Tabla de contenidos para 6 December 2025 en The Spectator

Last week, our political editor, Tim Shipman, revealed a recent meeting between Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton, the Chief of the Defence Staff, and the three heads of the services to discuss the defence investment plan. This plan governs the day-to-day armed forces’ budgets and follows the recent Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR), which sets our military aims as a nation. The chiefs agreed to write an unprecedented letter to John Healey, the Defence Secretary, explaining that the SDSR couldn’t be delivered without the requisite funding. That money was not forthcoming in the Budget, so they are forced to contemplate a bleak alternative: immediate cuts to both our forces and ambitions. These looming defence cuts could not come at a worse time. The Prime Minister knows this. In…

I was in Singapore last week, a city that hums with energy. It feels efficient, cosmopolitan and yet personal – if you know where to look. My schedule was packed, but in the best way. First stop: Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan’s chair and CEO, in conversation about the state of the world. Jamie was vintage Jamie – articulate, forthright, refreshingly unscripted. In a world drowning in platitudes, his candour was invigorating. He spoke about resilience and leadership that doesn’t flinch when the winds change. Focus on the mindset, not just the markets, he said. Then came the Bloomberg New Economy Forum. I sat on a panel about global debt sustainability, a topic that sounds dry until you realise it touches everything: growth, inequality, geopolitics. The discussion was lively, but what I…

Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have gone into bunker mode. The pair – whose political fortunes are so tightly bound – have been forced all week to defend the Chancellor’s claims at last week’s Budget that there is a black hole in the country’s finances. Mendacity soon gave way to something closer to bewilderment. Neither can grasp why they are being called out for their omissions and dishonest briefings – always more fiction than fiscal – about the state of the economy. Their new argument is this: once you factor in the Budget’s own measures – welfare increases, the U-turn on winter fuel payments and the desire to increase headroom – a hole did indeed appear. They insist they had no choice. What both fail to understand, however, is that…

Too much information. That’s what you’re about to get. I wouldn’t read another line if I were you. I will be talking, at length, about my prostate and, by extension, my old fella and why I will not let the medical clergy anywhere near either of them, not the private medics or the chaotic maniacs who work for the NHS. I don’t mind whipping it out for you, though – and so this is an article which is both repulsive in its personal revelatory details and will also, if anyone takes it seriously, result in 230 premature deaths over the next decade or something. I don’t think it’s going to get me on the shortlist for the Orwell prize, then. But telling unpopular truths hasn’t worked very well either, so…

For perhaps the first time in my life I have experienced ‘fomo’ – fear of missing out. It is strange to feel this teenage sentiment now I am safely in my forties, and even odder that it should occur in relation to a party political conference in Liverpool. Yet as I sat watching videos from Your Party’s first conference this week, there was no way to avoid the feeling that I had missed out on something big – a feeling only intensified by the likelihood that Your Party’s first conference will also be its last. It pains me that I should have missed out on the opportunity to see some of this week’s events in person – beginning with the fact that party founders Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana fell…

I’m committed this winter to too many expensive building projects at once. As the balloon of my bank balance drifts ever lower towards the waves, and the crests of red ink lick the wicker of my basket, I’ve realised something has to be thrown out. Thus it was that last week I found myself in London’s Hatton Garden. Tucked into my little knapsack was my passport and a couple of one-ounce mini bars of gold I had bought after the last banking crisis, and stored in an old kettle. It was late afternoon, and dark. Hatton Garden is a strange street, lined with jewellers and bullion dealers, and peopled by all types – customers and security guards, lovers window-shopping for engagement rings, plump foreign gentlemen padding around like small bears…

A Life in Lettersby John Updike, edited by James SchiffHamish Hamilton, £40, pp. 880 When John Updike died in 2009, aged 76, he left behind the last great paper trail. Novelist, short story writer, poet, essayist and art critic, he published with unstoppable fluidity in every genre. The sheer tonnage of his 60-odd books has now been augmented by A Life in Letters, a comparatively small sampling of the 25,000 or so epistles he sent out over the course of his life. This unwieldy volume serves up about 700 of them. I say he wrote with unstoppable fluidity (it was David Foster Wallace who dangled the question ‘Has the son of a bitch ever had one unpublished thought?’), but I should add that the letters and postcards (Updike loved a…

Schott’s Significaby Ben SchottMichael Joseph, £22, pp. 304 Where might you observe both form policing and labour pains? What’s the difference at a casino between a flea, a vulture and a fish? Who talks about plate spinning, monkey branching and hard nexting? Why would a devotee of competitive eating (otherwise known as a gurgitator) exploit a manual typewriter yet shun the Roman method? Should you worry if a sommelier tells a colleague you are a whale and ready to drop the hammer? If a doctor identifies you as a Honda, is that praise or disapproval; and how should you feel when prescribed a therapeutic wait? This handsomely produced volume, a field guide to the esoteric languages of different professions and tribes, provides answers to all these questions and many more.…

Blitz: The Club that Created the 80sby Robert Elms Faber, £20, pp. 304 It is hard to write the history of a subculture without upsetting people. Events were either significant or inconsequential depending on who was there, which leads to absurdities. When Jon Savage wrote England’s Dreaming, his history of punk, Jenny Turner berated him in the London Review of Books for being ‘a bit of a Sex Pistols snob’. Ironically, the most exclusive British subculture of them all seems to have escaped infighting over who or what mattered, possibly because so few people were part of it. The Blitz, Steve Strange and Rusty Egan’s much mythologised early 1980s nightclub, had a brutally selective door policy. Strange let hardly anyone in, which must have made Robert Elms’s task of researching…

The playwright Peter Nichols created a character based on Tom Stoppard. Miles Whittier. On a car journey across London, I once asked Peter why he was so irked by Stoppard. Thelma, his wife, answered for him: ‘He uses all the oxygen.’ But Stoppard was miles wittier. Asked by a punter, after the New York first night of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, what his play was about, he replied: ‘It’s about to earn me a great deal of money.’ Think about it: the only person capable of preserving that bon mot was the playwright himself. He knew how funny he was. Later, he was more careful. Asked by Melvyn Bragg on Start the Week, what the play was about – it was revived with Adrian Scarborough and Simon Russell Beale…

We knew the church would be packed as Shelley had died so young. We knew the church would be freezing, as her funeral fell during the Arctic spell that whitened the bracken and iced over puddles the colour of Dairy Milk. When we drove into Simonsbath just after lunchtime, the sun was only grazing the hilltops, leaving valleys in deep shadows. We’d allowed plenty of time, but the lanes were already crammed with vehicles. My husband and I had intended to stand at the back of St Luke’s so as not to take up precious places, but thanks to Ivo’s near-village-elder status we were ordered into the emergency seating in the chancel. This gave me the opportunity to study the fine stained-glass window, added in remembrance of local men who…

Jamie ‘Jimmy’ Graham, co-proprietor with Carlos de Haan of Brunswick Fine Wines in Brighton, is one of my oldest chums. We cut our vinous teeth at Berry Bros decades ago, we live on the same street in Skid Row-on-Sea and, as always, we will be drowning our considerable sorrows together on Christmas Day. I’ve long badgered Jamie to run an offer here and, over several homemade Quarante Quatres (my new favourite tipple), he finally succumbed. I didn’t ask him because he’s a mate – almost everyone who runs offers here is a mate, the wine trade is like that – I asked him because the wines Brunswick peddle are so good and I wanted you to share the joy. The 2024 Churchill’s Estate Grafite Branco (1) from the Douro Valley…

John Studzinski, who writes this week’s Diary on p7, is a philanthropist and investment banker, who runs the firm PIMCO. Max Jeffery, The Spectator’s online commissioning editor, heads to Somerset to meet the man behind the ‘Crewkerne Gazette’ on p22. Adam Begley reviews a ‘remarkable’ new collection of John Updike’s letters on p28. Adam is a book critic and biographer of Updike. Samantha Ellis, who reviews Ella Risbridger’s celebration of romantic fiction on p32, is a playwright and the author of How to Be a Heroine. The poet Craig Raine remembers Tom Stoppard, who died last week at the age of 88, on p46.…

It is easy to criticise the Budget. The process was a chaotic mess. For many on the right, Rachel Reeves’s £26 billion tax raid to placate Labour MPs was a form of madness as well as badness. But good politics means understanding your opponents. One former No. 10 Tory thinks there was method in the madness: ‘It totally makes sense for Labour to move to the left.’ Nearly half of those who voted Labour last year would not vote for the party today. The number of voters fleeing Labour to the right – to Reform or the Tories – has remained steady since January at between 13 and 16 per cent, or one in seven of their 2024 voter base. Two-thirds of those votes have been lost to Reform. However,…

I was considerably perplexed for a long timeas to how they ensured each can contained a uniform amount. And what was the measurement?Gigglebytes? Guffaws? Microsnorts? I assumed there was a warehouse or depotin HaHa-on-the-Hill or Chucklington or some peripheral spot: HowlMart! orLarfs-R-Us! in dayglo on the side, but worried about the clowns who manned itbeing drenched by their backfiring buttonholes. How could they possibly handle bulk ordersin those absolutely massive shoes?…

The Pope is visiting Lebanon and Turkey. Will anyone be raising the vexed question of the Latin mass and sacraments with him and asking him exactly why it is so vexed? Though Jesus spoke Aramaic, the New Testament first appeared in Greek in the 1st century AD because that was the common language of the Mediterranean. It remained the language of the liturgy until Pope Damasus I (d. AD 384) invited St Jerome to translate the whole Bible into Latin (the Vulgate: vulgatus, ‘widely used, common’). The Roman empire collapsed in the 5th century AD and local languages started replacing Latin, but the Roman liturgy remained standard in western Europe. It was not until 1546 that the Vulgate was declared the inspired word of God. Wherever Christianity was introduced, there…

Many years ago, and well retired, I was working in my study when the phone rang and a voice said: ‘This is Tom Stoppard. David West put me on to you.’ West was professor of Latin at Newcastle University and Tom called him when he had queries about Latin. But he had a question about the ancient Greeks which David could not answer, so he suggested Tom try me. I have no memory of what the question was, but my answer must at least have satisfied him because he continued to throw the odd leg-break my way. To give some idea of his range of interests, on one occasion he became interested in the Greek perfect tense. He had done Latin and some Greek at his school in Yorkshire. In…

Finally, thankfully, the global warming craze is dying out. To paraphrase Monty Python, the climate parrot may still be nailed to its perch at the recent Cop summit in Belem, Brazil – or at Harvard and on CNN – but elsewhere it’s dead. It’s gone to meet its maker, kicked the bucket, shuffled off this mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. By failing to secure new pledges for a cut in fossil fuels, Cop achieved less than nothing. The venue caught fire, the air conditioning malfunctioned – and delegates were told on arrival not to flush toilet paper. Bill Gates’s recent apologia, in which he conceded that global warming ‘will not lead to humanity’s demise’ after he closed the policy and advocacy office of his…

Tried and tested Sir: Your otherwise excellent leading article opposing proposed restrictions on jury trials (‘Judge not’, 29 November) misses two important points against the proposals. First, one can go much further than pointing to 3,000 days of unused capacity. The capacity itself can be expanded quite readily. It was once normal for courts to sit on Saturdays. Moreover, the court day once started at 9 a.m. and, after a break for supper, could go on well into the late evening – the ‘black cap at midnight’ is not a myth. The modern court day is 10.30 to 4.30, with an hour for lunch. A 9.30 to 5.30 day would add another 40 per cent capacity. Including Saturdays would increase capacity by 68 per cent. Second, a review is needed…

Holbein: Renaissance Masterby Elizabeth GoldringPaul Mellon Centre, £40, pp. 424 On the evening of 6 May 1527, Henry VIII entertained an embassy from France at a lavish party in Greenwich. The festivities took place in a banqueting house and a theatre, both built for the occasion. At the feast’s end, Henry led his guests out through a great archway. After a moment, he invited the French to turn around and look at a painting which hung behind them. It was a vast panorama of the 1513 siege of Thérouanne – ‘very connyngly wrought’, a chronicler reported. As Henry knew, the siege was a sour memory for his guests. Henry himself, in league with Maximilian I, the Holy Roman Emperor, had routed them there. So great had been their humiliation that…

In Love with Love: The Persistence and Joy of Romantic Fictionby Ella RisbridgerHodder & Stoughton, £16.99, pp. 288 ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged that any essay about Jane Austen... must be in want of a poorly rendered paraphrasing of her most famous opening lines,’ writes Ella Risbridger in this sharp, gleefully obsessive field guide to romantic fiction. For her, Austen is the genre’s ‘mother’, and she crisply notes that while George Eliot disparaged ‘silly novels by lady novelists’, ‘she does appear to have read a lot of them’. Risbridger is the author of two cook books, including the award-winning Midnight Chicken (and Other Recipes Worth Living For); a children’s novel, The Secret Detectives; and the editor of anthologies of poetry and food writing. She has read a lot of…

The Man Who Sold Honours: The First Cash for Honours Scandalby Stephen BatesIcon, £18.99, pp. 288 Why another book about Maundy Gregory? The spiv who in the 1920s acted as middleman between David Lloyd George and potential peers, baronets and knights – the former desperate for money to fund his campaigns, the latter greedy for status, irrespective of any merit they might have – has been documented extensively. Gregory also features in histories of the period, in studies of the honours system and in countless newspaper and magazine articles. Stephen Bates’s book, which appears to have been published to mark the centenary of the 1925 Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act, adds little to what we already know. Despite other potential candidates, Gregory is the only person ever to have been…

Other People’s Funby Harriet Lane Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £20, pp. 208 Do you have one of those friends who is uncannily conscious of the most subtle signs of insincerity; who quietly witnesses selfish and narcissistic behaviour and drily expresses their observations with devastating wit in a few well-chosen words? Well, Harriet Lane is like that friend, and you don’t have to know her to enjoy her deliciously bitchy awareness of fakery. Her first novel, Alys Always (2012), told the story of a silently sour sub-editor who seizes her chance to better her lot through a tragedy. She inveigles her way into the life of a recently bereaved male writer and exploits the situation to enjoy new-found power and material benefits. A second novel, Her (2014), was a simmering tale of…

Royal Academy of Music Soloists Ensemble/Berman; Il Giardino Armonico/AntoniniWigmore Hall Symphonies of John WhiteSt Mary-at-Hill Explore Ensemble & ExaudiMilton Court Concert Hall Bruckner at the Wigmore Hall. Yes, you heard right: a Bruckner symphony – his second: usually performed by 80-odd musicians – on a stage scarcely larger than my bedroom. How? Welcome to Anthony Payne’s very smart 2013 chamber arrangement. Bruckner on Ozempic. Composition is an Alice in Wonderland activity. A key duty is mastering how to make things bigger and smaller, how to stretch and compress and bend – time and space and sound. Bruckner understood this. If you know anything about his symphonies, it’s that they’re vast – and that critics are mandated to compare them to cathedrals or mountain ranges. What survives after such an extreme…

The smashed pick-up truck was delivered back to us after I burst into tears and began wailing at the recovery man. When all else fails, men usually cave in to what I like to call tear pressure. Their brains scream ‘Make it stop!’ and they’ll do pretty much anything. The tears gushed out of my eyes very easily as I stood in that recovery yard two days after the builder boyfriend had been hit head-on by a driver speeding down the wrong side of the road who smashed into him at such force that he took apart the entire driver’s side and undercarriage of his Mitsubishi L200. The truck was still on the low loader that had brought it back from the crash site as I stood there demanding its…

Grandmasters do not, as a rule, overlook one-move threats. But when they do, there is a good chance that a retreating knight is the culprit. Take the 1956 Candidates tournament, where Tigran Petrosian (a future world champion), attained an overwhelming strategic advantage as his opponent David Bronstein shuffled his knight back and forth, waiting for the axe to fall. One of these jumps just happened to attack Petrosian’s queen, who failed to notice and moved a different piece forward. Bronstein’s knight moved back again, snapping off the queen, and Petrosian resigned. The curse of the cavalry claimed yet another victim in the semi-final of the Fide World Cup in Goa. The young Russian grandmaster Andrey Esipenko was two pawns to the good against China’s Wei Yi in their second rapid…

On Tuesday, David Lammy announced in parliament that a bill would be included in the next King’s Speech restricting the right to trial by jury in England and Wales to those accused of serious crimes, such as murder, rape and manslaughter. Lesser crimes, he said, would be dealt with either by magistrates or by a new tier of jury-less courts. The point of the reforms is to address the delays and backlogs in the courts, with the Justice Secretary pointing out that the Crown Courts are facing a backlog of 80,000 cases. I’m opposed to this, obviously, because jury trials have been a bulwark of English liberty for 800 years. Juries are more likely to acquit than magistrates or judges across the piece, but that’s particularly true of speech offences.…

Q. My godfather, who has managed to get me a valuable internship in the Far East, has also sent me a business-class ticket to fly out there in the new year. I have seen how much the ticket costs (£3,800) and would much prefer to cash it in, go economy (£694) and spend the balance when I am there. But would it be rude to suggest this? – Name and address withheld A. First check with your godfather that he meant to buy you a business-class ticket – his secretary may have done it in error. Then offer to go economy. If he refuses, then make the most of the opportunity, but don’t try to cash the ticket in as the airline’s computer is likely to inform him of the…

‘Do you know what vibe coding is, darling?’ I asked my husband. ‘What do you take me for?’ he replied. ‘Or 67?’ ‘Ah, I do know that the Prime Minister had to apologise for leading a classroom of little children in a series of hand moves to that one. But I’ve no idea what it means.’ Thus was my suspicion confirmed that most ‘words of the year’ are far from general concern. Vibe coding, some sort of AI software development, is Collins Dictionary’s new Word of the Year; 67 (pronounced ‘six seven’), which has no agreed meaning, is Dictionary.com’s. To me, a far more interesting word is fudge. It is not new, but its entry in the Oxford English Dictionary was revised this year. The fudge we might get in…

Sir Tom Stoppard, who died last week, never wrote a memoir, but he did sort of speak one. Just over ten years ago, he told me that he and his new wife, Sabrina Guinness, had become tenants of an old rectory in Dorset. I asked him if he would therefore speak as guest of honour at the AGM of the Rectory Society, a fan club for existing and former clergy houses which I invented in 2005. The AGM always takes place in a central London church, and in 2015, the year I invited Tom, it was held in the Queen’s Chapel beside St James’s Palace. Beyond expressing a tepid wish that speakers make some small reference to the society and its purposes, I never specify their subject. Years before, I…

Watching David Dimbleby watching the royal family, I am instantly reminded of the BBC’s other royal David. It is pure Attenborough as he examines the exotic plumage and rituals of rex Windsorianus in its natural habitat. In this week’s first episode of What’s the Monarchy For?, a three-part study of the sovereign for BBC1, Dimbleby examines royal power, engagingly prodding and poking fun at both sides. However, it ends as it starts, with our host still scratching his head. Perhaps we will have an answer by the end of the final episode. For those who do not have three hours to spare, however, I would point to the scene on Windsor high street this week as a very simple answer to Dimbleby’s question. I happened to be there, talking to…

In August, The Spectator began to investigate allegations that Harry Shukman, a 33-year-old freelance journalist, had used a fake British passport as part of a two-year undercover investigation into the far-right in Britain which was sponsored by Hope Not Hate. We published an article about this in our 6 September issue titled: ‘Dirty tricks: the sinister tactics of Hope Not Hate.’ As a result of correspondence from their lawyers, we now know the passport was not ‘fake’ at all: the true story is even more interesting. Shukman’s 12-month undercover investigation led to a series of articles in the Guardian, a documentary broadcast by Channel 4 and a book published by Penguin in May called Year of the Rat. The targets of his work ranged from activists in the established British…

Many mansions Does a two-bedroom flat worth £2 million deserve to be called a ‘mansion’? — The word ‘mansion’ is borrowed from the old French mansion, which means any old house. And so it was in English until the 18th century. It also had associations with a home lived in by a priest. — The first instance of ‘mansion’ being used specifically for a grand home was in 1512, according to the OED. In 1865, the word was being applied to lodging houses in Brighton, while the Westminster Gazette in 1893 defined it as a house with a back staircase. By 1901 blocks of flats in London were being called ‘mansion blocks’. Juries out David Lammy proposed to do away with jury trials for most court cases. What is the…

You’ve probably seen the videos. Kemi Badenoch delivering her Budget response in the form of a rap to a sobbing Rachel Reeves. Keir Starmer as a McDonald’s drive-thru worker. David Lammy as a Spice Girl in a tight dress. Reeves (again) as the Grand High Witch from The Witches. Behind the videos is one man. He runs the Crewkerne Gazette, an online publisher of viral political videos made with artificial intelligence. The ‘Crewkerne Man’ would not give me his name when we met for lunch in Somerset last week. What I can say is that the most important political satirist of the moment is a large guy in his mid-thirties with a ginger beard and glasses; that when he entered the Crooked Swan pub he scanned the room shiftily; and…

‘Banks don’t vote and citizens don’t love them, so they’ll always be the Chancellor’s target of choice,’ I wrote in September when one of this autumn’s many false Budget trails pointed towards a left-pleasing extra surcharge on bank profits. But it didn’t happen: partly because Rachel Reeves was love-bombed by Goldman Sachs chief David Solomon and JPMorgan chairman Jamie Dimon, promising new investment in the UK if she held off; partly because she had evidently figured out that a raid on banks that already pay higher tax rates than in any other major financial centre – many of whose bosses are already packing to move to Dubai – would make them even less eager to help boost growth by lending more to British businesses. Another rumour said Reeves had asked…

Beyond strange, to find myself in this roomful of ghosts!Or whatever’s left when the person’s gone.Where was I when they all slipped out? In life we shared so much, meals, beds, and life was great,Thanks! It really was. Now I don’t know my hosts,Let alone my fellow-guests... But here’s Someone looking round him, clutching two beers,One in each trembling hand – he’s coming this way,Smiling – Is that one for me? I almost shout, Wondered if you’d make it back! And so on...When suddenly it strikes me: this is how I nightlyMove about my own rooms, swaying slightly, Clutching a glass, under the embarrassed eyeOf my cat. Miaow... It’s not what I’d have chosenBut it’s how I live – which isn’t something I can say; Meanwhile my new friend talks…

Earliest Stories: Stories, Novellas, Humoresques, 1880-1882by Anton Chekhov, edited by Rosamund Bartlett and Elena MichajlowskaCherry Orchard Books, £52.99/ £24.99, pp. 488 This book collects 58 pieces of fiction that Anton Chekhov published between the ages of 20 and 22. Many appear in English for the first time. In her introduction, Rosamund Bartlett refers to the material with disarming candour as a ‘wholly unremarkable debut’. Is there ever any point in publishing juvenilia? In his first years as a medical student Anton Pavlovich dashed off these pieces for a few kopecks a line (his father, born a serf, was a bankrupt shopkeeper). Ranging in length from three paragraphs to 76 pages, they appeared under pseudonyms in lowbrow comic magazines that included another Spectator (founded in Moscow in 1881). Unremarkable they may…

The Beast in Me; Stranger Things: Season FiveNetflix The Beast in Me is one of those ‘taut psychological thrillers’ that everyone talks about in the office. This might sound disparaging – as it is, obviously – but I have to admit that, having succumbed in desperation (because, as usual, there is so little else on), I did find the show pretty addictive and unusually satisfying. What makes it stand out is that it doesn’t go for the obvious. Yes, its heroine – played by Claire Danes – is feisty, talented and capable. But she’s also whiny, uptight and really quite unsympathetic, as perhaps screenwriter Gabe Rotter intended when he gave her the weirdly repellant name Aggie Wiggs. Aggie, a Pulitzer Prize winner, has made enough money from washing the dirty…

I’ve decided I need a party trick. This thought occurred to me at a recent dinner party as I watched my mother effortlessly tie a cherry stem into a knot with her tongue. So ensued 20 minutes of entertainment as everyone thought that they too would give it a go. No one succeeded, and my mother remained the undisputed champion. But when the floor was opened to any other demonstrations, I had nothing. My failure to inherit any sort of skill is a bit of mystery since my father also has an arsenal of party tricks. While most of his peers spent their early twenties in clubs and at parties, he was at circus school. He can juggle countless random objects with ease and balance all manner of household items…

It was just a straightforward dinner in the bosom of the House of Lords, talking to members of the Jockey Club. What could possibly go wrong? When I rashly accepted with gay abandon the invitation to speak to them after dinner, I’d forgotten that I’d been quite punchy about the club over the past decade in the Daily Telegraph. Forgotten, that is, until I arrived at the Victoria Tower Gardens gate to the welcoming grunt of: ‘Well, you’ve been bloody rude about us in the past, so let’s see what you’ve got to say for yourself now.’ I could see one of the more senior members of the club was itching to give me a good whack with his walking stick. Fortunately I think they’ve tightened up the rules on…

Comp. 3428 was inspired by Rose Ruane’s Larkin/Shelley mash-up (many thanks to Bill Greenwell for flagging this up): They Oz you up, your Mandyias.They may not mean to, but they do.They give you vast and trunkless legs A sunken shattered visage too. For space reasons I won’t quote the rest but it can be found at spectator.co.uk/ozpoem. You were invited to create a fusion of two poems of your choosing. Some came out more like one poem commenting on another but that was OK. I’m very sorry not to have room for Paul Freeman, D.A. Prince, Elizabeth Conquest, Nick Syrett, Nicholas Lee, Elizabeth Kay and others. The £25 vouchers go to the following. Had we mome raths enough, and time,Your mimsy gimblings were no crime.The Jubjub bird you’d try to…

There’s tetchy, and then there’s Ben Stokes ‘tetchy’ – pulling out his mic and stomping off cursing, or so I’m told, after Jonathan Agnew asked a disobliging question. Admittedly it’s hard not to feel some sympathy for Stokes, an inspirational leader on the pitch who had just seen his team skewered in two days in Perth in one of the most brutal (and thrilling) Ashes Tests in history, and then had to do a live BBC interview. But this was the ever-courteous Aggers, for heaven’s sake, the nearest thing to a secular saint for TMS. There’s no need for a four-letter outburst. He was asking what were standard if faintly troublesome questions about why England were not going to Canberra for a day-night beer match to get a sense of…

Elizabeth II was a god and a commodity: now she is gone it is time for posthumous exploitation. Lilibet’s is a restaurant named for her childhood nickname at 17 Bruton Street, Mayfair, on the site of the house where she was born. It was inevitable that Elizabeth II would eventually get a personal restaurant. Princess Diana ate in the Café Diana – English breakfasts and kebabs – on the Bayswater Road and George VI is the inspiration for the superb Guinea Grill – mostly sausages, or rather it is the sausages I remember – near Lilibet’s. Because that is what the British do to our monarchs and their intimates. We eat them and call it love. But seconds into Lilibet’s – the use of the diminutive is offensive to any…