Innholdsfortegnelse for 1533 i The Week

What happened Reeves’s repair job Rachel Reeves announced a £14bn squeeze on public spending in her much-anticipated Spring Statement this week. The cuts were necessary, she said, to repair damage to the public finances caused by global economic volatility. The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), the fiscal watchdog, has halved the UK’s expected growth rate for 2025 from 2% to 1%. The less favourable economic outlook, combined with higher than expected borrowing costs, meant that Reeves had been on track to miss her self-imposed pledge to bring day-to-day spending into balance with tax receipts by the end of the decade. In her Budget in October, the Chancellor had set aside a contingency fund of just £10bn to ensure that she met that rule. Last week, ministers unveiled about £5bn worth…

The already wide range of unconventional hot cross buns on offer has expanded in the run-up to Easter this year, says The Times. Asda has Tiramisu Hot Cross Buns; for fans of classic English biscuits, Sainsbury’s is peddling custard creams with hot cross bun-flavoured filling; Waitrose, riffing on a Christmas staple, has Hot Cross Bunettone; M&S is catering to sweet tooths with Millionaire’s Hot Cross Buns, studded with bits of salted caramel fudge; and in Australia, McDonald’s has launched a Hot Cross Bun Flavoured McFlurry. According to a new poll of 2,000 adults, 22% of Britons are not able to identify a robin; 21% say they might struggle to identify a badger; and a quarter are not clear what dragonflies look like.…

Plans to introduce assisted dying in England and Wales may be delayed until 2029, throwing the future of the legislation into doubt. In a change proposed by Kim Leadbeater, the MP sponsoring the bill, the deadline for an “assisted dying service” to be operational is to be pushed back from two years to four; more time is needed, she believes, because of amendments proposed by MPs since it was voted through the Commons in November. Pushing back the deadline to 2029 means that it may fall on the other side of the next election, which could result in the reform never coming to pass.…

Berlin Jet regrets: There have been calls in Germany to renege on Berlin’s €8.3bn order of 35 F-35 fighters from the US, following reports that Washington had reserved the right to block the use of the jets. Stern magazine said it had obtained a copy of the classified contract for the planes, which showed that the Pentagon had reserved the right to approve all sorties, and that Berlin was not allowed to service the jets or examine their software. Other Nato members, notably Portugal and Canada, have also called for reviews of their decisions to buy US fighter jets (see page 14), having been spooked by Washington’s recent decision to cut off parts and software updates to Ukraine for a brief period, grounding its jets by doing so. Germany’s order…

1 We’ve Only Just Begun by Roger Nichols and Paul Williams, performed by the Carpenters 2 Bye Bye Baby by Bob Gaudio and Bob Crewe, performed by the Bay City Rollers 3 Ukulele Lady by Gus Kahn and Richard A. Whiting, performed by Ethel Merman 4 Isn’t it Amazing, written and performed by Hothouse Flowers 5 If Only, written and performed by Hazel O’Connor 6* I Can See Clearly Now by Johnny Nash, performed by Hothouse Flowers 7 We’ll Keep a Welcome by Mai Jones, Lyn Joshua and Jimmy Harper, performed by Harry Secombe 8 Francesca by Jennifer Decilveo and Andrew Hozier-Byrne, performed by Hozier Book: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë Luxury: red lipstick * Choice if allowed only one record…

Greenland is the most sparsely populated territory on Earth. All of the largest settlements are on the coast, and there are few roads inland. Each year, it enjoys perpetual daylight for around two months, and perpetual night for almost three months. In winter, the capital Nuuk in the south sees average temperatures of only –8°C, because it is warmed by the Gulf Stream. By contrast, in the north, average temperatures are around –18°C. In central Greenland, temperatures nearing –70°C have been recorded. In summer, temperatures seldom reach above 10°C; this is too cold to sustain trees, so the land is largely a treeless tundra. Agriculture is only possible in the sheltered fjords in the south of the country, where people keep some livestock and grow vegetables. Greenland has a super-charged…

Trump has trashed our jet exports Joe Lancaster Reason One downside of turning on your allies, says Joe Lancaster, is that it can make them less inclined to buy your weapons – as the Trump administration is now discovering with regard to the F-35 fighter jet. The F-35 Lightning II aircraft is the Pentagon’s most costly weapon system, and one that has long been dogged by technical problems. It requires endless expensive retrofits and software upgrades. Despite this, the jet is scheduled to remain in service until 2088, at an estimated cost of $2trn. But Trump’s provocations have prompted some allied nations to reconsider whether to keep using, or acquire, the aircraft. Canada, which agreed in 2023 to buy 88 of them for $19bn, now says it’s “examining other alternatives”.…

Severe alcoholics and opioid addicts are to be offered the chance to have electrodes implanted into their brains, to see if this can modulate cravings and improve their self-control. For a trial at King’s College Hospital in London and Addenbrooke’s in Cambridge, the electrodes will be used to stimulate areas of the brain involved in reward, motivation and decision-making. The hope is that just as a pacemaker can stabilise abnormal electrical rhythms in the heart, the electrodes will normalise “deviant” rhythms linked to addiction. The technique, deep brain stimulation, is already used to treat people with conditions such as Parkinson’s disease and obsessive compulsive disorder, says Robin McKie in The Observer, and several proof-of-concept studies have suggested it may also be of benefit in addiction. The trial will involve 12…

Is the world’s most powerful democracy “sliding towards autocracy”? It certainly looks that way, said Ian Birrell in The i Paper. Since embarking on his second term less than three months ago, President Trump has been busily flouting conventions and dismantling checks on his power. His administration has arrested protesters without due process; sought to stifle free speech in universities; denied federal contracts to law firms it regards as unfriendly; replaced top generals with more ideologically compatible candidates and fired military lawyers. Last week, it invoked a wartime power to deport 238 Venezuelan migrants to a brutal prison in El Salvador, in defiance of a judge’s verbal order. Trump called the judge “a radical Left lunatic” and demanded his impeachment, drawing a rare rebuke from Chief Justice John Roberts. David…

“To be classed as a great heavyweight boxer, it is often said that a fighter needs to duel with the best combatants of his time,” said John Rawling in The Guardian. And George Foreman, who died last week aged 76, “unquestionably did that”. During part one of a remarkable two-stage career, he had “epic” rivalries with Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali: his defeat of Frazier in 1973 earned him his first world heavyweight crown, which he relinquished 21 months later by losing to Ali in “perhaps the most talked about fight of all time” – the “Rumble in the Jungle” in Zaire. That unexpected defeat, which was watched by an estimated TV audience of one billion, played a part in Foreman’s decision to “quit boxing aged 28 in 1977”. Astonishingly,…

To The Times You report that judges have been told they face disciplinary action for working too hard. I had to laugh, having just completed jury service. The content was interesting, but the hours beggared belief: regular 10.30am starts, always a full hour for lunch and never finishing later than 4pm. Of course I appreciate that other work would be going on behind the scenes, but the pace was nevertheless glacial. Chris Wilson, surgeon, Cardiff To The Times I was interested to read the observations by Chris Wilson, a surgeon, about the hours worked by judges based on his experience as a juror. Funnily enough, as a newly retired judge, I have recent experience of the hours worked by surgeons, having undergone minor surgery myself. I couldn’t have been in…

The Week reviews an exhibition in a private gallery Lorena Lohr at Soho Revue Lorena Lohr (b.1990) is one of the more idiosyncratic and surprising presences in British contemporary art. The British-Canadian artist is best known as a photographer, but has long led a double life as a painter of exuberant nudes, which owe as much of a debt to the 15th century Dutch painter Rogier van der Weyden and Balthus as they do postwar pin-ups and trashy illustration. A typical painting will see an imagining of the female nude, intentionally teetering somewhere between baroque fussiness and comic-book caricature, marooned in vast desert landscapes – and to all appearances, very much enjoying the experience. This show, Motel Nudes, brings together two dozen or so recent miniatures in the same style:…

Moonfleet Manor, behind Chesil Beach, in Dorset, was the inspiration for the 1898 children’s novel Moonfleet by J. Meade Falkner. The hotel has 36 rooms and lots of child-friendly facilities (from £150 b&b; luxuryfamilyhotels.co.uk). Agatha Christie wrote And Then There Were None at Burgh Island, a glamorous art deco hotel off the South Devon coast. Stay at her writer’s retreat, now a modern beach house (sleeps six), with panoramic sea views and a hot tub (from £940 b&b; burghisland.com). Dylan Thomas moved to Laugharne, Carmarthenshire, in 1949. You can visit his boathouse (cofgar.wales) while staying at Brown’s, a 14-room boutique hotel with an old-school pub where he used to drink (from £130 b&b; browns.wales). J.K. Rowling completed Harry Potter at The Balmoral Hotel in Edinburgh. The J.K. Rowling Suite is marked…

The Nare Hotel Veryan, Cornwall “Perched prettily” above the pale sands of Carne Beach on Cornwall’s south coast, The Nare is one of England’s most “charmingly oldfashioned” seaside hotels, says Tom Mulvihill in The Independent. Built in 1929, it retains an Agatha Christie-ish appeal, with floral wallpaper and antique furniture throughout, and Roberts radios and huge baths in the rooms. Staff are unfailingly friendly, the traditional English cuisine in the restaurant is excellent, and there’s also a spa, two pools, two boats and a tennis court. Best of all, though, are the hotel’s “stunning” setting, its beautiful gardens, and the lovely coastal walks nearby. Doubles from £406 b&b; narehotel.co.uk.…

BYD/Tesla: EV road race “The good times are rolling” for the Chinese electric carmaker BYD, said Peter Landers in The Wall Street Journal. Hot on the heels of a technical breakthrough – a new fast-charging system that can deliver 250 miles of range in just five minutes – comes a symbolic number. Sales last year burst through the $100bn mark, beating arch-rival Tesla to the punch. Like other Chinese carmakers, BYD is also “racing ahead” in terms of “advanced driver-assistance features”: its “God’s Eye” self-driving system is being built into all models, while “regulatory difficulties have held Tesla back”. The Shenzhen-based outfit, which includes Warren Buffett among its investors and “has dozens of showrooms across Britain”, enjoyed a 29% surge in revenues last year, said Chris Price in The Daily…

Reeves’s soft spot for the City Oliver Shah The Sunday Times Business anger over the tax hikes in October’s Budget was widespread, and “knocked the Chancellor and her team sideways”, says Oliver Shah. Ironically, it was at its worst among those employing what Labour would probably deem “working people”; in the retail and hospitality sectors, the combination of hiked employers’ NICs and the higher minimum wage will squeeze those employing workers on low wages. The imminent workers’ rights bill and fudged promises to reform business rates are added sores. “The mood is best, or least bad, in the City and Canary Wharf” – neither traditional left-wing redoubts – because all the “grasping for growth levers that don’t cost anything” rather suits banks and insurers. Out go EU bonus caps, in…

England’s first new national forest in 30 years – the Western Forest – is to be created across a 6,178-acre swath of the West Country, the Government has announced. Some 20 million trees will be planted around farmland and urban areas in Bristol, Gloucestershire, Wiltshire and Somerset by 2050, starting in areas where current tree cover is as low as 10%. This will create habitats for wildlife including dormice and pine martens, and make woodland accessible to 2.5 million people. An 89-year-old man has won his “David and Goliath” battle to prevent BT from closing the last remaining phone box in his Norfolk village. Derek Harris learnt of the planned removal of the K6 model kiosk in January, when he saw it on the agenda of a parish council meeting…

Nicola Sturgeon, who was cleared of any wrongdoing by police investigating the SNP’s finances. The former first minister, who was arrested in 2023 and released pending the probe, said that there had not been “a scrap of evidence” against her. Her estranged husband, former SNP chief executive Peter Murrell, has been charged with embezzlement. He has yet to enter a plea. Noughties dramas, which are topping the charts on streaming platforms. Grey’s Anatomy, Prison Break, Lost and Suits are among the “legacy” shows eclipsing newer hits. Analysts say part of their appeal is that they are so bingeable: Grey’s Anatomy is in its 21st season. Several of the shows are now being rebooted.…

The Government has announced a £500m boost to its road maintenance budget for local authorities in England, taking it to £1.6bn in total. Funding is to be linked to councils’ plans for eradicating potholes: they must now publish details of how many potholes they have filled; 25% of the uplift will be withheld from councils that fail to show proof of repairs. The extra money is intended to fill seven million potholes per year, but it would cost £16.8bn to fix the entire backlog, according to the Asphalt Industry Alliance.…

Mandan, North Dakota Greenpeace damages: Greenpeace has been ordered to pay $660m in damages to an oil company owing to its role in fomenting anti-fossil fuel protests in 2016. The Texas-based firm Energy Transfer alleged that Greenpeace had used “misinformation” to incite people to demonstrate against its Dakota Access Pipeline, and sued it for defamation, trespass nuisance and civil conspiracy. Last week, a nine-person jury in the staunchly Republican town of Mandan found in favour of Energy Transfer. Greenpeace, which said the damages could put the group out of operation in the US, says it will appeal the verdict. San Francisco, California Meta “piracy”: Mark Zuckerberg allowed Meta’s flagship AI model to be secretly trained on a notorious “shadow library” of copyrighted books, court documents have suggested. Filed as part of…

“Every time I see someone filch a load of steaks from the supermarket, or jump through the Tube barriers without paying – the sort of routine law-breaking that happens so often now – my trust in the people around me is eroded. What is so corrosive about these petty misdemeanours is not the loss to supermarket shareholders, or even to train operators’ balance sheets, but the slow, progressive sense it creates in lawabiding observers that nothing matters that much, that nobody is following the rules, that there isn’t much worth defending. It’s a small step from there to asking the question: why should I follow the rules if nobody else is?” Charlotte Ivers in The Sunday Times…

Is nothing sacred behind closed doors? Tom Felle The Conversation Tony Blair called it one of his biggest mistakes as PM, says Tom Felle, and ever since the Freedom of Information Act (FOI) was introduced, ministers have had reason to curse it, given the ever-expanding area of official business it has enabled journalists to dig into. In 2015, the state was forced to publish the “black spider” letters written by Prince Charles to ministers; more recently, FOI requests have forced disclosure of ministers’ WhatsApp messages relating to official business. And now FOI has advanced into yet another domain: the New Scientist has invoked it to obtain the ChatGPT prompts of Science Secretary Peter Kyle, who reportedly had asked the chatbot to draft a speech, explain complex policy and tell him…

Married men pile on the pounds It’s common for people to put on weight in middle age – but if you are male, being married very much increases the odds. Research in Poland has revealed that married men are far more likely to be obese than their single counterparts. For the study, a team examined data on 2,405 men and women with an average age of 50 who’d taken part in a national health survey. About 38% of the participants were overweight, 26% were obese and the rest were of a healthy weight. The researchers found an expected link between age and weight gain: for each year of age, the risk of being overweight rose by 3% in men and by 4% in women. More surprising was the finding that…

It’s a “dismal parable” of Broken Britain, said Andrew Neil in the Daily Mail. Last Thursday, one creaky old substation near Heathrow managed to bring Britain’s busiest airport to a shuddering halt for 24 hours, when an explosion in one of its transformers started a fire; more than 1,300 flights were cancelled, leaving hundreds of thousands of passengers stranded. This wasn’t just a “massive inconvenience”; it was a “global embarrassment”. Why was Heathrow so dependent on a single substation? Why did it have no adequate standby source of power? Back-up generators kept the airfield lights on, but passengers were forced to use their phone torches to navigate the pitch-black terminals, while baggage carousels came to a shuddering halt. The disruption was so great, said Quentin Letts in the same paper,…

Last week, England’s new manager, Thomas Tuchel, was “asked what had been missing” under Gareth Southgate, said Oliver Holt in the Daily Mail. The German “did not hold back”: he talked about “clarity, rhythm, freedom and expression” – and suggested that the side needed an entirely new identity. Perhaps he is now regretting those comments, because in the first two games of the Tuchel era, England have been little different to how they were under his predecessor. Their first match, a World Cup qualifier against Albania last Friday, ended in a 2-0 victory; it was followed, on Monday, with a 3-0 victory over Latvia. The latter display, in particular, was “dull and turgid”. Against a team “ranked between Burundi and the Dominican Republic in Fifa’s world rankings”, Tuchel’s men “laboured”…

Snow White 1hr 49mins (PG) Controversial reimagining of the Disney classic You have to feel slightly sorry for the makers of this (mostly) live-action musical reimagining of the Snow White story, said Danny Leigh in the FT. Adapting Disney’s beloved but “deeply pre-feminist” 1937 original into a story fit for the 21st century was always going to be tough, and the film arrives “pre-mired in controversy”. Hackles have been raised over everything from the casting of Rachel Zegler, an actress of Latino heritage, in the title role, to the decision to CGI-generate the dwarves, rather than employ actors with dwarfism. The result is “an earnest effort to meet an impossible brief”. It’s not the disaster it could have been, said Robbie Collin in The Daily Telegraph, nor has there been…

Two men have been found guilty of stealing America, the 18-carat gold toilet, worth £4.8m, created by the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan. First displayed at New York’s Guggenheim Museum in 2016, it was installed in Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, Winston Churchill’s family home, in 2019. Visitors were able to use the fully functioning toilet. It has never been found, and is thought to have been melted down and sold. Michael Jones, a builder from Oxford, was convicted of the burglary, which took place in September 2019. He had visited Blenheim twice before the theft (on one occasion, he used the toilet, describing it as “splendid”). Another man, Frederick Doe, was convicted of helping to sell the gold. In 2019, Edward Spencer-Churchill of the Blenheim Art Foundation had explained why the 98kg…

As Lynda sets Freddie straight on managing the newly promoted cricket team, Lily offers to come on board. Helen tells a shocked Clarrie and Susan that one of them will have to lose their job. Lily tries to woo Rex onto the team, offering to secretly pay him. At the prison, George realises that his sisters have duped him into seeing Clarrie and Emma, but admits he’s missed his family. Pat and Susan want to use the church bells as a rallying call for their protest; Neil has reservations, but Alan is enthusiastic and suggests a ten-hour ring. As Vince agrees to pay for two players on the team, Freddie is dismayed, but Lily says the team must evolve; Tony and Pat are annoyed when they’re dropped. After an ultimatum…

Stark East Road, East Mersea (near Colchester), Essex (01206-616430) This husband-and-wife establishment on Mersea Island, Essex, is about as “independent” as a restaurant can get, says Grace Dent in The Guardian. A “reprise” of Ben and Sophie Crittenden’s acclaimed restaurant of the same name in Broadstairs, it is located in what feels like a “glorified” summer house. “There is no reception desk or cloakroom, no art installations, wine cave, private dining mezzanine or other such frippery.” There is just Ben working “solo” in the kitchen, and Sophie out front, serving. While some might “scoff at its lack of airs and graces”, I found it to be a refreshing “lesson in simplicity”. And if the setting is homespun, Ben’s cooking isn’t: the original Stark earned a Michelin star, which this has retained.…

SOURCES: THE INDEPENDENT/THE DAILY TELEGRAPH…

Group Captain John Hemingway 1919-2025 Group Captain John “Paddy” Hemingway was an Irish fighter pilot who took part in the Battle of Britain when, in the summer and autumn of 1940, nearly 3,000 airmen from Fighter Command fended off the Luftwaffe’s attempts to gain aerial superiority over southern England and the English Channel – though vastly outnumbered. In so doing, these men, mostly in Hurricanes and Spitfires, prevented Hitler’s planned invasion of Britain and gave a vital boost to Allied morale. More than 500 of them lost their lives; many more were injured. Addressing the Commons in August that year, Winston Churchill famously paid tribute to the sacrifice, courage and resilience of the pilots and other aircrew: “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so…

In the 1990s, Allan Leighton built Asda into Britain’s most happening supermarket, eventually selling it to the US giant Walmart for £6.7bn in 1999. Asda then began a lengthy decline – exacerbated by the recent “debtfuelled” reign of the Issa brothers, said Emily Hawkins on This is Money. But now guess who’s back as “executive chairman” and gunning for a repeat triumph? Leighton, 71, is all about shock and awe, and has “fired the starting gun on a price war”, recently slashing the cost of 1,500 items by as much as 45%. And it looks like he’s bedding in for a lengthy campaign: he told The Grocer he has “loved every minute” since returning in January. “The mere announcement of Asda’s new strategy was enough to rattle investors in other…

Anne Wojcicki The once high-flying DNA testing firm 23andMe has filed for bankruptcy protection in the US, said Ben Sherry on Inc. All assets, including its “vast trove of genetic data”, are now up for auction. The advice to customers from California’s attorney general? “Urgently” ask the firm to “delete your data and destroy any samples of genetic material”. After repeated attempts to take the company private, co-founder Anne Wojcicki has resigned as chief executive to pursue an “independent” bid herself, said Lex in the FT. The clock is ticking. The value of 23andMe’s central asset is “eroding in real time”. The daughter of a senior Stanford physics professor, Wojcicki, 51, grew up in Palo Alto, said Business Insider. Her mother was an influential local educator known as “the Godmother…

“Most of us know that awful feeling,” said Anne McElvoy in The i Paper, when we accidentally shoot off a message to the wrong address. None of us, though, in all of our “klutziness”, has ever managed to send “secret military plans for an attack on a terror group” to a prominent journalist. Unbelievably, the same can’t be said of Donald Trump’s national security team: The Atlantic magazine’s Jeffrey Goldberg revealed this week that he was mistakenly added to a group chat on the Signal messaging app where Vice-President J.D. Vance, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth discussed the imminent bombing of Yemen’s Houthi rebels. “If you think we should do it let’s go,” said Vance in one message; Hegseth then shared operational details, including targets,…

Blue Peter, which was transmitted live for the last time. The children’s show launched in 1958, and in its heyday it was broadcast three times a week on BBC1, attracting audiences of up to eight million and making household names of its presenters, who included Valerie Singleton, John Noakes and Lesley Judd. The Duke of Sussex, who stepped down as a patron of Sentebale, the charity he founded in Lesotho 19 years ago, as a result of a dispute between its trustees and its chair. His co-founder, Lesotho’s Prince Seeiso, has also stepped down. The Tate Galleries, with new figures showing that they are receiving 30% fewer visitors than in 2019; other leading art museums that have not bounced back since the pandemic include the Royal Academy (where visitors are…

More than half of adults in Gaza would leave if given the chance. 14% of the territory’s population would like to leave Gaza permanently, and 38% to leave temporarily – while 39% would not leave if given the opportunity. Gazans under 34 were most likely to consider relocating. Gallup/The Daily Telegraph 62% of Britons agree that welfare should be amended to cut costs. 39% think it is too easy to apply for benefits, 18% that it is not. Lord Ashcroft/Daily Mail More than a third of German millionaires are considering leaving the country. Of those considering it, 42% cited the rise of the far-right as their main motive, while 47% cited instability caused by immigration as a concern. Arton Capital…

Blumenthal on being bipolar It is 16 months since Heston Blumenthal was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. The chef and food writer was sectioned by his wife Melanie following a week-long manic episode, and then spent weeks in a clinic; but this may not have been his first episode. In his high-pressure career, presiding over the three-Michelin-starred Fat Duck, he had experienced symptoms before – including racing thoughts, levels of energy which meant he rarely slept, as well as bursts of anger and irritability: three times, he has bitten the corner off an iPhone. Nor is he the first member of his family to receive the diagnosis: his sister, Alexis, who died in 2021, was bipolar; and he wonders if his mother was too. She was an often angry woman, who…

Britons love tea so much that every day a “tea alarm” goes off, reminding them to stop what they’re doing and have a brew. That is the hoax claim shared by thousands of UK social media users in a viral trend created to confuse Americans. Failure to drink a cup of tea at the allotted time, it is said, results in a fine. “When the tea alarm goes off you just go into the nearest home, shop, building and they will be making tea and you’ll be given a cup,” said one typical post. “It’s illegal for them to turn you away; they will be prosecuted.” A portrait of Donald Trump has been taken down from Colorado’s State Capitol building, after the president condemned it. “Nobody likes a bad picture…

SOUTH KOREA A nation lost in an epidemic of loneliness Korea JoongAng Daily (Seoul) “Korean society is ailing,” says Kim Eun-mi. Our birth rate is plummeting, while the suicide rate just hit a 13-year high. More and more people “pass away alone, unnoticed”. The thread tying together these “heartbreaking” warning signs is “unbearable loneliness”, which affects around one in five Koreans. We share some of this with other advanced economies, where the young isolate themselves, “watching YouTube alone”. But in South Korea, the loneliness epidemic is worsened by the stuttering economy that has left our youth “overwhelmed by uncertainty about the future”. As a society, we’ve become withdrawn, missing out on normal social activity, such as chitchat with a shopkeeper or even the “seemingly trivial act of making eye contact”.…

When his father suffered a massive heart attack in 2001, Daniel Timms – then a 22-year-old student of biomedical engineering in Australia – set himself a challenge: to create an artificial heart that would render heart transplants obsolete. He acquired parts from a local hardware shop, and when his father, a plumber, had recovered, they set to work on their first prototype. Artificial hearts had existed for decades, but Timms was convinced he could improve on them, by building one from durable titanium that would use an electromagnetic motor to drive a spinning disc that would push the blood through the body in a continuous flow. Later, he refined the idea, using “maglev” (magnetic levitation) technology to ensure that none of the parts touch, eliminating wear and tear. Timms has…

In what has been referred to as an outbreak of the “Montecito lifestyle war”, Gwyneth Paltrow has posted a video to Instagram showing her cooking in her home, not far from that of the Duchess of Sussex. In the clip, the actress dances around the kitchen, make-up free in her pyjamas (right) while preparing glutenfree scones. She recommends making breakfast for your partner, as she does with husband Brad Falchuk: “Both of us relish the energy it brings to our relationship,” she says. One favourite of theirs is toad in the hole – which Paltrow makes with flax milk and paleo baking flour. ”Even when I’m not eating, I enjoy the act of cooking,” she explains. The release of the files about JFK’s assassination was all too much for conspiracy…

“Nothing is as obnoxious as other people’s luck.”F. Scott Fitzgerald, quoted in The Knowledge “Occam’s razor, the venerable philosophical principle that the truest explanation is likely to be the simplest, has been thrown away. We’re living in the age of Occam’s chainsaw, when the preferred answer is the one that makes the loudest noise and generates the most debris.”A.O. Scott in The New York Times “I’m a big fan of the Irish goodbye. Which goes without saying.”Comedian William Stone, quoted in The Times “Time is not a line but a dimension… You don’t look back along time but down through it, like water.”Margaret Atwood, quoted in Vogue “It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”Frederick Douglass, quoted in The Daily Telegraph “I like long walks, especially…

Theatre: Playhouse Creatures Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond (020-8940 3633). Until 12 April Running time: 2hrs “April De Angelis goes time travelling again,” said Clive Davis in The Times. Last year, her portrait of Sarah Siddons, a star of the late 18th century London stage, premiered at the Hampstead Theatre in London. Now, a “vivacious” revival of 1993’s Playhouse Creatures – her drama about the pioneering women who were the first to be allowed to tread the boards when the theatres reopened during the Restoration – has opened at the Orange Tree in Richmond. This is a fractured, “dream-like” piece, in which we eavesdrop on the women backstage as they discuss their lives and their work, and also see them perform in front of an invisible audience – which, channelled through…

Pleasure of Ruins by Rose Macaulay and Roloff Beny, 1964 (available used). I dug this out of a charity shop 25 years ago and it inspired me on my own journeying around the Mediterranean basin, resulting in three books on the ruins of the Roman empire. Macaulay’s prose is stirring, and triggered my own fascination with stone. If This Is a Man by Primo Levi, 1947 (Little Brown £14.99). I return to this book when my violent nightmares become extreme, for it is a lesson in being human, even in unimaginable depths of horror. Written in a spare style, the memoir is about the author’s arrest and subsequent incarceration at Auschwitz. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe, 1719 (Penguin £6.99), was a favourite childhood book, and when I read it as…

Programmes Our Land: Israel’s Other War Bafta-winning director Jordan Bryon’s film follows the lives of an Israeli settler and a Palestinian family in the occupied West Bank. Sun 30 Mar, ITV1 22:20 (85mins). Ready Meals: What They Really Mean for You Justin Rowlatt explores the manufacture of various ready meals to discover their environmental impact, among other things. Mon 31 Mar, BBC1 21:00 (60mins). Twitter: Breaking the Bird The inside story of Twitter, from its founders’ vision of a digital Utopia to its current reputation as a disseminator of hate speech and misinformation. Mon 31 Mar, BBC2 21:00 (75mins). The Real Ruth Ellis Documentary about the life of the last woman to be hanged in Britain. It includes new findings and interviews with her grandchildren. Wed 2 Apr, ITV1 21:00 (60mins). Black Snow…

● Managing an allotment is a lot of work, especially in the summer. Try growing things at home first in a window box, or join a community garden to see if you enjoy it. ● When you get a plot, talk to your neighbours to find out what was growing there before, and work out what you want to keep before you start clearing. ● Before choosing your plants, work out the soil type and pH, and map out the sunny and shady spots, as all this will influence what you can grow, and where. ● Start simple, with fruit trees and bushes, which take the longest to grow and are pretty low maintenance. Plant perennials for cutting and to attract pollinators, and companion plants to lure pests away from…

Oleg Gordievsky 1938-2025 Oleg Gordievsky was a senior KGB agent who spent ten years spying for MI6. His most “valuable achievement”, said The Guardian, was reassuring a paranoid President Andropov that the Nato exercise Able Archer 83 was not a cover for a nuclear strike on the USSR. Via his handlers, Gordievsky also warned Margaret Thatcher (and by extension Ronald Reagan) that the Kremlin’s anxiety about a pre-emptive strike was genuine: after Reagan doubled defence spending, Andropov had sent agents all over the world, to look out for signs of an imminent strike. (In London, Gordievsky recalled that they were told to check for the NHS stocking up on blood supplies.) By convincing the Kremlin that Able Archer really was just a war game, Gordievsky, who has died aged 86,…

What is tax avoidance? Barrister Patrick Cannon describes it as an arrangement enabling “a tax advantage to be obtained that was not intended by Parliament”. Unlike tax “evasion”, avoidance is legal. “But if a scheme is spotted, challenged and defeated by HMRC”, you’re “on the hook” for both the disputed amount, and interest and penalties. Check the list You can’t claim ignorance and blame your adviser. “HMRC’s view is that you don’t need to be a tax expert to spot an avoidance scheme” – so do your homework. Since 2022, it has publicly named tax avoidance promoters – there are currently 150 dodgy schemes on the list. Rules of thumb The biggest red flag, as ever, is something that looks “too good to be true”. Beware promises of big tax…

The week’s best shares Avon Technologies The Times Avon, which supplies essential protection gear for troops, is benefitting from war in Ukraine. Its Star strategy – strength, transformation, advance and revolution – is boosting orders and profits. Buy. £13.80. H&T Group Investors’ Chronicle Demand for the financial group’s pawnbroking services should remain strong, given the rising gold price and growing need for small-sum, short-term loans. Revenues and profits are up. Prospective yield 4.8%. Buy. 396p. Hammerson The Times Uncertainty has hammered property stocks, yet this Reit, which owns London’s Brent Cross and Birmingham’s Bullring, is refocusing on build-to-rent residential sites in “higher-quality” destinations. “Ready to bloom.” Buy. 250.6p. Legal & General Group The Mail on Sunday This “big beast” of the savings sector is selling off a house-building business, launching…

THE WEEK CROSSWORD 1458 Two Connell Guides and three Week-branded items will be given to the sender of the first correct solution to the crossword and the clue of the week opened on Monday 7 April. Send it to The Week Crossword 1458, 121-141 Westbourne Terrace, London W2 6JR, or email the completed grid/listed solutions to crossword@theweek.co.uk. This week’s winner will receive Week-branded items, as well as two Connell Guides (connellguides.com). ACROSS 7 Such as Edgar Allan originally made (4) 8 Soft song, right for Joanna’s attendant? (5,5) 10 Way to control foam near canal’s enclosure (8) 11 Tattoo by daughter is tit for tat (2,4) 12 Facing back this keeps you in line (7) 13 Frights in the manner of dramas leaving out odd bits (6) 15 Line that in…