Culture

The Templeton Prize is known to lots of people from Richard Dawkins’ intemperate denunciation of it in The God Delusion in which it features as the unspeakable temptation for scientists to do business with the God lobby. But having been to the ceremony last night in which it was awarded to the former Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks – who, unusually for a winner, featured, mike in hand, in a performance of a hymn to celebrate Israel by the Shabbaton choir – I’m still at a bit of a loss as to what it’s about. The billing is that it ‘honours a living person who has made an exceptional contribution to

Apologies for the lack of blogs – I’ve been on jury duty for two weeks. Hang the bastard, regardless of the evidence, was my watchword as jury foreman. Anyway, normal service will soon be resumed. In the interim, let me give the few of you who care about football my take on the England team at present, and its chances in France next month. I was of course delighted we beat the hideous, cheating, Turks – and in the end with something to spare. But what we learned was this: Playing Jamie Vardy on the wing is stupid. Put him in the centre with Harry Kane. So that means some

In England after the Norman Conquest the worst insults you could throw were class insults. So long has feudal prejudice survived that we unconsciously echo the Anglo-Norman aristocracy when we use ‘villainous’ (from villien) and ‘churlish’ (from ‘churl’). The churl of the 1300s might have reflected that, however miserable his life, it was not his fault that he had been born into servitude. His suffering was the result of an unjust society not a real reflection of his worth. No one shouts ‘churl’ or ‘rustic’ or ‘villien’ today.  We live in a meritocratic country and feudalism is long gone except for a few gaudy spectacles around the monarch. So they

I hate Facebook, mostly because it’s full of other people’s happiness. I appreciate this makes me a terrible person, but it’s a bit like being at the wedding of a contemporary whose life has panned out perfectly, leaving you to reflect on your own inadequacies and failures. I know half the happy people on Facebook are probably dying inside, but that’s no consolation. I’ve long suspected that the site is terrible for people’s mental health, but it’s probably also terrible for the political process, too, helping to drive polarisation, especially in the United States. It’s something that people really don’t appreciate the danger of. Normal decent people who would be horrified

I must admit to snigger-spitting my Sugar Smacks recently as I read an interview with Eddie Izzard in the Times. (Odd, because he’s never made me laugh before.) He spoke thus: ‘I would have been a soldier if I’d knew which war I’d have to fight. I was ready to apply but when you join the armed forces you fight where you’re sent. I parked the idea.’ Later on in the interview he opines – and Izzard is a proper Opiner, whereas most of us just say things – ‘Fears are there to be conquered. I’ve gone from playing the streets of London to the Hollywood Bowl. But the biggest thing

The RSPCA over the last decade has – many would say – lost its way, bogged down in a mess of private prosecutions against honest members of the public instead of focusing on real animal welfare issues. But could the charity be about to do a U-turn? In an interview with the Telegraph their new chief executive, Jeremy Cooper, has admitted that the charity has become too political in recent years, accepting that they have ‘made mistakes in the past’, including over the badger cull and in its prosecution of hunts, and says it is ‘very unlikely’ that the charity will bring any private prosecutions against hunts in future. If the RSPCA

The Boleyn Ground, commonly known as Upton Park, has been home to West Ham United since 1904. It stands on Green Street, a road in London that bisects the parishes of East and West Ham. With its slightly tacky fortress-inspired design, it has become a symbol of East London’s resilience against the tide of gentrification and development. Until this summer, that is. West Ham will today play their final match at the Boleyn Ground, because the stadium is due to be bulldozed in order to make way for a trendy block of flats.  Developers are busy drawing up plans for the property, which they purchased in February 2014. Their original designs – which

When I got an email from the Evening Standard’s education correspondent at 06.29am yesterday I had no idea that my life was about to turn to shit. She had just read an interview I’d done for a magazine called Schools Week in which, among other things, I said that I was standing down as chief executive of the group of free schools I’ve helped set up. She wanted to talk to me about why I’d made this decision. At that point, I made a terrible mistake. I asked if I could send her an email explaining why I was stepping down rather than talk to her in person. The reason

[audioplayer src=”http://feeds.soundcloud.com/stream/262486539-the-spectator-podcast-erdogans-europe.mp3″ title=”Roger Alton and Nick Hilton discuss Leicester’s title win” startat=1063] Listen [/audioplayer] Jean-Philippe Toussaint, in his recent book Football, observes that the sport is ‘measured and appreciated’ in the imagination. Toussaint, an intellectually fanatical supporter of the Belgian national team, is used to failure. Indeed, he is an acolyte of the view that football support is built on failure. After all, aren’t the grown men and women on the terraces of English stadia simply not good enough for a place on the pitch? Am I not, in writing passionately about football, merely replacing the frustration of not being the world-class midfielder that I was born to be? Leicester City are living

I was interested to read recently that Her Majesty The Queen’s party planner, Lady Elizabeth Anson, makes a point of putting boring guests together as ‘They don’t realise they’re the bores, and they’re happy.’ Knowing what passes for sparkling wit among the English aristocracy, this did make me chuckle – the social Siberians are probably the interesting ones, and the rest of the guests are too busy boring on about hunting and shooting to get it. For what is a bore? – nothing more than someone we personally find uninteresting. But what if we’re boring, and we just don’t get them? It brought to mind the old torch song –

Louis Theroux’s latest documentary on alcoholism confirms the fact that he has become an interesting broadcaster. He has grown up. This was already clear from his last couple of films from America, on a secure mental hospital, and on transgender children. This might sound excessive, but he has become capable of expressing a more nuanced humanity than the average television journalist. In his callow youth he was fun to watch, but overdid the sneering ironic act. He kept a straight face in order to allow idiots to expose themselves. Such an approach is tainted by a sort of self-righteousness: let’s look down on these ridiculous human specimens. Then he began

Every week, The Spectator podcast brings together a variety of people to discuss politics, culture and current affairs. Presented by Isabel Hardman, The Spectator’s assistant editor, each episode focusses on three separate topics. Past guests have included everyone from doctors to dominatrixes, cab drivers to Cabinet ministers. To join some of the best British journalists, critics and authors discussing an intelligent and entertaining mix of stories, you can subscribe to our free podcast in a number of different ways. Episodes will then automatically download to your computer, phone or tablet. To subscribe using iTunes, click here. Alternatively, you can find our RSS feed here. The following links will allow you to stream episodes through our apps for iPhone, iPad or

Yay – Izzy Christiansen! Yay – Beth Mead! I daresay you were as thrilled as I was to see that these two women had been named as, respectively, PFA Women’s Players’ Player of the Year and PFA Women’s Young Player of the Year. Izzy plays for Manchester City, Beth for Sun’lan. You have never heard of either of them. You will never see them play ever. Both are worse at football than the worst player your club has ever employed. Yes, worse than Seth Johnson. Worse than Ade Akinbiyi. And yet they were given equal billing by the BBC at the Professional Footballers’ Association awards with Riyad Mahrez and Dele Alli. I have nothing

In last Saturday’s Daily Telegraph, I mentioned how outside candidates for civil service and public appointments feel ill-used by the system. My piece prompted more correspondents. One tells me that little effort was made, when he applied for a permanent secretaryship, to give him the information about the post which was available to insiders but not to people like him. The question on which he had five minutes to speak was ‘The Secretary of State has set out a number of clear priorities for the Department, covering safety and wellbeing of children, educational excellence and preparing young people for adult life; as well as the equalities agenda. How would you lead