Innholdsfortegnelse for V. 1104 i The Week

What happened The fall of Aleppo The Syrian regime won a key victory this week when it seized all but a few pockets of Aleppo, Syria’s largest city. For most of the past four years, Aleppo has been split in two, the government controlling the western half, and rebels the east. But after a long and brutal siege, Syrian soldiers, aided by Russian jets and Iran-backed militias, have in the past fortnight routed their opponents. The assault triggered a mass flight of desperate civilians and insurgents. There were unverified reports of atrocities, including summary executions of women and children. A United Nations spokesman talked of a “complete meltdown of humanity”. The Syrian army denied responsibility for any torture or killings; Russia blamed terrorists for keeping “over 100,000 people as human…

Washington DC Trump builds team: Donald Trump continued to build his administration-in-waiting this week, picking oilman Rex Tillerson as secretary of state, and Goldman Sachs’s Gary Cohn as his top economic adviser. Meanwhile, Trump came under pressure on several fronts – from the CIA over Russian influence in helping get him elected (see page 24); from Beijing over his breach of the “One China” policy; and over his refusal to explain how he plans to handle potential conflicts of interest relating to his many businesses. On Monday, Trump cancelled the press conference (his first in months) where he had promised to address this third issue, instead tweeting: “I will hold a press conference in the near future to discuss the business, cabinet picks and all other topics of interest. Busy…

1 Our Mutual Friend by Neil Hannon, performed by The Divine Comedy 2 The Nutcracker Suite: Overture by Tchaikovsky, performed by Duke Ellington and his Orchestra 3 Your Kiss is Sweet by Stevie Wonder and Syreeta Wright, performed by Syreeta 4 One Nation Under a Groove by George Clinton, Garry Shider and Walter Morrison, performed by Funkadelic 5 Can You Feel It (Can You Party) by Todd Terry 6 Jig of Life, written and performed by Kate Bush 7 Never Let Her Slip Away, written and performed by Andrew Gold 8* Angel, written and performed by Sarah McLachlan Book: Still Life with Woodpecker by Tom Robbins Luxury: A bath * Choice if allowed only one record…

Google has been hijacked by racists Carole Cadwalladr The Observer “Did the Holocaust really happen?” Not according to the planet’s leading source of information, it didn’t, says Carole Cadwalladr. Type the question into Google and the first answer you get (the one you take to be the most authoritative) is headlined: “Top ten reasons why the Holocaust didn’t happen.” The second refers to “the Holocaust hoax”. In fact, seven of the top ten all insist the murder of six million Jews is a made-up story. Yet such malign outcomes are by no means a one-off. So proficient have far-right groups become at colonising the internet, they’ve been able to game the Google algorithm and hijack its search results. Google, however, is so wedded to the image of itself as a…

C-sections “changing our bodies” The increased use of Caesarean sections may be affecting human evolution, say the authors of a new study. Though C-sections have been performed since ancient times, they have only been considered safe for about the past 50 years. Now, around a quarter of babies in the UK – and a third in the US – are delivered by C-section. Dr Philipp Mitteröcker, a theoretical biologist at the University of Vienna, has suggested this may be having a little-understood evolutionary consequence: in the past, babies whose heads were too big to get through the birth canal would often have been stillborn; while women with very narrow pelvises were liable to die in labour. Today, thanks to the availability of C-sections, they can survive to pass their genes…

Kirk Douglas, who turned 100 last week, will probably always be best known for playing the rebel gladiator Spartacus. This proved problematic for his late son, Eric Douglas, who pursued an unsuccessful career as a stand-up comic. Once, when his dire routine bombed at London’s Comedy Store, he lost his temper and shouted: “I’m Kirk Douglas’s son!” At that, someone in the audience stood up and replied: “No, I’m Kirk Douglas’s son!” And then another. And another… He may be about to take control of the world’s only superpower, but Donald Trump is never too busy to meet a fellow celeb. The president-elect was visited at Trump Towers this week by the rapper Kanye West, husband of reality TV star Kim Kardashian. It was West’s first public appearance since he…

“When you are the woman who wears the trousers for the country”, your trousers can become a public matter, said Dominic Lawson in The Mail on Sunday. So Theresa May discovered this week, after she was pictured in a magazine photo shoot wearing brown (or “bitter chocolate”) leather trousers made by the British couturier Amanda Wakeley, priced at £995. Nicky Morgan, a former cabinet minister sacked by May, suggested that her luxurious strides made her look out of touch with ordinary voters. The trousers, Morgan said, had “been noticed and discussed” in Tory party circles, adding: “I’ve never spent that much on anything – apart from my wedding dress.” Morgan’s comments were puritanical, unfair and sexist, too, said Lisa Armstrong in The Daily Telegraph. Why shouldn’t a successful woman spend…

What a “goal crazy” season we’re enjoying, said BBC Sport online. Last weekend was a bonanza, with 36 goals in ten matches; the week before there were 37 – just six short of the record for a single weekend. If things continue at this rate, it will be the highest-scoring season in Premier League history. All these goals make for thrilling viewing, said Jonathan Wilson in The Guardian. But they’re not entirely good news: more often than not, they’re down to shoddy defending. That’s because traditional defending has become “unfashionable”. Instead, many managers urge their sides to press high, and select defenders and goalkeepers for their passing ability as much as “their capacity to stop” attackers. Manchester City are certainly struggling against attackers, said Jonathan Northcroft in The Sunday Times:…

To The Guardian I write regarding Hitachi Rail Europe’s first Intercity Express train to be built in the UK. This train might well be “put together in the UK”, but many of its components are made in Japan and elsewhere. Perhaps it might be more accurate to say assembled in the UK, though I doubt that would have quite the same publicity value. My company, William Cook Rail, based at the heart of the “Northern Powerhouse”, in Leeds, is a world-class manufacturer of components for high-speed and commuter trains. It exports 80% of its products to blue-chip train manufacturers throughout Europe and elsewhere. Yet it was not even invited to bid to supply the critical bogie parts for the new Hitachi trains. These are all coming from Japan. Manufacturing forms…

1 The Return by Hisham Matar Viking £14.99 The Week Bookshop £11.99 Novelist Hisham Matar’s latest book is a memoir about his father, Jaballa, a prominent anti-Gaddafi activist abducted in Cairo in 1990 and imprisoned in Tripoli’s notorious Abu Salim jail. After Gaddafi’s overthrow, Matar, whose novels include the Man Booker-shortlisted In the Country of Men, returned to the country he’d left as a child to try to find out his father’s fate. Critics were deeply impressed by The Return’s combination of technical mastery and emotional power. Number of votes: 11 Who chose it? Hilary Mantel, Julian Barnes, Alan Hollinghurst, Blake Morrison, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Gaby Wood and five others. Praise: “A masterpiece… the natural delicacy of Matar’s writing… only heightens the power of a gripping and agonising story.” (Alan…

The best… Christmas gifts for adults Elio Fiorucci Carrot Kitchen Timer For lovers of kitsch, consider this colourful – and practical – kitchen gnome from the late Italian designer Elio Fiorucci. By rotating the base, you can set the timer to up to 60 minutes (£28; www.lovethesign.com/uk). Bang and Olufsen BeoSound 2 This futuristic-looking speaker is made from sturdy aluminium. Easy to use, it produces a fantastic, powerful sound that fills the room (£1,350; www.petertyson.co.uk). Moomin Snowhorse Mug New to the Moomin range, this ceramic mug features Tove Jansson’s Moominvalley in winter. There is a matching bowl, and the mug also comes in a mini version, sold in sets of four (£20.40; www.finnishdesignshop.com). Ferm Living Fein Measurement Spoons Made from brass-gilded stainless steel, this simple but stylish four-piece set starts…

Glencore/QIA/Rosneft: crude deal Glencore’s return from near-death has been one of the great recovery stories of 2016, said Neil Hume in the Financial Times. And the Swiss-based commodities giant, led by Ivan Glasenberg, is ending the year in style. It has teamed up with the Qatar Investment Authority to take a 19.5% stake in Russia’s biggest oil producer, Rosneft, in a s10.2bn deal highlighting an “undiminished” appetite for “audacious deal-making”. The contract will enable Glencore’s trading arm to sell 220,000 barrels a day for the next five years, generating “as much as $80m a year in profits” and posing strong competition for the current “dominant trader of crude oil”, Trafigura. And at a time of rising crude prices, the timing looks good. It’s back to the future for Glencore in…

Rex Tillerson Donald Trump’s “astonishing” decision to select the ExxonMobil boss as his secretary of state will confirm the worst foreign fears about US power, said Steve Coll in The New Yorker: that it is basically “a raw, neo-colonial exercise in securing resources”. Tillerson, 64, is a Texan oilman whose “life has been shaped” by two institutions: the Boy Scouts of America, and Exxon, where he has worked all his life. He heads a “ruthless and unusually aggressive organisation” that has long operated like “a parallel quasi-state”; it has its own foreign policy. The appointment will be controversial at home, too, said the FT. In 2013, Tillerson was awarded Russia’s Order of Friendship, highlighting his ties with Vladimir Putin following Exxon’s 2011 deal with Rosneft to develop oil in the…

Who’s tipping what The week’s best buys DS Smith The Times Smith makes cardboard boxes for transporting and displaying food and drink, including “ingenious” promotional devices that help sell products. It has plants across Europe and is “basking in favourable packaging trends”. Buy. 419p. Lloyds Banking Group The Daily Telegraph The high-street bank has been hit by a regulatory clampdown, and haemorrhaged a colossal £17bn in fines. But Lloyds is stable and lucrative, and cash should start to divert back into profits and distributions. Buy. 62.77p. Severn Trent The Sunday Times The debt-dependent water giant has had a rough ride lately, but may look “interesting” to “savvy infrastructure investors” who can spot value. Even if no bid materialises, Severn yields 3.7%. Buy. £21.47. Hotel Chocolat Group The Mail on Sunday…

Controversy of the week Bringing Boris to heel “Diplomacy has always been a term interchangeable with insincerity,” said Dominic Lawson in The Sunday Times. As the diplomat Sir Henry Wotton put it four centuries ago, “an ambassador is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country.” Yet the Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, seems to be struggling with his brief. Last week, he caused great concern by criticising Saudi Arabia – the UK’s best friend in the Middle East – for fighting “proxy wars” in the region. “You’ve got the Saudis, Iran, everybody, moving in and puppeteering and playing proxy wars,” declared Johnson at a conference in Rome. Theresa May was furious, and felt it necessary to rap his knuckles in public: “These are the Foreign…

Uyo, Nigeria Church collapse tragedy: At least 160 people are believed to have been killed last Saturday when the roof of a newly built church crashed down onto worshippers in the city of Uyo, in Nigeria’s southeastern Akwa Ibom State. Hundreds of people had packed into the Reigners Bible Church to see a local pastor be ordained as a bishop. However, the building was reportedly still under construction, and there were also claims that the builders had rushed the work, to ensure the ordination could go ahead. Metal girders gave way and fell to the ground, before the entire corrugated roof caved in. The state government has launched an investigation into the disaster. Building collapses are not uncommon in Nigeria: with corruption endemic, contractors often bribe inspectors to ignore shoddy…

A designer in Finland has come up with an ingenious device for protecting dogs from wolf attacks: chilli vests. The idea is that when the wolf attacks the animal, it gets a blast of chilli in the face and mouth – which should be enough to drive it away. The vests, due to be trialled next year, were invented by Jussi Aro, who has been trying to come up with a non-lethal means of preventing wolf attacks for a decade. Sharp-eyed pedestrians in the Swedish city of Malmö have been beguiled by a miniature street scene, created – apparently – for the local mouse population. Built into a wall, it features a tiny shop called Noix de Vie (nuts of life), with a window display of pistachios, almonds and hazelnuts;…

A huge crack – roughly 70 miles long, more than 300ft wide, and a third of a mile deep – has appeared in the Larsen C ice shelf in Antarctica. Images of the rift were taken by Nasa scientists, who say it suggests that a vast block of ice is at imminent risk of breaking off. “The crack completely cuts through the ice shelf, but it does not go all the way across it – once it does, it will produce an iceberg roughly the size of the state of Delaware,” said the agency, in a press release. The second-smallest state in the US, Delaware is roughly 95 miles long, ranges from 9 miles to 35 miles across, and covers 2,491 square miles. The Larsen Ice Shelf is a vast,…

Sue Gaitskell has been forced to give up her job in west London because she can no longer get home to Croydon. Alison Hazel’s seven-year-old son, who suffers from learning difficulties, hardly sees his father any more: a Metropolitan Police officer, he has given up trying to commute from Sussex to London, and now stays in the city all week. It is impossible to know exactly how many lives have been “blighted” by the year-long dispute between Southern Rail and the transport unions, said The Daily Telegraph. As well as more than 300,000 daily commuters (who have paid up to £5,000 each for their season tickets), those affected by strikes, delays and cancellations include the firms whose staff can’t get into work, patients unable to travel into London for hospital…

“Philosophers are adults who persist in asking childish questions.” Isaiah Berlin, quoted in The Times “The war against intelligence is always waged in the name of common sense.” Roland Barthes, quoted on The Browser “Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.” General James Mattis, quoted on The Daily Beast “Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.” Mary Shelley, quoted in the New York Post “A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.” Henry David Thoreau, quoted on LitHub.com “America is too big to be witty.” Martin Amis, quoted on LiveMint.com “Nobody looks stupid when they’re having fun.” Amy Poehler,…

Last week, a chess player named Timur Gareyev took on 48 opponents at once. But that wasn’t “the hard part”, said Ian Sample in The Guardian. While his challengers played as normal, the Uzbekistan-born American was blindfolded. It was a “mind-boggling” sight, said Albert Silver on Firstpost.com. As the “Blindfold King” played his simultaneous matches, over 19 hours, he cycled on an exercise bike in order to “feel in touch with his surroundings”; and gesticulated to work out images for each move. Blindfold chess has a long history, said Sample: it dates back to 13th century Florence. In 1947, Miguel Najdorf played 45 challengers at once – including Luciano de Nilo Andrade, one of Gareyev’s opponents last week, who’s now 92 years old. Gareyev finds the first, “humdrum” moves particularly…

Grease is certainly a “curveball” choice as the Leicester Curve’s Christmas show, said Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph. We arrive at the theatre “in our scarves and woollies, our chills multiplyin’” in the crisp winter air. And what’s on offer? A chance to rewind to 1959 and “some of the most pigment-alteringly sunny rock’n’roll numbers ever siphoned into a single show”. Yet it works a treat: in the experienced hands of director Nikolai Foster, this Grease is a like a sunny Christmas “fairy tale”. Designer Colin Richmond’s spacious, brightly lit retro set is “beautiful to behold”. And choreographer Nick Winston has done a “brilliant – not to say brilliantined – job” with the energetic, 21-strong cast. The stage is a riot of “supple, rippling movements, pelvic thrusts, synchronised steps…

It’s truly astonishing what some actors will endure in the name of art, said Stephanie Merry in The Washington Post. Last year, we learned of the sufferings Leonardo DiCaprio went through on the way to winning an Oscar for The Revenant. “This year’s The Revenant”, it seems, is Martin Scorsese’s Silence, an adaptation of Shusaku Endo’s 1966 novel about the persecution of Jesuit priests in 17th century Japan. Adam Driver, who plays one of the heroes, lost 23kg for his role. Quite skinny to start with, by the end he was hallucinating. Andrew Garfield, who plays another priest, went to similar extremes, said Harriet Sherwood in The Guardian. He spent a year in training with the Jesuit priest and author James Martin. This culminated in a week-long silent retreat at…

We might have hoped that Mike Ashley’s grovelling appearance before MPs earlier this year would have put an end to concerns about “Victorian” practices in retail warehouses. Sadly not, said The Sunday Times. An undercover investigation of Amazon’s fulfilment centre near Dunfermline has revealed conditions as punishing as those at Sports Direct’s Derbyshire warehouse. Amazon “robots”, to quote the GMB union, are threatened with the sack if they take sick leave, even with a doctor’s note. And though paid from £7.35 per hour (above the national living wage), travel costs eat into their income. Rather than pay fares of up to £10 a day on buses brought in to shuttle them to work, said The Courier (Scotland), some have been camping out in the cold. At least three tents have…

Paris Tax evasion tsar jailed: A former government minister appointed by President Hollande to lead the campaign against tax evasion by the super-rich has been sentenced to three years in prison for hiding s3.5m in secret foreign bank accounts and lying to parliament about his fraud. Jérôme Cahuzac’s deception was discovered in 2013; and the affair came to symbolise the rapid public disenchantment with the government following Hollande’s election, in 2012. Cahuzac (above), a hair-transplant surgeon by profession, maintained his innocence for months before admitting to a “spiral of lies”. His former wife, Patricia Ménard, got two years for her part in the fraud. Paris Rats and smog: In a blow to its reputation for refinement and glamour, the French capital has been obliged to close several tourist attractions and…

Gervais’s Golden memories Ricky Gervais has probably presented his last Golden Globes, says Lynn Barber in The Sunday Times. The British comedian has hosted the awards ceremony four times – to the growing displeasure of those Hollywood stars whose flops and foibles he mocks. In 2011, for instance, he caused outrage by joking that he liked a drink as much as the next man, “unless the next man is Mel Gibson”. “It just went crazy,” Gervais recalls, “and I thought: ‘Really? You’re not allowed to make fun of a Hollywood superstar?’ I admire a lot of people in that room, I’ve worked with them, I’m almost one of them, in many ways – but I have to be the outsider. How nauseating would it be for me to go on…

Cash is still king in many places: in Italy, few people have bank cards, and 83% of payments are still made in cash. In India, which has a vast “black” economy in cash hoardings, the government has tried to boost tax revenues by scrapping India’s biggest banknotes; but poor planning and execution of the policy have caused widespread chaos – a cautionary tale for other governments hoping to abolish cash. Other countries, by contrast, are quietly becoming cashless. In Norway, Denmark and Belgium, many shops and cafés – even some banks – no longer accept cash. And throughout sub-Saharan Africa, where only about a third of the people have bank accounts but at least 60% have mobile phones, mobile payment apps (such as Kenya’s M-Pesa) have begun to leapfrog paper…

The Golden State eyes up independence David Horsey Los Angeles Times Secession didn’t turn out too well for the American South, says David Horsey, but that hasn’t stopped people in certain states contemplating the option “when the powers-that-be in Washington are not to their liking”. Early in Barack Obama’s presidency, many Texans pushed for their state to quit the union. And now that Donald Trump is about to take over, the “secessionist talk” has switched to California, where activists are gathering signatures to put a measure on a 2018 ballot proposing that the state go independent. There are valid arguments for such a move. The world’s sixth-largest economy, California is big enough to stand on its own two feet, and it has very different priorities to heartland America: it voted…

The “other Austria” has shouted a resounding “no” to the far-right, said Alexandra Föderl-Schmid in Der Standard (Vienna). In the presidential election run-off last week, Green Party candidate Alexander Van der Bellen won nearly 54% of the vote, handily beating Norbert Hofer of the ultra-right, anti-EU Freedom Party (FPÖ). Hofer’s party was formed after WWII by unrepentant ex-Nazis, and still stands for ethnic German nationalism and xenophobia. Most Austrians don’t, in fact, support the leftist ideas espoused by the Greens; but left, right and centre chose Van der Bellen as the lesser of two evils. It was a clear rebuke to the politics of hatred and exclusion. Most analysts felt Austria would succumb to the wave of anti-immigrant populism, said Manfred Perterer in the Salzburger Nachrichten (Salzburg): the British embraced…

Last week the CIA confirmed what to some of us has long been obvious, said The New York Times: that Russia not only launched cyberattacks and disseminated fake news to disrupt the US election, but did so specifically to give a leg up to Donald Trump. With characteristic bluntless, the president-elect has dismissed this conclusion as the rantings of an unreliable agency. “These are the same people who said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction,” read a statement from his team. But it’s easy to see what Moscow stood to gain by tipping the scales his way. Hillary Clinton had made it clear she’d seek to further punish Moscow for its foreign aggressions; by contrast, Trump had all the appearance of “a malleable political novice who had surrounded himself…

Labour has pulled off an astonishing feat, said Rod Liddle in The Sunday Times. Presented this summer with ideal conditions for a fightback – the Government in disarray, the Liberal Democrats reeling from a general election wipeout, UKIP beset with infighting – the party has somehow contrived to become even more unpopular. In last week’s by-election in the Tory seat of Sleaford and North Hykeham, in Lincolnshire, Labour slipped to fourth place and saw its share of the vote decline from 17% to just over 10%. Following this dismal result, a Labour spokesman was reduced to boasting that the party had at least not come fifth, as some had predicted, and had not lost its deposit, as the Labour candidate did in the Richmond Park by-election the previous week. “That’s…

The end was “swift” and brutal, said Vic Marks in The Guardian. On the final morning of the fourth Test, in Mumbai, India needed less than half an hour to take England’s last four wickets. They thrashed the visitors by an innings and 36 runs to seal a 3-0 series victory, with the fifth Test still to be played. It was England’s seventh Test loss of the year, said Mike Atherton in The Times – their “worst run” since 1993. And it was Alastair Cook’s 21st defeat at the helm, the joint worst total for an England captain. It had all seemed to be going so well in the first innings, when the visitors were 230 for two, before they were bowled out for 400. To lose so badly from…

A Saudi crash is coming To The Guardian Saudi Arabia is certainly fighting proxy wars in the Middle East, as well as promoting its form of Islam in many countries around the world. But it is not just for their oil and for their lucrative custom, for as long as they can pay, that we court Saudi Arabia. We were friendly with the shah of Persia and selling him aircraft only weeks before he fled his country. The West found itself needing the stability the Saudi regime provides in the region. But it can now be predicted that all of this will end – perhaps soon – and that things will become catastrophically worse in the region. Saudi Arabia is running out of money and, despite protestations and efforts to…

Rock David Bowie: Blackstar ISO/Columbia £9.99 “There has never been a musical farewell anything like Blackstar,” says Rob Sheffield in Rolling Stone. Bowie “saved his bravest and boldest performance for the final curtain” – showing up at his 69th birthday to drop a “surprise masterpiece, let an astonished world puzzle over the music for a couple of days, and then slip off into the sky”. Almost a year later, the album still evokes mysteries with every listen; an “anguished, bittersweet” rumination on mortality. R&B Frank Ocean: Blonde (download only, £7.99) Ocean earned a reputation as one of contemporary music’s most vital voices with his 2012 debut Channel Orange, says Tim Jonze in The Guardian. This stupendous follow-up is simply one of “the most intriguing and contrary records ever made” –…

Best books… Jeanette Winterson Writer Jeanette Winterson picks five of her favourite books. Her own latest book, Christmas Days: 12 Stories and 12 Feasts for 12 Days, a collection of festive tales and recipes, has just been published by Jonathan Cape at £14.99 A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, 1843 (Puffin £6.99). Still the best Christmas ghost story in the world; an irresistible appeal against meanness of spirit. And why do we punish the poor for the sins of the rich? I read it in three parts every year, starting on the 23rd and finishing on Christmas morning, with mince pies and coffee in bed before anyone else is up – except Santa, of course. Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino, 1972 (£8.99 Vintage). A series of fictions about Venice –…

Cook Japanese at Home by Kimiko Barber Kyle Books £25 (£20) If you love tucking into sushi and ramen when eating out, but lack the confidence to make it yourself at home, this book (subtitled From Dashi to Tonkatsu, 200 Simple Recipes for Every Occasion) is the “perfect” solution, says Rhian Williams in The Independent. From soups and salads to meat and fish dishes, plus desserts, Barber covers all the basics, and also offers great “modern twists” on the classics. Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons by Raymond Blanc Bloomsbury £50 (£40) Raymond Blanc is the “impressionist painter” of French cuisine who – along with Pierre Koffmann, who has also published a fine book this year – revolutionised British cooking in the late 1970s, says Rose Prince in The Spectator. Blanc’s…

Brilliant journalist known for his acerbic wit A.A. Gill 1954-2016 A.A. Gill, who has died aged 62, overcame severe dyslexia, and chronic, rock-bottom alcoholism, to become one of Britain’s most prominent journalists. Though he wrote wittily, and often brilliantly, on a wide range of subjects, he was chiefly known for his restaurant and TV reviews, and for his unflinching honesty and outrageous rudeness. The “soul of courtesy and charm” to people he liked, he could be blistering in print, said The Daily Telegraph: he wrote that Mary Beard was too ugly to be on TV; described Maureen Lipman as “a three-flush floater”; and referred to Clare Balding as a “dyke on a bike”. In 1998, Gordon Ramsay threw him (and his friend Joan Collins) out of one of his restaurants…

A “seismic” turning point for markets Patrick Hosking The Times Remember 11 July, asks Patrick Hosking. It was the day that Andrea Leadsom pulled out of the Tory leadership contest, ceding Downing Street to Theresa May – and that bonds “hit valuations they may never see again”. Bank of America Merrill Lynch has identified it as the great “inflection point” marking the end of the 35-year bull market for bonds. On 11 July, the yield on benchmark US 30-year treasuries (which move inversely to prices) sank to a historic low. “Uncle Sam had never been able to borrow that cheaply before, or since.” Calling “seismic” market turning points is tricky. But the bond market suggests that we have passed “the point of peak anxiety about deflation” (bonds are attractive in…

 Boarding schools are such comfortable places nowadays – duvets on soft mattresses, psychotherapists on call, choice of desserts. But it certainly wasn’t like that in the late 1960s, even at Millfield, notorious then as the most expensive educational establishment in Britain, and a Mecca for sporting prodigies and the offspring of plutocrats who couldn’t pass legitimately into Eton or Roedean. “Nobody wanted him as their friend, and at every meal he sat himself next to the matron. She clearly found him a bore” The truth about the place, located in the Somerset town of Street, was rather different. The maverick founder and headmaster R.J.O. Meyer, universally known as Boss, had a genuinely comprehensive and internationalist vision that in some respects was admirably progressive. Co-education (a rarity at the time) prevailed…

 Rupert Christiansen isn’t the only one to have uncomplimentary things to say about Thailand’s new king. A letter written by two of his sons from his second marriage, and posted online last week, accuses him of forcing the family into exile and of having them followed by detectives. “Our father never loved or treated our mother as his wife,” they wrote. “She lived in a state of servitude, and every time he found another woman we would be forced out of the house.” But few people will get to hear any of this in Thailand, because the country’s laws of lèse-majesté (“injured majesty”) are amongst the strictest in the world: Article 112 of the criminal code decrees that anyone who “defames, insults or threatens the king, the queen, the heir-apparent…