else to add. Indeed, there sional mistress called Gaby, occupying a The same might be said of Debussy, who is a good case for calling Debussy the rank below the famous grandes horizon- could not have broken more decisively with most perfectly original composer of the past tales of 1890s society. He left her for Lilly the past. His major works were written over 200 years. Texier, whom he married; but she shot her- not much more than 20 years, from the prel- He came out of nothing, and the erup- self in the stomach when Debussy left her ude ‘L’après-midi d’un faune’ in 1894, to the tion of his genius is a complete mystery. in turn for the rich, married Emma Bardac, piano etudes and the three chamber sonatas There was no musical tradition in his very with whom he had his only child. dating from the middle of the first world war. ordinary family. Within two years of start- Many of Debussy’s friends were out- Much earlier, a curious and by no means ing to play the piano he was admitted to raged at his conduct. What seems most hostile teacher at the Paris Conservatoire the Conservatoire; and two years after that, shocking is that his affections were not had asked Debussy what principles guided aged 12, he was being given prizes for his bestowed for very long; and perhaps he his harmony: ‘My pleasure,’ he replied. That performance of a Chopin concerto. Almost was incapable of loving anyone — except approach extended to pleasure in form and from the start, his own music was exquisite- his daughter ‘Chouchou’, who inspired development, not merely as a succession of ly formed, and even the earliest of the songs songs, ballets and piano pieces and had delicious moments: Debussy’s pieces are and piano pieces give a lot of pleasure. love in abundance piled upon her. It would never just improvisations, one thing after When his mature period began in 1894, be telling, however, to put ‘Children’s Cor- another. that satisfying form was filled with inven- ner’ next to the great musical classics of The results were extraordinarily original. tions of extraordinary beauty and, at first, childhood such as Schumann’s ‘Kinders- Jeux, a ballet commissioned by the Ballets strangeness — there are chords in the zenen’ or Mussorgsky’s ‘The Nursery’. Russes for the same season as The Rite of sumptuous ‘Les sons et les parfums’ prel- Those are leaps of the imagination and of Spring, has a good claim to possess a more ude of extreme discord. Oddly enough, his recollection, whereas Debussy’s suite plays radical form; in it, everything is repeat- music, apart from the etudes, is not difficult at showing affection, amusing an adult

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flute, viola and harp. At the end, he was planning to write sonatas for still more unusual combinations — the last of the six would have obliged him to use a harp, a harpsichord and a piano in the same ensem- ble — and there is no doubt that his ear for original sonorities never left him. Published to mark the centenary of the composer’s death, Debussy: A Painter in Sound concentrates on what truly matters. Walsh is one of our most insightful writers on music, and his judgment always illumi- nates what it touches: his preference for the second book of piano ‘Images’; his scepti- cism about the violin and cello sonatas; and some historical sleuthing, that allows a planned three-part piano suite to emerge Debussy appears to have had no real sympathy for, or interest in, other people from three pieces, published separately in Debussy’s best period. Added to which, Walsh writes with preci- sion and almost consistent accuracy — well, he gets the title of ‘Lindaraja’ wrong, but audience with jokes about Wagner and too, a surprising number of bids for mass that is the sort of slip that anyone can make. Czerny. His great leaps of the imagination popularity, such as the vulgar slow waltz of But as I’ve grumbled before, what is regret- were inspired by visions of unpeopled land 1910, ‘La plus que lente’, charitably regard- table is that it’s still apparently impossible and seascapes. ed by a number of scholars as a vicious to include music examples in books of this What emerges strikingly from Walsh’s parody. When he died in 1918, he owed his sort. Why is the following sentence (about a account is just how much Debussy wrote publisher a colossal sum in advances. piano ‘Image’) any more accessible than a for money. With an expensive house to run, It is fair to say that Debussy succeeded simple music example? a first wife who had to be supported, and in spite of himself. He had that sort of per- At one point, for the sake of fluency, the a second with luxurious tastes, he often verse temperament which rather despised whole tone becomes a semitone, and on found himself in urgent need. Sometimes the his admirers; and once he had roused their the last two chords of the opening phrase the money-making plans were successful. ‘Clair rapture he would make sure he never wrote open fifth contracts to an augmented fourth, de lune’, dug out from his bottom drawer, in that vein again. The very few composi- as if questioning the previous chords. was a huge hit, and has been a favourite of tions which attempt to repeat previous amateur pianists ever since 1905. successes — such as the ‘Bruyères’ and It’s a piece that I happen to enjoy The last years are full of hare-brained ‘Pickwick’ pieces from the second book of playing myself, but reading this, I didn’t projects such as the ‘Martyre de Saint preludes — are painful rarities. know what Walsh meant by ‘contracts’, Sébastian’ music for D’Annunzio and the Otherwise, he pressed on. The last works and had to hoik the score off the shelf to Khamma ballet for the Canadian dancer are astonishingly unexpected inventions — see. Serious, careful and readable writers Maud Allan — often beautifully executed, the hard-edged two-piano suite ‘En blanc like Walsh are not helped by this publish- but done entirely out of necessity. There are, et noir’ and, above all, the great sonata for ing restriction. the spectator | 24 february 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk 31 РЕЛИЗ ГРУППЫ "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS BOOKS & ARTS The only word that hurts Robert Graves, Laurie Lee, Paddy Leigh Drugs, guns and blood Fermor, Richard Hughes, and finally some Ruth Scurr women. M.F.K. Fisher’s Love in a Dish William Leith enchanted Freeman: ‘I liked her bubbling, The Reading Cure: How Books boiling-over, irrepressible way of writing.’ Blood Barrios: Dispatches from the Restored My Appetite Elizabeth David, setting off on a boat with World’s Deadliest Streets by Laura Freeman 400 books and a married lover in 1939 to by Alberto Arce Weidenfeld, £16.99, pp. 259 research her first book, Mediterranean Food, Zed, £10.99, pp. 275 was another companion on the long journey It is hard to be honest about anorexia. back to eating with ease. The Spanish journalist Alberto Arce The illness breeds deceit and distortion: ‘It Recovered anorexics remain strict worked for Associated Press in Hondu- thrives on looking-glass logic. It up-ends rule-followers. Freeman keeps her com- ras in 2012 and 2013. After a year, he says: your thoughts, turns bone into flesh, makes mitment to honesty, describing clearly her ‘My wife and daughter left me. It was the life unlivable, death seem glorious.’ In her setbacks as well as her victories. While work- right choice.’ Arce stayed on in the capi- first book, the literary critic and art histori- ing as a journalist she gave in to the ‘clean- tal, Tegucigalpa, ‘fighting against addic- an Laura Freeman is determined to tell the eating creed and crusade’. The bullying tions, sadness and depression’. He believes truth about her recovery from the illness that voices of anorexia came back disguised as he ‘won’ that fight, ‘but only because ravaged her adolescence and early adult life. a new religion: each morning I counted down the days until The result is the reverse of a misery memoir. What had once existed only in my unhappy I could leave’. Freeman’s celebratory book is about getting mind — disgust for food, an obsession with a So: Honduras, says Arce, is bad. How better and learning to savour life again by clean, pure, empty stomach —was now bodied bad? He tells us that ‘Tegucigalpa is the most doing what she most loves: reading. forth by siren-beauties and ‘wellness’ bloggers dangerous capital city in the world without Freeman was diagnosed with anorex- in books and newspapers, on restaurant menus a declared war.’ And that ‘in 2012 and 2013, ia when she was 15 and had already been and in shopping baskets. more people were murdered in Honduras ill for two years. She was told she faced a than in Iraq, even though the population in This time it was Virginia Woolf who saved Honduras is three times smaller’. Also that ‘I do not like the word anorexia, her. Was it sensible to read Woolf? Freeman in 2012, there were 7,100 murders. That’s 598 knows her readers will ask this question. per month, or ‘20 daily homicides,’ in a coun- with its harsh X, like a pair of Even people who have never read a word try with a population of 7,000,000. London, crossed femur bones’ of Woolf know she took her own life. And with a slightly higher population, has around those who have read her diaries and letters five- to ten-year recovery and was invalid- know that she struggled for years with food. In Honduras, the good guys are bad ed out of school for many months, at her Freeman quotes a passage from Leonard and the bad guys are bad. And even if weakest leaving her bed only on weekly Woolf’s diary, in which he tries to make sense visits to doctors, therapists and bookshops. of his wife’s madness: they blur, they still hate each other ‘If words had been calories, I would have Superficially I suppose it might have been been gorged. Reading was an escape when said that she had a (quite unnecessary) fear of one murder per day. Almost all murders in I was most desperate.’ Later, it was medicine becoming fat; but there was something deep- London lead to a trial. In Honduras 91 per of a different sort. er than that, at the back of her mind, or in the cent don’t. Anorexia, she admits, is a difficult word. pit of her stomach, a taboo against eating. Per- Why is this place so violent and lawless? She shied away from it for years, preferring vading her insanity generally there was always Partly because, in 1998, Hurricane Mitch a sense of some guilt, the origin and exact the term ‘eating disorder’, which is vague nature of which I could never discover; but it smashed the country to pieces, and partly and capacious, like the baggy clothes ano- was attached in some peculiar way to food and because, soon afterwards, the Colombian rexics wear to disguise their loathed and eating. drug cartels began to use Honduras as a self-starved bodies. Restored to health, useful depot on the way to Mexico. Lots of Freeman pins the word to the page with Freeman is too knowledgeable about drugs, lots of guns, lots of blood. As a for- a forensic sensitivity to language: ‘I do not life and art to be comfortable with a pat eign correspondent, Arce wrote what he like the length or unfamiliarity of the word, diagnosis of Woolf as an anorexic. Instead calls ‘red journalism’. When he sees a body nor its harsh X, like a pair of crossed femur of applying the label — the uncomfort- on the street, he says, ‘you smell the blood’. bones. You think of X-rays and skeletons.’ able skull-and-crossbones word — she He sees two bodies in a car: ‘Blood is spat- Worse, you think of death. finds a life lesson in Woolf, who was not a tered on the window, the steering wheel, the Nursed at home by her mother, Free- sybarite like Fisher and David, but she shirt.’ The other body is ‘less bloody’: ‘A little man eventually became a ‘functioning found a balance between not wanting to red dot at the temple.’ anorexic’, able to live independently at eat and knowing she must. ‘In her writing Arce keeps seeing blood, talking about university, and even, occasionally, sharing there is a spring-like pleasure, pinking and it, thinking about it. At the hospital, there’s meals — ‘chips!’— with friends. But prop- blossoming, cautious and gradual, in food so much blood it never gets cleaned up. In er enjoyment of food was postponed until, and in her attempts, often haphazard, to a pool hall, he sees bodies lying in blood, aged 24, she set herself the challenge of cook.’ There is that same pleasure in Free- and directs the photographer Esteban Felix reading all of Dickens’s novels in a year. For man’s writing. to the scene. Felix’s picture wins an award. Dickens, there is ‘no beauty, nothing brave Words on the page cannot be every- At one point, Arce is in a taxi, idling in traf- in starvation’. Starvation is sadistic. His one’s weapon against illness. The Read- fic. A man pulls a gun and demands his most revolting characters stuff themselves ing Cure is not a self-help manual; it won’t phone. Arce runs. Back home, he writes: ‘I’ve with the food they cruelly withhold from make you well, or tell you how to heal your dreamed of this scene... My blood would others, often children. Wackford Speers, sick child. But it will give you hope. Rupert splatter over the taxi seat.’ Mr Pumblechook, these obese peddlers of Brooke once asked Woolf: ‘Virginia, what is Why is Arce doing this? Standing with hunger and deprivation, turned Freeman the brightest thing you can think of?’ ‘A leaf voyeurs — and a photographer — at a mur- into a ‘questioning anorexic’. with the light on it,’ she answered. Freeman’s der scene, he says: ‘We’re sick. All of us.’ He After Dickens came Siegfried Sassoon, joyful book reminded me of this. tells us about the time when the guys from

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A nightly occurrence in Tegucigalpa. Forensic officers

REX FEATURES inspect a crime scene involving the execution of six men in drug-related gang warfare

the morgue handle the bodies and bag them: replied: ‘Who would go with a 14-month-old striving to buy ‘a horrible maisonette’ in ‘For a crime photographer, these moments baby to a place that was listed everywhere as the brutal London property market. This are like a landscape painter’s sunset.’ Arce is the most homicidal on earth? A person who extended adolescence is thus enforced, morbid. He’s an artist. He’s looking for some- needed the money of an entry-level con- rather than embraced. Ray’s social back- thing, for the bigger picture — not just the tract.’ His motivation was simple. He needed ground, as introduced at the party he bodies, but the whole unwieldy mechanism a job. He calls himself a ‘harvest gypsy’. He attends at the beginning of the novel, is the that produces the bodies. The authoritarian stayed because he saw a chance to tell real ambitious middle class, educated enough to gangs, the police gangsters, the extortionists, stories: ‘Those were the best professional be ironic about it. ‘I’m getting the whiff of the kidnappers, the death squads. years of my life.’ aspiration from your art collection, Lee,’ a He inhabits a place where the good Towards the end of Blood Barrios he woman says to the host. He replies: ‘Glad guys are bad and the bad guys are also writes: ‘Only one thing is clear: in Honduras to hear it. Wouldn’t want Marie [his wife] bad — and even if the two sides blur, they it’s impossible to investigate, and without an to have spent all that money and not have still hate each other. He talks to one man, investigation it’s impossible to get answers.’ anyone notice.’ a former paramilitary killer. He says the A brave, memorable book. One always Ray’s troubles are more arbitrary than guy has failed a lie-detector test in the past; hopes the pen will prove to be mightier than gormlessly self-inflicted, allowing The you realise that this might well be because the gun, or the machete or the line of coke. Adulterants to dramatise the inadequacy what he did was worse than what he’s pre- In Honduras, I fear, one hopes in vain. of the social safety net. A series of calami- pared to admit. The man says he snatched ties descends on Ray, following an out- people and tortured them. Then he and his break of rioting in their London borough, colleagues had to kill them: Ray of light in which he loses his (freelance) job and their (rented) flat — and worse. The main At first we shot them, but there was too much Mike Cormack blood, and it was too loud. Then we used a bag point throughout, however, is Ray’s voice: over the head, cinching the neck with a cord, alienated, sardonic, pithy and frequently or without a cord, and in two minutes, just The Adulterants very funny. like that, they peed themselves, defecated and by Joe Dunthorne But such is his ironic smart-assism, his were dead. Hamish Hamilton, £12.99, pp. 192 first-person narration can sometimes fail to convey the narrative adequately; his There are many such stories. Arce Often a blurb exaggerates, but rarely does actions are relayed as though in inverted describes what you have to do to interview it fundamentally misrepresent (unless it commas. This especially mars the novel’s gang members. He runs a terrifying gaunt- contains the words ‘In the tradition of...’). opening, when the initial narrative trajec- let: ‘They play with me, frighten me, and, The Adulterants, however, talks of ‘the tory is laid out. But as a lunatic series of high as shit on who knows what, see right modern everyman... stubbornly ensconced events conspire against Ray, his mocking through me with their adolescent eyes.’ in an adolescence that has extended well take on everything gets the novel into gear. Every so often, you realise how young beyond his biological prime’. We thus There are bullseyes on almost every these bad guys are. expect a man-child, resiling from responsi- page: uncovering bare floorboards is ‘bour- Kevin Said Carranza, a snatched gang bility and dependent on internet porn and geois archaeology’; during the riot a man boss, was 28. There was a picture in the gaming — basically the Simon Pegg charac- hands Ray ‘the sort of lager I considered local press of Carranza alive, but having ter in Shaun of the Dead. myself too good for’; and skinny jeans no been tortured. But Carranza himself had But the protagonist, Ray, is really ‘most- longer fit Ray ‘ideologically’. disappeared. Who had done him in? The ly’ a good guy: he mostly loves his preg- Spiked with wit and caustic irony, bad guys, or the worse guys? I was curious nant wife Garthene, and looks forward to this novel isn’t quite what it says it is — and about Arce’s motivation. I emailed him. He being a father; and the youngish couple are is much the better for it. the spectator | 24 february 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk 33 РЕЛИЗ ГРУППЫ "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS BOOKS & ARTS The Little Matchstick

that ignited civil war GETTY IMAGES Oliver Balch

Franco: Anatomy of a Dictator by Enrique Moradiellos I.B. Tauris, £20, pp. 264

Spanish restaurants in Germany are rela- tively rare, but not nearly as rare as biog- raphies of General Franco. So when the Spanish-born waiter in Bonn’s Casa Pepe approached my table, it struck me as an opportune moment to solicit his opinion about the former dictator. ‘No sé mucho,’ he shrugged. ‘I don’t know a whole lot.’ Just imagine it: an unexceptional army cadet becomes a general in his mid- thirties, leads the Nationalists to victory in a bloody civil war, wields absolute power for close to three decades, and then, barely a generation later, his memory is reduced to an indifferent shrug. The contrast with Germany’s treatment of its totalitarian past could not be greater. Students are compelled to study every angle of the Third Reich. School trips are organ- ised to former concentration camps. The past is ever present, lest it be repeated. Not so in Spain. Franco and Francoism are effectively off-limits, swept under the car- pet of history in a nationwide act of amnesia. The old bugger is dead and gone, the theory Portrait of Franco as Generalissimo seems to go. Let the nation move on, rid at last of his suffocating shadow, able to breathe freely once again. ing Madrid, Franco’s counter-insurgency ing for. Historians have long argued about This all makes Enrique Moradiellos’s forces embarked on a slow war of attrition. the precise nature of Francoism. Was it new biography of the Generalíssimo long For Spaniards, it was their first taste of his fascist or totalitarian, was it a military overdue. Written explicitly for an English- ruthlessness. As Moradiellos notes, Franco dictatorship or an example of modern speaking readership, the book makes up didn’t just want victory: ‘He wanted... the despotism, was it Bonapartist (as the for lost time, providing an extensive intro- total physical removal of an enemy consid- author believes) or Hitler-esque? Moradiel- duction to both Franco and Francoism. The ered the Anti-Spain.’ los provides chapter and verse on this result is a three-part structure that examines What follows is the portrait of a clas- historiographical debate. For the non- the man, the dictator and the regime in turn. sic dictator: power-hungry, paranoid and specialist reader, however, this quickly feels Part One is a conventional biography. puffed up by an unshakable sense of messi- academic and arcane. Born in 1892 into a lower-middle-class fam- anic mission. Yet, for all the author’s evident As a primer on a little-known period of ily from the northernmost tip of Spain, the erudition, glimpses of the man behind this Spanish history, Franco: Anatomy of a Dicta- young Francisco revealed little in his early monumental ego are too fleeting. Indeed, tor does an admirable job. But an easy read it years that pointed towards a dictator-in- it’s not until the end — in a throwaway line isn’t. This is old-school history, and Moradiel- waiting. Indeed, so weedy was the country’s about Franco bingeing on TV during the los is not one to let a good story get in the future strongman that his classmates called 1974 World Cup — that we’re given any ink- way of facts and footnotes. The tripartite him ‘Little Matchstick’. ling of his private life. structure begins to weigh heavily too, tied as Franco’s star began to rise in Morocco, Maybe, just maybe, the private was the it is to the same repeated chronology. where he distinguished himself as a mili- public: Franco the single-minded, mono- And there are more serious short- tary strategist among Spain’s elite Army of layered political beast. That would certainly falls. The first relates to Franco’s brutality. Africa. An obsessive nationalist and mili- explain why this account comes to life when There’s a brief recognition — more of an tant Catholic all his life, he watched with Moradiellos turns his attention to the ‘cult of afterthought really — that Franco’s regime dismay as Spain’s newly elected Republi- the Caudillo’ during the Franco era. Spain’s was seen as ‘always anti-democratic’ and can-Socialist government began a process ultimate dictator was a charismatic leader in ‘counter-revolutionary’. But mention of of democratic reform in the early 1930s — the archetypal Weberian sense: an ‘immense these revolutionary forces is almost com- including a thwarted attempt to authorise Caesar’ who conjoined the might of the pletely absent, let alone the violence meted autonomy for Catalonia. Church, military and state in a single person. out to them. If only as corroborating proof The victory of the left-leaning Popular Moradiellos’s gift is less as a biogra- of Franco’s authoritarianism, this feels like Front in 1936 persuaded Franco that things pher than as a master political theorist. a major oversight. had gone far enough. It was time for the If that’s your cup of tea, then the book’s Then there’s the question of legacy. Just army to step in. Initially unsuccessful in tak- third and final section is well worth wait- because Spaniards choose to turn a blind

34 the spectator | 24 february 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk РЕЛИЗ ГРУППЫ "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS eye to the Franco regime does not make it of the slow horses: there is a greater than Close to the bone go away. Comparatively speaking, this is 50 per cent chance that one of them will recent history. The sight of Spain’s federal be killed before the book is finished. Anna Aslanyan police storming the streets of post-referen- There will be politicians teasingly like dum Barcelona brings it all home. ones in real life: in this instance, someone The Book of Joan Intricate and informed though this biog- a bit like Sadiq Khan, someone a bit like by Lidia Yuknavitch raphy is, it assumes that Francoism ended Theresa May, someone a bit like Nigel Canongate, £14.99, pp. 266 with the dictator’s death. It did not. Mil- Farage. A cross-dressing Nigel Farage. lions of Spaniards today still recall what it The success of a good fiction series Does J.G. Ballard’s ‘disquieting equation’, was to live under the dictatorship’s asphyx- lies in its adherence to, or elegant varia- ‘sex x technology = the future’, still hold? Not iating grasp; but how this memory shapes tion from, a formula. The Bond books in Lidia Yuknavitch’s novel, which imagines the Spain of today is anyone’s guess. As began going off the rails when M became a society better described by the formula ‘the with the waiter in Casa Pepe, the question a health-food nut, or when Bond started future = technology – sex’. There is no pro- appears to inspire in Moradiellos a pecu- quoting poetry; heaven protect us from creation in it, and any manifestation of sexu- liar indifference. the day when Jackson Lamb gives up ality is a crime. Its inhabitants have left Earth smoking, or swearing at his underlings, or, for a space station, a hi-tech prison only the come to think of it, his overlings, if there’s rich can afford, moving away from ‘a lunar A comedy of violence such a word. (I used to read his lines out landscape of jagged rocks, treeless moun- to myself in the voice of Roger Allam, in tains, or scorched dirt’, the scene of endless Nick Lezard the persona of the sarcastic first officer in wars fought by child soldiers, where ‘technol- John Finnemore’s excellent Radio 4 com- ogy is seized by those who kill best’. Both the London Rules edy series, Cabin Pressure. The fit was so ruined old world and the AI-ruled new one by Mick Herron close that I asked Herron, via a third party, are frightening, and not so much because of John Murray, £12.99, pp. 345 whether this was deliberate; it turns out their fantastic aspects as because they look so I was right, and there is, I am delighted to probable from today’s perspective. The well-written spy novel is not a hotly report, an explicit reference to the radio The only vestiges of humanity retained by contested field. Le Carré, Fleming, Deight- show in London Rules.) the space-dwelling elite are skin grafts: texts on, a few Greenes, and that’s largely it. I have been raving about these books, they burn on to their biosynthesised, nano- However, we now have a new contender: privately, for more than a year now, and I enhanced bodies as a way of telling stories Mick Herron’s Jackson Lamb series. have made many converts, and these range in their ‘paperless existence’. This gives them It was a brief but intriguing review in from respectable women novelists to my a chance to put up a collective performance, the TLS that first alerted me to the books, teenage son (and his older sibling), who are a ‘literary and flesh uprising’ against the dic- with their sidelined spooks, contemptu- not, to put it mildly, generally in the mar- tatorial world order. It all starts with the main ously nicknamed ‘slow horses’, sent to an ket for books of any kind. The trick about narrator writing on her own skin the story of oubliette next to the Barbican on having the Jackson Lamb books is that they are Joan of Dirt, an ‘eco-terrorist’ burnt at the screwed up, and their appalling boss, the — there’s no other word — addictive. One stake — at least according to her ‘official veteran Jackson Lamb, a monster of flat- turns to the beginning to read them again, deathstory’. ulence, astonishing drinking habits and to squeeze the last drops out. The dialogue Growing up, Joan develops an uncan- withering put-downs (on requesting ‘an is first-rate, addressing and exploiting the ny intimacy with the natural world, already educated guess’, he says, on hearing what’s appalling comedy of violence; the plot- doomed for extinction. Soon a technologi- offered: ‘I said educated. That guess left ting of both the novelist and the charac- cal boom triggers global violence, and the school at 15 for a job at Asda’), who can ters (alas, the malevolent character based planet, gripped by inequality and anthropo- nevertheless, on occasion, move as silently on Boris Johnson only makes a very fleet- centricity, run by men who can only move as a ninja and is seemingly omniscient. ing appearance here) ditto. I cannot rec- ‘warward’ or ‘fuckward’, is headed for the London Rules is the fifth book in the ommend these books strongly enough; but end. Although Joan has what it takes to series. Having read the previous four, and, start with the first, Slow Horses, so you launch a crusade to save the Earth, her moreover, paid for them with my own don’t miss out on anything. superhuman powers prove too destruc- money, an extraordinary admission for tive to restore the balance of things. And a book reviewer to make, especially this yet the story of the Maid of Orléans trans- one, I can say it is at least as good as the ferred to the age of AI is a timely reminder rest. There is a familiar template. The A Tired Rose that resistance, however futile or dangerous, books begin with an outrage of some sort. is always preferable to a passive accept- We then cut to Slough House, the unoffi- These are the lips of an old rose, ance of what’s imposed from above in the cial name for the slow horses’ dismal offic- name of progress. es, whose wretched residents are being blushed and parting. A slow curl As far as dystopian sci-fi goes, the plot kept busy, and mindlessly bored, collecting through frayed and veined petals, centred on humankind that has fallen vic- number plates, or council tax bills, or any- sun worn, not fading more quickly tim to its own advances dates back to the thing not directly connected to the outrage. dawn of modernity and has never gone Jackson Lamb torments them with their than might be thought normal. out of fashion. The Book of Joan stands own insignificance. out from the genre as a cross between the But then there is something they can do, And there is still a hint of liquid apocalyptic tale and the erotic poem. The often connected to the fact that it turns out, theme of invincible sensuality, conveyed in some way, to have been the Secret Ser- in the shadows, where a cluster by lines whose passion burns through vice’s fault after all, and the proper spies of stamens is waiting tenderly, the universal gloom — ‘In place of their over at the shiny spy building in Regent’s the scent of expectation waning. sexual union, she’d written desire straight Park end up having to dance to Jackson into his flesh’ — gives hope that no amount Lamb’s tune. of technology can eliminate life forms from Do not get attached unwisely to any — Oliver Comins Ballard’s equation. the spectator | 24 fbruary 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk 35 РЕЛИЗ ГРУППЫ "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS BOOKS & ARTS

ARTS SPECIAL Seeing the light When the artist Anthony McCall was in his mid-thirties his creations vanished before his eyes. Laura Gascoigne talks to him about what happened next

he impermanence of works of art is The Hepworth’s ceilings are not quite of the fascination of his solid light works lies a worry for curators though not usu- high enough to accommodate McCall’s in the tension between the rigour of their Tally for artists, especially not at the newer vertical projections, which require ten design and the volatility of their materi- start of their careers. But Anthony McCall metres of headroom. Large as this sounds, all als. Captivated by ‘the beauty of something was only in his mid-thirties when his crea- the solid light works, whether vertical, hori- shifting and changing in a way that you can tions vanished before his eyes. zontal or, most recently, diagonal, take man control and be part of’, he delights in con- It was in New York in the early 1970s as their measure: ‘“The Vitruvian Man”,’ taining the uncontainable. that McCall came up with the idea of ‘solid he says, ‘is carefully placed in the centre of Knowing that he has also made works light works’, animated projections of simple the beam.’ Turbine Hall folie de grandeur is involving water and earth, I’m tempted to abstract shapes in which the beams of pro- not for him: ‘If I were asked to make a piece read all sorts of metaphysical meanings into jected light assumed a physical presence. Not twice as big, I’d say no, it’s not going to work his allusions to the four elements, which he being taken seriously by commercial galler- — the body would lose its reference.’ The refuses to confirm — such meanings, he says, ies — ‘It did occur to me that I hadn’t made human figures are part of the work, caught ‘are the work of the spectator; they belong to a terribly wise career decision’ — McCall’s in the nets of light like shadow puppets. the art of looking, not the art of making’. He solid light works were initially shown in the Part film, part drawing, part sculpture, recognises, though, that a narrative element sorts of dusty, smoky downtown lofts where McCall’s shape-shifting creations defy cat- has crept into the titles of works such as ‘Face devotees of ‘expanded cinema’ gathered. egorisation. Using the same basic vocabu- to Face’ (2013), in which two of the animated Then, just as they began to attract attention lary of straight lines, ellipses and waves — ‘I drawings he calls ‘footprints’ are projected on from public institutions, their solidity crum- haven’t added to them much’ — they might to facing screens. Another double projection, bled. In the dust- and smoke-free zones of today be called ‘projected installations’, ‘Leaving (With Two-Minute Silence)’ (2009), the modern art gallery the sculptural beams though McCall prefers the less pretentious is a self-confessed ‘meditation on mortality’ of light became invisible: from dust they word ‘film’ with its connotation of sequen- in which one elliptical form grows as anoth- came, and without dust they went. tial development and its connection with er dwindles. ‘Leaving’ is the first of the solid Fortunately the British-born artist had performance. It was the need to record one light works to have a soundtrack — or ‘sound another string to his bow, having initially shroud’, as he calls it — of distant traffic and trained at Ravensbourne college in graphic In the dust- and smoke-free zones of harbour noises, including foghorns. ‘I urgent- design. From the early 1980s he reinvented the modern art gallery the sculptural ly needed a two-minute silence and the only himself as a designer of art books and cat- beams of light became invisible way to create silence is to have sound you can alogues, a career change so thorough that then remove,’ he explains. ‘When it does go people thought there must be two Antho- of his early fire performances that originally silent, it’s a deafening silence.’ ny McCalls, and he almost began to think prompted him to turn his hand to film. His Luminously simple as these works seem, so himself. Then the haze machine came first attempt in the medium, ‘Landscape for the choreography they involve is astonish- along to solve the problem that had put a Fire’ (1972), shows a grid of petrol drums ingly complex, as testified by the accompa- halt to his fine-art career, and by the time he dotted across a disused Essex airfield being nying mini-retrospective of works on paper returned to the art world in the early nough- set alight by a team of white-overalled per- ranging from volumetric sketches, sequen- ties it was ready for his work. formers. With its soundtrack of howling wind tial drawings and animation schemas to ten His new exhibition, Solid Light Works, and distant foghorns punctuated by the fizz years’ worth of notebooks: ‘This is where at the Hepworth Wakefield — his first in and thunk of lit matches being thrown into everything begins — all the rubbish goes in Britain for ten years — includes the work the drums, it seems dramatic enough, but to there.’ The rubbish is the residue of a cre- that marked his return, appropriately titled its maker the resultant film felt like a sec- ative journey that has taken McCall from ‘Doubling Back’ (2003). The effect is mag- ond-hand experience of an event belong- dusty loft to spotless art gallery via a 20-year ical. Viewed from the outside, the slowly ing to another time and place: ‘I thought it cooling-off period in the design studio. As moving beam of light appears to be con- might be possible to make a film that only someone whose fine-art career was almost tained by a gauzy membrane that gilds existed in the present and shared space with ended by the white cube, does he feel that your hand if you penetrate its surface; its audience. I became interested in the idea the contemporary art world could be get- step through the membrane and you enter of real time.’ Back in New York, after adding ting too clean for creativity? No. ‘Creativ- another dimension, an ethereal atmosphere animation to his skill set — ‘When you need ity is by definition opportunistic and gets of swirling vapour where you can imagine to find something out, you find someone to round problems. Some new form of art may yourself seated on the clouds of heaven teach you’ — he produced his first solid light emerge which finds those boxes irrelevant. looking down a shaft of celestial light. Actu- work, ‘Line Describing a Cone’ (1973). Art plays tricks on us all. Just when we’re ally, the darkened gallery with its carpeted What struck me, watching the film of the thinking: “This can’t get any worse,” some- floors has the feel of a movie theatre rath- fire performance, was the paradoxical effi- thing glorious happens unexpectedly.’ er than a church. McCall likes ‘the little nod ciency of the operation with its uniformed to cinema’ — lucky there are no usherettes marshals patrolling the regimented rows of Anthony McCall: Solid Light Works is at with competing torch beams. flaming drums. McCall likes paradoxes. Part the Hepworth Wakefield until 3 June.

36 the spectator | 24 february 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk РЕЛИЗ ГРУППЫ "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS DAVID X PRUTTING/BFA/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK

One of Anthony McCall’s celestial shafts of ‘solid light’ from a 2013 show with Mischa Kuball the spectator | 24 february 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk 37 РЕЛИЗ ГРУППЫ "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS BOOKS & ARTS LAKELAND ARTS TRUST, ABBOT HALL ART GALLERY, KENDAL

Exemplary candour: detail from Paula Rego’s ‘Abortion Sketches’ (1998)

Exhibitions residents, who selected the exhibits, designed over a plastic bucket. I find Rego’s figures a the layout, and wrote the exhibition texts. In touch Brobdingnagian and coarse — think Keeping up with the ‘The Waste Land’, some of it written in the of her over-emphatic portrait of Germaine Nayland Rock seafront shelter, Eliot writes: Greer — but her candour is exemplary and Joneses ‘On Margate Sands./ I can connect/ Noth- unflinching. (‘The Policeman’s Daughter’ is Craig Raine ing with nothing.’ The local research group an oblique depiction of fisting.) This abor- have connected Eliot’s text with everything tion triptych is a virtuoso use of chalk — Journeys with ‘The Waste Land’ — some duds, some successes. a revelation invisible in reproduction. You Turner Contemporary, until 7 May For example, in ‘The Fire Sermon’, a are going to have to go to Margate. All gossipy, gripping, ungrammatical female three pictures use chalk as if it were oils and To bleak, boarded-up Margate — and a voice says: ‘It’s them pills I took, to bring it achieve some incomparable textures. There salt-and-vinegar wind that leaves my face off’. So we have three Paula Rego pictures, is a plush velvet chair like a burgundy bul- looking like Andy Warhol’s botched 1958 ‘Abortion Sketches’ (1998). One in a hospi- rush, parallel to the squatting girl, with a nose-peel — to see Journeys with ‘The Waste tal (the bed leg has a castor); another clear- ragged gash in the upholstery correspond- Land’ at Turner Contemporary. The exhibi- ly illegal, showing a schoolgirl, with a tie ing to the vulva. The flesh of her thighs is tion has been organised by a group of local and gathered green skirt pleats, squatting exact. There is a check dress intricately cap-

38 the spectator | 24 february 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk РЕЛИЗ ГРУППЫ "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS tured in this very testing medium. A floral Greek, that prefaces ‘The Waste Land’. Opera bedspread might be Degas. But the tour The lettering becomes deliciously cramped de force is a brown moulded plastic chair, towards the bottom when Jones runs out It’s the music, stupid which Rego breathtakingly sets before us of parchment as he quotes Malory’s Morte in all its hideous banality. d’Arthur. The opening lines of ‘The Waste Richard Bratby I happen to think that the first world war Land’ run alongside the side of the main is peripheral to Eliot’s poem — academics quotation. What we have here is letter- Iolanthe find it impossible to imagine that this cata- ing ‘arranged’ like a hand-written letter, Coliseum, in rep until 7 April clysm didn’t make its mark on all subsequent squeezed, inconsistent, casual and there- masterpieces — but the exhibition supplies fore actual. La forza del destino several ‘relevant’ art works. We get Henry Another delicious David Jones is his Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff, and Moore’s underground drawings of punning watercolour ‘Trystan ac Essyllt’ (1962). Two touring until 21 April ‘bandaged’ figures from the second world white dogs bay from a boat alongside the war. Coercive connection is compounded ship. The boat’s rim is braided with osiers. ‘Welcome to our hearts again, Iolanthe!’ in, for example, ‘East Coker-Tse’ (1979). Its rudder is clearly visible through typical- sings the fairy chorus in Gilbert and Sul- Philip Guston’s typical, wilfully ugly depic- ly transparent water. Jones’s whimsical per- livan’s fantasy-satire, and during this exu- tion of a profiled face, flayed like a biopsy, spective can be seen in another ship to the berant new production by Cal McCrystal outdoing Dubuffet. The link with ‘The Waste right, where the black anchor is a third of you could almost hear the assembled Land’ is a stretch. In the end, the rationale, the length of the ship. There is a lot to see in G&S fans sighing in agreement. Iolanthe the research exercise, is less important than this busy picture: the ship’s cat, tail on high, is our trump card against the sceptics, and the pictures. its reflection dim on the wet deck. The top- not merely because Gilbert’s digs at par- The first world war gives us, for example, sail is being reefed by three naked sailors. liamentary politics are still so startlingly David Jones’s ravishing ‘Frontispiece for In The high wind has taken Iseult’s heaped acute. No, we insist, it’s the music, stupid: Parenthesis’, 1959–60, a work in pencil and hair like Bobby Charlton’s comb over. The just listen to it! Sullivan’s score gleeful- watercolour. Again, this is a work deplet- lovers are holding the goblet with the love ly assimilates Handel, Mendelssohn and potion and their clothes are already désha- Wagner (Tannhäuser, Rheingold; even The high wind has taken Iseult’s billé. Both have one naked foot. She is lift- Tristan und Isolde), and to fly that close to heaped hair like Bobby Charlton’s ing her dress. Her dress sleeve discloses its the magic flame of Bayreuth without get- comb over red silk lining. His spurs are off. Five sea- ting frazzled is something that very few gulls hover, the incarnation of appetite, and composers have achieved with such fresh- ed in reproduction. In person, as it were, a symbolic figure emerges with a lantern ness and melodic grace. Jones’s characteristic transparencies and from below decks… So that’s the fans spoken for. McCrystal’s vagrant perspectives become coherent and It is worth the trip to Margate to see the job is to make everyone else laugh, and he’s intelligible. The plethora of detail becomes Joneses. But there are other things well- compelling. The central figure is the semi- worth seeing — Wyndham Lewis’s geomet- Sullivan’s score gleefully assimilates clad soldier, Private John Ball. His cock ric portrait of Ezra Pound, whose pointed Handel, Mendelssohn and Wagner and balls are compact as a referee’s whistle, beard is segmented like a scorpion, with below a little burning bush. He is putting on the sting in its tail. There is Cy Twombly’s at it from the off, with gags even before the his battledress blouson. Only his right arm ‘Quattro Stagioni’ (1993–5), a masterpiece curtain rises on a stage filled with colossal is in the sleeve. His right calf is clothed but of smashed pigment, drips and handwriting, multicoloured flowers. The designer, the late his foot is naked. His left foot has a shoe. that makes action painting look infantile. Paul Brown, has taken his cues not just from (This combination of naked and shod feet And don’t miss Fiona Banner’s ‘Breathing G&S’s own creative lineage (grand opera is a motif in Jones’s oeuvre.) He has high Bag’ (2016), a black plastic bag inscribed meets 19th-century music hall), but from ribs, above them an identity tag. There is a ‘Mistah Kurtz — He Not Dead’, which the stylistic layers of the score. Strephon bruise on his left pelvis. His belly button is inflates and deflates high on the wall. A (Marcus Farnsworth) and Phyllis (Ellie an enigmatic emoji. schoolgirl said: ‘That is well creepy.’ She Laugharne) are dressed like porcelain fig- Crowded around this figure is the war. was right. ures in a Gainsborough Arcadia; when real- In the right foreground there are five beau- ism crashes in, it’s with an unambiguously tiful rats. (Jones was a beautiful painter of Victorian self-confidence. animals: his yak, his jaguar.) Above, there is McCrystal crams this world with visual a crescent moon and three stars (one five- comedy. The chorus of Peers performs a pointed, two four-pointed). Below, there is non-stop beer-bottle juggling act, a puppet a trenching spade. Everywhere, there are horse defecates on-stage and an officious smashed trees and stylised barbed wire, sim- fireman (an invention of McCrystal’s) per- ple four-pronged asterisks. Action is diffi- emptorily extinguishes the Fairy Queen’s cult for artists, so some inadvertent comedy thunderbolts. Cast members can soar aloft occurs top left: a group of plank-carrying at any moment, and frequently do. It’s sappers look strangely camp, like a troupe the music, though, stupid: and while this of Ensa ballet dancers. isn’t a cast full of superstar voices, exact- But it is a lovely thing, as is his lettering, ly, they’re all highly listenable and endless- blown up at the entrance to the exhibition, ly game. Yvonne Howard’s Fairy Queen seen in perfect scale inside. Another tri- is a Valkyrie with a twinkle in her eye, umph over reproduction. Jones learned the Laugharne shapes her lines with delightful art of lettering from Eric Gill and brought alertness, and Andrew Shore’s turkey-cock to it the quality of tipsy but legible callig- of a Lord Chancellor bustles through his raphy. Nothing is quite in true. The letter patter songs with champagne clarity. Ben ‘e’ takes three different forms, to reflect McAteer gets the gormless dignity of Lord the epigraph from Petronius, in Latin and ‘Have you tried turning it off and on again?’ Mountararat down pat, and when he’s not the spectator | 24 february 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk 39 РЕЛИЗ ГРУППЫ "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS BOOKS & ARTS camping it up with Ben Johnson’s Tolloller the collective strengths of his company. The the phonograph in 1877 to the present day’s (McCrystal never misses a chance to out an news that he is to step down as WNO’s artis- streaming audio and portable digital players. unsuspecting subtext) swaggers sonorous- tic director at the end of next season is cause The exhibition may be small in comparison ly through ‘When Britain Really Ruled the for real dismay. to the blockbuster Harry Potter show on the Waves’. Timothy Henty, conducting, finds ground floor, but its vitrines are jam-packed in Sullivan’s music a dramatic momentum with the embalmed corpses of so many dead and a sense of light and shade that you Exhibitions media, a near century and a half of audio won’t hear on any recording. curiosities: from wax cylinders and little As for McCrystal’s Carry On additions to Sound investment dolls’ house discs, brightly coloured ‘play- Gilbert’s script, well, purists will just have to Robert Barry able stamps’ from Bhutan, and record-your- suck them up, because the audience roared. own souvenir records, all the way up to more But it’s a pity that he couldn’t fully trust Sul- recent missteps in format history, like the livan in all those inconvenient slow bits. The Listen: 140 Years of Recorded minidisc player and portable tape machine. lovely duet ‘None shall part us’ was oblite- Sound Each of these is fascinating in its own way rated under some knockabout business with British Library, until 13 May and speaks volumes about the place of sound plastic sheep, and by Iolanthe’s surprisingly in the everyday life of other eras. But the real sincere final reunion with the Lord Chancel- Listen closely, among the shelves of the pleasure of this show comes from following lor you half-expected a pantomime unicorn last remaining music shops, in student its titular injunction to grab a pair of ear- to trot on and take a leak on the woolsack. dorm rooms and amid the flat whites and phones and listen. Perhaps this can be ironed out later in the reclaimed wood of certain coffee shops, and Walking up to the exhibition from the run, or in the many and frequent reviv- you’ll hear a sound that many thought long library’s main entrance you are immedi- als this staging unquestionably deserves. banished. Check out the steadily rising sales ately confronted with this demand in foot- McCrystal says that he set out to make a figures of the past few years and there’s lit- high block capitals. Look closely and you’ll genuinely funny and joyful show, augmented tle doubt: the vinyl record is making a come- see that these six letters are not embossed by a mischievous and daring production, and back. With it comes the return of another fair play to him. I’ve already bought tickets sound, like some po-faced, bearded hand- Edison decried electric recording as to see it again. maiden: the whine of the vinyl bore. a mere ‘volume fad’ Strange to say, David Pountney’s new It is three decades since 12-inch PVC Welsh National Opera production of Verdi’s discs were the dominant means of access to on their chipboard wall but engraved into La forza del destino shares similar weak- music, but for some the format never died it, revealing a dense thicket of fibres within, nesses and strengths. An opera with a rep- and analogue will always offer a purer, as if to suggest that the simple act of listen- more true-to-life audio reproduction. Lis- ing could strip away the glossy surface sheen Destiny stalks about in tailcoat ten up and you’ll hear them jabbering of contemporary recording technologies to and tights like a sort of gothic insistently about ‘warmth’, ‘punch’ and uncover myriad coarse textures. Debbie McGee ‘high fidelity’. Whether listening to the first dub reg- The analogue-digital debate is as old as gae record or the soundscape of Vancouver utation for complexity is stripped back to digital recording itself. But few then — and harbour, the biscuity crackle of old media is its dramatic core: the words ‘Peace’ and fewer now — recognise that since its incep- inescapable — and in some cases, like the ‘War’ are projected at the start of each act tion, the terms of that debate have echoed prehistoric (acoustically speaking) trace of and a pair of screens swing back and forth a much earlier one. As Greg Milner recog- Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville singing against the surrounding blackness to serve nised, in his 2009 history of sound record- ‘Au clair de la lune’ into his phonautograph as bedroom, battlefield, or monastic cell. The ing, Perfecting Sound Forever, the disputes in 1860, the noise threatens to completely bloodstain from the Marchese’s accidental between acoustic recording and electric overwhelm the putative signal. Digital for- death remains throughout, a symbol of the were the analogue vs digital of the Edison mats, with their perfect, crisp silences, their obsession that drives Verdi and Piave’s head- era. It pitched the supposedly more direct, smooth sonic surfaces, erase these trac- long plot. And having clarified the essentials, unmediated presence of the phonograph’s es and in the process erase their own pro- Pountney proceeds to add a layer of distract- mechanical recording process against the duction history. Presenting itself as a kind ing complication, turning the military scenes electric microphones and amplification of pure, unmediated signal, digital, truly, is into Oh, What a Lovely War!, with Preziosil- that produced what some — including Edi- the format that is both there and not there. la (Justina Gringyte) as an embodiment of son himself — would decry as a mere ‘vol- That might be why the exhibition’s timeline Destiny stalking about in tailcoat and tights ume fad’. offers no recordings from after the coming like a sort of gothic Debbie McGee. But the electrification of sound proved of digital at the start of the 1980s. Carlo Rizzi conducted, and his ability to to be no fad. And listening to two different Listen is part of the British Library’s generate tension within a single phrase (the recordings of the same symphony, through ongoing campaign to ‘Save Our Sounds’. first clarinet deserved a solo bow), even as a set of headphones slung from a hook When I met the BL sound archive’s Will he drives the music forward in taut, gleaming near the start of the British Library’s cur- Prentice in June 2015, he showed me many paragraphs, made the whole thing gripping rent exhibition, it’s easy to see why. More more extinct formats than the ones on dis- and compensated for a slightly underpow- ‘real’, more ‘direct’ it may be, but the acous- play here: dictabelts and wire recorders, ered duo of male leads (Gwyn Hughes Jones tic process on display in a recording of the ADATs and sound mirrors. There are around as Alvaro, Luis Cansino as Carlo). No wor- Großes Odeon-Streich-Orchester in 1911 seven million recordings in the collection, ries on that count with Mary Elizabeth Wil- clearly lacks the tonal depth and dynamic bearing a century’s continuous listening. As liams’s Leonora: her singing was radiant, range of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra machines and expertise keep dying, Prentice and touchingly understated in her scenes under Felix Weingartner recorded electrical- predicted just 15 years left to preserve them. with Padre Guardiano (it was an excel- ly 15 years later. No contest. The ‘artificial’ But it’s not only the recordings themselves lent idea to cast the same singer — Miklos enhancement just sounds better. that deserve preservation. As the present Sebestyen, sounding even more than usually Listen, on display in the Library’s exhibition makes clear, sometimes the noise noble — as her father too). Not for the first Entrance Hall gallery, charts 140 years of — with or without artificial enhancements — time, Pountney pulls it off by understanding sound recording, from Edison’s invention of can be as significant as the signal.

40 the spectator | 24 february 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk РЕЛИЗ ГРУППЫ "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS РЕЛИЗ ГРУППЫ "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS BOOKS & ARTS © HONEY SALVADORI

Girls in the hood: traditional hairdresser in Nottingham, 1996

Exhibitions field observed of the Beatles era that it was ley boy made good as British Hairdress- a worrying time to begin with: ‘Nothing er of the Year (2006). But it’s the artefacts Hair-raising happened for about two or three months. of hairdressing that are so captivating: the Nobody came. We thought we’d lost our hood dryers, the Wella machine with what Melanie McDonagh business. But it turned out that the men look like dozens of scary electrodes, the jars were just growing their hair. They came and jars of Brylcreem; the hairnet proudly Beehives, Bobs and Blow-dries back when it was shoulder length.’ advertised as being made of human hair; the The Civic, Barnsley, until 7 April The thing about hair is that we’ve all got it — well, most of us — and how we handle You can’t escape the reality that hair is One of the best things about Beehives, Bobs it, cut it, style it, treat it, colour it, says lots less fun now; styling less directional and Blow-dries — yep, an exhibition about about us, and about the age. Yet hairdressing hairdressing — is the reaction of visitors. as a marker of social change doesn’t often West Indian castor oil. All of these sum up Some are getting on a bit and their pangs get its due. This little exhibition at the Civic, their era. Visitors contemplate the hair prod- of recognition as they pass 1970s straight- Barnsley, is an attempt to put that right. It’s a ucts of their youth — the L’Oréal colour ening tongs or Carmen heated rollers are bid to summarise the art, science and politics charts — as museum pieces. ‘It’s frightening,’ evident. One woman exclaimed, as she of hair from the 1950s to our own time, from said one woman wistfully. This is an exhibi- passed a Ronson hairdryer with its show- the beehive to transgender salons (yep, non- tion that rejoices in the ordinary things that er-cap hood, ‘Ooh, they were good, they binary), in a small space. were the stuff of hairdos. were. We’ve only just got rid of my mum’s.’ Quite a lot of room is given over to the There’s a succession of evocative adver- A hairdresser called Keith from Wake- portfolio of Andrew Barton, the local Barns- tisements and photos — and it is in the ads

42 the spectator | 24 february 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk РЕЛИЗ ГРУППЫ "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS that we encounter the first celebrity hair- from the 1970s, with a cup of tea on the ops unimpeded. Yes, unimpeded. This indi- dresser, the glorious Raymond ‘Teasy-Wea- side: they sum up a social history, a van- cates that Gill hasn’t absorbed Rule Three sy’ Bessone (1911–92), who was a Saturday ished world. of drama (which has particular relevance prime-time TV star and could command the to romances): create as many snags as you price of a small house (£2,500) for being sum- reasonably can to hinder the consumma- moned to do Diana Dors’s hair in 1956. He Theatre tion or continuation of a love affair. Gill was the granddaddy of the big-name hair- creates no snags. The cowherd’s family dressers who turned themselves into brands. House rules appear not to know that he’s gay, or to care. Then came Vidal Sassoon, his disciple, and Lloyd Evans His neighbours aren’t bothered either. his bobs and geometrical five-point cuts. My And the artiste works on the London friend Neville (of Pont Street) used to say fringe, where everyone is gay unless other- lugubriously that when he was beginning his The York Realist wise stated. So the lovers are constrained own hairdressing career, he would try to use Donmar Warehouse, until 24 March by nothing other than their reluctance to his cousin as a guinea pig for those cuts, but explore the romance. Neither chap wants she, like me, had thick, wavy hair that stub- The B*easts to travel 200 miles to see the other chap. bornly resisted anything geometric; they only Bush Theatre, until 3 March And neither chap wants to move house. Oh worked on a certain sort of hair. dear. This impasse suggests that Gill that There’s Twiggy here, too, but alas, nothing The Donmar’s new show, The York Real- has overlooked Rule Four of drama: don’t about Leonard Lewis, probably the greatest ist, dates from 2001. The programme notes create a storyline whose central dilemma hairdresser of the era, who not only invented tell us that the playwright, Peter Gill, ‘is one can be solved by the purchase of a shag- Twiggy’s look, and trained umpteen celeb- of the most important and influential writ- pad in Coventry. ers and directors of the past 30 years’. Who The B*easts is a fascinating monologue Hairdressing as a marker of social wrote that? Not Peter Gill, I hope. The play, written and performed by Monica Dolan. change doesn’t often get its due. This directed by Robert Hastie, follows a gay She plays a therapist, Tessa, who counsels a is an attempt to put that right affair between a strapping Yorkshire cow- mother charged with assaulting her eight- herd and a sensitive London artiste. They year-old daughter. The girl is a precocious rity hairdressers, but did everyone’s hair in meet while rehearsing an am-dram produc- extrovert who pesters Mum to buy her the 1960s and ’70s, including John F. Kenne- tion of a mystery play set in a ruined abbey. high heels and a padded bikini top. Tessa dy and the Kray Brothers (once both at the Gay men will enjoy this charmingly acted same time). production but it’s apt to bore the general It’s commonplace nowadays for girls But if it misses out Leonard, black hair- audience because the characters are trite, at primary school to enquire, ‘How dressers get their due. In the 1960s most the gay theme feels antiquated and the sto- soon can I get a boob job?’ British hairdressers couldn’t handle black ryline is as light as a Post-It note. hair, so people would cut each other’s hair It doesn’t help that Peter Gill writes like supports this decision, arguing that breasts at home, a hugely enjoyable ritual. Actually, a newcomer at a creative writing weekend. represent more than erotic stimulation. black hair had a hard time of it until recently; He ignores Rule One of drama: a charac- They’re emblems of parenthood, nutrition from the time when ‘grease’ (originally ani- ter without a motive is not a character. Gill and responsibility. The little girl goes one mal-derived) was the product used to tame sets his scene in a kitchen and he inserts further and asks Mum for a boob job. Yes, it to the advent of horrible harsh straighten- five characters — Barbara, Jack, Doreen, says Mum. Off they fly to Brazil for surgery ing products with industrial chemicals and Arthur and Mother — but gives none of but when they return Mum is arrested and the Jheri curl, which was a nightmare in the them a dramatic purpose other than to be the child, with her new bust, is taken into way of maintenance. Things changed with nice. Nothing’s at stake, no one has a mis- care. (She’s also raped, although this adds the advent of the Winifred Atwell Salon in sion, no one stands to gain or lose anything an unnecessary dimension to a story that Brixton in 1957 for West Indian clients, and apart from a second cup of tea or a bit more already teems with moral quandaries.) black hair was thoroughly politicised with cake. So the action burbles along with a lot Dolan’s script examines the sexuali- dreadlocks in the 1970s. of jolly chitchat about shirts, pies, kettles, sation of little girls with a searching and The exhibition takes us up to the biscuits, fences, milk, calves, and so on. In often hilarious intelligence. She consid- transgender stuff, which doesn’t have a sin- the background, the cowherd is eyeing up ers the whole issue of larger breasts. ‘The gle trend, but it can’t escape the reality that the artiste but nothing happens until the over-riding opinion seems to be that you hair is less fun these days; styling less direc- other characters have shoved off. Then they are in charge of them somehow, that you tional. And with fewer skills: lots of styl- have sex. must be responsible for them, or even that ists now can’t actually dress hair — they’d Act Two is a little better. The characters you thought of them yourself.’ Dolan gives be stumped by the beehive, whose creator, have returned from the mystery play which Tessa such a wealth of natural and sponta- Margaret Vinci Heldt, is celebrated. daft young Jack mistook for a whodunnit. neous gestures that it’s hard to believe this The exhibition is weaker on men’s hair That’s not a bad gag. ‘Jesus was good,’ says is a performance and not a documentary. than on women’s, but then, as one visitor Doreen. That’s funny as well because it has But that turns out to be a mixed blessing. observed, for much of the period men real- two meanings: ‘the actor playing Jesus was At previous shows, some viewers asked ly didn’t spend that much time in salons. effective’ and ‘the son of God was virtuous’. whether the story was true or satirical. And Those evocative photos of women compan- However this long scene suggests that Gill it’s commonplace nowadays for girls at pri- ionably sitting side-by-side under hood dry- hasn’t grasped Rule Two of drama: put your mary school to enquire, ‘How soon can I get ers — why, it was the female equivalent of characters under pressure and oblige them a boob job?’ men’s clubs. You spent more time in those to make choices that will catalyse change in These little nippers are the parents of the days getting your perm or your colour and themselves, or in others, or in both. No one is future and if they think breast implants are set. And, if you wanted, said Keith, the under any pressure here and no one is capa- an acceptable indulgence, like a dolls’ house former hairdresser, you could share your ble of change either, so the scene unfolds as or ballet lessons, they’ll build their world secrets with your stylist (‘It were amazing another great wodge of jabber. accordingly. Our shock is irrelevant. The what they’d tell you’). The pair of black Time passes. Someone dies. The affair future looms, terrifying but ineluctable. Kid- hairdresser’s chairs here in faux-leather between the cowherd and the artiste devel- die boob jobs ahoy. the spectator | 24 february 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk 43 РЕЛИЗ ГРУППЫ "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS BOOKS & ARTS Dance the infatuated puppy or the broken-hearted THE YOUTUBER lover purified by suffering and remorse. He When content-creators fight Wronged women partnered strongly but his gestures lacked emphasis and he gave Hayward little to Louise Levene work with. Matthew Ball, who debuted the follow- Giselle ing lunchtime, couldn’t match Campbell’s Royal Opera House, in rep until 9 March clean account of the steps but made an ardent and utterly believable Albrecht. The A Winter’s Tale early games of kiss-chase had a real sexual Royal Opera House, in rep until 21 March charge, as if he couldn’t wait to get Giselle in his embrace. Ball has a nice clean-and-jerk A bumper fortnight for Covent Garden flo- lift and frequent pairing with Naghdi ena- None of us is above YouTube, and rists thanks to a 20th-anniversary flower bles him to shadow her line with meticulous nothing is beneath it. We have of shower for the Royal Ballet’s Marianela grace. His jumps were juicy and although his course all long since submitted to a Nunez and bales of bouquets to mark major beaten steps were fudged (counting entre- universal medium whose sole purpose debuts by new(ish) principals Francesca chats is vulgar, luckily for him) he managed appears to be the promotion of the Hayward and Yasmine Naghdi. to give the sense of a man being danced to universal below-average, but this Giselle, the timid village beauty whose death without actually running out of puff. doesn’t mean that there isn’t pleasure ghost returns to forgive her duplicitous Leading cast changes can be thrilling, to be had from watching content lover, was never an obvious vehicle for Nun- but giving everyone a turn in secondary created by so-called ‘content-creators’ ez’s sunny virtuosity, but she has always had roles, while generous-spirited, can turn the whose created content is often pretty absolute command of the role’s fiendish mix delicious Act One pas de six into a bit of a much content-free. Indeed, of crisp footwork and melting lines. Naghdi curate’s egg. Casting principal dancers helps a large part of the obvious appeal of and Hayward both gave polished, intense- user-generated content is that it is ly felt performances, their innate musicality Perdita clamps herself around his generated by people who are just like enhanced by Koen Kessels’s responsive han- shoulders in unlikely attitudes like you and me and who therefore make dling of the Adam score. a sex-starved bush baby stuff that isn’t actually very good. We Hayward is marked for misery from no longer marvel at skill. What we the moment she opens the cottage door. (Naghdi and Campbell were both terrific on admire is chutzpah. Giselle loves to dance — she has a spe- the opening night) and James Hay, for whom The most recent example of cial mime that tells us so — but she isn’t a there is simply no such thing as a minor role, a home-grown, coarse-grained show-off and Hayward strikes exactly the brought a blast of starlight to his scene-steal- YouTube spectacular was the right note of bashful bravura. Her exquisite ing solo. amateur boxing match between KSI feet frisk through the Act One variations Myrtha, Queen of Act Two’s avenging and Joe Weller earlier this month, with happy facility and her thistledown battalion of Wilis, demands a rippling pas de broadcast live from the Queen elevation makes her an eerily insubstantial bourrée and a massive, heat-seeking jump. Elizabeth Olympic Park in London. ghost, wafting free of Alexander Camp- Mayara Magri and Fumi Kaneko possess KSI, as Spectator readers will be bell’s yearning arms. both, together with a commanding stage aware, is a professional gamer-cum- Albrecht isn’t like other boys. Better presence that lets us know who is in charge rapper, real name Olajide Olatunji, bred, better fed, the slumming aristocrat of this scary woodland deathtrap. from Watford, some of whose popular in disguise observes the Act One peasant More wronged women, more remorseful uploads include ‘The Best Ever festivities with a sardonic, anthropologist’s men in Christopher Wheeldon’s 2014 pro- Steak!’, ‘I Hate Pokémon Go!!!’ and eye. He learns their steps but he still has an duction of A Winter’s Tale. It’s a dour and ‘Smash or Pass: Female YouTubers’. alien glamour that sets him apart. This isn’t difficult story and despite Bob Crowley’s Joe Weller is a YouTuber from a crude matter of height — heroes come in handsome, action-packed designs, and acres Eastbourne who mostly films himself a range of sizes — nor even mere groom- of fine dancing, it remains a hard ballet to exploring abandoned buildings. ing. The Royal Ballet’s lost star Sergei Pol- love and cries out for a sympathetic pruning. Between them, with their rough-and- unin danced Albrecht in Moscow during one Joby Talbot’s quirky, folk-inflected score ready charms, they have amassed of his skinhead phases and still managed to has plenty of sounding brass but fails to fuel more than 20 million followers on convince as a posh boy on the prowl. the big emotional reversals and never finds social media and small fortunes Alexander Campbell excels in comic the lyrical sweep needed for Leontes’s rec- to match. roles but he struggled to convince as either onciliation with his ‘dead’ queen. The fight ended with a win for KSI Great dance acting can rise above these by a technical knockout. What both weaknesses. Ryoichi Hirano, in a shatter- men lacked in skill they more than ing debut, showed a man eaten alive by his made up for in their pre- and post- groundless suspicions, elegant lines snapped fight postings, which would have made and distorted by his toxic delusions. His cru- Ali blush. More than one-and-a-half elty revolts us but Laura Morera’s sternly million people watched the fight live forgiving Paulina teaches us to pity rather — none of them, one suspects, actual than condemn. fans of boxing — and KSI has since Wheeldon’s ugly cat-and-mouse duets announced that his next opponent for Leontes and the pregnant Hermione will be Logan Paul, the much-loathed (a luminous Lauren Cuthbertson) make American YouTube personality. dramatic sense but this novelty pairwork England amateurishly awaits. becomes wearisome in the pastoral second — Ian Sansom ‘Our boy is a straightforward heterosexual male. act. Perdita finds love with the son of her Where did we go wrong?’ father’s ex-friend and expresses her joy by

44 the spectator | 24 february 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk РЕЛИЗ ГРУППЫ "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS clamping herself around his shoulders in — blood pours out of her mouth and into hearing the curator’s views about the art- unlikely attitudes like a sex-starved bush a pool to the floor.’ Silent Witness (and my ist’s life, intentions, brush strokes, added baby. Happily, the spun-sugar Sarah Lamb ironing) on a Monday evening has never a different dimension to it all. I know many and the effortlessly virtuosic Vadim Munta- been so riveting. will find the idea of a blind person enjoy- girov transcend the acrobatics, making silk Of course, as with many modern inven- ing art surprising, but art is not just about purses from the unlikeliest materials. tions, you need to be careful what you choose seeing, but also about the language used to to take your blind and visually impaired describe what is being seen. And beyond auntie/sister/brother/friend to. My sighted the art world, audio description commen- Audio description sister and I went to see the first Fifty Shades tary is available at almost all major UEFA of Grey a few years back, and even though Champions League football matches, not Lend me your ears we both knew the film was going to be bad, to mention, albeit slowly, at local football Selina Mills I convulsed so hard with laughter that I fell clubs around the UK. Anyone can ask for a off my seat at the cinema. She was morti- headset, blind or not. fied. Afterwards, I had to explain that hear- Indeed, as many commentators are Audio description, or AD, as it is fondly ing American accents having rampant sex increasingly arguing, on both sides of the called, is coming of age. Once consigned to — ‘Antastasia! Christian!’— while a rath- Atlantic, audio description is not just for the utility room of grey voices reading bor- er bored English voice describes the scene blind people. Georgina Kleege at the Uni- ing cues to inform blind people what was with the enthusiasm of someone reading versity of California, Berkeley, and Han- going on on stage or screen, AD is now a tax return was very hard. When I heard, for nah Thompson at London University (to a dynamic narrative form that is finding example: ‘Christian pulls down her under- name just a couple) point out that there a presence in almost all the arts (from opera, wear. He spanks her bottom. He spanks her can be some sort of ‘blind gain’ from things theatre and film to art galleries and muse- again. She smiles,’ I rather lost the plot. And that support what we presume is ‘sight loss’. ums). It is so widespread and well done that from the audio describer’s tone of voice, Haptic technology (how your mobile phone many consider it an art form in itself. I suspect that I wasn’t the only one. buzzes when you press it) is another format For the uninitiated, audio description AD is common in public art galleries. that has many uses over and above telling simply provides a listener, through head- The V&A’s touring Opera exhibition comes you that you have a message. phones or a TV speaker, with the essential with a headset and audio guide that was In other words, tools created for disabled details of the action and events in a film not created for blind visitors but for eve- people are not simply utilitarian and func- or play during a convenient pause. When ryone. Designers and directors share their tional, but things that can enhance all of our thoughts about the sets and costumes on experiences, whether or not we are disabled. At Fifty Shades of Grey, I convulsed display, which brings the entire exhibition Now, if you’ll excuse me, I am off to listen to so hard with laughter that I fell off my to life. At Tate Modern’s Modigliani show, more Silent Witness. seat at the cinema done well, it does not intrude on an audi- ence’s experience of the play, the acting or the director’s intention, but instead shapes and enhances it. 
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  Over the past few weeks, for instance, I have seen quite a few shows in the West End and at the National Theatre that have ‘audio described’ performances. As usual, AD gives me access to precise facial cues that I, as a   
 
 

blind person, would never see. At Amadeus at the National I am informed through my 

   earpiece that ‘She [Mozart’s wife] looks at the palms of her hands sadly, and softly turns away’. I was also told about the physicality of the orchestra, which was an integral part of the action on stage. And if you like musical shows (which I don’t) AD can really change the game. At Pinocchio (also at the Nation- al), having someone describing how a dancer moves –– swivel, turn, bend, tap — really does give you the sense of how a body works on- stage and how it interacts with others. Audio description is also increasing- ly available via media and streaming pro- viders, and here the quality of description is really improving. Netflix, Amazon and Apple store all offer AD on a large per- "  "



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.-,- are the descriptions on Scandi dramas and crime thrillers. They are so detailed and rhythmic — akin to an afternoon play on Radio 4. ‘He raises the knife — he plung- es it down, again and again and again. She slides down against the kitchen cupboard the spectator | 24 february 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk 45 РЕЛИЗ ГРУППЫ "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS BOOKS & ARTS BBC/WILD MERCURY PRODUCTIONS

Paris (Louis Hunter) and Helen (Bella Dayne) in the most comically earnest TV series around

Television anything bad she may have done. She also ance, as he’d promised to walk her boy home seems to specialise in cases where she has that day. Losing the plot a deep personal involvement that might And from there, well, who quite knows? cause a lesser woman to worry about a con- Monday’s episode began in the usual way of James Walton flict of interests. modern TV dramas: with a mystifying bliz- In this new series, for example, the body zard of apparently unrelated scenes. Unlike ITV’s Marcella (Monday) represents anoth- of a murdered nine-year-old was discovered most other dramas, though, this is also how it er triumphant breakthrough in the portray- continued. By my reckoning, there are now al of female cops on television. Of course, By my reckoning, there are now eight eight plots under way, featuring, among other thanks to more or less every other crime plots under way, none of which are so things, an angry skinhead, a ruthless capital- show around, we already know that women far conclusively connected ist, an aphasic rock drummer and Marcella’s in their forties can be senior police officers. own domestic troubles, which on Monday But what Marcella makes even clearer than, behind the wall of a London flat. Despite led her to beat up her ex-husband’s new say, Vera or No Offence is that so can women the corpse being in an advanced state of partner. (‘I’m not well,’ she later explained in their forties who are entirely unsuited to decay, Marcella (Anna Friel, acting her unapologetically. ‘I get violent.’) None of the being senior police officers. socks off throughout — and in one scene eight are so far conclusively connected — For a start, the eponymous heroine suf- her pants) immediately recognised the vic- except by the fantastically sinister music that fers from regular mental collapses during tim as her son Edward’s friend Leo, who’d accompanies them all. which she often turns violent before hand- disappeared in 2014. Not only that, but Leo’s In fact, the whole episode was so wildly ily forgetting — and forgiving herself for — mother blamed Edward for the disappear- overwrought that I’m now curious to see

46 the spectator | 24 february 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk РЕЛИЗ ГРУППЫ "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS how on earth the series will end up linking Yet, while the dialogue there was also loons and banners reading: ‘Welcome home these various elements — which annoyingly a seamless combination of the portentous Alice!’ (I wish!) Instead, she discovers that suggests that it succeeded in its central aim. and the banal, Troy takes the process a whole the farm has, yes, gone to ruin. Beneath that In the meantime, all we know for sure is that lot further, with a script that seems pitched cement sky, she discovers not just the rust- when it comes to the least capable cop on tel- somewhere between a particularly corny ed old machinery and the mud but also a evision, it’s now a straight fight between Mar- Hollywood epic and a play by Ernie Wise. rat infestation and a sheep with a broken cella and Chief Wiggum from The Simpsons. leg that needs to be shot and peeling paint Still, the one crown you might think that and holes in the walls and broken fences Marcella would be bound to win outright is Cinema and neglected fields. And, on top of all that, Most Comically Earnest TV Series Around. there’s her brother Joe (Mark Stanley). Sadly, however, even that’s by no means Heavy-going Joe is not about to give up the tenancy guaranteed — because on Saturday BBC1 Deborah Ross and Joe is violently angry. Their father, he brought us Troy: Fall of a City. tells her, did not die without suffering. He Dominating the first episode was Paris, asked for you. Why weren’t you here? We the son of Troy’s King Priam, who’d been Dark River know why, just as we know why she won’t abducted by wolves when he was a few 15, Key Cities go upstairs to her childhood bedroom. We days old — which is why, when we joined know because, in the frequent flashbacks, him as a young man, he was rather improb- Dark River is the much-anticipated third she sees her father abusing her in that bed- ably working as a cowboy. Not that this feature from British writer/director Clio room — not in detail, but we get the gist — career would last much longer. Within Barnard and it is one of those bleak, rural- and she sees him coming down those stairs, minutes, he’d been asked to judge which England dramas featuring cement-col- and because she sees it, then we see it. The of three goddesses was the loveliest, and oured skies, wind, rain, mud, rusted old farm father is played by a near-silent Sean Bean opted for Aphrodite who’d promised him machinery and dead animals — do people and his presence not only feels like a surpris- who move out from the city know what they ingly cheap and clumsy stunt, but also denies The dialogue even managed to are letting themselves in for? — as well as descend into cliché when nobody was the aftermath of childhood sexual abuse. Barnard might as well have drawn actually using any words (Should we pull them aside and have a arrows in a big marker pen all over it word?) Apologies for sounding glib about ‘the most beautiful woman in the world’ if such a heavy subject but this is, ultimately, the narrative the complexity and nuance she won. (Every man has his price.) He’d so heavy-handed about that heavy subject that, to my mind, it would have to have if we also blagged an invitation to Troy, been it left me cold. I should point out, however, were going to use words like ‘powerful’ and beaten almost to death by Hector, had that other critics are available, and some are ‘affecting’. his true identity revealed, and agreed to saying it is ‘powerful’ and ‘affecting’. So you As with all great actors, Wilson can bril- travel as a peace envoy to the Greek king pays your money and takes your pick. liantly communicate an interior life, but that Menelaus. He then met the king’s wife Whereas Barnard’s two previous films seems wasted here, as so much is external- Helen who, without wishing to be ungal- — The Arbor and The Selfish Giant — were ised, with not just the flashbacks of abuse lant, was possibly not the most beautiful both terrific, and social-realist tours de force, but also the flashbacks to cheerier times woman in the world — or at Menelaus’s this feels laboured from the off. Loosely when Joe and Alice were innocent kids. The palace — although in her defence she did inspired by Rose Tremain’s Trespass, and direction is extraordinarily linear. It is: Alice wear a dress that would have the MailOn- with the title taken from a Ted Hughes poem feels this because of this, which we are now line sidebar reaching for the words ‘flaunt- about grief and memory, it opens with Alice going to cut away to, in case you otherwise ing’ and ‘assets’. (Ruth Wilson), a sheep shearer, returning to won’t get it. Barnard might as well have All of which might have been fine as a her childhood home, a Yorkshire farm, fol- drawn arrows in a big marker pen all over it. standard slice of harmlessly po-faced Sat- lowing her father’s death. She believes he And, consequently, it is plodding rather than urday night entertainment, but couldn’t had promised the tenancy to her, and she slowly revelatory — we know everything help but feel a bit of an anti-climax for is determined to claim her inheritance. As we need to know within the first ten min- the most expensive drama series in BBC she drives though the hills, P.J. Harvey sings utes — and there is little actual drama. You history. Nonetheless, what really raised the deeply melancholic folk song ‘My Father do, admittedly, expect little actual drama in the levels of inadvertent comedy was the Left Me an Acre of Land’ so we know that films such as this, but here you keenly feel staggeringly creaky and endlessly bathetic her arrival, after a 15-year absence, is not the lack. As both know the truth about their dialogue. going to be greeted by a party, bunting, bal- father, but refuse to address it, most of the ‘How did you two get together?’ Paris action is centred on a brother and sister cir- asked Helen and Menelaus at the banquet cling each other, eyeing each other, and row- given in his honour, and duly introduced by ing viciously. As Sean Bean hovers. Beneath the king with a cry of ‘Let us feast!’ Else- a cement sky. where, gods sternly announced ‘Enough! There are occasional fine, touching The mortal has spoken!’ and scorned women moments — as when Joe talks Alice through declared, ‘Men are fools.’ Impressively, the the wild flowers in the neglected field — dialogue even managed to descend into cli- but, for the most part, it’s as heavy-going ché when nobody was actually using any as it is heavy-handed and some aspects are words — as in the scene where the two plain odd. For example, Alice is not a girly defeated goddesses from the beauty contest girl. Alice can heave sheep and kill rabbits went for one of those anguished bellows that and wears farm clothes and has only one causes all the nearby birds to fly theatrically prized possession (her shearing tool) but she from the trees. always seems to be in full make-up? I was The writer responsible is David Farr puzzled, I admit. And as for the ending, it’s whose adaptation of The Night Manager explosive, but muddled. Still, there are other was for my money distinctly overpraised. ‘Ha! Ha! Ha! He lives in his properties.’ critics. But I know who I trust. the spectator | 24 february 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk 47 РЕЛИЗ ГРУППЫ "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS BOOKS & ARTS Radio someone who has thought about it, analysed THE LISTENER its insidious power, and worked out how to Franz Ferdinand: Always Light and dark get over it (Edwards now has three children Ascending and a new life in New Zealand). It was not Kate Chisholm billed as part of the Riot Girls season, being celebrated on Radio 4, but could have been. This week’s edition of Ramblings with Clare Edwards was fearless in her willingness to Balding did all the usual things: a walk in the face the illness and her own part in it, over- country (cue breathy conversation as we fol- turning much of what is currently said about lowed her up hill and down dale), braving cause and treatment. Balding, too, never the elements (there’s always rain at some fails to impress with her ability to time the point) with a dog in tow, and in the com- right question, and to listen, blending intui- pany of someone for whom the walk has tion with a blunt directness of approach. some meaning. But then the programme Elsewhere on the network, two great took off into something quite unexpected as dames of the literary world have been pitted her walking companion, Christina Edwards, against each other for the season, Margaret began to explain why this particular ramble, Atwood’s transgressive novel The Robber in the heart of Northamptonshire, was so Bride up against Doris Lessing’s sharp study familiar to her, and why they were retracing of incompetent radicals, The Good Terror- her steps not in daylight, when the rolling ist. Atwood’s untrustworthy heroine, Zenia, Grade: A hills and gentle fields could best be appreci- subverts the tale of the male folk monster Yay, people with a modicum of wit. ated, but as darkness fell. who lures away gorgeous young brides only They come along so very rarely these In Edwards, it soon transpired, the to kill them. She seduces in turn the partners days. A decade on and that punky, indomitable Balding had met her match, and husbands of her three college mates, guitar-driven power-pop funk has teased for insisting on donning a head torch casting them off as soon as she has got what long since been expunged. Singer so that she could see where she was going. she wanted. She’s so alluring, so clever and Alex Kapranos expressed a wish Edwards was resolutely unperturbed by the so amoral, a devil in high heels, for whom for Franz Ferdinand to reinvent gathering gloom, insisting she had never Atwood has confessed she has far more themselves — and has turned to the used a torch, and had never been scared. sympathy than the three (or rather six) vic- same source inspiration as did their It was a walk she had done many times tims of Zenia’s wickedness, who are drawn recent collaborators Sparks when when she was younger, and suffering from much less vividly, as if in comparison they they, too, needed a swift reboot at the anorexia nervosa. She would wake up at end of the 1970s: Giorgio Moroder. 2 a.m. starving hungry but unable (or rath- ‘I just want to try and tread lightly on But Kapranos and co. have laced er unwilling) to satisfy her hunger pangs. To this earth. I want to take as little as those metronomic German beats tire her body out, she would go for a walk. possible from it’ with camp glamour and swirling, ‘Do you know why? Do you know what unpredictable melodies — and, of triggered the illness?’ asked Balding. are cartoon characters, two-dimensional, course, the frequent touch of Bowie. Edwards believes she can pinpoint it to squashed flat. This is a disco-pop album. But a time in sixth form when all her friends In Sarah Wooley’s two-part Sunday- even at its dumbest — on ‘Finally’ were studying subjects that led to conversa- afternoon drama (atmospherically directed and ‘Huck and Jim’ — there is always tions, relentlessly, pitilessly focused on war, by Marion Nancarrow), you could not fail to something to hold the attention, an nuclear, chemical, historical, ‘The thought be seduced by Zenia’s honeyed tones (she unexpected hook or an outré chord came into my head, I just want to try and was played by Tanya Moodie). The second change. I’m not sure if this makes tread lightly on this earth. I want to take as part had too much plot to sort out and was them, as Kapranos apparently wishes, little as possible from it.’ This could have not quite as spellbinding as the first, but this ‘subversive’, but it does make them sounded fey, but Edwards was looking back lingered in the mind, Zenia both appalling a very good pop group. I listened to on herself as a teenager when such ques- and compelling. ‘Lois Lane’ five times over and still tions can feel of excruciating importance Lessing’s The Good Terrorist, drama- haven’t got bored and the songs that and it made perfect sense because she was tised in ten short episodes by Sarah Dan- bookend the album — the title track so scrupulously honest, stripping back to iels (and produced by Emma Harding), and the beautiful ‘Slow Don’t Kill lay bare. also has a fearless woman at its heart. Me Slow’ — take disco and make it When a psychologist tried to suggest The rebellious daughter of a rich fam- rather glorious and anthemic. it was all about her relationship with her ily, Alice gets tied up in the Communist It all reminds me a little of the mother, she was furious, but, inadvertently, Centre Union without realising that it’s second album from Garbage, which it helped her to realise that, on the contra- her money that her new friends are most- is a tad unfair, because FF are not ry, the illness was all about her (‘it wasn’t ly after, and that their anti-Thatcherite quite so determinedly cold-blooded. my mother denying me food’), and if she motives are less clear-cut than her own. In But the insistence that every song wanted to get better she needed to do it spite of her upbringing, she’s the one who should have three hooks with which for herself. knows how to unblock concrete from the to snare you is present here, and it How did her mother help her? Balding toilets in the squat they take over, while at works. They seem a little too pleased asked. the same time sweet-talking the council to with themselves, at times. But not ‘She was endlessly patient with me not- allow them to stay. Set in the 1980s as IRA half as smug as Vampire Weekend — eating.’ Meals carried on as usual, not with bombs continue to trouble London, Less- and with FF you get more than one food as the central issue but because it was ing’s novel (first published in 1985) sounds decent song per album. I counted important they all sat down together. remarkably dated now, so different have eight on this one. A walk in the country became some- the arguments about male–female rela- — Rod Liddle thing much more; an insightful examination tions become, but you can really under- of what anorexia nervosa really means to stand how terrorists are formed.

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NOTES ON … Vienna By Guy Dammann

wo things always strike me when ISTOCK Wiener Festwochen, which takes place in I visit Vienna. The first is how easter- May and June. Tly the city lies. This was more appar- The life of the Museumsquartier is ent last century, when on maps of Europe enhanced by the presence of subsidised art- the silhouette of Austria poked itself like a ists’ studios and there’s a feeling of things swollen proboscis into the dark shadows of happening, as opposed to having happened. the eastern bloc. But even today, with Bra- That said, the focus this year is all on what tislava, Brno and Gyor as its closest inter- happened 100 years ago, when the city’s two national neighbours, it’s a good reminder most famous modern painters, Egon Schiele of how much ‘western European’ culture and Gustav Klimt, died within months of comes from quite far east. each other. Schiele is well served by the Leo- The second thing is how at home there pold Museum’s exhibition, focusing on his I feel. The names and faces on the billboards ‘expressionist years’ (he was only 28 when he are conductors and pianists, stars of opera Night at the museum: the city’s skyline died, so that’s pretty much his entire career). and ballet. For once, you get the feeling Klimt’s ‘The Kiss’, perhaps his most celebrity is selling something worth buying. the grandly planned ring road which from famous image, hangs across town in the Bel- There are stars on the pavements, as in Hol- the 1880s began to replace the medieval city vedere, where two exhibitions looking at lywood, but the twinkling immortals are all walls with imposing chains of grand houses both artists’ influence on modernism will composers, making your arrival in the city and public buildings. open in the spring (Klimt) and autumn feel like a spiritual homecoming. Among them are the twin palaces of the (Schiele). Also worthwhile is the Kunst- As a tourist destination, Vienna’s great- Kunsthistorisches and Naturhistorisches historisches Museum’s exhibition ‘Stairway est problem is that it’s a tourist destination. Museums, which face each other off over the to Klimt’ (until September), with its close- Which is to say, the city can feel less like a formal gardens of the Maria- Theresien Platz, up view of the 13 paintings that usually hang city with museums than a museum itself, with a handsome bronze of the enthroned high above the grand staircase, including the full of people seeking to flee the 21st cen- empress herself presiding. Her former sta- full-frontal ‘Nuda Veritas’ of 1899. tury in the company of the 50 gilded top- bles lie just beyond the Ringstrasse and 20 If that’s not your idea of the place to be, less women who prop up the Musikverein years ago were converted, together with the the city’s Jewish Museum has an exhibition balcony. But today’s Vienna actually has surrounding area, into a modern museum about the hostesses whose salon culture as buzzing a contemporary arts scene as district, home to the Leopold Museum and allowed Schiele and Klimt’s art to flour- any European city. For this, though, you’ll ‘mumok’ (museums of modern and contem- ish. Appropriately enough, the exhibition’s need to venture beyond the Ringstrasse, porary art) as well as the annual exhibition name is ‘The Place To Be’.

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‘Boris Johnson’s language was not simply a pile of lexical meanings, but also a series of implicit references’ — Dot Wordsworth, p62

High life have to know who is making them. Not some tragic Irène Némirovsky’s novel of the same faceless, unelected bureaucrat in Brussels, name. Némirovsky never finished her book Taki but someone we can vote out the next time. — she was arrested for being Jewish and This is where the falseness of the argu- murdered in a camp — so the movie does ment against Brexit stands out, the ‘con- it for her. I read it when it was discovered in temptus mundi’ of the self-proclaimed elites. 2004, and I was not disappointed. The love How can those unelected bureaucrats of the affair between a French beauty and a won- EU accuse Poland and Hungary and the derful German officer rings true, as do the Visegrád states of being undemocratic when pettiness and hatreds of the French bour- their leaders have all been elected demo- geoisie and peasantry. cratically? If this isn’t Nineteen Eighty-Four Another thing that the director got right then what is? (And how can Israel accuse was the politeness of the Wehrmacht offic- Gstaad Poland of complicity in the Holocaust — the ers, and the looks of the German soldiers. It was nostalgia time at Prince Victor Emma- Poles were victims — while running the larg- I was four when they came to occupy our nuel’s birthday party here, with many old est concentration camp in the world, Gaza?) house in Athens and I remember Major friends reminiscing about our youthful she- How can George Soros undermine Bal- Henry Murgen very well. He was charming nanigans in times gone by. Victor, the pre- kan countries with his billions and go after and played with me and told me all about tender to the Italian throne, and I go back the democratically elected Viktor Orbán, his own boys, and I can still smell the leath- a long way — more than 60 years. In a very er and brilliance of his boots and belts. He roundabout manner, so do our families. When lost in the mists of alcohol, was tall, blond and handsome. As were the His namesake and grandfather King Victor I dream of my perfect state: Sparta majority of Germans at that time. Films Emmanuel III facilitated Benito Mussolini’s nowadays portray them as bullet-headed rise to power, although he was the one who when he couldn’t get elected water boy for Slavs. But I was there; modern Hollywood dismissed him in July 1943 and declared Italy an all-girls tiddlywinks team? And what’s types were not. no longer a combatant. My mother’s young- he doing attempting to undermine the will Never mind. The national idea is as nat- est brother wrote a fan letter to Il Duce, aged of the British people with paid clowns like ural as loving one’s children. D-man and 12. Benito invited the boy to visit Italy as his this Malloch Brown fellow? Georgie Por- Georgie Porgie don’t like it, so it’s up to us guest, and sure enough my uncle went and gie wants a borderless Europe but he ain’t to overcome their billions with willpower. stayed with him in Villa Torlonia for a fort- gonna get it, billions or no billions, and he We won at the ballot box, and the losers are night. Ironically, he fought against the Italians won’t get it because it is unnatural. crying foul. They do it in Africa and in small in Albania and died of his wounds after the The betrayal of Germany by Angela South American countries. And now they’re war. Victor and I have talked about this many Merkel is a lesson for all of us. The Ital- doing it in Britain too. times, and both of us remain admirers of Il ian people have seen the light, as have the Duce — up to a point, that is. Greeks, but Brussels is a hard nut to crack Back then nationalism was what count- and it has the media behind it. The latter Low life ed. Nationalism and patriotism were one are so consumed with rage against Trump and the same thing. Today both are consid- that they made a heroine of little rocket Jeremy Clarke ered suspect, Trump-like gaucheries; con- man’s sister. Forget about the mass torture, cepts that only an unsophisticated rube can starvation and murder; if Trump dislikes believe in. Sovereignty ditto. We are, or so the little rocket man, he must be good. they tell us, one big family, and those three Recovering in my chalet after Victor ideas are bad for the common good. Davos Emmanuel’s party, I happened on a won- Man, being a paragon of neoliberalism and derful film, Suite Française, an adaptation of a paid-up member of the globally net- worked elite, is the type who frowns on nationalism-patriotism. D-man would sell his mother for a shekel, but his country for My hangover was what the great Kingsley an even lower price. When lost in the mists Amis describes in his Everyday Drinking of alcohol, I dream of my perfect state, guide as a ‘metaphysical’ hangover. Apart Sparta, and wonder how Davos Man would from the usual feeling of being unwell, steal- deal with it. Given how slick and lubri- ing over me was that ‘ineffable compound cious D-man is — a cross between Anna of depression, sadness (these two are not Soubry and Jean-Claude Juncker — the the same), anxiety, self-hatred, sense of fail- Swiss should name the convention centre in ure and fear for the future’. Amis’s reme- Davos after Ephialtes, the traitor who led dy was to read the final scene of ‘Paradise the Persians to the path behind the gallant Lost’, Book XII, lines 606 to the end, ‘which 300 at Thermopylae. is probably the most poignant moment in Our ex-editor Boris got it right when he ‘Before I say “Yes”, I’d like to carry out all our literature’. Otherwise he recom- said that if we’re going to accept laws, we a risk assessment.’ mends battle poems, such as Chesterton’s the spectator | 24 february 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk 55 РЕЛИЗ ГРУППЫ "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS LIFE

‘Lepanto’. But now the random selection to the Lord for the provision of a full-time It was delicious. I assumed I’d seen the last of images and scenes recollected from the job in these straitened times; and perhaps of it and here it was back for an encore. The previous evening paused on a new and par- to his starring at such a tender age in a You- smell was a pungent combination of gin and ticularly horrific one. So before I searched Tube clip with 55,000 views. sulphuric acid. I closed the door, went back for ‘Lepanto’, before rising even, I reached Vomit on an SUV’s carpet was meat to bed and carefully watched Tim Duke’s for the phone and typed in ‘how to clean and drink to him. He did not say, as did video again. vomit from the inside of a car’. other YouTube vomit-cleaning video stars: Tim recommended first a citrus-based I am evidently not the first person to type ‘Accidents happen.’ To Tim, emollient cli- degreaser to break down the bacteria. His this sentence into a search engine. I chose chés such as this were otiose, the domain product had a spray nozzle. ‘And you’re one of the many YouTube demonstration gonna wanna just squirt that in there like videos available. Tim Duke, a car valeter When I opened the driver’s door that,’ he said, giving it three or four blasts. from Orem in Utah — cargo shorts, reversed I don’t know what was worse, the Then he flourished a brush with a plastic baseball cap — was kneeling in the back of sight or the smell handle, helpfully describing it as ‘an er… an SUV and briskly demonstrating his own stiff bristle kinda nylon kinda, er… brush. method. of those not living life to the full. His non- You can git ’em at AutoZone.’ He set to Tim was aged about 18 and seemed judgmental attitude was such a comfort work briskly with it. ‘And you kinda just remarkably habituated to this gruesome that I suppressed an impulse to write him work it in real nice, like that, kinda work- task. Maybe it is not unusual for the inhab- a fan letter. ing it in, agitating it.’ itants of Orem in Utah to vomit over the Steeling myself, I rose, dressed, went Next, he gave the carpet a good squirt interiors of their monster SUVs. Or maybe outside to the garage and lifted the door. of enzyme cleaner, also available at Auto- young Tim was the valeting company’s des- The car was inside and parked perfectly. Zone, and attacked the resulting mess with ignated vomit guy and trying to make the But when I opened the driver’s door, I don’t a towel and enough energy to sink a bat- best of it. ‘Oi! Duke the Puke! Another know what was worse, the sight or the smell. tleship. The harder he worked, the more SUV for you at the regurgitation station.’ There was vomit on the steering wheel, the articulate he became. ‘You buff it in real But I rather thought that the commendable handbrake, the gearstick, the speedometer. good with a nice white towel so you can see absence of disgust, both physical and moral, It was under the seat and in the side pocket the bacteria coming up. See it. Right there? in his attitude to his job, was more likely and heater vents. There were flecks on the There’s the vomit right there. And you due to an adolescent’s frenetic and dramat- windscreen. (On the removable, disposable kinda do that. Agitation. Heat. Extraction. ic love life making everything else appear foot mat there was none at all.) The main These are the three methods for removing insignificant; to the vomiting of himself constituent of the mess was BBC shep- stains and smells.’ and his friends whenever they could afford herd’s pie, which had taken me two-and-a- Unfortunately, I hadn’t got a white towel, to buy enough alcohol; to his thankfulness half hours to make and two minutes to eat. or a citrus-based degreaser or enzyme clean-

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56 the spectator | 24 february 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk РЕЛИЗ ГРУППЫ "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS er, and it was Sunday. Also the mess in my Then I found out that all this is quite Bridge car was 100 times worse than Tim’s. So I legitimate. You can have Netflix, with eve- decided to leave it until I felt a bit better. rything you could ever want to watch and Susanna Gross Meanwhile, I watched the clip several times enjoy, virtually for free. Or you can pay more. It was posted in 2009, I noticed. I sin- a satellite or cable company nearly £100 cerely hope that Tim Duke has been pro- a month for 600 channels, all of them pure It’s nice being part of a community. That’s moted since then. dross. how bridge is: over the years, you get to What was I doing paying a satellite know, or recognise, pretty much everyone company £90 a month for pure dross? Was on the tournament scene. Even when you Real life I insane? And what are you doing, if you are play abroad, you see the same faces again still paying them? If you haven’t got Netflix and again. I’m think I’m on friendly, or nod- Melissa Kite yet, you need to see a shrink. When you get ding, terms with at least one player from it, my top tip is Grace and Frankie. every country on the globe. At home in Lon- Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin play two don, it’s positively incestuous: we’re like one seventy-something women whose husbands huge, dysfunctional family. And with bridge leave them for each other. The husbands, being broadcast online, we can follow each I mean. They’ve been having an affair and other wherever we are. divorce their wives so they can get hitched. For instance, I’ve just come back from a Of course, the liberal bias is ludicrous. family holiday in Tenerife, where I spent as You have to be prepared to be bludgeoned much time as I could following my bridge over the head with the joy of gay marriage. pals competing in the Winter Games in Everything since the ZX Spectrum has pret- And with recycling, veganism, hybrid cars, Monaco. They’re all doing well so far — ty much left me cold. Ghetto blasters, Sony paraben-free cosmetics, Al-Anon, middle- Andrew Black’s team, Simon Gillis’s, Patrick Walkmans, CDs, Apple Macs, iPods, PlaySta- class ‘harmless’ pot-smoking, gluten-free Lawrence’s, Jonathan Harris’s and, top of tions… I didn’t want any of them. brunch and saying ‘Wow! Seriously? Are the bunch, Janet de Botton’s. From my deck- Back in 1981, I did want a CB radio and we doing this now?’ to express annoyance. chair, I was glued to the action. I particularly I nearly got one too, but then my mother But notwithstanding all that, I’m in love enjoyed this hand played by Andrew ‘Ber- found out that lorry drivers were on them with Grace and Frankie because I am in love tie’ Black — who, by the way, is famed for and the thorny issue of whether it would be being the founder of Betfair, about the cool- appropriate for a nine-year-old girl to con- If you haven’t got Netflix yet, you est thing a card-player could be: verse with a trucker put the kibosh on the need to see a shrink whole thing. Dealer East NS vulnerable I was bitterly disappointed. I seem to with Jane Fonda. Formerly the keeper of the remember I cried. I did not cry about not 1980s keep-fit flame — I jumped about to z Q being bought a Commodore 64 or a BBC her VHS video cassette — Jane Fonda, aged y 10 9 7 5 4 Computer, as the technological bee’s knees 80, is now the foremost wearer of a sharp X 9 6 3 2 was then called, or any other home comput- pant suit teemed with a nattily tied silk neck er with plastic rather than rubber buttons scarf while being age-appropriate kooky. w A 7 2 like mine had. I did not covet them. Nor did What a role model. I covet a video game machine. I realised something was up when I z K 9 4 2 z A 10 6 3 I had a brief fling with Donkey Kong looked in the mirror and saw that I was y A K 2 N y 8 while holidaying in Corfu aged about 12, dressed in a sharp pant suit and nattily tied W E X A J 4 X K 8 7 S in an arcade on the lower ground floor of neck scarf. w 10 9 4 w K J 8 5 3 a large hotel. The other kids and I sat on Now it’s as bad as my Columbo habit. I’m the high stools playing Nintendo for hours binge-watching in bed. on end. I watched all the way through the four z J 8 7 5 But I haven’t enjoyed any technolo- series available in a matter of days and as y Q J 6 3 gy since then, unless you count the Black- I got to the end of the last episode of Series X Q 10 5 Berry. Nothing, that is, until Netflix. Why Four, I knew what I was going to do before w Q 6 hasn’t everyone got Netflix? I simply cannot I did it: the second the credits rolled, understand why you would not have it. For a I scrolled back to Series One and began few pounds a month, you can watch almost again, because until Series Five comes out West North East South any film or TV series you like, when you like. I can’t live without Jane Fonda. 1w pass Every night, I climb into bed and marvel It had better come out, by the way. The 1z pass 3z pass at the sheer volume of entertainment I have first series I discovered on Netflix was 4z pass pass pass almost free access to. House of Cards and no sooner had I become And if anyone thinks I’m toadying up to inseparable from Kevin Spacey than Kevin North led the w2. If declarer plays low, Netflix for a freebie, know this: there is no Spacey went and got himself investigated for South will win with the wQ, play a club to point trying to get a freebie from Netflix, for sexual assault. North’s wA and get a ruff — and there’s a it is as good as free anyway. One could hard- I’m sorry, but are we to lose absolutely possible trump loser to come. Black got off to ly get it any cheaper. everything we enjoy because no celebrity is a great start by rising with the wK (amazing When my tech guy Andy first set me as morally perfect as society now sudden- table presence). He then played yAK, throw- up with it, I felt as though there had been ly, for no reason, requires them to be? I’m ing a diamond, ruffed a heart, then XAK and a mistake. Surely, I can’t really have thou- losing track of all the cultural treats being a diamond ruff, eliminating the red suits. Next sands of the latest movies and television thrown on the bonfire because their creators he played a club to South’s wQ, and now he series instantly available for a few pounds have had sex with someone they shouldn’t. was home on any break. Not wanting to give a a month? I’d better keep quiet. There’s been Jane Fonda had better not have a skel- ruff-and-discard, South played a spade round a glitch. eton in her immaculate closet. to dummy’s zA10: the contract was made. the spectator | 24 february 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk 57 РЕЛИЗ ГРУППЫ "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS LIFE Chess Competition Another Troy On the way out Raymond Keene Lucy Vickery

One of the sharpest lines in the Ruy Lopez (1 e4 Diagram 1 In Competition No. 3036 you were invited e5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 Bb5 f5) is widely attributed to to provide a resignation letter in the style of Wilhelm Karl Adolf Schliemann (1817-1872), said rDbDqDWi a well-known author. I was inspired to set to be a relative of the Heinrich Schliemann this challenge by the great William Faulkner, (1822-1890) who discovered the site of Troy. Now 0p0WhWDp who bowed out with panache from his job as it appears that the variation should in fact be University of Mississippi postmaster: ‘I will attributed to Carl Jaenisch (1813-1872) since WgW0W0WG W.K.A.S. in fact advocated something rather DWDW0WDW be damned if I propose to be at the beck and different, namely 1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 Bb5 Bc5 4 call of every itinerant scoundrel who has two c3 f5. However as Junior Tay, author of the new W)BDPDrD cents to invest in a postage stamp. This, sir, book The Schliemann: Move by Move (Everyman is my resignation.’ Some entries were resig- Chess) points out, the name of Schliemann has DW)QDNDP nation letters on the part of the author in stuck and it would take a lot of literary hard PDWDW)PD whose style they were written; others were labour to undo the misattribution. written by well-known figures in the style of This week, a game and puzzle from the book, $WDWDRIW a given author. Given my somewhat woolly featuring a line which, prima facie, looks brief, either approach was permissible. suspicious, but which in fact is remarkably vital There was much wit and cunning inven- and indeed viable. Diagram 2 tion on display. Commendations go to Rich- Warman-Gareev: London 2016; Ruy Lopez rDWDWDWi ard Corcoran and Michael R. Burch. The winners take £25 each and the bonus fiver 1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 Bb5 f5 4 d3 fxe4 5 0pDqhWDp belongs to Bill Greenwell’s Anna Soubry dxe4 Nf6 6 0-0 Bc5 7 Nc3 d6 8 Bg5 0-0 9 WgW0WDbD channelling Virginia Woolf. Nd5 Kh8 10 c3 Denying Black the use of the d4-square and preparing to advance the b- and DWDW0WHW Yes, I think, shuffling my possessions — a string a-pawns to harass the c5-bishop. 10 ... Ne7 11 of pearls, a leopard-print scarf, a foghorn — Nxf6 gxf6 12 Bh6 Removing Black’s strong W)WDW0WD Parliament is full of contradiction. To be bishop with 12 Be3 Bxe3 13 fxe3 is a logical DW)WDWDW independent; to be loyal. And always the glare, the alternative. 12 ... Rg8 This position is fine for commotion, the blatant intrusion of the cameras: Black who gets to hack on the g-file and can PDWGQ)PD but always we must rise above them, I suppose, to occasionally play for the ... d6-d5 or ... f6-f5 break go on. And yet the wickedness, the wickedness too. 13 b4 Bb6 14 Bc4 Rg4 15 Qd3 This $WDWDRIW runs deep; and how shocking that this blueness move, defending the e4-pawn and connecting the oozes out of them and rolls like tides of bile which rooks, is actually a mistake. White should have choke and half-throttle the onlookers. They must cease, must desist, must grind to a halt. For I, played 15 h3 Rg6 (15 ... Rxe4 16 Bd5 Re2 17 by ... Rxd3 and wins. 20 ... Bf5 21 d6 cxd6 Anna Mary Soubry, will otherwise hand in my pass, Qxe2 Nxd5 offers Black reasonable 22 Bf7 Qd7 23 Bxg6 Bxg6 24 Ne4 f5 simply renounce my membership. I feel myself compensation too) 16 Bd2 with unclear play. 15 Ì0IH(see diagram 2) Cutting off the shining a light into the dank, corrupt recesses ... Qe8 16 h3 (see diagram 1) 16 ... Rg6 The d2-bishop and clearing the paths for his pieces where he, so thin, so pinched, so cruel, holds sway, spectacular 16 ... Rxg2+! 17 Kxg2 Qg6+ 18 Bg5 on the kingside light squares. 26 Rfe1 Rf8 he and his charlatans. And I will do it, I think, this (or 18 Kh2 Qxh6 19 Ng1 f5) 18 ... fxg5 19 Kh2 Qf6 Ì3HPerhaps 27 c4 was the best chance, instant. It is enough! It is enough! gives Black very good play, but presumably threatening 28 c5, or if 27 ... Nc6 then 28 Bc3 Bill Greenwell Gareev didn’t see any need to sacrifice at this and White might yet survive. 27 ... Nf5 28 stage. 17 Bd2 d5 A good pawn sacrifice, but also Qd5 Qd8 Offering yet another exchange Armed with the Sword of the Spirit and clad in the possible was 17 ... Rg7 clearing the path for the sacrifice. 29 Ne6 Qh4 30 Qf3 Bh5 Pushing Belt of Truth buckled about my waist, undaunted queen. 18 exd5 Bf5 19 Qe2 Bxh3 20 Ng5 the queen away from the defence of the by perils that lay in wait, I strove resolved to Warman finds the correct defence. If White plays f2-pawn. 30 ... Ng3 leads to mate in five, but it ascend the hill that stood before me however steep 20 Nh4?, he runs into 20 ... Nf5!! 21 Nxg6+ Qxg6 doesn’t really matter as Gareev finishes the the way. The burden upon my back I bore with and the onslaught is overwhelming, e.g. 22 Qf3 game in four more moves anyway. 31 Qh3 fortitude and patience ever faithful to my calling Bg4 23 Qd3 Rg8 24 Bb3 Be3! 25 fxe3 Bh3 26 Rf2 Qxf2+ 32 Kh2 Rg8 33 Rg1 Bg4 34 Raf1 and my cause. But those I sought to lead betrayed Qxg2+! 27 Rxg2 Rxg2+ 28 Kf1 Rxd2+, followed Qxd2 White resigns my trust with doubt, hypocrisy and envy. Still unbowed though sorely tried by my enemies, forth I strode determined not to fall. Yet fall I did and PUZZLE NO. 494 rising thereafter, ploughed through the Slough of Despond to the Vale of Humiliation. Thus by my Black to play. This position is from Drozdowski- WDQDWDWD followers thwarted, I now embrace defeat and, Tay, chess.com 2014. Black played 1 ... Qg6 which Dp0WDW0k with a heavy heart, finally lay my burden down. was good enough to win but what would have pDpgWDWD Alan Millard been quicker? Answers to me at The Spectator Sir, To yet again play mine unworthy part upon by Tuesday 27 February or via email to victoria@ DWDWDWDp the stage or to exit nevermore to make an spectator.co.uk. There is a prize of £20 for the first entrance, that has been for some time the correct answer out of a hat. Please include a postal WDWDqDWD question. Whether to suffer the phone-fiddling address and allow six weeks for prize delivery. and computer-crunching that blazon the slave-jack DWDW4W)K office that has been mine or to pack up my accoustrements in a black plastic bag and, so Last week’s solution 1 Qxe5 (after 1 ... Qxe5 P)PDWDRD lightly burthened, leave the building and seek 2 Nxf7+ wins) DWDWDWHW sweet content in some more blessed hap. Last week’s winner Oliver Cleaver, You will have heard me say how betimes there Broadhembury, Devon comes a tide in the affairs of men that need be

58 the spectator | 24 february 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk РЕЛИЗ ГРУППЫ "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS LIFE

taken at the flood. Well, the way I see it, the flood 123456789 has overflowed, the tide is at its heighth and the Crossword time is ripe for me no longer to act like that 2347: 10 11 12 gorbellied cat in the adage but resolvedly to bid you and all my co-leagued fellows forever and Capital letters 13 14 15 16 forever farewell. Adieu, adieu, adieu! Yours faithfully, by Doc 17 18 Ralph Rochester 19 20 21 Each of the eight unclued lights Dear friends, Conservatives and Brexiteers, is a series of letters in alphabeti- 22 23 24 25 I’ve come to bury Theresa not to praise her; cal order which can be formed Nor will I wrong those honourable men into eight theme words. Else- 26 Whose daggers were employed for Britain’s sake. where, ignore two accents. 27 28 The noble Corbyn called for me to go Across While those I knew as friends sat silently, 1 Book from Goon, having 29 30 31 And so it is with sadness I submit siesta disturbed (12) And leave the poisoned cup to someone else. 10 Second-in-command’s 32 33 34 35 Recall the day when you presented me deviant practice (4) 36 37 38 With laurel wreaths that I at first declined. 12 Gave permission and Was this ambition? Surely I displayed reportedly went under, 39 40 The sense to see a Pyrrhic victory. getting ignored (10) Better than I must guard this sceptred Isle 14/40 French pal, tense, at 41 42 And fight her cause against our friendly foes. heart in his city (6) Resigning at your silent invitation 18 A lad — Tim — composed 43 I’ll let some wilier fox assist our nation. Dahl musical (7) Frank McDonald 22 Fields entered by sportsmen, finally (6) Each pilgrim I created was to tell 24 On outskirts of Evesham, 5 Intoxication from tiny beer A first prize of £30 for the first two tales, but this has proven hard to sell. encountered Cornish I ordered (9) correct solution opened on 12 The Prioress, who demonised the Jews, tourist (5) 6 Tubes — Cornish March. There are two runners- has drawn much castigation for her views. 26 Writers taking a fizzy painting’s turned up (6) up prizes of £20. (UK solvers On top of this, a courtly tale which ends drink in the Florida 7 Red dye is one newly can choose to receive the latest in wedding bells, your noted bard defends Panhandle (9) produced (5) edition of the Chambers ’gainst those who claim the story’s noble knight 27 See a trick re-presented 8 Persistent strife of vassal’s dictionary instead of cash — is nowt but an abhorrent, rapist shyte. by lutz performer (3-6) tenure with duke (4) ring the word ‘dictionary’.) The voice of every Middle Ages’ prude 29 Speedy aunt regularly 9 Useful point on Dark Blue Entries to: Crossword 2347, has vilified my Miller for the crude appearing in carriage (5) university society (12) The Spectator, 22 Old Queen encounters when a student’s arse gets burned 31 Well-groomed engineer 11 Like a road’s edge in small Street, London SW1H 9HP. and quims get kissed by clerics cruelly spurned. comes back after most of county, partly tapered (8) Please allow six weeks for Dear PC-minded, medieval folk, the evening in 14/40 (6) 13 Heavenly demo shortened prize delivery. you’re far too grave! Why can’t you take a joke? 34 Show embarrassment as — one round Calais (12) Hear this, from England’s literary lion; run ended in distress (6) 16 Secretive and silly, oddly up yours! From rhyming couplets I resign. 36 Bitter maple starts to (3) Paul Freeman bloom in Canada (7) 20 32 now remade as gun, say 40 See 14 (6) Name Dear Howard, 41 Mariner’s stress spoken of 21 Pacific islander at Hindu It is with a poignant mingling of regret and relief when not taking alcohol fair turning insane (10) Address that I hereby resign my membership of Royal (10) 23 Rex left exotic dancer Moulsecombe Golf Club. It has been a privilege to 42 Direct approach (4) confused about a short ply brassie and niblick on the finest links in the 43 Expressing disapproval narrative (9) South. But, alas, my game has disintegrated. Even about one losing value (12) 25 It kills snakes for money — at its best, you may recall, it was wildly erratic: if I peso mostly turned up (8) did hit sweetly on the meat, I shouted both ‘Fore!’ Down 32 Vegetable and fruit cut, and ‘Aft!’ And I spent more hours parting fronds 2 Marks of damage reported and another cut twice (3) of undergrowth than a botanist in pursuit of a from more macabre 33 Rocky ridge — one first particularly reclusive fritillary. But now I am moments (10) reached before summer in Email merely feeble. I foozle without let: the ball 3 Moon vehicle supported by France (5) dribbles from my driver; I strike air from a perfect China? One misjudges 35 A lot of jealousy over one lie; I top putts. My partners have gone from landing! (7) final stanza (5) amused tolerance to a wincing horror. I sense 4 Native Israeli overturned 37 Vehicles cruising along their fear of contagion. wheeled carriages (5) Baker Street at first (4) Enough said. I must make way for a new and worthy member. Sincerely, Pelham Wodehouse SOLUTION TO 2344: I’M AWAY W.J. Webster The unclued lights can be preceded by or followed by the NO. 3039: DOING WORDS unclued word DOCTOR, which explains why I (Doc) am away in the title of the puzzle. Elizabeth Gilbert wrote the phenomenally successful memoir Eat, Pray, Love. You are First prize Pam Dunn, Sevenoaks, Kent invited to choose a well-known figure, past Runners-up Tim Hanks, Douglas, Isle of Man; or present (please specify), invent a three- R.C. Teuton, Frampton Cotterell, Gloucestershire verb title you feel would be appropriate for their memoir, and provide an extract from it of up to 150 words. Please email entries to [email protected] by midday on 7 March. the spectator | 24 february 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk 59 РЕЛИЗ ГРУППЫ "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS LIFE No Sacred Cows just on the right side of the healthy/ height is fluid, as Sasha pointed overweight border. But the scale still out, does make it a less reliable My BMI calculator has me insists it’s 25.1 kg/m². Why the dis- measure than I first thought. Fred, my crepancy? After puzzling away at ten-year-old, made the same point inching towards despair this for hours, I eventually figured it when we were watching a film about Toby Young out. It’s because when I entered my a man who loses both his legs in a ter- height into the scale I wasn’t able to rorist attack. ‘If that was you, Dad, include half-inch units. I’m 5ft 8.5in, you wouldn’t care about never being but rounded this down to 5ft 8in. able to walk again,’ he said. ‘You’d ’ve become obsessed with my BMI. That vital half-inch is what makes all just be worried about its impact on For those of you who don’t know, the difference. your BMI.’ Iit stands for body mass index and When I explained this to my chil- Caroline was concerned that if I is supposed to be a more reliable way dren, they were divided about which discussed my weight loss in front of of assessing whether you’re a healthy of the two BMI measures is the more the children they might develop eat- size than weighing yourself. It’s calcu- accurate. Charlie, my nine-year-old, ing disorders. In fact, it’s they who lated by dividing your weight by the thinks I should have rounded up. ‘One have made me manorexic. When I square of your height and is expressed to four, down to the floor, five to nine, stand in front of a full-length mirror as kg/m². If your BMI is under up the vine,’ he recited. I was very in my Y-fronts, I’m convinced I’m 18.5 kg/m² you’re underweight, if it’s happy with that, obviously, since if I looking at the Michelin Man — even over 25 kg/m² you’re overweight, and record my height as 5ft 9in the NHS though I’ve lost more than a stone in if it’s above 30 kg/m² you’re obese. calculator puts my BMI at a healthy the past six weeks. The sweet spot is anywhere between 24.4 kg/m². But my 14-year-old daugh- To torture me, both Charlie and 18.5 kg/m² and 25 kg/m². ter Sasha was more sceptical. Fred gave me one of their Fruit Pas- As regular readers will know, I’m ‘To begin with, you’re not 5ft tilles at QPR vs Bolton on Saturday, on a diet. At the beginning of the year 8.5in,’ she said. ‘You may have been then insisted I look up how many cal- I was nearly 13st and I’m trying to get in your early twenties, but you’ve ories they are on MyFitnessPal and down to 11st 7lb. So far, so good, with shrunk since then — that’s what hap- include them in my daily food diary. I only 4lb left to go. But infuriatingly, pens to old people. complied: they’re 13 calories a piece. my BMI stubbornly refuses to dip ‘In addition, you’re about an inch Oh, how they laughed. under 25 kg/m², so I’m still techni- taller when you first wake up than My home has become like the cally overweight. At least, that’s what you are when you go to bed — it’s Stanford prison experiment, with my my fancy new Nokia Body+ scale called gravity, Dad — so to be accu- children playing the part of the sadis- tells me. I bought this scale because, rate, you should enter your height as tic guards. But by thunder it’s work- in addition to recording your BMI 5ft 7.5in because that’s your average ing. My worry now is that I won’t alongside your weight, it syncs with height over the course of the day. And be able to stop at 11st 7lb. The little various apps on my phone and ena- if you’re rounding down — which I pitchfork-wielding devils will figure bles you to track your weight loss — If I stand in think you should because, you know, out a way of measuring my height that which I’ve been doing every minute front of a you’re only fooling yourself if you will mean my BMI is still in the over- of the day. There’s one in particular round up — then you should enter weight zone even then. ‘Sorry, Dad, called MyFitnessPal that I stare at mirror in my your height as 5ft 7in.’ She then did but you’re shrinking so fast, you’re almost continuously. Y-fronts, I’m a quick calculation and announced going to have to get down to 11st. No The weird thing is, when I plug my convinced I’m that my ‘true’ BMI is 25.8 kg/m². ‘Still more Fruit Pastilles for you!’ height and current weight into the some way to go,’ she said ruefully. BMI calculator on the NHS website, looking at the The dependence of your BMI Toby Young is associate editor of it says my BMI is 24.7 kg/m², which is Michelin Man on your height, and the fact your The Spectator.

MICHAEL HEATH

60 the spectator | 24 february 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk РЕЛИЗ ГРУППЫ "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS

Spectator Sport slipped his telephone number into speed skater Elise Christie, who has her jacket. Oh no, she thought, don’t had a tricky old week. Three events in Look, I just love the spoil it. Always good to see a lazy Pyeongchang and three times Chris- national stereotype in action. The ski- tie has crashed or been disqualified. It Winter Olympics ing commentary has been a work of was the same four years ago in Sochi. Roger Alton art: ‘There’s a 360 backstroke reverse Maybe the big events are not for you, alley-oop with a 920 variation and Elise. Olympic skating receives mil- forward partial grab incorporating an lions in funding, unlike basketball, octopus and 410 degree double kiss which is played by millions but gets espite the best efforts of this on the rails… oh my word, did you see nothing. Time for a rethink perhaps. column (and the BBC), too that backside triple cork, humongous You may have missed the exploits D many Brits regard the Win- air with a 180 switch-up and a flying of a laconic young man from Colo- ter Olympics with the same enthusi- hand drag on the kink,’ and so on until rado called Red Gerard, who at the asm as they would a traction engine the screen explodes. I haven’t a clue, age of 17 picked up the snowboard rally or a village fête. Well you are so not a clue, what Ed Leigh is on about. slopestyle gold with a breathtaking wrong, people. Admittedly you can Spare a thought for America’s run that took him from last to first. get fed up with the BBC TV break- über-broadcaster Katie Couric, who When it became clear he had won, he fast presenters nattering away about has come in for some heavy social exclaimed ‘Holy fuck’ live on air, like how they are going off after the show media stick after claiming that the rea- any self-respecting 17-year-old. That to watch the Nordic combined, as if son the Dutch are so good at skating morning he had slept through his they really believe we believe them. is because they use their iced canals alarm after staying up binge- watching And when you find yourself in the to travel about in winter. When some Brooklyn Nine-Nine on Netflix. His small hours, like me, watching the humourless tweeters pointed out that mate woke him up, lent him a coat and curling mixed doubles or listening to the Dutch, like everyone else, use they shot off to the slopes. That strikes ice hockey commentary on the radio bikes, cars or public transport to get me as just about the most snowboardy you are forced to question whether about, Katie was quick to put out a full thing ever. your life has gone seriously wrong 100-carat, château-bottled apology. As for the women’s curling, the somewhere. But hey, they are only on Pity. Have a look at any Brue- lovely Eve Muirhead has been press- every four years and there’s plenty of In the studio, gel winter painting and they are full ing on, and good for her, though reasons to love these Games. Chemmy of Dutch peasants skating along the quite how closely she is related to In the studio, Chemmy Alcott, the canals, their arms niftily held behind in the Duchess of Cambridge I think we former British champion skier, has Alcott has best speed-skating style. I wish Katie should be told. been the star. She has been there, been the star. had stuck to her guns, and thrown in done that and worn the catsuit, and She has been a couple of remarks about clogs, can- astly: bless Pep Guardiola. As talks about the sport with great wit there, done nabis cafés and the red light district. L if he couldn’t get more godlike, and authority. She told a wonder- One person who should spend after Wigan we now know he steams ful story about meeting her idol, the that and worn a bit more time on iced-up canals is in when he needs to steam in. And seedy Italian Alberto Tomba, and he the catsuit Britain’s very own triple-gold-hope hundreds of managers never do that.

DEAR MARY YOUR PROBLEMS SOLVED

flowers etc. They need meeting dinner in the evening. Sometimes participate in the full event. You off trains and taking to the station my friends reply that they’d love should not take the unavailability and the whole enterprise causes to come shooting but are already personally. Desirable people need great stress when one is reeling busy in the evening. I don’t want to be booked for this sort of thing from shock and exhaustion. to fall out with them but find many months in advance. Others — Name and address withheld this behaviour difficult. Am I in your position are happy to bulk unreasonable to find this picking out the numbers at dinner with A. You can kindly discourage the and choosing irritating and, if not, non-shooting guests. second division by responding to how best to nip it in the bud? Q. Obviously one is delighted their overtures with an insistence — Name and address withheld Q. May I pass on a tip to readers? to have visits from close friends that you know it would accelerate This year my wife and I decided and family when one’s spouse is the recovery of the patient far more A. You are not unreasonable to give up complaining for Lent. ailing, but how does one politely if he were able to look forward to to find it irritating but if you So far it is working very well. We deter those in what might be visiting them in their own homes. especially want them to ‘shoot and fine ourselves £1 each time we called the second division who, Say ‘Let’s wait till the weather is stay’ then you are unreasonable in lapse, and we compete with each mindful of the Bible’s teaching, better and he is feeling stronger.’ failing to decree that if they can’t other with two separate jam jars are intent on visiting the sick, This should put them off, but they come to the dinner, they can’t come of coins sitting in the kitchen to when the sick and his wife would will still feel they have discharged at all. Next year give adequate signal our rival success rates. rather be left alone and only wish their responsibility. notice of your dates. If you still — R.O., Pimlico for supportive emails promising have leavers, weed them out by thoughts and prayers? Visitors Q. My wife and I are lucky telling them you will ask them A. Thank you for sharing this require feeding and watering, enough to be able to invite guests again next year and hope that by tip. There is no need to wait for which entails shopping trips and shooting at home each year. We the time the date comes round they Lent next year. Negative-thinking general labour in the form of generally invite them to shoot will have the evening free, but for readers will find benefit in tidying the house and getting in during the day followed by this year you need those who can following your lead immediately. the spectator | 24 february 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk 61 РЕЛИЗ ГРУППЫ "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS LIFE Food side Jeremy Corbyn, wholeheartedly Adult novel inspired by #MeToo — support. I have cow ennui, and cow has swept the soft porn out, built a Poor cows fatigue. I am, essentially, cowed. steakhouse on the ashes of tits, and Even so, I am excited because named it for herself. From here, she Tanya Gold Sophie’s used to be the Moulin Cin- awaits the men with clean socks. ema, which showed soft pornography It is two pale caverns, separated by and, for some reason, Carry On films. a small staircase; the second holds an Is that what fans of soft pornography open kitchen and the beginnings of liked to watch when they were sated? an oven. I would have liked to have Bernard Bresslaw looking sad? Was seen some wreckage of the Moulin, that their cinema verité, their recogni- if only to gloat on its passing — some tion? I am not sorry that the Moulin Carry On film posters, a thong with Cinema has closed but sometimes any- historical significance, possibly Karl thing feels more palatable than what Marx’s thong (he was certainly a slut, Soho has become, which is blocks of and his maid could cry #MeToo from ophie’s lives in an old porno- flats for men seeking danger, even as her grave, and Jenny Marx could cry graphic cinema at the south they make Soho undangerous. (Even #MeTooToo) — but there is nothing. Send of Great Windmill Street, the Colony Room Club has fallen.) The interior is another tedious Soho. It is opposite McDonald’s and There are also shops with one pair homage to the Conran Shop and the the Windmill International (‘Prob- of clean socks in the window, presum- wankers who go there (technically ably the most exciting mens club in ably for the men looking for danger speaking, the other wankers): white the world [if you don’t mind paying but finding clean socks instead. They walls, dark floors, blue velvet sofas. women to expose their breasts when should have stayed in Surbiton but There is nothing to offend, and noth- they might do it for nothing if you They forced instead they forced the scumbags out ing to love. One day I expect to dis- were charming]’). Is it so exciting that the scumbags of Soho, using mortgage brokers as cover that London has become a the patrons do not care that they have out of Soho, brooms, and that is that. The under- single hotel with ten million identical been given a semi- consensual sexual using mortgage belly has no underbelly. I have looked. bedrooms, all centrally controlled by experience but denied an apostro- So Sophie — a woman called Richard Caring: but I am writing one- phe? It is also pleasingly close to the brokers as Sophie Bathgate, who sounds like the sentence pitches for novels I am too venue of the Second Congress of the brooms plucky orphan heroine of a Young lazy to type, and I must stop. Communist League, which took place The food does not raise Sophie’s. in 1847, and prompted the commis- It is cow, hot, in parts, and expensive sion of the Communist Manifesto, — sirloin, rump, châteaubriand. The and all on the first floor of the Red staff do their best in the almost-empty Lion pub which is now a cocktail bar cavern but it simply doesn’t taste very called Be At One. Quite so. good, and who pays £120 for lunch Sophie’s is a steak house because it for two (without wine) to sit in a for- is now the fashion to eat cow by mass. I mer porn cinema and eat bad food? don’t know why and assume it is a kind The men in socks? They came to of machismo; cows are bigger than Soho by mistake; perhaps they will ducks. It is the third Sophie’s — the come here too. first is in Chelsea — and the second, in Covent Garden, closed recently, possi- Sophie’s, 42-44 Great Windmill Street, bly due to cow terrorists who I, along- ‘Today’s reading is the parable of the fully vetted Samaritan.’ London W1D 7NB.

MIND YOUR LANGUAGE Borislike allusions In Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, about Thomas Babington ways: by reinforcing a point Bertie is moved to reward his Macaulay as a little boy having or undermining its apparent inestimable valet for solving the hot coffee spilt on his legs and meaning. unsolvable. Before requesting responding to his hostess’s So, when in the speech, the sacrifice of the Alpine hat solicitous enquiry with the words: Mr Johnson mentioned that Bertie had recently been I waved to Miriam Gross and ‘Thank you, madam, the agony is Mrs May’s ‘Lancaster House sporting, ‘he coughed that sheep- swapped a cheery word with abated.’ It’s in Trevelyan’s Life. and Florence speeches — which like cough of his’. And there it Lord Trimble in the lift. As for When Mr Johnson spoke of now have the lapidary status was in the Foreign Secretary’s the speech, its language was not the British diaspora as ‘points of the codes of Hammurabi or speech last week. EU integration simply a pile of lexical meanings, of light scattered across an Moses’, he invoked a remark that deepened, he said, ‘in spite of but also a series of implicit intermittently darkening globe’ James Boswell recorded Samuel sheeplike coughs of protest references. Civilised language is he necessarily invoked George Johnson making in 1775: ‘In from the UK’. allusive. Hence the Wodehouse. H.W. Bush’s inaugural address lapidary inscriptions a man is not I enjoyed the social side of Mr Johnson has read a lot as president in 1989: ‘I have upon oath.’ squeezing myself into a chair more than Wodehouse. He spoken of a Thousand Points Thus we have the indelible beside my husband for Boris mentioned that, among some of Light, of all the community moderated by the revocable: it’s Johnson’s historic peroration, who fear Brexit, ‘the feelings are organisations that are spread a case of having your cake and within sight of the strangely abating with time’. To use abate like stars throughout the Nation, eating it. scaffolded tower of Big Ben. here is to invoke the anecdote doing good.’ Allusion cuts both — Dot Wordsworth

62 the spectator | 24 february 2018 | www.spectator.co.uk РЕЛИЗ ГРУППЫ "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS

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