Innholdsfortegnelse for 1406 i The Week

The expression “U-turn” doesn’t really do justice to the Government’s frantic reversals of its calamitously received mini-Budget, said David Smith in The Times. A more accurate term would be unconditional surrender. On Monday, Britain’s newly installed Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt – the fourth person to hold that post since July – announced the scrapping of almost every single measure. The cut in the basic rate of income tax has been shelved indefinitely. The cuts to dividend tax rates, the tax reforms for freelancers, and the freezes in alcohol duty have all been scrapped. Of the main measures in the original package, only the reversal of the national insurance contributions increase, and the cut in stamp duty, have survived. “Just in case that wasn’t enough to mollify the financial markets,” said Larry…

Kwasi Kwarteng’s sacking ”was a humiliation on the grandest possible scale”, said Dominic Sandbrook on UnHerd. When he took his place at the Treasury on 6 September, he was armed with a “breathtakingly radical plan to defy the markets and turbo-charge a new era of growth”. But in the 38 days that followed, he achieved the remarkable double feat of crashing the economy and becoming “the most unpopular chancellor in the history of the Ipsos-Mori poll”. So when he was summoned back early from an International Monetary Fund conference in Washington last Friday, the writing was on the wall: some 6,000 people “gleefully” tracked his flight to London, where Liz Truss “delivered the inevitable bullet”. Before he reached No. 11, Kwarteng was a relatively obscure figure, said Sam Greenhill in…

Shehan Karunatilaka, who won the Booker Prize with his second novel for adults, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida. Set in the author’s native Sri Lanka, it focuses on the afterlife of a gay war photographer, and was described by judges as switching confidently from “noir to philosophical meditation to hilarity”. Reality TV, with reports that Mike Tindall is set to become the first member of the royal family to appear on I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here. The former England rugby player, who is married to Princess Anne’s daughter Zara, is not a working royal and so receives no public funds. Boris Johnson, after he earned more than twice his annual salary as PM from a single 30-minute speech and a “fireside chat” in the US. Johnson…

Only 10% of British adults have a favourable opinion of the Prime Minister. Among Tory Party members, 55% think Liz Truss should resign, including 39% of those who voted for her in the leadership contest. 38% of members want her to stay in post. Were Truss to resign, 32% of Tory Party members say they would like Boris Johnson to replace her. Rishi Sunak comes second, with the backing of 23% members; and Ben Wallace comes third, on 10%. YouGov 46% of people who earn less than £20,000 a year say they’ve had to cut down on their consumption of meat and fish owing to rising prices. 34% have cut back on the amount of fruit they eat, and 41% have cut down on sweet treats. YouGov/The Sunday Times…

The legacy of Bo’ Selecta! Craig David became a star at 19, when he had his first top ten hit, and he has gone on to sell 15 million records; but the Southampton-born singer, 41, still feels scarred by the ridicule he endured early in his career, says Jonathan Dean in The Sunday Times. David was only 21 when he heard that the comedian Leigh Francis was sending him up on his celebrity caricature show Bo’ Selecta!, which launched on Channel 4 in 2002. He sat down to watch it with his mother – and was shaken to the core by the way he was depicted on it. “Every sketch felt personal,” he says. “And when [the show] got a following, it became something that affected me. People would shout…

Villagers in Potto, North Yorkshire, have each been hit with a £150 bill from their parish council, thanks to a prolific serial complainer. Gerry Woodhouse is thought to have made 366 complaints to the council, submitting 1,500 documents in support. The volume of gripes led to the council being audited at a cost of £37,000, requiring additional contributions from residents. “We have a guy who is holding the parish to ransom,” lamented council chairman Andrew Wilde. Woodhouse has not admitted to making the objections, but in 2019 a tribunal found that he was an “obsessive and vexatious” complainer. Last week, The Economist dubbed Liz Truss “The Iceberg Lady”, saying that her grip on power had lasted seven days – “the shelf-life of a lettuce”. Now, the Daily Star has set…

NEW ZEALAND This “fart tax” has a bad smell to it The New Zealand Herald (Auckland) New Zealand’s government thinks it’s onto a winner with its new plan to tax farm animal farts, says John MacDonald. Methane emitted by livestock is held to be a major contributor to climate change: the gas has 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide over the first 20 years after it reaches the atmosphere. And our country is home to ten million cows and 26 million sheep. Scientists reckon that modifying their diets can go a long way in cutting the methane emissions they produce, so our PM, Jacinda Ardern, desperate to be seen as a world leader on climate change, has decided to tax farmers whose animals “have the nerve to burp…

If anyone were still in doubt about the scale of the challenge facing Sir Mark Rowley – the new commissioner of the Metropolitan Police – then this should do it, said the London Evening Standard. Dame Louise Casey was asked to investigate the force last year, in the wake of the rape and murder of Sarah Everard by a serving officer. Now, Casey has released an interim report, covering the Met’s internal disciplinary procedures, and it makes for shocking reading. Time and again, she found examples of officers who were still in the ranks despite having faced multiple allegations of misconduct. One officer had been accused of sexual assault, sexual harassment and fraud, yet was still serving. In total, 1,809 officers had faced multiple charges since 2013; 41 of them…

No way to pick a leader To The Times The principal flaw in the Conservatives’ leadership election rules is not so much that they are undemocratic, as Lord Grabiner says, but that they are unconstitutional. Constitutional precedent provides that the sovereign should invite the person who can command a majority in the House of Commons to form a government. Giving the final say to members risks the membership electing a leader the parliamentary party doesn’t want, with the wrong choice imposed against the better judgement of MPs by the threat of deselection. This is how we ended up with Liz Truss and Jeremy Corbyn. Tory MPs recently took the oath of allegiance to our new King. The oath is a profound commitment to put the interests of the country before…

by George Saunders Bloomsbury 256pp £18.99 The Week bookshop £14.99 Besides being a Booker Prize winner with his only novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, George Saunders is “routinely hailed as the world’s best short story writer”, said James Walton in The Daily Telegraph. The American’s dazzling new collection – his first since 2013’s Tenth of December – shows why he garners such acclaim. As is customary in a Saunders collection, quite a few of the tales are “deeply strange”: in the title story, three people are kept permanently “pinioned to a wall”, enacting scenes from American history; another story is set in a theme park that has never received any visitors. Around half the tales, however, explore “recognisable social and political dilemmas”: two employees clashing at work; a mother’s despair…

● Double-glazing is a good but expensive option. An alternative is using secondary glazing film, which you can buy online for about £10 and shrink to fit your window frame using a hairdryer. ● Hold a candle near windows and doors to find draughts. Add a brush draught-excluder to gaps at the bottom of external doors and fit rubber seals around the sides, use keyhole covers and a letterbox brush. ● Close curtains when it gets dark to stop heat escaping. Heavy duty thermal-lined curtains are best. You can sew or Velcro thermal linings to existing curtains. ● If you don’t want to go the whole hog of insulating your attic with mineral wool between the joists, try insulating your hot-water tank with a lagging jacket and hot water pipes…

Robbie Coltrane 1950-2022 Robbie Coltrane, who has died aged 72, became familiar to British audiences in the 1980s, when he started to crop up in TV comedies such as The Young Ones and Blackadder. But it was his lead role in Jimmy McGovern’s dark, Manchester-set police drama Cracker that cemented his reputation as a serious actor, said The Times. The role had not been written with him in mind (Robert Lindsay had turned it down); and McGovern was puzzled by the decision to cast him as the troubled criminal psychologist Eddie “Fitz” Fitzgerald. For one thing, he had imagined Fitz as a small, wiry man. But the show’s producer, Gub Neal, was convinced that Coltrane was right for the part. “Robbie was capable of asserting a presence that was genuinely…

Parkour athletes in Paris are using their talent for scaling high walls to flip the light switches of signs that have been left on overnight, in defiance of energy saving rules. Since 2013, shops in the city have been required to turn off their signs and displays between 1am and 6am, but enforcement is lax – hence the “Lights Off” operation. “Everyone can contribute [to energy saving] in their own way,” said Kevin Ha, who leads a group. “We put our physical abilities to good use.” More than 90 lost recordings of BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs have been found by a radio enthusiast from Suffolk. The episodes, which date back to the 1960s, were unearthed by Richard Harrison, who buys boxes of old reels and cassettes at car…

Kamikaze drones were “flying low and slow” over central Kyiv on Monday morning, said John Paul Rathbone and Christopher Miller in the FT. They were Iranian Shahed-136s, dubbed “mopeds” by the Ukrainians because of the buzzing noise made by their cheap two-stroke engines. One crashed into a street; another exploded into a residential building. Among the civilian dead that day were a young couple, the woman six months pregnant. The drones are effectively “cheap cruise missiles”, which can be pre-set to hit specific targets up to 1,500 miles away, and their relatively low price – $20,000 apiece – means they can be unleashed “in swarms”. Since the 8 October attack on the Kerch Bridge from Crimea to the Russian mainland, the Kremlin’s forces have “stepped up efforts to inflict suffering…

Festival-goers, who learnt that to attend Glastonbury next year, they will have to fork out £340 each. Tickets for this year’s festival (postponed from 2020) had cost £270. Tickets go on sale on 6 November and despite the hike, are likely to sell out fast. James Corden, the actor and TV host, who was banned by the fashionable New York restaurant Balthazar for allegedly being “extremely nasty” to its waiting staff on two separate occasions. Owner Keith McNally branded him a “tiny cretin of a man”. Budget airline Ryanair then got in on the act, tweeting that the millionaire comic wasn’t welcome on its flights either. McNally rescinded the ban a day later, saying Corden had apologised.…

Brussels Parliamentary facelift: Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have decided to press ahead with a refurbishment of the parliament building in Brussels, the bill for which will be at least €500m (£438m) – and could top €1bn. Renovating the Spaak building has long been on the parliament’s agenda, but many felt it unwise to go ahead at a time when food and energy bills are soaring across the EU. However, an amendment to “explore savings opportunities”, introduced by the socialist grouping, was voted down, and work on the building will now begin. The parliament also plans to purchase a large office complex in Strasbourg – where the parliament has its second seat – and convert it into a luxury hotel exclusively for the use of members and their entourage.…

1 Mersey Paradise by Ian Brown and John Squire, performed by the Stone Roses2 Puff the Magic Dragon by Peter Yarrow and Leonard Lipton, performed by Bonnie “Prince” Billy and Red3* Joe Hill by Alfred Hayes and Earl Robinson, performed by Paul Robeson4 The Four Horsemen by Vangelis Papathanassiou, performed by Aphrodite’s Child5 Evening of Light, written and performed by Nico6 Promised Land, written and performed by Joe Smooth7 A Whistling Woman by Maxine Peake, Adrian McNally and Becky Unthank, performed by The Unthanks8 I Saw the Light, written and performed by Todd Rundgren Book: One Moonlit Night by Caradog Prichard Luxury: a solar-powered epilator * Choice if allowed only one record…

Chess began life in India in the sixth century as chaturanga – a board war game for two players, in which the pieces had different powers, and the aim was to capture the king. It spread round the world, taking on different characteristics in different places. The game reached China in about 750AD. The East Slavs took it to what is now Russia, from where the Vikings took it to Scandinavia and Britain; the Lewis chessmen, from the late 12th century, include kings, queens, bishops, knights, warders (rooks) and pawns. Meanwhile, the Arabian empire brought chess to southern Europe, where in the late 15th century crucial rule changes made the Queen the most powerful piece – possibly in homage to Queen Isabella of Spain. The rules were standardised, and so…

Civil war in congress over Ukraine Nick Catoggio The Dispatch The “Republican civil war” over Ukraine is coming, said Nick Catoggio. Although polls indicate that America’s $67bn in aid to Ukraine, thus far, still has bipartisan support, “hairline cracks” within the GOP are widening. Polls indicate only a slim majority of Republicans – 51% – think the US should maintain support until the Ukrainians reclaim all their territory. And 43% say America has already given Ukraine too much aid. In Congress, Republican hawks are being challenged by an isolationist, “America First” wing that “punches above its weight”. Republican Roger Williams of Texas, for example, argues that the military equipment being sent to Ukraine “should be down at the border”, repelling Venezuelans and Central Americans; some Trump Republicans view Vladimir Putin…

The heat left behind by people’s fingertips can be used to crack passwords in seconds, researchers have found. A team from Glasgow University’s School of Computing Science used infra-red cameras to take images of keyboards, ATM pads and phone screens. These showed which keys had been touched, with those touched most recently coming up brightest. By looking at the relative intensity of these areas, the team found that it was possible to work out the specific letters, numbers or symbols that have been touched and when – making it possible to crack passwords with trial and error. When they took hundreds of thermal images, and used them to train an AI program, they found that it could predict 16-character passwords in 20 seconds, with an accuracy rate of 67%, and…

We’ve got to do something about Just Stop Oil, said Michael Deacon in The Daily Telegraph. Every day, this group of climate activists carries out some “fresh and deeply tedious outrage”, whether it be blocking London roads or spray painting Scotland Yard. Last week, these “eco-yobs” threw tomato soup over van Gogh’s Sunflowers, a masterpiece valued at over £72m. “What is worth more?” shouted 21-year-old Phoebe Plummer, as she glued herself to the wall of the National Gallery. “Art, or life?” It’s just the latest such gallery stunt, said Ben Ellery and Fiona Hamilton in The Times. In July, protesters covered Constable’s The Hay Wain with a poster, and glued themselves to a copy of Da Vinci’s Last Supper. Is it “oil paint or petrol” these people object to? As…

“Success is a poison that should only be taken late in life and then only in small doses.”Anthony Trollope, quoted in The Times “Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung.”Voltaire, quoted in The Guardian “Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.”Robert Frost, ibid “The only way of really finding out a man’s true character is to play golf with him. In no other walk of life does the cloven hoof so quickly display itself.”P.G. Wodehouse, quoted in the Financial Times “There are two kinds of people in the world: those who believe there are two kinds of people in the world and those who don’t.”Robert Benchley, quoted on The News-Star “Education should not be intended to make people comfortable, it is meant to…

To The Daily Telegraph Four generations of my British family have lived and worked in India since independence. The relationship between Britain and India is complex, but no two peoples are more complementary, nor share so much. Following the accession of King Charles III, there could be no more positive statement than returning the Koh-i-Noor diamond to India. As a long-time resident, I can tell you that it matters. Jasper Reid, New Delhi, India To The Daily Telegraph The Koh-i-Noor diamond dispute is absurd. I say that as someone of joint Pakistani and Indian heritage (one parent of each). The diamond belongs in the crown, and that is the best place for it. If it is to be returned, it should be returned to Lahore (as it was ceded by…

by Kathryn Harkup Bloomsbury 400pp £17.99 The Week bookshop £13.99 Kathryn Harkup is a chemist-turned-author whose first book, A is for Arsenic, explored the poisons in Agatha Christie’s stories, said Jeremy Duns in The Times. In her “highly entertaining” follow-up, she turns her gaze on the science and technology in the James Bond books and films. Few go to 007 expecting plausibility, but it turns out that some of the gadgets and dastardly plots in his world are rooted in reality. The wetsuit that Bond peels off at the start of Goldfinger – to “reveal pristine evening clothes” – was modelled on an “experimental watertight suit” developed by MI6 to infiltrate Nazi-occupied Holland. And Goldfinger’s dastardly scheme – to detonate a nuclear device inside Fort Knox, rendering the bullion worthless…

Jimmy Carr vs. Hitler Channel 4’s upcoming show Art Trouble has provoked something of a furore, says Nadia Khomami in The Guardian. The TV series will examine whether it’s possible to separate art from the artist. Channel 4 has purchased a series of “problematic” works – by, for instance, Eric Gill, who abused his daughters, the convicted paedophile Rolf Harris, and by Adolf Hitler, who was a painter in his youth. After a debate, a studio audience will be asked to decide whether each piece should be destroyed by the host, comedian Jimmy Carr. Channel 4 says that Art Trouble is in keeping with its tradition of “iconoclasm and irreverence”, but it has sparked criticism. The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust complained that the show is “making Hitler a topic of…

Alan talks to Jim about Peggy’s stained-glass window, which the parish council is voting on; Jim shares his misgivings. Lily manages to sell Russ’s portrait of her for a profit. Alan tells Usha that the vote went in favour of the window. Tracy brings Chelsea to see the midwife; Chelsea’s distraught when she discovers she’s further along than she thought. Meanwhile, Natasha bumps into Tracy in the clinic, and later reports that Tracy must be pregnant. As plans for the window progress, disheartened Alan feels the whole village is in favour. George confesses to Eddie he’s considering quitting college. Eddie tells Emma, who suggests that Mia helps George study; he isn’t pleased. As Alan and Usha remove pigeons from St Stephen’s, the ladder topples and smashes the Jack Woolley window.…

One of my all-time favourite Japanese comfort foods is tonjiru, a hearty miso soup made with chunky root vegetables and slow-cooked pork, says Tim Anderson. This recipe is based on that, but uses chicken instead of pork, for a lighter flavour, but with the same heart-warming effect. Like any good chicken soup, this one also works as a meal in and of itself. Serves 4 as a starter, or 2 as a main 20g pearl barley, cooked (see instructions) 1 chicken drumstick or thigh, boned, cut into 2.5cm chunks ½ an onion, diced 1 garlic clove, finely chopped 5g fresh ginger root, peeled and finely shredded 600ml dashi or chicken stock 50g daikon, peeled and cut into wedges about 5mm thick, or radishes, washed and quartered 70-80g burdock, Jerusalem artichokes…

Little & Local returns to Nottingham with an intimate candlelit evening on 13 November. Expect delicious seasonal produce and personalised place settings (see Instagram @littleandlocal_). The Little Chartroom presents Chef Roberta Hall-McCarron is hosting a guest chef at her Edinburgh restaurant one evening a month until April (thelittlechartroom.com). Italo This tiny Italian deli in Vauxhall, south London, champions up-and-coming local chefs, who cook dinner served on one long table on a cobbled street outside the shop (see Instagram @italo_vauxhall_). When they aren’t catering private parties, The Dinner Ladies host monthly themed supper clubs at interesting venues from the Embankment at Putney to a farm in Hertfordshire (dinnerladiesltd.com) Hannah Crosbie with… sees the sommelier joined by guest chefs to co-host very popular one-off dinners in London (see Instagram @hannahcrosb). SOURCE: THE…

BMW/Mini/Britishvolt: broken electric dreams As the Western tech world drifts ever further away from China, BMW is motoring in the opposite direction. The German carmaker has revealed it plans “to axe all UK production of the award-winning electric Mini and relocate it to China”, said Sophie Zeldin-O’Neill in The Guardian. The marque’s historic home at Cowley in Oxford, which now produces 40,000 electric vehicles a year, will continue building petrol Mini Coopers until into the 2030s. The move is “a major blow” to Britain’s ambition of becoming “a global hub for zero-emission vehicle manufacture” – a pillar of the “short-lived” industrial strategies of Theresa May and Boris Johnson. The main beneficiary is BMW’s Chinese partner, Great Wall Motor, which will build the next generation, zero-emission Mini Aceman. An electric version…

As a student of economic history, the former chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, should have thought twice before provoking the bond markets, said Jill Treanor in The Sunday Times. Traders, after all, “have called the shots since the days of Napoleon”. 1815: Waterloo “The biggest player in the European bond market’s early years”, Nathan Rothschild, was “as important in the battlefield victory as the Duke of Wellington”, according to historian Niall Ferguson – because he backed the bond issue that funded the British war effort. MP Thomas Duncombe warned at the time that “the credit of nations depends on his nod”. 1860s: American Civil War The Southern Confederate states issued bonds linked to the price of their “mainstay crop”: cotton. All went well until competing supplies hit the market, pushing down the…

Kanye West A week after Ye, the rapper once known as Kanye West, was suspended from Twitter and Instagram for anti-Semitic posts, “he has found a new way to get back onto social media”, said DealBook in The New York Times. This week he agreed to buy the right-wing social network Parler for an undisclosed sum. If the deal goes through – still “a big if” – the musician will join a select group of tycoons, including Donald Trump and, potentially, Elon Musk, in owning a social media site. The deal could be finalised by the end of the year. “Once again, Ye proves that he is one step ahead of the legacy media narrative,” said Parler CEO George Farmer. But despite their professed shared love of free speech, the…

THE WEEK CROSSWORD 1334 An Ettinger pass holder 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 31 October. Send it to The Week Crossword 1334, 121-141 Westbourne Terrace, London W2 6JR, or email the completed grid/listed solutions to crossword@theweek.co.uk. Tim Moorey (timmoorey.com) This week’s winner will receive an Ettinger (ettinger.co.uk) travel pass holder in assorted colours, which retails at £115, and two Connell Guides (connellguides.com). ACROSS 1 Stratospheric rent for lowest levels in the Savoy? (9,4) 10 Removing top just very bad (5) 11 All fine playing with me in French (2,7) 12 Expel from a racing venue? (4,3) 13 Top Gear? Hasn’t it changed! (3,4) 14 Somerset town Conservative? Difficult…

Two former public school pupils have set up a support group for men who’ve been made to feel ashamed of their privilege, or been left emotionally “numb” by their boarding school education. The Privileged Man group, which charges yearly fees of £1,995, holds weekend retreats and Zoom calls for its members. “There are thousands of us,” co-founder Pete Hunt told The Spectator. “We cannot be ashamed of being born.” Nearly seven million people in the UK, or 14% of the population, now identify as naturists or nudists, up from 2% in 2001, an Ipsos poll has found. Mark Bass, president of British Naturism, said the shift was partly down to people seeking to slough off a “body confidence crisis” and “reclaim our identities”.…

A nationwide “prevention zone” was introduced in Britain this week, to tackle the country’s largest ever recorded outbreak of avian flu. Under the new rules, keepers with more than 500 birds must only allow essential personnel onto their sites; staff must change clothing and footwear before entering enclosures; and vehicles used on site must be regularly disinfected. There is currently no nationwide requirement to keep birds inside, but officials said that was being kept under review. There have been 190 confirmed cases of avian flu across the UK since October 2021, 30 of which were confirmed this month. The risk to human health from bird flu is said to be very low.…

Washington DC Trump subpoena: In a dramatic move, the congressional committee investigating the storming of the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 has voted to compel Donald Trump to testify about the events of that day. The committee’s members, made up of seven Democrats and two Republicans, voted unanimously in favour of the subpoena at the end of their ninth public hearing – likely the last before November’s midterms. Trump has not yet confirmed if he plans to comply with the summons. If he refuses, the committee could ask the House to send a criminal referral to the justice department. But the summons may yet prove symbolic. Should the Republicans regain control of congress in the elections on 8 November, they are very likely to wind up the 6 January…

“Zealots, even right-wing ones, don’t get business: the pragmatism of it, the lack of absolutes. To judge by Elon Musk’s faith that Russia would honour the peace deal that he has in mind with Ukraine, the incomprehension is mutual. Business people don’t understand fanaticism. They don’t believe that something as abstract as an idea can move people to extreme deeds. No, there must be earthly and negotiable grievances under all that mystical bluster. There must be a deal to be done. An aggressor in war can cite imperial honour and other intangibles as animating drives. ‘Let’s talk’, is what someone of a commercial cast of mind hears.” Janan Ganesh in the Financial Times…

Our health service is on its last legs Harry de Quetteville The Daily Telegraph More than six million stuck on waiting lists; 22,000 appointments cancelled every day: the NHS is buckling and the cause is plain for all to see, says Harry de Quetteville – a chronic lack of staff. The UK has fewer doctors per head than most rich nations – 2.9 for every 1,000 people against an EU average of 3.7. The BMA claims we need another 46,300 just to bring us up to the average; instead we face an exodus – according to a recent survey almost half of hospital doctors plan to leave the NHS within a year. And it’s not just doctors: the latest NHS England figures show that more than 130,000 positions are currently…

Goldfish have good memories It used to be said that goldfish have three-second memories; but according to the latest study to disprove this theory, the fish have good memories which they rely on to navigate their surroundings. The research, at the University of Oxford, involved training nine goldfish to swim 70cm in a straight line, lured by a tasty treat in the form of a worm. By the end, if there was no worm when they reached that point, they’d turn back – suggesting that they had been expecting one. By painting the bottom of the tank with black and white stripes, the researchers were also able to show that the fish were monitoring their environment as they swam. Initially, the stripes were 2cm wide, which meant that the fish…

Elon Musk has a reputation for womanising – but his ex-wife, Talulah Riley, has revealed that when they met in 2008, he was a rather shy man. He asked permission to put his hand on her knee; then, after several dates, he asked her if she would like to go back to his hotel room to look at some rocket videos. “And we did go back to his hotel room,” she told a new documentary (see page 34). “And he did just show me rocket videos.” William Hague is proud of his younger self for having had the audacity to address the Tory party conference when he was still at school, in 1977. But there were downsides to becoming an “elder statesman at 16” – and when teenagers ask him…

The Koh-i-Noor “is neither the biggest diamond in the world, nor the most beautiful”, said Anita Anand in The Guardian. But it is “arguably the most infamous”. And now it is threatening to cause a “very ugly diplomatic row”. The 105.6-carat gem, which resides in the Tower of London, has a long and “blood-drenched” history. Mined in India in medieval times, it passed through Moghul, Afghan and Persian hands (its name means “Mountain of Light” in Persian) and is said to have cursed many of its owners. In 1849, the East India Company forced its then owner, the ten-year-old Sikh boy-king Maharajah Duleep Singh, to sign a treaty which took his kingdom and the Koh-i-Noor from him. The jewel went to Queen Victoria, and is now inset in a crown…

For a six-year spell – from 2002 to 2008 – Wasps were the dominant team in English rugby, said Ben Coles in The Daily Telegraph. Four times they won the Premiership title and twice lifted the Heineken Cup. So how painful it must be for Wasps fans to now be witnessing the prospect of their club sinking into oblivion. Having defaulted on £35m owed to investors, the club was suspended from this season’s Premiership earlier this month and this week was placed in administration, with all current players made redundant. Wasps isn’t the only top club in trouble, said Mark Dobson in The Guardian. A few weeks ago Worcester Warriors were partially liquidated, having failed to pay a tax bill of around £6m. They too have been suspended from the…

Cricket England beat Pakistan by six wickets in their final warm-up before the T20 World Cup. Football Arsenal extended their lead over Manchester City in the Premier League to four points with a 1-0 victory over Leeds. Tottenham beat Everton 2-0, and Chelsea beat Aston Villa 2-0. In La Liga, Real Madrid beat Barcelona 3-1 in the 250th El Clasico. Tennis The world No. 1, Iga Świątek, claimed her eight tournament victory of 2022 by winning the San Diego Open. In the final, the Polish player beat Donna Vekić of Croatia 6-3 3-6 6-0.…

“Few actors can project charismatic affability better than David Tennant,” said Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph. And fewer still have his ability to switch off the charm in an instant and “go dead behind the eyes”, as we discovered when he played the serial killer Dennis Nielsen in ITV’s Des. In Good, set in prewar Germany, Tennant plays another “seemingly ordinary man” – a liberal-minded literature professor, John Halder, who gradually becomes part of the Nazi “killing machine”, washes his hands of his Jewish best friend, and ends up arguing for the Final Solution. First performed in 1981, C.P. Taylor’s quietly terrifying play offers a “surprising and perceptive psychological slant” on the Nazis’ rise. Halder is not “spurred by rousing speeches” and nationalist passion – but rather by bourgeois…

Elon Musk “a visionary, an eccentric, or something more dangerous?” BBC2’s new three-part documentary doesn’t draw any firm conclusions, said Anita Singh in The Daily Telegraph – but it does shed light on how he became the world’s richest man. Though Musk doesn’t appear himself, there are interviews with people who know him well, including his doting mother, and both of his ex-wives. The odd Tesla employee pops up too, to attest to Musk’s single-minded drive (“My family life was not the highlight of my years at Tesla,” notes one). The series is overly deferential, said Sean O’Grady in The Independent. But its main flaw is that Musk just isn’t that interesting. We see him “working hard and expecting others to do the same”, but lots of wealthy entrepreneurs do…

Ma’am Darling by Craig Brown, 2017 (4th Estate £9.99). A tragicomedy told in micro-episodes that cheerfully blurs the line between parody and biography – a task admittedly made much easier by its subject, Princess Margaret, who is monstrous, charming and pathetic by turns. And after you’ve got your breath back: boy, do we need to do some hard thinking about that institution. The Trouble with Being Born by E.M. Cioran, 1973 (Penguin £9.99). Of Cioran’s many volumes of philosophical essays and aphorisms, this is the one I’d sew into my greatcoat. For some of us, the only cure for black is more black, and Cioran is like a camping trip on Pluto. “What do you do from morning to night?” “I endure myself.” Bad Blood by Lorna Sage, 2000 (4th…

Programmes Antiques Roadshow: 100 Years of the BBC One of many programmes marking the corporation’s centenary, this special edition comes from Alexandra Palace and features BBC memorabilia, including Del Boy’s Ford Capri from Only Fools and Horses. Sun 23 Oct, BBC1 17:45 (60mins). The Pact Second series of the well-received thriller set in the Welsh valleys. Mon 24 Oct, BBC1 21:00 (60mins). Made in the 80s: The Decade that Shaped our World Documentary exploring how British technology, culture and politics shaped global events during a tumultuous decade. Mon 24 Oct, C4 21:00 (60mins). Louis Theroux Interviews… Stormzy From his home in south London, the rapper, singer and songwriter speaks candidly to Theroux about his childhood and the pressures of fame. Tue 25 Oct, BBC2 21:15 (45mins). Kids’ TV: The Surprising…

How likely is a property market crash? David Smith The Sunday Times Even the “calmest commentators” now reckon that a house price crash will be hard to avoid due to “the dramatic rise in yields on government bonds”, says David Smith. “Is the gloom justified?” Lending rates for banks have jumped too. And although mortgage rates of 6% might be low compared with the peaks of the 1980s, the actual financial burden for the home-owner – when adjusted for higher household debt and higher house prices – is about the same. The upshot then was “the worst housing crash in modern history”. But while “the vultures” are already “circling the housing market”, it could be different this time if the reversal of almost all of the former chancellor’s “mini-Budget” means…

The week’s best shares DS Smith Mail on Sunday DS Smith majors on eco-friendly recycled and cardboard packaging. Performance is beating expectations, debt is falling and it has hedged most of its 2023-2024 energy costs. “Very cheap” and yields 5.5%. Buy. 267.1p. Diageo The Daily Telegraph The spirits giant, “one of the UK’s great exporters”, is benefiting from sterling’s weakness. Profits have jumped and the divi is growing. A “genuine world leader” offering “rare resilience in a troubled market”. Buy. £36.62. Entain The Times The Ladbrokes and Coral owner is on track for growth despite punters having less spare funds. Highly cash-generative, set to hit US profit targets and expanding globally. The football World Cup will be a boon. Buy. £11.52. Harbour Energy The Times Shares in the North Sea…

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