Innholdsfortegnelse for V. 1016 i The Week

What happened Campaigning in Britain’s most unpredictable election in decades formally began on Monday. After informing the Queen of the dissolution of Parliament, David Cameron gave a statement outside No. 10 in which he declared that voters faced a “stark choice” on 7 May: they could let him see through the job of “turning the country around”, or let Ed Miliband take it back to “square one”. Labour, he warned, would raise the tax bill for “every working family” by £3,000 – a figure the Tories were later forced to admit was a guess. Miliband launched Labour’s campaign by warning that the Tories’ EU policy threatened business (see page 43). Both parties came under pressure to be more forthcoming: Labour was asked to spell out its spending plans, the Tories…

Paris Sarkozy triumphs: France’s ruling Socialist Party took a drubbing in the second and final round of the French local elections on Sunday, while the conservative UMP and its allies triumphed, winning two-thirds of the country’s 101 départements. “The French people have massively rejected the policies of President François Hollande,” said UMP leader and former president Nicolas Sarkozy (above). Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Front, which had secured one in four votes in the first round, failed in the end to capture a single département, though it did win 62 of 4,108 council seats, whereas before it had only held one (see page 15). Berlin Privacy laws under scrutiny: German MPs are calling for reforms to the country’s strict privacy laws, in the wake of last week’s fatal air crash…

This week’s edition of Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs featured baker and TV presenter Paul Hollywood 1 Strut, written and performed by Lenny Kravitz 2 The Most Beautiful Girl by Billy Sherrill, Norris Wilson and Rory Michael Bourke, performed by Charlie Rich 3 My Sweet Lord, written and performed by George Harrison 4* Comfortably Numb by Roger Waters and David Gilmour, performed by Pink Floyd 5 Return to Innocence by Michael Cretu (Curly MC), Kuo Ying-nan and Kuo Hsiu-chu, performed by Enigma 6 Jesus to a Child, written and performed by George Michael 7 Fix You by Chris Martin, Jonny Buckland, Guy Berryman and Will Champion, performed by Coldplay 8 6 Words by Jermaine Scott and Varren Wade, performed by Wretch 32 Book: First Light by Geoffrey Wellum Luxury: Two pillows * Choice if allowed only one record…

Let’s applaud Cameron for being honest David Mitchell The Observer Why do politicians always try to evade our enquiries? Why do they fob us off with “I think the real issue here is...” or “The more important question is...”? All we want is a straight answer – or so we claim. Yet when David Cameron was asked last week whether he’d “go for a third term” and replied with a straight “no”, rather than with “That’s an issue I’ll have to discuss with colleagues”, did he get applauded for his honesty – for “answering the bloody question”? Not a bit of it, says David Mitchell. He was instantly accused of being “arrogant”, of insulting democracy, of presuming it was for him, not the British voter, to decide. His opponents made…

Britain’s “shameful” cancer rates Britain’s survival rates for some common forms of cancer are at least ten years behind those of comparable EU countries – a finding that Macmillan Cancer Support, which conducted the study, has described as “shameful”. The Concord-2 global study looked at five-year survival rates in 67 countries for patients diagnosed with lung, breast, colon and stomach cancers between 1995 and 1999, and compared them with rates between 2005 and 2009, reports The Guardian. The researchers found that UK survival rates had improved significantly in that time – but that they still lagged behind rates in many EU countries. For instance, in the 1990s, only 7% of lung cancer patients in the UK survived. A decade later, the rate had risen to 10% – but this still…

Several people have drawn parallels between Jeremy Clarkson – sacked for punching his producer – and John Prescott, who biffed a member of public in 2001, and yet kept his job as deputy prime minister. But Two Jags thinks the comparison is misplaced. He lashed out after being hit on the head by an egg. As he pointed out on Twitter: “I was attacked by a man with food. Didn’t attack a man for not getting food.” Meanwhile, it has emerged that when the three Top Gear presenters are on tour, a hot dinner is the least of their demands. Their list of requirements for the “Green Room” reportedly includes Veuve Clicquot champagne served on linencovered tables, white porcelain tea mugs, a coat stand – “NOT a rail” – green…

“Confidence is not about believing you’ll win. It’s about being comfortable with the fact that you might lose.” Adage, quoted in the Quartz Daily Briefing “It seems to me that what we call a religion is merely a house-trained sect, civilised by years of socialisation.” David Aaronovitch in The Times “It is in the power of every hand to destroy us, and we are beholden unto every one we meet, he doth not kill us.” Sir Thomas Browne, quoted in The Times “Bad taste is simply saying the truth before it should be said.” Mel Brooks, quoted in The Daily Telegraph “Critics of mass culture have a trick of weighing the worst of the present against the best of the past.” Critic John Gross, quoted in The Observer “We go…

Experience is important To The Times Mr Carnegie has suggested that MPs should be limited to two or three terms. If that had been the rule in the past, no prime minister from Robert Peel to Margaret Thatcher would have been eligible to lead the country, for every one of them (leaving aside peers) had served at least 17 years since first entering the Commons before becoming PM. The average was 27 years. Although Pitt the Younger was a dramatic exception, with only three years behind him when he became PM at the age of 24, it is salutary to be reminded that when Churchill came to office in 1940 he had the advantage of vast parliamentary and ministerial experience since first being elected in 1900. It is only very…

Forget Fifty Shades of Grey and mummy porn, said Jamie Doward in The Observer. The latest literary phenomenon is “the British public’s seemingly unfettered desire for nature writing”. Helen Macdonald’s H is for Hawk – the story of how she trained a goshawk while recovering from her father’s death – won two major prizes last year, and sold more than 135,000 copies. Before that, Robert Macfarlane’s The Wild Places and The Old Ways were muchpraised bestsellers. Macfarlane’s success “has led to a glut of books in which an author sets out on a journey across Britain that becomes one of self-discovery”. Similarly, three major tomes about British butterflies have followed on the heels of Patrick Barkham’s hit The Butterfly Isles. The style might be called “contemporary lyrical pastoral”, said Kathryn…

The suits at Walt Disney Pictures have come up with a sure-fire way of making money, said Rhys Blakely in The Times: producing live-action remakes of Disney’s own classic animated feature films. The ploy was first tried in 1996, with a liveaction version of 101 Dalmatians starring Glenn Close. Now it has gone into overdrive. As well as Cinderella (released in the UK this week), cinema-goers can shortly expect remakes of Dumbo, The Jungle Book and Beauty and the Beast. To some, this provides “depressing confirmation of how hesitant Hollywood has become to back original ideas”. But look at it from Disney’s point of view, said Ben Fritz in The Wall Street Journal. After recent flops such as the dire John Carter (2012), it’s no surprise that the company is…

Attempts to claim back artworks looted by the Nazis tend to be difficult and protracted, says The New York Times. El Greco’s Portrait of a Gentleman, for instance, was seized by the Gestapo from the Viennese industrialist Julius Priester in 1938 – and after the War, Priester and his family tried for decades to claim it back. As early as 1951, it was located in New York, but it was sold on, eventually re-emerging in 2003 in the possession of a Swiss collector. Even then, since private owners are not bound by international treaties on the return of looted art, it was not returned. However, the painting was bought by a New York dealer in 2014. And when Priester’s heirs, who live in Britain, approached him via the Commission for…

Programmes Code of a Killer Two-part drama about the British scientist who pioneered DNA finger-printing, and its role in the identification and conviction of a double murderer. With David Threlfall and John Simm. Mon 6 April, ITV1 9pm (90mins). David Cameron: Tonight The first of five films painting intimate portraits of the party leaders. Tue 7 April, ITV1 7.30pm (30mins). The Island with Bear Grylls Bear Grylls takes 14 men and 14 women to separate uninhabited Pacific islands to see which sex fares better. They are left alone for a month, filming themselves, with only the clothes they came in. Wed 8 & Thur 9 April, C4 9pm (60mins). This World: Britain’s Jihadi Brides More than 60 British women have joined Isis in Syria. Their friends and families reveal how…

This is a great side dish that adds taste and texture to any meal, says Ella Woodward, a food blogger who recently published her first cookbook, made up of plant-based, dairy-free and gluten-free recipes. The dish can also be used as a dip for crudités Creamy Brazil-nut cheese 1 lemon a couple of fresh rosemary sprigs 2 tsps nutritional yeast (see below for more information) 1 mug Brazil nuts (120g) 1 tbsp olive oil salt and pepper • Simply juice the lemon and pull the rosemary leaves off the sprigs, then add them to a food processor with the nutritional yeast, Brazil nuts, olive oil and salt and pepper, and whizz until combined. • Serve as desired; I love adding it to a pile of stir-fried veggies, or spreading it…

Bruges and Waterloo Mark the bicentenary of Waterloo with a 4-night Belgium trip with Huon Mallalieu. £1,695pp (meals, Eurostar). 020-7436 8801, www.theoldie.co.uk/brugesand-waterloo. Depart 13 July. Icelandic getaway Staying at the central Hotel Frón in Reykjavík, enjoy a 2-night break from £199pp b&b, incl. Gatwick flights and an excursion. 020-8099 9366, www.viva-holidays.co.uk. Book by 7 Apr, travel in Oct. Northumbrian short break Visit Alnwick Castle during a 7-night stay at the Paikes Lane Apartment (sleeps 3), in the centre of town. Prices from £293.25 (was £345). 01228-406721, www.northumbriancottages. info. Arrive 10 April. Hong Kong and Fiji Enjoy a 2-night stay at the Metropark Hotel Causeway Bay, followed by a 6-night stay at the Fiji Hideaway Resort, for £1,395 per person. 0800-988 4834, www.aus.travel.com Select dates in June.…

Jackie Trent 1940-2015 Jackie Trent, who has died aged 74, was courted by the Kray twins in London clubs in the 1950s, said The Herald (Glasgow); she knocked The Beatles off the top of the charts in the 1960s – and in the 1980s, co-wrote one of TV’s most enduring theme songs. The producers of a new Australian soap opera were going to call it Ramsay Street – until they heard Trent’s lyrics: “Neighbours, everybody needs good neighbours...” A miner’s daughter, she was born in Newcastleunder-Lyme in 1940, and by her teens, had become a star on the local club circuit. In 1955, she packed her bag and headed to London with, as she recalled, “no agent, no contacts and no work”. But she soon found work, in West End…

Heinz ketchup, Oscar Mayer hot dogs, Kool-Aid, Jell-O, Kraft Singles... “it could be the perfect meal for a six-year-old”, said the FT. But Warren Buffett, “who once admitted to eating like one”, is betting that consumers around the world share his tastes. The billionaire investor has joined forces with private equity firm 3G Capital to combine Heinz and Kraft in a $100bn deal, creating the world’s fifth-largest food conglomerate. The deal, which saw Kraft shares jump 34%, doesn’t involve Cadbury (controversially bought by Kraft in 2010), which was spun out into a separate company, Mondelez, in 2012. What does 3G Capital, a clique of Brazilian bankers led by Jorge Paulo Lemann (see page 40), see in Kraft? To put it bluntly, cost-cutting opportunities, said Andrew Clark in The Times. This…

THE WEEK CROSSWORD 947 An Ettinger card case and two Connell Guides will be given to the sender of the first correct solution to the crossword and the clue of the week opened on Monday 13 April. Send it to: The Week Crossword 947, 2nd floor, 32 Queensway, London W2 3RX, or email the answers to crossword@theweek.co.uk. Set by Tim Moorey (www.timmoorey.info) This week’s crossword winner will receive an Ettinger ( www.ettinger.co.uk) visiting card case for business cards or to use as a mini wallet, and two Connell Guides (www.connellguides.com). ACROSS 1 Game instruction given to anticorruption police? (6,7) 8 Back engaging ambassador to try again (6) 9 No longer have aim for score at Twickenham (4,4) 10 Definitely successful but needing a drink indoors? (4,3,3) 12 Two days to…

What happened A Saudi-led coalition launched air strikes on Iranian-backed rebels in Yemen last week, heightening fears of a new proxy war between two of the Middle East’s military superpowers. Warplanes pounded targets in the Yemeni capital, Sana’a, captured by the Houthi insurgents last year. But the raids failed to halt the rebel advance on the country’s main port, Aden, where fierce fighting was reported. President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, who represents Yemen’s Sunni majority, fled to Saudi Arabia. Responding to the crisis, Arab leaders agreed to create a joint military force to intervene in states fighting armed rebellions. The announcement came at a summit of the Sunni-dominated Arab League, where Egyptian President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi warned that the Arab world was facing “an unprecedented threat”. He blamed Shia “stooges…

Fort Bragg, North Carolina Desertion charge: The army sergeant who was freed last year from Taliban captivity and returned home to the US, has been charged with desertion and misbehaviour. In June 2009, Bowe Bergdahl had walked away unarmed from his post in Afghanistan when he was captured by Taliban troops. Five years later, to the fury of Republicans, President Obama secured his release in exchange for letting five Guantánamo inmates go free. But the circumstances of his capture have always been unclear: some former army colleagues say he’d grown disillusioned with the war and was deserting his post, whereas his lawyers claim he had been seeking out a US general officer to report a “disturbing situation”. Following a lengthy investigation, he is now awaiting court martial. If convicted, he…

A group representing British GPs has posted a list of their patients’ trivial, inappropriate and sometimes downright weird complaints. Here are some of the highlights: “I get sore feet when I dance in high heels.” “My lodger is annoying me because he is spending too much time in my room.” “Doctor, please tell my son to study harder so he can get into Eton.” (The boy was six.) “Can you settle a marital dispute? My wife thinks paracetamol is better. I think ibuprofen is. Who is right?” “Please can you help me write my CV?” One patient requested a home visit because he wanted help changing the batteries in his satellite remote control; another booked an emergency appointment for a cold sore, and then a second one when his grandmother…

UNITED STATES How we kill inmates isn’t the real issue The New Republic (Washington DC) In 2011, the European Union set out to “save America from itself” by banning the export of lethal-injection drugs, says Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig. Without these drugs, EU lawmakers reasoned, US officials wouldn’t be able to carry out executions, and the practice would perhaps end. Alas, they “underestimated old-fashioned American ingenuity”. The US is simply resorting to alternative means. Last week, Utah gave the green light to firing squads. As stocks of lethal drugs dwindle, other states will doubtless fall back on this and other methods. Oklahoma also permits firing squads; Kentucky allows electrocution; in New Hampshire, inmates can be hanged; Arizona has the gas chamber. Commentators are already arguing that these methods are no crueller…

The surgeon who performed the world’s first successful penis transplant says his phone has barely stopped ringing since, with requests for help coming in from all over the world, reports the Daily Mail. Last month, South African urologist André van der Merwe revealed that in a nine-hour operation performed in December, he had given a new organ (from a deceased donor) to a 21-year-old man, whose own penis had had to be amputated following a botched ritual circumcision. Three months on, the man was said to be sexually active again, and to have the potential to have children. “This guy is now confident, he’s really back to being a man,” said van der Merwe – now widely known as Dr Dick. There are nine other men awaiting penis transplants in…

Good riddance; he had to go; sacking was too good for him. News that Jeremy Clarkson had been sacked by the BBC met with universal jubilation last week... in Argentina. In Britain, opinion was divided, said The Times. Many agreed that Tony Hall, the BBC’s director general, had had no choice but to fire the Top Gear presenter: Clarkson had, after all, verbally abused and punched producer Oisin Tymon over the absence of a hot dinner. Yet there was also the sense that while Clarkson had “been an idiot, he’d been sacked for more than his idiocy”. Had the BBC taken into consideration the interests of licence-fee payers, it would surely have stopped short of firing “the creative genius behind a global hit”. Instead, senior managers seized the opportunity to…

Cricket: Australia win a thrilling World Cup “For the fourth time in five tournaments, the World Cup is in Australian hands,” said Mike Selvey in The Guardian. The side went into Sunday’s final against New Zealand, their co-hosts and arch-rivals, as favourites. But in the event they surpassed expectations, blowing the Black Caps “out of the water”. In front of the Melbourne Cricket Ground’s (MCG) 93,013-strong crowd – a record official attendance for a cricket match – Australia’s peerless bowlers took wicket after wicket, bowling out New Zealand for just 183. When it was their turn to bat, they reached their target at a canter, winning by seven wickets and with 101 balls remaining. In an emotional press conference afterwards, Michael Clarke, Australia’s captain, dedicated the victory to his “little…

Theatre Rules for Living Playwright: Sam Holcroft Director: Marianne Elliott Dorfman Theatre, National Theatre, London SE1 (020-7452 3000) Until 8 July Running time: 2hrs 30mins ★★★ The final play of Nicholas Hytner’s 12-year stint at the National is a “brilliant black comedy about families, furtive truths and the games that people play”, said Dominic Maxwell in The Times. Mix Alan Ayckbourn with a game show based on cognitive behavioural therapy, “place it in laboratory conditions”, and you will get the feel of Sam Holcroft’s “ingenious, insightful play”. At first, we are in familiar territory, said Matt Trueman in Variety: a family Christmas torpedoed by clashing personalities. But there’s a twist. At each end of this family’s kitchen – kitted out as a kind of board game in Chloe Lamford’s outstanding…

The Royal Academy’s “revelatory” new Richard Diebenkorn retrospective is a “pitch-perfect exhibition of a pitch-perfect artist”, said Jackie Wullschlager in the Financial Times. Although not a household name in Britain, Diebenkorn is considered a postwar master in the US: when Barack Obama moved into the White House, he selected one of the artist’s paintings to decorate his personal quarters. Diebenkorn was born in 1922, and apart from wartime service in the US Marine Corps, spent most of his life in California. This show – Diebenkorn’s first in Britain since 1991 – includes around 50 of his works, covering his career from his student days in the 1950s to the “lustrous” paintings he completed shortly before his death in 1993. Diebenkorn’s development as a painter can be “easily grouped into three…

Best books… Robert Macfarlane Robert Macfarlane, writer and Cambridge don, picks six of his favourite books about travel and landscape. His latest book, Landmarks, is published by Hamish Hamilton at £20 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by an unknown late 14th century poet (Weidenfeld and Nicolson £7.99). Gawain’s quest for the Green Chapel is English literature’s second great work of landscape writing (the first being Beowulf). He rides through winter forests, sleeps by crashing waterfalls and battles “wodwos” and “worms” – and all this in what is now the Wirral. A Time Of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor, 1977 (John Murray £9.99). In 1933 the young PLF set off to walk from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople, through a Europe on the brink of calamity. His gloriously ornate…

Spring is upon us and it’s time to embrace the lighter side of red wine, says Hamish Anderson in The Daily Telegraph. Here are three high-quality Beaujolais from the “wonderfully juicy” 2013 vintage: Fleurie, Georges Duboeuf 2013 (£9.75; Sainsbury’s). Duboeuf’s signature floral labels are a “reliable sign of quality”. Serve this raspberry-scented Fleurie at cellar temperature (12°C) and it will disappear in a flash. Brouilly, Château des Tours 2013 (£11.50; The Wine Society). There are ten Beaujolais areas (or crus), all with different attributes. Fleurie is known for its perfume and delicacy; Brouilly is also at the lighter end but with darker fruit. This is typical, with its plum and black cherry, and a “dusting of spice”. Saint-Amour, Domaine des Pierres Trichard 2013 (£12.95; Tanners Wines). Saint-Amour has instant appeal…

● Ignore “display until” dates. They’re not an indicator of the food’s longevity, but rather part of a system used by retailers to help manage stock. ● But you should take “use-by” dates seriously. And if something is within date but still smells funny, just bin it. ● Ignore the instructions about freezing products on the day you buy them. You can freeze them until their use-buy date. ● Disregard packaging that tells you to “consume within x days of opening”. This often refers to how long a product retains its optimum quality, rather than safety. Some food – such as yoghurt – keeps for weeks after opening. ● Keeping apples in the fridge can extend their life by weeks. ● Onions can last months beyond their best-before dates –…

La Grande Maison, Bordeaux, France Created by “two grandees of the French gastronomic scene” – Bernard Magrez and Joël Robuchon – this hotel is a true dining destination, says Natalie Whittle in the Financial Times. It has only six bedrooms, and feels like a “baronial home”, with velvet upholstery, heavy curtains and “suffusions of flowers”. Sleeping in one of the richly “old-fashioned” rooms “is like being rolled up in a French tapestry”. Eating in the Michelin-chasing restaurant is an event, from the meticulous amusebouches to the “mobile glutton’s altar” that is the dessert trolley. La Grande Maison (www.lagrandemaison-bordeaux.com) has doubles from g395. Prix-fixe menus g160-g210.…

The historian who fought at Cable Street William Fishman 1921-2014 As a boy in London’s East End, Bill Fishman took part in the Battle of Cable Street – the 1936 clash between Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts and their opponents both from within the neighbourhood and beyond. Years later, as the foremost historian of the area where he was born, he would write about that day, and other occasions when the East End’s disparate communities stood side by side against their oppressors. Often, the poor had been represented as a passive underclass, said The Daily Telegraph. Fishman “showed them as agents of change – people who, through co-operative and collective action, were capable of winning significant victories”. Born in 1921, William Fishman was the son of a Russian-born Jewish tailor and a…

Jaguar/Geely/HSBC: revving up in Brum Ten years after MG Rover went bust, with the loss of 6,500 jobs, the West Midlands is “back in the fast lane” of car manufacturing, said James Quinn in The Daily Telegraph. Jaguar Land Rover, which is owned by India’s Tata Motors, is to invest £400m in a new plant; meanwhile, China’s Zhejiang Geely group, which owns the London Taxi Company, plans to spend £250m on a new factory which will produce the next generation of black cabs. The latter expects to create 1,000 jobs. When MG Rover collapsed, it “seemed like the end”. But there is still “significant life left in Britain’s car industry”, which now has an annual turnover of £64bn, employs 160,000 people directly and was last year responsible for 10% of…

Deflation isn’t a threat? Don’t be so sure Larry Elliott The Guardian There are some economists, says Larry Elliott, who insist deflation is not a threat – that there’s no danger of falling into the economic doldrums, as Japan has done. Fear not, they say: give it time. Wages will rise with growing productivity. But weak productivity is only part of the story. As Bank of England chief economist Andy Haldane points out, the rising number of older and overseas workers willing to work at existing rates has altered the relation between employment rates and wage pressures. In theory, higher employment in a recovering economy should make wages rise: by 4% a year on the Bank’s model. Yet they are now “struggling to get above 2%”. At least in Japan,…

● Oil chatter When unrest in Yemen sent the oil price ticking up last week, it was a shot in the arm for traders “betting against the bearish consensus in the oil market”, said Gregory Meyer in the FT. The price of Brent Crude, for example, jumped 6% to within a whisker of $59/barrel – and then retreated. But a handful of traders are so sure of an eventual sustained rebound that they have resumed buying call options that pay out if benchmark crude futures surpass $100 by the end of 2018. The price could just as easily go the other way, however, said Andrew Critchlow in The Daily Telegraph. A binding deal that brings Iran in from the cold is “tantalisingly close” – and that could have a huge…

The week’s best buys Bellway The Times All the metrics are moving in the right direction for the housebuilder, which is investing in growth and adding regional subsidies. A generous dividend, with room for further improvement. Buy. £20.59. Inspired Energy Daily Mail The energy procurement specialist has notched up record full-year results and boosted its dividend. Exceptional results from the corporate division and impressive client retention have particularly impressed broker Shore Capital. Buy. £11.88. Matomy Media Group Shares This digital marketing business, which manages campaigns for 5,100 customers, is well-placed to capitalise on the fastdeveloping mobile advertising boom. Canny strategic partnerships spell good news for future growth. Buy. 199.6p. Smith & Nephew Daily Mail Speculation that the artificial hip and knee maker could once again become a bid target has…

Controversy of the week Long after the servants at Clarence House have gone to bed, said Richard Kay in the Daily Mail, the heir to the throne can often be found at his desk scratching away in black ink. Passionate words pour from his pen: letters to ministers and civil servants on issues dear to his heart – hunting, architecture, homeopathy. But until last week we, the public, never thought we’d get to read these “black spider memos”. Well, we soon will. For ten years The Guardian tried to get 27 memos that Prince Charles sent to ministers in 2004/5 released under the Freedom of Information Act, to no avail: when an information tribunal demanded that they be published three years ago, the then attorney general, Dominic Grieve, simply overruled…

Sympathy for the coalition James Graham wants to do the near-impossible: make politicians seem human again. The British screenwriter – whose current hits include the film X+Y and the Broadway musical version of Finding Neverland – was also behind Coalition, the TV drama about the frantic political dealmaking that took place after the May 2010 election. In it, he portrayed David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Gordon Brown with rare sympathy. “The public handed these people an impossible situation,” he told Andrew Rawnsley in The Observer. “We don’t know what we want. You’ve got five days to sort it out. I want you to compromise, but when you do I will consider that a betrayal and I’ll be angry.” Graham wants audiences to empathise instead. “I think it’s the easiest thing…

“General Khalifa Haftar’s enemies accuse him of being a CIA plant, a traitor, and a vicious killer, and of seeking to install himself as a latter-day Gaddafi,” says Jon Lee Anderson in The New Yorker. He is certainly the figure most likely to decisively influence the country’s current drama. A former army cadet, Haftar joined Gaddafi’s coup to seize power in Libya in 1969, and led a war against Chad in 1987, in which he was captured, and subsequently disavowed by the Gaddafi regime. For 20 years – like many of the senior politicians and militia leaders now battling for supremacy in Libya – Haftar lived abroad, in northern Virginia, from where he led the National Front for the Salvation of Libya, a CIA-backed group that plotted the overthrow of…

SWITZERLAND Let’s welcome this “eyesore” in the Alps Neue Zürcher Zeitung (Zurich) Surely they’re not going to build a skyscraper in the Alps? Plans to erect an 80-storey luxury hotel in the Alpine village of Vals have been greeted with horror, says Davide Scruzzi. The tower, designed by US architect Thom Mayne, will be a third taller than London’s Shard, and critics are already fulminating about the monstrous shadow it will cast over the glories of nature. Yet knee-jerk reactions are always a bad thing; given their way, naysayers in Paris would have put the kibosh on the Eiffel Tower. The proposed hotel is no eyesore: it’s wonderfully slender – just one room per floor – and its light-reflective surface would match its surroundings perfectly. Economics matter, too. The thought…

At 10.27am last Tuesday, Germanwings flight 9525 from Barcelona to Düsseldorf reached its cruising altitude of 38,000ft; three minutes later, Captain Patrick Sondheimer left the cockpit to visit the lavatory, said Jon Henley in The Guardian. His co-pilot had encouraged him to go, and Sondheimer – a skilled pilot with ten years’ experience – had no reason to think it unwise to leave Andreas Lubitz alone: the pair had flown in from Düsseldorf without any mishap, and their conversation during the first 20 minutes of the flight was later described as “jovial”. Yet no sooner had the captain closed the door than Lubitz, 27, flicked a switch to put the plane into descent mode. Two minutes later, Sondheimer returned. Finding the keypad entry system had been disabled, he tried to…

Spare a thought, said Stuart Heritage in The Guardian, for all those poor people who gave birth to daughters between seven and 14 years ago. They are living in chaos today. Their homes are littered with tear-stained tissues and their ears are being assaulted with wails of anguish. Why? Because Zayn Malik has “ruined everything” by leaving One Direction, the most successful boy band of all time. He says he wants “to be a normal 22-year-old who is able to relax”, though he has subsequently released a solo single. The news prompted an emotional outpouring on Twitter. “I JUST WOKE UP AND ZAYN LEFT IM CRYING SO HARD I HATE THIS LIFE,” read one; “zayn left one direction??? @god what did I do wrong,” read another. Given the “obsessive nature…

On Sunday, Formula One breathed a collective sigh of relief, said Daniel Johnson in The Daily Telegraph. In a “thrilling, tensionfilled race”, Sebastian Vettel won the Malaysian Grand Prix. The German’s victory came as a complete surprise: at the Australian Grand Prix two weeks before, Lewis Hamilton “crushed the entire field”, and many feared he would dominate a “dreary, doom-laden season”. But with “a flash of brilliance”, Vettel rediscovered the form that saw him win four consecutive championships between 2010 and 2013. The 27-year-old had been “written off” following a disastrous 2014, when he failed to win a single race. But he moved from Red Bull to Ferrari last October and, after just two Grand Prix for the Italians, he already looks like “a transformed man”. Vettel picked an ideal…

Cuckoo by Nick Davies Bloomsbury 320pp £16.99 The Week bookshop £13.99 (incl. p&p) “The cuckoo has one of the most equivocal reputations in the natural world,” said Andrew Holgate in The Sunday Times. “For thousands of years it has been spring’s trumpeter”, whose arrival has always been celebrated in words and music. The oldest known English song proclaims: “Sumer is icumen in / Lhude sing cuccu.” So distinctive is the bird’s call that the Spanish call it “cuco”, the Finns “kaki” and the Kashmiris “kuku”. But the cuckoo is of course also “nature’s most notorious cheat”. Ever since Aristotle noticed that the female lays its eggs in smaller birds’ nests, people have been “appalled by its parasitic behaviour”, and puzzled by how it gets away with such trickery. “In this…

Cinderella Dir: Kenneth Branagh 1hr 52mins (U) Conventional retelling of the fairy tale ★★ Why mess with a winning formula? That seems to be the premise of Disney’s live-action remake of its own classic 1950 animated feature, which is strikingly faithful to the original, said Tim Robey in The Daily Telegraph. Downton Abbey’s fresh-faced Lily James plays the put-upon heroine, who gets to go to the ball thanks to the intervention of her flamboyant fairy godmother (Helena Bonham Carter). There she meets her handsome prince (Richard Madden), but has to scarper before the clock strikes midnight. Kenneth Branagh’s film, with “its brilliant use of colour and its lavishly detailed production and costume design”, is magnificent to look at, said Geoffrey Macnab in The Independent. The more’s the pity that it…

The Week reviews an exhibition in a private gallery Around Drawing at Rosenfeld Porcini The title of this group show is misleading: this is really a painting exhibition. What the artists here have in common, though, is that they use traditional methods of draughtsmanship as a base for their work. The premise may be flimsy, but on the whole, the quality of the work compensates for it. What’s immediately apparent is the range of styles. Marcel Rusu’s charcoals based on photographs of the Hindenburg disaster take their cue from Gerhard Richter, while Lanfranco Quadrio’s epic scenes owe a debt to Goya and Francis Bacon. The work on display references everyone from Leonardo to Jackson Pollock to Hergé. There are certain paintings here that peddle an awkward line between social commentary…

What the experts recommend The Raby Hunt Summerhouse near Darlington (01325-374237) The Raby Hunt should never have worked, says Jay Rayner in The Observer. James Close was a struggling golf professional when he decided to open a fine-dining restaurant in “the middle of some fields” near Darlington. Few would have predicted a happy outcome for this self-taught chef. Yet through some extraordinary combination of “hard work, innocence, stubbornness and talent”, Close has created a Michelin-starred “beacon of gastronomy”. Raw beef from a Dexter-Wagyu cross, dressed with a little smoked marrowbone oil, dots of anchovy and torn basil leaves is a “sultry aromatic mouthful”. Tiny cylinders of duck-liver parfait come wrapped in the thinnest leaves of smoked eel. A thick piece of duck breast has “gloriously rendered skin” and comes with…

New cars: what the critics say The Daily Telegraph One of BMW’s “exclusive flagship models”, the 6-series Coupé has now been “refreshed”. The manufacturer consulted its customers on how to improve the car and discovered they wanted “a bit more luxury” to go with its sportiness – and even more of that sportiness. So there are new, fancy details – such as double-stitched leather – and a sports exhaust now comes as standard. Top Gear Still, you’ll need to “squint” to spot the changes. The exterior is almost indistinguishable from the last model, barring the “more angular” front lights and “lightly rehashed” bumper details. And for all the “nice” finishing inside the cabin, it’s “hardly memorable” – indeed, it struggles to justify the price tag. Better to focus on the…

Historic Toilet Tour in York takes you from Roman loos and Viking cesspits to a Victorian women’s lavatory. It is “fascinating”, but takes place infrequently: the next two are on 6 April and 1 August (£6 for adults; www.yorkwalk.co.uk). The Liverpool Slavery History Trail runs from the Cammell Laird shipyard, which supplied the confederates with warships, to a bank founded with slave money. It takes place every Saturday and Sunday (£7 for adults; www.slaveryhistorytours.com). Glasgow School of Art Style Tour takes in the city’s famed turn-of-the-century architecture, and is led by students from the art school. It runs every Sunday from 5 April (£9.75 for adults; www.gsa.ac.uk). A History of Terror, in Belfast, tells the “lost human stories” of the Troubles. Pointedly “non-partisan”, it includes visits to the sights of…

Tobago’s magical waters There’s a “most magical tour” in Tobago that can only be taken after dark, says Sarah Baxter in The Independent. First, you have to learn to paddleboard – which is tricky, but on a stable beginner’s board in calm waters anyone can do it. Then, when night falls, you wobble out “like Bambi on ice” onto the waters of a mangrove-fringed lagoon that are a “hotbed of bioluminescence”. Initially, there’s only a vague glow, then all at once “the world catches fire”. With each dip of the blade, there’s a swirl of “ghostly vapour”; when you lift the blade up, “drips fall and hit the surface where they explode like tiny stars”. Each wave of the paddle sends “sorcerous shazams” in all directions. No longer Bambi, now…

Gregory Walcott 1928-2015 During his 40-year Hollywood career, Gregory Walcott, who has died aged 87, worked with such luminaries as Richard Widmark and Clint Eastwood. But his own fame rested on just one film: Plan 9 from Outer Space. A science-fiction fiasco directed by the notorious Ed Wood, with wobbly sets, a dead leading actor, and toy planets hanging from bits of string, it is routinely cited as the worst movie ever made – and has become a cult classic. Born in North Carolina, Walcott hitchhiked to Los Angeles with $100 in his pocket in 1949. Tall and rugged, with a southern drawl, he appeared in 30-odd films and 300 TV shows, playing cowboys, heavies and drill sergeants (he had spent two years in the army). It was a fellow…

The election campaign got under way with a fillip for the Chancellor from the ONS, which revised up UK growth for 2014 to 2.8% – the fastest rate in the G7. Growth in the final quarter was largely driven by an improvement in the trade balance and domestic consumption. A GfK poll found that consumer confidence is at a 13-year high. The Institute for Fiscal Studies, an independent think tank, issued a strong critique of David Cameron’s contention that working families face an average £3,000 tax rise if Labour is elected, describing the figure as “unhelpful and of little value”. The Bank of England laid out the parameters for this year’s banking stress tests. Banks will have to prove they have the capital to withstand a collapse in economic growth…

Jorge Paulo Lemann The Brazilian powerhouse behind the Kraft Heinz megadeal is much admired by his partner Warren Buffett, who describes him as a “classy guy” and “a great professor”, says The Daily Telegraph. Together they “make for an irresistible combination” – even if Lemann’s dietary habits (he likes to snack on dried fruits) leave the Sage cold. At 75, Lemann is Brazil’s richest man, with a fortune worth around $25bn. A Harvardeducated former tennis champion, he set up 3G Capital in 2004 and embarked on a decade of acquisitions. After helping to create the world’s largest brewer, AB InBev, in 2008, the “hungry tycoon” wolfed down Burger King before teaming up with Buffett to secure Heinz. He lives in Switzerland, having relocated there following a kidnap attempt on his…

Amid predictions of a huge spike in scams as the pension freedom reforms kick in, a Daily Mail undercover investigation has revealed just how easy it is for cold-callers and fraudsters to buy data about your pension, says Michelle McGagh on Citywire. Here’s how to protect yourself Don’t take cold calls. “Regulated, reputable investment firms are very unlikely to cold-call prospective clients,” says Jamie Jenkins of Standard Life. Beware “glossy brochures” that come through the door, too. Resist income temptations. You might believe that a £10,000 annual income from a £100,000 pension is a reasonable expectation. It isn’t. You have to take “a big risk” to get that sort of return. Beware fraudulent reviews. There have already been examples of scammers setting up fraudulent sites that mimic the Government’s Pension…