Innholdsfortegnelse for V. 1352 i The Week

The Pandora Papers have sent shock waves across six continents, said The Washington Post. A cache of more than 11.9 million leaked documents, they show how the rich and powerful – including 35 current or former heads of state – use the offshore financial system to conceal their assets. The papers prove that King Abdullah of Jordan secretly spent $106m on luxury homes in California and elsewhere; that the leaders of the Czech Republic, Kenya, Ecuador and Ukraine squirreled away “millions of dollars in property and cash” abroad; and that a Russian woman, Svetlana Krivonogikh, acquired a waterfront property in Monaco soon after she allegedly gave birth to Vladimir Putin’s child. Such transactions are not necessarily illegal. But this investigation, jointly undertaken by media outlets in over 100 nations, exposes…

Prague Bad timing: With just days before the Czech Republic goes to the polls, its PM is facing the possibility of a police inquiry into his finances, owing to revelations in the Pandora Papers. These have suggested that Andrej Babiš – a billionaire business tycoon – used a web of offshore companies to buy luxury properties, including a $22m château on the French Riviera. Babiš, who has been dogged by allegations of shady dealings, insists he has done nothing wrong, and described the latest charges as an attempt to influence the election. “This is not an international consortium,” he said of the media outlets behind the scoop. “This is the work of our mafia.” Paris Sexual abuse: A landmark independent inquiry has concluded that between 1950 and 2020, around 216,000…

1 Doctor Who by Ron Grainer, performed by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop 2 Sweet Mother, written and performed by Prince Nico Mbarga and Rocafil Jazz International 3 The Boys Are Back in Town by Phil Lynott, performed by Thin Lizzy 4 Swing Low, Sweet Chariot by Wallace Willis, performed by Ladysmith Black Mambazo 5 That’s The Way Love Goes by Janet Jackson, James Harris III and Terry Lewis, performed by Janet Jackson 6 Family Business, written and performed by Kanye West 7* Mr Bojangles by Jerry Jeff Walker, performed by Sammy Davis Jr. 8 A Change is Gonna Come by Sam Cooke, performed by Ayanna Witter-Johnson Book: The Wormwood Trilogy by Tade Thompson Luxury: A solar-powered puzzle generator, designed by Tom * Choice if allowed only one record…

The Assad family has ruled Syria since 1970, when Hafez al-Assad led a military coup. The family are Alawites, part of a sect that made up around 10% of Syria’s pre-war population, and who have historically been oppressed by the Sunni majority. Since the 1920s, when the French imperial authorities chose to recruit loyal minorities to the army, Alawites have always played an important role in Syria’s armed forces. The elder Assad joined the air force and later the Ba’ath party, a secular pan-Arabist organisation which, under his leadership, became a front for an Alawite-dominated dictatorship. In 1982, his forces crushed a militant Sunni Islamist uprising in the city of Hama, killing at least 10,000 people. Bashar al-Assad, who trained as an ophthalmologist, was not his father’s chosen heir: he…

Is Trump plotting a coup? Robert Kagan The Washington Post The US is “heading into its greatest political and constitutional crisis since the Civil War”, says Robert Kagan. It’s clear that Donald Trump, barring health problems, will be the Republican nominee for president in 2024. He has the support, he’s amassing the funds – and he and his allies are evidently out to take the White House “by whatever means necessary”. The fact that Trump failed to overturn the last election has reassured many Americans that the system remains robust. But it was a close call. The only thing that stopped Trump getting his way was the refusal of a handful of Republican state officials to “find” more votes, and the reluctance of two attorney generals and the vice-president to…

The Government has confirmed that it plans to relax the rules surrounding gene-edited crops in England, in the hope that the technology will eventually enable farmers to grow “more nutritious and more productive” food, and cut back on their use of pesticides. Unlike GM crops, which are created by adding genes from other plants or from animals, gene-edited ones have simply had bits of their DNA “snipped” out. Scientists say this creates variations that could have occurred naturally, or by traditional breeding. EU rules make no distinction between gene-edited and GM crops; but the Government says it now intends to make it easier for researchers to conduct field trials on gene-edited crops, and that it may later relax the rules on animal research too. It is likely to be some…

With each team in the Premier League having played seven games, it is Chelsea who sit at the top of the table, said Paul Joyce in The Times. But anyone lucky enough to have watched Sunday’s 2-2 draw between Liverpool and Manchester City at Anfield would be in no doubt that the table is “home to a lie”. For the inescapable conclusion of this spellbinding encounter was that these are the two teams “who will shape the season”. This was a pulsating, high-quality game, said David Hytner in The Guardian – and one that City really ought to have won. Pep Guardiola’s side dominated the first half, but failed to capitalise on several chances. After the interval, Liverpool rebounded brilliantly, and twice went ahead courtesy of Sadio Mané and Mohamed…

Football Claudio Ranieri was appointed Watford’s new manager, replacing Xisco Muñoz after the Spaniard was sacked. Tennis British No. 2 Cameron Norrie beat World No. 5 Andrey Rublev to reach the final of the San Diego Open. However, the 26-year-old lost 6-0, 6-2 in the final to Norway’s Casper Ruud. Cycling The inaugural Paris-Roubaix Femmes – the women’s version of the infamous race in northern France which contains several cobbled sections – was won by Lizzie Deignan of England.…

Imitating the Dog is a Leeds-based theatre company that “pushes the boundaries” between theatre and digital technology, said Nick Ahad in The Guardian. Its latest show is a bracingly inventive spin on Dracula in which a 90-year-old woman named Mina Harker turns up at a police station on New Year’s Eve in 1965 to confess to an unlikely 70-year killing spree. To tell this strange tale, the three actors perform simultaneously for the audience and for cameras on stage, so that their images can be relayed to a giant projection screen and digitally treated to “make it look as though we are watching a graphic novel come to life”. With influences ranging from movies such as Sin City and TV dramas such as Sherlock, to graphic novels including Watchmen and…

Whether you prefer Gustav Möller’s acclaimed 2018 Danish drama The Guilty, or this Hollywood remake, will depend partly on whether you like your thrillers “chilly or hot-wired”, said Jeannette Catsoulis in The New York Times. But it may also hinge on the question: “How many close-ups of Jake Gyllenhaal are too many?” In what is “essentially a one-man show”, Gyllenhaal plays a demoted cop who, while on a night shift in a 911 call centre, picks up a call from a woman who is in the process of being abducted. What follows is a “taut cat-and-mouse” tale, set entirely in the call centre, in which the “unexpectedly shocking” off-screen twists and turns are brought vividly to life by the voice work of actors including Riley Keough and Ethan Hawke None…

The former anti-apartheid activist and Labour cabinet minister picks his favourite books. His memoir, A Pretoria Boy (Icon £20), is out now, alongside his recent thriller The Rhino Conspiracy (Muswell Press £8.99) The Elephant Whisperer by Lawrence Anthony, 2009 (Pan £9.99). An enchanting tale of how a conservationist accepts a small herd of wild elephants turned “rogue” by poacher attacks into his new game reserve. After turmoil, they eventually form a unique bond as he provides a safe haven for a new elephant dynasty. Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela, 1994 (Abacus £14.99). His exhilarating memoir of courage, suffering and tenacity, and the eventual triumph of humanity over apartheid, the worst racist tyranny in history, contains fascinating insights into strong leadership, generosity of spirit and wisdom. To Kill a…

Simon & Garfunkel: The Harmony Game Documentary about the making of the duo’s last studio album, Bridge Over Troubled Water. Sat 9 Oct, BBC2 20:55 (75mins). Paris Police 1900 French crime drama set in Paris in the wake of the Dreyfus Affair. As a grisly suitcase turns up in the Seine, an ambitious detective embarks on his first murder investigation. Sat 9 Oct, BBC4 21:00 and 21:55 (55mins each). Clapped Out: Is the NHS Broken? Award-winning journalist Matthew Syed presents a Dispatches special on the systemic failings that have stretched the NHS to breaking point. Mon 11 Oct, C4 20:00 (60mins). Nature and Us: A History Through Art Art historian James Fox explores humankind’s earliest relationship to nature through the art of the ancient world, from cave paintings to Assyrian…

It’s a question I’m often asked, said Jancis Robinson in the Financial Times: how long can you keep a bottle of wine once opened? The answer, predictably, is that it depends – “on what it is, how you store it and how empty the bottle is”. Generally, red wines go off faster than whites, and delicate reds fastest of all. So a red burgundy probably won’t last more than a couple of days. Oaked whites such as chardonnay may last a “few days” in the fridge, and champagne and sparkling wines may last longer, provided you have a really good stopper. The best I have tried comes from The Finest Bubble (thefinestbubble.com) and costs just £4. Longest-living of all are Rieslings: an open bottle can remain fresh for “weeks if…

Situated on a clifftop overlooking the English Channel, The Clifton, Isle of Wight, is a mansion hotel that has won several awards, both for its gardens and its service (doubles from £144, including breakfast; thecliftonshanklin.co.uk). Built in 1905, Portpatrick Hotel, Stranraer, is large but low-key, and very good value. It is close to spectacular cliff paths, and the pretty and peaceful seaside town of Portpatrick is just below it (doubles from £89; bespokehotels.com). Perched on top of a former copper mine, Pedn Olva, St Ives, has wonderful sea views, an airy contemporary design, and an outdoor heated swimming pool built into the rocks (doubles from £160, including breakfast; pednolva.co.uk). Year after year, people are drawn back to The Druidstone, Pembrokeshire, a small, informal hotel on a cliff overlooking St Brides…

A stately tour of the Broads Navigating the tree-lined inland waterways of the Norfolk Broads in a traditional wherry is an introduction to the pleasures of a simpler, “slower” age, says Richard Woods in The Sunday Times. Few of these old sailing barges survive, but the charity Wherry Yacht Charter (WYC) in Wroxham owns five magnificent, recently restored examples, all built for leisure between 1905 and 1927. One, Hathor – originally owned by the Colman family, of mustard fame – is decorated with “intricate” marquetry depicting Egyptian symbols; two others, Ardea and White Moth, have pianos in their saloons. Norfolk’s “big-sky landscape” adds to the appeal, and although the views are sometimes marred by an excessive number of “ageing white plastic motorboats”, with more than 120 miles of the Broads…

Supply chaos: towards autarky “It’s astonishing how fortunes can change in the matter of a year,” Russ Mould of investment house AJ Bell told The Guardian. AO World, the online electric goods retailer, was “one of the star performers of the pandemic” until it was assailed by supply chain problems. Last week, the company lost almost a quarter of its value (£200m) in a day after blaming shortages of drivers, parts and materials for lower-than-expected profits. AO’s travails are being repeated across other sectors, said The Sunday Times. NatWest boss Alison Rose has described a “real drop” in confidence as shortages “bite”. Some companies, “unable to fulfil orders” and facing a “cash squeeze”, are scrambling to stay afloat. Boohoo boss John Lyttle says the fashion chain currently has about 150…

Energy firms are like macho banks Patrick Jenkins Financial Times “A government keen to boost consumer choice. A string of upstart operators with aggressive business practices. A sleepy regulator…” There are striking parallels, says Patrick Jenkins, between the UK banking market, circa 2007, and today’s crisis-hit power market. It seems regulators were so busy cleaning up from the financial crash that no one realised that another “time-bomb” was being “built from very similar ingredients in a very different sector”. Banks like Northern Rock crumbled because, in the quest for rapid growth, they “supercharged” what bankers call “maturity transformation” – borrowing short (typically via customer deposits), to lend long via mortgages. Collapse was inevitable when access to short-term finance dried up. Similarly, many of today’s energy minnows exploited the “maturity mismatch”…

The week’s best shares Bluefield Solar Income Fund The Sunday Telegraph Bluefield owns a large UK portfolio of solar photovoltaic assets and is diversifying into onshore wind turbines and battery storage. Supported by the ESG investment trend. Yields 6.4%. Buy. 122.4p. Boohoo Group The Times The fashion giant’s cut-price acquisitions of Burton, Wallis and Dorothy Perkins have broadened its demographic and should boost sales growth. Enjoys higher margins than rivals thanks to own brands. Cash-generative. Buy. 217.3p. Carnival The Times Carnival, which has 87 cruise ships under nine brands including P&O and Cunard, has reported a $2.8bn loss, but expects to break even in 2022. Covid risks linger, but it is set to benefit from pent-up demand. Buy. £17.67. DFS Furniture Investors Chronicle After a torrid 2020, the sofa-maker has…

THE WEEK CROSSWORD 1281 An Ettinger travel pass 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 18 October. Email the answers as a scan of a completed grid or a list, with the subject line The Week crossword 1281, to crossword@theweek.co.uk. Tim Moorey (timmoorey.com) This week’s winner will receive an Ettinger (ettinger.co.uk) travel pass case (assorted colours), which retails at £105, and two Connell Guides connellguides.com). ACROSS 1 First act in work Frenchman returned (6) 5 Anne sets out for tidy competence (8) 9 Mobile installed almost? Virgin’s part of it (8) 10 Spice Girl enthralling America? (6) 11 Dicky following one in lines for the Palace (10) 12 Yields…

What happened The Home Secretary this week announced an inquiry into the “systematic failures” that allowed Wayne Couzens to abuse his position as a police officer to kidnap, rape and murder Sarah Everard. Describing Couzens as a “monster”, Priti Patel said a two-part inquiry would examine his predatory behaviour and what his colleagues knew about him, as well as wider issues in policing, including vetting procedures, standards, discipline and workplace culture. “We need answers as to why this was allowed to happen,” she said. Her announcement – five days after Couzens was handed a whole-life sentence for his crimes (see page 22) – followed intense criticism of the Met’s response to the case, including its suggestion that people who felt threatened by a lone plainclothes police officer could “wave a…

A dilapidated “studio flat” barely spacious enough to fit a single bed has gone on sale in Notting Hill Gate for £150,000, raising hopes among investors that the market in “prime” London is revving up again. At 7.3 sq metres (79 sq ft), the room, with a shower and WC, is two-thirds the size of the average parking space. Zoopla describes it as “a wonderful opportunity to create a London bolt hole”. Beethoven’s unfinished Tenth Symphony has been completed – by an artificial intelligence programme. Researchers “trained” the AI by feeding it the work of composers Beethoven listened to, along with his own work. The result was so convincing, scholars could not tell where the original phrases ended and the new ones began.…

Houston, Texas Pro-choice rallies: Tens of thousands of people took part in rallies across the US on Saturday, in defence of women’s constitutional right to abortion. The protests – in cities including Houston, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York and Washington DC – were organised in response to the new “heartbeat” abortion law in Texas that bans abortion once the foetus’s cardiac activity can be detected by an ultrasound, which is usually at around six weeks of gestation. The law, which makes no exceptions for incest or rape, is unusual in that it relies on ordinary citizens to enforce it. They can sue anyone who provides an abortion, or who aids and abets in it, and are incentivised: if they win, the complainants’ legal costs are paid, and they keep the…

“As soon as he finished his speech at the Labour conference last week, Keir Starmer ushered his wife up on stage, and proudly paraded her before his cheering party members. I had hoped this peculiar tradition had died out. It makes little sense. Lady Starmer isn’t a politician. She doesn’t work for Labour. So why should she be paraded around the hall at the party conference, to a standing ovation from regional delegates? Political leaders, however, have been showing off their wives to activists since time immemorial. It feels like some ancient tribal ceremony: the presentation to the tribespeople of the chief’s chosen bride, as proof of his power and virility.” Michael Deacon in The Daily Telegraph…

Europe won’t – and shouldn’t – muscle up Simon Kuper Financial Times Europe must become a military power and take care of its own defence. That’s the talk one’s hearing from EU leaders after the humiliation of being sidelined by the AUKUS pact between the US, UK and Australia. Happily, it’s just talk, says Simon Kuper. Not only do the member states – France excepted – lack military ambition, but even if they had it, what good would it do? Does Europe want to take over America’s policy “of disastrous foreign interventions”? Not if its own intervention in Libya in 2011, or France’s eight-year mission in the Sahel is anything to go by. Does it want to send lots of troops to reinforce the security of the Baltic states? That…

A waist test for type 2 diabetes Type 2 diabetes is strongly associated with obesity, but a leading expert has warned that you can be at risk of the condition even if you are not technically overweight – just larger around the middle than you used to be. “As a rule of thumb, your waist size should be the same now as when you were 21,” said Prof Roy Taylor, director of Newcastle University’s Magnetic Resonance Centre, at the European Association for the Study of Diabetes’ annual conference. Doctors, he added, tend to assume that when their “normal weight” patients develop type 2 diabetes, it is not excess fat that is causing it; and as a result, these patients are not advised to lose weight before being given diabetes drugs…

At his sentencing hearing last week, prosecutors summed up Wayne Couzens’s crimes in just five words: “Deception, kidnap, rape, strangulation, fire.” But in their impact statements, the parents of his victim, Sarah Everard, described their feelings in heartbreaking detail, said The Times. Everard’s mother, Susan, was the first to stand up. “There is no comfort to be had, there is no consoling thought in the way Sarah died,” she told the packed courtroom, at the Old Bailey. “In her last hours [Sarah] was faced with brutality and terror, alone with someone intent on doing her harm… I am haunted by the horror of it.” She said that every morning, she wakes up to “the awful reality that Sarah is gone”, and that every evening, at the time of her daughter’s…

Keir Starmer’s “very long speech” at the Labour conference last week – an hour and a half, to be precise – won him 17 standing ovations, said Isabel Hardman in The Spectator. But it will largely be remembered as the speech during which he was “repeatedly heckled by the hard-left”. The shouting from the conference floor was insistent and often inappropriate, especially when Starmer was recalling his late mother’s illness. But, in fact, “it worked hugely in his favour”. He was ready with ripostes: Labour, he declared, had a choice between “shouting slogans or changing lives”. Starmer roused the majority to drown out the Corbynite remnants. He showed that he “wants to turn his party away from the past 11 years of opposition, and he doesn’t mind who heckles him…

It will probably go down as the most expensive wave in athletics history, said Sean Ingle in The Guardian. The 30-year-old Ethiopian, Sisay Lemma – so often a “marathon bridesmaid” – had just burned off a high-quality London Marathon field that included last year’s winner, Shura Kitata. So who can blame him for basking in his moment of glory as he neared the finish on Sunday and giving the crowd a “regal wave”. Yet shortly after crossing the line in 2hrs 4mins 1sec (27 seconds ahead of second-placed Vincent Kipchumba of Kenya), Lemma was struck by a painful thought. He will receive $105,000 in prize money, but had he not slowed down he would have earned an extra $25,000 (£18,500) for breaking the 2hrs 4min barrier. Elsewhere in the men’s…

The Magician by Colm Tóibín Viking 448pp £18.99 The Week bookshop £14.99 The German novelist Thomas Mann (1875-1955) led an overwhelmingly “sedentary existence”, said Lucy Hughes-Hallett in The Guardian: most of his adult life was either spent “behind a desk”, creating the works that brought him wealth and fame (such as Buddenbrooks and Death in Venice), or “going for sedate little postprandial walks with his wife”. Yet from such unpromising material, Colm Tóibín has fashioned a “compelling fictionalised biography” – which exquisitely balances the “intimate and the momentous”. This isn’t the first time Tóibín has portrayed a writer who subsumed his homosexual desires into his work, said Dwight Garner in The New York Times: in the Booker-shortlisted The Master (2004), he delved into the mind of Henry James. But while…

Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga: Love for Sale Polydor £10.99 For his 61st studio album, the great Tony Bennett has once again paired up with Lady Gaga, with whom he recorded a wonderful album of jazz duets in 2014, said Ludovic Hunter-Tilney in the FT. This time, the unlikely duo (who have a mere 60 years between them) focus on Cole Porter standards, and the result is a glorious display of “wit, skill, feeling and musicianship”, with a healthy dose of “old-school Broadway razzle-dazzle”. Bennett is 95. His voice is “sandpapered” thin with age, whereas Gaga “purrs and preens in shades of velvet and honey”, said Neil McCormick in The Daily Telegraph. It’s “a partnership of contrast and complement rather than perfect harmony”, and it works: each occupies “distinct spaces…

The gates of Auschwitz appear early on in this “haunting” film, said Danny Leigh in the Financial Times; then a drone camera rises to show “the obscene scale” of the death camp. It is an apt moment in a documentary whose central argument is that there can be “no end” to the Holocaust when so few of its perpetrators have been held to account for their crimes. Director David Nicholas Wilkinson focuses on the “ordinary” Nazis and collaborators who “slipped into new identities” after the War, or lived blithely under their real names, “growing old in pretty hamlets”. Horror at the Holocaust has been an “article of faith” underpinning our belief in the “just war” for more than seven decades, said Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian. And yet it is…

Roger Michell 1956-2021 The film director Roger Michell, who has died aged 65, was initially reluctant to cast Hugh Grant in the Richard Curtis romcom Notting Hill. Expectations for the film, effectively a follow-up to Curtis’s 1994 smash hit Four Weddings and a Funeral, were already worryingly high, and Michell was concerned that if Grant played the charming and diffident hero for a second time, the film risked seeming even more of a sequel or re-tread; but eventually he decided that it would be mad not to give Grant a part he was born to play – and Notting Hill set a new record for the British box office. Yet Michell refused to take the credit for its success, said The Times. An affable, mild-mannered man, he had no time…

Every autumn, rail passengers are delayed by “leaves on the line”. But now engineers at the University of Sheffield may have a solution. The technique, which is to be trialled by the operator Northern, involves blasting pellets of dry ice at leaves. They become brittle, then when the ice turns back to gas and expands, they’re destroyed. Leaves are currently tackled by specialist trains equipped with water jets: the dry-ice method can be used by passenger trains. A chorister who dedicated more than 50 years of his life to the Exeter Cathedral choir is to be immortalised in stone on the roof of the 14th century building. Gordon Pike began singing at the cathedral as a boy in 1963; he left a few years later, but returned full time in…

The Labour conference appears not to have boosted the party’s poll ratings. At the end of last week, the Tories dropped one point to 39%, while Labour had fallen two points to 35%; the Lib Dems were on 8%. The Observer/Opinium 65% of UK voters are in favour of raising the minimum wage to £15; 14% oppose the idea. 76% of Labour voters support the rise, compared to 59% of Conservatives. The Independent/Survation More than half of young people are not getting a good night’s sleep. 28.7% of six to ten year olds had trouble sleeping on three or more nights in a week, rising to 38.4% of 11 to 16 year olds, and 57.1% of 17 to 23 year olds. The Guardian/NHS Digital…

Andrew Neil on GB News Andrew Neil is a broadcaster with 25 years’ experience. Yet even he struggled to cope during the chaotic launch of GB News – the “anti-woke” TV channel of which he was, until recently, lead presenter and chairman. “I came close to a breakdown,” he told Rebecca Hardy in the Daily Mail. There were multiple technical glitches on the day the channel first broadcast in June – and they persisted for days afterwards. Once, Neil was informed just moments before going on air that all the virtual interviews lined up for his show had had to be cancelled, leaving him with an hour of live TV to fill. “I was in despair,” he recalls. “Unlike other shows where there are two anchors, so they can talk…

A drunk Turkish man spent hours helping a search party look for a missing person – who turned out to be him. Relatives of Beyhan Mutlu, 50, sounded the alarm after he failed to return home from drinks with friends, having wandered into a forest near his home in the northwestern Bursa province. And when Mutlu stumbled upon the resulting search party, he joined them – realising who it was searching for only after hearing his name being called. “Who are we looking for?” he asked. “I am here.” The Danish artist Jens Haaning was loaned £60,000 in banknotes by The Kunsten Museum of Modern Art in Aalborg, to reproduce his 2007 work An Average Danish Annual Income, which featured the notes fixed to canvas, along with another similar work.…

ITALY A shocking miscarriage of justice la Repubblica (Rome) A once-feted mayor has suffered “monstrous” cruelty at the hands of Italy’s legal system, says Francesco Merlo. Mimmo Lucano was lauded around the world for his work helping refugees in Riace, a poor town in Calabria, southern Italy. Having become its mayor in 2004, Lucano helped reverse the town’s decline by welcoming some 500 refugees into a 2,000-strong population and giving them on-the-job training. But in 2018, days after Italy’s then far-right interior minister, Matteo Salvini, had passed harsh new anti-immigration laws, Lucano was arrested. His alleged crimes were allocating waste collection contracts to cooperatives set up to help migrants find work; and arranging a marriage of convenience between a Nigerian woman and an Italian man so that the woman, who…

The usually mild-mannered Keir Starmer shocked some on the Right last week, when he cracked a rare joke at Boris Johnson’s expense, during his conference speech. The Labour leader talked up his working-class upbringing and contrasted himself to the Prime Minister – but said the pair did have one thing in common. “My dad was a toolmaker…” he said. “Although in a way, so was Boris Johnson’s.” The Colombian pop star Shakira has been mugged – by wild boars. She was walking with her eight-year-old son in a park in Barcelona, when two of the animals – whose numbers have boomed in the city – stole her bag and took it into nearby woods. Holding up the torn bag, she said on social media: “Look at how two wild boars…

“Most of the great problems we face are caused by politicians creating solutions to problems they created in the first place.”Economist Walter E. Williams, quoted in The Sunday Telegraph “Think before you speak. Read before you think.”Fran Lebowitz, quoted in the Daily Mail “Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit.”Historian Henry Brooks Adams, quoted on The Browser “I have to think hard to name an interesting man who does not drink.”Richard Burton, quoted in Forbes “Isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?”L.M. Montgomery, quoted in Reader’s Digest “Breakfast is a personal ritual that can only be properly observed alone, and in a spirit of genuine excess.”Hunter S. Thompson, quoted in Lapham’s Quarterly “Gossip is the art of saying nothing…

It has to be one of the biggest upsets in the 101-year-history of Europe’s most famous horse race, said Greg Wood in The Guardian. At the start of this year’s Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, few punters gave Torquator Tasso – named after the 16th century Italian poet – the slightest hope of scooping the £2.5m first prize. In one of the strongest Arcs for several years, the German-trained colt, ridden by Arc debutant Rene Piechulek, was a 69-1 shot on the French Tote – and 80-1 with British bookmakers. And for the great majority of the race, there was no sign that the bookmakers were due a surprise, said BBC Sport. With less than a furlong to go, it looked to be a two-way race between “well-fancied rivals Tarnawa…

To The Daily Telegraph Hauliers knew for at least 18 months that we were leaving the EU, and there are currently 1.64 million people unemployed in Britain. What have they been doing to recruit drivers? Instead of waiting for the Government to bail them out, they should manage their businesses to meet demand. The country has to stop relying on government to solve every problem that arises. David Shadwell, Little Baddow, Essex To the Financial Times Being an immigrant myself, I realised how the smart and pragmatic policy in this country was to allow people in to do the types of jobs British people are simply not willing to do. Young Britons are very unlikely to be attracted by physically draining and demanding jobs like picking berries or driving trucks.…

by Lucy Burns Chatto 240pp £10.99 The Week bookshop £8.99 “It is still, in 2021, a brave step for a woman to speak openly about choosing not to continue a pregnancy,” said Laura Hackett in The Sunday Times. Lucy Burns should be applauded, then: in this “visceral”, beautifully written memoir, the 31-year-old lays bare the agonised consequences of an abortion she had in 2017. The procedure itself is described in “graphic and shocking detail”. But what happened next was almost worse: after developing worrying physical symptoms, Burns was treated humiliatingly by medical professionals – and coldly by her employers. Written in a “fragmented style” that moves between her perspective and others’, the “book becomes a kind of whodunit” which asks: “Who is to blame for how horrible this is?” Like…

In a world without Covid-19, Daniel Craig would have retired as James Bond 18 months ago, said Robbie Collin in The Daily Telegraph. Instead, he’s been “on furlough”, while wave upon wave of the virus has sloshed around the world. But 007 finally returned to the big screen last week, and it was worth the wait. No Time to Die is an “extravagantly satisfying” last chapter to the Craig era, “which throws almost everything there is left to throw at 007 – including, in a twist of teeth-clenching pertinence, a man-made virus” that threatens to overrun the globe. The lethal “goo” has been pilfered by SPECTRE, and it falls to Bond to come out of retirement to retrieve it. In some respects, we’re in familiar territory: the film has all…

Lee and Kirsty apprehend the intruder at Beechwood – it’s not Rob, but Blake, one of the slaves, looking for Philip so that he can work for him again. Tracy takes Chelsea for a driving lesson on the backroads and urges her to be cautious. Meanwhile, after spending a night in a hostel, Blake is told by Kirsty that Philip and Gavin are in jail. He gets upset – he still believes they were good to him – and runs off, only to be knocked down by Chelsea. At the hospital, Blake refuses to see Kirsty; Lynda tries to tell him that this is a fresh start, but he’s not convinced. Elsewhere, things are going strong between Beth and Ben, as she meets the family at Brookfield. After manager Stella…

You can use any type of lentils you wish for this simple salad, says James Martin. The key is adding a touch of sherry vinegar, which cuts through the richness of the goat’s cheese butter. Dice all the vegetables nice and small as this will help them break down as the lentils cook. It is a great dish either hot or cold Lentil salad with whipped goat’s cheese butter Serves 4 For the lentil salad: 50g butter 2 garlic cloves, chopped 1 shallot, peeled and diced ½ a carrot, diced ½ a celery stick, diced 50g bacon lardons ½ a leek, diced 1 tsp ground cumin 1 tsp ground coriander 150g green lentils a few sprigs of thyme 300ml chicken stock 50ml red wine 1 tbsp sherry vinegar a small…

• Early autumn is a great time for planting. Look for a sunny spot, with well-drained soil: herbs positively hate wet feet in winter. If your soil is in the least bit heavy, dig in grit or sharp sand before planting to stop them rotting over the winter. • Trim evergreen herbs into a dome shape (and remove any remaining flowers). This will help to protect them from high winds or snow. But don’t prune back too hard, as this will create deep cuts that may not heal. • Common herbs such as rosemary, thyme, bay, chives, marjoram, oregano, tarragon and mint can all go into the ground now. • The anise leaves of dill will not survive outside all year, but the similarly flavoured chervil is quite happy outdoors.…

Bernard Tapie 1943-2021 One of France’s most “colourful” public figures, Bernard Tapie, who has died aged 78, was a flamboyant business tycoon with a host of sidelines, said The Times. At various points, he was an actor, a singer, a yachtsman, a TV presenter and a government minister. In opinion polls in 1992, he emerged as the person most French people under 30 wanted to be president; and as the man French women most wanted to go to bed with. But he was perhaps best known as a litigant and a jailbird. In the 1990s, the sale of his controlling stake in Adidas sparked a complicated legal battle that was still dragging on when he died, and which became a political scandal known as L’Affaire Tapie. Before that, he had…

Prices of lithium, aluminium and copper are soaring, said David Brenchley in The Times. Gas prices have jumped sixfold, and oil has hit a three-year high. Whether or not you believe “the hype about supercycles”, commodities are flying. Here’s how to cash in: General funds The share prices of individual miners are often “more volatile than commodity prices”, making general funds an attractive option. Investment trusts listed on the stock market are an option, but exchange traded funds (ETFs), which track indices or commodities passively, “can offer less risk with lower fees”. Dzmitry Lipski of Interactive Investor suggests the WisdomTree Enhanced Commodity ETF, which has returned 34.3% in the past year. Energy Matthew Read at research firm QuotedData reckons nuclear “will play a key role in the global move to…

Sanjeev Gupta Thousands of steelworkers employed by Sanjeev Gupta’s companies face an “uncertain future” after the collapse of their main lender, Greensill, said the FT. But the steel magnate is still living “the high life”. Gupta, who has not stepped on British soil since the Serious Fraud Office opened a probe into the affair, has been enjoying “the dying days of summer” on Mykonos. He recently threw a “multi-day” 50th birthday party on the Greek island, ferrying guests to and from festivities by helicopter. Gupta’s GFG Alliance has more than $5bn in outstanding debt that needs to be refinanced. Those involved in negotiations say he seems unfazed. “‘Cocky’ is probably the right word”, says one. “Some members of his circle privately wonder how long the party can last.” Euan Blair…