Innholdsfortegnelse for V. 1106 i The Week

What happened Russian spy scandal America expelled 35 Russian diplomats last week as part of a package of measures designed to punish Moscow for cyberattacks allegedly aimed at influencing the US election. President Obama also shut down two country estates, in Maryland and New York, that are used by Russian diplomats, and ordered sanctions against Russia’s two top intelligence agencies, the FSB and the GRU. “All Americans should be alarmed by Russia’s actions,” Obama said. “Such activities have consequences.” The Kremlin rejected the hacking claims as “unfounded”, but chose not to retaliate, saying it wouldn’t stoop to the same level of “irresponsible diplomacy”. The Russian Embassy in London described Obama’s move as “Cold War déjà vu”, tweeting a picture of a duck and the word “lame”. President-elect Donald Trump, meanwhile,…

Calgary, Canada Drunk pilot: A pilot working for a Canadian low-cost airline was removed from his own plane last week after being found slumped unconscious at the controls of the aircraft at 7am, shortly before take-off. Police later reported that he had more than three times the legal drink-drive limit of alcohol in his blood, and that he remained in a state of severe intoxication for another two hours. The Sunwing passenger jet had been due to take off from Calgary airport for Cancun, Mexico, but ground staff noticed that the pilot – now named as Miroslav Gronych, 37, a Slovak national – was behaving strangely as he boarded the Boeing 737, due to carry 99 passengers, and alerted the crew. They discovered him passed out in the pilot’s seat,…

Is peace at risk in Northern Ireland? Siobhan Fenton The Independent Is the Government intent on alienating Northern Ireland? You’d think so from its total lack of concern, ever since the Brexit vote, for the way its actions might affect local sensibilities, says Siobhan Fenton. This is a region striving to cement peace after decades of sectarian conflict; yet only recently Communities Secretary Sajid Javid was suggesting all public sector workers in the UK be made to swear an oath to British values. In Northern Ireland few things could be more divisive – except perhaps the erection of a “deeply controversial physical border” between north and south. Yet some six months after the poll, we’ve still not been told whether such a border is on the cards. And now Theresa…

Cancer drug “wrongly abandoned” Women with breast cancer may be giving up on an effective drug because they mistakenly believe that it is causing them horrible side effects. A hormonal therapy, tamoxifen is prescribed to many women who have had breast cancer, and to those with a genetic predisposition to it. The drug is believed to cut the risk of the disease recurring by more than 30%, if taken for long enough. However, research by Cancer Research UK suggests that one in three patients do not continue taking it for the recommended five years, most likely because of its association with nausea and vomiting, hot flushes, sweats and low libido. But in the new study, researchers found that the nausea and vomiting also occurred in many patients who took a…

When Bradley Wiggins announced his retirement last week, it should have been the opportunity for a “hero’s goodbye”, said Paul Hayward in The Daily Telegraph. Britain’s greatest cyclist can take pride in a variety of remarkable achievements: a Tour de France win, world titles on both track and road, and collecting more Olympic medals than any other British athlete. Yet he exits under a cloud: the revelation that he was injected with triamcinolone, a powerful corticosteroid, between 2011 and 2013. Often used as a performance-enhancing drug, triamcinolone is a banned hormone, said William Fotheringham in The Observer. But Wiggins, who claimed he needed it to treat asthma-induced hay fever, had been granted an exemption to use it. He may have been acting “within the rules”, but for a cyclist who…

To The Times The demand to build more homes in Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty highlights a conflict between where people wish to live and a public duty to maintain the natural beauty of landscapes. Here in the Brecon Beacons National Park, the planners make it as hard as possible to allow any form of residential development, thus perpetuating a gradual depopulation of fragile rural communities that increasingly depend on tourism – which itself is further limited by underinvestment in infrastructure. Until we are prepared to pay for the higher costs of developing brownfield sites or promote well-designed higher-density housing in urban areas, the strict protection of desirable swathes of countryside from housing developments may become harder to justify. Rob Yorke (FRICS), Abergavenny, Monmouthshire To The Times According to your…

The Glass Menagerie John Tiffany, director of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, brings his revival of Tennessee Williams’s searing classic – already a hit in New York – to the West End. Broadway star Cherry Jones makes her London debut, with a definitive performance as matriarch Amanda. Duke of York’s, London WC2 (0845-505 8500), 26 January to 29 April. Hamlet Andrew Scott, best known for his mesmeric performance as Moriarty in the TV series Sherlock, stars as Hamlet at the Almeida from February. “It’ll be murder getting tickets,” says Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph, “but I’d wager on a West End transfer – it’s directed by that bankable whizz-kid Robert Icke.” Almeida, London N1 (020-7359 4404), 17 February to 8 April. Liverpool Everyman Rep Company After a gap…

The publicity for Assassin’s Creed claims you don’t need to have played the violent video game on which it is based in order to enjoy it. Well, I’m not so sure about that, said Geoffrey Macnab in The Independent. Directed by Justin Kurzel, this mega-budget action blockbuster stars Michael Fassbender as a criminal sent back in time to 15th century Spain by a winsome scientist (Marion Cotillard) to track down the apple from the Garden of Eden, which contains the key to free will. That was about all I could understand. Scarcely five minutes go by without “something in a monk’s outfit doing a bit of sub-parkour jumping” from one building to another, said Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian. Yet despite this surfeit of energy, the film manages to be…

Best books… Paula Hawkins Paula Hawkins, author of the international bestseller The Girl on the Train, picks her five favourite books. Her next novel, Into the Water, will be published by Doubleday on 2 May at £20 Regeneration by Pat Barker, 1991 (Penguin £8.99). Deftly interweaving fact with fiction, Barker reimagines Siegfried Sassoon’s hospitalisation at Craiglockhart during WWI. In this, the first of a trilogy, she confronts with intelligence and nuance the damage done by the War to men and women at home and in France. The Soccer War by Ryszard Kapuscinski, 1990 (Granta £8.99). Over four decades as a Polish foreign correspondent, Kapuscinski witnessed 27 coups and revolutions, and was sentenced to death four times. This is a selection of his writings, including his coverage of the eponymous soccer…

When shopping for this salad, opt for fruit and vegetables in a wide range of vibrant contrasting colours, says Nina Olsson. Foods of similar colours often share the same nutrients, so a “rainbow” meal provides a greater variety of vitamins. Steam or roast the veg to bring out their flavour, or simply eat raw. Adding grains turns this into a more filling meal: fluffy, nutty buckwheat is a great salad grain Serves 4 big bunch of colourful fresh raw vegetables (rainbow or regular carrots, Chioggia beetroot, radishes and tomatoes), cut into pieces or sliced drizzle of olive oil 200g buckwheat handful of cauliflower and broccoli florets bunch of spinach 1 mango, stoned, halved, peeled and diced 3 handfuls of red cabbage, shredded 2 handfuls of seeds and nuts (I use…

George Michael 1963-2016 George Michael, who died on Christmas Day aged 53, was one of Britain’s biggest recording musical stars of the 1980s and 1990s. As one half of Wham! he was responsible for a series of brilliantly crafted pop hits, including Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go, Everything She Wants and Last Christmas. Then, when he tired of being a perky, perma-tanned teen idol (“all white teeth and silk shorts”, as he put it), he cut his bouffant hair and reinvented himself as a brooding soul singer. His first solo album, Faith (1987), sold more than 20 million copies, and spawned several hits, including the widely banned I Want Your Sex. Going on to sell 100 million records in total, Michael became a global superstar, said The Daily Telegraph,…

Debbie Reynolds 1932-2016 Debbie Reynolds was only 19 years old when she burst out of a cake in Singin’ in the Rain (1952) – and “into screen stardom”, said The Guardian. It was her first major role, and she had never danced professionally before, making her casting in the musical a gamble. Years later, she would recall that the film’s co-director, Gene Kelly, had made her practise until her feet bled. “The two hardest things I ever did in my life are childbirth and Singin’ in the Rain,” she said. But it paid off: she held her own against two of Hollywood’s greatest hoofers, Kelly and Donald O’Connor, in one of the best-loved films ever made. (Some of her singing, on the other hand, was dubbed by an uncredited Betty…

After David Cameron shared a pint with Chinese president Xi Jinping at The Plough at Cadsden, Buckinghamshire, back in 2015, The Plough became “an improbable symbol of the embryonic romance between London and Beijing”, says The Guardian. Sales of their chosen tipple, Greene King IPA, surged in China. Now a Chinese investment company, SinoFortone, has bought the pub itself, for an undisclosed sum. There’s certainly mileage in the deal: The Plough is now a Chinese tourist hotspot, and “the English pub concept” as SinoFortone notes, “is growing very fast in China”. But not all patrons are impressed by the changes. “Seems to have lost its mojo,” wrote one critic on TripAdvisor in September.…

In praise of Fat Cat Wednesday Nils Pratley The Guardian Some in business will doubtless regard the concept of “Fat Cat Wednesday” as gimmickry. But the “beauty” of the idea “is that the methodology is easy to understand, and the result striking”, says Nils Pratley. According to the High Pay Centre, it took just 28 hours’ of work in the new year – until midday on Wednesday – for a FTSE 100 boss on median pay to reach the average annual UK salary of £28,200 (and that figure is based on “generous assumptions” about long hours worked). Critics of Government plans to force firms to publish pay ratios also claim the exercise is too “crude”. But after two decades of discontent over boardroom pay, “a touch of coarseness is no…

AstraZeneca The Daily Telegraph The pharma giant’s “relentless focus” on immuno-oncology has created a “potentially lucrative portfolio” of drugs. A “pipeline play” with high risks, but early trial results are encouraging and it yields 5%. Buy. £43.44. DS Smith The Mail on Sunday It may not be glamorous but this packager, whose customers include Amazon and Domino’s Pizza, shows constant resilience in uncertain times. Profits jumped 60% last year (before currency considerations). The booming in-store display business promises more. Buy. 408.1p. Horizon Discovery Group The Sunday Times This biotech creates genetic material that is used in new drugs research and to diagnose conditions. Clients include most of the world’s big pharmas. Soaring sales and falling costs continue to bode well. Buy. 144p. Hotel Chocolat Group Shares The ethical British chocolatier…

Controversy of the week Kerry’s parting shot Relations between the US and Israel have reached a “dramatic low point”, said Jonathan Greenblatt in The Jerusalem Post. On 23 December, the US decided not to use its veto in the United Nations Security Council to protect its ally from a resolution – 2334 – that condemns Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories as a “flagrant violation under international law” and a “major obstacle” to peace. Then, last week, the outgoing US secretary of state, John Kerry, used his final major speech to argue that the two-state peace process had been put in “serious jeopardy” by settlement building, and by Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, which he described as “the most right-wing in Israeli history”. Israeli TV stations dropped Kerry’s speech after the…

Baghdad Multiple Isis bombings: In a bloody start to 2017, around 64 people were killed in five separate suicide attacks in Baghdad on Monday. The attacks, using explosive-laden vehicles, targeted Shia areas of the city, and were believed to be the work of the Sunni jihadi group Islamic State. Monday’s multiple bombings – the worst of which were on a marketplace and a hospital in the Sadr City area of the Iraqi capital – followed a twin bombing on New Year’s Eve, in which 29 people were killed. Baghdad has been on high alert since mid-October, when Iraq’s government began its biggest military operation in years – the battle to retake the northern Isis stronghold of Mosul. Isis has hit back with diversionary attacks on other targets across Iraq, but…

A home video of a toddler playing with his family’s new gadget went horribly wrong when the machine starting spouting obscenities. The boy asked the voice service, Alexa, on the new Amazon Echo Dot to “play digger digger”. But instead of playing the song or game the child seemed to have hoped for, the device replied: “You want to hear a station for ‘Porn detected… Porno ringtone hot chick amateur girl calling sexy f*** c*** s*** sex c**k pu**y anal dildo’.” The boy’s parents can be heard shouting “No! No! Alexa, stop!” as the bemused toddler looks on. The device appears to have been reading out the name of a spoof ringtone. A film fan from Stoke-on-Trent has spent his life savings building a replica of a 1980s cinema in…

Almost seven centuries after his death, the face of Robert the Bruce has been revealed. And the 3D digital reconstruction, based on a 19th century plaster cast of what is believed to be his skull, backs up the theory that the 14th century Scottish king suffered from leprosy. Contemporary records mention that the great warrior – famed for his victory over Edward II’s English army at Bannockburn in 1314 – was often laid low by illness, but leprosy is not mentioned, nor are any disfigurements; and there are no contemporary portraits to rely on. But scientists at the universities of Glasgow and Liverpool John Moores say the cast of his skull (unearthed during excavations of Dunfermline Abbey, in Fife, in 1818, and then reinterred) shows signs of leprosy. They therefore…

It’s the season of goodwill when people traditionally look to the future – but Donald Trump doesn’t do things by the book. On New Year’s Eve, he tweeted: “Happy New Year to all, including to my many enemies and those who have fought me and lost so badly they just don’t know what to do. Love!” It wasn’t Trump’s only festive tweet. A few days earlier he had congratulated himself for a recent surge in a consumer confidence index, signing off with the words: “Thanks Donald.” Nigel Farage and his fellow Brexit campaigners could be the heroes of a new Hollywood movie. Warner Bros, the studio behind the Harry Potter films, is reportedly considering buying the rights to The Bad Boys of Brexit, a book by Farage’s backer Arron Banks,…

The Dutch king of darts It was the finest display of scoring the sport had ever seen, says Jonathan Liew in The Daily Telegraph. On Monday night, Michael van Gerwen beat Gary Anderson by seven sets to three to win his second World Darts Championship. “Peppering the treble-20 bed as if he had a personal vendetta against it”, the 27-year-old Dutchman had an extraordinary average of 108 per three darts (the best in a world championship final since 2009). Anderson averaged 105, far higher than his winning score in either of the last two finals, yet he was still “thrashed”. The holder of every major trophy in darts, van Gerwen now has a fair claim to be the best player ever seen – and “one of the greatest geniuses plying…

Martin Scorsese is best known for making violent, high-octane movies such as Taxi Driver and Goodfellas. Yet when he chooses to turn down the volume, the results can be “astounding”, said Joshua Rothkopf in Time Out. So it is with his latest film, a stirring parable about religious faith under pressure, set in 17th century Japan. Based on an acclaimed novel by Shusaku Endo, Silence is intense, slow-burning, and – though totally devoid of humour – utterly compelling. It is Scorsese’s “most mature” movie to date, and it begs comparison with Ingmar Bergman’s masterworks. That is to say, “it ranks among the greatest achievements of spiritually minded cinema”. The film’s title refers to the response of God – or rather the bewildering lack of it – to the brutal oppression…

New cars: what the critics say What Car? Since its launch 45 years ago, the 5 Series has been “a regular at the top of the executive saloon class”. Offering a combination of “pace, driving fun and practicality”, it is a “go-to company car”; yet with stiff competition from the Audi A6 and Mercedes E-Class, it was due a rehaul. Faster and lighter than its predecessor, this new, seventh-generation model is packed with cutting-edge technology. Auto Express BMW has “taken no risks with the design”: handsome and “beautifully proportioned”, this new car looks nearly identical to the previous 5 Series. The “exquisitely finished” cabin features classy materials, as well as an excellent infotainment system and a sophisticated autonomous driving set-up. Legroom in the rear is the “best in the class”,…

Richard Adams 1920-2016 “Once upon a time there were two rabbits named Hazel and Fiver.” In the 1960s, a senior civil servant named Richard Adams began entertaining his daughters on car journeys with stories about a colony of rabbits, who – when their warren is threatened by development – must go off in search of a new home. He’d dream up his story during tedious afternoons at work, said The Times, and long for the morning school run so that he could tell his children the next chapter. When he finally finished his narrative, they urged him to turn it into a novel. Thereafter, every evening after work, Adams would spend two hours writing. His book was informed by his love for the English countryside and knowledge of its wildlife,…

Toshiba: nuclear meltdown threatens survival While much of the world was hunkered down enjoying a well-earned December break, complete mayhem broke out at Toshiba, said Alex Brummer in the Daily Mail. Shares in the Japanese industrial and tech giant went “into free fall” between Christmas and the New Year following a warning that it may have to write down billions of dollars on some of the assets of its Westinghouse nuclear operations in the US. The situation is so serious that there are “fears for the survival” of what was once one of corporate Japan’s proudest names. Some 40% of Toshiba’s market value was wiped out in three days following the announcement – erasing almost all of the gains from last year’s rally, said Gaurav Sharma in the International Business…

Brussels Juncker embarrassed: As president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker has campaigned vociferously for greater tax cooperation among member states. But leaked German diplomatic cables now show that while he was prime minister of Luxembourg (from 1995 to 2013), Juncker went to great lengths to obstruct EU efforts to tackle tax avoidance by multinationals. The cables, which are highly embarrassing for Juncker, draw attention to the workings of the EU’s Code of Conduct Group on business taxation; this committee was set up in 1998 with the aim of stopping multinational firms avoiding tax by playing member nations off against each other. But the cables show that during Juncker’s premiership, the group’s efforts were regularly delayed, diluted or derailed by a handful of small nations, often led by Luxembourg, whose…

Farage’s Trump card Nigel Farage has had a hell of a year. The former UKIP leader went into 2016 as a political outsider, routinely mocked. Then Britain voted for Brexit. Farage was promptly invited to join Donald Trump on his campaign trail, as an example of someone who’d overturned the status quo. And when Trump won the US election, Farage became the first foreign politician to visit the president-elect – the two of them pictured grinning like schoolboys in front of Trump’s gold-and-diamond front door. “We were both roaring with laughter,” Farage told Sam Knight in The New Yorker. “We were two people who had been through quite an ordeal. But suddenly, you know, we’d won.” Their friendship, he says, was forged in the furnace of liberal hatred. “Trump and…

If the New Year countdown seemed a little slow this year, there was a reason for that: the arrival of 2017 was delayed by one second, to compensate for a slowing in the Earth’s rotation. Had the “leap second” not been added, there would have been a divergence between atomic time, which is constant (measured by movements of electrons in caesium atoms), and astronomical time, which is irregular and dictated by the Earth’s spin. “Leap seconds are needed to prevent civil time drifting away from Earth time,” Peter Whibberley, of the National Physical Laboratory told the BBC. “Although the drift is small – taking around 1,000 years to accumulate a one-hour difference – if not corrected it would eventually result in clocks showing midday before sunrise.” Leap seconds were introduced…

“What a difference a year makes,” said James Gheerbrant in The Times. Chelsea entered 2016 in dismal form: 14th in the Premier League table, they’d won just five of their first 19 matches of the season. Fast-forward 12 months, however, and the Blues have been transformed into “an unstoppable winning juggernaut” at the top of the table. Their 4-2 win over Stoke last Saturday was their 13th in a row, equalling Arsenal’s record for the most consecutive Premier League victories in a single season. Under Antonio Conte, the Italian manager who took over last summer, the changes have been “staggering”. Belgian forward Eden Hazard is “tormenting defences with a puffed-chested swagger”; Nigerian Victor Moses, once so little regarded that he was loaned out for three seasons, has proved pivotal at…

On the wrong track To The Sunday Telegraph Professor Eric Laithwaite, of Imperial College London, invented the linear motor, which is the principle behind the drive and lift of the impressive maglev train operating in Japan. This train, which can travel at more than 310mph, carries passengers 10cm above the ground. It has no track to maintain, does not produce emissions and has no mechanical friction. Equally advanced are the Chinese trains using the same technology, which operate on the run from Shanghai airport. Against this background, is there any sense in Britain embarking on HS2 – a project based on technology that is already completely obsolete? Not only would a maglev service be far superior in all technical respects, it would also help to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. T.W.…

What a fantastic year Matthew Warchus has had at the helm of The Old Vic, said Paul Taylor in The Independent. His programming coups in 2016 have included Glenda Jackson’s astonishing King Lear and the critical success of Tim Minchin’s Groundhog Day musical. And now The Old Vic’s boss has capped the year, turning the corner into 2017 with a “very funny and exquisitely calibrated” revival of Art, the French three-hander that made his name as a director 20 years ago. Yasmina Reza’s play, in a sparkling translation by Christopher Hampton, is a hugely witty and enjoyable dissection of the “antagonisms that lurk under the surface of male friendships”. When one of three close friends buys a wildly expensive modernist painting, which appears to be just white strips on an…

There’s a “fertile subgenre” of movies about children whose lives are transformed by supernatural beings, said Tim Robey in The Daily Telegraph. This latest example, the affecting A Monster Calls, stars newcomer Lewis MacDougall as a young boy named Conor who takes refuge from his worries – he’s being bullied at school; his mother is dying of cancer – by sketching in his room. Then, one day, the old yew tree he can see from his window morphs into a huge tree-monster. At first the creature, voiced by Liam Neeson, seems terrifying. But he soon turns out to be friendly. He will tell Conor three stories, he says, after which the boy must tell one in return. The idea is that stories can be a good tool for processing grief,…

Hugo Wilson at Shapero Modern Hugo Wilson’s new set of hunting-themed etchings probably won’t do much to charm animal lovers. In one, two horses rear up over a giraffe they have dragged to the ground, its neck bent double in agony. Another depicts a bewildering assortment of wild animals vying for dominance in a violent scrum, seemingly on the point of ripping each other’s flesh to shreds. In Wilson’s fantasies, the attacking animals – crocodiles, lions, even ponies – have apparently been trained to hunt big game, yet their human masters are nowhere to be seen. David Attenborough it isn’t, but there’s proper art historical heft to this show. Wilson has based these images on paintings by Rubens and George Stubbs, as well as on illustrations from 18th and…

La dolce vita in Tuscany Hotel Il Pellicano, Tuscany Perched on Tuscany’s wild Monte Argentario peninsula, with “breathtaking” sunset views down the coast, this “spring-to-autumn haven of dolce vita luxury” has been a “clubbish, word-of-mouth” kind of place ever since it opened, back in the 1960s, says Lee Marshall in The Daily Telegraph. Recently, it has acquired a Michelin star and added a small, well-run spa – without losing its “insider cachet”. The town of Porto Ercole (popular with the Roman yachting set) is nearby, but guests rarely leave the hotel’s grounds, where the distractions include a beach club, two restaurants (the formal Il Pellicano and the “laid-back, al fresco” Pelligrill), a tennis court and a heated seawater pool. The decor in the 50 rooms is understated and “old-school”, though…

Carrie Fisher 1956-2016 Carrie Fisher was born into Hollywood royalty, and became something of a movie legend in her own right, owing to her role as the intergalactic rebel leader Princess Leia in one of the most successful film franchises of all time. But she packed far more than just Star Wars into her 60 years, said Vanity Fair. She was a mental health advocate, who spoke movingly and intelligently about her bipolar disorder; she was also a sought-after script doctor, who used “her signature wit to punch up” films including Hook (1991) and Sister Act (1992); but she was primarily a writer of novels (including the semi-autobiographical bestseller Postcards from the Edge) and delightfully frank and self-deprecating memoirs. In these, she described everything from her work on the first…

Global stock markets continued their “Santa rally” into the New Year. The FTSE 100 reached a new peak of 7,205 – propelled by rising oil prices, which hit an 18-month high above $58/barrel, and upbeat manufacturing figures in Britain, China and the US. Markit reported that UK manufacturing growth is at a 30-month high, buoyed by the weaker pound. But there were warnings that recent positive data may be the “calm before the Brexit storm”. Shares in Next dived 9% after the retailer reported falling sales in the Christmas run-up and warned of a “challenging” year ahead. The retailer reckons sales will be hit as rising inflation erodes earning growth. Ford cancelled plans to build a new $1.6bn plant in Mexico hours after President-elect Donald Trump blasted rival General Motors…

Convexity. The phenomenon of bond prices being more sensitive to movements in interest rates when yields are low or negative. Sounds dull and dweeby; could be explosive if rates rise faster than expected. Data lake. Bigger, sexier and deeper than a mere database. French. Difficult, awkward, hostile. Brexit negotiators fear that their opposite numbers in Brussels will be “very French” – in every sense. Gener-vacation. Holiday taken by parents and grown-up children together, paid for by the former. Low latency. Quick. Used in the world of high-frequency trading, but spreading. It can’t be long before pizza delivery is described as low latency. Midult. New demographic identified by marketeers: women aged 35-55 with the tastes of 20-year-olds. OOO. Out of the office. As in: “Yah, I’m triple-O till 3 January.” Shrinkflation.…

Steve Clarke The WH Smith boss hates giving interviews, says The Daily Telegraph. But he has been forced out of the shadows to celebrate the newsagent’s 225th birthday this year (it started in London’s Little Grosvenor Street in 1792). “People think Smiths is fuddy-duddy,” says Clarke, who grew up in the tough Belfast district of Ardoyne during the Troubles. “But I was one of the first openly gay CEOs, and Kate Swann [his predecessor] was one of the first women to be a FTSE CEO. For a company with such longevity, we are very meritocratic.” These days Clarke bangs the gong for diversity, but coming out when he was younger was tricky. His first attempt, when working for Dixons in the 1990s, failed because “people thought I was having them…