Innholdsfortegnelse for V. 1058 i The Week

What happened Vladimir Putin “probably approved” the killing of the exiled Russian dissident and former KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko in 2006, a public inquiry concluded last week. Litvinenko – who had accused the Russian president of mafia links and paedophilia, among other things – died after drinking green tea laced with polonium-210 at the Millennium Hotel in Mayfair, central London. Sir Robert Owen, who led a year-long investigation into the murder, concluded that two former KGB colleagues Litvinenko had met in the hotel bar, Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun, had poisoned him, in an operation most likely endorsed by Putin. The two agents apparently left a trail of radiation through hotels, aircraft, offices and restaurants during three visits to London. David Cameron accused Moscow of an “unacceptable breach of international…

Calais, France “Agitators” in the Jungle: The port of Calais was temporarily closed last week after hundreds of migrants, aided by anarchist groups, stormed the quayside and tried to board a P&O passenger ferry. Some 35 people were reportedly arrested; nine of them were said to be members of the anti-capitalist No Borders Network. According to the French police, “agitators” from Britain and elsewhere have infiltrated the Jungle camp, and are now supplying migrants with chainsaws and walkietalkies to help them make coordinated attacks on the port and the Eurotunnel terminus. Saturday’s port invasion followed an angry and sometimes violent protest in Calais itself against the conditions endured by the 4,000 or so migrants encamped around the city. The next day, local residents and business owners staged a demonstration of…

1 Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen, performed by k.d. Lang 2 The Vatican Rag, written and performed by Tom Lehrer 3 Bird on a Wire, written and performed by Leonard Cohen 4* Etudes Op. 10 No. 1 in C Major: Allegro by Frédéric Chopin, performed by Murray Perahia 5 Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us by Sam Phillips, performed by Alison Krauss and Robert Plant 6 The Last Goodbye, written and performed by The Kills (Alison Mosshart and Jamie Hince) 7 I Get a Kick Out of You by Cole Porter, performed by Ella Fitzgerald 8 Le Cygne (The Swan) by Camille Saint-Saëns, performed by Yo-Yo Ma Book: Mansfield Park by Jane Austen Luxury: The British Library * Choice if allowed only one record…

Show some moral courage, Europe! Joyce McMillan The Scotsman A new political narrative is haunting Europe: the continent has grown inward-looking; people are increasingly hostile to refugees; the postwar drive to greater integration is at an end. That mood is best symbolised, so pundits tell us, by the introduction of passport controls on the famous bridge between Denmark and Sweden, and by the fierce reaction to Angela Merkel’s brave open-door refugee policy. Yet the thing about this narrative, says Joyce McMillan, is that it’s wrong. In the nations that have taken the most refugees – Sweden, Germany, Finland – public opinion is still surprisingly positive. Far from plummeting, poll ratings for Merkel’s centreright alliance have held steady at around 37%, whereas support for the far-right party is stuck at 10%.…

Chemo without side effects Scientists have found a way of making a common chemotherapy drug “invisible” to the immune system, raising the prospect of thousands of cancer patients being spared the side effects – including hair loss, nausea and muscle pain – that often come with the treatment. Every year, more than 100,000 people in the UK are diagnosed with cancers that can be treated with paclitaxel (also known as Taxol). The drug is effective, but it has to be given in very high doses, as when it is delivered into the body, encased in plastic spheres, it is spotted and attacked by the immune system, and much of the compound is destroyed. The new system gets round this problem by encasing the drug in material made from the body’s…

Michael Gambon never made it as an action hero – but at one point, he was in with a chance. The actor (pictured) has revealed that in 1970 – while a member of the RSC – he was asked to go to London to audition in London for a new Bond film. “We weren’t told what was happening. I said: ‘I don’t know why I am here.’ [Producer Cubby] Broccoli said: ‘Oh, it’s to play James Bond.’ I said I couldn’t play Bond. He asked why not. I said: ‘I’m big, fat, my hair is thinning, it wouldn’t be right.’ He said: ‘We can fix all that. We’ve got make-up. We’ll put a wig on you, we’ll pull this [his face] back and take this [his tummy] off.’ I said:…

“It has been a long journey to this moment,” remarked Sidney Poitier, on becoming the first black man to win an Oscar, in 1964. That was more than 50 years ago, said Baz Bamigboye in the Daily Mail, yet it seems the “long journey” is not yet over. In the intervening decades, only four other black actors, male or female, have won leading role awards – so that’s five in 87 years of Oscar history. And that isn’t about to change, because this year, for the second year in a row, not one of the 20 acting nominations has gone to non-white actors. In response, many black industry figures have vowed to boycott the awards, while the Academy’s president, Cheryl Boone Isaacs (who is black) has promised to improve the…

Football: can Leicester go all the way? “Leicester were meant to have crashed out of the top four by now,” said Paul Hayward in The Daily Telegraph. So many times this season, we have been told that the Foxes’ remarkable success cannot last. Yet it’s almost February, and they are three points clear at the top of the Premier League. The 3-0 win over Stoke last Saturday was one of those days when “almost everything went right for Leicester”, said Andrew Longmore in The Sunday Times. Their talisman Jamie Vardy ended a sevenmatch scoring drought to fire in his 16th league goal of the season. And there was a first Premier League goal for midfielder Danny Drinkwater, who epitomises the team’s “energy and drive”. The win was “a striking reminder…

Murdered on British soil To The Times There’s a remarkable contradiction between the robust defence of UK sovereignty against our neighbours in France, Germany and the Netherlands, as expressed through the collective decisions of the European Union, and the limp response to the abuse of our sovereignty by “probable” Russian state employees in the murder of Mr Litvinenko. Two travel bans and a protest to the Russian ambassador seems grossly inadequate. Russian oligarchs are welcomed to London – they are the largest national contingent in the UK’s Tier 1 (Investor) category, ahead even of the Chinese. Some of the most expensive property in London is reported to be Russianowned, though hidden behind corporate vehicles based in tax havens. Some, at least, of their purchases have involved the money-laundering of improperly…

Theatre Herons Playwright: Simon Stephens Director: Sean Holmes Lyric Hammersmith, London W6 (020-8741 6850) Until 13 February Running time: 1hr 20mins Simon Stephens’s play, first seen at the Royal Court in 2001, doesn’t stint on the “horror” of urban life, said Michael Billington in The Guardian. It’s a powerfully graphic study of “broken homes, merciless bullying and physical barbarism”. The pivotal character is Billy, a solemn 14-year-old from east London who is brutally persecuted by a teenage gang after his dad “grasses to the cops” about who was responsible for the drowning of a girl in the River Lea. This is a “salutary” play about teenage life, excellently acted by its committed young cast, and it deserves to be seen. But I have my reservations about Sean Holmes’s overly “expressive”…

The work of the British landscape painter Francis Towne (1739-1816) is a “revelation”, said Laura Cumming in The Observer. His best watercolours display “not just a way of painting, but a way of looking at the world”. Yet for all of this “brilliant” and “original” artist’s achievements, he never attracted the acclaim that was his due. His talents were largely ignored outside his adopted home town of Exeter; even the 54 watercolours he painted of Rome during his tour of Italy in 1780 – “by general consent his greatest works” – failed to sell. To add insult to injury, he was rejected by the Royal Academy no fewer than 11 times. Towne died in relative obscurity, but not before bequeathing his Rome paintings to the British Museum, where they gathered…

Killers of the King by Charles Spencer, 2014 (Bloomsbury £8.99). I love this book – impeccable research and a narrative pace worthy of a thriller. It shines a magnificent light on those who put Charles I to death, and the terrifying, bloody days when the hunters became the hunted. Unmissable. I Can’t Begin to Tell You by Elizabeth Buchan, 2014 (Penguin £6.99). A scintillating WWII story packed with gripping espionage and a tremendous lead character. Constructed with skill and elegance – no one writes a cliffhanger scene like Buchan – it’s a breathtaking read. Elizabeth: Renaissance Prince by Lisa Hilton, 2014 (Orion £8.99). A superbly innovative and beautifully written investigation of Elizabeth I – focusing on her as a Renaissance Prince. New scholarship, searing insight and Hilton’s sharp eye for…

Programmes A Death Row Tale: The Fear of 13 In David Sington’s documentary, charismatic death row inmate Nick Yarris describes how he ended up a condemned man. Sun 31 Jan, BBC4 10pm (90mins). Camila’s Kids Company: The Inside Story This film records the implosion of the children’s charity and the fall from grace of Camila Batmanghelidjh. Wed 3 Feb, BBC1 9pm (60mins). World War Three: Inside the War Room The world today is closer to a superpower confrontation than at any time since the Cold War. Here former top British military and diplomatic figures fight a hypothetical “hot war” in Eastern Europe. Wed 3 Feb, BBC2 9pm (60mins). The Crusades: A Timewatch Guide Historian Thomas Asbridge explores the BBC archive to reveal how television’s depiction of the Crusades has changed…

Roast garlic tartiflette Serves 4 1 tbsp vegetable oil 1 onion, halved and finely sliced 100g pancetta or bacon, cubed 300ml crème fraîche or sour cream 300ml whole milk 3 sprigs fresh thyme, leaves picked 3 cloves of roasted garlic, peeled and crushed to a paste 800g waxy potatoes, such as Charlottes, very finely sliced ½ reblochon cheese, thinly sliced with rind left on salt and freshly ground black pepper • Preheat the oven to 200°C. Heat the oil in a frying pan. Add the sliced onion and fry, stirring often, until lightly browned and softened. Add the pancetta and fry, stirring, for 2-3 minutes. • In a large saucepan, mix together the crème fraîche, milk, thyme leaves and roast garlic paste. Season with salt and pepper. Bring to the…

Midweek Cotswold break Saintbridge, a lovely Grade II property in Barnsley (sleeps 8), has a 15% discount on a weekday stay from 8 February. Prices from £746.30 for 4 nights. 020-8935 5375, www.character-cottages.co.uk. Highland glamping Stay in a heated wigwam or glamping dome at Loch Tay Highland Lodges, Perthshire. 2 nights in a premium wigwam cost from £112. www.pitchup.com/campsites/scotland. Until the end of March. Yorkshire retreat The modern converted farm building The Byre (sleeps 2), in Ruswarp, near Whitby, is available from £336 for a week’s stay from 14 March. 0333-2020 899, www.cottageholidays.co.uk. Detox in Wales A night at The Vale Resort, the Vale of Glamorgan, with a full body massage, a full Welsh breakfast, and use of the leisure facilities, costs from £178. 01443-667800, www.valehotel.com. Until 28 February.…

The brief rally in stock markets, following doveish assurances last week by ECB president Mario Draghi, was halted by further falls in China, where markets sank by a further 6.4% on Monday. Both the FTSE 100 and Japan’s Nikkei index had earlier hit “bear territory”. EY reported that profit warnings from UK-listed companies hit a seven-year high of 313 in 2015, with 100 issued in the fourth quarter. UK company dividends are forecast to fall for the first time since 2010 as oil groups, miners and retailers feel the pinch. The new boss of the Financial Conduct Authority, Andrew Bailey, signalled a clean break from the tough regulatory regime of his predecessor. Bailey, head of the Prudential Regulation Authority and deputy Bank of England governor, was a surprise choice for…

● Dead cat bounce “Rome burns all around them, but at the Grandhotel Belvedere in Davos, the Bavarian band plays on,” said Harriet Agnew in the FT. The annual schmoozefest has a history of coinciding with market ructions, but the mood this year was more than usually subdued as indices plummeted again and oil hit new lows. Even renewed assurances from the European Central Bank that there would be “no limits” to attempts to boost growth failed to cheer the mood for long, said Tom Knowles in The Times: after a sizeable “relief rally”, markets fell again this week. Some investors, including James Maltin of Rathbones, maintained the gloom was overdone. “The economic data is really not that bad,” he said. But others see no sustained bounce in sight. That…

Michael Lewis Are we on the brink of the next crash? If that question is preying on your mind, says Giles Whittell in The Times, don’t seek reassurance from bestselling financial writer Michael Lewis. The former banker, who “turned on his tribe” to write blockbusting exposés of the financial industry, believes a crash like the one that triggered the Great Recession could easily happen again. He made the risks plain in his 2010 book The Big Short, and now the film version – starring Christian Bale and Steve Carrell as two socially inept financial geniuses who foresaw the 2008 meltdown – has opened to rave reviews in Britain. “Surely the only comedy that will ever be attempted based on credit default swaps and collateralised debt obligations”, the movie is well…

What happened The EU edged closer this week to accepting that it might be forced to drop its prized passport-free travel zone, as refugees continued to flood in. Interior ministers agreed that border controls should be allowed within the 26-nation Schengen zone for up to two years. Some also said that Greece should be shut out of the zone unless it did more to control migration: Athens, they claimed, had failed to use the EU cash provided to set up registration “hotspots” for new arrivals. In Britain, there was an angry reaction to suggestions from Brussels that the country might be forced to accept up to 90,000 refugees a year: under new proposals, the EU plans to replace rules obliging refugees to claim asylum in the first EU country they…

As a protest against censorship, a film-maker has forced Britain’s film censors to spend ten hours watching a film about paint drying. Charlie Lyne used Kickstarter to raise the £5,963 it cost to make his opus, and then submitted it to the British Board of Film Classification. The board’s examiners duly sat through the 607-minutelong film before granting it a U certificate. “Paint Drying is a film showing paint drying on a wall,” they concluded. “It contains no material likely to offend or harm.” Users of the Airbnb website were offered the chance to stay in a boutique igloo this week – in Brooklyn. The advert, offering accommodation in a “chic dome-style bungalow” for $200 a night, appeared after New York was hit by a blizzard, but was taken down…

TURKEY Erdogan’s unforgivable outburst Hürriyet Daily News (Istanbul) Terrorist bombs aren’t the only threat to Turkey just now – our president can cause an explosion just by opening his mouth, says Candan Kirisci. Even by his intemperate standards, President Erdogan’s fury at the 1,400 intellectuals who dared question his military crackdown on Kurdish rebels was obscene. Their petition – for a ceasefire in the southeastern provinces monitored by UN peacekeepers – unleashed a verbal tirade. They “spit out their hatred of our nation’s values and history” while living a comfortable life on state wages, Erdogan raged, threatening them with prosecution and the sack (27 have already been quizzed over “terror propaganda”). And he’s being applauded by some of the worst people in Turkey: a notorious crime boss has vowed to…

Could a planet ten times the size of Earth have gone overlooked in our solar system? The theory that a mysterious Planet X is lurking way beyond Neptune has often been posited. Now two astronomers in California claim to have found solid evidence to back up the theory, based on observations of objects in the far-flung Kuiper Belt. They say that the movements of these objects can only really be explained by the presence of a massive planet, exerting a strong gravitational pull. According to the duo – Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown of the California Institute of Technology – Planet Nine is a gas giant, 20 times further from the Sun than Neptune. Its orbit is elliptical, with each lap of the Sun taking up to 20,000 years. “There…

David Cameron has peculiar priorities, said Humza Yousaf in the Sunday Herald (Glasgow). Last week, with global markets in turmoil and Moscow implicated in a state assassination on British soil, the subject exercising our Prime Minister was… Muslim women, and their deficient language skills. He cited a report estimating that 22% of Muslim women in the UK – almost 190,000 people – speak little or no English, and announced an extra £20m in funding to help rectify this situation. In future, he said, immigrants admitted to the UK on spousal visas would have to take a language proficiency test after two-and-a-half years. If they failed that test, they could be deported. Cameron then turned his attention to the veil, saying that while he didn’t support a French-style burka ban, he…

“With its slightly chipped red grip and retro look, it could be the hand control for an old Scalextric set,” said the Daily Mail. But the device, pictured in the press for the first time last week, is no toy. Modelled on an old Colt .45 Peacemaker pistol, it is the trigger for one of Britain’s Trident nuclear missiles – capable of flying thousands of miles, and killing millions of people. This one is held on HMS Vanguard: the submarine is currently undergoing routine maintenance at Faslane on the River Clyde, but normally it glides – without surfacing for weeks at a time – beneath the seas, providing Britain’s continuous “sea deterrence”. It won’t be much of a deterrent if Jeremy Corbyn ever becomes prime minister, said Nigel Nelson in…

Exeter have “pulled off a miracle”, said Nigel Walrond in The Daily Telegraph. On Sunday, in one of the most dramatic finales in Champions Cup history, the side reached the quarter-finals of Europe’s premier rugby competition for the first time. They had started the day bottom of their group – but thanks to a 33-17 victory over Welsh side Ospreys, and Bordeaux Bègles’s “unlikely win” at Clermont Auvergne, they squeaked through. Exeter are one of a whopping five English sides in the quarter-finals, said Alex Lowe in The Times. That’s a record for any nation. Competing alongside the Chiefs will be Saracens, Northampton, Leicester and Wasps. Make no mistake: the Premiership is now the “dominant league” in Europe. But while that’s great news for English rugby, such dominance is bad…

The Big Short Dir: Adam McKay 2hrs 10mins (15) Riotous comedy about the banking crisis I had assumed there was no conceivable way the financial collapse of 2008 could be made to seem “compelling or sexy”, said Deborah Ross in The Spectator. The Big Short proves me wrong. Most of us haven’t a clue what caused the sub-prime mortgage bubble (or even what the phrase means), said Geoffrey Macnab in The Independent: the wonderful thing about this “slick” comedy drama is that director Adam McKay splices it with simple but entertaining explanations. The film also benefits from the “star power” of its cast, with Steve Carrell as the nervy hedge-fund manager who realises early on the depth of corruption in the banking system, Christian Bale as a socially inept numbers…

You Are Here at Store Street Gallery What is it about maps that fascinates us so much? They are supposed to be simple navigational tools, yet they have a powerful pull on the imagination. Does the appeal stem from some weird desire to see our surroundings, whether local or exotic, in the abstract? Or in finding unexpected connections between places and events that matter to us? These are the kind of questions you end up pondering after seeing this fascinating little show, which contains everything from scrunched-up London street plans arranged into the shape of trees, to maps representing Europe’s changing political structure between 1939 and the present day. In the work of Ewan David Eason, we find echoes of Victorian sociologist Charles Booth’s famous “poverty maps”, while Adele Moreau…

If you are asked to picture a nice glass of Rioja, the chances are you will think red, rich and oaky. Sure, the Rioja region does indeed major on barrel-aged reds, mainly made from its wonderful tempranillo grape, says Susy Atkins in The Daily Telegraph. But here are three other great Riojas – two crisp whites and a mazuelo red. Solar Viejo Blanco 2014, Rioja, Spain (£6.99; SohoWine.co.uk). Rioja’s own viura grape brings fresh, crisp zip to this white wine, which has a gingery orange note, while the rare addition of 40% chardonnay adds richness. Nicely done. Viña Real Rioja Blanco 2014, CVNE, Spain (£9.29; Majestic). Here’s a lesson in well-judged, subtle oak character, with a little spice and vanilla coming through on the finish. Great with smoked fish. Beronia…

La Bastide de Gordes, Luberon, France Not far from Avignon – to which the Eurostar now speeds directly – is the “yellow-stoned” hill town of Gordes, beloved of Chagall. Following an £18m facelift, this hotel set into its ramparts is now the region’s “most elegant”, says Condé Nast Traveller. The views – of mist-shrouded hills, roads lined with cypress trees, and “ancient” moss-covered houses – are “stunning”. And despite having 40 bedrooms, three restaurants and a spa, the hotel is “snug” and intimate, with antique furniture and walls hung with Napoleonicera portraits. With a “slim, quiet” outdoor pool, and roaring fires in winter, it’s perfect for any season. Doubles from £140. +33 4 90 72 12 12, www.bastide-de-gordes.com…

Refugee from Nazism who transformed British publishing George Weidenfeld 1919-2016 George Weidenfeld was, with Paul Hamlyn and André Deutsch, among a group of refugees from Nazism who came to Britain in the 1930s and transformed its publishing industry after the War. “While Hamlyn went down a more commercial route,” Weidenfeld, like Deutsch, combined his entrepreneurial zeal with “high-mindedness”, specialising in serious non-fiction and globally renowned literary fiction, said John Dugdale in The Guardian. At Weidenfeld & Nicolson, the firm he founded with Nigel Nicolson while still in his 20s, he published Isaiah Berlin’s The Hedgehog and the Fox, James D. Watson’s The Double Helix, the diaries of Chips Channon and Alan Clark, and Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, among many other books. A man of considerable charm, a ceaseless party-giver and a…

Some seven years after the collapse of Halifax Bank of Scotland, the accountancy watchdog has finally decided to take a look at KPMG’s audit of the bank’s accounts, said Nils Pratley in The Guardian. Specifically, why the accounting giant deemed HBOS a “going concern” in 2007, a year before its catastrophic failure and subsequent rescue by Lloyds. The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) is only making a “preliminary” inquiry, “but thank heavens something is happening”. The Treasury Select Committee’s chairman, Andrew Tyrie, and others have been “screaming for the FRC to wake up” for years. The FRC had previously concluded that it “lacked sufficient grounds” to suspect the auditor of misconduct, said Chris Warmoll on AccountancyAge.com. But while it’s apparent volte-face is a blow for KPMG – which is also under…

“Here’s a tip for raising profit margins,” said Alistair Osborne in The Times: “Not paying back money owed.” It’s just one of the tactics identified by the Groceries Code Adjudicator – the watchdog that polices UK supermarkets – in a highly critical report into Tesco’s relationship with its suppliers. Other abuses included paying some suppliers 24 months late, and “invoicing others twice for the same stuff”. These ruses were especially common in the final days of any reporting period, suggesting – says adjudicator Christine Tacon – that Tesco “knowingly delayed paying money to suppliers in order to improve its own financial position”. These are serious charges – even if, as its current chief, Dave Lewis, points out, Tesco has cleaned up its act since the departure of former boss Phil…

Controversy of the week Whoever said you can’t escape death or taxes clearly hadn’t come across Google, said Vlad Savov on TheVerge.com. The Silicon Valley giant has made an estimated £6bn profit in the UK (by far its biggest foreign market) over the past ten years, most of it from online advertising. Yet so skilful has it been at manipulating international tax arrangements, a mere fraction of that sum has reached HM Treasury; its effective tax rate seems to have been 2.5%. Last week, HMRC clawed back a little by getting Google to pony up a further £130m, a deal hailed by George Osborne as “a major success”. It was anything but, said Nic Fildes in The Times. For Google, coughing up £13m a year over the next decade is…

Michael Caine’s acting tips Michael Caine never expected big things from acting. As a working-class boy from south London, the best he hoped for, he says, was to scrape a living doing something he loved – and not work in a factory. For ten years, he toiled in rep, he told Mick Brown in The Daily Telegraph. Then, aged 31, he was cast as an upper-class British officer in Zulu. It was his big break, but he reckons he only got the part because the director was American. “No English director, even if he’d been a communist, would have cast me in that role.” To work out how an officer would move, he watched Prince Philip, and noticed the way he walked with his hands behind his back. That, he…

According to the US electoral statistician Nate Silver, who predicted the correct result in every state of the 2012 election, the most reliable guide, at this stage, to who will win their party’s nomination is not the polls but the number of endorsements that they’ve received from fellow politicians. In The Party Decides, a 2008 study of US elections from 1980 to 2004, a group of political scientists coined the term “invisible primary” to describe how Republican and Democrat congressional representatives and governors start to coalesce around candidates, signalling their approval to the electorate, donors and other party elites. Endorsements don’t always pick the winner. In 2008, Hillary Clinton had more support from Democratic politicians than Barack Obama at the time of the Iowa caucus, though he had some. But…

People love the jerk from New York John Podhoretz Commentary Ted Cruz tried a new line of attack against his Republican rival Donald Trump the other day. “Donald,” he declared dismissively, “comes from New York, and embodies New York values.” It wasn’t so long ago, says John Podhoretz, that America was full of admiration for “New York values” – the values of stoicism and equanimity that the city showed in response to the 9/11 attacks. But Cruz is betting that this view has faded, and that the popular image of the Big Apple has now reverted to the old one summed up by those famous lines in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall: “The rest of the country looks upon New York like we’re left-wing communist Jewish homosexual pornographers. I think of…

A study suggesting that people trying to lose weight would do better to drink Diet Coke than water was funded by... Coca-Cola. The review was conducted at Bristol University, but part-funded by a research body called ILSI Europe, which counts Coca-Cola and PepsiCo among its sponsors. Representatives of both firms sit on its “nutrition task force”, which is co-chaired by the academic who led the Bristol study. Yet when the team released its findings last year, ILSI’s involvement was not mentioned. Moreover, says The Sunday Times, the researchers considered more than 5,500 papers, yet only used three, two of which found no difference between water and diet drinks. The university, however, said the paper was peer reviewed before publication in the International Journal of Obesity, and that several bodies funded…

“Who was to blame for Labour’s catastrophic election defeat last May?” Many experts have puzzled over this question, said Rod Liddle in The Sunday Times, but last week we finally got to hear the party’s own explanation, enshrined in the official inquest led by Labour grandee Margaret Beckett. Her report concludes that the party lost for many reasons, none of which really had anything to do with Labour failings. She blamed it on the collapse of the Liberal Democrats, and on the success of the Scottish National Party north of the border (“Whose fault was that, then?”). She blamed the Tories for being beastly to Labour, and the “evil media” for subjecting the “brilliant Ed Miliband” to ridicule, and failing to recognise “his statesmanlike qualities and unique ability to reach…

“The secret source of humour itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humour in heaven.” Mark Twain, quoted in The Guardian “The truth is like poetry. And most people f**king hate poetry.” Overheard in a Washington DC bar by author Michael Lewis, quoted in The Times “The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.” George Orwell, quoted in The Washington Post “When everyone is somebody then no one’s anybody.” From Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Gondoliers, quoted in The Times “A well-adjusted person is one who makes the same mistake twice without getting nervous.” Alexander Hamilton, quoted in The Buffalo News “If God had not intended us to eat animals, how come He made them out of meat?” Sarah Palin, quoted in The Times “You would think that a…

Toothless Tridents? To The Daily Telegraph In your guide to Trident, you state that the combined power of its 16 missiles is equivalent to eight times the explosive power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The US developed a conventional warhead in 2006 that used tungsten steel rods; arriving at supersonic speed from the stratosphere, these create enough kinetic energy to blast a lot of very large holes. They could be fired as a first-strike weapon without any of the inhibitions that prevent us from using nuclear warheads. The cost of maintaining a nuclear deterrent has reduced our conventional armed forces to a level well below that required to defend our nation. Conventional warheads for Trident would at least be usable and are therefore worthy of discussion. Commander Robert Forsyth…

The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes Jonathan Cape 192pp £14.99 The Week bookshop £12.99 (incl. p&p) “Make no mistake,” said Alex Preston in The Observer, this is Julian Barnes’s “masterpiece”. A fictionalised biography of Shostakovich, it focuses on the composer’s relationship with the Soviet authorities, and the compromises he made to gain their favour. Against his will, he joined the Communist Party and, on a propaganda tour of the US, publicly denounced Stravinsky, a composer he liked and admired. The book raises issues of universal significance: the “operation of power upon art, the limits of courage and endurance, and the sometimes intolerable demands of personal integrity and conscience”. But anyone expecting the “taut thriller-ish” qualities of Barnes’s 2011 Booker Prize winner, The Sense of an Ending, will be disappointed,…

No one will be able to accuse the BBC of overlooking the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, said The Daily Telegraph. This spring, you won’t be able to turn on the TV without bumping into the Bard. There will be history plays starring Judi Dench and Benedict Cumberbatch. David Tennant will be in Stratford-upon-Avon to host Shakespeare Live! – a variety show celebrating the playwright’s influence on everything from opera to hip hop. It doesn’t stop there. The daytime TV soap Doctors will have a week of storylines linked to the sonnets. Gyles Brandreth will scour the nation looking for people called Shakespeare. Countryfile will explore the Warwickshire scenery that inspired the Bard. There’ll even be an interactive website – Shakespeare Me – that will match any set of emojis…

A photographer known for his portraits of the rich and famous confirmed this week that he had sold a photograph of a potato for £750,000. Kevin Abosch, 46, who has dual Irish-American nationality, made his name taking close-up photographs of the likes of Steven Spielberg, Bob Geldof and Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, against his trademark dark background. In 2010 Abosch photographed a potato – an organic one, as it happens – against a similar background, and hung it on his own wall. There it was spotted over dinner by an unnamed European businessman, reports The Sunday Times. “We had two glasses of wine and he said: ‘I really like that.’ Two more glasses of wine and he said: ‘I really want that.’ We set the price two weeks later.” Abosch’s commissioned…

Pip and Matthew visit a farm in Dorset for research purposes. Rob sneers at the fact there is nonorganic beef in the Bridge Farm shop’s chiller cabinets, telling Tom he wasn’t aware there was a change of policy. Tom insists it’s good-quality, welfare-friendly beef from a local farmer – and it’s important to be flexible. Rob responds sarcastically, saying it’s nice to be kept in the loop about new strategy. Josh helps Rex sort out some fallen trees. Josh says he’s applying for an agriculture degree at Felpersham, adding that he needs a fallback plan in case his parents’ dairy idea goes pear-shaped. Rex isn’t impressed to hear that Pip’s gone away with Matthew. Ian and Adam have lunch at Grey Gables, as Ian wants to try out the new…

Flour & Ash 203b Cheltenham Road, Bristol (0117-908 3228) If restaurant chefs exist on a continuum from “feeder” to “nerd”, than I’m more a fan of the feeders, says Jay Rayner in The Observer – the “bashers and boshers” who love to satisfy others with hearty, heartfelt fare. “Which makes my utter delight in Flour & Ash in Bristol all the more surprising, if only to me.” This chic little place is “about as nerdy a restaurant as you will hope to find” – fanatically devoted to baking the perfect sourdough (the Flour) and using a wood-fired oven as their sole cooking source (the Ash). It works; the sourdough here must be among the choicest breads available in Britain, with a deep acidic tang to the elastic crumb and a…

New cars: what the critics say Auto Express The new Civic Type R has “a lot to live up to”. While we’ve been waiting for an updated version of the Honda – for five years, in fact – the “hothatch arena” has become particularly competitive. To challenge the likes of the Seat Leon Cupra and the Renaultsport Mégane, Honda must match their winning combination of “driving thrills with everyday usability”. Has it managed to pull it off? The Guardian The regular Civic may have a reputation for “characterless” reliability, but the brash Type R is something else entirely. Its body “looks like a Batmobile”; the wheels resemble “fresh wounds”. The interior is mostly “perky” – with “sparkling” pedals, “noisy red” seat belts – but there are some “pesky” design quirks,…

Prada’s Milanese anti-museum Occupying a former distillery complex in the gritty industrial outskirts of Milan, the new Fondazione Prada is a kind of “antimuseum”, says Adam H. Graham in Afar; an untraditional place for viewing art that is as “disorientating” as it is “intriguing”. The brainchild of fashion designer Miuccia Prada and her husband, Patrizio Bertelli, it was designed in collaboration with “visionary” architect Rem Koolhaas. Upon arrival, you see no ticket office – just a vast, empty courtyard and a cluster of “oddly shaped” buildings, one clad in 24-carat gold, another in so many mirrors it “nearly dissolves into the sky”, and a third with a staircase that “seems to lead nowhere”. The exhibits range over seven centuries, with an emphasis on contemporary work; and there’s a café designed…

Twitter: no phoenix For a couple of hours last week “market gloom was lifted” by rumours that Twitter was being acquired by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, said Lex in the FT. Shares in the ailing microblogging company duly jumped by 14%. The news was swiftly denied. Still, “the chatter was understandable” given that Twitter has lost more than half its market value in the past year, and “looks less and less like a sustainable independent proposition”. Co-founder Jack Dorsey was brought back as CEO in October “to drag his creation out of the ashes”, and got to work on “a pretty radical clear-out”, said Jack Torrance in Management Today. Four more senior execs – including the head of product and the head of engineering – left this week. To the…

A worrying tide of social protest Gillian Tett Financial Times Of all the eye-popping charts and statistics in circulation in Davos last week, the most thought-provoking was in a report entitled “World Protest Intensity”, which warned that we are approaching levels of social protest not seen since the 1980s. Partly this reflects specific geopolitical trends, such as the upheavals in the Middle East, says Gillian Tett. But the report, by the World Economic Forum, also refers to a wider phenomenon, which it calls “the (dis)empowered citizen” problem. New technologies, it says, have fostered both frustration and disappointment, because “the internet gives people the impression that they can have a voice”, yet power remains, in most countries, “firmly in the hands of the elite”. As a result, trust in established institutions…

Who’s tipping what The week’s best buys Braemar Shipping The Sunday Telegraph Shipbrokers are reeling from the China slowdown, and the oil price has collapsed, but the ending of the US oil export embargo and Iran’s emergence has raised demand for tankers. Diversified, with a strong order book. Buy. 430.75p British Land The Daily Telegraph The value of this Real Estate Investment Trust’s portfolio of offices and shopping centres has risen in the booming property market. Shares have suffered a sell-off; there are “quick-fire gains” to be had now. Buy. 715p. Green Dragon Gas The Mail on Sunday Green Dragon has developed state-of-the-art technology to extract gas from coal beds in China, where gas prices are stable and protected by legislation. Strong sales are expected and profits should rise in…

This week’s crossword winner will receive an Ettinger (www.ettinger.co.uk) Brogue Collection coin purse in black, which retails at £150, and two Connell Guides (www.connellguides.com). ACROSS 1 Alsace airstrips out – not a direct flight (6,9) 9 Talk by salesman on new model (7) 10 Down-and-outs you finally found in the press (7) 11 Deer got up, so to speak (4) 12 “Afro”, alternatively! (3,1,6) 13 Repeat adagio played by musician in the end (2,5) 15 Went by first-class parking in Leeds somehow (7) 17 Former PM was victorious, retaining institution briefly (7) 19 Party worker in new terrace (7) 20 Choose appropriate dip (10) 22 Group in the club locker-room (4) 25 Skilled worker is prejudiced but not soft (7) 26 Royal flunky has no time for messenger (7) 27…