Innholdsfortegnelse for 1564 i The Week

The “mast year” that has produced a glut of seeds and nuts in British forests has been a boon to red squirrels, The Times reports. At Whinfell Forest in Cumbria, it is believed to have enabled two breeding seasons, and rangers counted 215 reds, from January to September, 24% more than last year. Worryingly, the mast year will also have benefitted greys, but at Whinfell Forest, guests at the local Center Parcs are asked to report sightings, and so far there have been none. A man who lost half his face in a cycling accident four years ago has been fitted with a prosthetic mask which restores his original appearance with remarkable accuracy. Dave Richards, 75, from Devon, was left with devastating injuries, including severe burns, when he was knocked…

Controversy of the week The grooming inquiry “Perhaps the national inquiry into grooming gangs was doomed from inception”, given that the Government had to be dragged into holding it in the first place, said Sonia Sodha in The Independent. At any rate, “it is now in a complete mess”. Four survivors resigned last week from the inquiry’s advisory panel. They claimed that ministers wanted to expand the inquiry’s remit to cover all types of child sexual exploitation, instead of focusing on rape (grooming) gangs, particularly those involving men from Asian backgrounds; they fear it will duck the difficult political issues. Jess Phillips, the Minister for Safeguarding, added insult to injury by describing these claims as categorically “untrue”, even though participants had been sent a consultation document specifically asking whether the…

Prince Andrew, who has reportedly succumbed to pressure from King Charles to give up his lease on Royal Lodge, his 30-room mansion in Windsor. This week, a photograph emerged of a trio of sex offenders – Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell – standing together in the garden of Royal Lodge. It was taken in 2006, before Princess Beatrice’s 18th birthday party. Strictly Come Dancing, which is losing its hosts. Claudia Winkleman and Tess Daly announced they were quitting the show after more than a decade co-presenting. The BBC is said to have already offered Winkleman a chat show, in an effort to keep her. Thames Water, after it scored just one star in a government scheme to rate water companies’ environmental performance. Only one major firm, Severn Trent…

Paris Suspects caught: Police have arrested two men suspected of being involved in the theft from the Louvre last week of eight pieces of 19th century royal jewellery valued at €88m – the most spectacular heist France has seen in decades. One, bound for Algeria, was apprehended at Charles de Gaulle Airport; the other, who had reportedly planned to travel to Mali, was arrested in Seine-Saint-Denis, a northern suburb of Paris. The two are thought to have been among the four who broke into the museum, using a truck-mounted ladder to access a first-floor window. In their 30s and with criminal records, they were identified from DNA traces and fingerprints from the scene found on abandoned items – gloves, a hi-vis vest, a motorbike helmet, angle grinders, a walkie-talkie and…

1 Touch the Hem of His Garment by Sam Cooke, performed by Gene Martin 2 I Found Lovin’ by Johnny Flippin and Michael Walker, performed by the Fatback Band 3 Doesn’t Make it Alright by Jerry Dammers, Dave Goldberg and Mark Harrison, performed by The Specials 4 Living for the City, written and performed by Stevie Wonder 5 Any Old Time by Artie Shaw, performed by Artie Shaw and his Orchestra with Billie Holiday 6* For Me… Formidable by Charles Aznavour and Jacques Plante, performed by Charles Aznavour 7 Champagne Supernova by Noel Gallagher, performed by Oasis 8 Try a Little Tenderness by Jimmy Campbell, Reg Connelly and Harry Woods, performed by Otis Redding Book: The Collected Novels of Toni Morrison Luxury: a guitar * Choice if allowed only one record…

The UN has five principal “organs” (originally six, but one, the Trusteeship Council for managing former colonial possessions, is now “inactive”). The General Assembly is made up of representatives from all 193 member states, each of whom can vote to approve the budget, elect non-permanent members of the Security Council, and appoint the secretary-general. The Security Council has “primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security”. The UN Secretariat is the office of the secretary-general, its highest official, who is appointed for a five-year, renewable term. The International Court of Justice is the only one of the bodies not located in New York (it sits in The Hague); it is responsible for adjudicating legal disputes between countries. Finally, the Economic and Social Council is responsible for coordinating the…

Prising loose the left-wing grip on campus Megan McArdle The Washington Post Does academia tilt left in the US? The answer to that question would seem blindingly obvious to most people outside that world, says Megan McArdle, but not, it would seem, to many of those in it. Progressive academics still insist that claims of ideological bias are unproven, and that arguments for more “viewpoint diversity” in universities are “weak, bad faith, and inimical to the search for truth and academic self-governance”. But just because they want that to be true, doesn’t make it true. The reality is academia had a “sweetheart deal” in the 20th century. So long as demand for knowledge workers kept rising, and degrees provided a reliable ticket to a middle-class job, “few were inclined to…

Brace yourselves, said Harry McGee in The Irish Times (Dublin): “Storm Catherine is about to hit the Irish political landscape.” Our next president will be the outspoken socialist politician Catherine Connolly, who won Friday’s election by a landslide with 63.4% of the vote. And though the role of president may be largely ceremonial, there are a number of reasons Connolly could still make waves, said Pat Leahy in the same paper – her far-left views, for a start. The Irish-speaking former barrister is critical of the EU and Nato; wants to ringfence Irish neutrality from what she calls Western “militarism”; has accused the UK and US of enabling genocide in Gaza; and has called on the Irish government to prepare for a united Ireland. Combine all that with the fact…

Almost 5,600 drug deaths were registered in England and Wales in 2024 – 2.1% more than in 2023, and the highest number since records began in 1993. Opiates and opioids such as heroin and morphine were the drugs most often mentioned on registrations in 2024. A total of 2,621 deaths were related to their use, up about 3% on the year before. Around 1,280 were related to cocaine, up 14% on last year, and 11 times more than in 2011. However, the sharpest rise was in deaths involving nitazenes – synthetic opioids that can be 100 times stronger than heroin. These rose almost fourfold, from 52 in 2023 to 195 in 2024. More men were killed by drugs than women, and both genders were most likely to have been in…

It’s 53 years since Bloody Sunday, when 13 unarmed civilians were killed by the British Army in Londonderry, said Andrew McQuillan in The Spectator – but the events of that day continue to reverberate. Last month, the trial of a former British paratrooper, now in his 70s, began at Belfast Crown Court. He was accused of shooting dead two protesters, and attempting to kill five others. But after a five-week trial, Judge Patrick Lynch found“Soldier F” not guilty. Delivering his verdict, he said that the evidence offered by Northern Ireland’s Public Prosecution Service had fallen “well short” of the standard required. This was “a politically driven show trial”, said the Daily Mail, and the ruling will doubtless have come as an “immense relief” to Soldier F, who’d been “hounded through…

“Posterity is as likely to be wrong as anybody else.”Heywood Broun, quoted on Medium “Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go.”William Feather, quoted on The Knowledge “The public must be put in its place […] so that each of us may live free of the trampling and the roar of a bewildered herd.”Walter Lippmann, quoted on Conspicuous Cognition “The particular charm of marriage is the duologue, the permanent conversation between two people who talk over everything and everyone till death breaks the record.”Cyril Connolly, quoted in The London Review of Books “It seems the misfortune of one can plough a deeper furrow in the heart than the misfortune of millions.”Kirby Larson, quoted in The i Paper “Good comedy is based on pain…

To The New Statesman Your cover story has given me cause to reflect upon the language used by our politicians in relation to immigration. Rather than othering immigrants, we should look sympathetically towards those willing to undertake dangerous journeys to the UK. In their resolve to reach our shores, they show a humbling belief in Great Britain that should shame those who think patriotism is demonstrated by affixing a Union flag to a lamppost. Working in the road transport industry, I work with Afghan, Indian, Iraqi, Pakistani, Somalian, Sudanese and Syrian migrants. Despite language barriers, we endeavour to communicate and understand each other. Working with them has immensely enriched my life. The language surrounding immigration has become toxic. Progressives must make the argument that the right-wing offers nothing to improve…

“It’s a bold move to reactivate Stratford’s The Other Place as a regular performance space with Macbeth,” said Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph. “This, after all, was the scene of Trevor Nunn’s landmark 1976 production starring Ian McKellen and Judi Dench.” Daniel Raggett’s new modern-day staging – set in a boozer in gangland Glasgow – is not in that league, but it “seizes every opportunity to achieve a sense of infernal intimacy”, often plunging the auditorium into darkness, and creating the atmosphere of “a nightmare lock-in”. The witches are a disturbingly ordinary trio of pub gossips. Duncan is a brutal “old capo” who has had the Thane of Cawdor executed; while Macbeth and his peers are thugs fighting to take over his turf. It’s a brutal production, blessed by…

TV adaptations of the American author Harlan Coben’s “extravagantly plotted” thrillers tend to attract A-list casts, said Rebecca Nicholson in the Financial Times. And it is often the case that the actors are “more believable” than the plotlines. This is very much the case with Lazarus, a new six-parter on Amazon Prime. Bill Nighy and Sam Claflin play father-and-son psychiatrists Jonathan and Joel Lazarus, both of whom are haunted by the unsolved murder of Joel’s sister 25 years earlier. The series begins with Jonathan’s death, an apparent suicide; but “it doesn’t take a super-sleuth to work out that Nighy was never going to join the cast for a mere two-minute cameo”. It soon gets “a bit Sixth Sense”, said Anita Singh in The Daily Telegraph. Joel starts receiving spectral visits,…

Researchers believe they have pinpointed the identity of a black soldier who fought for Britain in the Napoleonic Wars and whose portrait was recently acquired by the National Army Museum. The sitter is wearing a Waterloo Medal – which narrowed the search down as it is only known to have been awarded to nine black soldiers. He is also dressed in a fur-trimmed pelisse, and carrying a cymbal, suggesting that he was a percussionist in a cavalry regiment. Military records show that Thomas James was a military musician with the 18th Light Dragoons – making him the “most plausible candidate”. Born into slavery in Montserrat, he enlisted in 1809, by which time he had made his way to Sussex and was living as a servant. He did not fight at…

Esme breaks down in tears to Josh as she tries to sort her dad’s affairs. Jolene tells George he’s barred from The Bull. He pushes back, saying he risked his neck for them, when furious Lilian arrives and an ugly showdown ensues. Ruairi and Alice figure out that Brian is playing them off each other regarding Home Farm’s future – Adam is also put out. Tracy’s plans to surprise Oliver on his 80th are thwarted when he plans a trip to New York – but all comes good in the end. George complains about Amber always being on her phone; he suggests they move somewhere new, but Amber isn’t keen. Lilian tells Alice she shouldn’t be surprised by Brian’s duplicity. David continues to help struggling Esme with the farm; eventually…

Topjaw’s “mighty” influence Over the past couple of years, the “small but mighty internet platform” Topjaw has become the talk of London’s dining scene, says Morwenna Ferrier in The Guardian. The platform produces a range of food-related content, but is chiefly known for its “Best of” series, which it launched in 2023. In these “snappy” 90-second videos, Topjaw’s 34-year-old host, Jesse Burgess, asks “influential chefs, critics or celebrities” to recommend places to eat and drink. He might begin by asking them to name the “best coffee in London”, before moving on to “best Sunday lunch” and “best burger”. Florence Pugh, Gordon Ramsay and Jay Rayner have appeared, and the videos rack up millions of views. Burgess, a man with“Rembrandt curls, a square jaw” and a posh accent, can be seen…

● Gardeners may be tempted to rake up fallen leaves, but they are full of goodness and invaluable to wildlife. If they look messy, sweep them into a pile in a dry spot for hedgehogs, or in wet spots for frogs. ● Leaves provide vital nutrients and shelter. Earthworms roll them up and pull them into the soil; the elephant hawk-moth caterpillar attaches its cocoons to leaves until spring. ● Leaf mulch around the base of a tree forms a sponge to provide water during dry spells. While a layer of thick, large leaves might kill the grass underneath, smaller leaves will soon be absorbed, returning nutrients to the tree roots. ● A thin layer of fallen leaves is a great habitat for insects that birds can prey on, particularly…

Björn Andrésen 1955-2025 Björn Andrésen won screen immortality aged 16, when he appeared as Tadzio, the sailor-suited Polish boy whose beauty bewitches an ageing homosexual composer in Luchino Visconti’s 1971 adaptation of Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice. The film caused a sensation on its release, said The Daily Telegraph, and was hailed as a masterpiece. Visconti dubbed its child star “the most beautiful boy in the world”, a tag that was taken up by the press. But for Andrésen, the whole thing was a nightmare that, he said, “screwed up my life quite decently”. He was born in Stockholm in 1955. He was never told his father’s identity; and when he was ten, his mother died by suicide. It was his grandmother who pushed him into acting because, he said,…

Elon Musk has threatened to leave Tesla, unless the company agrees to his demand for a $1trn pay package – “easily the biggest in corporate history”, said Lex in the FT. Given the EV-maker’s “equivocal outlook”, and the poor performance of its shares this year, investors might wonder why they should approve “a 13-digit” bonanza. But it is “by no means money for nothing”. To achieve the reward, payable in shares over a decade, Musk must reach “multiple challenging operational targets”, which can only be good for Tesla. That’s debatable, said Alistair Osborne in The Times. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Tesla’s board is once again “being held hostage”.…

A moment for courage, not caution Editorial Financial Times With a month to go before the Budget, “the already arduous task of balancing the nation’s books” has just got even harder, says the FT. The Office for Budget Responsibility is expected to downgrade productivity forecasts by more than anticipated. If Rachel Reeves is to maintain – “or more prudently, increase” – her modest headroom, she could face a fiscal shortfall exceeding £30bn. However the Chancellor contrives to make ends meet, “merely tinkering at the edges” would be a missed opportunity. She should use the coming weeks to set out bolder reforms to strengthen Britain’s public finances and its growth trajectory. Simplifying the tax system, with its “plethora of reliefs, cliff-edges and carve-outs” is “a good place to start”. Council tax…

The week’s best shares Brooks Macdonald Group The Mail on Sunday The wealth manager has sold its international arm to prioritise the UK. Funds under management are up, with outflows slowing. Investing in tech and AI, while boosting its financial retirement-planning offering. Buy. £17.90. Burberry Group The Mail on Sunday Things are “looking brighter” for the iconic British outerwear designer – back in the FTSE 100 and making hay from a marketing campaign starring Olivia Colman. Shares, up 68% in 12 months, have further to run. Buy. £12.87. Morgan Advanced Materials Sharecast Morgan makes components for sectors ranging from healthcare to energy. Chip customers are reporting revenue improvement. “Not blow-out cheap”, but “risk/reward tilted to the upside”. Berenberg gives a 250p target. Buy. 207p. Relx The Times Shares in Relx,…

THE WEEK CROSSWORD 1489 Two Connell Guides and three Week-branded items will be given to the sender of the first correct solution to the crossword and the clue of the week opened on Monday 10 November. Send it to The Week Crossword 1489, 121-141 Westbourne Terrace, London W2 6JR, or email the completed grid/listed solutions to crossword@theweek.co.uk. By Tim Moorey (timmoorey.com) This week’s winner will receive Week-branded items, as well as two Connell Guides (connellguides.com). ACROSS 1 The French annoyed by English game (8) 5 Free from danger, alternatively secure (6) 9 Second type of bean improving (6-2)  10 That man’s behind transport for people who are late (6) 11 Furniture for theatre assistants? (8) 12 Temperature first of all struck one in a tropical island (6) 14 Terribly old English…

What happened Home Office chaos A bruising week for the Government on the issue of migration was capped off by a damning report by MPs accusing the Home Office of “squandering” billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money on hotels for asylum seekers. Last Wednesday, it emerged that one of the few people to have been deported to France under Labour’s flagship “one in, one out” scheme had returned to the UK on a small boat. Two days after that, the Government suffered further embarrassment when an Ethiopian migrant whose sexual assault of a 14-year-old girl had sparked protests in Epping was accidentally released from prison, triggering a manhunt. He was arrested two days later in a London park, and deported. In its report, the Home Affairs Committee accused the Home…

A couple have advertised for a £180,000 tutor to help their one-year-old son become an English gentleman. According to the ad, the parents, who come from overseas and now live in north London, want the boy to be “truly bicultural” (indistinguishable from a child raised by wealthy British parents in the UK) and ultimately win a place at “Eton, St Paul’s, Westminster or Harrow”. They’d started this process with their older son when he was five, the advert states. That had proved too late, so they were starting younger this time. The tutor – who should be from a “socially appropriate background” – will cultivate the child’s “habits, outlooks, tastes and sporting preferences”, by taking him everywhere, from art galleries to polo matches.…

Resident doctors in England will stage a five-day walkout from 14 to 19 November, the British Medical Association has announced. The walkout will be the 13th by resident (formerly junior) doctors since 2023, and relates to a dispute over the number of jobs and training contracts available to them, as well as their working conditions and pay, which they wish to increase by 29%. Hospital chiefs warned that the strike will make it harder for the NHS to cope with winter viruses and clear the waiting list of 7.41 million appointments. Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, warned that the Government would not be “held to ransom”; but the BMA said it had been left with no choice but to strike, following the breakdown of talks with the Government.…

Ottawa Reagan row: Donald Trump halted trade talks with Canada last week, after the provincial government in Ottawa released an advert critical of his tariff policy. The 60-second ad, which aired on major US networks, used excerpts from a radio address given by Ronald Reagan in 1987 in which he’d spelled out his objections to tariffs. On his Truth Social account, Trump said the ad was “fake”, noting that the Reagan Foundation had stated that it misrepresented the address, and had been used and edited without permission. Trump said that the ad was designed to sway a Supreme Court ruling on the legality of his tariff policy, and that he’d be raising tariffs on Canadian goods by 10% in retaliation. The advert was launched by Doug Ford, the premier of…

“What was so mortifying is that the thieves made it look so simple. They parked a truck-mounted ladder against the Louvre’s south facade and smashed two vitrines. Vincent Cassel needed an over-engineered capoeira routine and backflips across a cascade of laser-activated alarms to pocket a Fabergé egg in Ocean’s Twelve. Yet it turns out that all you need for a real-life heist are balaclavas, angle grinders and scooters revved up for a speedy getaway. Someone should tell Tom Cruise to stand down from whichever ceiling he’s currently dangling off. The Louvre heist was not so much Mission: Impossible as Mission Really Quite Feasible.” Shahidha Bari in the Financial Times…

Musk debased the currency of free speech Hugo Rifkind The Times I’m no fan of coppers policing speech, says Hugo Rifkind. I’m glad the Met has ceased investigating non-crime hate incidents. I was appalled when the comedy writer Graham Linehan was arrested for making “gender critical” tweets. But let’s be clear. Had Linehan posted that tweet five years ago – the way to deal with a trans woman in a female changing room, he’d tweeted, is to “punch him in the balls” – he’d have been kicked off Twitter. Had he tried to make it in a newspaper article, some editor would have warned him off. But on social media today there are no such “moderators”. Musk scrapped “content moderation” when he bought Twitter three years ago, the other platforms…

CO2 reaches record levels The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere rose by a record amount in 2023/24 – taking concentrations of the greenhouse gas to the highest level since measurements began. The 3.5 parts-per-million surge in the global average concentration is well above the 2.3ppm rise recorded the previous year, and falls within a pattern of accelerating increases, the World Meteorological Organisation warned in its new report. The burning of fossil fuels and an increase in wildfires, particularly in South America, will have contributed to the most recent leap in CO2, but scientists are also concerned that the planet’s carbon sinks are weakening. Oceans, trees and plants soak up about half of all the CO2 emitted each year – and if this process breaks down, temperatures could start rising…

Nick Clegg had quite a culture shock when he moved to Silicon Valley. In one of his first staff meetings at Meta HQ, the former Lib Dem leader tried to break the ice “in a rather British way”, by joking about a motivational poster which read “Bring your authentic self to work”. “I tried to make [my colleagues] feel at ease by saying: ‘Please don’t bring your authentic self to work. Bring your inauthentic self to work … and we’ll all get on perfectly well.’” His comments were met with “stony silence” by the millennial staff. “Someone came up to me after and said, ‘We’ve had some disquiet. Would you like to go on a course?’” Restaurateur Jeremy King doesn’t impose dress codes at his restaurants, believing that the way…

“Is there no end to the sufferings of Keir Starmer?” asked Sean O’Grady in The Independent. Fresh from a “humiliating” loss in the Caerphilly by-election, the PM was this week forced to welcome Lucy Powell as his Labour deputy – the left-wing Manchester Central MP having defeated his preferred candidate, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson, with 54% of the vote. Powell, the only Cabinet member to have been sacked in the last reshuffle, had made the vote a referendum on Starmer’s leadership, said Dan Hodges in the Daily Mail – “and the verdict from his own party was utterly damning”. Labour members plumped for a deputy who’d openly criticised the PM for attempting welfare cuts and failing to scrap the two-child benefit cap. Arguing that Labour can’t “out-Reform Reform”, Powell has…

Arguably the reason Arsenal didn’t win the Premier League last season was their patchy record against middling teams, said Sam Dean in The Daily Telegraph. Defeats or draws against sides that finished between eighth and 13th in the table cost the Gunners 20 points – compared with only 15 points they lost to teams finishing in the top seven. So far this year, however, Mikel Arteta’s men have proved much more adept at overcoming “gritty” opposition. Last Sunday, they again demonstrated this facility, with a hard-fought 1-0 win at the Emirates over a “well-organised” Crystal Palace. For the most part, it was an even contest; what made the difference was Eberechi Eze’s “fabulous, karate-style volley” from just inside the area on 39 minutes. Eze, who is known for his “ability…

Cricket England beat New Zealand in their final group game in the Women’s World Cup. They faced South Africa in the semi-final. Football Celtic accused Brendan Rodgers of creating a “toxic atmosphere” at the club following his resignation this week as manager. He has been replaced on an interim basis by Martin O’Neill. Bournemouth are second in the Premier League after a 2-0 win over Nottingham Forest. Tennis Britain’s Cameron Norrie claimed the “biggest win” of his career, beating the world No. 1 Carlos Alcaraz 4-6, 6-3, 6-4 at the Paris Masters.…

Book of the week After Oscar by Merlin Holland Europa Editions 800pp £30 The Week Bookshop £26.99 (incl. p&p) “Today, Oscar Wilde is one of the most celebrated writers in English, both instantly recognisable and actually read,” said Matthew Sturgis in The Guardian. “But it was not always so.” When he died in Paris in 1900, aged 46, five years after his arrest and imprisonment on charges of “gross indecency with male persons”, the dominant feeling was one of “relief that an embarrassing figure had been removed from the scene”. Few of his friends attended his funeral, and it was widely assumed that “he and his works would soon be forgotten”. This “fascinating book” by Wilde’s only grandchild, Merlin Holland, tells the story of what has happened since. Deftly weaving…

On Lewis Goodall’s regular podcasting gig, The News Agents, I sometimes find him (and his co-hosts) a bit “bombastic”, said Miranda Sawyer in The Observer. But he’s incisive, thorough, and (unlike many podcast presenters) he does the necessary legwork. Now he has a “fabulously entertaining” new podcast, Coining It, on which he does a “sterling job making sense of what, by any standards, is a brilliantly nutty tale”. It concerns a man named James Parker who, in 2017 – while ill, and living on benefits in Blackpool – stumbled across a glitch in a bitcoin trading site. He managed to purloin cryptocurrency worth £24.5m, and spent the money with reckless abandon – moving into a flashy hotel, buying cars for new friends, and giving homeless people wads of cash. This…

In October 1960, Nigeria won full independence from the UK, said Anny Shaw in The London Standard. This landmark moment sparked “a period of enormous cultural fecundity”, as artists sought to create a “visual identity” for the country – one that embraced indigenous traditions and the “buzz” of modern life, while reckoning with Nigeria’s “fraught colonial past”. Now this cultural “renaissance” is the subject of a new exhibition at Tate Modern, which brings together some 250 pieces – including paintings, sculptures and textiles – by more than 50 artists, to examine Nigerian art pre and post-independence. The result is a show that is sprawling but compelling, said Mark Hudson in The Independent. Other exhibitions of African art have tended to shy away from showing “the first gropings towards modernity from…

The Life of Charlotte Brontë by Elizabeth Gaskell, 1857 (Penguin £12.99). I have always loved this stormy book, full of the wild spirits of the Yorkshire Moors, and the true backstory of Jane Eyre. As gripping as a great Victorian novel, it caused a scandal on publication, but was the first truly modern literary biography. The Invisible Woman by Claire Tomalin, 1990 (Penguin £12.99). An outstanding example of the biography as detective story. Tomalin’s brilliant investigation into the secret life of Dickens’s mistress, Nelly Ternan, begins with a mysterious railway timetable held in the New York Public Library, but ends with the destruction of Dickens’s marriage and a revealing account of the whole perilous world of the Victorian actress. Flaubert’s Parrot by Julian Barnes, 1984 (Vintage £9.99). Barnes’s malign but masterly…

Programmes Girlbands Forever A three-part look back at the heyday of girl bands, including All Saints, Eternal and the Spice Girls. Sat 1 Nov, BBC2 21:20 and 22:20 (60mins each). Panorama: Trump and the Tech Titans Investigation into Trump’s volatile relationships with Big Tech and its leaders. Mon 3 Nov, BBC1 20:00 (60mins). Walter Presents: The Roots of Evil Dark German thriller set in 1993. Following the discovery of a girl’s body in the forest, two investigators follow different leads: one suspects a serial killer; the other local neo-Nazis. Tue 4 Nov, C4 00:05 (50mins). Anthony Hopkins: A Career in Character As his memoir is published, the actor talks to Katie Razzall about overcoming a troubled childhood in Port Talbot to become one of the world’s most lauded film stars.…

This has to be one of the easiest, most decadent desserts you’ll ever make, says Poppy O’Toole. I picked it up when working in the kitchens of a bank: for big events it would be our go to sweet treat, as it was so easy and everyone loved it. Serves 8-10 20cm loose-bottomed fluted tart tin 250g Hobnob biscuits (or your favourites – Oreos, Bourbons, digestives… anything you fancy) 300g unsalted butter 200g light brown soft sugar 200ml double cream 200g 70% dark chocolate, broken up pinch of flaky salt • Place the biscuits in a large sandwich bag and smash them with a rolling pin to a fine crumb (or you could blitz them in a food processor). • Measure out 100g of the butter and melt in a…

Less than 10% of the hospitality workforce is female in Sri Lanka; Amba Yaalu, the country’s first women-led hotel, promotes equality, and offers a range of immersive experiences, from cooking classes to village visits (from £89 b&b; themacollection.com). G Adventures puts community tourism at the heart of its itineraries. The Masai Clean Cookstoves project, to replace dangerous traditional stoves with modern models in the Serengeti in Tanzania, can be seen on its 12-day Serengeti Safari and Zanzibar trip (from £2,649pp; gadventures.com). Visit the Rukha Ayllu project – which helps traditional weavers in the Andes benefit from responsible tourism and share their culture and crafts – on a 14-day Colours of Peru trip (£2,000; valenciatravelcusco.com). Gap360 supports local communities with trips for travellers aged 18 to 30. Volunteers work with locals in…

Hyll Charingworth, Gloucestershire T.S. Eliot wrote the first of the poems in his Four Quartets at Charingworth Manor in 1934, after visiting another nearby manor, Burnt Norton. It later became a hotel, and this year it has been revamped as Hyll, says Fiona Duncan in The Daily Telegraph. The name might grate, but it’s a calmer, more relaxing place than many of its “trendy” Cotswolds rivals, with 26 “cocoon”-like rooms, with heavenly beds and wonderful books (though the decor is slightly dull). There’s a garden with “spectacular” views, and good food, including pleasing breakfast dishes such as Scotch woodcock (scrambled eggs and anchovies). Doubles from £350 b&b; hyllhotel.com.…

Ah, autumn, says John Stepek on Bloomberg. “The days grow short, the leaves cut loose from the trees” – which means it must be time for the latest Long-Term Asset Return Study from Deutsche Bank. The report looks at “real” (after inflation) returns across 200 years. Some snippets jumped out: Cash is for emergencies Over 200 years, cash has been the worst-performing asset, shedding 2% of value a year. While it’s useful to have an emergency fund (three to six months’ earnings) and maybe a stash on hand to “pounce on any investment opportunities”, forget pinning retirement on it. Equities are the best hedge against inflation They deliver decent returns even at quite high inflation rates; it’s only once you get above 9% that performance drops off. So outside of…

Tom Hayes The former trader, whose conviction for rigging the Libor benchmark interest rate was recently overturned, is suing his former employer UBS for $400m – claiming the bank “maliciously” framed him as “the evil mastermind” of the scheme, to shield top executives. Hayes, a star trader in yen derivatives who spent five-and-a-half years in prison after his 2015 conviction, wants compensation for the “destruction” of his career and family, and the “loss of his liberty”. He is estimated to have made about $260m for the Swiss bank, which was later fined more than £900m. Nicknamed “Rainman” by colleagues for his obsession with numbers, Hayes, 46, argues that UBS conducted a “fundamentally flawed probe” and offered him “up on a silver platter” to be prosecuted, said the FT. UBS declined…

What happened Labour’s resounding defeat in a by-election in its Welsh heartlands last week prompted renewed criticism of Keir Starmer’s leadership. Labour had held the Senedd seat in the former mining town of Caerphilly since its creation in 1999 (and has held the Westminster seat there for more than 100 years). But, last Thursday, it was beaten into third place by Plaid Cymru, on 47.4%, and Reform UK, on 36%. Labour’s vote collapsed to 11% (from 46% in 2021). The Tories recorded their worst-ever by-election result, winning just 2% of votes. The PM said he was “deeply disappointed” by the result, which leaves Labour two seats short of a majority in the Senedd. Mainstream, a group linked to the Greater Manchester Mayor, Andy Burnham, said that Labour had become “detached…

Minor rule breaking, after Richmond Council, in southwest London, revoked a £150 fine issued to a woman who had poured the remains of her coffee into a gully. Burcu Yesilyurt said she had tipped “a tiny little bit” of coffee down the drain, to avoid spilling it on the bus, when three enforcement officers stopped her and told her it was an offence under the 1990 Environmental Protection Act. They told her she should have poured the coffee into a bin. Children’s writers, who are getting their own Booker Prize. The Children’s Booker will celebrate the best fiction for children aged eight to 12, and will include children on the judging panel. The winner will be given £50,000 in prize money, and the Foundation will distribute 30,000 copies of the…

More than one in three people in England believe in ghosts or the spirits of deceased people. Over a quarter think it is possible to communicate with the dead. 24% say they believe that spacecraft piloted by aliens have crashed on Earth. Ipsos UK/Sheffield Hallam University 82% of Britons have a “negative view” of Prince Andrew, compared with 5% who have a favourable view of him. 51% think Parliament should strip him of his titles. Ipsos/Daily Mail Reform UK is now the most popular party among Gen Z men. 31% of men aged 16 to 25 would vote for Nigel Farage’s party in a general election; 24% would back Labour, while 14% would vote Green. JL Partners/The Telegraph…

Mick Hucknall’s parents Mick Hucknall was only 17 years old when he wrote Holding Back the Years. A hit on both sides of the Atlantic, it was inspired by the trauma of his mother Maureen walking out when he was three, leaving him in the care of his father, Reg. He saw her only once after that, in the 1990s, and felt nothing: there was no “emotional affiliation”, he explains. Yet her desertion still weighs on him, says Jonathan Dean in The Sunday Times. He thinks it left him overly sensitive to criticism in his youth, because he associated it with rejection, and lacking certain social skills, especially around girls. And, of course, it made his childhood lonely: he often came home to an empty house. When his daughter was…

Hoax council letters have been sent to homes flying the St George’s flag in Gloucestershire, warning that they will be required to house refugees. The letter said that “patriotic” households displaying the flag will temporarily house refugees because “we know you would be proud to assist your country” – and will receive a mug with a St George’s flag on it from King Charles as a reward. Reform UK councillor Alan Preest, of Forest of Dean District Council, branded the letters “childish” and “silly”. A Dutch election candidate was hauled out of a live TV debate after being mistaken for an infamous “vegan streaker”. Security guards escorted Kevin Nuijten, of the JA21 party, from the audience, because he was believed to be Peter Janssen (pictured), an animal rights activist. “I…

FRANCE Don’t cry over the Louvre jewels Le Monde (Paris) To listen to the hysteria over the Louvre heist, you’d think it were not just jewels that were stolen, “but the French soul”, says Michel Guerrin. Far-right leader Marine Le Pen called last weekend’s brazen museum robbery a “new ordeal for our country”; “How far will the breakdown of the state go?” pondered her deputy, Jordan Bardella. The idea of a “humiliated nation, unable to protect its people or its treasures”, has taken hold – particularly outside France, where people jump at any chance to laugh at “French arrogance”. But, seriously, can we get some perspective here? Before this heist, these “jewels were displayed to total indifference” from the museum’s nine million visitors. They come for “da Vinci, Poussin, Delacroix,…

Sarah Pochin used her first Commons appearance to call for a burqa ban. Now, the Reform UK MP has made headlines again, said The Guardian, by telling a TV phone-in show that adverts contain too many black and Asian actors. She was talking to “Stuart in London”, who had complained that such ads “don’t represent what this country looks like”. Pochin agreed: “It drives me mad when I see adverts full of black people, full of Asian people,” she said, before blaming this on the “woke liberati”. Her comments provoked howls of outrage. Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, warned that they signalled a return to “1980s-style racism”; the shadow home secretary, Chris Philp, eventually agreed that they were racist; Nigel Farage described them as “ugly”. Yet Labour, the Tories and…

Back in the 1980s, when I was growing up in “dowdy Dartford”, going to Pizza Hut was a “thrilling” experience, said Jim Armitage in The Sunday Times. Until the chain arrived, my family only ate out at the chippy or the greasy spoon. Pizza Hut was an exotic but reasonably priced novelty, with its American deep-pan pizzas and tangy new flavours – chilli, pepperoni, ham and pineapple. Staff were friendly; there was bright lighting and coloured Formica everywhere; you could load up at the all-you-can-eat salad bar and the ice cream station. But last week, it was announced that 68 of the chain’s UK restaurants – more than half of the total – will close, and some in the restaurant business fear that it won’t be long before the rest…

“Lando Norris does not believe in momentum,” said Molly Hudson in The Times. In F1, the McLaren driver has said, “the margins are too tight and the tracks are too specific” for the concept to have much meaning. But whether the Briton “believes in it or not”, momentum is undoubtedly what he has. On Sunday, the 25-year-old stormed to victory at the Mexican Grand Prix, “leading from pole to flag” to move to the top of the drivers’ table for the first time since April. His lead – over teammate Oscar Piastri, who came fifth – “may only be a single point, but it comes at a pivotal moment of the season”. With four races to go, Norris has beaten his teammate five times in a row – and clearly…

The Rose Field by Philip Pullman Penguin 640pp £25 The Week Bookshop £22.99 Philip Pullman’s “magnificent” new novel is the final volume in his The Book of Dust trilogy, which expands on his previous “unsurpassed” trilogy for children, His Dark Materials, said Philip Womack in The Daily Telegraph. All these novels are set in the same world − one “tantalisingly close to ours”, but with key differences, such as the fact that humans there are accompanied by souls in animal form, known as “dæmons”. There were some who thought His Dark Materials unsuitable for children, owing to Pullman’s “stringent attacks on Christianity”. The Book of Dust really isn’t for children: Pullman uses the series to delve deeper into various points in the life of his heroine Lyra, whom we first…

Karlo Kacharava at Modern Art The poet, critic and artist Karlo Kacharava is not well known outside his native Georgia, but there he is a cultural icon. Although tragically short-lived – he died aged 30 in 1994 – Kacharava left behind thousands of paintings and drawings, which he had made using whatever materials he could find in the shortage-blighted USSR. Many of his often comical, romantic images were created to complement his poetry; and if his signature aesthetic – Munch-indebted symbolist figuration – seems out of kilter with the period in which he was working, that may be due in part to the Soviet Union’s censorious attitude to Western culture. In any case, his influences clearly ranged beyond that. This show gives us some nice examples of his work, including…

Kanchha Sherpa 1933-2025 When news filtered out that Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay had reached the summit of Everest in 1953, it caused a sensation all over the world. In London, where preparations were under way for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, the Daily Express captured the sense of national elation with the headline: “ALL THIS – AND EVEREST TOO!”. Hillary was knighted; Norgay was awarded the George Medal. Both became household names. But they had not, as they often acknowledged, climbed Everest unaided, said The New York Times. It had taken a large team to get them to the top of the world; Kanchha Sherpa, who has died in Nepal aged 92, was the last surviving member of that team. Colonel John Hunt, the leader of the British…