Innholdsfortegnelse for V. 1075 i The Week

What happened A campaign of fear Britain will be plunged into a year-long recession if it votes to leave the European Union on 23 June, according to a Treasury analysis published this week. The document warns that, in the worst-case scenario, GDP in two years’ time could be 6% lower than currently forecast, unemployment 820,000 higher, and house prices 18% lower. Presenting the report alongside George Osborne, David Cameron said that quitting the EU would be the “self-destruct” option, and that the “moral” choice was a vote for Remain. The Treasury’s latest intervention infuriated Leave campaigners and intensified the “blue-onblue” attacks within Tory ranks. Priti Patel, the employment minister, accused the PM and his “hysterical” allies of “concocting Armageddon scenarios”. They, in turn, accused the Leave camp of scaremongering, after…

Plain cigarette packets Cigarettes must now be sold in plain packets in the UK. To comply with new Government regulations, the packaging of tobacco products must be olive green, with a standard font, and covered in health warnings including graphic images of diseased lungs and the like. The new packs are expected to reach shops in a few months, when manufacturers have sold off existing stock. A High Court judge last week rejected a case brought by four tobacco firms, who argued that the new rules would make it harder to distinguish between brands. Separate EU rules have also come into effect, requiring packets to contain at least 20 cigarettes, and banning menthol varieties by 2020. Fracking go-ahead Fracking is to take place in the UK for the first time…

Scotland’s toughest Tory Ruth Davidson has achieved the seemingly impossible, by leading the Tories to second place in the Scottish elections. But the 37-year-old kickboxing lesbian is good at defying the odds. Aged five, she was run over by a truck outside her parents’ house in Fife, and almost killed. The impact shattered her pelvis, broke her right leg and crushed her main femoral artery. “I remember feeling someone put a blanket over me on the tarmac,” she told Emma Cowing in the Daily Mail. “Then I remember opening my eyes in the ambulance and my mum being there and looking dreadful. Then I blacked out again.” Davidson spent months in hospital, after which she had to learn to walk again. “It’s tough when you’re the only child in your…

Unlike the Great Famine, or Mao’s brutal land reforms, the Cultural Revolution directly affected a large swathe of China’s ruling class. The current president, Xi Jinping, was beaten by his classmates and sent to the countryside after his father, who’d been part of Mao’s inner circle, was purged, jailed and tortured. The father of Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao, was also denounced. The Cultural Revolution has also given rise to countless memoirs – a whole genre known as “scar literature”. A fine example is Ji Xianlin’s The Cowshed, which recalls nine months spent in a Peking University detention centre, where, locked up with other officials and teachers, the author was starved and tortured, and forced to do manual labour and recite Mao’s writings. Oddly, some memoirs recall the period nostalgically: young…

“A victory lap on a dead boy’s grave” Leonard Pitts Jr. The Seattle Times “It was not enough just to kill Sam Hose,” says Leonard Pitts Jr. “No, they had to make souvenirs out of him.” Hose was an African-American man lynched by a 2,000-strong white mob in Georgia in 1899 after he killed his employer in self-defence. Pieces of Hose’s mutilated body were subsequently parcelled out as mementos. You could buy fragments of his bone for a quarter; a piece of his liver, “crisply cooked”, for a dime; his knuckles went on sale in a grocer’s window. Hose was not unique. Thousands of such grisly trophies from the murder of African Americas circulated back in those days. And, unbelievably, it’s happening again today with Trayvon Martin, the unarmed 17-year-old…

Doctors should not prescribe patients antibiotics until tests have proved that their infection really is bacterial – that was one of the core recommendations from a major new report into preventing the scourge of antimicrobial resistance. “We must stop treating antibiotics like sweets, which is what we are doing around the world today,” said economist Jim O’Neill, author of the Governmentcommissioned report. However, rapid diagnostic tests are not yet available – so there would also have to be incentives to develop them. His second proposal was that pharmaceutical companies be forced either to research and develop new antibiotics, or pay for others to do so. O’Neill warns that unless urgent action is taken to stop common bugs becoming resistant to existing drugs, and to develop new ones, an extra ten…

“Are you one of the handful of people who still doesn’t know the identity of the married celebrity alleged to have taken part in a threesome with another couple in a paddling pool full of olive oil?” asked Richard Littlejohn in the Daily Mail. “Tough.” Even though his name has been published in the US and Scotland – and all over the internet – the Supreme Court last week upheld an injunction preventing him or his world-famous spouse from being identified by newspapers in England and Wales. The decision was an “outrageous affront” to justice and freedom of speech. The very rich shouldn’t be able to buy “kryptonite-plated” injunctions to protect “their carefully cultivated public images” from the consequences of their own actions. The effort is also clearly futile. Lord…

“She’s the sort of woman who lives for others – you can always tell the others by their hunted expression.” C.S. Lewis, quoted in The Times “You just don’t know writers. They’ll use anything, anybody. They’ll eat their young.” Dennis Potter, quoted in The Daily Telegraph “Jogging is for people who aren’t intelligent enough to watch television.” Victoria Wood, quoted in The Times “Faced with the prospect of voting for either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, Mary Anne Noland of Richmond chose, instead, to pass into the eternal love of God on Sunday.” Obituary notice in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, quoted in The Times “Sincerity in society is like an iron girder in a house of cards.” Somerset Maugham, quoted in The Guardian “A man can measure out his life in…

Right on the money To the New Statesman In his interesting examination of why certain famous figures have gravitated from the farleft to the far-right, John Gray overlooks one simple factor: money. Thus, one of history’s most notorious apostates, William Wordsworth, shed his early enthusiasm for the French Revolution (“Bliss was it that dawn to be alive”), not out of disgust at its worst excesses – he was at his most vehemently republican in the years of the Reign of Terror between 1792 and 1794 – but after inheriting £900 from a friend in early 1795. At the time, he was broke and a shameless freeloader. From here began his drift to the conservatism of his later years, but not, as he said, because the French “abandoned liberty, gave themselves…

Fourth Estate 272pp £12.99 The Week bookshop £10.99 (incl. p&p) Alexander Masters is the most unorthodox of biographers, said Victoria Segal in The Sunday Times. Rather than finding his subjects “neatly shelved in libraries”, he “trips over them in doorways” – like the homeless hero of Stuart: A Life Backwards – or “discovers them in his basement”. The subject of his latest book isn’t merely “unknown to the public”; even Masters himself, initially, doesn’t know who it is. The book begins in 2001, when a friend discovers, in a Cambridge skip, 148 notebooks. These prove to be the diaries of an eccentric – and clearly somewhat disturbed – woman. The friend passes the diaries to Masters, charging him with the task of returning them to their “rightful heir”. Instead, Masters…

A Hologram for the King Dir: Tom Tykwer 1hr 38mins (12A) Whimsical meaning-of-life drama with Tom Hanks Tom Hanks is such a genial screen presence he can make even quite a bad film “watchable”, said Nigel M. Smith in The Guardian. So it is with A Hologram for the King, an uneasy blend of broad comedy and serious drama, in which Hanks plays a depressed, recently divorced salesman who travels to Saudi Arabia for a make-or-break business meeting with the monarch. After the meeting is postponed, he is left brooding on the surreal aspects of Saudi culture, and falling for a sultry local doctor (Sarita Choudhury). This, I fear, is yet another male wish-fulfilment story in which a middle-aged man is seduced by a beautiful younger woman, said Charlotte O’Sullivan…

Shigeo Anzaï at White Rainbow If this exhibition is anything to go on, Japanese photographer Shigeo Anzaï has an impressive address book. The show brings together around 50 of Anzaï’s thrilling black-and-white photographic portraits of artists taken since the late-1960s, and the result is something like a Who’s Who of late-20th century art. From Michael Craig-Martin and Andy Warhol to Damien Hirst, the greats are all present and correct. In one image, painter Bridget Riley is glimpsed as a blur moving past a large example of her dazzling op art; while another gives us Christo next to one of his giant indoor landscape installations. Best of the lot are the images of Gilbert and George, taken in London in the mid-1970s. In one, the besuited oddballs appear profoundly awkward, shuffling…

New cars: what the critics say Auto Express When it arrived in 2013, the Peugeot 2008 was an instant hit. Based on the 208 hatchback, this stylish, small crossover SUV – basically a pumped-up supermini – was pitched as a rival for the hugely successful Nissan Juke. Now, the time has come for a “midlife nip and tuck”: the car has been given a “fresh face”, updated kit list and a new, top-of-therange GT Line trim. Autocar The revamp has been modest, however. Outside, there’s a new bumper and grille, and wider arches, which make the car look more “butch”. Peugeot were probably right not to meddle with the already high-quality interior – though it’s a shame they haven’t ditched the scratchy plastic on top of the dashboard. The front…

Trout fishing in the Towy Sea trout are bigger and plumper than their brown cousins – and there are few better spots to fish for them than the River Towy in South Wales. The best time to head there is between April and October, says Will Hide in The Independent. On a two-day beginners’ fly-fishing course, you may or may not land a catch, but either way, there’s something “inherently calming” about standing in a river “far away from car horns or the beeps and pings of mobile phones and urban life” – especially a river as idyllic as this. The Towy winds through beautiful countryside, and is home to all sorts of wildlife, including otters and kingfishers. Dinefwr Castle sits in nearby hills, and the town of Llandeilo –…

Bayer/Monsanto: $62bn question The US agrochemical giant Monsanto “has been fighting adverse publicity” since the 1960s, when it produced the deadly herbicide Agent Orange, said Rupert Neate in The Guardian. More recently, it has taken flak for its role in GM crop development. Now it faces a new challenge: an unsolicited $62bn offer from the German pharma and chemicals group Bayer, which “would create the dominant force in the world’s food supply”. It’s “a role reversal” for Monsanto, usually the predator in takeover situations. But the Missouri-based firm’s acquisitions plan hit a roadblock last month when it lost a battle to take over the Swiss seed and pesticide company Syngenta to the Chinese, leaving it “vulnerable”. Now Bayer has pounced. This deal would be “the largest foreign corporate takeover ever…

● In the dark The Bank of England’s chief economist, Andy Haldane, has observed that the British pensions system is so complex that even he is unable to make “the remotest sense” of it, despite being “moderately financially literate”. He’s right of course, said Richard Evans in The Daily Telegraph. A year after the Chancellor’s pension freedoms kicked in, the system remains “chaotic” and incomprehensible to many savers. Many “are in the dark about what they can expect from the state once they retire”, and “even more uncertain about what they can expect from their private pensions”. We urgently need “radical reform” to simplify the system. Osborne could start by introducing a “Kitemark” for pension firms that offer “simple, comprehensible products and communicate about them in the same way”. ●…

Tom Joule More than 25 years after he went into business selling pink wellies at a horse show in Leicestershire, the founder of Joules is cashing in, says Laura Chesters in the Daily Mail. Tom Joule – whose colourful bags and clothes are “a firm favourite among well-heeled country types” – this week scored a huge personal “pay day” of more than £60m, after listing his firm on Aim. A former market trader from Market Harborough, Joule, 48, was inspired to design and make clothes by his mother Jean, whom he describes as “the best-dressed woman around”. But it was gaining “the Royal seal of approval” that really lifted sales. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are such big fans of the label that the royal spaniel, Lupo, reportedly sleeps…

Venezuela was teetering on the brink of political breakdown this week as demonstrators took to the streets to demand the removal of President Nicolás Maduro. In the capital, Caracas, police fired tear gas at protesters, and sealed off much of the city centre, preventing a rally in the main square. Opponents of Maduro’s left-wing government, angry at the country’s deepening economic crisis, have collected 1.8 million signatures, enough to force a national vote on ousting the president. But under pressure from Maduro, the election authorities have so far refused to accept the petition. In response to rising tensions, Maduro has declared a 60-day state of emergency, and last weekend he deployed 500,000 troops for the largest military exercises in the country’s history, citing the threat of foreign invasion. The president…

Geneva, Switzerland Zika “will spread to Europe”: The mosquito-borne Zika virus is expected to spread to Europe in the coming months, with several tourist destinations likely to be at risk, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). The virus can cause congenital abnormalities, including microcephaly in babies born to women infected with the virus while pregnant. The main areas so far affected by the outbreak have been Brazil and several other nations in South and Central America. But the virus has already spread to Cape Verde, off Africa’s northwest coast; and the island of Madeira (off Morocco) is described by the WHO as having the highest risk of an outbreak this summer, along with the northeastern coast of the Black Sea, owing to the type of mosquitoes found there. Of…

1 Sweet Lorraine by Mitchell Parish and Cliff Burwell, performed by The Nat King Cole Trio 2 Prelude in C sharp minor, Op. 3 No. 2 by Sergei Rachmaninov, performed by Vladimir Davidovich Ashkenazy 3 Ain’t Nobody Here But Us Chickens by Joan Whitney and Alex Kramer, performed by Louis Jordan and His Tympany Five 4 To Be Loved by Berry Gordy, performed by Jackie Wilson 5 I’ll Try Something New by Smokey Robinson, performed by Smokey Robinson and The Miracles 6 God Bless the Child by Billie Holiday and Arthur Herzog Jr, performed by Billie Holiday 7* I Hear a Symphony by Brian and Eddie Holland and Lamont Dozier, performed by Diana Ross and The Supremes 8 Can I Close The Door (On Love) by Berry Gordy and Michael…

Brexit could be good for the young Lara Prendergast The Spectator Like many people under 30, I’ve yet to decide how to vote in the EU referendum, says Lara Prendergast. But if George Osborne wants my generation to vote Remain, he’s going an odd way about it. A Brexit, he warns, would cause a stock market slump and a sharp fall in house prices. Really? For those of us in our 20s, “this sounds like a pretty good trade-off”. We don’t own many shares, but we’d love to put a foot on the property ladder. Yet so dramatically have house prices risen since the time David Cameron became Tory leader, most of us can’t. A two-bedroom ex-council house in Hackney – where the average salary is about £30,000 – costs…

GM foods “are safe” Most of the concerns about genetically modified food are completely unfounded, a report by a prestigious US scientific body has claimed. Experts from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine considered some 900 studies, and heard 80 speakers on the issue, in compiling the 400-page report, which found “no substantiated evidence” that GM foods harm human health. On the contrary, GM foods have led to substantial health benefits: because many are bug resistant, cases of insecticide poisoning have declined in areas where they’re planted; and the so-called “golden rice” GM crop, rich in vitamin A, has helped prevent blindness in many deprived regions. The scientists also found no “conclusive” evidence that GM crops harm the environment – though evolving resistance by pests and weeds to…

Tom Conti has struck a blow for persecuted thespians, claiming that the term “luvvies” is as abusive as the N-word. The 74-year-old actor lives in Hampstead, where a Labour councillor recently bemoaned the number of “livid luvvies” who campaign on local issues. Conti struck back, saying the word “luvvies” is as “as abusive as ‘Yid’ or ‘n*****’, and it’s a horrible expression. It’s pejorative, denigrative and demeaning. I know a number of actors and certainly the actors with whom I have mixed over my entire life have been very bright people.” Serena Cowdy, the journalist at the centre of the so-called SNP love triangle, isn’t just attractive to politicians. The 36-year-old hit the headlines last week when it was alleged that two SNP MPs – Stewart Hosie and Angus MacNeil…

As a reformist education minister, he was notoriously “divisive”, said The Yorkshire Post. Michael Gove seems to be just as determined to make his mark as Justice Secretary – but this time, with policies that are winning plaudits across the political spectrum. Gove signalled a more “enlightened” approach when he ditched his predecessor Chris Grayling’s ban on prisoners being sent books. Now, he’s trying to cut the appalling recidivism rate in our prisons: almost half of inmates commit a further crime within a year of their release. The plan, unveiled in the Queen’s Speech, includes giving governors of six “reform prisons” the freedom to decide how best to educate and rehabilitate their inmates. The innovations that succeed will be reproduced elsewhere. Writing in The Times, Gove said his Prison Reform…

Football: can Mourinho revive Manchester United? Louis van Gaal’s suit was still “damp from the spray of champagne” when the news leaked, said Daniel Taylor in The Guardian. The Dutchman’s Manchester United side had just won the FA Cup, beating Crystal Palace 2-1, but that wasn’t enough to save his job: as he was soon to find out, he was about to be replaced as manager by José Mourinho. It’s hard not to feel sorry for van Gaal, who only learned of his sacking when his wife read the news online. But it’s even harder to argue with the decision. In van Gaal’s two years at the helm, United played dreadful football. They failed to qualify for the Champions League, and scored just 49 goals last season – their lowest…

To The Times Another aeroplane crash, another frantic search for the black boxes. Why, in this age of electronic communications, satellites, etc, do we still have to wait to locate and read the black boxes? Much information from aeroplanes is apparently now routinely relayed and captured. Why do they not do the same with the data that is recorded onto the black boxes, allowing it to be analysed immediately? It’s so obvious that I can only assume that there must be some fundamental reason why it’s not done, in which case it would be interesting to know what that reason might be. Anthony B. Blasdale, Bowden, Cheshire To The Times Anthony Blasdale wonders why airlines do not routinely relay and capture data, rather than depending on the often timeconsuming and…

The Mandibles Lionel Shriver The Borough Press 400pp £16.99 The Week bookshop £14.99 (incl. p&p) Lionel Shriver has always used her fiction to explore “sociopolitical issues”, said Hannah Rosefield in the New Statesman. Previous novels have dealt with mass shootings (We Need to Talk About Kevin), health insurance and obesity. In The Mandibles, she envisages a near future of economic meltdown. It’s 2029, and the US government has defaulted on its debt; there’s hyperinflation; citizens are required to “hand over” any gold they own. All of which is a big shock to the once-rich Mandible family, now unable to afford extra-virgin olive oil and forced to forgo daily showers. The futuristic setting gives Shriver’s inventiveness “full rein”; there’s an “impressive thoroughness” to her vision. Unfortunately, the “mechanics” of Shriver’s imagined…

Women in Hollywood get a tough enough deal as ordinary humans, said Clarisse Loughrey in The Independent, but now we learn that their prospects of getting to be superheroes are even worse. That’s because new research has shown that superhero toys – from which the studios make much of their profits – sell better if they’re male. The studios certainly seem to have have taken this research to heart, as screenwriter Shane Black recently revealed. He told an interviewer that the supervillain in his first draft of Iron Man 3 (2013) had in fact been female, but that the suits at “Marvel corporate” were having none of it: the villain had to be male. “We had to change the entire script,” lamented Black, “because of toy-making.” The film went on…

“Grayson Perry has revealed two new works inspired by his encounter with the banking world,” says Hannah Ellis-Petersen in The Guardian. One is a large print of a huge creature, half bull, half bear, entitled Animal Spirit (Keynes’s term for non-rational economic thinking). The other is a “huge, shiny penis” adorned with banknotes and the faces of bankers and the current Chancellor. It is not “his most subtle work”, Perry admitted. “There’s no disputing what it is,” he said. “It’s a big cock.” For his recent TV series about masculinity, All Man, he spent some time interviewing senior figures in the financial world, and was struck by how overwhelmingly male it was. He also became “quite frustrated” that none of the “nicely educated, perfectly mannered gentlemen” he interviewed even acknowledged…

Helen admits to Anna that she’s not looking forward to meeting her baby. She says it was different with Henry, as he was planned; this time, she’d wanted to wait before having another one, but Rob disagreed. Anna tries to find out more but Helen changes the subject. With Bridge Farm barely covering its costs, Tom suggests selling the pigs. The idea saddens Johnny, as it was his dad who introduced pigs to the farm. Pat’s distressed at not being allowed to be with Helen for the birth. Anna advises her to email DS Madeley to ask for permission to be there. The DS tells Pat that she is within her rights to apply to be present, but that she would be “minded” to recommend a refusal. Tony and Peggy…

The Sichuan 14 City Road, London EC1 (020-7588 5489) Critics don’t generally follow Chinese chefs “from gig to gig as we do those from France or Italy or Spain”, says Jay Rayner in The Observer. But Zhang Xiao Zhong, the chef at The Sichuan – a thrilling new restaurant just down from the Old Street roundabout – “deserves to be followed”. He was one of the people behind Bar Shu, which brought excellent Sichuan cuisine to the heart of Soho a decade ago. Then he went to Hutong, 40 floors up in The Shard. Now he’s dishing up “bold and serious” cooking at his own place. A salad of cloud ear fungus with chilli, vinegar, sesame oil and soy got our appetites going. We fell in love with a dish…

Dahl’s Norway Experience the inspiration for Roald Dahl’s genius on a 5-day trip staying in Oslo and Fevik, by the sea. From £595pp b&b, with flights and car hire. 020-7664 2241, www.best-served.co.uk. Until 30 September. Cornwall’s cream of a deal Treat yourselves to a 2-night stay at The Cornwall Hotel and Estate, St Austell, from £138pp b&b, with dinner the first night. 01726-807561 (ref: CDR5), www.thecornwall.com. Select dates until July. The cities of Canada Sample Canada with 3 nights apiece in Toronto, Montreal and Québec City. From £1,395pp room only, including flights and rail travel. 0800-316 0194, www.bon-voyage.co.uk. Until 20 June. Magical Madrid Enjoy the Spanish capital during a 4-night stay at the ME Madrid Reina Victoria from £499pp b&b including flights. 01204-824619, www.destinology.co.uk. Book by 31 May; travel until…

Global stock markets rallied as jitters caused by hints of a possible US interest rate hike next month receded. Markets in Europe were bouyed by news of a Greek debt deal, breaking an impasse between Germany and the IMF. Creditors agreed a range of measures to restructure Greece’s debts when its g86bn bailout ends in 2018. Russia launched its first international bond sale since sanctions were imposed three years ago, but the issue flopped after US and European fund managers declined to participate. In Britain, the Government launched its latest dossier outlining the short-term risks of a Brexit vote. Critics accused the Treasury of painting the “worst-case” scenario and leaving out the rest. The independent Institute for Fiscal Studies accused the Brexit campaign of peddling “clearly absurd” figures, and claimed…

Passphrases, not passwords. Singleword passwords can be cracked almost instantly, but it “might take upwards of two years” to crack a “passphrase”. Take a line from a favourite film or poem, and “maybe swap a word”, says Fraser Kyne of security expert Bromium. “It will be very easy to remember, but very, very hard to crack.” Careful with special characters. Many people like exchanging an “a” for an “@”, or an “i” for a “1”. But hackers know this and search accordingly, so beware. It took only 19 minutes to crack “guard1@n” with standard software. Be digitally hygienic. Hackers scour the net for information that will guide them in attacking bank accounts. Avoid passwords connected to family or pet names, or past addresses. Password manager? You can download apps that…

Who’s tipping what The week’s best buys Booker The Times The cash and carry operatorturned-retailer has completed its tricky Budgens and Londis acquisition. Profits are 11% ahead, thanks to earlier improvements, and there’s a reliable 4.2% yield. Buy. 175p. Grainger The Times This residential property outfit is jumping on the Generation Rent bandwagon, ramping up its new-build private rental business. Rental growth is accelerating significantly, there’s plenty in the pipeline, and the yield should climb to 4%. Buy. 232.5p. Greencore Group Shares Greencore is making hay from the consumer trend for convenience food, providing ready meals, sandwiches, sushi boxes and soup cartons in the UK and US. Investment in production capacity is paying off: profits are up 8%. Buy. 384.6p. Marston’s The Times Shares in the pub operator have been…

Ausaf Abbas, 55 Then: bass player in the band Alien Kulture Now: investment banker We very much believed in the philosophy of punk – here’s a chord, here’s a second, here’s a third, now go and form a band. I’d never touched a bass guitar until our first rehearsal, but that didn’t matter. It was all about the energy and the enthusiasm. We were probably from the more intellectual wing of punk and were very much involved in the Rock Against Racism campaign. Our name came from Margaret Thatcher, who’d made an infamous comment about how Britain was in danger of being swamped by an alien culture. We interpreted that to mean that if you weren’t white, Anglo-Saxon, middle-class, Protestant, maybe you didn’t fit in. The reason we split up…

“So in the end, the junior doctors blinked first,” said Fraser Nelson in The Daily Telegraph. After months of deadlock, and five strikes, including the first ever all-out stoppage in NHS history, they found that Jeremy Hunt “didn’t buckle quite as easily” as the other Tory ministers, who have performed U-turn after U-turn in recent months. The Health Secretary spent nearly a year fighting the British Medical Association, the doctors’ union, without budging from his goal of a seven-day NHS. In the end, a deal was reached over the vexed question of weekend hours, without the Government offering any extra money. “The fight was unwanted and, at times, unedifying” – thousands of operations were postponed, and Hunt has been unfairly smeared. “But he can still chalk it up as a…

A 71-year-old greatgrandmother in Switzerland has been denied permission to marry a toy boy 50 years her junior. The retired secretary insists she loves the 21-year-old Tunisian, and that they share a passion for “rap music and country walks”. She met him in an online chat room three years ago, flew to Tunisia to meet him in August – and lodged a request to marry five days later. But last week it was turned down, when a court in Vaud ruled that her fiancé was guilty of “emotional fraud” and that his aim was simply to get into Switzerland. An American woman has declared herself the “world’s proudest nan”, after spending thousands of dollars decorating her house with wallpaper, curtains and cushions – all emblazoned with her grandchildren’s faces. Retired…

FRANCE A sickening way to honour our war heroes Boulevard Voltaire (Paris) It’s hard to imagine a less suitable commemoration for the fallen of the First World War than a rap artist spouting obscenities, says Fabien Bouglé. Yet that’s what the organisers came up with for a concert to mark the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Verdun later this month. They arranged a performance by French-Guinean rapper Black M – notorious for lyrics that incite “hatred and division”: some refer to France as a nation of “kuffars” (infidels); others advocate castrating homosexuals; others again glorify school massacres (“get a Smith and Wesson… go ahead, shoot the school”). As you’d expect, his selection led to an outcry; sponsors pulled out; the concert had to be scrapped. Cue howls of rage…

Lesbian sex between gorillas has been scientifically documented for the first time. Researchers from the University of Western Australia recorded 44 instances among gorillas in Rwanda’s Virunga mountains. The apes’ standard procedure was to “get on top of each other” and rub their “bellies and genitals together”, the team reported. Some of the couplings occurred after a female had been rejected by a male – suggesting it was a form of consolation – but others followed sex with a silverback. The team also noted a “pornographic effect” – females hooking up after seeing sexual encounters between other gorillas. Homosexual behaviour in primates is not uncommon – bonobos are notorious for it – but it has rarely before been seen among gorillas. The team hoped that their research would shed light…

Midwives occupy a special place in our hearts, as “angels of resourcefulness and patience”, said Jane Shilling in The Daily Telegraph. So how are we to square this “cosy image” with the decision of the Royal College of Midwives (RCM) to support a campaign that would make it legal to abort a baby right up until birth? The “We Trust Women” campaign, run by the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), argues abortion should be removed from criminal law and regulated by clinicians, like any other medical procedure. The chair of BPAS – which is paid about £25m a year to provide abortions for the NHS – is Professor Cathy Warwick. She also happens to be head of the midwives’ union, and reportedly signed it up for the campaign without consulting…

Excuse me while I “rend my petticoats” and “swoon prettily”, said Alice Jones in the i newspaper. The world’s oldest golf club, the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, based at Muirfield in East Lothian, has voted to keep its ban on women members. “Or ‘ladies’, as it likes to call them, despite the fact that it is only old sexists and overenthusiastic Zumba teachers who use the word now.” Prior to the ballot, a group of mostly elderly members had written to their peers, warning that the introduction of “lady members” might upset the club’s traditional foursomes play, its match system and, God forbid, its “lunch arrangements”. It would “take a very special lady golfer” to keep up with the menfolk, they noted, proposing instead the creation of a “lady-friendly”…

For more than two decades, Rob Fahey was the king of real tennis, said Patrick Kidd in The Times. The 48-year-old Australian has won the sport’s four grand slam titles an astonishing 48 times, outshining Roger Federer’s “mere 17 in the more popular form of tennis”. He became world champion in 1994 and held the title for 22 years, defending it 11 times. But last Saturday Fahey was finally dethroned, by American rival Camden Riviere. Fahey’s loss shouldn’t overshadow his remarkable record, said Harry de Quetteville in The Daily Telegraph. No one has won as many grand slams; no one can match his “skill, agility and mental strength”. He is truly the greatest of all time. That’s quite a claim, said David Shatfel in The New Yorker, because real tennis…

Theatre The Invisible Hand Playwright: Ayad Akhtar Director: Indhu Rubasingham Tricycle, London NW6 (020-7328 1000) Until 2 July Running time: 1hr 55mins (including interval) “You don’t need a ritzy, hightech office on Wall Street to rig the economy”: it turns out you can wipe millions off an international currency perfectly well from a hostage cell in Pakistan armed only with a laptop. That’s the set-up of this witty new thriller by the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Ayad Akhtar, said Claire Allfree in The Daily Telegraph. The plot centres on Nick Bright, an American investment banker who has been kidnapped by three self-styled Islamic revolutionaries and, after being thrown into a makeshift prison, has a ransom of $10m put on his head. But when Nick points out that the figure is impossibly…

Sunken Cities is a show “to move you to tears of wonder”, said Rachel Campbell-Johnston in The Times. The exhibition tells the story of Thonis-Heracleion and Canopus, two ancient Egyptian cities founded at the mouth of the Nile Delta, probably in the seventh century BC. By the end of the eighth century AD, however, they had been flooded and claimed by the sea. These “famously magnificent” places faded to “near-myth”, and only ancient texts telling of “soaring temples and towering statues, sacred offerings and fleets of boats” hinted at their lost grandeur. In the 1990s, however, the marine archaeologist Franck Goddio began to uncover their secrets, digging under centuries of Nile silt in the waters of Abu Qir Bay. The British Museum’s show brings together some 300 objects recovered from…

The Soul of Kindness by Elizabeth Taylor, 1964 (Virago £9.99). I am increasingly fascinated by the mid-20th century England I grew up in, and Taylor is its social observer par excellence. Subtle domestic canvases are her speciality. This “soul of kindness” is a monstrously deluded St John’s Wood beauty who wrecks the lives of those around her. The Easter Parade by Richard Yates (Vintage £8.99). This poignant tale – of two sisters whose lives are shaped by their feckless parents – first came out in 1976, just as I was starting out as a wine writer. The only thing I have in common with the great author is alcohol. It killed him, and his tales are wonderfully gloomy and self-referential. Middlemarch by George Eliot, 1871-2 (Penguin £6.99). Any woman can…

Programmes The Disappearance Double episode of a gripping new eight-part French crime drama following a family’s ordeal when their teenage daughter fails to return home from a night out. Sat 28 May, BBC4 9pm (100mins). Top Gear Chris Evans, Matt LeBlanc and Eddie Jordan are in the driving seat for the first episode of the revamped show. Sun 29 May, BBC2 8pm (60mins). A Midsummer Night’s Dream Russell T. Davies adapts Shakespeare’s comedy for television. With Maxine Peake as Titania and Matt Lucas as Bottom. Mon 30 May, BBC1 8.30pm (90mins). The Real Versailles To accompany the BBC’s new drama (see below), historians Lucy Worsley and Helen Castor recount the history of the world’s grandest building, revealing a world of sex, drama and intrigue. Mon 30 May, BBC2 10.30pm (55mins).…

Serves 4 4 x 100g pieces of beef bavette (you could also use onglet or thinly sliced rump) brine for red meat (see below) 100ml extra virgin olive oil 2 garlic cloves, roughly chopped 1 small red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped finely grated zest of 1 lemon 1 tsp chopped thyme leaves 8 large salad onions or bulbous spring onions crunchy shallot and garlic salsa cruda (see below) olive oil, for cooking sea salt and black pepper For the brine: 100g coarse sea salt 50g demerara (brown) sugar 1 tbsp honey 2 bay leaves 8 black peppercorns 4 cloves For the salsa: 1 large banana shallot, or 2 medium-sized ones, finely chopped 1 red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped 2 tbsp finely chopped flat-leaf…

Amanemu, Ise-Shima, Japan Located near to the famous pilgrimage site of Ise, the Aman group’s latest opening is an enchanting rural haven, says Charles Spreckley in Condé Nast Traveller. Its 24 suites and four two-bedroom villas are scattered over a windswept hill above the “pearl-rich” bay of Ago. All have private terraces, expansive views and warm-hued wooden interiors. The open-air onsen (hot spring) is exceptional, with terraces of tiled baths, lounging pavilions, day beds and an outdoor fireplace. And the kaiseki (formal, multi-course) cuisine from chef Masanobu Inaba is “modern and punchy”. Doubles from £685. 0800-2255 2626, www.aman.com.…

Entrepreneur behind the success of the Filofax David Collischon 1937-2016 In the upwardly mobile 1980s, no self-respecting yuppie left home without his or her Filofax. Although the personal organisers were, in the words of the FT, little more than a “souped-up diary”, they became one of the defining objects of the era: in 1990, there was even a Hollywood film, Taking Care of Business, built around the commonly held notion that for a busy executive, to lose your Filofax was, effectively, to lose your entire life. David Collischon, who has died aged 78, did not invent the Filofax, but perhaps more than anyone, he was responsible for its phenomenal, if fleeting, success. David Collischon was born in London in 1937, the son of a sales manager. He left school at…

Look out for the other June vote Nils Pratley The Guardian The FTSE 100 suffered another wobble last week, says Nils Pratley. The reason? Hints from the US Federal Reserve that the next interest rate rise could come in June, rather than September as previously thought. In theory, the timing of the quarter-point rise should make little difference: “US rates will be low whatever happens”. Yet it would be wrong to dismiss the anxiety as “a fuss about nothing”. The weakening of the dollar since April “has made investors feel better about the world” – easing pressure on overextended companies in emerging markets, and supporting a higher oil price. “A US rate rise threatens to undo that work if it forces the dollar higher.” It is possible that markets will…

This week’s crossword winner will receive an Ettinger (www.ettinger.co.uk) Brogue Collection nut coin purse, which retails at £150, and two Connell Guides (www.connellguides.com). ACROSS 1 Expanse of water right by church? Try Google (6) 4 Quickly eating hot Indian (6) 9 Parts of Cats in break overheard (4) 10 A bishop’s answer: forgiveness (10) 11 Meals without starter? Could be if you are on these (6) 12 Genius with a German beer mug? (8) 13 Prominent feature Italian understands reportedly (5,4) 15 Comfortable with four-pounders being brought back (4) 16 Summit where you’ll see Bill with your setter (4) 17 Not a long event for this carrier (9) 21 Digits rising, OK? (6,2) 22 Joke is a dig at former British state (6) 24 Check out fantastic achievements of Asian…