Innholdsfortegnelse for V. 1273 i The Week

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, who managed to leave Canada and move into a rented home in California before the borders closed. Having officially stepped down as working royals on 31 March, they are reportedly planning to start a new life in or near Los Angeles, in order to be close to Meghan’s mother. Shoppers, after leading supermarkets, including Waitrose, Morrisons and Aldi, announced that they were relaxing the restrictions they’d imposed to prevent stockpiling. Meanwhile, Tesco said it was increasing its capacity to home-deliver shopping, and M&S said it was introducing an “essentials” hamper. A retired nurse from Suffolk, who became the oldest person known to have survived the coronavirus in Britain. Identified only as Joy, the 94-year-old credited the “brilliant” staff at James Paget hospital in Great Yarmouth…

92% of British voters say they support the country’s current lockdown measures. 57% think the measures should go even further, and 33% think there should be a ban placed on all public transport. Opinium/The Observer Boris Johnson’s net favourability rating (those who say they have a positive opinion of him, minus those who have a negative opinion) rose from -7 to +20 during March. The Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s rating rose from -7 to +49. YouGov/The Independent 84% of Britons say they are “mostly” following official advice to stay at home. 55% are working from home when they would not ordinarily be; 24% are required to go to work. Savanta/The Daily Telegraph…

Washington DC Democrats’ fears: The Governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo (pictured), has publicly quashed speculation that he could be drafted in as a last-minute Democrat candidate for the presidency. Cuomo’s daily press briefings, showing a calm authority and focused grip on the detail, have impressed many Americans. By contrast, the Democrats’ presumptive candidate, Joe Biden, has failed to remain in the public eye at this time, raising fears in the party that he would struggle to defeat President Trump, whose approval ratings, like those of many national leaders, have risen during the crisis. Separately, Democrats have called for reforms – such as an expansion of postal voting, same-day registration and early voting – to ensure this autumn’s presidential election can go ahead safely, as there has been talk of…

“Imagine it was winter. That’s what I thought as I queued around Sainsbury’s car park for 30 minutes just to buy milk, as I passed a padlocked children’s playground, shuttered cafés and discarded latex gloves. Imagine it was November and we were heading down a dark tunnel into grimmer, colder days. But it’s spring – thank God! The days are chill and blue, the leaves are their palest, sweetest green and you can smell the earth awaken. We’re bathed in lemony vernal light – with a whole extra hour of it in the evenings. They can ban birthday parties, school proms, beach holidays, hot dates and lunch with old friends. But, as the artist David Hockney said, they can’t cancel spring.” Janice Turner in The Times…

Holding out for heroes fresh from the fight Simon Kuper Financial Times You hear it every evening across the world – from Italian balconies to the favelas of Brazil: clapping for the nation’s medical workers. It’s a global ritual, says Simon Kuper. And though the applause from my Paris balcony sounds tinny – much of Paris having gone to self-isolate in country homes – it still marks a sea change in our civilisation: “the cult of the health worker is replacing the cult of the soldier”. Before the 21st century, nations named streets after war heroes and spent fortunes on their armies. In the two World Wars, Britain devoted almost half its GDP to its forces. But slowly, our soldier-veneration is fading. In the late 1980s, health spending in the…

Possibly the most important US presidential election of our lifetimes is due to take place this November, said Eugene Robinson in The Washington Post. But will it actually go ahead? The coronavirus crisis has thrown a spanner into the election-year schedule. The Democratic race for the nomination is in a state of “suspended animation” following the postponement of several decisive primaries. And it’s hard to see how the party conventions, due in July and August, will work. Anyone who has been to one of these crowded events, attended by people from all across the country, will know that “even the most diabolical Bond villain could hardly design a more perfect environment to guarantee the spread of a dangerous pathogen”. The hope is that new Covid-19 infections will naturally decline over…

Invisible smiles If older people view the world as a threatening place, it may be because as we age, we become less adept at spotting friendly faces – but we do not lose our ability to notice a frown. For the study at Kyoto University, published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, two groups of volunteers – one in their early 20s, the other in their 70s – were shown photographs of people with various expressions (happy, cross and neutral), and were asked to classify their emotions. The younger participants were quick to “read” both positive and negative emotions, while taking slightly longer to spot neutral ones. The older volunteers, however, though relatively quick to spot negative emotions, found happy faces no easier to classify than neutral ones. According…

A perilous walk... To The Times Coronavirus has led to many good decisions made in haste and many poor ones. My local council has veered towards the poor. Hammersmith and Fulham council closed all its parks at the weekend. If you wish to do your daily exercise/ walk the dog, you now have only pavements to do so, making it impossible to maintain social distancing if someone is coming the other way. As the parks are now closed, invariably someone is approaching. The council has managed to make walking more, rather than less, dangerous. I note that the traffic wardens are still working and giving out tickets. Today on my pavement walk (and hello to all those I passed far too close) I noticed one waiting outside a pharmacy, ready…

As Kirsty tries to distract a preoccupied Philip, Gavin rings to say the police are interviewing Blake in hospital. Phoebe tells Pip that Roy has concussion; as they discuss rewilding plans, Justin shows up and goes through their estimates, to Pip’s irritation. Gavin frets that Blake won’t stick to the story for the police. Philip berates Gavin for supplying the petrol – to clean the floors – that caused the explosion; he tells Gavin to lie low. Josh complains to Brian about having nothing to do since his business dried up. Brian suggests he help Adam on the farm, but an annoyed Adam refuses. After removing the first fence on the rewilding land, Rex, Phoebe and Pip celebrate at The Bull. A scared Blake tells Philip about the police interview.…

I first tried these pancakes years ago in Bali, says Elly McCausland. With chunks of ripe banana, they will bring some feel-good Indonesian magic to your kitchen. For a slightly sharper sweetness, use slices of pineapple instead of banana Serves 4 150g plain flour 1 egg 300ml milk (whole or semi-skimmed works best) a pinch of salt ¼ tsp ground cinnamon 1 tbsp melted butter, plus extra for cooking 4 tsp light muscovado sugar 2 large bananas (not too ripe), sliced on the diagonal as thinly as possible (about 3mm) 4 tbsp desiccated coconut maple or coconut syrup, to serve • You need a good non-stick pan of the correct size (about 20cm diameter) for this recipe, otherwise it will be difficult to set the bananas in the pancake. Don’t…

UK grocers: breaking records At the start of the year, when Britain’s grocers were taking stock of a pretty average Christmas, no one foresaw the trauma – and the bonanza – ahead. Suffice it to say that “panic-buying shoppers” have made March “the busiest month on record for supermarkets across the UK”, said Kit Heren in the London Evening Standard. Sales jumped by 20.6% over four weeks, according to market researcher Kantar, as customers bent on stocking up before the lockdown “made an extra 42 million visits to supermarkets” in just four days. Overall, the nation shelled out £10.8bn on groceries in March – “even higher than levels seen at Christmas”. Booze sales jumped 22% to £200m; sales of store-cupboard ingredients rose by 28%. And with pubs and restaurants…

Can China get us out of this mess... again? Editorial Financial Times “The economic fallout from the pandemic is starting to feel like 2008 reprised,” says the FT. Once again, all eyes are on China, the hope being that the country can revive the world economy. But although China “appears on track to stage the first recovery among leading economies”, the “unpalatable reality” is that it will be impossible to replicate 2008. Then, Beijing “led the world to growth by pushing out a massive $590bn stimulus package” equivalent to 13% of its GDP. However, it has run up so much debt in the credit-fuelled 12 years since that crisis, it can ill-afford another big bazooka. “Nor does it appear as willing as it was in 2008 to identify the world’s…

● Poor judgement? “Jes Staley has made some decent strategic calls at Barclays,” said Alistair Osborne in The Times. But when it comes to “personal decisions”, he repeatedly gets it wrong. At a time when customers’ businesses have been “pole-axed” by the coronavirus, Staley is pocketing a £395,000 cash bonus. “What sort of judgement call is that?” The dole-out had the effect of highlighting another “delicate issue” for Barclays: namely, its “ill-judged” insistence on continuing with a planned £1.03bn dividend payment to investors – even though credit-strapped companies are crying out for the cash. Fortunately, the bank has been saved from its own folly. Following pressure from regulators, all of Britain’s largest lenders have now agreed to cancel their dividends – freeing up a combined £7.5bn. ● Doing the right…

Controversy of the week Maths, life and death Last month, Imperial College London “released one of the most consequential academic papers in recent history”, said Fraser Nelson in The Daily Telegraph. In it, researchers reported that their mathematical modelling had predicted that the UK’s existing strategy would fail to contain the outbreak, resulting in up to 260,000 deaths. It jolted Boris Johnson into imposing the lockdown he had resisted. But a few days later, a group from Oxford University posited another theory, using a different model: that the disease could have already infected up to 68% of the British population. If so, the death rate is tiny, and “herd immunity” might have already been acquired. The Oxford study “has its (vociferous) critics”, but it points to a real dilemma. Looking…

Carluccio’s, which became the latest casualty of the lockdown. The Italian restaurant chain, which had been struggling for some time, went into administration, putting 2,000 jobs at risk. Edinburgh, with the cancellation of the Fringe and International festivals, which had been scheduled for August. The city’s Art Festival and International Book Festival have also been cancelled. Tennis lovers, after Wimbledon, and the entire grass-court season, was called off, following emergency meetings held this week. In France, organisers of the Tour de France were looking into whether the race could be held “behind closed doors” this summer – with no spectators lining the route.…

Penistone Hill, West Yorkshire Toads saved: Large numbers of migrating toads may have had their lives saved, as a result of the cancellation of a series of cross-country running races on Penistone Hill, near Bradford. According to the head of the Riddlesden Toad Patrol conservation group, “literally hundreds” of amphibians have been trampled in previous years by fell runners competing in the evening “bunny runs”, which take place around Easter, close to a pond where the toads mate. Wharfedale Harriers, which organises the runs, said it wasn’t aware of tramplings, and had in any case planned to reroute the runs. Birmingham Critical care: Birmingham’s vast National Exhibition Centre is being hastily converted into the UK’s largest hospital, with 5,000 beds. A smaller facility, with 1,000 beds, is being built at…

Thandie Newton on #MeToo Thandie Newton began her film career in the 1990s, at a time when sexual predators like Harvey Weinstein “reigned supreme” in the industry, says Kirsty Lang in The Sunday Times. When Newton was 18, for instance, she was called for an audition with a male director. “[He] asked me to sit with my legs apart; the camera was positioned where it could see up my skirt,” she recalls. “He asked me to put my leg over the arm of the chair and think about the character I was supposed to be having the dialogue with and how it felt to be made love to by this person. I was still very young and thought it must be normal.” Later, she learnt that he had kept the…

A website that supplies medical fetish wear has donated its entire stock to the NHS to help alleviate equipment shortages. MedFetUK said it supplied a number of sets of disposable scrubs after being contacted by “desperate” NHS procurement staff. The company – which caters to “a small section of the kink community” – described the equipment shortages as “scandalous”. A US man who was arrested after leading police on a high-speed car chase explained that he was “trying to teach his dog how to drive”. The man hit two cars before reaching 109mph during the ensuing pursuit. His pit bull was found in the driving seat when he was arrested, said Washington State Trooper Heather Axtman. Under Spain’s strict lockdown rules, you’re allowed to walk a dog – but not…

SPAIN Catalans are being conned over Covid-19 El País (Madrid) Catalan nationalists have reached a new low, says Javier Sampedro. Desperate to further their separatist agenda, they’ve now resorted to exploiting the coronavirus crisis for their own ends: the region’s pro-independence premier, Quim Torra, has called for Catalonia’s border with Spain to close. In a televised address, he declared this was the only way the region can hope to contain the virus as Spain grapples with one of Europe’s worst outbreaks. It’s “pathetic” – and, what’s more, the logic isn’t even borne out by science. Catalonia is one of the country’s worst affected regions: the big problem will be the virus spreading locally there. Closing the border would be “completely useless”. Predictably, separatist politicians are loudly complaining that Madrid is…

They are a much prized fashion accessory among the A-list now, and it seems tiny dogs may have been similarly popular two millennia ago. Archaeologists excavating a Roman cemetery in Córdoba, in southern Spain, have uncovered the remains of a 22.5cm-tall dog that they think was transported thousands of miles in order to be a rich person’s pampered pooch. With a small skull and large bulging eyes, it would have closely resembled a modern Pekingese. Analysis of carbon and oxygen isotopes in the dog’s bones suggest that it had a similar diet to the region’s humans – suggesting that it may have been fed from its owners’ table – but that it was born in the eastern Mediterranean. Yet the dog’s status did not prevent it from meeting a grisly…

It was panned by critics, but Cats has been amusing people in lockdown. Now, screenwriter Jack Waz has revealed the existence of an unseen edit of the film. He explained that he knew a producer who had been hired to “remove CGI buttholes that had been inserted a few months before” – meaning that “somewhere out there, there exists a butthole cut of Cats”. Fan Seth Rogen immediately tweeted “Release the Butthole Cut of Cats!!” – a demand that has been “liked” 50,000 times. Meera Syal is used to working from home: the actress says auditions have been conducted online for some time now. You are emailed lines, film yourself on your phone and send it off, “hoping this will get you to the next round when you may meet…

To The Daily Telegraph I am a business adviser with clients across the North West. Four of my clients – all well-run businesses and financially sound until the coronavirus struck – have approached their banks for support under the initiatives recently announced by the Government. Without exception, they were turned down, but the banks offered them alternative products, which in some cases involved 22% interest rates, exorbitant arrangement fees and personal guarantees. I’m afraid to say the banks are not helping at all. Indeed, they are seeking to profit from the situation by tying desperate business owners into punitive deals that will create hardship and, in some cases, bankruptcy – the exact opposite of the Government’s objective. David Lee, Wistaston, Cheshire To The Sunday Telegraph My business employs 64 people…

Nicole Taylor wrote the Baftawinning child-abuse drama Three Girls, said Euan Ferguson in The Observer. Now, she is back with the Glasgow-set The Nest, which promises to be both an edgy thriller and a “pointed exploration” of the rights and wrongs of surrogacy. It stars Sophie Rundle as well-heeled Emily who, having struggled for years to have a baby, asks a troubled 18-year-old named Kaya (Mirren Mack) to carry her last viable embryo, and pays her, illegally, to do so. But can she be trusted? Emily’s working-class husband (Martin Compston) is doubtful. Everything about Kaya “rings alarm bells”, said Anita Singh in The Daily Telegraph. We see her brawling with her social worker, and learn she has lied about her criminal record. It’s an “intriguing” first episode. I feel it…

New cars: what the critics say What Car? The original Renault Captur, released in 2013, was not the first small SUV to hit the market. But it did ride the “tsunami” of their popularity, and since then, 1.2 million Captur’s have been sold worldwide. The secret to its appeal was its “distinctive looks” and lots of customisation options – and Renault has been even “bolder” with this model. But while it remains keenly priced, the “funky” design doesn’t quite make up for some disappointing engines. The Daily Telegraph It’s a bit odd that these “hatchbacks on stilts” have proved so popular; “as a rule, the taller the car, the stiffer the suspension must be to stop it leaning over”. Increased aerodynamic drag makes them less economical too. Still, this one…

Global stock markets bounced back strongly in response to the wall of firepower deployed by central banks to calm the system – Wall Street enjoyed one of its biggest weekly rebounds since the aftermath of the 1929 crash. But investors, struggling to adapt to a rapidly shrinking global economy, were still counting the cost of a bruising quarter. The FTSE 100 fell 26% in Q1 2020 – its worst performance since 1987, the pound slid to a 35-year low, and the price of oil fell so precipitously that some analysts predicted it could turn “negative”. One of the early casualties of the virus, Singapore, revealed that its GDP contracted by 10.6% in the quarter. As Britain steeled itself for what one fund manager described as a period of “corporate Darwinism…

Laxman Narasimhan Lots of us are getting used to running our business empires from home. Few are quite the size of Laxman Narasimhan’s, said The Times. The new Reckitt Benckiser boss was relocating to Britain when the crisis hit – and has since been running “one of the world’s biggest consumer goods companies” from his two-bed home in west London, “while also looking after his 79-year-old mother”. His wife and children are “trapped” in New York. Indian-born Narasimhan joined Reckitt from Pepsico last summer, “partly because he had an affinity” with one of its leading brands, Dettol – a staple of his childhood. Sales of the disinfectant have, unsurprisingly, soared. Bill Ackman Less than a week after warning the American public that “hell is coming”, the billionaire investor behind Pershing…

Houses: frozen “An Englishman’s home was once his castle,” said Lex in the FT. “It is now his open prison.” All the more so since the property market was effectively “shut down” this week. Banks are withdrawing mortgages; homes will no longer be advertised; housebuilders have “mostly downed tools”. The move was inevitable given collapsing transactions: Zoopla reported that the number of “sales falling through” rose by 60% in mid-March. The question every homeowner wants to ask is: what will happen to prices? Technically, “not a lot” while the lockdown continues. In the longer term, like much else, it all depends on the extent of the economic fall-out. Shops: rent strikes In much of the commercial property market, meanwhile, anarchy rules, said Ben Chapman in The Independent. “Hundreds of retailers”…

The days when people gave their pets distinctively animal names – whether Rex, Rover, Tiddles, Pompom or Puss – appear to be over. Nine out of ten of the most popular names given to puppies and kittens in 2019 (among them Poppy, Molly, Alfie and Max) also appeared in the top 100 names for babies. Bosses are reportedly panic-buying office surveillance software so that they can keep an eye on their employees now working from home. Producers of the software, which can monitor online activity and keystrokes, and even take screenshots, have reported a surge in demand since it became clear that a lockdown was coming. One firm, ActivTrak, says its software orders have tripled in a few weeks.…

A £75m plan to repatriate the 300,000 Britons stranded abroad owing to Covid-19 lockdowns was announced this week. Aimed at tourists, and not expats, it will prioritise vulnerable people, and involve a mix of scheduled and chartered flights. Passengers have been told to use commercial flights if they are in a country where flights are still taking off, and the Government has urged airlines to help people whose flights were cancelled to get home at “little to no extra cost”. Britons were advised to make themselves known to embassies and high commissions, and await further details. Passengers will be expected to pay for their flights, but loans to cover the cost will be made available to them.…

Prague Mandatory masks: The Czech government has made the wearing of face masks mandatory in public – and has called on the public to make their own at home from cotton, to avoid a shortage of the specialist surgical masks worn by medical workers. Although the WHO advises that people coming into contact with Covid-19 patients wear masks, the benefits of wider social use are disputed. Only two other European countries (Slovakia and Bosnia) have decreed that masks should be worn at all times in public, but Austria this week ordered its citizens to wear them when visiting the few shops that remain open. The government said free masks would be distributed at supermarkets. Austria’s lockdown measures are among the strictest in Europe. By contrast, in Sweden, cafés and restaurants…

1* Bridge Over Troubled Water by Paul Simon, performed by Johnny Cash 2 Saturday Night At The Movies by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, performed by The Drifters 3 The Air That I Breathe by Albert Hammond and Mike Hazlewood, performed by k.d. lang 4 Get Back by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, performed by The Beatles 5 La quête by Joe Darion, Mitch Leigh and Jacques Brel, performed by Jacques Brel 6 Both Sides Now, written and performed by Joni Mitchell 7* God Only Knows by Brian Wilson and Tony Asher, performed by The Beach Boys 8 Don’t Get Me Wrong by Chrissie Hynde, performed by The Pretenders Book: In Search of the Miraculous by Pyotr Ouspenskii Luxury: a very good sewing kit * Choice if allowed only one…

It’s not just Britain shovelling money into the economy; globally, commitments have reached an unprecedented $7trn, according to CNN. The US, which saw 3.3 million people newly register as jobless over one week, put the largest rescue package on the table last week: $2trn for companies and individuals, including unemployment insurance, loans and “helicopter money” – cheques of $1,200 sent to all Americans earning up to $75,000 annually, or to married couples earning a combined $150,000. The EU launched a Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme of e870bn, equal to about 7.3% of the euro area’s GDP. In France, President Macron promised that no company, “whatever its size, will be exposed to the risk of collapse”, adding that the state would be ready to nationalise industries at risk. Germany, like Britain, has…

The corrupt senator and his falling stock Matt Taibbi Rolling Stone “If there is such a thing as a grand slam of political assholedom”, says Matt Taibbi, then Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina has surely hit it. Consider the facts. The Republican attended a private Senate briefing in late January in which intelligence officials spelled out the dire risks to America from the coronavirus outbreak in China. Soon after, Burr sold off “hundreds of thousands (if not millions) worth of stocks” while continuing in public to parrot President Trump’s line that there was nothing to worry about. Burr did, however, admit how grave the situation was to a group of financial big hitters at a private lunch. When this story recently came out, Burr insisted he’d sold his shares,…

The coronavirus pandemic is having a dramatic impact on air pollution levels, reports The Guardian. Data from the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-5P satellite has revealed that there was a marked drop in levels of the toxic gas nitrogen dioxide (NO 2 ) as lockdowns were introduced across Europe last month. In Milan, average concentrations of NO 2 during the week of 16-22 March were 21% lower than for the same week in 2019; in Bergamo, they were 47% lower. After Spain and Portugal went into lockdown, Madrid’s NO 2 levels fell 55% in about a week; Lisbon’s fell 40%. Nasa reported similar falls in China during the lockdown in Hubei province. “We’re inadvertently conducting the largest-scale experiment ever seen,” said Prof Paul Monks, of the University of Leicester. “Are we…

“Everybody knows that pestilences have a way of recurring in the world; yet somehow we find it hard to believe in ones that crash down on our heads from a blue sky.” Albert Camus, quoted in The Paris Review “It is a great advantage to a president, and a major source of safety to the country, for him to know he is not a great man.” President Calvin Coolidge, quoted in Forbes “All logical arguments can be defeated by the simple refusal to reason logically.” Physicist Steven Weinberg, quoted on The Browser “There may be years of crowded passion in a word, and half a life in a sentence.” Thomas Wentworth Higginson, quoted in The Washington Post “Virtue has never been as respectable as money.” Mark Twain, quoted in Forbes…

Giri/Haji A British detective show set partly in Japan, with plenty of subtitled, Japanese dialogue and an interpretive ballet for a climax, this BBC co-production was never going to be an easy sell. But it is a thing of beauty, bursting with brilliant characters, from kimono’d mafia dons to Japanese-speaking Peckham rent boys. On BBC iPlayer. Detectorists This low-key comedy focuses on the friendship between two middle-aged metal detectorists: lonely, laconic Andy (Mackenzie Crook) and puffed-up Lance (Toby Jones). The pace is snail-like, the dialogue deadpan, the comic chemistry near-perfect, and tinged with melancholy. On BBC iPlayer. The Americans Created by former CIA officer Joe Weisberg, this spy thriller is about Soviet sleeper agents posing as a happily married couple (Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell) in 1980s Washington DC. Their…

Best books… Petina Gappah The author chooses her favourite books. Her debut story collection, An Elegy for Easterly, won the Guardian First Book Award in 2009, and her new novel, Out of Darkness, Shining Light (Faber £16.99), is out now The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius, 121 AD; translated by Robert Graves, 1957 (Penguin £10.99). I bought my first Suetonius in a secondhand bookshop in Amsterdam, started reading it on the tram and missed my stop thanks to its gripping, dense and gossipy tabloid take on ancient Rome’s greatest men. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, 2004 (Virago £8.99). Robinson’s perfectly pitched story about three generations of a family of Congregationalist ministers is, perhaps, close to a perfect novel. A quiet and moving meditation on goodness, centring on a flawed and constantly seeking…

Dig for victory over the virus When I started Tim Lang’s new book Feeding Britain, it struck me as “alarmist and off-beam”, says Simon Jenkins in The Sunday Times. Not so much now. In it, the farmer-turned-academic warns that we are risking a crisis of food insecurity, and urges Britain to revert to a wartime siege economy for food. It’s crazy, he argues, that we’re reliant on imports for half of our supplies – including 87% of fruit and vegetables – the arrival of which depends on “hyper-fragile” transnational distribution systems. The declining quality of our food is another problem – as is the amount we waste. Faced with all manner of threats, from “cyberaggression” to disease, we must, he says, start digging for victory. A few weeks ago, the…

Brilliant illustrator who created Asterix the Gaul Albert Uderzo 1927-2020 As a child, Albert Uderzo did not seem destined to become an illustrator. He was born colour-blind, and with six fingers on each hand. Even after the extra digits had been removed, he could only grasp a pencil awkwardly, between his third and fourth fingers, said The Times. Yet he grew up to draw one of the most famous illustrated characters of all time: the indomitable Asterix the Gaul. Created with the great René Goscinny, who wrote the books until his death in 1977, the stories about Gaulish villagers resisting and outwitting the Roman invaders in 50BC have delighted readers all over the world. The Asterix books have been translated into 111 languages and dialects, and have sold some 380…

The onslaught of “online offices” and “virtual water coolers” has proved a game-changer for companies such as Slack, said Danny Fortson in The Sunday Times. The $16bn workplace messaging service reports it has signed up 9,000 new accounts in the past three weeks – “nearly equal to the 10,000 it signed in the preceding six months”. Shares in the other big tech winner, Zoom Video, have jumped by 30%. The latter is proving strangely compulsive, one nosey banker told the Financial Times. “What I love [on Zoom calls] is looking at people’s bookcases – the amount of John Grisham they have on there. And these are educated people!”…

The week’s best shares CMC Markets The Sunday Telegraph The spread-better and trading firm has been capturing twice the normal volume of client trading activity, notes Peel Hunt, with an extra £15m revenue in March boosting profits by £10m. Investing heavily in tech. Buy. 165.6p. Codemasters Group Investors Chronicle This video-games developer majors on car-racing – promising licences include Formula 1. Could face disruption, but should benefit from surging demand for streamed products. Margins are up 89%. Buy. 215p. Diageo The Daily Telegraph The drinks group is holding up well, thanks to long-established brands including Smirnoff, Johnnie Walker and Baileys. A strong stable of labels enjoying generation-spanning support around the world. Buy. £22.16. Hollywood Bowl Group The Mail on Sunday Shares in Britain’s biggest bowling operator have been overly savaged.…