Innholdsfortegnelse for V. 1276 i The Week

It is “a matter of national shame” that NHS staff are still not being given the personal protective equipment that they need to fight the virus, said The Independent. NHS hospitals, GP surgeries and the Royal College of Nursing, among others, have repeatedly warned that front-line staff may be unable to do their jobs because the shortage of gowns, gloves and masks poses a serious risk to their own health. Public Health England has issued “alarming” new guidance allowing for the reuse and substitution of gowns. It seems extraordinary, said The Daily Telegraph, that despite this dire shortage, UK firms are exporting tonnes of masks and gowns manufactured here. Millions of pieces of British PPE are being shipped to Germany, Spain and Italy by companies that had tried to get…

Netflix, with news that it has added more than 15 million subscribers this year, twice as many as expected (see page 42). However, it could soon start running short of new shows owing to productions being mothballed. Amazon, which has also profited in the crisis, this week announced that it was awarding its warehouse and delivery staff a temporary £2-an-hour pay rise. Nick Heath, a sports commentator, who won thousands of new Twitter followers by posting clips of himself narrating tales from ordinary life in his “work” voice. Earlier this month, BBC Radio Stoke’s Phil Bowers provided pro-commentary for clips of children playing football in lockdown in their back gardens. Bad week for: Munich, with the cancellation of its Oktoberfest. The beer festival, which had been scheduled to begin in…

Newcastle Golden goal: A Saudi-led consortium has agreed to buy Newcastle United for £300m, signalling the end of Sports Direct tycoon Mike Ashley’s 13-year ownership of the football club. If the deal goes through, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) – which is headed by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and has reported assets of £300bn – will own 80% of the club’s shares, with the remaining 20% split between the financier Amanda Staveley and property tycoons David and Simon Reuben. Amnesty International is among those to have criticised the proposed takeover: it says the Saudi regime is using the club to “sportswash” its dismal human rights record. Before they can take over the club, Newcastle’s new suitors must pass the Premier League’s owners’ and directors’ test, which is designed…

An adventurer’s near miss Over the course of 12 months last year, Steve Backshall (pictured) visited uncharted 100-metre waterfalls in Suriname, navigated desert canyons in Oman and dived through unexplored caves in Mexico. “It was the hardest year I’ve ever had. Apart from anything else, during that same year, I built a house, nearly went bankrupt and had my first baby.” The wildlife presenter’s adventures are not without risk: he once nearly drowned while attempting the first descent of a whitewater river in Bhutan. “This river tumbles down and, over several miles of vertical descent, thrashes its way down through these incredible remote canyons,” he told Donna Ferguson in The Observer. At one point, his kayak overturned, and he was submerged for almost five minutes in freezing water. “I was,…

Until recently, marine biologists paid little attention to the deep sea. Pitch black, and with temperatures ranging from about zero to 3°C, it doesn’t sound like a rich ecosystem; the abyssal plains were long assumed to be barren deserts. Yet it is the largest habitat on Earth – and until recently, it was almost entirely unexplored. But now, scientists have found that these plains have an extremely high level of biodiversity. They are teeming with strange, little-known forms of life: molluscs, nematode worms, bacteria, protozoans, sponges and strange fish – eels, spiderfish, lizardfish. Until recently, it was also thought that all life began with the Sun and photosynthesis. That was disproved in 1977, when oceanographers exploring underwater mountains near the Galápagos Islands spotted a hydrothermal vent more than 2,000 metres…

Fate has been especially cruel to millennials Annie Lowrey The Atlantic Millennials have truly become a “lost generation”, says Annie Lowrey. The children of the 1980s and 1990s did everything right. They avoided drugs and alcohol as adolescents; they went to college in record numbers; they sought “stable, meaningful careers”. Yet the world has conspired against them. They entered the workforce just as the 2008 credit crunch produced “the worst downturn since the Great Depression”. This, combined with their hefty debts from increasingly worthless university degrees, put them on “a worse lifetime-earning trajectory and blocked them out of the asset market”. And now, just as they’re entering what should be their peak earning years, they’ve been swamped by the economic “tsunami” created by the coronavirus pandemic. Many of them hold…

Greenland’s vast ice sheet shrank by a record amount last summer, an analysis has revealed. By combining the amounts lost by meltwater run-off and glacial calving, researchers from Columbia and Liège universities calculated that the sheet lost 600 billion tonnes in mass – equivalent to a global sea level rise of around 1.5mm. While warm temperatures were one factor, another was a sustained period of high pressure – the result of changing atmospheric circulation patterns which are believed to be becoming more common. The high pressure pulled warm, moist air into the northern part of Greenland, creating a small-scale greenhouse effect, while in the south it resulted in less snowfall. In the journal The Cryosphere, the scientists warn that if such high pressure zones become normal, future melting of the…

In an alternative Britain, the one that existed before coronavirus, children would have trooped back to school this week for the summer term, said the London Evening Standard. As it is, schools remain open only to the children of key workers and to pupils with special educational needs. The vast majority of Britain’s ten million schoolchildren are stuck at home. Over the weekend it was reported that some classes might go back on 11 May, but Gavin Williamson, the Education Secretary, denied this. The Government, he said, was studying measures being deployed in other European countries, such as Denmark, that have started to reopen their schools, but had set no date yet to follow suit. It’s thought that children in this country are unlikely to return to their classes until…

Caring carers To The Daily Telegraph There is a crucial difference between a carer in a residential or nursing home and front-line NHS staff. All are simply amazing, but care home workers will have looked after their residents for months, often years, and formed a bond with them and their families. Seeing them become seriously ill and die is a real trauma. Although they get excellent care, Covid-19 patients admitted to hospitals are not known to the medical staff. Both sectors require the best protection and testing, but I feel that the pressures on care home staff have been grossly underestimated. Estelle Townsend-Smith, Coxhill, Pembrokeshire A story of expletives To The Economist Your intriguing article on why so many Dutch swear words relate to disease instead of sex made me…

Platform: London on David Zwirner As many small businesses are wiped out by coronavirus, it’s heartening to see some of the art world’s giants taking care of industry minnows. A case in point is New York-based mega-gallery David Zwirner, which is hosting online displays of London’s smaller but more interesting dealerships, to showcase their eclectic range of representational painting and more conceptual work. Galleries such as Bethnal Green’s The Approach (featuring the photographer Sara Cwynar), Soho’s Arcadia Missa (for the Mexican painter Frieda Toranzo-Jaeger) and Hollybush Gardens in Clerkenwell (the Turner-nominated conceptual artist Andrea Büttner) are all worth a look; best of the lot, however, is painter Celia Hempton’s showing at Soho’s Southard Reid. This consists of a parade of nudes and anatomical close-ups executed with rare verve and…

Our restaurants need a rent holiday The UK restaurant industry is facing a “once-in-a-century crisis”, says Yotam Ottolenghi in The Guardian. It’s four weeks since we were ordered to close our doors. We have no idea when we will be able to reopen them, nor what restrictions will be imposed when we do. Chances are, we’ll face limited opening hours, and new rules on diner density. It could “take months” to return to profitability. Thanks to the Government’s furlough scheme, we have been able to keep on staff. But other fixed costs haven’t disappeared – including the rent. At a time of zero income, paying the rent is liable to be the “kiss of death” for many businesses. Others may cling on, but when they reopen, the accumulated debt will…

Virgin: risking his Necker Sir Richard Branson has offered his private Caribbean island, Necker, as collateral in hopes of securing a £500m UK government bailout of his troubled Virgin Atlantic airline, said BBC Business. You can understand the urgency – events are moving fast in Branson’s empire, and he’s already one down. This week, Virgin Australia collapsed after the country’s government refused a request for a A$1.4bn (£720m) rescue loan. Virgin is Australia’s second-largest airline (with a 30% market share) and there are concerns its demise would leave the national flag carrier, Qantas, with a damaging “near monopoly”, said the FT. Even so, ministers in Canberra “baulked at providing assistance” because, in their words, the debt-ridden airline is 90% owned by “five large foreign shareholders with deep pockets”. Branson’s…

A rally born of misplaced optimism Patrick Hosking The Times “Optimism in moderation is no bad thing, but markets do seem to have got a long way ahead of events,” says Patrick Hosking. As of last weekend, Wall Street’s benchmark S&P 500 index was up 29% from late March’s “panicky” lows, while the FTSE 100 had recovered by 16%. This week’s oil panic has tamed the rally somewhat – even so, it has been “remarkable” at a time when the economic forecasts are, if anything, getting worse. Risk appetite has been building, even as the IMF forecasts “the worst global recession since the Great Depression”. Traders, it seems, “have faith that central bankers and ministers really can and will do ‘what it takes’ to mitigate the pain” of a global…

● Gasping for air The Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, is getting “rave reviews for his stentorian Downing Street appearances”, said Alex Brummer in the Daily Mail. Meanwhile, Britain’s 5.7 million small and medium-sized firms (known as SMEs) are “gasping for air”. Banks are “patting themselves on the back” for getting “£1bn of small business loans out of the door”, via the Government’s business interruption loan scheme, to the benefit of some 6,020 firms. But that’s a shockingly low figure. Particularly compared with progress stateside, where a similar scheme has proved such a “roaring success” that “the $350bn set aside was exhausted in less than two weeks”, and a further 700,000 SMEs are now waiting on Congress to approve new funds. “Donald Trump may be crazy” – but the efforts of his…

Children in lockdown can now learn physics from Brian Cox, and attend geography lessons run by David Attenborough. Man City striker Sergio Agüero is on hand for Spanish, and actor Danny Dyer is taking a history class. All of them, and other stars, are contributing to the BBC’s new Bitesize Daily education service, for children aged five to 14, which is also supported by 200 professional teachers. The programmes are on iPlayer and the BBC Red Button, from 9am to 11am. Two residents of a village in Perthshire have turned a disused phone box into a larder full of groceries and essentials for those struggling in lockdown. Corinna Robertson and Susan Crawford set up the “take what you need” service in Muthill – population 675 – for locals who have…

“The Covid-19 pandemic came along just as Cold War II was getting under way between the United States and the People’s Republic of China,” said Niall Ferguson in The Spectator. And the plague is now intensifying that conflict. Donald Trump has made no bones about blaming China for the virus’s spread. If it was “knowingly responsible”, he declared this week, “then there should be consequences”. China has responded with Russian-style conspiracy theories, blaming US soldiers for the outbreak. Some “naive observers” think that China will win these “corona wars”. The virus may have emerged there, they argue, but China brought the contagion under control with remarkable speed – unlike some disorganised democracies. It is now casting itself as a “saviour”, supplying the world with medical supplies and trying to step…

As the Government’s furlough scheme launched, the Treasury confirmed that 140,000 companies had applied for it on Monday, effectively putting a million people on the state payroll. Staff temporarily laid off under the scheme receive 80% of their wages (up to £2,500 per month). Their employers pay them this money, but recoup it from the state. So far, this has cost the Treasury £1bn. However, it has been estimated that eight million people could end up being furloughed, and the Office for Budget Responsibility has calculated that over three months, the bill will balloon to £42bn.…

Berlin Tentative opening; Germany has become the latest EU country to start easing Covid-19 restrictions: smaller shops and garden centres are reopening, and some older children are going back to school. However, Angela Merkel urged Germans to “make as little use as possible” of their re-established freedoms, and warned that if cases start going up again, a new lockdown will be imposed. Germany’s per capita death toll is a fraction of that in other European countries, including France and Britain. In Scandinavia, Sweden remained a regional outlier in terms of Covid-19 deaths (see page 17). The country – which has not imposed a lockdown as such, but has urged people to avoid unnecessary contacts – reported its biggest one-day death toll to date, of 185, on Tuesday. In total, 1,937…

“The most misleading idea I picked up at school was that success is the result of intelligence. It’s not: it’s the result of doing things. This seems so obvious now, I can’t believe nobody drummed it into me at school. So I never did an internship or tried to get myself elected to a prestigious student body. I assumed my good grades would transform themselves into a job. I spent three years working in a bookshop. When we think we see intellect what we’re really looking at is energy. The really energetic write pushy emails demanding work. They apply for grants, they go to parties, they network. All this stuff is exhausting and a lot of people who do it are ghastly, but it should be more widely taught that…

The NHS: heroic staff but a flawed service Mary Dejevsky The Independent Each week, the #ClapForCarers grows more enthusiastic – and quite right, too, says Mary Dejevsky. NHS and care workers fully deserve this expression of collective appreciation. Working on the front lines of this crisis, at considerable risk to themselves, they’re doing “a heroic job”. Yet it would be wrong to place our health service on too high a pedestal. Yes, it has risen to this challenge, but it’s not without its faults and its workers aren’t all “saints”. Although hailed as a unique national treasure, the NHS is just one of many state-run health services in Europe that are free, or nearly free, at point of delivery: and it’s by no means the best. Look how many Europeans…

The long-term impact of Covid-19 It is becoming increasingly clear that Covid-19 doesn’t just affect the lungs – raising concerns that some people who recover from the disease will be left with lasting health problems. A study of 214 hospitalised patients in Wuhan, China, published in Jama Neurology, has found that more than a third developed neurologic symptoms, including dizziness, headaches, impaired consciousness, skeletal-muscle injury and, in a few cases, seizures and stroke. These may have been a result of the virus infiltrating patients’ nervous systems, but they could also have been due to their immune system overreacting. A second study in Wuhan found that even when hospitalised patients recovered from the virus, their livers and kidneys showed signs of impairment. “Covid-19 is not just a respiratory disorder,” Dr Harlan…

“Hats off to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex,” said Joanna Williams in The Spectator. “It’s hard to get the world’s attention in the middle of a pandemic” – but in firing off the “latest salvo in their long-running feud against the press”, Harry and Meghan have managed to fight their way into the headlines once again. In a strongly worded open letter to The Sun, Daily Mail, Daily Mirror and Daily Express newspapers, the couple last Sunday set out their “new media relations policy”. Henceforth, they said, they will no longer “offer themselves up as currency for an economy of clickbait and distortion”. Instead they will adopt a “zero engagement” strategy towards newspapers that run stories that are “distorted, false or invasive beyond reason”. “The move is designed to…

To The Guardian The tragic deaths of Bame (black, Asian and and minority ethnic) NHS staff cannot go on unchecked. As a second-generation Bame consultant, I know only too well of my genetic predisposition to cardiovascular disease. I rarely find any Bame doctor of my age or older who is not being treated for high blood pressure. And some years ago, I found myself on the point of virtual collapse and diagnosed with a severe vitamin D deficiency. This vitamin is key to the body’s immunity, including to chest infections, and is also likely to be lower in Bame populations. With the combination of a Covid-exposed environment, compounded by high levels of stress and long working hours, it is not surprising that Covid-19 has taken its toll on Bame doctors.…

Alisa Weilerstein: Bach Cello Suites Pentatone e28 Music is proving sweet consolation in these dark days of confinement, said Michael Andor Brodeur in The Washington Post. “When the sounds of my own thoughts grow unlistenable, I reach across the table for my headphones, and across the centuries for music that will settle me.” If, like me, you long for “the familiar, the steady, the permanent”, then Bach is your man – and his “six beloved cello suites come alive anew” in Alisa Weilerstein’s sparkling recording. The American cellist has recently been leading illuminating discussions about these works on Facebook Live, but just listening to her play them is a “masterclass” in its own right. In Weilerstein’s “exceptional” hands it’s as if each suite has a “public and a private side…

Charles Ingram was the so-called coughing major who – with his wife, Diana – was found guilty of having cheated his way to the top prize of ITV’s hit quiz show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? in 2003. Last week, ITV broadcast its three-part dramatisation of the scandal, said Carol Midgley in The Times, and it was hugely entertaining. Matthew Macfadyen played the major (“dim” but “terribly polite”); Sian Clifford was his steely wife – “Wiltshire’s Lady Macbeth” – while Michael Sheen took on the role of smooth quiz-master Chris Tarrant, an impression that was “Rory Bremner good”. The final courtroom scenes were “gloriously teasing”, said Euan Ferguson in The Observer. At the time, the Ingrams seemed to have been got bang to rights, but writer James Graham and…

Barbie has a surprisingly long political career. In the 1990s, the Barbie Liberation Organisation caused a stir by switching the doll’s voicebox with that of GI Joe (the US equivalent of Action Man), to draw attention to gender stereotyping in US culture. More recently, ArtActivist Barbie has descended on British galleries to draw attention to gender inequality in the art world, reports The Guardian. In the past year or so, the doll has visited the National Gallery, to point out that it has 2,300 works by men, and just 21 by women. In various venues, she has posed in front of paintings of naked women, holding tiny banners – one declaring that it was a “pre-Raphaelite wet T-shirt competition”, or that “fine painting” has been used to “legitimise the male…

Harrison interviews Philip about events on the day of the explosion; Philip talks about Blake’s troubled past, and stresses that Gavin had no part in supplying the materials for the job. Robert, Lilian and Freddie bring Lynda’s bed downstairs and get things ready for her homecoming. Freddie thinks Lynda might be struggling, but Lilian reassures him. On her return, Lynda is horrified by the bed move and irritated by Robert’s concern. Leonie finally tells her off for being so ungrateful, and later, a chastened Lynda apologises to Robert. Helping Shula with Easter Festival preparations, Kirsty says the gossip about Philip is tough on them. As the new cricket season starts, Tracy complains to Harrison about the new recruits: they’re old and slow. At Grey Gables, Oliver tells Roy there’s one…

These rostis are a great way of using up root vegetables, says Annie Rigg – and of persuading children to eat vegetables. Serve them topped with a fried egg (if not cooking a vegan version) and some sautéd garlicky rainbow chard. Root vegetable rosti Makes 12 small rosti 150g red-skinned potatoes, such as Désirée 100g parsnip (roughly 1 parsnip) 100g celeriac (roughly a ¼ of a celeriac) 100g carrot (roughly 1 medium carrot) 1 small onion 1 clove garlic, crushed 2 tbsp chopped parsley 1 tbsp plain flour 2 tbsp sunflower oil salt and freshly ground black pepper • Coarsely grate the potatoes, parsnip, celeriac and carrot onto a clean tea towel. Finely slice the onion, add to the veg and gather the tea towel into a pouch encasing the…

Classic Swingball All  Surface Perfect for anyone with a garden, Swingball is a high-energy game that you can play in a relatively small space. This set is water-resistant, but the base converts into a case so you can store it when you’re not using it (£30; argos.co.uk). Lustigt dart game A child-friendly version of darts, it comes with six googly-eyed figures that have velcro-like fastenings so that they stick to board. The board is double-sided: one side is multicoloured, the other has numbered concentric circles (£12; ikea.com). RS#2 football table If you hate the thought of clunky games cluttering up your home, consider RS Barcelona’s “stylish” indoor football table, made from powder-coated steel (e3,474; shop365.rs-barcelona.com). Alternatively, Asda sells a small table-top version of the game, made by Hy-Pro, for £12.…

US oil prices crashed below zero for the first time in history, and Brent crude fell below $20/barrel (for the first time since 2001), as producers fought to offload oil. Crashing demand due to the global lockdown, combined with a supply glut, has wiped out spare storage capacity. Stock markets paused their “recovery rally” – the Dow Jones fell by 2.7% on Tuesday and the FTSE 100 by 3%. But international markets regained their poise midweek as investors looked past the chaos in oil markets to signs that the coronavirus outbreak could be peaking. A new $480bn US stimulus to support businesses also cheered investors. In Britain, the CPI inflation rate fell to 1.5% in March, largely driven by falls in clothing and fuel prices ahead of the lockdown. The…

Reed Hastings In a sign of the times, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings conducted this week’s quarterly earnings report from “unspecified quarantine quarters” that looked suspiciously like his bedroom, said Deadline.com. And his overall message, was as cosy as the “blue comforter” on the bed. “Our small contribution in these difficult times is to make home confinement a little more bearable,” he said. But it’s certainly been a fruitful period for Netflix. Hastings – who founded the company in 1997 and is estimated to be worth $4.8bn – delivered news of a blockbuster quarter in terms of subscriber additions: up by 15.7 million to just shy of 183 million globally, reported the FT. Once an upstart, Netflix is now “firmly in the ranks” of large technology companies emerging as big winners…

The investment bank Jefferies has interviewed 5,500 people from 11 countries to build a picture of how citizens are coping with the lockdown, said Philip Aldrick in The Times. The results paint a mixed picture. Two-thirds of Britons are “worried about both their financial situation and job security”, and a central preoccupation is “running out of food or household products”. However, most remain “remarkably optimistic”, believing that the hiatus also “has the potential to shake things up for the better”. According to IHS Markit’s UK household finance index, confidence has “deteriorated” at its sharpest ever pace, said Gurpreet Narwan in the same paper. Indeed, IHS Markit’s “sub-index for job security perceptions” is at an all-time low. For now, many are “dipping into savings” to support their incomes and debt levels…

A “catastrophe” is unfolding in Britain’s care homes, said the Daily Mail. Data released by the Office for National Statistics on Tuesday showed that Covid-19 fatalities in English and Welsh care homes have quadrupled in a week, bringing the total to 1,043. And these are only the confirmed figures; they don’t account for deaths in care homes which were not attributed to Covid-19 owing to lack of testing, and those to which the virus contributed but may not have been recorded on the death certificate. Care England, Britain’s largest representative body for care homes, reckons 7,500 residents may have died of the virus. Average life expectancy in nursing homes is only two years anyway, but that’s no excuse for shrugging our shoulders. “In a civilised society, defending the most vulnerable…

One in three Britons say they are drinking alcohol less often than before the lockdown; one in five are drinking more, according to an Opinium survey. 57% of Britons say they value food more than they did before, and 43% say they are enjoying it more (Hubbub). 85% of adults say they want some of the changes – personal or social – that they have experienced in lockdown to continue after the crisis is over (YouGov). The Oxford English Dictionary has added an extra print run to its normal schedule in order to include coronavirus-related words and terms that have surged in use. These include “Covid-19” (the only new word), “social distancing”, “personal protective equipment”, “self-isolation” and “flatten the curve”.…

An official inquiry is to be launched into why black, Asian and minority ethnic (Bame) Britons appear to be disproportionately affected by Covid-19. The first ten doctors to die of the virus were all non-white, and early figures indicated that 35% of critically ill patients were from minorities, though they make up only 13% of the population. Although no one reason for this has been established, it has been suggested that the figures reflect existing inequalities: people from Bame backgrounds are more likely to live in crowded housing and to be in insecure employment; they also have a higher incidence of diabetes, and other conditions.…

A Japanese company has issued some 3,700 “marriage certificates” to men who say they’ve fallen in love with the animated holograms it produces. The 60cm Gatebox devices chat to their “digisexual” owners and send encouraging text messages, all for just £1,230. Akihiko Kondo, 36, fell so hard for his device, Miku, that he spent £15,000 on a wedding for 40 guests – even if it isn’t legally valid. Alas, his family missed out on the big day. “For mother, it wasn’t something to celebrate,” he admitted. A US student has created a canoe from mushrooms. Katy Ayers, from Nebraska, fashioned the 8ft vessel from mycelium, the fibrous roots of the mushroom. Every time it is used it sprouts fresh mushrooms. “Mushrooms are here to help us – they’re a gift,”…

CHINA A nation in the grip of rampant xenophobia The New York Times This is a terrible time to be a foreigner in China, say Vivian Wang and Amy Qin. The pandemic has been brought under control there but continues to rage outside its borders – triggering a sharp rise in xenophobia. Foreign residents have been banned from shops and gyms. A banner in a restaurant in the city of Shenyang read: “Celebrating the epidemic in the United States and wishing coronavirus a nice trip to Japan.” A popular cartoon showed foreigners being sorted into bins. And Africans living in China – a repeated target – have reported shopkeepers shooing them away, locals covering their noses as they pass and enforced quarantines. For now, nationalism may help Beijing, which touts…

A photograph affording a rarely seen view of the top of one of Stonehenge’s sarsen stones has revealed the construction technique used to fit the giant boulders together. Posted on Twitter by English Heritage, the photo – taken from a cherry picker – shows an upright stone in the monument’s outer circle that is missing its horizontal lintels. On its exposed top, there are a series of knobs and holes, which would have fitted snugly into corresponding holes and knobs carved into the underside of the lintel that sat on top of it. “A bit like early Lego!” as English Heritage noted. The Danish toy company spotted the reference, and posted a reply: “Ah, where it all began!” This type of interlocking joint – known as mortise (cavity) and tenon…

The past 30 years have seen a rise in elites trying to show off their “ordinariness”, an LSE and Oxford study has found. And you can see it on Desert Island Discs, said Libby Purves in The Times. Nigella Lawson used an appearance on the show to enthuse about Eminem, while David Cameron chose Benny Hill’s Ernie (The Fastest Milkman in the West). By contrast, the old school comic Les Dawson (pictured) merrily opted for Ravel’s Pavane pour une infante défunte and Sviatoslav Richter playing Chopin’s Étude in C minor. And ex-Labour minister Roy Jenkins surprised Sue Lawley with his request to play the Soviet Airman’s Song at the height of the Cold War: “Flying higher and higher, Our emblem the Soviet Star, Every propeller is roaring, Defending the USSR...”…

“Whoever said one person can’t change the world never ate an undercooked bat.” Internet meme quoted in The Times “Hatreds are the cinders of affection.” Walter Raleigh, quoted in Forbes “If I’d known how wonderful grandchildren were going to be, I would’ve had them first.” Joanna Trollope, quoted in The Times “All God’s children are not beautiful. Most of God’s children are, in fact, barely presentable.” Fran Lebowitz, quoted in Lapham’s Quarterly “The only real things in life are food and love in that order.” David Hockney, quoted in the FT “The hospitals alone remind us of the equality of man.” W.H. Auden, quoted in The Times “In hard times, cultivate yourself. And you cannot lose your labour.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, quoted in The American Conservative “Money is in some…

Plenty of TV comedy classics are available to stream – including Seinfeld, Green Wing and Spaced on All4; Gavin & Stacey on BBC iPlayer; and Yes Minister on BritBox. For those seeking newer material, here are five of the best comedy series of the past ten years. Red Oaks Set in the 1980s, this coming-of-age tale stars Craig Roberts as a school leaver who takes a summer job as a tennis tutor at a country club in New Jersey. Overseen by indie director Steven Soderbergh, the series is sharply funny but warmly nostalgic, perfectly evoking the era. On Amazon Prime. The Kominsky Method A gently amusing portrait of two old buddies – played by Michael Douglas and Alan Arkin – navigating loss, messy family dynamics and their own frustrated ambitions…

Museums are facing a multitude of challenges during the worldwide lockdown, said Catherine Hickley in The Art Newspaper. Cancelled shows and lost revenue are obvious and serious problems; but to add to their woes, they’re also having to brace themselves for an uptick in art thefts. In normal times, gallery heists most commonly take place on bank holidays, when security is at its most lax. Now, according to specialist loss adjuster Philip Austin, every day is effectively a holiday, with the added benefit of nearby streets being deserted, and police being distracted by the public health crisis. The threat of thefts has already become a reality for some museums, said Colin Moynihan in The New York Times. Days before a full lockdown was imposed, three “high value” paintings by Van…

Best books… Philippe Sands The writer and human rights lawyer picks six favourites that inspired his new book The Ratline: Love, Lies and Justice on the Trail of a Nazi Fugitive, published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson at £20 A Perfect Spy by John le Carré, 1986 (Penguin £14.99). Magnus Pym, spy, looks back on his life and work, from Cold War struggles to his feelings about the scoundrel who was his father. A hint of autobiography from my friend and neighbour – a powerful influence on both style and substance. Soldiers of Salamis by Javier Cercas, 2001 (MacLehose Press £8.99). Spanish Civil War: a moment of eye contact between a Nationalist prisoner and the Republican soldier who is about to execute him unveils an exploration of what may have followed;…

A number of wholesale food suppliers are now doing home deliveries. Here are five: Forman & Field used to supply restaurants but now delivers premium produce within 48 hours to homes across the UK. From cheese, beer and smoked salmon to pre-made pies and fish cakes (formanandfield.com). La Tua Pasta will deliver a range of fresh pasta varieties to your door. Delivery is free on orders over £30, and for each online order, it will donate a meal to the NHS (shop.latuapasta.com). Darts Farm in Devon is offering seasonal vegetable boxes, starting from £11, and fruit, salad and meat hampers. Deliveries are nationwide, and free for the vulnerable and over-70s within Devon (dartsfarm.co.uk). Home Pantry used to be the Office Pantry, as it catered to offices. Now it will deliver…

Motor racing legend who won the Mille Miglia Stirling Moss 1929-2020 Stirling Moss, who has died aged 90, was often described as the greatest motor racing driver never to have won the F1 World Championship, said The Times. An all-rounder, who notched up 212 victories in 529 races across all racing disciplines, he was so skilled, and so daring, his name became a byword for speed. For years, drivers pulled over by traffic police could expect to be asked: “Who do you think you are...?” But his status as a motoring legend rested also on his sportsmanship, and in particular, on an incident in the 1958 Portuguese GP when he intervened to stop his rival, Mike Hawthorn, from being disqualified for allegedly reversing on the track. As a result of…

Earlier this month, Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket company banned staff from using Zoom, citing “significant privacy and security concerns”, said Reuters. Are the worries serious enough to halt the Icarus-like ascent of the video-conferencing company? The practice of gatecrashing, or “Zoombombing”, conferences has become “so pervasive” that the FBI is now investigating, said NBC News. Meanwhile, Zoom faces several class-action lawsuits over privacy issues. No wonder the company’s founder, the newly minted billionaire Eric Yuan, is reportedly ramping up Zoom’s lobbying presence in Washington. Pre-lockdown, Zoom was an also-ran video app mainly used by business and hosting “no more than ten million daily meetings worldwide”, said Francesca Steele in The Times. An “extraordinary” surge of “brand recognition” has seen that figure shoot to 200 million. Zoom is now a social…

The week’s best shares Amazon The Times It’s the world’s biggest online retailer, has a subscription music service, a film and TV business and is the market leader in cloud computing. Very highly rated, but looks “unstoppable”. Buy. $2,408.19. Reckitt Benckiser Group Investors Chronicle There’s “positive change afoot” at the household goods giant, whose “exceptional” brands include Dettol, Cillit Bang and Durex. The £2bn turnaround investment includes improving sustainability. Buy. £61.68. RWS Investors Chronicle This language, localisation and IP specialist is enjoying higher demand for its translation services from both life sciences (thanks to Covid-19 vaccine trials) and tech customers with social networking platforms. Buy. 463p. Smurfit Kappa The Times The packaging group owns forests and paper mills, with 350 production facilities in 35 countries. Financially strong and performing well…