Lara King | The Spectator columnists & writers

We’re in the elegant 1820s parlour of a five-star, Grade II-listed hotel. There’s music playing softly, and opposite us, one particularly well-groomed guest is wearing a bowtie. A three-tier cake stand is brought to the table. On the top tier sits a selection of homemade biscuits and a fluffy cupcake finished with a swirl of yellow icing. Beneath that is a thick wedge of cake with what looks like pink and white buttercream oozing from the middle. And on the bottom tier is a finely decorated China bowl, piled high with… mashed-up meat? This beautifully presented afternoon tea isn’t for me, you see. It’s for my dog. We’re in the former London police headquarters of Great Scotland Yard Hotel, which is hosting a dog-friendly Jubilee afternoon tea every Sunday – and I’ve brought my four-year-old cocker spaniel Branston to give his verdict.

The snobbery of ‘staycations’

Last summer, when Covid forced the cancellation of our holiday, my husband and I had a staycation. We read books, played games, drank Pimm’s on our patio and invented ever more imaginative ways to avoid our DIY to-do list. Each morning brought the usual bills and junk mail to our door rather than a hotel breakfast tray, and there was no one else to do the washing up or freshen up the bathroom towels. As of this week, apparently, millions of other people are doing the same thing. The Sunday Times heralded ‘the return of the staycation’ as ‘the great unlocking begins in earnest and we are allowed to stay away from home overnight’, while the Daily Mail declared ‘It’s staycation mania!’, reporting that ‘many campsites and holiday cottages are almost fully booked’.

The Sarah Everard case has shown how frightened women really are

Muggers don't carry umbrellas. Murderers don't carry briefcases. Kidnappers don't carry Tesco bags. These are the sorts of utterly illogical things I have been known to tell myself on a ten-minute walk home from the Tube station in the dark (past well-lit houses, on familiar roads, in a 'nice' part of London) as I try to stop my heart pounding quite so violently when someone happens to be following me down an otherwise empty street. Once I shut my front door behind me, I let go of these thoughts, along with the breath I hadn't realised I'd been holding. And I think no more of it, until the next time. I had always assumed this was unique to me and my overactive imagination. But the way women everywhere have responded to the Sarah Everard case has shown that I was wrong.

The political power of America’s First Dogs

From the moment Donald Trump’s presidency began, he was lacking something. But Joe Biden is about to make up for it — twice over. Trump was the first president in more than a century not to have a dog in the White House. Biden’s German shepherds Champ, 12, and two-year-old Major will be filling the vacancy left by Barack Obama’s Portuguese water dogs, Bo and Sunny, and continuing a tradition of First Dogs that can trace its pedigree back to George Washington. Far from being mere political poodles, many First Dogs have made history in their own right. Calvin Coolidge’s collie Rob Roy was the first dog to feature in an official First Family portrait, which still hangs in the China Room, while George W. Bush’s Scottie, Barney, gave a dog’s-eye view of Washington life with ‘Barneycam’, a series of videos so popular they crashed the White House website.

The politics of handbags

‘Of course, I am obstinate in defending our liberties and our law — that is why I carry a big handbag,’ Margaret Thatcher once told an interviewer. That handbag was part of the Iron Lady’s suit of armour; a fashion accoutrement turned into a political prop. But an accessory that became instantly recognisable on the outside held secrets on the inside. Thatcher referred to it as the only ‘leak-proof’ place in Downing Street, and it was a bag of tricks from which she might conjure pertinent quotes from Abraham Lincoln or Friedrich Hayek, or a crumpled brief from a mysterious source. Norman Tebbit said the art of being a successful cabinet minister ‘was to have worked out in advance how you shot down the advice that was in her handbag, and if you did it well enough the handbag was not opened’.

Home advantage: not going to school was the making of me

At last, school’s out for summer — although this might be a strange concept for children who have not set foot in a classroom for months. If social media is anything to go by, home-schooling is hell. Since March, the internet has been awash with panicked parents sharing mock timetables with slots for ‘mum quits’ and ‘dad starts drinking’. And who’s to say the madness will end after the summer? A recent survey showed that a quarter of parents don’t intend to send their children back to the classroom in September, and one in ten of those plans to home-school permanently — which at least offers certainty. It can also offer much more than that. And I speak from experience. When I was 13, I tried home-schooling for the same reason millions have been forced to do it now: not because of any ideological, religious or educational imperative, but because of a virus.

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