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10 September, 2023

Boyt with a dead polecat, or as he calls it, lunch. Katherine Haddon/AFP/Getty

The man who ate sperm whale for Christmas

Arthur Boyt, who has died aged 83, was Britain’s foremost “roadkill enthusiast”, says The Times. His favourite snack was a badger ham sandwich, but he was also partial to “weasel, crow, hedgehog, squirrel, bat and otter”. Dog, too – as long as he couldn’t locate the owner. “Labrador is rather special,” he said. “It has a pleasant taste and flavour that is a bit like lamb.” He was less impressed by rat (too bland) and fox (a “pungent taste” of diesel and onions). Cats, he found, “could be improved with a spoonful of redcurrant jelly”. Like most of us, he “enjoyed a special dish at Christmas”. One year it was a sperm whale that had washed up on the nearby Cornish coast; another year it was dolphin. “As with all meat,” he said, “you just make sure you cook it long and hot enough to kill any bugs.”

Boyt first began eating roadkill aged 13, after finding a dead pheasant while cycling through Windsor Great Park. He developed a love for it because he knew the animals hadn’t been purposely killed, something he was vehemently against. (He never bought meat from the shops.) His second wife, a vegetarian, wasn’t wild about his habit. “Sometimes I use her car,” he said, “and forget that I’ve left a badger in it.” Nor were his employers. When, in retirement, he drove the school bus for Haberdashers’ Aske’s, the parents complained about the stench from a dead fox somewhere in the vehicle. Boyt’s other great passion was orienteering – in 2009, he won bronze at an orienteering competition in Australia. “He celebrated by eating a wallaby, a possum and a parrot.”

Dissolving social barriers. Lorado/Getty

The case for reintroducing national service

In recent weeks, says Gavin Rice in The Critic, Commons leader Penny Mordaunt has backed a recommendation to introduce a “Great British National Service”, while Tory MP Danny Kruger has suggested a compulsory one-year period of service on local councils. Earlier this year, the political philosopher Adrian Pabst voiced his support for a “national civic service”. They may be on to something. Some 57% of Britons are supportive, most believing it should have some combination of military and civil elements. There are plenty of successful international examples to follow, from France’s Service National Universel to full-on military service in Switzerland and Israel.

Understandably, in Britain there are plenty of dissenters. They argue that what younger folk here lack is material: housing is laughably expensive, incomes are stagnant, and young workers shoulder a higher share of the tax burden than wealthy homeowners. Consumer culture has also created social silos in which any sense of collective identity is eroded by the cult of individualism. It’s no surprise, given all this, that younger people are far less likely to feel “patriotic” than their older peers. National service may not solve this overnight. But it can certainly help dissolve social barriers by throwing together people from all corners of society. With reasonable compensation, young people could enter higher education or work with meaningful savings. And if older people can be persuaded to foot the bill, it may even make our aimless youth feel warmer towards the society they belong to. “It’s worth a shot.”

THE ESTATE Keiss Castle is the centrepiece of this coastal estate near John O’Groats in northeast Scotland. Spread across four floors and 11,300 sq ft, the 18th-century baronial abode is in need of refurbishment and modernisation. The property also includes a four-bedroom farmhouse, a two-bedroom gate lodge, and a working arable and livestock farm with 786 acres of land. Perched on the cliff in front of the main building is the ruin of the original, 16th-century Keiss Castle. Inverness is 2hr 30min by car. £1.8m.

Top Secret: domesticated silk moths mating on a white mulberry branch. Science Photo Library/Getty

The secrets we pinched from China

The West has long feared China stealing its industrial secrets, most recently for semiconductors, says Howard Chua-Eoan in Bloomberg. But it used to be the other way round. The Chinese developed techniques for making silk thousands of years ago, and for centuries, they kept it a secret. “Breaking the sanctions could lead to death.” As the luxurious material was traded across the “silk routes”, the Roman Empire ended up “spending the equivalent of 1% of its GDP on the cloth”. According to legend, the monopoly was finally broken in the 6th century, when Justinian I had two monks “smuggle back silkworm eggs in bamboo cases”. 

China also used to have a monopoly on paper manufacturing, until the emperor’s army lost a battle against the Arabs. “Among the prisoners of war were military paper-makers who brought their secrets to the Middle East, from where it spread further west.” Then there was porcelain, much desired for sanitary purposes due to “the ease with which it could be cleaned”. It wasn’t until the 18th century that factories in Germany and France finally figured out the firing techniques “to create true porcelain”. With all that, it’s no surprise that Beijing “comes to the semiconductor contest with a lot of… uhm, chips on its shoulder”.

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It’s a mark of the speed at which “recently loathed leaders become more palatable”, says Emma Brockes in The Guardian, that the new portrait of Theresa May “triggered not the gag reflect of yore but something almost like warmth”. Credit to the artist, Saied Dai, who has managed to imbue a politician not known for her “inspirational leadership style” with an air that “appears almost noble”. Opinion is rather more divided in Westminster, says Tim Stanley in The Daily Telegraph. Yes, some think the arm across the midriff makes the former PM appear “Napoleonic”. Others think she looks like she’s “regretting last night’s curry”.

“Burners” at the 2000 festival. David McNew/Newsmakers/Getty

A bewitching festival in the Nevada desert

Marie Antoinette built a model peasant village at Versailles, where she would retire to escape court life and sometimes dress up as a milkmaid. If the 21st century has an equivalent, says Mary Harrington in UnHerd, it is Burning Man, a festival in the Nevada desert. Last week, torrential rain transformed the event into a “dystopian-looking mud-pan”, which campers were temporarily barred from leaving. But it usually goes off without a hitch – I attended many years ago and had a ball. No commerce is allowed; everything must be bartered. “There is a lot of installation art, a lot of sex, a lot of drugs and music and fancy dress.” The cumulative effect is “a bewitching, enchanted sense of openness, serendipity, and infinite possibility” – a perfect expression of the American liberal ideal.

Like that progressive dream, Burning Man “requires considerable material effort under the bonnet”. Nothing is left in the desert between festivals – on top of the $575 ticket, you must buy or rent everything you need and bring it with you. Enjoying this “gift economy” therefore requires you to have done rather well out of “the regular cut-throat capitalist one”. Just like Marie Antoinette sauntering down to her farm, Google multimillionaires “helicopter into Nevada for a week of self-expression”, before retreating to their air-conditioned condos. No wonder the public reaction to the Burning Man mudbath “held a vindictive edge”.

“I always have a quotation for everything – it saves original thinking.”

Dorothy Sayers

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