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THE WEEK

24 JULY 2021 | ISSUE 1341 | £3.99

THE BEST OF THE BRITISH AND INTERNATIONAL MEDIA

The “pingdemic”

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4 NEWS

The main stories…

What happened

England’s “pingdemic” The arrival of “Freedom Day” in England this week was overshadowed by concerns about rising infections and confusion over self-isolation requirements. Until 16 August, anyone “pinged” by the NHS Covid app – alerted they have been in close contact with a person with Covid – is meant to self-isolate for ten days. Critics have warned that this is crippling the economy.

Around half a million people in England were pinged last week, and more than a million children were off school. Boris Johnson insisted it was still “essential” for people to continue isolating, but said a small number of critical workers would be exempted from the rule.

What the editorials said England is the first country to lift restrictions in the face of exponentially rising Covid cases, said The Guardian. Some experts have condemned the strategy as unethical, and “it’s hard to disagree”. People are cross about the disruption caused by selfisolation rules, but the “pingdemic” is just a symptom of the real problem: the surge in new cases. There’s no logic to the Government’s approach, said The Observer. Why drop the mask mandate while still requiring fully vaccinated people to self-isolate for ten days, even if they test negative? Why open nightclubs while insisting that double-jabbed people returning from France, a country with a lower infection rate than the UK, go into quarantine?

The Covid rules are “a muddle”, said The Times, and the PM’s “ludicrous” attempt to The PM is isolating in Chequers after coming Back on the dance floor into contact with Health Secretary Sajid Javid, dodge self-isolation has further undermined who has contracted Covid. Along with Chancellor Rishi confidence in them. The good news, though, is that while new Covid cases in the UK are nearing 50,000 a day, only 4,567 Sunak, he initially tried to avoid isolation by joining a pilot testing scheme, before U-turning. Speaking on Monday, as patients were in hospital with it on Monday. The fully mandatory Covid restrictions were lifted in England, he said vaccinated now have very little to fear from Covid. But the that proof of double vaccination would be a condition of entry vaccination drive is stalling: last Thursday, just 60,000 first for nightclubs and other crowded venues from the end of doses were given, compared to 300,000 a day a few months September, when all over-18s will have been offered two jabs. ago. We must drive the rate up, using both carrots and sticks.

What happened

Solving the obesity crisis

Breaking the junk-food cycle

But one of the review’s key proposals – a levy of £3 per kilogram on sugar and £6 per kilogram on salt, estimated to be worth £3bn a year – was swiftly rejected by Boris Johnson, who said he opposes “extra taxes on hardworking people”. Instead, he suggested exercise and limits on junk food advertising could be used to tackle obesity.

It wasn’t all bad A retired solicitor from Hastings is thought to have become Britain’s oldest new graduate after receiving a fine art degree aged 96. Archie White, who was born when George V was on the throne, was inspired to take up a place at East Sussex College by a friend who had studied there before him. White said he enjoyed clay modelling and photography during the course, but was less taken with learning Photoshop. He now plans to set up a charity to support graduates, and to continue painting.

This is the second of two reports Dimbleby has produced for the Government, examining “every aspect of the food chain, from farm to fork”, said The Times. And it contains “many sensible ideas”, like proposals that GPs should issue prescriptions for fruit and vegetables, and that food education should return to the national curriculum. It’s also correct to conclude that the “junk food cycle” cannot be broken without state intervention – while pragmatically accepting that a “meat tax is a political non-starter”. In all, the review puts forward 14 “thoughtful recommendations”, said The Guardian, amounting to a persuasive “manifesto for change”. If ministers had any sense, they’d hurry up and implement them.

The most striking recommendation is for a salt and sugar tax, said the Daily Mail – a measure that, as critics of the “nanny state”, this paper would usually oppose. But poor diets, which contribute to 64,000 deaths a year, are “so damaging we need a sea change. As with tobacco and alcohol before, the case for state intervention is overwhelming” – no matter what the PM says to the contrary.

For the first time in 200 years, osprey chicks have been born to fathers who themselves fledged in Northumberland’s Kielder Forest. The birds of prey were driven to extinction in Britain in the early 20th century, following years of decline caused by egg collectors and farmers who blamed them for depleting fish stocks. But in 2008, two of the birds were encouraged to nest in the forest, near the Scottish Borders, breeding successfully the following year. In what experts hailed as a milestone in ospreys’ recolonisation of northern England, several chicks have now been born to male birds fledged in the forest, and their mates; the males are more territorial, returning to Kielder after wintering in Africa.

A couple stumbled upon one of the largest collections of rare marine fossils ever found in the UK – while using Google Earth to explore their local area in lockdown. Palaeontologist Dr Neville Hollingworth and his wife Sally, of Wiltshire, discovered an array of rare fossils of sea lilies, crinoids, starfish and brittle stars after deciding to explore a quarry they’d seen online. “The preservation is stunning,” said Sally. “They are 167 million years old, these little critters.” Scientists have flocked to the site, which has been dubbed “Jurassic Pompeii”.

COVER CARTOON: HOWARD MCWILLIAM THE WEEK 24 July 2021

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Britain should impose the world’s first tax on sugary and salty foods to improve people’s diets, a Government-commissioned review has concluded. The 290-page National Food Strategy, published last week, made a host of recommendations – including turning up to a fifth of Britain’s farmland over to woods and wildlife, and cutting meat intake by a third – as part of a £1.4bn plan to address the impact of bad food on health, inequality and the environment. “The food we eat – and the way we produce it – is doing terrible damage to our planet and to our health,” warned the report’s author, restaurateur Henry Dimbleby.

What the editorials said

…and how they were covered

NEWS 5

What the commentators said

What next?

How “wickedly mischievous” of Fate to arrange events so that Boris Johnson spent “Freedom Day” in forced isolation, said Michael Deacon in The Daily Telegraph. When he drew up his roadmap, the PM must have envisioned Monday as a moment of national and personal triumph. Instead, addressing the nation from Chequers by video link as Covid cases soared, he “looked like Churchill declaring victory from the bowels of an air raid shelter, while VE Day street parties were strafed by Messerschmitts”. His message to the public, in essence, was that our freedoms have returned – but that we shouldn’t make use of them.

The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation concluded this week that there wasn’t a case for routinely vaccinating the under-18s. The balance of harms and benefits, it said, meant jabs should be given only to 380,000 children aged 12-15 who are at higher risk from Covid infection, or who live with immunocompromised adults.

It’s crazy, agreed Dan Wootton in the Daily Mail. “Either Covid is still a mortal threat, in which case we should still be in lockdown, or it isn’t”, in which case we need to start treating it like a normal disease. As things stand, we’ve got “the worst of both worlds”. That’s what comes of having a PM as feckless and unprincipled as Johnson, said Polly Toynbee in The Guardian. “Please, please, please be careful,” he urges us, even as he ignores critical voices within the NHS and predictions that new Covid cases in England – already running at the third-highest rate in the world after Brazil and Indonesia – could soon reach 200,000 a day.

The Government is under fire from two sides, said Dr Raghib Ali on Conservative Home.

One side is accusing it of pursuing a reckless, “let it rip” strategy; the other is accusing it of following an excessively cautious, “Zero Covid” strategy. Neither charge is fair. What the Government is really trying to do here is to negotiate an inevitable “exit wave” in the least damaging way. The highly transmissible nature of the Delta variant, and the less than perfect protection provided by vaccines, mean that every country will have to manage this exit wave at some point. Hospitalisations and deaths “are no longer being prevented, just postponed”.

There is a good case for England opening up now, in the summer months, in a graduated way that helps flatten the peak. “The value of booster doses is still unproven and uptake is uncertain, so our defences from vaccination are now likely to be as strong as they ever will be.”

The NHS plans to deliver an unprecedented 35 million flu jabs this winter amid fears that the triple pressures of Covid, flu and other respiratory illnesses could overwhelm the service.

Officials are concerned that social distancing measures will have left the UK with an unusually low level of immunity to flu.

What the commentators said

What next?

This is the 14 government report on cutting obesity since 1992, said William Sitwell in The Daily Telegraph. Sadly, most have had precious little impact. We’ve “continued to eat too much of the wrong things”, with adults consuming an average of 500 more daily calories than we should. Snacking has subsumed meals: the average dinner lasts just 21 minutes, and one in five households “don’t even have a dining table”. But perhaps this pragmatic plan – published in a pandemic that has cruelly exposed our obesity crisis – will be the one that finally hits home.

We must all hope so, said Janice Turner in The Times. Obesity now affects 28% of British adults, costing the NHS at least £6.6bn a year. “Of all manufactured foods sold in Britain, 85% are deemed too unhealthy to be advertised to children.” If we are to have any hope of “saving the next generation of children from lifelong ill health”, the Government must act now.

The report urged the Government to enforce “core minimum standards” for the environment when striking post-Brexit trade deals, to avoid undercutting UK farmers and “exporting all the environmental harms we wish to avoid”. And it argues that alternative proteins like algae could be used to help cut Britons’ consumption of processed mince meat.

I don’t dispute that obesity is a problem, said Morgan Schondelmeier on TheCritic.co.uk; but a salt and sugar tax isn’t the way to fix it. Instead of encouraging people to take “personal responsibility” for their lifestyles, the proposal by Dimbleby – the millionaire co-founder of Leon – would add an average of £172 a year to household food bills. “And for what?” To cut an estimated 38 calories a day from people’s diets – equivalent to “half of a Digestive”. I have some sympathy with the view that we shouldn’t clobber people with lifestyle taxes, said Camilla Cavendish in the FT. But they can be stunningly effective. When George Osborne unveiled his sugar tax on soft drinks in 2016, he was attacked by industry leaders. Yet five years on, added sugar in drinks has fallen by almost a third, while sales have gone up. The bald truth is that in a country where people “spend a smaller proportion of their income on meals at home than any other Europeans, and one of our favourite TV shows is The Great British Bake Off”, we haven’t got a hope of improving our diets through willpower alone.

THE WEEK

For most of us, even a sunny trip to the Mediterranean still feels like a distant prospect. But as we sweat over pandemic-hit holiday plans, Jeff Bezos has embarked on an altogether more ambitious journey. On Tuesday, the world’s richest man touched down in the Texan desert in his New Shepard rocket, having just completed a ten-minute foray into the lower reaches of space, reaching an altitude of 66.5 miles – 4.5 miles above the Kármán line, the internationally accepted space boundary.

High-fiving his entourage, Bezos looked every inch the man who’d just reaped the rewards of years of work and billions of dollars of personal investment. And no wonder. As well as marking his own first trip to space, the mission also set records: on board was the oldest person ever to go to space, astronaut Wally Funk, 82; as well as the youngest, Oliver Daemen, 18, whose father was the second highest bidder for a seat on the craft (the original winner dropped out, citing, of all things, a diary clash). Watching Bezos’s celebrations on his return to Earth, I found myself wondering what this man must think of the rest of us mere mortals. But perhaps he’d be wise to reflect on what we make of him. After all, the timing of his quest to fulfil his boyhood dream of space travel risks looking a little tone-deaf to those of us who’ve spent the past 16 months grappling with challenges somewhat closer to home. Which is perhaps why 185,000 people signed a petition for Robin de Peyer Bezos to forfeit the journey back from space – and stay there instead.

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Environment Secretary George Eustice pledged to “carefully consider” the report’s findings and “respond with a white paper within six months, setting out our priorities for the food system”.

Editor-in-chief: Caroline Law Editor: Theo Tait Deputy editor: Harry Nicolle Consultant editor: Jenny McCartney City editor: Jane Lewis Assistant editor: Robin de Peyer Contributing editors: Simon Wilson, Rob McLuhan, Catherine Heaney, Digby Warde-Aldam, Tom Yarwood, William Skidelsky Editorial staff: Anoushka Petit, Tigger Ridgwell, Aine O’Connor, Georgia Heneage Picture editor: Xandie Nutting Art director: Nathalie Fowler Sub-editor: Monisha Rajesh Production editor: Alanna O’Connell Editorial chairman and co-founder: Jeremy O’Grady Production Manager: Maaya Mistry Production Executive: Sophie Griffin Newstrade Director: David Barker Marketing Director (Current Affairs): Lucy Davis Account Manager/Inserts: Jack Reader Account Director/ Inserts: Abdul Ahad Classified: Henry Haselock Account Directors: Jonathan Claxton, Joe Teal, Hattie White Advertising Manager: Carly Activille Group Advertising Director: Caroline Fenner Founder: Jolyon Connell Chief Executive, The Week: Kerin O’Connor Chief Executive: James Tye Dennis Publishing founder: Felix Dennis THE WEEK Ltd, a subsidiary of Dennis, 31-32 Alfred Place, London WC1E 7DP. Tel: 020-3890 3890 Editorial: 020-3890 3787 Email: editorialadmin@theweek.co.uk

24 July 2021 THE WEEK

Politics

6 NEWS Controversy of the week

Levelling up Britain Shortly after his 2019 election victory, Boris Johnson stood outside No. 10 and promised to “unite and level up” the nation, said Andrew Rawnsley in The Observer. This is his “Big Idea” and he keeps returning to it. The PM has appointed the thoughtful and effective Conservative MP Neil O’Brien to develop the policy. But O’Brien has been in the post for a few weeks only, so it’s not his fault that Johnson’s landmark speech on his “defining mission” last week went down “like a cup of cold sick”. Yes, Johnson asked many of the right questions about the UK’s “gross inequalities”. How can it be right, he asked, that life expectancy is ten years lower for a man in Blackpool or Glasgow than one in wealthy Hampshire?

Yet Johnson’s splashy rhetoric about “the magic sauce – the ketchup of catch-up” – came with “meagre policy meat”. He Johnson’s “defining mission” spoke of £50m in funding for football pitches, cleaning up chewing gum, and a “National High Streets Day”; but the lack of real substance was striking. The theme also makes southern Tories “angsty”: they report “festering resentment” among voters that “levelling up” essentially means taking money away from them to give to the North.

Johnson insists that it doesn’t in fact involve “levelling down” the South, said Ailbhe Rea in the New Statesman: he won’t, he said, “decapitate the tall poppies”. But the speech reaffirms his focus on his party’s new “Red Wall” voters in former Labour heartlands. He has already decided that, come the next election, if the Tories must lose votes somewhere, it should be in their traditional southern seats.

Fine, but if he wants to convince anyone, he needs some serious policies, said Michael Crick in the Daily Mail. Dominic Cummings last week called levelling up a “crap slogan”. But it shouldn’t be.

Britain has a massively “skewed” economy, which Johnson’s uninspiring plans for county mayors and the like will not solve. What’s needed are tens of billions in Treasury investment to boost businesses in the Midlands and the North. How about improving Lancashire’s “atrocious” railways, for a start, or expanding northern universities to increase research and development?

That won’t happen, said Madeline Grant in The Daily Telegraph. “Levelling up” is a policy so vague that measuring its success will be impossible. After Johnson’s “word-salad” speech, even the Tory MP Laura Farris said it “means whatever anyone wants it to mean”. Britain voted Tory; instead it got “government by platitude”. Let’s not get too sneery, said Patrick O’Flynn in The Spectator.

Every leader has their “unifying philosophy”: Tony Blair’s “Third Way” or David Cameron’s “Big Society”. “Levelling up” will “cut through” better than either of those: it shows Johnson’s desire to reorientate his party away from the “Newbury set”, and it builds on the popular perception that socialism means “levelling down”. “Key groups of voters will understand it perfectly well.”

Spirit of the age Two peers have been banned from Parliament’s libraries, restaurants and bars because they failed to complete their mandatory “Valuing Everyone” training. A House of Lords spokesperson said the move would protect staff by “minimising” contact in social spaces with Lord Kalms, 89, and Lord Willoughby de Broke, 82, who had refused to attend the anti-bullying and sexual harassment workshops.

A “pregnant man” emoji is set to be introduced after a row over transgender representation in the phone symbols. It will join a “person with crown” for gender-neutral royalty, and follows a similar update to the “bearded person” emoji that allows users to choose between a masculine and feminine bearded face.

THE WEEK 24 July 2021

Good week for:

Sue Perkins, who will be the new host of Just a Minute. Her appointment follows the death of Nicholas Parsons, who hosted the show for more than 50 years from its first broadcast in 1967.

British accents, which are spreading fast through the US, thanks to the popularity of Peppa Pig. The “Peppa effect” has taken hold during lockdown, according to parents in America and Canada, who claim their children are talking in funny accents, and saying “to-mah-to” instead of “to-may-to”. “She says ‘lovely’ and ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ all the time,” said one baffled parent.

Prince Harry, who has agreed a publishing deal to write his memoirs. His “literary memoir” is expected late in 2022, and will be written, he said, “not as the prince I was born, but as the man I have become”. It was reported that he will earn at least $20m for the book, but that proceeds will be donated to charity.

Bad week for:

Liverpool, which has been stripped of its World Heritage status.

A Unesco committee recommended that the city be removed from the list owing to developments on its waterfront, which had resulted in an “irreversible loss of attributes”.

Andrew Lloyd Webber, whose new West End musical, Cinderella, was cancelled just hours before its first performance.

Lloyd Webber said there had been only one positive case among the entire cast and crew. But under the Government’s isolation guidance, he said he could not continue the run.

Ocado, after “robot wars” closed down its automated warehouse near the Thames. Three robots collided, starting a major fire.

Social care funding plan

Boris Johnson reportedly plans to hike up National Insurance (NI) to fund a longpromised overhaul of social care. The Prime Minister is said to have reached a deal with Chancellor Rishi Sunak that would see NI rise by a penny in the pound for both employers and employees, raising an extra £10bn a year.

Any such increase would prove controversial, as the Tories promised at the last election not to raise income tax, VAT or NI. Critics also say it would increase the burden on younger taxpayers while sparing the retired, who do not pay NI. Full details of the plan are not expected until the autumn.

Channel migrants’ record The number of migrants to have crossed the Channel this year reached 8,474 this week, surpassing the figure for the whole of 2020. On Monday alone, at least 430 people reached the UK in small boats, a new daily record. In an attempt to curb numbers, Home Secretary Priti Patel agreed to pay France an extra £54m to step up police patrols along the French shore. Patel has pledged to clamp down on crossings, and under the Nationality and Borders Bill now going through Parliament, anyone arriving in Britain illegally could face a jail term of up to four years.

Poll watch 67% of adults under 35, but only 39% of over-55s, support building new homes on the green belt (if plans comply with government regulations to offset damage to the natural environment).

Overall, 53% supported such developments.

Bright Blue/The Times About one in five adults of all ages in the UK had the NHS Covid-19 app but have now deleted it from their phone. About a third of those who had it last week expressed an intention to delete it on 19 July.

Savanta/ComRes 78% of Japanese people think the Tokyo Olympics should not go ahead because of Covid. Across 28 nations, 57% of people said it should be cancelled.

Ipsos

Europe at a glance Brussels Hunger strike: A hunger strike by hundreds of undocumented migrants is threatening to bring down the Belgian government. About 470 mostly North African migrants – many of whom have lived and worked in Belgium for many years – have occupied a Brussels church and university buildings in the capital, demanding the right to enter the formal economy as legal residents. Under the banner “We Are Belgium Too”, the so-called Sans-Papiers began a hunger strike two months ago. After migration officials refused to give ground, a few began refusing water. In response, some members of the country’s sprawling ruling coalition said they would quit if any of the migrants died: ministers from the Green and Socialist parties declared that they would resign “within the hour”. The hunger-strikers are four-fifths men, one fifth women. They mostly come from Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria, with a few from Nepal and Bangladesh.

Erftstadt, Germany Flood aftermath: Germany grappled this week with the aftermath of the worst floods in recent history.

The 15 July deluge killed more than 160 people in Germany (see page 21). It also highlighted deficiencies in the nation’s storm-warning systems. Armin Laschet, the conservative (CDU) candidate to succeed Angela Merkel as chancellor, provoked anger last weekend by laughing and joking on a visit to the town of Erftstadt, one of many devastated by the floods. Laschet (above) chuckled with members of his entourage as the president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, solemnly addressed the cameras about the national trauma.

NEWS 7

Vienna “Havana syndrome”: More than 20 US diplomats and other staff based in Vienna have developed unexplained illnesses akin to Havana syndrome, the mysterious neurological condition first identified at the US embassy in Cuba in 2016. Since then, more than 150 US government staff working overseas have fallen sick with unexplained symptoms including headaches, dizziness, nausea, hearing problems and “cognitive fog”. The Vienna outbreak is the biggest yet outside Cuba, and the CIA has begun an investigation.

The US believes the syndrome is most likely the result of targeted attacks using microwave radiation by hostile state actors, including Cuba and Russia – but this has not yet been proved.

Luxembourg City Hijab ruling: The European Court of Justice has ruled that EU businesses can ban Muslim women from wearing the hijab (the Islamic headscarf that covers the hair, but not the face) in the workplace. “A prohibition on wearing any visible form of expression of political, philosophical or religious beliefs in the workplace may be justified by the employer’s need to present a neutral image towards customers, or to prevent social disputes,” the Luxembourg judges ruled, in a decision that is binding in all 27 EU member states. The case involved two women in Germany who were suspended after refusing to remove the hijab at work – one in a supermarket, one in childcare.

Critics of the ruling say the concept of “neutrality” is a smokescreen for antiMuslim discrimination. President Erdogan of Turkey attacked the ruling as a “blow to the rights of Muslim women”.

Biarritz, France Vaccine drive: The French government’s new policy of compulsory vaccinations for health workers (by 15 September), and proof-of-vaccine “health passes” for access to many public spaces (from this week), has led to a surge in the number of people coming forward for jabs. However, the policies have also led to an angry backlash from those who see the policy as an infringement of their civil liberties. Slightly more than half the adult population has had a first dose, and 42% have had two. President Macron’s announcement last week caused an immediate uplift in vaccinations, with a record 800,000 jabs given the following day. But on Saturday, hundreds of thousands joined protest marches across the nation, and there was a string of attacks on vaccination centres – including an arson attack on a clinic in Urrugne, near Biarritz.

Last week, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control reported a 64% week-on-week rise in new Covid cases across 20 European nations, related to the relaxation of lockdowns and the fast spread of the Delta variant. Young people were the most affected; hospitalisations remained broadly stable. The Netherlands, Russia, France, Spain and the UK reported the most new infections. Cases remain relatively low in Italy and Germany, and across most of central and Eastern Europe.

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Moscow Kremlin’s pro-Trump “plot”: The Guardian newspaper has published what it says is a leaked Kremlin document confirming that President Putin ordered Russian spies to support Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential election campaign. The document, apparently from a January 2016 meeting of Russia’s national security council, includes a short psychological assessment of Trump as an “impulsive, mentally unstable and unbalanced individual who suffers from an inferiority complex”. It demands the use of “all possible force to facilitate his election to the post of US president”, predicting that a Trump presidency would lead to “social turmoil” in America. There are also references to unspecified kompromat – compromising information – relating to Trump’s earlier visits to Russia. The Kremlin dismissed the report as fiction; Trump called it “disgusting” “fake news”.

24 July 2021 THE WEEK

8 NEWS

The world at a glance

Fremont National Forest, Oregon Wildfires rage: More than 2,000 firefighters were attempting to quell a gigantic wildfire in southern Oregon this week, as large parts of the western United States and Canada continued to endure a record-breaking heatwave and high winds that have sparked fires across the region. Oregon’s “Bootleg Fire”, which has burned more than 550 square miles of forest and grassland since it began on 6 July, is now so large that it covers an area the size of Los Angeles, and is generating its own weather in the form of dangerous lightning clouds. It’s one of more than 80 major fires raging across 13 US states, while western Canada has also been badly affected, with more than 150 new fires breaking out last weekend alone. It takes the number of Canadian blazes recorded this year to more than 4,300, with hundreds still burning across British Columbia. Climate scientists say the high temperatures – which began in late June – would have been “virtually impossible” without climate change.

Washington DC Capitol rioter jailed: A Florida man has been sentenced to eight months in prison for his part in the storming of the US Capitol by a mob of pro-Trump protesters on 6 January. It is the first custodial sentence handed down in relation to the deadly riot – or “insurrection” – and is likely to set a benchmark for, potentially, hundreds of other cases. Paul Hodgkins, 38, a crane operator from Tampa, had pleaded guilty to “obstructing an official proceeding” – namely the ratification of Joe Biden’s election win.

He made it as far as the Senate chamber itself, and was pictured on the dais. Hodgkins was not accused of violence or damaging property, and expressed shame at his “foolish decision” to join the mob. Prosecutors had asked for an 18-month sentence, noting that Hodgkins had travelled from Florida with a rope, protective goggles and latex gloves, suggesting he was prepared for violence.

Los Angeles “Pandemic of the unvaccinated”: The US surgeon-general has warned that more cities and states are likely to reimpose mask mandates in coming months, with Covid cases rising in every US state for the first time since January. Los Angeles County – home to ten million people – announced the reimposition of compulsory mask-wearing in public indoor settings last weekend. Covid-19 cases, hospitalisations and deaths in the US remain low compared with the January peak (around 34,000 cases and 250 deaths a day, compared to around 250,000 cases and 3,500 deaths).

However they have been slowly rising – and jumped sharply last week – with particularly marked resurgences in southern states with low vaccination rates, notably Florida. President Biden called the rise the “pandemic of the unvaccinated”. More than 90 million eligible Americans have yet to get the jab.

Port-au-Prince “Big fishes” still at large: Martine Moïse, the widow of Haiti’s assassinated president, Jovenel Moïse, flew home this week after being treated in Florida for injuries sustained in the 7 July gun attack at the couple’s home. Mrs Moïse was wearing an arm sling and a bulletproof vest on arrival at Port-au-Prince airport.

The late president’s funeral was due to take place on Friday. The circumstances of Moïse’s murder remain unclear.

Haitian police say a group of foreign mercenaries – 26 Colombians and two Haitian-Americans – carried out the killing. At least 20 people have been detained, but Haiti’s election minister, Mathias Pierre, said that the “big fishes” behind the assassination were still at large. On Tuesday, Ariel Henry was sworn in as Haiti’s new prime minister; the interim PM, Claude Joseph, had stepped down the day before.

Lima Wafer-thin win: Pedro Castillo, a left-wing former schoolteacher, who has promised to overhaul Peru’s economy and society in favour of the rural poor, has been confirmed as the country’s next president after a vote count lasting more than six weeks.

According to the final tally, Castillo took 50.13% of the vote in the 6 June run-off, with 49.87% for his hard-right opponent Keiko Fujimori. He won by just 44,000 votes out of nearly 19 million cast – and will become Peru’s first left-wing leader in a generation. He is expected to take office next week, for a five-year term. Fujimori, the daughter of the jailed ex-president Alberto Fujimori, had made multiple claims of voter fraud, and launched several unsuccessful legal challenges. However, all international observers reported the vote to be free and fair.

THE WEEK 24 July 2021

São Paulo, Brazil Bolsonaro’s hiccups: Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro was hospitalised for four days last week, with serious intestinal problems that had caused him to suffer an unremitting bout of the hiccups for ten days. Bolsonaro was stabbed in the lower abdomen while on the campaign trail in 2018, causing near-fatal injuries that required several rounds of surgery, leaving him with ongoing complications. On this occasion, the president received treatment for an obstruction to the intestines, but did not require surgery. “Only God can remove me from that chair,” said Bolsonaro on leaving hospital on Sunday, in reference to the presidency. Bolsonaro caught Covid-19 last year, but made a full recovery.

The world at a glance Beirut Power vacuum: Lebanon’s prime ministerdesignate Sa’ad Hariri has quit after almost ten months of failed attempts to form a new government, plunging the rudderless and increasingly unstable country deeper into crisis. Hariri resigned after a power struggle with the head of state, President Michel Aoun, over the composition of the cabinet. Under Lebanon’s complex political system, posts are divided up according to informal religious quotas. But Hariri, a Sunni Muslim, proved unable to agree a cabinet with Aoun, a Christian who is allied with the Iranian-backed Shia group Hezbollah. Lebanon’s economy and currency are in free fall; it is plagued by fuel and medical shortages, hyperinflation and a breakdown in law and order.

Lebanon has had no government since the devastating Beirut port blast last August.

NEWS 9

Jakarta Pandemic gathering pace: Dozens of countries in the developing world are seeing a surge in coronavirus cases driven by the Delta variant, with many countries in Southeast Asia and Africa entering their worst phase of the pandemic. “The world thinks this epidemic is over,” said Fatima Hassan, founder of South Africa’s Health Justice Initiative. “But we still don’t have enough vaccine supplies in the system.” Globally, the number of reported Covid-19 cases has been growing again since June, with daily deaths also rising. The country now recording the most new cases is Indonesia (99% of them the Delta variant), with around 50,000 cases a day and 1,100 deaths. Very low levels of testing mean these figures are likely to understate the true picture. The number of deaths in Africa jumped by 43% last week, according to the WHO, with five countries – Namibia, South Africa, Tunisia, Uganda and Zambia – accounting for 83% of the deaths. Namibia’s daily rate of 28 Covid deaths per million people is the highest in the world. India, where the Delta variant was first identified, has officially recorded more than 418,000 Covid-19 deaths, but its “excess” deaths (above the long-term average) are around four million.

© AFP PHOTO/HO/SANA

Zhengzhou, China Henan floods: At least 12 people have died after record-breaking rainfall flooded underground railway tunnels in China’s Henan province. In the provincial capital, Zhengzhou, the equivalent of a year’s rain fell in just three days this week, and began to flow into railway tunnels, leaving passengers trapped in rising waters.

Over 500 people were eventually rescued from the tunnels. More than a dozen cities in Henan were affected, and 200,000 people had to be evacuated.

Pietermaritzburg, South Africa Trial pushed back: The trial of South Africa’s ex-president Jacob Zuma on corruption charges has been postponed for three weeks, in order to lower tensions following the wave of unrest sparked by his jailing for contempt of court. More than 200 people were killed in violent protests, rioting and looting that began following Zuma’s imprisonment on 8 July, and subsided last weekend. He was jailed for refusing to cooperate with an inquiry into endemic corruption during his 2009-18 presidency.

This week, a court in Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natal, agreed to his legal team’s request for a delay to Zuma’s trial on 16 separate charges of fraud and corruption.

Damascus New alliance: China has thrown its weight behind the Assad regime in Syria – vowing to help rebuild the country as part of Beijing’s Belt and Road initiative, and promising cooperation with Assad on “combating terrorism”. The Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, made the pledges on a visit to Damascus at the weekend. He was the first foreign dignitary to visit President Assad since the latter claimed victory (with 95% of the vote) in sham elections in May. Western countries, including the UK, EU and US, have all pledged not to lift sanctions on Syria as long as Assad remains in power.

Mumbai, India Killer monsoon: At least 31 people were killed on Sunday when catastrophically heavy rain in India’s most populous city, Mumbai, caused a landslide and flooding.

Mumbai is always badly hit by the monsoon, but Sunday’s deluge was exceptional, dumping 20cm of rain in a few hours. In recent years, the pattern of monsoon rainfall in India has changed, with dry spells broken up by bursts of extreme rainfall that are harder to predict and more damaging. State environment minister Aaditya Thackeray said it was proof that climate change “is happening”.

24 July 2021 THE WEEK

People

10 NEWS Falling from the sky Not many people have survived plummeting 10,000ft out of the air – but Juliane Diller did. It happened on Christmas Eve of 1971, when she was 17. She and her mother had taken off from Lima in Peru in a small propeller plane bound for Pucallpa. Diller’s destination was Panguana, a research station in the Amazon run by her zoologist parents. But 25 minutes into the flight, the plane was struck by lightning and broke apart: Diller fell nearly two miles into the jungle below. “From above, the treetops resembled heads of broccoli,” she told Franz Lidz in The New York Times. Her fall was cushioned by the rainforest’s dense foliage and, miraculously, she escaped with minor injuries, the worst of which was a broken collarbone. The sole survivor, she lay on the ground for a day and night before setting off through the jungle with only a bag of sweets to sustain her, dodging poisonous snakes and spiders as she hiked. Correctly guessing her mother must be dead, she nearly lost all hope. “I realised that I no longer heard any search planes and was convinced that I would surely die,” she says. But after 11 days of walking, wading and swimming through the jungle, she stumbled into a camp of forest workers who fed her cassava and flushed maggots from her wounds with gasoline. The next day, they took her to a nearby village, and she was flown to safety. It was a harrowing ordeal – but

the experience didn’t dampen her love of the jungle, and she later took over her parents’ research station. “The jungle is as much a part of me as my love for my husband,” says Diller, “and the scars that remain from the plane crash.”

Geoff Hurst, insurance man These days, the world’s best footballers earn mind-boggling amounts. But for Geoff Hurst, scoring a hat-trick in the World Cup final to propel England to glory in 1966 didn’t bring great riches and, when his playing career ended, he had to get a job. For a while he managed Chelsea, but he was sacked and ended up on the dole, getting £25 a week. “In those days, footballers tended to do one of two things when they stopped playing: running a pub or getting into insurance,” he told Gordon Rayner in The Daily Telegraph. He chose insurance.

How did he adjust to his new life? “My attitude was that the past was forgotten. I wanted to focus on becoming a success in a new life and a new world.

The past, as much as it was fantastic, you had to push it aside.” Still, that wasn’t easy when cold-calling potential customers. “I remember calling one lady, and giving her the usual, ‘My name’s Geoff Hurst and I work for Abbey Life’,” he says. “She told me she’d have to fetch her husband, as he dealt with that sort of thing, and when he came to the phone he said: ‘If your name’s Geoff Hurst, my name’s effing Marilyn Monroe!’ That was the end of that one.”

Castaway of the week This week’s edition of Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs featured the Olympic gold medallist Dame Jessica Ennis-Hill 1 Moment 4 Life by Onika Maraj, Aubrey Graham, Nikhil Seetharam and Tyler Williams, performed by Nicki Minaj 2 Street Life by Joe Sample and Will Jennings, performed by Randy Crawford 3 Westside by Donald Custis, performed by TQ 4 Foolish by Ashanti Douglas, Mark DeBarge, Etterlene Jordan, Irving Lorenzo and Marcus Vest, performed by Ashanti 5 Mo Money Mo Problems by Christopher Wallace, Sean Combs, Mason Betha, Bernard Edwards and Nile Rodgers, performed by The Notorious B.I.G. (feat. Puff Daddy & Mase) 6* Unfinished Sympathy by Robert Del Naja, Grantley Marshall, Shara Nelson, Jonathan Sharp and Andrew Vowles, performed

by Massive Attack 7 Public Service Announcement by Shawn Carter, Justin Smith and Raymond Levin, performed by Jay-Z 8 Try a Little Tenderness by Jimmy Campbell, Reg Connelly and Henry Woods, performed by Otis Redding Book: Wonders of Life by Professor Brian Cox * Choice if allowed only one record Luxury: photo album of loved ones

THE WEEK 24 July 2021

In 1983, when Gabriel Byrne was a struggling actor living on welfare in London, he got a lucky break: he was sent to Venice to act opposite Richard Burton in a TV series about Wagner. He found himself living in a posh hotel on the Grand Canal and sharing scenes with one of the great actors of the day. The first day’s filming, however, went terribly; Byrne’s fake moustache kept falling off. At the end of it, Burton invited him for a drink and offered some advice: “Give it all you’ve got but never forget it’s just a bloody movie, that’s all it is. We’re not curing cancer.” Byrne never forgot Burton’s words. “This was a man I hugely respected and revered as an actor telling me: ‘Be careful. This isn’t real life’,” he told Fiona Sturges in the FT. Even so, when films such as Miller’s Crossing and The Usual Suspects thrust him into the limelight, it was a shock. Now 71, Byrne likens going to Hollywood to “touching a hot stove. I touched it and then I thought: ‘Jesus, do I really want this?’”

As well as an agent, he was told he’d need a lawyer, a manager and a publicist – as well as “a little bit of Botox to sort out the lines that were coming in on my forehead”. The last part was suggested as if it was perfectly normal. “The business seduces you. It does it in ways that are almost imperceptible,” reflects Byrne. “Botox! You have to wonder what Burton would have made of that.”

Viewpoint:

Blaming social media “No doubt, great torrents of cant and quackery wash through Facebook and Twitter. [But there is] a harder-todiscuss problem. This is human credulity: the demand for nonsense, not the supply of it. Anyone prone to mistrusting a vaccine, or an election result, will hunt out corroborating news.

If Facebook provides it, so too do talk radio, cable television and word of mouth. At some point, the instrument of misinformation becomes less troubling than the underlying receptiveness to it.

Social media users are discussed as if they were passive victims of demonic possession. The implication, that they would be model citizens were it not for the apps, slips by unquestioned.”

Janan Ganesh in the FT

Farewell Squadron Leader “Benny” Goodman, one of the last surviving bomber pilots of 617 (Dambuster) Squadron, died 18 July, aged 100.

Joan Le Mesurier, actress and author, died 9 July, aged 90.

Tom O’Connor, comedian and three-time winner of Opportunity Knocks, died 18 July, aged 81.

John Woodcock, cricket correspondent for The Times, died 18 July, aged 94.

Briefing

NEWS 11

The UFO files

A Pentagon report released last month examines mysterious phenomena in the skies. What does it tell us?

Why was the report compiled?

In 2017, The New York Times publicly revealed that the US Defence Intelligence Agency had, ten years earlier, established the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Programme – a secret $22m government project to examine military encounters with unidentified flying objects, or Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs), as they are officially known today. By that time, details and footage of some particularly striking incidents had already been leaked and widely reported. There was growing interest among members of Congress, who called for greater transparency on the issue. The Senate’s intelligence committee demanded that the Pentagon – the Department of Defence – release a public report describing its findings.

“airborne clutter”, such as birds, drones, balloons or debris; second, “natural atmospheric phenomena” such as thermal fluctuations, ball lightning or solar flares; third, classified technology operated by “US entities”; fourth, “foreign adversary systems”, i.e. secret technologies deployed by China or Russia; fifth, a catch-all “other”. The fifth, of course, was taken by many as a code for “aliens”, but the word did not feature in the report. Essentially, the report amounts to a “giant shrug”, said The Economist, finding that the evidence on UAPs is “largely inconclusive” and that conclusions will require more data.

So was it a damp squib?

Not altogether. There was enough there A UAP in a declassified Defence Department still to excite the UFO-watching community: “Some UAPs,” the report confirmed, “appeared to remain stationWhat were these widely reported incidents? ary in winds aloft, move against the wind, manoeuvre abruptly or In 2014 and 2015, US navy pilots from the aircraft carrier USS move at a considerable speed, without discernible means of propulsion.” It also signalled that security officials do now take Theodore Roosevelt described close encounters in the Atlantic off Virginia with what looked like flying spheres. Pilots reported that UAPs seriously, and that, as Barack Obama recently put it: the objects had no visible engine or exhaust plumes, but that they “there’s footage and records of objects in the skies that... we don’t know exactly what they are”. Most significantly, the findings are could reach altitudes of 30,000 feet and hypersonic speeds. Some incidents were videotaped, including one in early 2015 that shows potentially deeply troubling from a national security perspective. an object zooming over the waves as a pilot exclaims: “Wow, what is that, man? Look at it fly!” In November 2004, two jets Why are they worrying, security-wise? from the USS Nimitz were 100 miles southwest of San Diego If a “foreign adversary” is behind the aircraft seen by US pilots and radar, then the likes of Russia or China are developing craft when they encountered a white oval-shaped craft hovering above the sea. As one of the F-18 jets descended to look, the object with advanced flying abilities that not only exceed the US, but ascended towards it, then zipped away. “It accelerated like which are so far ahead that they are actually incomprehensible. nothing I’ve ever seen,” said David Fravor, one of the pilots.

Marik von Rennenkampff, a former Pentagon analyst, said that “It had no plumes, wings or rotors and outran our F-18s.” in that case, foreign powers would have performed a breathtaking technological leap – and that US intelligence would have suffered an immense failure “orders of magnitude worse than 9/11” by What did the report find?

The Pentagon examined 144 reports of UAPs made by US military failing to note and explain them. Other experts, however, pilots between 2004 and 2021. Although only nine pages long, it questioned why a foreign adversary would risk their technological presents some interesting findings. One is that UAPs “probably advantages being discovered by parading them in front of rivals. do represent physical objects”, as opposed to technical anomalies or figments of pilots’ imaginations. Some 80 of the UAPs were What other possible explanations are there? observed with “multiple sensors”, for The Pentagon has not always been instance by radar, infrared and optical forthcoming where reports of UAPs The Roswell incident cameras as well as pilots’ visual are concerned (see box). “There is a People have seen mysterious objects – angels, observations. Furthermore, in long history of the US government spheres, triangles, ships – in the sky throughout 18 of the incidents, the objects allowing UFO theories to develop to recorded history. But the modern UFO traces its origins to June 1947, when the amateur pilot Kenneth demonstrated “unusual flight mask or hide classified programmes,” Arnold reported seeing a chain of nine shining convex characteristics”, such as manoeuvring said Julian E. Barnes, an intelligence disc-like objects flying near Mount Rainier in abruptly or moving at intense speeds reporter at The New York Times.

Washington state, at estimated speeds of 1,700mph.

– potentially demonstrating advanced, Many historical UFO sightings in A flurry of other reports of “flying saucers” followed. as-yet unknown technologies. The the US have been retrospectively Earlier that month, a rancher north of Roswell, New report also identified 11 “nearexplained as sightings of the Mexico, had found mysterious hi-tech wreckage on his misses” between UAPs and US pilots, Lockheed U-2 and its successors: topland. An air force major, Jesse Marcel, was sent to concluding that they “clearly pose secret high-altitude spy planes that collect it, and in early July, with the saucer frenzy in a safety of flight issue and may pose the Pentagon did not wish publicly to full flow, the Roswell Army Air Field publicly stated a challenge to US national security”. discuss. The report is somewhat nonthat it had found the remains of a “flying disc”. The army quickly retracted the statement, claiming that the committal in this area, saying only: remains were just those of a weather balloon. In 1978, Did it offer explanations?

“We were unable to confirm” that the story resurfaced when Marcel told a UFO By and large, no. In one case, the classified US programmes “accounted researcher that there had been a cover-up, and that the for any of the UAP reports we Pentagon felt confident that the wreckage he saw featured alien hieroglyphics. There reported sighting of a UAP was in fact collected”. At any rate, this report is had indeed been a cover-up, but UFOs were not “a large, deflating balloon”. As for only the beginning: it advised more involved. The truth, declassified in 1994, is that what the other 143 sightings, it said it was “consistent consolidation” and crashed at Roswell was a balloon from Project Mogul, unable to explain them definitively. analysis of reports. Mystery objects a secret military programme that launched highBut it did put forward five potential altitude balloons to detect signs of Soviet nuclear tests. in the skies above are now firmly on categories for sightings of UAPs: first, the radar of the US armed forces.

24 July 2021 THE WEEK

The tide of sewage on our coasts George Monbiot The Guardian

Britain’s ticking debt bomb Fraser Nelson The Daily Telegraph

Don’t take away online anonymity Ellen Judson and Joe Mulhall The Independent

The losing battle against online fraud James Forsyth The Times

Southern Water was fined a record £90m this month, for pouring billions of litres of raw sewage into the sea off Hampshire and Kent. But the most surprising thing, says George Monbiot, is not so much the deed itself as the fact that the water company was actually prosecuted. These firms so seldom are. They’re only allowed to release sewage when “exceptional rainfall” overwhelms their works, yet in practice “the crap keeps coming”, rain or shine. Court documents show that Southern Water chose to pump filth into our coastal waters after calculating that even a big fine would be cheaper than upgrading its plants and treating the sewage. It also thought its chances of being caught were slim.

Since 2016, the monitoring budget of the Environment Agency (EA) has been slashed by 55%. It largely relies on water firms to “self-report” pollution, which – surprise, surprise – they’re bad at doing. It took years, and many public complaints, for the EA to take action over this deluge of coastal sewage. The complaints must keep coming. “We do not consent to this tsunami of shit.”

Covid-19 is no longer the Government’s biggest worry, says Fraser Nelson. What’s really keeping it awake is what one minister refers to as the “debt bomb”. The recent splurge of crisis spending comes on top of a decade of borrowing that has, until now, been remarkably easy to finance. But that won’t remain the case if inflationary pressures bring an end to rock-bottom interest rates – as could easily happen given the way things are going in America. The US inflation rate hit a 13-year high of 5.4% last month, and the Biden administration’s lavish spending programmes will further stoke the economy. The UK is more exposed than the US to rising interest rates because an “unusually large amount” of our debt is linked to inflation. Were interest rates to rise by a single percentage point – “to a level that would still be very low by historical standards” – it would add £21bn to our annual debt interest. That’s twice as much as our entire international aid budget. No wonder ministers are worried. “If Boris Johnson’s Government falls,” says a Tory MP, “it will be due to this.”

When the 19-year-old England footballer Bukayo Saka missed his penalty, he was instantly inundated with online racist abuse. How can we solve this problem? A popular answer, say Ellen Judson and Joe Mulhall, is to scrap online anonymity. If people had to disclose their identity, the theory goes, they wouldn’t say such awful things. It sounds plausible, but anonymity is actually a “red herring”. While it no doubt emboldens some social media users to act badly, “huge amounts” of online abuse comes from named individuals (and police can already identify “anonymous” accounts that break the law). For many people, meanwhile, online anonymity is valuable. It makes it easier for the vulnerable to find information and support. It helps whistleblowers and journalists to trade information. Rather than forcing the public to share more of their personal data online, social media platforms should redesign their algorithms so that they no longer reward divisive content and enable “instantaneous abuse at scale”. We shouldn’t have to choose between privacy and the right not to be abused: “we should find solutions to protect both”.

If Labour is looking for an issue to “hound” the Government over, says James Forsyth, online fraud is a prime candidate. It causes a huge amount of misery and aggravation, and not nearly enough is being done about it. It is a sphere of life “where the forces of law and order have lost control”. Fraud accounts for “more than a third of crime but just 1% of police resources”. And it has increased dramatically: remote banking fraud rose by 68% last year, online shopping fraud by 38%. The Government is planning to work with banks and retailers to improve online security, but much stronger action is needed. Action Fraud, the national reporting centre for fraud and cybercrime, currently acts as “little more than a black hole for complaints” (one wag called it “No further Action Fraud”). It should be replaced by a new body that has the power both to investigate and prosecute, as the Serious Fraud Office does. This isn’t just about preventing people having their life savings stolen or having to cancel their cards, it’s about the “functioning of our economy”. It’s about preserving the high levels of trust on which successful societies depend.

NEWS 13 IT MUST BE TRUE…

I read it in the tabloids Have beds in the Olympic village been weakened to discourage athletes having sex at the pandemic-hit Tokyo Games? The US runner Paul Chelimo suggested that their 100% recyclable cardboard beds had been designed to hold only the weight of one person, so as to “avoid intimacy among athletes”.

But the theory has been debunked by the Irish gymnast Rhys McClenaghan, who posted a video of himself on Twitter bouncing up and down on the beds to show they could withstand “sudden movements”. “It’s fake, fake news!”, he said.

The England fan who became briefly famous for placing a lit flare up his bottom before the Euros final was tracked down by The Sun – and declared that he “regrets nothing”. “I loved it,” said Charlie Perry, 25. He said that he had “banged a load” of cocaine, and downed at least 20 cans of cider during a 15-hour bender before gatecrashing Wembley for the Italy game.

“I’d been on the p*** since half eight in the morning,” said Perry, a Chelsea fan from Sunbury-on-Thames.

“It was the biggest day of my life. There were no rules that day. I was off my face and I loved every minute.”

A runaway tortoise has been found almost a year after it went missing – just over half a mile from home. The animal, Maxi, had travelled at an average of 0.00007 mph before he was found by dog walkers in Wiltshire, 11 months after disappearing.

Owner Ruaidhri Jukes was reunited with Maxi after the people who found him scoured Facebook for missing tortoises in the area.

24 July 2021 THE WEEK

© ELLIOTT FRANKS

Best articles: Britain

14 NEWS

Best of the American columnists

Art and ethics: Hunter Biden’s controversial new career “There is a long tradition of these paintings if the artist’s father presidential relatives posing ethical “were not the most powerful man challenges,” said The Washington on the planet”. It’s not the first time Post, “but there has never been one Hunter has profited from his connections, said Kevin D. Williamson in the quite like this.” Joe Biden’s son Hunter has embarked on a new career as an National Review. He has admitted that he was given his previous artist and is preparing to hold his first solo exhibition in October, in a New $50,000-a-month board position with York gallery. The art dealer handling a Ukrainian energy company because the sales expects Biden’s pieces to fetch “they saw my name as gold”. Biden between $75,000 and $500,000 – a should sell his art under a pseudonym huge amount for an unknown painter or give the proceeds to charity. with no formal training. In an effort to prevent anyone using his art as “a Compared to the shameless nepotism conduit” to the first family, the White of the Trump presidency, this is tame Biden’s art: a “hotel aesthetic”? stuff, said Karen Tumulty in The House has asked the gallery owner to keep the identity of buyers anonymous, even from Hunter, and Washington Post. But for a president who has promised “the to reject any unduly high bids. This, says the White House press highest ethical standards of any administration in American secretary, will provide “a level of protection and transparency”. history”, it’s still unsatisfactory. To stave off corruption, the “Indeed,” said Miranda Devine in the New York Post. “So White House is “counting on the sole judgement of a gallery owner who stands to make a profit on the deal”. Let’s at least much transparency that no one is allowed to know anything.” have real transparency, so we can see who’s paying him what.

Hunter, a former alcoholic and drug addict, has very publicly The critics have responded to Hunter’s blown-ink abstractions with “a mixture of curiosity and derision”, said Robin Abcarian talked about his struggles with living in his father’s shadow, in the Los Angeles Times. One called his work “Generic Post said Ben Davis on Artnet. He took up painting as therapy. If Zombie Formalism”; another characterised it as having “a hotel he doesn’t want his art also caught up in his father’s “political narrative”, there’s a simple solution: “don’t do this show now”. art aesthetic”. Clearly, no one would shell out big bucks for

Trump finds a martyr for his cause Jonathan Chait NYMag.com

Who’s to blame for the culture wars?

Kevin Drum Jabberwocking.com

Ice cream is back... thanks to Joe Biden Bill Press The Hill

THE WEEK 24 July 2021

“Who shot Ashli Babbitt?” That’s the question Donald Trump keeps asking, says Jonathan Chait.

He’s referring to the air force veteran killed by police during the 6 January storming of the US Capitol. Her death, “while tragic, occurred for a very good reason”. Babbitt, who had been radicalised by online conspiracy theories such as QAnon, was shot while trying to force her way through a barricaded door to a chamber where members of Congress were hiding from the mob.

Yet in rallies and interviews, Trump has called Babbitt “an innocent, wonderful, incredible woman” who was executed for “no reason” by a rogue cop affiliated with the Democrats. It’s part of a cynical – and worryingly effective – attempt to rewrite history. In the aftermath of the riot, Republican leaders condemned the mob’s actions and criticised Trump for inciting the assault. But over six months, Trump has intimidated the GOP into denying the gravity of the episode. Now, by painting Babbitt as a martyr, Trump is trying to insist that cowed Republicans adopt an even more radical narrative. No longer are the events of 6 January a black mark against Trump, or even a “regrettable episode”. Now, they’re “the heroic culmination of a righteous uprising”.

The conventional wisdom is that it’s conservatives who have turned American politics into an endless “culture war battle”, says Kevin Drum. And it’s entirely wrong: liberals are the driving force behind this. It’s obvious in a way. Almost by definition, liberals tend to be the ones pushing for change, while conservatives resist it. And the data shows that progressive politics has become increasingly provocative over the past two decades. When you analyse attitudes on hot-button issues such as immigration, abortion, guns and LGBTQ rights, it’s clear that the Republican move to the right since 2000 pales into insignificance compared with the Democrats’ move to the left. On abortion, for example, the percentage of Republicans who advocate a total ban has risen only a couple of points, while fully 20% more Democrats favour no restrictions at all. As a progressive, I welcome the Democrats’ “leftward march”, but there’s no denying that the views pushed by the party are increasingly distant from those of the median voter. A course correction is needed, if we’re to become routine winners in national politics. “All it takes is a moderation of our positions from ‘pretty far-left’ to ‘pretty liberal’. That’s all. But who’s got the courage to say so?”

If you follow the Bidens’ official trips around the US, says Bill Press, you’ll notice a recurring theme: desserts. On a recent visit to Georgia, for instance, the First Lady made an unscheduled stop to pick up a box of pecan pies. Her husband combined an official visit to Michigan earlier this month with a stop at King Orchards Farm in Central Lake to grab a cherry pie. As for ice cream, it seems the president is incapable of driving past a parlour without stopping to sample its offerings. “It’s never too cold for ice cream or too dark for aviator glasses,” he once quipped. The coverage of these visits infuriates the conservative press, who accuse White House reporters of paying more attention to what flavour ice cream Biden eats than what he’s going to do about Russian hacking. But presidential food favourites have always been an object of fascination: James Garfield’s squirrel soup, Harry Truman’s fried chicken, Jimmy Carter’s baked grits and cheese. And after Michelle Obama’s “stern admonitions” about healthy eating – her favourite snacks, she said, were “nuts, veggies and hummus” – it’s a relief. Shout it: “ICE CREAM IS BACK! Pie is back!”. “If the Biden administration achieves nothing else, it has already succeeded in redeeming America’s sweet tooth.”

Best articles: International

NEWS 17

“Down with communism!”: the mass protests in Cuba “Sunday, 11 July 2021 will go down stores where the lucky few with access to dollars can buy scarce goods. But as a landmark in Cuban history,” said the overarching cry was for political Carlos M. Rodríguez Arechavaleta in Diario de Cuba (Madrid). In an freedom: an end to the communist unprecedented display of anger and regime’s one-party rule. President Miguel Díaz-Canel, who succeeded frustration, thousands of people joined spontaneous anti-government protests Raúl Castro as party chief this year, across the island nation. The protests was quick to blame the US, said Carlos started in San Antonio de los Baños, Manuel Álvarez in El País (Madrid). southwest of Havana, but within Like any weak leader, he resorted to violence. “Into the street, revolutionminutes, identical demonstrations were aries!” he ordered. Pro-government taking place in more than 30 cities and thugs were unleashed on the protesters, towns across Cuba, organised via the internet and social networks. It was a said the dissident Cuban news site development unheard of in 62 years of 14YMedio.com. At least 140 Cubans A protester is detained during a rally in Havana are thought to have been detained. revolutionary Cuban history: not just the scale of the protests, but the explicitly political content of their demands. “Down with communism!” they shouted.

Both Cuban and US authorities are to blame, said La Joven “Freedom, Homeland and Life.”

Cuba (New York). The “current health, economic and political crisis” is largely the fault of the Cuban government. Couple that with the “inhumane attitude of the US government”, which still This explosion was sparked by economic discontent, said José Meléndez in El Universal (Mexico City). Shortages of basic enforces a suffocating decades-long economic embargo, and foods long predate the pandemic. But Cuba’s economy shrank you have a recipe for disaster. Cuban exiles in Miami seem by more than 10% in 2020 due to Covid-19, not least because convinced that this is “the beginning of the end”, said Günther Maihold in Der Tagesspiegel (Potsdam). This seems premature: the crucial tourist industry collapsed. The health service is struggling to cope with the pandemic. Prices have risen, wages the regime has the means to stop further protests. But if it can’t have fallen, food queues are long. Some protesters chanted “my feed its own people or reform itself, its long-term future must children are starving”, while others looted the hard-currency be in doubt. The real dangers to Cuban socialism “lie within”.

ITALY

Venice’s battle against the cruise ships Die Tageszeitung (Berlin)

FRANCE

Le Pen’s Anglo-Saxon ambitions Le Point (Paris)

EUROPEAN UNION

Are the EU’s rebels heading for the exit?

La Repubblica (Rome)

The Italian government’s decision to ban cruise ships from Venice has been greeted with applause around the world, says Petra Reski. These giant floating hotels create “small tsunamis” as they sail past St Mark’s Square, damaging the city’s foundations and the lagoon’s fragile ecosystem. For years, campaigners have pleaded with the government to take action. Now, at last, it has been forced into action by Unesco, which was about to add Venice to its blacklist of endangered world heritage sites.

From next month, vessels of more than 25,000 tonnes won’t be allowed in, until the city’s industrial port, Marghera, is ready to receive them. Sadly, though, there’s precious little to celebrate. Problems will persist until big ships are barred from the lagoon altogether, and there’s no sign of that happening. Unesco’s proposal that cruise ships be diverted to ports outside the lagoon caused an outcry among local politicians, some of whom have business interests in Marghera. Their plan to create a cruise ship terminal there would mean excavating huge amounts of soil from the lagoon bed, causing great damage. Unesco must keep fighting, and not “buckle” under pressure from Italian politicians.

“When she tackles geopolitics, Marine Le Pen makes your head spin,” says Luc de Barochez. The leader of the far-right National Rally recently sketched out what her foreign policy would look like, if she were to win in next year’s presidential election. As ever, she displayed a “furious antiGermanism” (cataloguing the “disappointments, betrayals and abandonments” that she claims France has suffered at the hands of Germany). But what was more remarkable was “the alternative to the Franco-German alliance that she proposes: a rapprochement with the UK and the US”. She wants a close foreign policy alliance with the UK, and an “ambitious” new treaty with the US, “focused on the challenges of the Indo-Pacific and space exploration”. Can she be serious? It’s hard to see Boris Johnson, who came to power on an anti-European platform, building new continental alliances. And Joe Biden is unlikely to favour a politician who praises Vladimir Putin and whose party is partly financed by Russian money. None of this makes the slightest sense. But then many of Le Pen’s signature policies – exiting the EU, leaving the euro – have since been unceremoniously abandoned. No doubt this ill-thought-out policy will, in time, be abandoned too.

For years, the EU watched helplessly as populist right-wing governments in Poland and Hungary trashed the rule of law and democratic standards. Now at last the EU Commission is cracking down, says Andrea Bonanni. Last year, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in Luxembourg ordered Warsaw to drop new measures to punish judges who refuse to do the bidding of the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS). Last week, when Poland’s constitutional court – packed with PiS loyalists – denounced the order as unconstitutional, the ECJ stood firm, and now Ursula von der Leyen’s Commission has “peremptorily” ordered Poland to comply. The Commission has also launched infringement procedures against Hungary and Poland for violating LGBT rights. Attitudes are hardening on both sides. The Commission seems determined to “go into battle”. There’s no question of either Poland or Hungary being expelled: that would require all other 26 states to agree, and they will defend each other. But neither appears willing to back down – meaning secession from the EU is now a real possibility. Voters in both nations may soon be asked to decide. We can only hope that, when the time comes, their democracies have not deteriorated so far that a free vote is impossible.

24 July 2021 THE WEEK

Health & Science

NEWS 19

What the scientists are saying…

Fading hope of life on Venus

The unexpected discovery of a gas called phosphine on Venus last year “led to speculation that there may be life floating in the planet’s clouds”, said Leah Crane in New Scientist. But now it seems that the gas may have come from “huge volcanic eruptions” instead. In 2020, a team from Cardiff University found evidence of phosphine in the atmosphere of our sister planet. On Earth, life is the only process known to produce the gas in large quantities. While the surface of Venus is a hellscape hot enough to melt lead, it is possible that organisms could live in the cooler upper layers of the atmosphere.

However, researchers at Cornell University in New York have now calculated that volcanic activity could also explain the presence of phosphine. Phosphorus hurled out by volcanic plumes could interact with the clouds of sulphuric acid in Venus’s atmosphere to form phosphine, they argue. However, the density of the planet’s atmosphere makes it hard to spot any active eruptions. In June, Nasa approved two future missions to the planet, an orbiter and a descent probe, to advance our understanding of Venus.

Heart attacks: on the rise again

The rate of heart attacks in England began to rise a decade ago, after many years of decline, according to research from the University of Oxford. Between 2012 and 2016, there was an average annual increase in myocardial infarctions, of 3.2% for women and 4.2% for men, with even steeper rises for certain age groups.

Several factors could explain the findings, including rising obesity levels, better testing and improvements in recordkeeping. Ironically, improved medical treatment could also have affected the

body size in more challenging environments, and shrink in less demanding ones.

In one study, the anatomy of rainbow trout that had escaped from a fish farm and begun living wild in a lake were compared with those left behind. After seven months, the brains of the escaped fish were 15% heavier relative to body size than those of their captive cousins. A second study found that lake trout’s brains grow in autumn and winter, when the fish have to forage in shallower waters near the shore, which are trickier to navigate. Their brains diminish in size again in the spring and summer. The researchers say the adaptation could help fish save vital resources, as brain tissue is highly energyintensive to maintain.

Venus: could there be life in the atmosphere?

figures, as more people may have survived their first heart attack only to suffer another. Either way, say researchers, “continued surveillance of trends and coronary disease preventive strategies are warranted”. Particularly worrying are increases in hospitalisation rates for young women and men. Heart attacks among women aged 40 to 49 and men aged 15 to 34 rose by 7% a year for both groups in the five years to 2016. In the 50-year period studied, hospitalisations peaked in the mid-1980s, before declining by more than a third. Overall, two-thirds of admissions were men.

The trout’s elastic brain

Fish literally become more brainy when forced to think hard by difficult circumstances; and less brainy in easier times. Two studies by teams at the University of Guelph in Canada show that trout brains grow larger relative to their

Dogs are born to be our best friends

After more than 10,000 years of domestication and breeding, dogs may have lost the pack-hunting skills of wolves; but, unlike wolves, they are very good at understanding humans.

“Researchers have shown that no matter how much you coddle and socialise with wolf cubs, they are never able to form the kind of inferences about humans’ behaviour that dogs can,” said Tom Whipple in The Times.

A study carried out at the Wildlife Dogs instinctively understand humans Science Centre in Stacy, Minnesota, monitored 44 puppies and 37 wolf cubs to see how they responded to human instructions. The dogs were left with their mothers and siblings, while keepers spent 24 hours a day with the wolves, and fed them by hand. Even so, the wolves never formed a bond like the dogs did. In a range of trials, the puppies understood cues such as pointing at food bowls far better than the young wolves, which simply ignored their handlers; the puppies also sought help by making eye contact. “Dogs are born with this innate ability to understand that we’re communicating with them,” said Hannah Salomons of Duke University, North Carolina, who led the study.

Neuroscience and sex difference

Neuroscience researchers are ignoring female subjects, meaning we have little understanding of how neurological and psychiatric disorders may differ between the sexes, according to a new review. Top research papers are eight times more likely to study only male participants or male samples than female-only participants, according to a team at the University of British Columbia, Canada. The team analysed the sex of samples used in every research paper published by three of the world’s most respected neuroscience journals between 2009 and 2019. Besides the bias towards men, only 4% of studies looked for sex differences in their data.

Many disorders are known to be more prevalent for one sex or the other, while women are on average diagnosed two years later than men for the same disease.

While there are many reasons for this, one major factor is our lack of understanding of how men and women may present the same disease differently.

Covid: the risk to children The risk of severe illness and death from Covid-19 remains extremely low in children, the largest study into the issue has found. Teams at University College London, Imperial College London and the universities of Bristol, York and Liverpool found that children had a roughly one-in-50,000 chance of being admitted to intensive care and a two-ina-million chance of dying. However, catching the disease did increase the likelihood of serious illness in those with underlying medical conditions. During the first year of the pandemic, 25 children and teenagers died as a direct result of Covid-19 in England, and about 6,000 were admitted to hospital. The findings have been submitted to the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, to inform vaccine and shielding policy for the under-18s. This is the first study to give clear estimates of the risks in a very large population.

24 July 2021 THE WEEK

20 NEWS Pick of the week’s

Gossip

Boris Johnson had to be talked out of going to see the Queen early on in the pandemic, according to Dominic Cummings. The PM’s former chief adviser claims his boss was about to attend his weekly audience at Buckingham Palace after Covid had hit No. 10. “I said, ‘What on earth are you talking about, you can’t go and see the Queen’,” he told the BBC. Johnson replied: “Ah, that’s what I do every Wednesday, sod this, I’m gonna go and see her.” The PM “just hadn’t thought it through”, said Cummings. When it was pointed out he could kill the Queen, “He said, ‘Yeah, holy shit, I can’t go’.”

President Biden has a new rhetorical trick: leaning into the microphone at important moments, pausing, and whispering theatrically. In Wisconsin recently, he said in hushed tones: “I think it’s time to give ordinary people a tax break.” At the White House, he huskily hissed: “I got them $1.9trn of relief so far. They’re going to be getting cheques in the mail that are consequential.” PR experts said it conveyed “intimacy and familiarity” – but not everyone agreed.

“Mr President,” whispered the TV host Stephen Colbert, “You know I’m a fan, but the way you lean forward and whisper: guess what? It’s a little creepy.”

The comedian Tom O’Connor, who has died aged 81, made his name in working men’s clubs, and liked to tell the story of one night when every joke fell flat. Finally, he heard distant clapping, and made a point of thanking his fan. “I was smacking the sauce bottle,” came the reply.

THE WEEK 24 July 2021

Talking points Northern Ireland: time for an amnesty?

“Nothing about the politics the past decade alone, some of Northern Ireland has 1,000 Troubles cases have ever been easy,” said The used “a staggering £500m in Times. But few questions legal aid” – with precious have been more difficult few tangible results. That money would be better spent than how to address “the on a relief fund for victims. legacy of violence during the Troubles”. The Good Still, even a commission Friday Agreement of 1998 would not tackle the brought peace, but it did fundamental problem: that “Northern Ireland’s rival not bring justice: around 1,200 unsolved deaths are communities remain defined still under investigation. by their past”. To move on, And for many, the Govern- Some 1,200 deaths are under investigation the country must deploy ment’s new proposal for an “the ability to forget”. “effective amnesty” for those accused of crimes committed before the agreement – whether Wrong, said Andrew McQuillan in The security forces or paramilitaries – will come Spectator. This idea has united both sides “in as “a bitter blow”. In place of prosecutions, revulsion” because it betrays all those “whose Brandon Lewis, the Northern Ireland Secretary, lives were ruined by violence”. If the proposal is backing a South African-style “truth and goes ahead, the families of the dozen people murdered by the 1987 IRA bomb at the reconciliation” commission. All major Northern Irish parties and the Irish government strongly cenotaph in Enniskillen will now have justice oppose such a move. But the truth is that the denied, but so too will the families of those likelihood of fair trials is fast receding. Trials of killed by the Parachute Regiment in Army veterans who served in Northern Ireland Ballymurphy in 1971. It’s true that the police have recently collapsed, and there is no appetite Historical Enquiries Team, which operated in Britain – particularly in the Tory party – for between 2005 and 2014, delivered only three pursuing elderly servicemen. Yet it would be convictions, said Gerry Moriarty in The Irish impossible, legally and morally, to introduce Times. But it did give families “the truth behind a statute of limitations for servicemen without hundreds of killings”. Whatever the British doing the same for terrorists.

Government decides, the IRA, the loyalist paramilitaries, the British Army and the security Lewis’s proposal could not be worse than services still face one unavoidable question: the current situation, from which only lawyers “Will they now, decades on, deliver the truth, profit, said Simon Jenkins in The Guardian. In if not the justice, the victims require?”

Spyware: an Orwellian nightmare?

Pegasus is an ingenious piece of spyware that covertly allows access to the target’s mobile phone, said The Guardian. Once it gains access, via little-known software flaws, it can not just extract emails, photos and contact details, but also secretly activate the phone’s microphone and camera – in short, it can access “our most intimate secrets”. The Israeli company that makes it, NSO, claims that it sells its software only to vetted government clients, to help them prevent “terrorism and crime”. Unfortunately, that is not the case. An investigation coordinated by the NGO Forbidden Stories, Amnesty and 17 news organisations, including The Guardian, suggests that Pegasus has been used by many authoritarian regimes and right-wing populist governments to target journalists, human rights activists, dissidents and opposition politicians.

Pegasus seems to be enabling Orwellian “state surveillance” on a vast scale.

The list of NSO’s clients should have raised suspicions, said Robert Fox on Reaction.life.

Big users include Hungary, Azerbaijan, Morocco, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Rwanda.

Investigators have leaked a list of 50,000 phone numbers that may have been subjected to surveillance. Among those apparently targeted were two leading journalists investigating state corruption and organised crime in Mexico;

Hatice Cengiz, fiancée of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi who was murdered by Saudi Arabian agents; Roula Khalaf, the editor of the FT; and even, it seems, France’s President Macron, apparently targeted by Moroccan intelligence.

The leaked list of names has set off a “political storm” in India, said Manoj C.G. in The Indian Express. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s most prominent political rival, Rahul Gandhi of the Congress party, was twice selected as a potential surveillance target by NSO. Dozens of Indian politicians, journalists, activists and government critics seem to have been targeted.

The implications for democracy are devastating, said Amitai Ziv in Haaretz. Who will ever want to share a secret with a reporter if they believe state agents may be listening in? Protests won’t even happen if everyone is “monitored and silenced” before they can reach the streets. Alas, this issue is not limited to NSO, said David Kaye and Marietje Schaake in The Washington Post.

The Israeli firm is just one of hundreds vying for a piece of the “lucrative private surveillance pie”; many are ready to do business with regimes of any stripe. Our response should be to push for a moratorium on the transfer of spyware until there are proper international controls in place.

Anything less, and we could be headed for a “global surveillance tech catastrophe”.

Talking points Germany: a once-in-a-century flood Early last week, a low-pressure extreme weather” are predicted system began forming over the as the global temperature rises. area where Germany meets Looking around the world – at the floods in Germany, the Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, said The heatwaves in the US, the Economist. Puffed up by heat – wildfires tearing through in the Netherlands, it had been Siberia’s forests – it is hard not the hottest June since 1901– it to conclude that we are at the sucked in moisture from all start of a climate emergency. across central Europe. “Then New “rapid attribution studies” it sat there for days, disgorging allow the role of climate change colossal quantities of rain.” in such events to be quickly Some regions got over 90mm assessed. One such study found of precipitation last Tuesday – that last month’s fatal heatwave much more than the average in the Pacific Northwest of the amount for a month – and a North Rhine-Westphalia: badly hit US and Canada would have been “virtually impossible further 70mm or more the next day. “Soon entire towns were under water.” without human-caused climate change”.

Across Germany’s northwestern states, houses, This is an election year in Germany, and the bridges and cars were swept away. Villages were destroyed. The press called it a Jahrhundertflut, campaign is likely to be shaped by the worst a once-in-a-century flood: the worst in postwar natural disaster in its recent history, said Der history. Nearly 200 people died in Germany Spiegel. Harsh though it may sound, the floods and Belgium; hundreds are still unaccounted for. probably “play to the Greens’ advantage”: they Even the Netherlands, with its famous system of are already second in the polls, despite a difficult dykes and canals, suffered heavy damage. On a campaign. The floods also pose problems for visit to Rhineland-Palatinate state, Chancellor Armin Laschet, the candidate for Merkel’s CDU. Angela Merkel said: “The German language has As governor of the badly-affected North Rhineno words, I think, for the devastation.”

Westphalia state, he is in the firing line. He was criticised for seeming to laugh during a visit; he German politicians were quick to blame the also brushed off questions about his climate flooding on global warming. While experts say policies, saying: “You don’t change your policies that climate change is never the direct cause of a just because of a day like this.” Those words flood, “it affects the likelihood and frequency of may come back to haunt him. “In such moments them occurring, and their intensity”, said Tom of need, people often take a closer look at the Parfitt in The Times. “More and more cases of people in power than they normally would.”

Tokyo 2020: the strangest Games in history The Tokyo 2020 Olympics are living under virtual house arrest. “With training were supposed to symbolise Japan’s national revival disrupted and little chance of after years in the economic acclimatising, don’t expect doldrums, said Ido Vock in many world records.” the New Statesman, but Covid-19 has put paid to These are hardly auspicious that. The delayed Games circumstances for an Olympic beginning this week are set to Games, said Nick Varley in be the “strangest” in history.

The Daily Telegraph. But let’s With Tokyo in a state of not forget that there’s always Tokyo is under a state of emergency emergency owing to a spike a certain amount of doom in Covid infections, the athletes will mostly and gloom in the run-up to these events. “When compete in empty stadiums. Medal ceremonies the action starts, the griping tends to stop.” It’s will be muted affairs, said David Brown in The sad that Japan will miss out on “one of the most Times: winners will pick their medal from a tray amazing parts of the Games – the melting pot of and place it around their own neck. Competitors different cultures and people” – but the rest of can’t mix and will have to leave the Olympic the world watching events on TV probably village within 48 hours of their final event. won’t notice much difference. The biggest losers “Organisers will, as normal, hand out 160,000 may be the sponsors, who have paid out a condoms to the 15,000 Olympic and Paralympic fortune with little marketing benefit in return, athletes, but this year only as a parting gift.” said Robin Harding and Kana Inagaki in the FT. But these stripped-back Games will at The event looks set to be “an utterly joyless least provide an opportunity to gain a fresh affair”, said Philip Patrick in The Spectator. It’s perspective on the Olympics. With much of the taking place against the wishes of most Japanese usual hoopla relating to marketing and national citizens. They regard it as a vanity project for the promotion cut away, all that remains of Tokyo former PM, Shinzo Abe, and fear it could fuel 2020 is “the athletes and these simple questions: Covid infections (there has even been talk of an Who is the fastest? Who can go highest? Who is “Olympic variant”). The athletes, meanwhile, the strongest?”

NEWS 21

Wit & Wisdom “Never eat more than you can lift.”

Miss Piggy, quoted in The Times “A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.”

Oscar Wilde, quoted on The Browser “Liking money like I like it is nothing less than mysticism.

Money is a glory.”

Salvador Dalí, quoted in Forbes “Journalism can never be silent: that is its greatest virtue and its greatest fault.”

US journalist Henry Anatole Grunwald, quoted on Medium.com “Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what’s for lunch.”

Orson Welles, quoted in the Daily Mail “To be left alone is the most precious thing one can ask of the modern world.”

Anthony Burgess, quoted on PasteMagazine.com “Beauty is rarely soft or consolatory. Quite the contrary. Genuine beauty is always quite alarming.”

Donna Tartt, quoted in the San Francisco Examiner “The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men.”

George Eliot, quoted on iNews.co.uk “How small, of all that human hearts endure, that part which laws or kings can cause or cure.”

Samuel Johnson, quoted in The Sunday Telegraph

Statistics of the week

The G20 nations have provided more than $3.3trn (£2.4trn) in subsidies for fossil fuels since the Paris climate agreement in 2015.

The Guardian The lowest vaccination rates in England are in Tower Hamlets, east London: just 32.1% of adults are double-jabbed.

ONS/Daily Mail

24 July 2021 THE WEEK

Sport

22 NEWS

Golf: Morikawa wins The Open

“Collin Morikawa is the first-timer who simply loves firsts, the virgin soldier who thinks nothing of being the last man standing on the battlefield,” said James Corrigan in The Daily Telegraph.

When the 24-year-old American won The Open at Royal St George’s on Sunday, with a nerveless, bogey-less 66 in the final round, he became the only golfer to win two majors on a debut attempt, having already collected the US PGA last year. He was “unbreakable, unmatchable and unbelievable”. South Africa’s Louis Oosthuizen had led the tournament since Friday – but when Morikawa overtook him with a birdie at the seventh, “he was doomed never to recover”.

Instead the contest on the back nine was with Morikawa’s countryman Jordan Spieth, who “burst back into the reckoning” after a recent slump in form. The two will surely have more showdowns, but this one was “a veritable cracker”.

When Spieth moved within a single shot, having birdied the 14th, Morikawa holed an 18-foot putt on the same green. The Californian’s steadiness on the final day was “close to serenity”, said Alasdair Reid in The Times. There is “something very Tigerish” about the young man from Los Angeles, who has taken only eight majors to complete half of a career Grand Slam. He turned professional two years ago, and this was only his second outing on a links course. Morikawa has had “a remarkably smooth rise to the top”.

“One can only wonder what Morikawa’s record might have looked like had he not appreciated the value of education,” said Ewan Murray in The Guardian. In 2016, he nearly turned pro after playing as an amateur at his first professional Morikawa: “unbelievable” event; but he postponed it for four years to finish his business degree at the University of California, Berkeley. Some have claimed that his US PGA victory was helped by the lack of crowds, but no one could question his calmness in front of 32,000 There were “shudders of uncertainty” for Morikawa on the tenth green, said Tom Kershaw in The Independent, when his approach spectators at Sandwich, where “he discovered a formidable shot “sailed over the back of the green and buried itself into a putting touch”. There was also, he declared, a more unorthodox deep tuft of rough that invited whispers of disaster”. But the secret to his success: “I never do this but I had a burger for four moment his par-putt reached the hole, “it became clear that straight days,” he said. Given “this illustrious CV” at the age of 24, Morikawa seems “on course for greatness”.

Morikawa’s stranglehold on the Claret Jug would never slip”.

F1: the most determined drive of Hamilton’s career “Football might not have come home,” said Jim White in The Daily Telegraph, “but Lewis Hamilton did – and how.” Hamilton won his eighth British Grand Prix with “the most determined and pugnacious drive of his career”; he equalled the record for the most wins at a single F1 event and gave his ailing championship campaign “a blast with the defibrillator” as the first lap turned his ongoing battle with Max Verstappen into something from the days of Prost vs. Senna. “It may have lasted under two minutes, but there was as much drama here as in any round of a world heavyweight title fight.”

incident was probably “Hamilton’s desperation”, said Jonathan McEvoy in the Daily Mail – born both at the “chastening loss” of the previous day’s sprint race, and the realisation that this was his best and possibly only opportunity to get ahead of his rival.

Verstappen was “badly shaken” and taken to hospital, said Rebecca Clancy in The Times: it is a testament to F1’s safety measures that he was able to walk away. Hamilton was handed a ten-second penalty, and any chance of a victory seemed to have gone. But as he has done so many times before, the world champion “flew” round the track, said Giles Starting from second on the grid, Hamilton tried to Richards in The Guardian. There was a “calm, stoic Hamilton: pugnacious slide inside Verstappen at Copse Corner, “perhaps confidence to his driving” as he overhauled first sensing a move that would have gone down in history as one Lando Norris then his teammate Valtteri Bottas. Hamilton finally of the greatest”, said James Gray in The i Paper. It’s more of a caught Charles Leclerc three laps before the chequered flag, “kink” than a corner, and the two cars collided at 180mph to passing him – at Copse Corner, no less – to seal a “mighty send Verstappen flying into a tyre barrier. The impulse behind the comeback”, and “one of his most memorable victories”.

Rugby league: a remarkable final

Sporting headlines

In rugby league, it takes “years Coote’s conversion levelled the of blood, sweat and tears” to score, while two more penalties build up a legacy, said Aaron from him swung the pendulum Bower in The Observer. Yet in St Helens’ favour. the big matches are often In the suffocating heat of “decided in razor-thin, marginal the second half the Saints’s moments”. So it proved at 20 unanswered points “slowSaturday’s Challenge Cup roasted” their opponents, said final, “one of the best in recent Chris Irvine in The Sunday memory”, fought between Times. Alongside league titles St Helens and Castleford, “two in 2019 and 2020, St Helens’ Roby: “Peter Pan” of the league towns where rugby league is victory means “their preeverything”. At half-time, Castleford were 12-6 eminence is unquestioned”. Thirty-five-year-old up and looking good for their first cup win since Roby was the only player involved the last time 1986. Then, early in the second half, as Mark the team won the Challenge Cup, 13 years ago.

Percival seemed to spill the ball near the To put his “remarkable longevity” into context, touchline, Regan Grace knocked it back infield said Ross Heppenstall in The Sunday Telegraph, to send St Helens’ captain, James Roby, over for his teammate Jack Welsby was just five back a controversial try, awarded only after much then; yet the “Peter Pan of rugby league” is deliberation from the video referee. Lachlan considering whether to play one more season.

Cricket Liam Livingstone scored the fastest-ever century for England as he hit 103 off 42 balls in the first T20 international against Pakistan.

England went on to lose the match by 31 runs.

Football Peterborough United’s Amputee team defeated Portsmouth Amputees on penalties in the FA Disability Cup at St George’s Park on Sunday.

Darts The former BDO world darts champion Andy Fordham died on Thursday at the age of 59. Known by his nickname The Viking, Fordham was one of the most popular figures in his sport.

THE WEEK 24 July 2021

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LETTERS Pick of the week’s correspondence Racism in football To the Financial Times

Sadly, why are we surprised (“Football, racism and the England team”)? John Barnes, a former great international player, was a guest on BBC Newsnight in the euphoric aftermath of the England victory over Germany. Barnes was asked if he thought that this “diverse” England team represented a new dawn in anti-racism in society. Barnes simply replied that it’s okay when England are winning, but you must wait to see what happens when the team loses.

Education has to go deeper into society than football teams and society needs to be represented by ministers who model equity rather than personal privilege.

Professor Bill Boyle, professor of education, University of Manchester 1989-2014

No diversity at the top To the Financial Times

The FT is right to condemn the disreputable and racist actions of a small minority who have targeted England players on social media. However, highlighting the allegations of hypocrisy against ministers would sit more easily if the newspaper’s board could count a single UK-born minority individual in its membership, which would reflect the spirit of Sir John Parker’s “Beyond One by ’21” recommendation to FTSE companies.

The FT is not alone in facing a gap between what it says and what it does. The BBC, which yesterday led its news reports on the same allegations, currently has no non-white members among its board of governors; and there is just one black individual on its executive committee, who happens to be the part-time executive responsible for its diversity policies.

Trevor Phillips, chair, Green Park Interim and Executive Recruitment, London

Bullingdon gaffe To The Times

The sartorial splendour of the Bullingdon Club members posing in 1987 is utterly spoilt by the unsightly flash of white flesh between the top of Boris Johnson’s socks and the bottom of his dress trousers.

Letter of the week

Changing the British diet To The Times

The proposals made in the National Food Strategy are evidence-based, necessary steps in reversing the destructive effect that poor dietary habits are having on our health and environment. The UK has the worst diet in Europe, and has to change with decisive action. In addition to recommending that we eat 30% less meat and rethink land use, the report builds on the efficacy of the narrow soft drinks industry levy, which, despite initial uproar of nanny-statism, has reduced obesity and tooth decay in children.

Although I am against demonising single ingredients (especially salt), focusing on the reduction of both salt and sugar will force the food industry to reformulate their highly processed products. The goal is not to make snack foods more expensive, but to drive a change towards whole foods instead of processed, nutrient-poor ones. Safety nets must ensure that products are not simply reformulated to contain artificial versions harmful in other ways. Aside from financial gains, this strategy will have huge health benefits. Let’s hope the Government has the guts for the fight.

Professor Tim Spector, author of Spoon-Fed: Why Almost Everything We’ve Been Told About Food is Wrong (2020) No male over the age of 13 should wear ankle socks. With formal and informal wear, socks that end just below the knee are required to spare us one of the most unpleasant spectacles available on television: the bare calf of an ingénu politician, cross-legged and squirming, as he is interviewed on Newsnight.

Michael Cole, director, Harrods (1988-98)

“Poultry potty” rivers To The Times

Helen Rumbelow hits the nail on the head when she talks about the River Wye becoming a “poultry potty”. For over a century, all human waste has legally been required to go into sewage treatment plants rather than straight into our streams and rivers. Water companies are fined if they allow raw sewage to run into a water course, yet there is still no waste treatment infrastructure for the tonnes of sewage coming from industrially farmed animals. It seems incredible in this day and age that, despite the Environment Agency producing legislation in 2017 to make it an offence to allow run-off from farms to enter rivers, there have been almost no prosecutions since then, and raw animal sewage continues to clog up our beautiful rivers with dangerous pathogens and algal bloom.

Jill Hazell, Bristol

Know your audience To The Daily Telegraph

I see that the Hundred cricket is to employ “an all-star lineup of DJs and rappers”in an effort to attract a more diverse and younger audience.

Have nightclubs considered earlier hours and softer music in an effort to attract a more diverse, older audience? No. I thought not.

Hilary Mathews, Tring, Hertfordshire

The old aren’t wallpaper To The Guardian

25

friends who’ll pick up bright new things for me to wear from the charity shops, make sure that when the rugby starts I have a bottle of San Mig and a bag of crisps every weekend, tell me about new books they’ve read (and lend them to me), and ask about my adventures (I’ve caught a fish from the African Queen and seen Mt. Everest).

Mr Head’s final words sum it up well: don’t treat old people as wallpaper. We’ve learnt a lot the hard way, and the most important lesson of all is that life is for living. I thank God for it every day.

Margaret Spivey, Clevedon, Somerset

Temporary measures To The Guardian

The Government’s promise that aid spending will return to 0.7% of gross national income “when the fiscal situation allows” will have a familiar ring to those with a long-standing involvement in development. It is exactly the same cliché that I had to trot out time and again during the last Conservative administration. Even the then-minister for overseas development, Lynda Chalker, described to me as “a good woman hampered by the Treasury and Foreign Office”, seemed embarrassed when she had to use it. It was to no one’s surprise that the financial situation never did allow. It fell from 0.51% in 1979 to 0.26% in 1997. Perhaps we should be grateful that it’s only going down to 0.5%.

Ron Fosker, former chief press officer, Overseas Development Administration/Department for International Development

The letters on depression in older people, especially David Head’s, touched me personally.

I am an 89-year-old widow living alone, with my children overseas, siblings dead, and other relatives out of reach.

I do not have dementia.

Mr Head’s words about older people “no longer finding much pleasure in the things they used to enjoy” worried me. We need to find new things to enjoy. It has depressed me how many people were surprised that I watched Euro 2020. Why? I’ve discovered how to record early-morning gems such as operas from Sydney Harbour, and tomorrow I’m starting lessons on how to use my late husband’s iPad. When I can no longer “Synchronised nasal swabbing” get out unaided, this is the kind of help I hope for: © MATT/THE TELEGRAPH

● Letters have been edited

24 July 2021 THE WEEK

ARTS Review of reviews: Books Book of the week Re-educated

by Lucy Kellaway Ebury Press 256pp £16.99 The Week Bookshop £13.99

Six years ago, Lucy Kellaway’s life seemed “a model of affluent, enviable stability”, said Lynn Barber in The Sunday Telegraph. A respected columnist for the FT, where she’d worked for 32 years, she lived in a large house in Highbury with her husband and four children. But in the space of two years, she writes, “I tore it all down. House, marriage, job, considerable income – I despatched the lot of them.” She separated from her husband, moved into a cool but rickety modern house of her own, and became a schoolteacher. She also co-founded Now Teach, a charity to encourage other middle-aged professionals to take up teaching. Why? She felt stale as a journalist, and wanted to do something useful; her mother had been a highly regarded teacher, which gave her some idea of what it would involve. What she didn’t realise was how relentlessly demanding it would be. When friends suggested meeting for coffee or lunch, she laughed. “What coffee? What lunch?”

There are lots of reasons to read this book, which has “the fineness of detail, sharpness of humour and grace of a novel by

27

Penelope Lively”, said Emma Brockes in The Observer. First and foremost, it’s about having one’s assumptions thoroughly dismantled: starting in a large comprehensive in Hackney, Kellaway comes to recognise that what her pupils need is not a progressive emphasis on creative thinking, but rigorous exam-training to help them out of poverty. It’s rare to find a narrator who can confront her own limitations “without sneakily presenting them as adorable virtues”, but this one mercilessly exposes her initial arrogance and ineptitude. The result is thrilling, fascinating and moving: I was “on the brink of tears” for the final third.

Re-educated is written with “warmth, wit and honesty”, said Anna Soubry in the FT, and offers a frank discussion about the role of schools in children’s lives, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds: I hope it sparks a wider debate. I’m sure it will, said Rosie Kinchen in The Sunday Times, Kellaway is eloquent about challenges facing the education system – poor pay and matters of race among them – and she’s rightly proud of pushing herself so far outside her comfort zone. At times she seems like a “wiser, smarter Bridget Jones” as she wrestles with PowerPoint and adjusts to singleton life. But while there is plenty of humour, this book is fundamentally a serious call to arms, trumpeting that it is perfectly possible – “enjoyable even” – to start a new chapter at any age.

Ethel Rosenberg: a Cold War Tragedy

Novel of the week

The Week Bookshop £15.99

by Esther Freud Bloomsbury 368pp £16.99

I Couldn’t Love You More

by Anne Sebba Weidenfeld & Nicolson 304pp £20 The execution of Ethel Rosenberg in 1953 must rank “among the most horribly botched in human history”, said Jake Kerridge in The Daily Telegraph: sentenced to die with her husband Julius for spying for the Soviet Union, she took four-and-a-half minutes to die in the electric chair. It was also, Anne Sebba argues with “exemplary clarity”, a miscarriage of justice fuelled by anticommunist hysteria and male chauvinism. The crucial evidence against her was supplied by her estranged brother David Greenglass – also implicated in the passing of atomic secrets to the Russians – in return for a reduced sentence; and even he testified that she had done little more than type up the information. Yet because she refused to play the part of a weak and helpless woman in court, she was branded a termagant who had masterminded the operation.

Sebba has taken a well-known story and skilfully breathed fresh life into it, said Andrew Lownie in The Oldie. This is a “powerful” biography of a woman caught in a system determined to make an example of her. The FBI knew its case against her was weak, but brought it to put pressure on her husband. Sebba persuasively argues that Ethel’s punishment was disproportionate, though her attempt to downplay Ethel’s guilt altogether “will strain credulity in some quarters”. You can say that again, said Oliver Kamm in The Times. This book is “an intellectual disgrace”. Julius Rosenberg was of great value to Soviet intelligence: he passed on a series of important military secrets. And the evidence is clear that Ethel conspired with him. The trial was certainly tainted, and the punishment was “barbarous”, but the Rosenbergs were willing servants of an appalling regime. “Theirs was no equivalent of the Dreyfus case.”

The Week Bookshop £13.99

“The glamorous unreliability of Esther Freud’s father, Lucian Freud, is an inescapable force in her novels,” said Markie Robson-Scott on The Arts Desk. Her ninth is a “what if?” exploration of her parents’ relationship: what if her teenage mother, pregnant by the older artist in the 1960s, had had to return home to Ireland to give birth in a hellish home run by nuns? Rosaleen is the stand-in for her mother, Bernardine Coverley, while Felix Lichtman is the Freud figure, haunting the French pub and ordering oysters in Soho restaurants. The timeline is not always clear, but Freud brings it to life with her “customary skill” and touches of dark humour.

This is a finely crafted novel of “three generations of women: the men they love and the choices they make”, said Ella Risbridger in The Guardian. “Tender, carefully drawn images reverberate.” Freud’s “darting, impressionistic” prose is full of riches, said Claire Allfree in The Times. She makes the most of details others neglect. Hitting the sweet spot between commercial and literary fiction, her novels are “invariably” a joy to read.

To order these titles or any other book in print, visit theweekbookshop.co.uk or speak to a bookseller on 020-3176 3835 Opening times: Monday to Saturday 9am-5.30pm and Sunday 10am-4pm

24 July 2021 THE WEEK

28 ARTS

Drama

Theatre and opera: South Pacific and Anna X “My, how I’ve missed the (“excellent” as Princess Diana gladdening sight and pulsein The Crown) and Nabhaan quickening sound of a major Rizwan are both “superb”: she emanating “steely cynicism”; he American musical done to perfection,” said Dominic “loveably gullible” – but it’s the set and video designs that blow Cavendish in The Daily the mind. Anna X deploys “such Telegraph. Daniel Evans’s sophisticated – and stupendous “enchanting” and “seductive” staging of South Pacific at – video projection techniques Chichester Festival Theatre is a that it feels like a reconceived theatrical form” – a mash-up flat-out triumph. Leads Julian Ovenden and Gina Beck are of film, pop video and both first-rate. The racial “happening”. Let’s hope that aspects of the plot are handled Charlton (a successful TV very sensitively, and without writer) continues to write for the theatre, said Paul Taylor in The sacrificing wit and buoyancy.

And just to see “a large cast Independent. He’s a major talent South Pacific: “a musical done to perfection” dancing and singing its lungs out (until 4 August). feels like witnessing an act of rebirth”. I’ve never before Pietro Mascagni’s charming “country-comedy” opera L’amico been seduced by South Pacific, with its “sumptuous score” and Fritz is a “musical flummery” as “toothsome” as its cherry“ghastly action”, said Susannah Clapp in The Observer. But this orchard setting – all “sharp-sweet dissonance, heavy with some “glorious” version made me think, for the first time, that Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical “really may, as has always been really sumptuous duets and a stirring intermezzo”, said Alexandra claimed, not be besmirched by racism and misogyny but be Coghlan in The Daily Telegraph. Verdi called it “the worst libretto I’ve ever seen”, but “since when has a lack of real conflict tackling them”. Truly an enchanted evening (until 5 September). been a barrier to success for a romantic comedy?” The piece is a Anna X, at the Harold Pinter Theatre in London’s West End, favourite at Opera Holland Park, where Julia Burbach’s new production boasts a cracking cast, and a reduced City of London is “frenetic, fun and ultra-cool” – and dazzling in its “ambition, Sinfonia sensitively captures the work’s tender string writing and originality and execution”, said Arifa Akbar in The Guardian. folk-infused melodies. “It’s froth, but deliciously served” – and Joseph Charlton’s “slick and intelligent” two-hander, about a “delivered with a final sprinkle of pink confetti, this is opera con artist who rips off a tech entrepreneur, is loosely based on without tears, and none the worse for it” (until 31 July). the story of the “fake heiress” Anna Sorokin. Emma Corrin

I’ve spent much less time on misunderstood in the popular Twitter of late, and am happier imagination. Other recent topics include the “Satanic Panic” of as a result, said James Marriott in The Times. The problem is the 1980s and 1990s, the saga that I have “an odd sensation of Koko the Gorilla, and the anti-vaccine movement. The of having lost a sixth sense for what’s going on in the world”: hosts are “warm and engaging”, who has been cancelled, what and thorough without getting is now deemed immoral, what bogged down by detail. we’re all arguing about. The Listening to them is “like sitting nifty solution is Blocked and in on a conversation with your smartest friends. You might not Reported, which offers “goodhumoured, common-sense get everything, but you’ll and often entertainingly definitely learn a lot.” exasperated” dispatches from the online culture wars.

Culture wars and comedy Presented by two “liberal but were the subject of Taboo, Blocked and Reported covers Adichie’s skirmish in the culture wars woke-sceptic” US journalists, an outstanding recent Radio Jesse Singal and Katie Herzog, the podcast has recently covered 4 programme that’s well worth seeking out on BBC Sounds, topics such as the “hounding” of the novelist Chimamanda Ngozi said Charlotte Runcie in The Daily Telegraph. The smart and Adichie for her views on trans rights; a Pride event in Seattle that “fearless” presenter Kate Copstick joined a very diverse group charged its white guests a “reparations fee” for attendance; and of comedians to discuss all aspects of offence-giving and taking. an “internet pile-on” that destroyed the business of a PalestinianThe result was “one of the most thought-provoking radio American entrepreneur whose daughter posted racist tweets. “To comedy” shows I’ve heard for years. Finally, I’d strongly clamber through all this thorny territory with confidence and recommend the new podcast from the TV doctors the Van good humour is, I think, pretty remarkable.” And it makes me Tulleken brothers, said Hannah Verdier in The Guardian. “very relieved I don’t spend so much time on Twitter nowadays”.

A Thorough Examination with Drs Chris + Xand explores why Xand is obese but Chris isn’t, even though they’re identical Cancel culture is the subject of my favourite recent episode of twins. It’s a question that the pair decided to confront after they You’re Wrong About, said Ella Mumby in The Guardian. This both caught Covid, and Xand developed a heart condition; the terrific US podcast is educational but entertaining – each episode twins delved back into their childhood eating patterns and more explores an event, phenomenon or person that the hosts, Michael recent life stresses. The Van Tullekens tackle a complex issue Hobbes and Sarah Marshall, believe has been miscast or sensitively, with insight and “much myth-busting”.

THE WEEK 24 July 2021

© JOHAN PERSSON

Podcasts... online rage, taboos and obesity

Film & TV Films to stream

New releases

Cinema has its share of heroic fathers, but the most memorable movie dads are often its most flawed. Here are five excellent films about fatherhood:

Summer of Soul

Through a Glass Darkly Ingmar Bergman’s exquisite 1961 Oscar-winner is a threeact chamber piece that depicts 24 hours in the lives of an estranged family on holiday together. Harriet Andersson’s performance as a young woman who, released from a mental institution, seeks security in the love of her father, is stark and precise.

The Return Andrey Zvyagintsev’s doleful debut about an errant father, who returns after an absence of 12 years and takes his two sons fishing in the Russian wilderness, won the Golden Lion at 2003’s Venice film festival. A mysterious, unsettling and beautiful film.

THE STREAMING FILMS ARE AVAILABLE ON NETFLIX, AMAZON PRIME VIDEO OR YOUTUBE

The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou Father-son issues appear in many Wes Anderson films, but this meticulous 2004 comedydrama handles them most satisfyingly. The film sees a washed-up oceanographer, played by a delightfully deadpan Bill Murray, meeting a young man who may or may not be his son.

There Will Be Blood If Paul Thomas Anderson’s films, from Boogie Nights to this one, have a common thread, it is the way people with no kin – or terrible kin – create makeshift families of their own. This 2007 Daniel DayLewis vehicle follows the fortunes of an enigmatic oil prospector who takes on an orphan and then the world.

Somewhere Drawing on her own experiences touring the world’s hotels as a child with her director father, Sofia Coppola looks at the angst that comes with fame and fortune. This 2010 film follows a Hollywood actor whose life of endless partying is interrupted when his 11-year-old daughter comes to stay for the summer.

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Dir: Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson (1h 57m) (12A)

★★★★★

This new documentary is “an absolute joy, uncovering a treasure trove of pulse-racing, heart-stopping live music footage that has remained largely unseen for half a century”, said Mark Kermode in The Observer. The Harlem Cultural Festival was a series of openair concerts that took place in New York in 1969, and which were dubbed the “Black Woodstock”. The concerts were filmed by the television producer Hal Tulchin, who planned to make a TV film out of it. But he was turned down by all the main networks, and his footage sat in a basement for 50 years. The director Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson discovered it, and has made it into a debut feature which “intertwines music and politics in one of the best concert movies of all time”.

This “deliriously enjoyable” film captures Nina Simone at the height of her powers, and a 19-year-old Stevie Wonder “on fire” on the drums, said Tom Shone in The Times. B.B. King, Sly and the Family Stone, Mavis Staples and Mahalia Jackson are seen performing to crowds nearly 300,000 strong. With material of “such richness”, Questlove could have been forgiven if he had just let the musicians sing for themselves, said Joe Morgenstern in The Wall Street Journal. But Summer of Soul is “informed by a desire to reflect the complexity of the black community” at the time: inflamed by “virulent racism” and beset by intractable poverty, a year after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. The film begins and ends with festival-goer Musa Jackson watching the reclaimed footage and tearfully thanking the film-maker for proving to him that “I’m not crazy!” – that this really happened. In cinemas.

Deerskin

Dir: Quentin Dupieux (1h 17m) (15)

★★★

Quentin Dupieux’s macabre tale of a middleaged man who has a psychotic obsession with

Mahalia Jackson and Mavis Staples: “absolute joy”

his new deerskin jacket is “entirely bizarre, uncompromisingly silly and intensely French”, said Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian. The director “has form” with creating odd films about inanimate objects attaining strange significance; his 2010 picture Rubber was about a tyre that comes to life and kills people. But even for Dupieux, this story of a man who believes his expensive jacket is “talking to him and basically encouraging him to kill people” is “very wacky” indeed. With a different cast it “might have been insufferable”, and to be honest it nearly is. But the “strangely poignant figure” of lead actor Jean Dujardin – with his “great open, handsome face, a little weathered by time” – makes the film work.

Dujardin is the sort of leading man who likes to “mix it up”, said Owen Gleiberman in Vanity Fair. Here, the “blazingly charismatic” star of The Artist and (in smaller roles) The Wolf of Wall Street and The Monuments Men, gives the kind of performance that “tosses vanity – and sanity – right out the window”. He is ably supported by Adèle Haenel, a “gifted” actress last seen in the period romance Portrait of a Lady on Fire, as an easily manipulated barmaid.

Dupieux whips up “a world daffy enough to make you feel silly just describing it”, said Danny Leigh in the FT: Dujardin’s character wants to be the only man alive to own a jacket.

But while the end is “epically flimsy”, it is also “oddly lingering”. In cinemas.

Fear Street trilogy: slasher horror with a Netflix twist This “hokey horror” film trilogy, to The Crucible, delivers a thesis released over the past three “far meatier” than we had any Fridays on Netflix, came to a right to expect from a slasher “surprisingly satiating” finale series. It suggests “that the this week with Fear Street Part original American sin is the Three: 1666, said Benjamin Lee triumph of Puritanism” and that in The Guardian. The timethere are “few things more hopping franchise, based on the terrifying than a righteous mob”. teen-fiction writer R.L. Stine’s The first two films had fun sprawling book series, took with the 1990s and 1970s period viewers from 1994 in part one A suspenseful mini-franchise detail, said Natalia Winkelman to 1978 in part two, before in The New York Times. But turning the clock back to 1666.

Part Three: 1666, with its “colonial rags” and This “longest, last and most audacious “period speech that nobody quite pulls off”, chapter” is set largely in a 17th century pilgrim lacks the fizz and fun of the earlier two. On the colony rife with accusations of witchcraft and whole, though, this mini-franchise “mostly satanic worship, said Kevin Maher in The succeeds”, managing to “sustain interest and Times. The film, which owes an obvious debt suspense over nearly six hours”.

24 July 2021 THE WEEK

Art

30 ARTS

Exhibition of the week British Art Show 9 Aberdeen Art Gallery, Aberdeen (03000-200 293, britishartshow9.co.uk). Until 10 October, then touring If anyone “has a finger one of which has a man assuming “the position on the pulse of contemporary art in of Courbet’s The Origin of the World, his Britain”, it’s the curators of the British genitals smeared into Art Show, said Alastair shape as if by a drunken Sooke in The Daily Frank Auerbach”. It is Telegraph. Staged in “raw, existential art”.

Yet all too often, the partnership with participants here seem London’s Hayward Gallery, this touring to prioritise signalling exhibition takes place their “lightweight” in different British cities student politics over once every five years aesthetic concerns. with the aim of Kathrin Böhm, for instance, affixes “a showcasing “the country’s most exciting typed diatribe about artists”. The latest Aberdeen’s relationship iteration will travel to with oil” onto one of her drawings, while four cities – Aberdeen, “research” artist Maeve Wolverhampton, Manchester and Brennan displays photos Joey Holder’s Semelparous (2020): viscerally “unnerving” Plymouth – offering a of stolen Ancient Greek vases to examine “the trade in archaeological loot”. If she is slightly different show in each. And if this first segment at saying anything, it isn’t clear. Worse still is Uriel Orlow, whose Aberdeen Art Gallery is anything to go on, visitors are in for a treat. Bringing together submissions from 33 artists, from relative installation advances the baseless claim that a “natural folk unknowns to Turner Prize nominees, it incorporates work made remedy for malaria” derived from African herbs is being “suppressed in the interests of Big Pharma”. All I learnt from in many different mediums, from Joanna Piotrowska’s unsettling domestic photographs, to the “uproarious, psychedelic drawings” this installation “is that artists are not qualified to legislate of Glasgow-based Hardeep Pandhal, to Hrair Sarkissian’s creepy for humankind”.

16-minute sound installation, Deathscape, in which we hear, in total darkness, the tap of tools on bones. The curators have cast Personally, I found the show a wonderfully “immersive” experience, said Scott Begbie in the Aberdeen Press and Journal. their net far and wide, rejecting the London-centric art world to draw on talent from around the country. Socially conscious but With its “stunning”, “weird” and “thought-provoking” pieces, it proves that contemporary art isn’t “elitist or incomprehensible” “rarely preachy”, it is as exciting a survey of contemporary art as or “something for other people”. Joey Holder’s Semelparous is you’re likely to encounter. viscerally “unnerving”: a dimly lit room that feels like an underground chamber, with a doomy soundscape and a screen showing The best stuff here is thrilling, said Jonathan Jones in The footage of “slithering eels”. Further on, Simeon Barclay gives us a Guardian. The painter Michael Armitage provides a “towering” canvas depicting “a giant pink octopus rising from a sea that “flashing neon reworking of a Rodin sculpture”, while Florence Peake’s disturbing sculpture Crude Care is a “fleshy, organic floods a forest”. It’s a dreamlike work that confirms him as one of the most “ambitious and rewarding artists in Britain”. Celia shrine”. This exhibition provides “something to delight, surprise and even unnerve at almost every turn”. Don’t miss it.

Hempton paints “small savage canvases” of herself and friends,

News from the art world Pornhub’s classic nudes

When Madrid’s Prado Museum reopened last “The debate over nudes is about to reach a week, eagle-eyed visitors noticed that The climax,” says The Art Newspaper. The adult Colossus, a painting once believed to be the video-streaming platform Pornhub has work of Goya, but subsequently dismissed as launched a series of digital “Classic Nudes” “a botched job” created by a studio assistant, tours for six of the world’s leading museums, had been quietly reattributed to “the Spanish with the declared aim of “stimulating the master”, said Isambard Wilkinson in The public to visit, explore and fall back in love (or Times. The museum’s decision to downgrade lust) with these cultural institutions”. Anyone the painting, back in 2008, was highly tempted by the new feature can either visit controversial. The Colossus was long thought the works online or use maps provided by the to have been painted between 1818 and 1825 platform to visit the paintings in real life. The as an allegorical response to Spain’s defeat captions and commentary, however, are far at the hands of Napoleon’s armies, but its removed from the traditional tour guide authenticity was called into question after register. Botticelli’s Primavera, for example, an extensive restoration in 1992. The art is described as “a medieval mood-starter”, historian Peio H. Riaño gave a scathing in reference to the fact that it was painted for assessment in the newspaper El Diario: Lorenzo de’ Medici, who intended to give it The Colossus: a Goya once more “Thirteen years after having misattributed the to his new bride as a wedding present. Voicepainting in a shady and treacherous manner, the Prado Museum overs are given by the likes of the adult film actress Asa Akira. has rectified its mistake in the same way, restoring the authorship The Uffizi Gallery, however, this week announced that it was to Goya without giving any explanation, taking advantage of its taking legal action against the use of its paintings, such as reorganisation to sneak it in without making a sound.”

Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus, in Pornhub’s online guides.

THE WEEK 24 July 2021

© JOEY HOLDER

A giant error of attribution

The List

31

Best books… Douglas Kennedy

The bestselling writer and former theatre director chooses his five favourite books. Kennedy’s novels have sold more than 15 million copies worldwide and the latest, Afraid of the Light (Hutchinson £13.99), is out now The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925 (Penguin £6.99). Fitzgerald’s seminal novel sold only 3,000 copies on its publication, but with its lyrical exactitude and an eye for the complex nuances of class and social hierarchy, it remains one of the most perfectly judged visions of that deeply American longing for perfection amid that equally American obsession with lucre.

I re-read it every two years – and it always astonishes.

A Flag for Sunrise by Robert Stone, 1981 (Picador £14.99).

My favourite novel of the Reaganite 1980s by this shamefully undervalued novelist, whose work grappled with the geopolitical mess we

created during the Cold War, and the spiritual vacuity of modern life.

The Collected Stories by William Trevor, 1992 (Penguin £16.99). I discovered Trevor’s brilliant oeuvre during my Dublin years – and still consider his short stories to be among the finest of any postwar writer. His reserved, unobtrusive narrative voice gives way to a frequently lethal dissection of the human condition in all its manifold contradictions.

Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates, 1961 (Vintage £9.99). Yates’s ruthlessly lucid examination of marital hell and self-entrapment remains,

for me, one of the great achievements in postwar American literature. Its portrait of a couple who talk themselves into a move to the New York suburbs and descend into destructive disaffection might be the most blistering examination of the way hell is not just others (as Sartre once noted). Hell, indeed, is often our self.

Pick-Up by Charles Willeford, 1955 (out of print; available as ebook). Written by one of the most underrated masters of American noir, this deeply strange, shadowy account of two drunks who meet in a sleazy bar and begin a romance doomed to conflagrate is pulp fiction at its most skewed.

Programmes

India’s Rape Scandal

Emmy Award-winning reporter Ramita Navai investigates two rape cases that lead to the highest reaches of Indian politics.

Tue 27 Jul, C4 22:00 (55mins).

Chris Packham: The Walk that Made Me The naturalist

reflects on his life and on living with Asperger’s Syndrome, as he walks a favourite route along the river Itchen in his native Hampshire. Wed 28 Jul, BBC2 20:00 (60mins).

BBC Proms: First Night of the Proms Live from

the Royal Albert Hall as the season kicks off with the BBC Symphony Orchestra performing works including Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Serenade to Music. Fri 30 Jul, BBC2 19:30 (65mins) and BBC4 21:05 (70mins).

King Gary The popular

The Week’s guide to what’s worth seeing

suburban sitcom returns: it’s a big day on Butterchurn Crescent as Gary hires a skip.

Fri 30 Jul, C4 21:30 (30mins).

Showing now

Films

Titles in print are available from The Week Bookshop on 020-3176 3835. For out-of-print books visit biblio.co.uk

After more than 60 years and various incarnations, Paddington Bear remains as beloved as ever, as evidenced by Paddington: The Story of a Bear, a “delightful new exhibition” featuring manuscripts, illustrations and film snippets (Daily Telegraph). Until 31 October, British Library, London NW1 (bl.uk).

Lady Bird (2017) Greta

Gerwig’s bittersweet comedydrama about a young woman navigating the end of high school and her relationship with her mother. Sat 24 Jul, BBC1 22:30 (90mins).

I Capture the Castle (2003)

Book now

Charleston, with its rich Bloomsbury literary heritage, hosts a series of talks with writers throughout August, including Elif Shafak, Arifa Akbar, Jeanette Winterson and Antonia Fraser.

Charleston, East Sussex (charleston.org.uk).

Just four actors will play all parts in The Tempest, in a high-energy, family-friendly version of Shakespeare’s final play, staged in the open air outside the Nottingham Playhouse.

4-7 August, Wellington Circus, Nottingham (nottinghamplayhouse.co.uk).

Primadonna – a literary festival with a focus on women and under-represented writers – returns with an impressive line-up including Sandi

Michael Bond with his famous creation, Paddington

Toksvig, Monique Roffey and Grace Dent, as well as writing classes, music and comedy.

30 July-1 August; Museum of East Anglian Life, Stowmarket, Suffolk (primadonnafestival.com).

Julian Clary and Matthew Kelly star in a new production of Ronald Harwood’s classic backstage drama The Dresser, with Clary as the long-suffering assistant to Kelly’s “Sir” in a provincial wartime theatre. 9-18 Sept, Theatre Royal Bath, then touring (theatreroyal.org.uk).

The Archers: what happened last week © PAUL STUART; P & CO. LTD 2021

Television

Ben is anxious ahead of his interview for a nursing course. Sharing her own experience of cancer, Ruth tells him he’d make a great nurse. Eddie is £200 up in tips after driving a stag party in his limo, but later finds the groom passed out on the backseat. Ed recognises the groom as his old PE teacher; Eddie later extracts £100 from him to keep quiet about his night in the limo. Ben is nervous at the interview but talks about how Ruth has inspired him. Roy prepares for a first date with Leyla, who he’s been talking to on the phone. When she cancels, Phoebe grows suspicious – she’s worried that her dad is being catfished, but Roy won’t believe it. Lee tells Ian that some neighbours have been saying cruel things about Helen’s past on the Beechwood WhatsApp group.

When Helen finds out about the messages, angry Lee goes to have it out with the ringleader Kyle, but stops short. Helen says she doesn’t want his protection, but wants him by her side. Joy reckons they should just ignore Kyle.

Charming adaptation of Dodie Smith’s 1948 coming-of-age novel about Cassandra Mortmain and her family, struggling in genteel poverty in a crumbling castle. Thur 29 Jul, BBC4 22:35 (105mins).

Bait (2019) An acclaimed

drama – shot in black and white – set in a Cornish fishing village, where tensions run high between locals and descending tourists. Fri 30 Jul, Film4 00:35 (105mins).

New to subscription TV Naomi Osaka Three-part series following the 23-yearold tennis player over two years, charting her meteoric rise and her struggle with the game’s pressures. On Netflix.

War of the Worlds This darkly atmospheric update of H.G. Wells’s classic novel returns for a new season, with Gabriel Byrne and Daisy Edgar-Jones. On Disney+.

24 July 2021 THE WEEK

Best properties

32 Properties with income potential ▲

Cornwall: Mount Pleasant Cottage, Mousehole, Penzance.

On the market for the first time in about 15 years is this spacious house and selfcontained apartment, which would be ideal as a holiday let, set in 0.15 acres of southfacing gardens, with views beyond the harbour to St Clement’s Isle, St Michael’s Mount and across Mount’s Bay. 4 beds, family bath, shower, kitchen, recep hall, 2 further receps, laundry/store, deck, terrace; 2-bed flat with separate entrance, open-plan kitchen/ recep. OIEO £950,000; Lillicrap Chilcott (01872273473).

▲ Devon: The Old School, Horrabridge. Currently a successful guest house with great reviews, this former Victorian school house on the edge of Dartmoor has an adjoining 2-bed cottage, plus planning consent for a new 3-bed holiday cottage offering further income potential. 5-bed main house, 2-bed cottage, outbuildings, parking, garage, 0.5 acres. £850,000; Stags (01822-612458). ▲

Somerset: High House, Dunster, Minehead. Set in this historic medieval village in Exmoor National Park, this Grade II property is already a successful holiday let (highhousedunster.com).

Just down the hill from a former motte-and-bailey castle now owned by the National Trust, the house has been renovated, but retains original features from open fireplaces to exposed timbers. 2 bed suites, 3 further beds, 2 further baths, kitchen, pantry, snug, 3 receps, study, studio, stores, summer house, 2 WCs, shower, parking, garden, hot tub, games rooms. £1.65m; Knight Frank (01392-848824).

THE WEEK 24 July 2021

on the market

33

▲ Hampshire: The Leckford Hutt, Stockbridge. This 18th century former farmhouse was converted into a restaurant in 2004. Restaurant: 2 dining areas (40 covers), kitchen, store, 2 cloakrooms, large car park, courtyard garden; accommodation: 3 beds, family bath, 2 receps, private garden. £685,000; Myddelton & Major (01264-316000). ▲

Inverness-shire: Drumnadrochit Post Office and Store, Drumnadrochit, Inverness. A superb business in a prime tourist area of the Scottish Highlands, close to Loch Ness, including a detached traditional 4-bed family home with a very successful trading general store, licensed tearoom and Post Office business. The owner’s accommodation is accessed from the rear and has a garden, garage and store.

OIRO £550,000; Strutt & Parker (01463-723593).

Northumberland: Beltingham, Bardon Mill, Hexham. This handsome renovated Grade II Georgian house in a charming setting surrounded by beautiful countryside is currently let successfully for selfcatering holiday accommodation (beltinghamhouse.co.uk).

7 beds, 5 baths (3 en suite), large kitchen/ breakfast room, 4 receps, 2nd kitchen, utility, cellar, 1-bed selfcontained annexe with garden area, mature garden, woodland, paddock, 1.83 acres. £1.15m; Knight Frank (01896-807013).

▲

▲

West Sussex: Post Office, Loxwood, Billingshurst. A detached house, together with its own shop and Post Office, in the heart of this sought-after village close to the Surrey/ West Sussex border.

Main bed suite, 5 further beds, family bath, kitchen/breakfast room, utility, 1 recep, hall; shop with range of shelves, post office counter and store room to the rear, good-sized garden, offroad parking at the front. £750,000; Henry Adams (01403782991).

▲

Cornwall: Flat 1, Lower Saltings, St Ives.

A fine waterfront apartment situated on the beach at Porthmeor, in the heart of St Ives, with truly impressive panoramic views overlooking the beach and out to sea. This immaculate apartment is currently rented out for short holiday lets, and generates a rental income with a net profit of around £40,000 in a normal year of trading. 1 bed, 1 bath, open-plan kitchen/sitting/dining room, hall, parking.

OIEO £930,000; Knight Frank (01392848822).

▲ London: Brushfield Street, Spitalfields E1. This Grade II building in the heart of Spitalfields Market comprises a shop and flat above, providing a rare opportunity to live and work in one of London’s most popular historic markets. Ground-floor shop with office, basement storage, utility and bath; 2-bed flat, private roof terrace. £2.185m leasehold; Inigo (020-3687 3071).

24 July 2021 THE WEEK

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LEISURE Food & Drink

35

What the experts say: how to cook well on a staycation This summer, once again, staycations are “top of the holiday menu”, said Katy Salter in Delicious Magazine. And unless you’re staying in a hotel (or planning to eat every meal in a restaurant), most will involve a significant element of selfcatering. While it can be fun to prepare meals on holiday, it can also be quite a challenge. If you’re staying in a rental property, the “oven and kitchen gear won’t be what you’re used to at home”.

If you’re camping, you’ll have to bring all your equipment with you. So it’s worth putting time and effort into ensuring that your staycation features plenty of lovely food. After all, it’s something you can control – unlike the British weather.

Equipment checklist First things first: bring the right utensils, continued Salter. Rental kitchens are often poorly kitted out, and there’s nothing worse than discovering at the last minute that you can’t purée your potatoes because there’s no masher. Many hosts provide a list of gear (consult it carefully); if they haven’t done so, ask for one. While what you bring will largely depend upon these inventories, it’s generally wise to pack all or most of the following: tin foil and kitchen roll, extra tea towels, washing-up liquid, Tupperware or lunch boxes (for storing leftovers and picnics), a cool bag for beach days, water bottles for days out, and bamboo picnic plates (in

pops uncooked couscous in a ziplock bag with dried herbs, a crumbled stock cube and spices (chilli, cumin, coriander, etc.), and then turns it into a finished dish by pouring the mixture into a bowl or pan and covering it with boiling water. Or, for a delicious cooked breakfast, Taylor advises tearing up some mushrooms and adding them to a “big, old pan over the fire” with garlic, butter, olive oil and parsley. Once they’re cooked, make a few holes in the mix, crack in some eggs, and continue cooking until they’re set.

Grilled fish can put you in a holiday mood

case you need extra, and for days out).

Food-wise, garlic bulbs, stock cubes, tea bags, pots of salt and pepper, olive oil and a bag of pasta are always a good idea.

Cooking in the wild If you’re camping, planning is even more important, said Anna Berrill in The Guardian. Not only is it essential to bring the right equipment with you, but you can make life so much easier by knowing some handy shortcuts to delicious meals.

“Be boy-scout about it,” advises barbecue expert and food writer Genevieve Taylor.

“Couscous is amazingly quick, especially when you take it ready-seasoned.” She

Recipe of the week Cauliflower fritters are a Palermo street-food classic from the friggitorie – hot and salty from the fryer and finished with a squeeze of lemon juice, says Ben Tish. Delicious. Perfect served with a glass of dry Marsala for an aperitivo.

Cauliflower, parmesan and anchovy fritters Serves 4 ½ a large leafy cauliflower, cut into florets and leaves thinly sliced 1.5-2 litres groundnut oil, for frying for the batter: 50g plain flour 50g cornflour 30g parmesan, finely grated 2 salted anchovies, finely chopped zest of ½ an unwaxed lemon ½ teaspoon of cayenne pepper 1 large free-range egg 75ml cold sparkling water sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

© KRIS KIRKHAM

• Cook the florets and

leaves in boiling salted water for 5 mins or so.

Drain well, refresh under cold water, drain again.

• To make the batter, mix the flours with the cheese, anchovies, lemon zest and cayenne. Make a well and add the egg. Mix with a wooden spoon, gradually adding the fizzy water and drawing the flour into the centre, until you have a smooth, thick batter.

Season well. Add the cauliflower florets and leaves and stir to coat.

• Heat the oil in a deep-fat

fryer or deep pan to 180°C (a cube of bread dropped in will brown in about 30 secs). Drop heaped tablespoons of the cauliflower into the hot oil and fry for 2 mins, or until crisp and golden brown. Lift out with a spider or slotted spoon onto a plate lined with kitchen paper to drain while you continue frying.

• Sprinkle sea salt liberally over the fried cauliflower and serve with homemade aioli.

Taken from Sicilia by Ben Tish, published by Bloomsbury at £26. To buy from The Week Bookshop for £20.99, call 020-3176 3835 or visit theweekbookshop.co.uk.

Foreign inspiration An alternative approach to staycation dining is to recreate what you’d be eating if you were abroad, said Tony Turnbull in The Times. “If I can’t get to the Med, I can at least try to bring a bit of it to my table.” Wonderful tomatoes are a feature of any Mediterranean holidays: the trick to making watery British ones taste more continental “is to slice them into a colander, sprinkle with salt and leave them for 30 minutes or so before rinsing and draining”. Grilled fish, cooked on the bone, is also likely to put you in a holiday mood. You can achieve this at home by stuffing a bream with herbs (especially fennel), and then grilling it over a barbecue in one of “those fish cages” (which make turning much easier).

Then serve it with tomatoes, capers and chopped anchovies.

Picpoul de Pinet One of my favourite wines to drink in summer is “fresh and tangy” Picpoul de Pinet, says Susy Atkins in The Daily Telegraph. Made “near the Med”, in the Pinet sub-region of the Languedoc, it has a light, crisp and floral style, which is rare in a wine produced in such a hot climate. “The vines’ proximity to the sea breezes helps”, as does the natural acidity of the picpoul grape.

Easily recognisable in shops, because of their distinctive tall green bottles, most picpouls are priced very reasonably – between £8 and £10. They make “lip-smacking” apéritifs, and are also “excellent matches for seafood and fish” and grilled vegetables like courgette and fennel.

If you’re a member of the Wine Society, try their Picpoul de Pinet 2020 (£8.75), which “has a hint of lime blossom, snappy lemon juice and a twist of white pepper”. Villemarin Picpoul de Pinet 2020 (£9.99, or £7.49 as part of a mixed six; Majestic) is an attractive mix of citrus, apple tart and light peach; it’s “terrific with oysters”. For a Picpoul with a “bit more texture than some”, try Domaine

Reine Juliette Picpoul de Pinet 2020

(£11.50; Lea & Sandeman), which would be ideal with fish in a light creamy sauce.

24 July 2021 THE WEEK

Consumer

36 LEISURE The best… sun loungers

▲

Barlow Tyrie Capri Ultra Lounger A classic but pricey lounger with honeycoloured teak slats and smooth curved legs. The wheels make it easy to follow the sun and there’s a handy pull-out tray for drinks (£1,287; barlow. worldofteak. co.uk).

▲

Habitat Jambi Garden Lounger If you’re looking for a statement piece, this Habitat lounger is a good option. It has a bold multicoloured finish and can stay outside all year round, but it’s adjustable to only two positions (£150; habitat. co.uk).

▲

Click Sun Lounger Part of a large collection of outdoor furniture, this lounger has been designed to follow the structure of the spine. The material used provides “cushionfree comfort” and comes in a wide range of colours (£446; madeindesign. co.uk).

Moroso Imba Sun Lounger This lounger is made from woven threads, using a technique normally used for fishing nets. Each piece is unique, and handmade by local craftsmen in Senegal.

Suitable for indoor and outdoor use (£948; madeindesign. co.uk).

▲

▲ Tine K Bamboo Sun Lounger For an eco-conscious option, this handmade bamboo lounger is a stylish choice.

The cushion is available in white, grey or black, and the lounger also comes with a cover for light rain showers (from £522; idyllhome. co.uk).

▲

Argos Home Zero Gravity Lounger A popular budget-friendly lounger which elevates the legs while supporting the back to give a “sensation of weightlessness” and reduce joint pressure (£30; argos.co.uk).

▲ Amezza Acacia and Canvas Lounge Chair

by La Redoute This coastalstyle canvas lounger folds up easily and is made with durable and weather-resistant wood (£99; laredoute.co.uk).

Tips of the week... how to plant around ponds ● When it comes to ponds, there is a variety of plants to choose from.

Oxygenators like fontinalis antipyretica (water moss) are fully submersed and help keep the water clear. ● Aquatics float with their roots in pots or pond sediment. Cover about 40% of a small pond’s surface with these plants to reduce direct sunlight and limit algae growth. ● Marginals such as dwarf reed mace (bullrush) should sit on the pond’s edge and have their roots below the water. ● If you don’t have a pond, one easy way to establish a water feature is to create a “mini pond in a pot”, which can be placed on a terrace or set within planting. ● Once filled with water (ideally rainwater), these can be planted up with oxygenators and marginals. Soon, damsels and dragonflies should show up. ● Use lush foliage plants such as ferns and hostas around water features to hide cables, pipes, pond liners etc.

SOURCE: THE TIMES

THE WEEK 24 July 2021

Brescia Wooden Garden Lounger The use of acacia wood makes this lounger particularly sturdy, and the curved design allows it to offer a gentle rocking motion. It comes with a thickly padded pillow (£270; beliani.co.uk). ▲

SOURCES: THE INDEPENDENT/LONDON EVENING STANDARD/THE SUNDAY TIMES

▲

Terno Garden Sun Lounger The eye-catching silhouette of this steel-framed lounger gives it a modern look. The canopy can be adjusted in order to keep your head in the shade, and the fabric is durable and easy to clean (£140; beliani.co.uk).

And for those who have everything…

Resembling a contemporary art piece, the Beosound Edge is a limited-edition speaker created as part of a collaboration between Bang & Olufsen and Saint Laurent.

Wireless, with a marble print and a matt black aluminium finish. from £5,225; ysl.com SOURCE: STUFF.TV

Where to find... boat trips in the UK Two experienced ecologists guide you through wildlife encounters as part of a boat tour with Shetland Seabird Tours.

The boat departs from Lerwick, Shetland’s main town, and heads to the uninhabited island of Noss (shetlandseabirdtours.com).

Cornwall Waverunner Safaris offers a range of boat-ride options, but for the more adventurous, the power boat tours are a fun way to explore the Cornish coastline and maybe even see some dolphins along the way (cornwallwaverunnersafaris.co.uk).

The Yorkshire Belle sails from Bridlington harbour and operates cruises which range from an hour to half a day. In the summer there’s a family-friendly disco and ghost cruises on offer (yorkshire-belle.co.uk).

For something different in London, the Thames Speedboat tour involves an action-packed trip along the banks of the Thames on a 245 horsepower boat (visitbritainshop.com).

SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN

Obituaries

37

Egypt’s first lady and campaigner for women’s rights As first lady of Egypt, Jehan Jehan Sadat Sadat, who has died aged 87, 1933-2021 braved fierce opposition from conservative Muslims to become a leading champion of women’s rights, said The Times. Before the assassination of her husband, President Anwar Sadat, in 1981, she lobbied for what became known as “Jehan’s Laws”; legislation that for the first time gave women the right to child support and custody after divorce. She also campaigned successfully to ban female genital mutilation and set up a women’s craft-making co-operative, so that wives were no longer dependent on their husbands for money. As a widow, she made a new life for herself as an academic, teaching at universities in Egypt and the US. In a rare mark of respect, she was the first Egyptian woman to be awarded full military honours at her funeral.

his mark as a politician. In 1952, Gamal Abdel Nasser toppled the Egyptian monarchy and Sadat, a close ally, began his rise. On Nasser’s death in 1970, it was Sadat who succeeded him as head of state, with a reforming agenda. In marked contrast to Nasser’s wife, Jehan took on a high-profile role, often accompanying her husband on foreign visits, many of which drew criticism from traditionalists. She also defended her husband’s decision to sign the 1979 peace treaty with Israel that ended 30 years of war – which made her a controversial figure in Egypt.

The peace deal would cost President Sadat his life. The Sadats’ marriage was cut short when Jehan’s husband was shot dead by Islamic fundamentalists at a parade in Cairo, said The Washington Post. Jehan, who was standing just a few metres behind him, escaped with only a light injury when the reviewing stand was with bullets. In a TV interview shortly Jehan Sadat was born in 1933, the daughter sprayed Sadat: awarded full military honours of an Egyptian surgeon and an English music afterwards, she said that she had always teacher, said The Daily Telegraph. Although brought up as a expected her husband to be killed: “He was much too outspoken.

Muslim, Jehan went to a Christian secondary school in Cairo.

But my husband never expected it.” She later reportedly kept his (The family mixed religious traditions, celebrating Christmas but blood-stained uniform in her room at their home in Giza. During her husband’s lifetime she had resumed her formal education, also fasting during Ramadan.) She met – and married – her future husband when she was just 15. Her parents were “understandably attending university in Cairo at the same time as her children, chary” about the match. Sadat, a former army officer from a poor and as a widow she completed a PhD in comparative literature. family, was a divorcee and 15 years older than his bride. What’s In 1997 she helped to set up the Anwar Sadat Chair for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland, where she had taught more, he was a convinced revolutionary who had served two international studies. In later life, she expressed her admiration prison terms, first for collaborating with German spies in the for Egypt’s authoritarian president, Abdul Fattah al-Sisi. The Second World War, and later for involvement in attacks on British officials. But the marriage, which produced four children, former general was among the mourners at her funeral, and posthumously awarded her Egypt’s Order of Perfection. was “remarkable for its romance”, and her husband soon made

Intrepid reporter who was shot down in the street Peter R. de Vries, who has died aged 64, was unconcerned by the many enemies he made through his work as a highprofile crime journalist. “If you can’t stand the heat,” he used to say, “get out of the kitchen.”

His dedication to unsolved cases earned him worldwide renown as the Netherlands’ most “fearless” reporter, said Al Jazeera. But his work put him on the wrong side of some of “the country’s biggest criminals”. At 7.45pm on 6 July he was shot five times as he walked to his car from a TV studio on a busy Amsterdam street. Nine days later he died in hospital.

De Vries investigated drug barons, police corruption, sex trafficking and more than 500 murders, said The Daily Telegraph. His work helped to solve several cold cases; last year he helped convict a suspect in the murder of an 11-year-old boy two decades earlier. He won an International Emmy Award for his inquiries into the mysterious disappearance of the 18-year-old American student Natalee Holloway on the Dutch-Caribbean island of Aruba in 2005. This year, de Vries had been advising a former gang member in one of the biggest crime cases in Dutch history, the Marengo process – in which 17 suspected members of the “Mocro maffia”, a Dutch-Moroccan criminal enterprise, are Peter Rudolf de Vries was born in the town standing trial for drug trafficking and a series De Vries: “afraid of nothing” of Aalsmeer in 1956, to a gunpowder factory of murders. The former gang member’s brother owner and his wife. (He later abbreviated the Rudolf to R, he and lawyer were assassinated in 2018 and 2019 respectively, and said, to make his name less “ordinary”.) After military service, many believe de Vries’s own murder is connected to the case. he began his career as a trainee journalist at De Telegraaf, the Netherlands’ largest paper. Aged 27, de Vries embarked on what De Vries became increasingly vocal about social issues in his later would become his most famous case, the kidnapping of the beer years. He was a staunch campaigner for refugee rights, and an tycoon Freddy Heineken. Heineken was eventually released and outspoken critic of right-wing politicians. In 2005, he founded several kidnappers were sent to jail. De Vries befriended one of The Party for Justice, Action and Progress, aimed at transforming them, Cor van Hout, and wrote a book from his point of view; he political culture in the Netherlands. To test its relevance, he tracked down another to Paraguay. In 1987, he became editor of organised an opinion poll, saying that he would keep it only if the weekly magazine Aktueel, pivoting its focus towards crime. it received a 41% approval rating; he disbanded it when only But his real breakthrough, said The New York Times, came when 31.4% of those questioned agreed that it would be an asset to he started a television programme called Peter R. de Vries: Crime Dutch political life. “Afraid of nothing and no one, he was Reporter in 1995, where he went undercover and confronted always seeking the truth and standing up for justice,” tweeted perpetrators on camera, and which he said provoked regular Mark Rutte, prime minister of the Netherlands, after his death. death threats.

He is survived by his wife Jacqueline, daughter and son.

Peter R. de Vries 1956-2021

24 July 2021 THE WEEK

38

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CITY Companies in the news ...and how they were assessed

39

Freedom day: Pingdemic pile-on

“More than 15 months after the last normal commute”, the City of London officially went back to the office on Monday, said Bloomberg. Could have fooled us. “From London Bridge to King’s Cross”, numbers remained “stubbornly low”; queues for coffee were brief and popular lunch spots “saw little extra custom”. But this disappointment paled into insignificance next to the “chaos” being caused across the nation by the “pingdemic” of workers told to self-isolate by the NHS app, said The Daily Telegraph. Sectors from manufacturing to retail, transport, banking and hospitality have been hit. The pub group Greene King had to shut “33 pubs in the past week”. Iceland, which kept all its supermarkets open during lockdown, has now had to shut stores. Carmaker Vauxhall has reduced daily shifts from three to two at its Luton plant. No wonder there is a “clamour” for an immediate change to the self-isolation rules, said Rob Young on BBC Business.

The CBI lobby group has joined the throng, warning that “crippling staff shortages” risk “hampering economic recovery”. For company bosses who were “longing” for Freedom Day and “the chance of turning a profit again”, it’s shaping up to be a long, hot summer.

Chinese hackers/Microsoft: malicious smear campaign?

“Signs of intensifying diplomatic hostilities between the world’s two biggest economies” are everywhere, said Edward White and Christian Shepherd in the FT. In the latest spat, the US and Western allies have accused Beijing of colluding with criminal cyber-gangs to unleash a wave of global attacks: notably “an offensive” against Microsoft’s Exchange email app that affected “tens of thousands of organisations”. China isn’t having any of it, and angrily accused the West of a “malicious smear” campaign. Indeed, according to the state tabloid the Global Times, the real culprits are US-based hackers attacking Chinese firms. When China messes with US companies, the White House has three tools it can use: “shame, tariffs and sanctions”, said Gina Chon on Reuters Breakingviews. None is perfect. Shame doesn’t outweigh “the benefits of obtaining trade secrets”, and tariffs “hurt US consumers too”. Sanctions can be effective, but there’s a risk of retaliation against US brands such as Apple or Starbucks. Washington can certainly “punish individual ransomware groups”, if it tracks them down. But generally, companies are on their own in this escalating tech cold war – “largely left to bolster their own defences”.

Sumo/Tencent: no haircut

There was a Chinese incursion of a more acceptable variety in Britain this week, said Simon Duke in The Times. The Chinese tech giant Tencent is seeking to buy one of the UK’s most successful video game developers, Sumo Group, for nearly £1bn. Sumo owns 14 studios in five countries and has worked on everything from Sonic the Hedgehog to Hitman. But the Aim-listed company makes “the bulk of its sales” developing games for large publishers. “Tencent’s raid comes as overseas predators and private equity firms scour the London Stock Exchange for cheap deals.” Sumo is the second big games developer to be eaten (last December, Codemasters succumbed to the US giant Electronic Arts for £945m) leaving just two major developers, Frontier and Team17, on the London market. “The cutting off of a sumo wrestler’s topknot, known as ‘danpatsu-shiki’” traditionally “marks his exit from the ring”, said Lex in the FT. But Sumo is taking “no such haircut”. On the contrary, Tencent is paying “a knockout 43% premium” to buy the Sheffield-based champion – assuming politicians refrain from blocking the deal.

Robinhood: hoodlum joins establishment

The Silicon Valley start-up that pitches itself as the antithesis of Wall Street is joining the establishment – at an “expected valuation” of $33-35bn, said Tyler Blint-Welsh on WSJ. com. Robinhood, whose trading app boasts more than 22 million active users, is expecting to raise about $2bn when it floats next week under the symbol “HOOD”. The online brokerage, which says its mission is to “democratise” investing, was founded in 2013 by Stanford University roommates Vlad Tenev and Baiju Bhatt, said Rupert Neate in The Guardian. If Robinhood achieves its valuation, “it will represent a threefold increase” in value since last September – partly due to its role “at the centre of the buzz” surrounding “meme stocks”, such as GameStop – the retailer whose shares were pumped up tenfold in a matter of weeks. Robinhood helped spur a new generation of “bedroom day traders” during the pandemic, said Jamie Nimmo in The Sunday Times. But there are signs the frenzy is abating. Revolution or blip? Robinhood could be a litmus test.

Seven days in the Square Mile In a week of extremes, global stock markets dropped sharply on fears over the spread of the Delta variant – before bouncing back strongly. In New York, the Dow Jones tumbled by more than 2% on Monday; European exchanges, were hit by fears that curfew measures could be reimposed; and in London, some £54bn was wiped off the value of FTSE 100 stocks – marring England’s “Freedom Day”. The sell-off, which hit travel, retail and leisure stocks hardest, was exacerbated by concerns about the “pingdemic” – the number of mandatory isolations resulting from NHS Covid alerts – and its impact on staff shortages.

The property portal Rightmove reported that “frenzied buyer activity” had driven the average asking price for a home in Britain to a new high of £338,447 – up 6.7% since the start of 2021. HMRC figures showed that June was the busiest month on record for sales, as buyers rushed to complete before stamp duty concessions ended. Some analysts reckon the boom may now have peaked.

In its latest funding round, the UK challenger bank Revolut was valued at £24bn, setting a record as the UK’s most valuable fintech. The six-year-old startup is now worth more than the highstreet bank NatWest. Ocado, the online grocer, suffered its second warehouse fire in two years. Netflix disappointed Wall Street by reporting one of its weakest quarters for audience growth.

Britain’s biggest pub group, Stonegate, filed an £845m Covid lawsuit against insurers. Amazon supremo Jeff Bezos became the second billionaire to complete a successful test space flight.

Inquire within There are no fewer than 13 inquiries into the collapse of Greensill Capital – reflecting “the sprawling nature of the business, its multiple connections with Sanjeev Gupta’s metals empire”, along with “the stink” surrounding David Cameron’s lobbying role, says Katherine Griffiths in The Times. One down, 12 to go. MPs on the Treasury Select Committee have concluded that urgent reforms of the financial system are needed to prevent a repeat: they want stricter controls on outsourcing regulation to third parties, and tighter rules governing the acquisition of banks.

Let’s get on with it. “We don’t need to wait” for the other inquiries to finish “to set these changes in motion”.

24 July 2021 THE WEEK

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Talking points

CITY 41

Issue of the week: the bumpy recovery Inflation has been spooking markets, but the surging Delta variant poses a much greater risk Many of us have fallen into the trap of highest in more than a decade. This “is a dark cloud that even the most cheerful black-and-white thinking during the investor struggles to ignore” because of pandemic, said Michael P. Regan in what it means for corporate valuations.

Bloomberg Businessweek. “The The US Fed is sticking with its story that scintillating vision of the dark era of Covid lockdowns quickly giving way to a “this inflation burst will be transitory bright vaccinated future was simply too only and can be largely ignored”. But enticing to resist.” But the reality, as the surveys show US households “aren’t so virus stages a fresh assault, is a much less sure”. That’s important, because “it is satisfying “grey area”. Stock markets not merely official interest rate rises, but have been reflecting the mixed message, expectations of interest rate rises” that move markets. presenting two visions of a recovery – one optimistic, one bumpy – in the same “A little inflation is no bad thing,” said week. Prices lurched sharply downwards Sunak: hoping for no U-turns on Monday, but investors returned the former IMF chief economist Kenneth following day determined to “buy the Rogoff in the FT. “Prices are rising mainly dip”. It looks like the pattern of things to come in what’s likely to because the US economy is doing vastly better than seemed possible a year ago.” Indeed, the “bigger risk” remains “an be an “interesting” quarter – guaranteed “to test your stomach”. unexpected setback in the fight against the pandemic”. The same is true in Britain, where the Bank of England is showing signs of At the heart of the market debate is the question of inflation, said David Brenchley in The Sunday Times. “The possibility that the waking up to the inflation danger, said David Smith in The Sunday Times. Chancellor Rishi Sunak may not welcome the Delta variant could slam the brakes on the economic recovery” has brought to a premature end the so-called “reflation trade” – impact of rising rates on the Government’s debt bill. But he’d face the idea that you should invest to prepare for higher inflation, and a far worse headache if a worsening health situation forced the rising interest rates. Yet, at the same time, many investors worry Treasury “to wheel out its pandemic support again”, including that rising inflation could force central banks to withdraw their restarting the furlough scheme. Its huge fiscal response was based unprecedented pandemic support “sooner than expected” – on the understanding it would be time-limited. “The Chancellor prompting market shocks around the world. The US inflation rate has every reason to pray that the path to freedom, while bumpy, rose to 5.4% in June, said Patrick Hosking in The Times – the does not include any U-turns.”

Making money: what the experts think in memorabilia, said Toby Walne in The Mail on Not so long ago, everyone Sunday. The most was talking up Asia’s “affordable way” to get emerging markets as prime a toehold is posters. An beneficiaries of the postexample from the 1948 Covid recovery. No longer, London Olympics went said The Wall Street Journal. under the hammer last month According to Invesco market for £1,000; and posters for strategist David Chao, the the last Tokyo Games in spread of the Delta variant 1964 sell for around £500. across Asia, coupled with low But you might snap up a vaccination rates, “has taken bargain from a more recent wind out of the sail for many event (say a £100 poster from investors expecting an the 2016 Rio Games) in hope economic rebound” in the of future returns. region. He expects them to An “affordable” toehold continue pulling funds out of ● Holding a torch Asian stocks and shifting them to Collecting posters is “a popular pursuit”, “developed markets with high inoculation ensuring a liquid market. But connoisseurs rates”. The recent tech crackdown in China hasn’t helped sentiment, said Lauren tend to prefer torches – again, the rarer the better. The “infamous 1936 Berlin Almeida in Investors’ Chronicle. Newly Olympics”, hosted by the Nazis, produced listed US shares in the ride-hailing app Didi have tanked following an intervention around 3,840 torches selling for around

by Chinese regulators. The “sharp sell-off” £6,500. But, according to the sports auctioneer Graham Budd, the most doesn’t bode well, agreed George Magnus valuable come from Helsinki in 1952, in the FT. Primarily because Didi is just because only 22 were made; in 2015, he “the latest example” of the ongoing sold one for £420,000. The highest price financial decoupling between the US and paid for any piece of memorabilia is China. Markets, unfortunately, have $1.47m for a gold medal eight years ago. barely “begun to reflect” the risks.

“Olympic medals rarely come up for sale”, and this one had particular historical ● Olympic memorabilia resonance. It belonged to the great black The Olympic Games have a mixed history American sprinter, Jesse Owens, who won of delivering prosperity to host nations. it in Berlin in 1936.

But there’s always been money to be made ● Emerging troubles

Legal bull run The price of commercial legal services “has grown much faster than inflation in the past year”, said Arthur Sants in Investors’ Chronicle. Good news for “one of the UK’s best performing industries”. The six listed law firms have grown their combined value by 50% in the past year. Here’s a rundown of the four main players: Keystone Law The most “unusual and entrepreneurial” firm has a decentralised model, in which all its lawyers work from home and none is paid a fixed salary, thereby reducing costs and aiding scalability.

DWF Currently the only firm listed on the main exchange, the largest firm by revenue (annual sales of £339m), and the only listed firm with “a significant international presence”. Nonetheless, “potentially undervalued”. The market, though, has reservations about potentially high levels of debt.

Knights Aiming to become the leading UK firm outside London, it has been aggressively buying up smaller regional firms. It looks to be paying off: revenues (up 39% to £103.2m) and profits (up 35% to £18.4m) have jumped.

Gateley Another domestic-focused firm, which, like Knights, is benefiting from the residential housing boom. This year’s results are reckoned to be well ahead of “market expectations” of a £14.7m profit on revenues of £111.7m.

24 July 2021 THE WEEK

42 CITY Without activists, ESG is just hot air Tom Braithwaite Financial Times

Tackling the economics gender gap Ruth Sunderland Daily Mail

Analysts who get their hands dirty Simon Duke The Times

Southgate versus Mancini Bartleby The Economist

THE WEEK 24 July 2021

Commentators Environmental, social and governance initiatives are notoriously prone to “empty rhetoric and fuzzy targets”, says Tom Braithwaite. PwC is a case in point. In a “splashy” $12bn drive, the accounting giant is taking on 100,000 staff (more than the total workforce at Caterpillar, Shell or Procter & Gamble) to advise companies on “delivering sustained outcomes”. Many of these new hires will in fact be in traditional jobs such as auditing; but PwC seems to have calculated that “$12bn + ESG blather = $$$$$”. The “ESG complex” is going from strength to strength – with even “holdouts” such as ExxonMobil “crumbling”. But the oil major’s conversion is instructive. It wasn’t ESG rhetoric that persuaded Exxon to curtail new oil and gas development, but an extraordinary campaign by the activist fund Engine No. 1, which succeeded in placing three experienced but climate-aware directors on the board – and sent shares soaring. A timely reminder that “activists are likely to have more real impact on a company’s environmental footprint than any army of ESG marketeers”.

Female economists have never before been so powerful on the global stage – witness the top jobs held by Janet Yellen at the US Treasury, Christine Lagarde at the European Central Bank and Kristalina Georgieva at the IMF. But this “display of female firepower” disguises a real problem, says Ruth Sunderland – the “widening gender gap” at grass-roots level. British women “are very poorly represented in university economics departments from undergraduates through to professorships”, feeding through to “a shortage at the top levels of policymaking”. A recent Royal Economic Society study found that just 27% of the current crop of economics students are female – a figure that “has gone backwards in the past two decades”. This matters. The discipline of economics would be broader, more insightful and less prone to groupthink if it paid more attention to women’s lives. And the same goes for other absent groups. The dearth of economists from working-class backgrounds is “a serious deficiency” when “levelling up” is supposedly top of the political agenda. “The broader the profession casts its net, the better.”

City analysts are often viewed, with good reason, as “spreadsheet automatons”, says Simon Duke. So how refreshing to see a trio from investment group Jefferies getting down and dirty in the real world. In an investigation recalling the 1970s police drama Starsky & Hutch, analyst Giles Thorne and two colleagues spent a week “undercover” in West London, “camped out in a battered 2003 Ford C-max”, staking out a “dark store” used by Getir – the Turkish-owned grocery-delivery business. The results were eye-opening for anyone interested in the sector. After analysing the comings and goings of Getir’s yellow-and-blue bikes, Thorne concluded the firm “has a higher order count” than its German rival Delivery Hero, but would even so benefit from “a greater sense of urgency” among riders. We could do with more on-theground research of this sort. “FTSE 100 companies are often covered by a couple of dozen analysts, but their output rarely rises above the underwhelming.” Getting “the smell of a company” – as Thorne has done – produces much more insightful stock tips.

The outcome of the Euro football championships has prompted much discussion on the differing management styles of England’s Gareth Southgate and Italy’s Roberto Mancini, says The Economist. The latter’s “domineering approach” – reminiscent of hard-boiled corporate bosses like former General Electric boss Jack Welch – is the antithesis of Southgate’s “more emollient and inclusive character”. Italy’s eventual victory makes it tempting to argue the superiority of a more aggressive style; but there are pros and cons to both styles. Indeed, in the corporate world, the fashion has moved more towards the Southgate school. “What unites Messrs Mancini and Southgate is their meticulous attention to detail.” They have another thing in common too. Any boss, in football or business, is only as good as the team at their disposal.

Had either manager been in charge of one “with fewer resources”, it’s unlikely he would have made it to the final. As Warren Buffett wisely remarked: “When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact.”

City profiles Bob Diamond The former Barclays boss plans to stick it to his former colleagues, says Liam Proud on Reuters Breakingviews.

Bob Diamond’s “blankcheque company” is merging with Circle, the digital currency operator behind USD Coin, whose products “may one day threaten corporate banks’ core businesses”. Circle’s mooted $4.5bn value is premised on “eyebrowraising growth rates”: in theory, the “total addressable market” for its dollarpegged coin is the entire $20trn global “M2” money supply. But with just 1,421 Circle accounts open by June, world dominance is some way off. This is “arguably even more of a punt” than past Diamond ventures, like his African banking venture Atlas Mara – whose shares plunged by 80% soon after its 2013 float.

Tanya Burr

It’s almost 12 years since Tanya Burr, then working on the make-up counter of a department store, posted her first beauty tutorial video on YouTube, says The Sunday Telegraph. She became one of Britain’s most popular vloggers, “adored by a generation of teens and twentysomethings”. When she married fellow vlogger Jim Chapman, in 2015, they became known as “Mr and Mrs YouTube”. But in 2019, she split from both vlogging and her husband. Now she’s back with a new lifestyle brand called Authored – consisting of “four essential beauty products, accompanied by online content” to help users “navigate life’s ups and downs”. Competition is tight, but Burr isn’t worried. “I was doing this before anyone knew what an influencer was,” she says.

Marketplace

43 AS SEEN ON

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Shares

CITY 45

Who’s tipping what The week’s best shares HydrogenOne Capital The Mail on Sunday Clean hydrogen is a hot sector in green energy. This specialist fund, which floats this month backed by energy giant Ineos, is well-positioned to tap a market predicted to be worth £600bn by 2040. Buy. 100p (price on launch).

Howden Joinery The Times The UK’s dominant kitchen supplier has raised profit guidance amid the continuing home improvement boom.

Shares trade at a premium, but recovering margins should prompt a further re-rating.

Buy. 879p.

Galliford Try Citywire The construction group is trading ahead of expectations with earnings per share up 9%.

The £3.3bn order book and strong pipeline point to a return to profitability. Shares are “materially undervalued”, says Peel Hunt. Buy. 157p.

Hyve Group The Sunday Times The event organiser’s strong recovery in Russia and China bodes well; ditto the move into “omnichannel” events. A good value play, trading at 80% below pre-Covid levels. Numis sets a 160p target. Buy. 121p.

Mpac Investors Chronicle Mpac’s automated packaging systems help clients in its core healthcare, food and pharma markets – all industries enjoying strong underlying growth – meet stringent regulations. Rebounding profits should maintain their momentum. Buy. 480p.

Animalcare 400 350

Director sells 33,409

300 250 200

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

Jul

The Aim-listed animal health specialist has crawled back from last year’s £1.6m loss, but revenues and profits at the pharma are still down.

Non-exec Nicholas Downshire has lowered his stake, pocketing a total £100,227.

…and some to hold, avoid or sell

Form guide

Ashmore The Times Assets under management at the emerging markets fixedincome specialist rose 5% to $94.4bn in Q4 – the highest since 2019. But the broader market is now more “risk off”.

Vulnerable to a less doveish US Fed stance. Hold. 411p.

Tate & Lyle The Mail on Sunday Markets pooh-poohed the £1.2bn sale of the corn division. But the “clever deal” (in which Tate retains an ongoing interest) builds on the drive to become sugar-free and focus on the “trendy” ingredients division. Hold. 729p.

Unilever The Daily Telegraph Unilever’s global consumer brands are increasingly threatened by local challengers, aided by the internet. Well managed, but “running hard to stay still” and no longer “a steady compounder” of returns. Hold. £43.58.

Syncona The Daily Telegraph Shares have drifted, yet the life sciences investor has the potential for explosive gains if one or more of its companies come up with a groundbreaking treatment. A “tin box” investment to lock away and review later. Hold. 221p.

Tullow Oil The Times Shares in the African-focused oil producer – hitherto “a lesson in equity value destruction” – have jumped on “bullish guidance”. Still, progress in improving cashflow and reducing debt is worryingly slow. Hold. 51p.

Watches of Switzerland Investors Chronicle Demand for the firm’s high-end timepieces gained momentum in lockdown: e-commerce sales jumped 121%, more than compensating for the decline in tourist footfall. But the market’s already up to speed.

Hold. 920p.

Shares tipped 12 weeks ago Best tip TClarke Investors Chronicle up 13.17% to 131p Worst tip AB Dynamics The Times down 11.04% to £19.75

Market view “Far from giving investors a jolt of confidence, Freedom Day has seen it evaporate.”

Susannah Streeter of Hargreaves Lansdown on Monday’s plunge.

Quoted on Citywire

Market summary Key numbers for investors FTSE 100 FTSE All-share UK Dow Jones NASDAQ Nikkei 225 Hang Seng Gold Brent Crude Oil DIVIDEND YIELD (FTSE 100) UK 10-year gilts yield US 10-year Treasuries UK ECONOMIC DATA Latest CPI (yoy) Latest RPI (yoy) Halifax house price (yoy) £1 STERLING

20 July 2021 6881.13 3932.84 34565.51 14475.99 27388.16 27259.25 1814.90 69.04 3.09% 0.56 1.21

Best and worst performing shares Week before 7124.72 4071.21 34979.65 14802.44 28718.24 27963.41 1792.40 76.40 2.96% 0.63 1.36

2.5% (Jun) 3.9% (Jun) 8.8% (Jun)

$1.363 E1.157 ¥150.104

2.1% (May) 3.3% (May) 9.5% (May)

Change (%) –3.42% –3.40% –1.18% –2.21% –4.63% –2.52% 1.26% –9.63%

WEEK’S CHANGE, FTSE 100 STOCKS RISES Price % change 590.00 +17.02 Avast +0.65 Hikma Pharmaceuticals 2626.00 3042.00 +0.63 Experian 4744.00 +0.40 Berkeley Group Hdg. 3260.00 +0.28 Admiral Group FALLS Takeaway.Com (Lon) Ocado Group BP Intermediate Cap. Grp. Smiths Group

Following the Footsie 7,200

7,000

6,800

5743.00 1731.50 280.15 2027.00 1508.00

–12.23 –9.11 –8.42 –7.57 –7.37

BEST AND WORST UK STOCKS OVERALL 9.75 +39.29 Bermele 15.25 –57.04 Immedia Group

Source: Datastream (not adjusted for dividends). Prices on 20 July (pm)

6,600

6,400

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

Jul

6-month movement in the FTSE 100 index

24 July 2021 THE WEEK

SOURCE: SHARECAST

Asos The Times Freight and delivery worries have wiped 15% off the fast-fashion outfit’s value. But “fickle” investors overlook its international sales potential.

The tie-up with store chain Nordstrom should accelerate US gains. Buy. £39.53.

Directors’ dealings

The last word

46

“Fantastic, fantastic!”: on the road with Boris Johnson

Everyone in Britain thinks they know all about the PM. But does anyone really have any idea what makes him tick? In a major profile for the US magazine The Atlantic, Tom McTague tried to uncover the elusive truth

“N

othing can go wrong!”

Boris Johnson said, jumping into the driver’s seat of a tram he was about to take for a test ride.

“Nothing. Can. Go. Wrong.”

The Prime Minister was visiting a factory outside Birmingham, campaigning for the local mayor ahead of May’s “Super Thursday” elections. The elections would allow voters to have their say on Johnson’s two years in office, during which quite a lot did go wrong.

By now, every Briton is a Johnson expert. We know he has a gift for extramarital affairs, that he has (at least) six children by three women, that his finances are the subject of press gossip. We know that he has been fired twice for lying; that he was the mayor of a left-wing capital city; that he helped engineer the defenestration of two Tory prime ministers; and that he nearly died during the pandemic. For three decades, we’ve followed his ambition, his outrages, Johnson was, as usual, his scandals. Yet the truth, unkempt and amused, a for a professional Boristornado of bonhomie. watcher such as myself, Walking in, he had launched into a limerick about a man Part of his genius lies in his ability to stop his opponents from thinking straight is elusive. named Dan who likes to ride trams. The mayor, Andy Street, looked horrified. Johnson’s To many, he is a clown – the man who got stuck on a zip line during the London Olympics, dangling helplessly above the aide told me the PM had been excited about his tram ride all crowds. To others, he is worse than that: a charlatan who lied his morning. He loves mobile infrastructure – planes, trains, bicycles, way to the top, who traffics in racism, who believes in nothing trams, even bridges to Ireland and airports floating in the sea. but his own advancement. He has been accused of triggering And he loves photo ops. There would be no point in displaying a wave of populist anger that he then rode to Downing Street, action and intent and momentum if no one were present to document it. “All aboard!” he yelled, though there were no leaving Britain weakened and in danger of dissolution. He is leading his country through its most radical reshaping since passengers. Photographers crowded around and men in hard hats stood by. The tram inched forward, only to jerk to a halt. That’s WWII. To Johnson’s cry that nothing can go wrong, critics say: No, a lot can go wrong – and very well might. £2.5m worth of vehicle, an executive of the tram company said nervously. When Johnson finally made it to the end of the circuit, That nothing ever seems to “He is scruffy, impulsive, exuberant – the stick is what drives opponents he blasted the horn. “Nothing mad. Johnson has written about went wrong!” he said gleefully. first British leader I’ve seen who genuinely Africans with “watermelon seems to be having a good time” Nothing, really, could have gone smiles” and described gay men as “tank-topped bumboys”. He wrong. The tram was limited to 3mph and had an automatic override system. No matter. It won the Conservative leadership soon after it was reported that an argument with his then-fiancée, Carrie Symonds, became so provided Johnson with the chance to do what he loves: to put heated, neighbours called the police. He won the biggest majority on a show, to create a little tumult where there is none. After he in a generation despite breaking promises over when and how he was first elected to Parliament, in 2001, his colleagues told him would secure a Brexit deal. Time and again, when controversy he would have to become serious to succeed in politics. To spend has engulfed him, he has emerged unscathed. Part of his genius time with Johnson, as I have done over several months, is to lies in his ability to stop his opponents from thinking straight: in watch a politician completely indifferent to such advice. their hatred for him, they cannot see why he is popular, nor what to do about it.

Johnson is unlike other prime ministers I’ve covered. Blair and Cameron were polished and formidable. Brown and May were On the day of Johnson’s tram factory visit, the big news was rigid, fearful, cautious. Johnson could be another species. He is the formation of a “European Super League”, made up of six lively and engaged, superficially dishevelled but in fact focused English football clubs and six from the continent. The plan was and watchful. He is scruffy, impulsive, exuberant – the first announced the night before, and Johnson had already come out British leader I’ve seen who genuinely appears to be having a against it, arguing that it would yank England’s grandest clubs good time. His conversations with members of the public are from their traditions against the wishes of their fans. peppered with, “That’s amazing!” and “You’re joking!”, and “Wonderful!” and “Fantastic, fantastic!” His mission, he says, I wondered why he cared so much. He delights in his ignorance is to restore Britain’s faith in itself, to battle the “effete and of football. But Johnson intuited something important about desiccated and hopeless” defeatism that defined the Britain of English anxiety, turning the issue into a parable for a sense of his childhood. He believes that if you repeat that it is morning powerlessness and dislocation felt by many in Britain – precisely in Britain over and again, the country will believe it, and it will the feelings that had energised the Brexit movement. “This come to pass.

THE WEEK 24 July 2021

The last word

47

is about the deracination of the community fan base,” he said.

Football clubs had turned into global brands and were leaving their supporters behind, “taking off like a great mother ship and orbiting the planet”. Here, the Prime Minister was offering himself as the people’s tribune, defender of the national game against globalisation. But Johnson is a strange figurehead for such a movement. He is, at least nominally, a free-marketeer, the chief proselytiser of “Global Britain”. He plays to the rootedness of Middle England – but he is also a very obvious transient.

“What am I doing this for?” Johnson asked his aides, looking at his schedule and seeing a slot carved out for me. “It’s for the profile I advised you not to do,” James Slack, Johnson’s then-communications director, replied. In the year since I’d first asked for time with Johnson, his communications director had changed twice, and much of his early team had been replaced, as interoffice rivalries spun out of control. In the end, Johnson himself gave the green light. When I finally saw him at Downing Street in March 2021, the country was coming out of its most stringent lockdown. Behind the polished front Playing the clown: Johnson stuck on a zipline in 2012 e was born Alexander Boris door of 10 Downing Street, an air de Pfeffel Johnson on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, in of shabbiness hangs over the place. Discarded modems sit on a hospital that served poor New Yorkers. His father, Stanley, windowsills, thick red carpets lie worn and uneven with bits of then 23, had moved to the US on a creative-writing scholarship, tape stuck to them. but quit and enrolled in an economics programme instead. The first few months of Johnson’s life were spent in a single-room In his office, Johnson steered the conversation to a subject he apartment opposite the Chelsea Hotel. His intricate name raised nearly every time I saw him. He’d read an article I’d suggests the cosmopolitanism of his background. Boris honours written, a eulogy for the novelist John le Carré. I’d praised le Carré’s observations about England’s failing ruling class – a Russian émigré whom Stanley and Johnson’s mother, Charlotte, met in Mexico shortly before his birth. De Pfeffel comes from privately educated charlatans whom he mocked as the greatest dissemblers on Earth. And I’d listed Johnson as an example.

Johnson’s half-French grandmother, who was born in Versailles.

Even the Johnson is less English than it seems. Boris’s greatJohnson said he had a different take. To him, le Carré exposed grandfather was a Turkish journalist and politician who was not the fakery of Britain’s ruling class, but its passivity and murdered as the Ottoman empire collapsed. acceptance of decline: “I read Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy at school.

It presented this miserable picture of Foreign Office bureaucrats…

Over the first 14 years of Johnson’s life, his family moved 32 For me, they were the problem.” He said he was trying “to times, including to Washington DC, where Stanley worked at the recapture some of the energy and optimism that this country used World Bank. In 1974, Charlotte to have”. had a nervous breakdown while “During my time with him, whenever we Johnson believes there remains the family was living in Brussels.

The next year, Johnson, then 11, a “world-weariness” in the got close to self-analysis, he would parry, was sent to boarding school in Government that has to swerve, or crack a joke” be “squeezed out”, one of his England, where he transformed himself from a quiet boy into ministers told me. Johnsonism, an aide said, was partly about “puffing our chest out and saying, the extrovert we see today. At Eton, Alexander became Boris – head boy, school magazine editor, debating society president ‘We’re Britain’”. The one member of le Carré’s establishment and “fully-fledged school celebrity”, as one biographer put whom Johnson admires is the hero, George Smiley, who is jaded it. After Oxford, Johnson married young, returned to Brussels, like his colleagues but plods on, catching traitors and serving divorced, married again, moved back to London, conducted Britain. “He was a patriot,” Johnson said.To Johnson, Smiley affairs, divorced again, got engaged again, and steadily made his might be a cynic, but he is also a romantic – a believer. Isn’t that professional ascent. Throughout it all, however, he stood apart you? I asked. Johnson is a romantic who urges the country to from any clique, avoiding the ties of obligation that come with believe in itself, but who plays the political game, stretches the being part of a group. truth, stands against his friends, and deposes his colleagues. After an initial show of mock evasion, the Prime Minister replied: “All In many ways he himself is the definition of deracinated. (A romantics need the mortar of cynicism to hold themselves up.” friend of his told me he suspected that Johnson subscribed to a pre-Christian morality system, with a multitude of gods and no Here was Johnson offering a rare moment of self-reflection. clear set of rules. The PM, but he dismissed this. “Christianity is a During my time with him, whenever we got close to self-analysis, superb ethical system and I would count myself as a kind of very, he would parry, swerve, or crack a joke. One aide told me very bad Christian,” he told me. “No disrespect to any other he loathed anything that smacked of over-intellectualising religions, but Christianity makes a lot of sense to me.”) politics. At Downing Street, I heard Johnson repeat one of his maternal grandmother’s favourite sayings. “Darling,” he said, The one group he is associated with are the Brexiters. Johnson mimicking her, “remember, it’s not how you’re doing; it’s what largely avoids the nativist rhetoric of the group’s more extreme you’re doing.” Johnson said this was “the key advice”. I asked elements, but he does believe Britain’s discomfort with its history Johnson’s sister, Rachel, about the saying. “It’s about being in the has gone too far. On St George’s Day this year, he released a moment,” she said, not worrying about how things will turn out. video urging the country to celebrate “without embarrassment, “Get on with it” is the Johnson mantra. without shame”. But while Johnson’s patriotic message is powerful in England, it does not readily translate elsewhere, Johnson often carries a notepad around, a habit from his particularly in Scotland. The irony is that Johnson’s success in journalism days. He also runs meetings like an editor, surveying “taking back control” from Europe has only intensified calls for staff for ideas, cutting through dry facts to identify what he Scottish independence. This is where his legacy is most at risk. If sees as the story. His journalism career, however, got off to an he were to preside over the country’s breakup, he would be the ignominious start. In 1988, just out of Oxford, he was fired from Lord North of the 21st century: not the PM who lost the US, but The Times for making up a quote. He has since apologised, sort the one who lost Britain itself. of, while also complaining about the “snivelling, fact-grubbing

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The last word

historians” who called him out. Despite getting sacked, he landed at The Daily Telegraph, and made his name as Brussels correspondent with outlandish stories about EU regulations ostensibly being imposed on Britons – rules governing the flavours of crisps, the bendiness of bananas, the size of condoms. But re-reading his work today, it appears far less hostile to Europe than one might imagine: in 1992, for example, he wrote that while the EU was wasteful and bureaucratic, these problems were “dwarfed by the benefits” of membership.

(Here even Johnson’s critics would have to concede one difference: Trump is unlikely ever to use the word autarkic.)

The first attempt at pulling together an intellectual framework for Johnsonism was the Government’s “integrated review” of foreign, economic and defence policy, published in March. It emphasised the importance of alliances outside Europe and the need to defend democratic values more robustly. Johnson’s pitch to voters is that he will “unite and level up” the country. He believes that the global zeitgeist has radically changed since the 2008 financial crisis: voters will not accept a laissez-faire attitude towards free trade, deindustrialisation or the rise of China any longer.

I asked Johnson about his change of mind.

He famously wrote two drafts of a column – one for “Leave”, one for “Remain” – ahead of the 2016 referendum. Critics allege he only backed Brexit as a path to power. Johnson Johnson emphasises that Brexit did not rejects that, telling me that, in any case, the happen in a vacuum. As the economist Dani UK could never play a leadership role in the Alexander became Boris at Eton EU, because it was too hamstrung by doubt Rodrik notes, the more tightly the world’s economies intertwine, the less influence national governments can over the project to be anything but a brake. “Anyway,” he said, have over their citizens. For a long time, governments – including “do we have to talk about Brexit? We’ve sucked that lemon dry.”

Britain’s – believed globalisation’s benefits outweighed that cost.

But when this bargain began to reveal its emptiness, particularly So we turned instead to Horace. In 2005, Johnson gave a lecture about the Roman poet, in which he reflected on the lasting after 2008, voters demanded more control. In Britain this was influence that poets and historians and journalists have over particularly acute, because the country was more exposed than how people are remembered. Johnson clearly appreciates the most, with its oversize financial sector and open economy. importance of shaping perceptions. To him, the point of politics Johnson has vowed to reinvigorate industry and boost growth is to offer people a story they can believe in. In Johnson’s view, those who wanted to remain outside London, using levers in the EU during the Brexit he says wouldn’t be available “‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘do we have to talk about in the EU. One aide told me referendum didn’t have the courage to tell the real story at Johnson had ordered civil Brexit? We’ve sucked that lemon dry’” the heart of their vision – about servants to reject conservative the beauty of European unity. orthodoxies about government Instead, they offered claims of impending disaster, most of intervention and be “more creative around who we choose to which have yet to come to pass. The story voters believed in was back”. It’s an unusual approach for someone caricatured as a fundamentally different – in Johnson’s words, “that this is a great right-wing ideologue; in the US, Johnson’s policies would fall and remarkable and interesting country in its own right”. well to the left of centre. For too long, Britain has been “living out a foreign policy of a world that has gone”, one adviser told “So you’re not Trump,” I asked Johnson. I had just been treated me. “The world is moving faster, and therefore we have to move to a monologue about his liberal internationalism and support faster with it.” for free trade, climate action, and even globalism. “Well, selfevidently,” he replied. It might be self-evident to him, but not henever you talk to Johnson, you bump up against an to others – the former president himself embraced Johnson all-encompassing belief that things will be fine. He believes that the threat of Scottish independence will melt away, with as “Britain’s Trump”, and Joe Biden once called him a Trump “clone”. This is the central argument against Johnson: that for Brexit acting as a centripetal force pulling the UK back together.

But with the UK finally outside the EU, does he have the focus to all his positivity and good cheer, the verses of Latin and ancient address issues that can’t be dealt with by belief alone? Even one of Greek, he is much closer to Trump than he lets on. Johnson his closest aides expressed worry that he doesn’t think systemspearheaded the “Leave” campaign the same year the US voted atically about Britain’s problems, that he is too reliant on faith. for Trump, and the two campaigns looked superficially similar – populist, nationalist, anti-establishment.

The last time I saw Johnson was back in the northeast of England.

Super Thursday had come and gone and he had scored thumping Johnson certainly understands that this perception has taken hold. victories in England, though not in Scotland. He reiterated his “A lot of respectable liberal opinion in America thinks Brexit is the belief that Brexit had given the country more “oomph, impetus, most appalling aberration and a retreat into nationalism,” he told mojo” than before it left the EU. As ever with Johnson, it’s hard me. “It’s not at all.” As for Johnson himself, his past language to discern true belief from narrative skill. I kept coming back to about minority groups – his use of the word “piccaninnies”, for something he’d said earlier, in our discussion of le Carré: “All example – is, to some, evidence of kinship with Trump. However, romantics need the mortar of cynicism to hold themselves up.” his partisans note that his Chancellor is a British Indian; the The duality of his character continued to fascinate me. There is Home Secretary is the daughter of Ugandan Indians; and the the light and the colour he wants the world to see. But there is Business Secretary’s parents came from Ghana. also a darker side that most who know him acknowledge, the moments of introspection and calculation.

In contrast to Trump, he has supported amnesty for undocumented immigrants; offered a path to British citizenship to Hoping for another glimpse of the more reflective Johnson, I millions of Hongkongers; and refashioned Britain’s immigration repeated the quote to him and began to ask what he’d meant. system to treat European and non-European migrants equally.

“I wondered –” was all I was able to get out before Johnson cut Even so, the Trump question is the first thing many Americans in. “Did I say that?” he asked. “How pompous of me.” will ask, I told him. “Well, how ignorant can they be?” he said.

“The point is that you mustn’t mistake this Government for some A longer version of this article appeared in The Atlantic sort of bunch of xenophobes, or autarkic economic nationalists.”

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THE WEEK 24 July 2021

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50 THE WEEK CROSSWORD 1270

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Email the answers as a scan of a completed grid or a list, with the subject line The Week crossword 1270, to crossword@theweek.co.uk. Tim Moorey (timmoorey.com) ACROSS 8 Treason upset politician (7) 9 Covered walkway left by one company (7) 10 What may be served in café for the team? (4,5) 11 Split clubs remaining (5) 12 I give it to show promise (2,4) 13 A friend gets dress mostly for the country (3,5) 14 Business partnership involving Mary Jane? (5,10) 19 Train panda etc? Not to do this! (3,5) 21 Look briefly at a Strauss score? (6) 23 One’s offspring could be a topic of discussion (5) 24 Fiction from tower block reported (4,5) 25 Supervise poetry in Old English (7) 26 Correct about singular flourish (7)

DOWN 1 A lady in truth (6) 2 PM once put across nothing in African republic (8) 3 Breakfast in Périgord ordered (8) 4 Nail story with moral after Sabbath (8) 5 Brother one day made stronger (6) 6 Floor tiler at one with learned people (8) 7 Sorry about touching pedestrian (8) 14 Abandon black? No, it’s out of order (8) 15 Cheat with tax? Leads to endless row (8) 16 Degrees of precision and what smart men wear (8) 17 Little resistance with awfully large US soldiers (8) 18 Heaps fail it! (4,4) 20 Discrimination using terrible images (6) 22 Surface to dishearten tapdancer perhaps (6)

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Name Address

Clue of the week: Newspaper taking offence (5, first letter T) The Sunday Times, Robert Price

Tel no Clue of the week answer:

Solution to Crossword 1268

ACROSS: 1 Slapstick 6 Imam 10 Stun 11 Ilminster 12 Grease 13 Clothing

14 Prime Minister 19 Blunderbusses 21 Somerset 24 Toasty 26 Eyestrain 27 Pave 28 Shed 29 Severally DOWN: 2 Literary 3 Panda 4 Tribesman 5 Comic 7 Matchless 8 Marine 9 Info 15 Millepede 16 Nye 17 Substance 18 Festival 20 Boxers 22 Sate 23 Tease 25 Alpha Clue of the week: Despotic leader installed without a break (5, first letter P) Solution: PUTIN (put in) The winner of 1268 is Sheila Stuart from Grimsby

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9 1

Sudoku 812 (medium)

4 3 8 4 7

3 4

4 7 9 1 2 5 3 1 5 8 3 6 5 9 3 1

1

Fill in all the squares so that each row, column and each of the 3x3 squares contains all the digits from 1 to 9

Solution to Sudoku 811

2 8 1 5 3 7 9 4

5 9 7 6 2 4 3 1

3 4 6 9 1 8 2 7 5

4 7 5 3 6 2 1 8

1 3 8 4 5 9 6 2

9 6 2 8 7 1 5 3 4

7 1 4 2 9 6 8 5

8 5 9 1 4 3 7 6

6 2 3 7 8 5 4 9 1

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