Table of contents for 1386 in The Week

What happened Boris Johnson’s hopes of putting the Partygate scandal behind him were evaporating this week, as the revolt against his leadership continued to gather strength. Pressure on him has been mounting since the release of Sue Gray’s report into Covid rule-breaking in Downing Street, in which the senior civil servant severely criticised No. 10’s culture and working practices. By Tuesday, 30 Tory MPs had publicly called for the PM to quit or face a confidence vote, and there was speculation that more had submitted no-confidence letters privately. Fifty-four are needed to force a leadership vote. The Government tried to move on from Gray’s report by announcing a special package to help alleviate the cost-of-living crisis (see page 6), and plans to allow traders to use imperial measures when selling…

Controversy of the week “Rishi Sunak is having an identity crisis,” said Anoosh Chakelian in The New Statesman. At heart, as he keeps telling us, he’s a tax-cutting Tory, “fixated on fiscal responsibility”. Yet he only “distinguishes himself politically” when he abandons his beliefs and embraces big-state spending: first by splashing the cash on his furlough scheme and other Covid measures, and now with his response to the cost-of-living crisis. The “big spender” is back, with a major package designed to help people with rocketing energy bills. All UK households will receive £400 off their energy bills; on top of this, the worst-off will receive grants of around £650. It will be paid for by borrowing £10bn and by exacting a £5bn “targeted Energy Profits Levy” on oil and gas…

Amsterdam Sanctions: The Netherlands has become the latest European country to have its supplies of Russian gas cut off for refusing to pay the state-owned supplier Gazprom in roubles. Moscow has demanded that “unfriendly” countries pay for gas in roubles in an effort to mitigate the impact of sanctions. It had already suspended supplies to Finland, Poland and Bulgaria; and Denmark is reported to be next in the firing line. On Monday, EU leaders unveiled a new package of sanctions against Russia, which will include a block on most Russian oil imports by the end of the year. The agreement was reached following weeks of negotiation, with objections coming from Hungary in particular: 65% of its oil is piped in from Russia, and its PM, Viktor Orbán (pictured), is on…

1 Exodus, live at the Rainbow on 4 June 1977, by Bob Marley, performed by Bob Marley & The Wailers 2 Tears On My Pillow by Ernie Smith, performed by Johnny Nash 3 One In Ten, written and performed by UB40 4 $29.00, written and performed by Tom Waits 5 I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For by U2, performed by The Chimes 6 (Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay by Otis Redding and Steve Cropper, performed by Otis Redding 7 Cruisin’ by Smokey Robinson and Marv Tarplin, performed by D’Angelo 8* Ain’t Nobody by David “Hawk” Wolinski, performed by Rufus and Chaka Khan Book: The Sandman by Neil Gaiman Luxury: a fold-out disco light-up dance floor * Choice if allowed only one record…

Jacobabad, an agricultural hub of 200,000 people in Sindh province, is the hottest city in Pakistan, and arguably the hottest on Earth. It has long been famous for its scorching summers: it is situated on the Tropic of Cancer, and warmed by humid winds coming up the Indus valley from the Arabian Sea. In Jacobabad, May and June frequently bring temperatures of over 50°C. And the 35°C wet bulb threshold has been crossed in July 1987, June 2005, June 2010, and July 2012. In May’s heatwave, Jacobabad recorded a WBT of 33.1°C. “It’s a very, very difficult time when it goes beyond 50°C,” Abdul Baqi, a shopkeeper, told The Daily Telegraph. “People do not come out of their houses and the streets are deserted”. In the fields around the city,…

Hundreds of thousands of people suffering from insomnia in England could be offered treatment via an app instead of sleeping pills, under new guidelines from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). Trials have shown that Sleepio is more effective than more usual treatments: advice on “sleep hygiene” and sleeping pills. It has also been shown to lead to fewer GP appointments. NICE concluded that Sleepio would save the NHS money and reduce patients’ reliance on drugs that can be addictive. The programme, which costs £45 a head, involves sleep tests, a sleep diary, and weekly interactive cognitive behavioural therapy sessions, which focus on identifying the thoughts and behaviours that contribute to the symptoms of insomnia. It is designed to be completed in six months, but patients prescribed…

Anyone going on a UK break this month would do well to book pubs and restaurants well in advance, said The Sunday Times – and even if they get a table, they shouldn’t expect a full menu. It is more than a year since the last lockdown, but the hospitality industry is still facing acute labour shortages – and it’s not the only one. Britain is currently in the grip of an “employment crisis”: there are 1.3 million job vacancies, and for the first time, there are not enough people looking for work to fill them. This is partly down to Brexit: it has “contributed to the exodus of 200,000 EU citizens” in the past two years; but a greater number of people – 450,000 – have simply left the…

“The more obviously one’s work benefits other people, the less one is likely to be paid for it.”Anthropologist David Graeber, quoted in The New Yorker “The single most underappreciated force in international relations is humiliation.” Thomas Friedman, quoted on The Browser “He spends so much time ‘speaking truth to power’ that power can hardly get a word in edgeways.”Charles Moore on Nick Robinson, in The Daily Telegraph “If I stop to kick every barking dog I am not going to get where I’m going.” Jackie Joyner-Kersee, quoted in Marie Claire “We’re all born naked and the rest is drag.”RuPaul, quoted in The Guardian “The action of the intellect is accelerated by the fever which a little wine produces in the system.”Walter Scott, quoted in The Times “The curse of totalitarian…

F1 Red Bull driver Sergio Pérez of Mexico won the Monaco Grand Prix. Max Verstappen finished third, and Lewis Hamilton eighth. Rugby union La Rochelle won the Champions Cup, beating Leinster 24-21 in the final. Football Nottingham Forest are to return to the Premier League for the first time in 23 years. They made it there by beating Huddersfield 1-0 in the Championship playoff final. Tennis British No. 1 Cameron Norrie lost in the third round of the French Open, losing in straight sets to Karen Khachanov of Russia.…

The Regent’s Park summer season has got off to a flying start with an “audacious” revival of Legally Blonde, said Clive Davis in The Times. “Go with an open mind and you’ll be blown away” – even if you’re not a fan of the 2001 movie. For the uninitiated, Legally Blonde tells the tale of ditzy, pink-loving fashion-obsessed Elle Woods (played in the film by Reese Witherspoon), who wangles a place at Harvard Law School in an effort to win back her ambitious, intellectually snobbish ex-boyfriend Warner. She struggles with academia at first, then unveils a razor-sharp legal mind. The film was a hit, but this stage musical, which launched on Broadway in 2007, is “far wittier”, with “insidious melodies” and lyrics with the cheek to rhyme “snobs” with “Thomas…

In the village of Le Mas-d’Angenais in southwest France, the talk last week was all of “Christ’s return”, says Adam Sage in The Times. The excitement was stirred not by the Second Coming, but by the reappearance of Rembrandt’s Christ on the Cross. The 1631 work by the Dutch master was taken away from the village to Bordeaux Cathedral in 2016, after culture ministry officials noted that the painting, valued at around €60m, was hanging on a wall in La Collégiale Saint-Vincent church with little protection. The picture had been in Le Masd’Angenais since 1804, when it was brought back by a captain in Napoleon’s army, who had no idea it was a Rembrandt. In 1959, it was sent to the Louvre for restoration and the telltale initials RHL (Rembrandt…

Tracy’s woes continue as she gets fired from a new job and her car packs it in. Brian confronts Chris about cash payments and things get worse when Alice reveals that Brian secretly gave them money when Chris’s business was struggling; Chris is crushed. Jazzer convinces Lillian to book a visit from kitchen sales rep Fern, so he can earn commission and help Tracy. Unconvinced at first, Justin is turned by Fern’s flattering patter. At the veterinary practice, nurse Denise and Alistair are getting along well, while Jakob comes clean to a dismayed Chris that he told Brian about the cash payments. At Berrow, a furious Neil calls Brian a bully after how he treated Chris; he wants nothing more to do with him. Jazzer is delighted he’ll get his…

• Clothes moths are active all year, but are most visible in warmer months. Larvae feed on the keratin protein in wool, cotton, linen, silk, fur and feathers. • Bag and freeze infested clothes at -20ºC for at least two weeks. Wash non-delicates on a cycle over 60ºC for 20-30 minutes. Store in plastic bags to prevent reinfestation and apply a moth-killer spray. • At least once a month, open your wardrobe or drawers to let light in. Larvae hate sunlight and will fall off when exposed. Shake out clothes and check hotspots such as under collars, cuffs, lapels and pockets. • Moths are less keen on clean clothes, so launder clothes before packing them away. Store with moth stop sachets (replace them every three months) and vacuum regularly. Use…

Dervla Murphy 1931-2022 Dervla Murphy, who has died aged 90, was brought up in straitened circumstances in rural Ireland; but she dreamed of travelling from a young age, and when she was given a bicycle and an atlas for her tenth birthday, she conceived of the idea of going to India, by pedal power alone. For years, she was too busy caring for her mother to travel. But when she was 31, she set off for a six-month trip on a bike she named Roz, armed with a gun and a compass. Her journey took her from northern France in winter, through communist Eastern Europe and the wilds of Iran and Afghanistan, to “monsoon drenched India”, said The Times. She then turned her diaries of the trip into a book,…

Sunak has set the Bank a mammoth task Alex Brummer Daily Mail The Institute for Fiscal Studies reckons the Chancellor’s latest £21bn package, when combined with “previous efforts”, amounts to “a £37bn injection into the economy”, says Alex Brummer. That fiscal largesse puts a considerable spoke in the wheels of the Bank of England’s efforts to quash runaway inflation, now running at 10%. It will make the task of a “discredited” BoE even more difficult. “The looser the fiscal stance, the harder it will be to put the inflation genie back in the bottle.” One reason why the Bank has made such a terrible job of managing inflation is because it has “sought to be a friend of consumers, backer of climate initiatives and fighter against unemployment all at the…

What happened Russian forces had by midweek captured half of Severodonetsk – the last city that Ukrainian forces still hold in Luhansk, one of the two provinces in the eastern Donbas region. Witnesses said the city was being bombed “200 times an hour”, and that tanks were flattening everything in their path. Attempts to rescue some of the 12,000 civilians estimated to be left in the city had to be abandoned. But with Russia’s resources concentrated in the east, Ukrainian troops launched a limited counter-offensive in the south, taking territory in Kherson province. France’s President Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz urged Vladimir Putin to hold “serious negotiations” with his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, during an 80-minute call on Saturday. This week, EU leaders meeting in Brussels agreed a…

Female winners at Wimbledon will not be referred to as Mrs or Miss on the honours board this year. Umpires stopped referring to women as Mrs or Miss when announcing the scores three years ago, but the titles remained on the boards that are displayed at the club. The men’s boards have always just included the player’s initial and surname. The All England Lawn Tennis Club will also stop giving married women their husband’s surname and initials. Animal rights activists have criticised Lego for selling farmyard sets that ignore the brutal and “blood-soaked” reality of modern farming. Peta says that farm toys should be rebranded as animal sanctuaries, to avoid misleading children about how animals are reared.…

Uvalde, Texas Police failures: President Biden travelled to the small Texas town of Uvalde on Sunday, to attend a memorial service for the victims of last week’s massacre. Nineteen children and two teachers were shot dead at Robb Elementary School on 24 May, making it the US’s worst school shooting since Sandy Hook in 2012. In the days since, the focus of attention has been largely on failures in the police response. It has emerged that 19 officers had waited in the hallways of the school for 48 minutes, even as children trapped in their classrooms made repeated 911 calls asking for help. In total, 90 minutes elapsed between the 18-year-old gunman – who had bought his weapons legally – entering the building, and Border Patrol agents shooting him dead.…

“Since the invention of the iPhone, we have been subjected to the triumph of a kind of infantile minimalism: bright colours, bold, obvious shapes, simple, instantly legible designs. These aesthetic tendencies go back to the late 20th century when bland corporate minimalism emerged as the imperial style of global capitalism. Today, there are identical towers of steel and glass from New York to London to Singapore. In all of these cities you can go to bed in a chicly spartan flat and rise to a morning flat white in a tasteful café surrounded by glossy pot plants. Local eccentricities are shorn away and the world converges on a narrow set of idealised, endlessly repeatable forms.” James Marriott in The Times…

Ministerial pipe dreams in the North Sea Grahame Buss The Independent So the Government now says it wants to spur renewed investment in North Sea oil and gas in order to plug the gaps caused by the Ukraine invasion and protect our energy security. I was principal scientist for Shell, says Grahame Buss, and take it from me, it’s a brainless idea. For a start it’s not Britain that owns the oil and gas taken from that sea, it’s the (well-subsidised) oil firms; and they sell to the highest international bidder and pocket the revenue. “Almost 80% of UK production of crude is exported.” What’s more, above a third of the licence blocks in the North Sea are foreign owned, several by fossil fuel firms from China, Russia and the…

Has Trump killed off the Bush dynasty? James Hohmann The Washington Post The Bush family has played a prominent role in Republican politics for 70 years, says James Hohmann, ever since its patriarch, Prescott Bush, was first elected to the senate in Connecticut. Over that time it has moved with the country, “relocating from New England to Texas to Florida, while shifting from country-club moderates to brush-clearing conservatives”. But the family’s hopes of extending the dynasty into a fourth generation were dashed last week when George P. Bush lost a race to become the next attorney general of Texas. It’s the third defeat Republican voters have inflicted on the Bush clan since Donald Trump launched his presidential run in 2015. George P.’s father, Jeb, pulled out of a 2016 presidential…

Tomatoes to raise vitamin D Around one in six people in the UK are deficient in vitamin D, which the body needs to maintain the health of bones, teeth and muscles. Now biologists at the John Innes Centre in Norwich have created a gene-edited tomato that is so abundant in the vitamin, that eating just two medium-sized tomatoes would be enough to bring most people up to their recommended levels. The plants were created using Crispr, a gene-editing tool that was used in this case to alter an enzyme in the tomatoes that usually converts provitamin D3 (a precursor to Vitamin D) into a carbohydrate. By slicing out part of the plant’s DNA, the researchers were able to put a halt to this conversion process, so that provitamin D3 accumulated…

Vogue editor Anna Wintour has always been fashion-focused. In a new biography, Amy Odell describes an occasion when, aged 18, Wintour was due to meet a date at an anti-Vietnam War protest in London. Her father, the Evening Standard editor Charles Wintour, recalled that she spent two hours agonising about what to wear, before finally setting off from the family home. Moments later she was back. “I opened the door, and she said: ’Daddy, am I for or against Cambodia?’” Madonna has become the latest celebrity to mint a non-fungible token, or NFT. Her triptych of video artworks, which were based on 3D scans of her vagina, and which sold for $627,000, show an avatar of the singer lying naked on the ground with her legs apart as she gives…

When it comes to the vexed question of what to do with art and artefacts that have been taken from their home countries, one dispute dominates them all, said Elizabeth Djinis in Smithsonian Magazine: the row over the Parthenon, or Elgin, marbles, taken from Athens between 1801 and 1805, and housed at the British Museum since 1816. Greece began asking for the return of the sculptures – which include a 247ft section of the original Parthenon frieze – in 1983. At the heart of the row is the question of whether Thomas Bruce, Seventh Earl of Elgin, acted lawfully in sending them to Britain. The British Government argues he had the permission of the Ottoman authorities ruling Greece at the time. Greece says the removal was legally and morally flawed:…

Lester Piggott, who has died aged 86, was widely regarded as the “finest jockey ever to ride on British turf”, said The Guardian. During a career that spanned 47 years, he racked up several records that are “unlikely to be surpassed” – including the most race wins by a British jockey (a total of around 4,493, including overseas victories), the most British classics (30), and the most Derby victories (nine). Piggott’s achievements as a Flat racer made him a household name, and wherever he travelled around the world, he was “feted in a manner unique for a jockey”. Yet “Old Stoneface”, as he was known, was also a figure “dogged by controversy” – notorious both for the ruthlessness of his racing style, and for his “legendary” stinginess (money, a fellow…

400 million guns To The Daily Telegraph Could President Biden “take on the National Rifle Association”? The answer is clearly no, but it would be academic anyway. About 400 million guns are in the hands of private US citizens – 67 million more than the entire population. Legislation to control the sale of arms would at this point simply establish a thriving black market. The Second Amendment was enacted to allow citizens to protect themselves from an overweening government. Today that means having the same access to automatic weapons as, say, the National Guard. I do not say it is right, but it is their constitution and they must learn both to live and die with it. The Second Amendment was enacted to allow citizens to protect themselves from an…

by Amy Odell Allen & Unwin 464pp £20 The Week Bookshop £15.99 “Even if you don’t care about fashion, you know who Anna Wintour is,” said Sarah Ditum in The Times. The editor of American Vogue for over 30 years, with her trademark bob and glasses, she has established a “tastemaking tyranny” not just over the fashion world, but the “entire ecosystem of celebrity”. Although Anna: The Biography is not an authorised life, Amy Odell interviewed many of Wintour’s friends and colleagues; her subject declined to be interviewed, but let it be known that she was “not opposed to the book’s existence”. The result is “fascinating”, said Daisy Goodwin in The Sunday Times: the most rounded portrait of Wintour yet. While at work she’s strikingly similar to the “exacting Miranda…

With true-crime podcasts coming out all the time, it’s hard to sort the wheat from the chaff, said The Daily Telegraph. Here are three series that stand out. Killer Book Club is a “riveting” eight-parter about the brutal murder of an apparently mild-mannered book-club member by one of his former students. The podcast’s creator and narrator, Gillian Pachter, “spins it into a cracking, intrigue-laden yarn, as well as a fascinating disquisition on all kinds of Britishness”. The long-running and award-winning RedHanded is a “breath of fresh air”. Hosted with wit and energy by Suruthi Bala and Hannah Maguire, it probes “little-known horrors in meticulous detail, and with a healthy dose of British banter”. Criminal remains the benchmark for “true crime with class”. Narrator Phoebe Judge guides the listener through everything…

The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer, 1970 (Harper Perennial £10.99). The best feminist polemic ever, showing how women’s lives and bodies have been shaped by what men want, setting the second wave of feminism alight. But the struggle is not over. Men are still trying to control women’s bodies, and not just in Afghanistan. Every Day is Mother’s Day by Hilary Mantel, 1985 (Fourth Estate £8.99). The novel that put our best female novelist on the map. A bizarre but funny story of a mother and her disabled daughter. The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes, 1986 (Vintage £12.99). The story of the first fleet which set out to Australia to establish a penal colony. The founding of one nation but the undoing of another, told with scholarship, empathy and understanding.…

Programmes Sir Alex Ferguson: Never Give In Heartfelt feature-length documentary about the legendary football manager, charting his rise to the top of the game. Sat 4 Jun, C4 19:30 (135mins). Everything I Know About Love Semi-fictionalised seven-part adaptation of Dolly Alderton’s memoir: four young women navigate life and love in noughties London. Tue 7 Jun, BBC1 22:40 (45mins). Bradford on Duty New five-part series following Bradford’s frontline workers as they fight against social inequalities and campaign to make their city – once the richest outside London – a better place. Thur 9 Jun, BBC2 21:00 (60mins). My Name is Leon Moving dramatisation of Kit de Waal’s award-winning novel about a mixed-race boy in care, trying to find his brother. Lenny Henry, Monica Dolan and Christopher Eccleston star. Fri 10 Jun,…

British drinks producers are getting creative in the name of fighting food waste, says Victoria Moore in The Daily Telegraph. Take strawberries. Up to 15% of the English crop is usually discarded, because the berries don’t meet supermarket specifications. Now, Sloemotion Distillery, near York, is using these rejected berries to make a delicious gin liqueur, flavoured with vanilla and black pepper. Available at sloemotiondistillery.com, it’s “very good neat over ice, or long with tonic and a sprig of mint”. Or there’s the Discarded range, from Scottish distiller William Grant & Sons. Its Sweet Cascara Vermouth – available at Waitrose – is made from the fruit of the coffee berry, which is normally thrown away once the bean is extracted. Try it in a boulevardier cocktail, a whisky-based take on a…

Thousands of puffins arrive on Rathlin Island, County Antrim in April to raise their young before flying off in August. Stay at the Manor House and you might also spot black guillemots, corncrakes and even the red-billed chough (manorhouserathlin.com). North Uist, Outer Hebrides is home to Britain’s largest bird of prey, the white-tailed eagle, and smallest, the goldcrest, weighing the same as a 20p piece. Uist Forest Retreats has forest cabins (uistforestretreat.co.uk). Ospreys are the stars of Rutland Water, but there are also egrets and kingfishers, and more than 30 hides with experts on hand. Stay at The Finch’s Arms (finchsarms.co.uk). Nightingales arrive at Minsmere, Suffolk at the end of April and stay for about six weeks. This 1,000 acre reserve has bitterns, avocets, marsh harriers and bearded tits. Try…

Norwegian islands by e-bike With a fast ferry network and a “jaw-dropping” mountain landscape, Norway’s Helgeland archipelago is a joy to explore by e-bike, says Sam Haddad in The Guardian. Many of its 24,000 or so islands are tiny, but the larger ones have villages of “prettily painted” wooden houses and pleasant places to stay. It’s worth stopping to explore some of the coast on a kayak, and to climb peaks such as Mount Ravnfloget, the notoriously steep summit of which can now be reached by ordinary mortals, via a recently constructed wooden staircase. Sample local delicacies such as cod cheek (“tasty if a little chewy”) and vegalefsa (“a cinnamon pancake-like power snack”), and don’t miss the Vega World Heritage Centre, for a fascinating picture of the islanders’ traditional way…

Ray Liotta 1954-2022 In the late 1980s, Ray Liotta heard that Martin Scorsese was making a film about Henry Hill, a New Jersey mobster who’d worked for the Lucchese crime family before turning FBI informant. Liotta was so keen to play Hill he approached Scorsese directly, in a hotel lobby during the Venice Film Festival. A relative unknown at the time, he was rebuffed by bodyguards, but Scorsese saw something in the way Liotta interacted with the heavies that sparked his interest, and he agreed to meet him. The film’s producers had wanted a big-name actor. Scorsese, however, persuaded them that Liotta could convey just the blend of swagger and paranoia, charm and menace that the part required. His performance in Goodfellas, with his evocative narration (“As far back as…

“The jig is up for ESG,” said Tom Braithwaite in the FT. Regulators are swarming, investor enthusiasm is waning, and executives are revolting against the environmental, social and governance movement. The armies of asset managers and consultants who have ridden the ESG boom face “an existential threat”. So why not “pivot to bullshit”? “The time is right for a BS Index”, turning it into a “tradeable asset class”. Here’s how it might work: • Identifying BS is subjective, but can be inferred with the help of several analytic frameworks, “all of which can be used to charge more fees to companies and investors” – like ESG. • Some investors will choose to short the index, “believing that BS is used to paper over an absence of real ideas”. Others will…

The Abbatars Back in 1976, “Abba fantasised about all the things they could do if they had a little money”, said Laurence Sleator in The Times. Almost half a century on, we are seeing the results. At vast cost, the Swedish group has launched “a virtual reunion” – featuring avatars of themselves, alongside real musicians – which will play for seven months at a purpose-built, 3,000-capacity venue in London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. So far, 380,000 tickets have been sold. Abba will need to sell a lot more to recoup a whopping £140m in costs, “a task made harder by their decision to shun almost all corporate sponsors”. Fortunately, the band’s “return” has “earned rave reviews”, said Liam Kelly in The Sunday Times: a mark, perhaps, of the monumental effort…

Cranswick Investors’ Chronicle Thanks to a booming poultry business, the meat producer has grown revenues and held margins – despite rising input costs and lower pork export volumes to China. Low cash is worrying, but it appears to be managing inflationary pressure. Buy. £32.04. De La Rue The Times After a period of upheaval, the banknote printer is recovering thanks to “game-changing” security features in polymer notes. There’s plenty of potential in its authentication arm for high-value global pharma brands. Buy. 99.8p. Hollywood Bowl Group Investors’ Chronicle Revenues have soared against pre-Covid levels, amid rocketing demand from bowlers. A relatively low-cost base helps mitigate inflationary pressures, and a Canadian acquisition should boost 2023 earnings. Buy. 243p. Legal & General Group The Daily Telegraph The FTSE 100 insurer benefits from a…

THE WEEK CROSSWORD 1314 An Ettinger shoe horn and two Connell Guides will be given to the sender of the first correct solution to the crossword and the clue of the week opened on Monday 13 June. Send it to The Week Crossword 1314, 121-141 Westbourne Terrace, London W2 6JR, or email the completed grid or listed solutions to crossword@theweek.co.uk. Tim Moorey (timmoorey.com) This week’s winner will receive an Ettinger (ettinger.co.uk) Bridle Hide travel shoehorn in black, which retails at £75, and two Connell Guides (connellguides.com). ACROSS 1 Eddie Izzard, for example unhappy with sideboard (5-7) 8 African capital detachments needing time to get to the front (5) 9 Ban what’s on snooker table (9) 11 Expensive, like entry to the Eiffel tower (1,3,5) 12 Short stumpy person quarrelling noisily…

Around 7% of British adults have used a private GP service, either online or in person, in the past two years; just under half of that group had never used such a service before. YouGov/The Times More than two-thirds of parents have asked voice assistants such as Alexa for help with their children’s homework. Three-quarters think school work is more difficult now than when they were young. More than half – 52% – say they’ve given the wrong answers to their child’s homework. TalkTalk/Metro 97% of French drivers think that they are vigilant, calm, polite and careful behind the wheel; but 86% think other drivers are irresponsible, stressed and aggressive. Ipsos/The Times…

Richard Coles’ anger Two years after the death of his husband David from alcohol addiction, Rev Richard Coles, Britain’s best-known vicar, is retiring. And the broadcaster, who has led his flock in Northamptonshire for 11 years, now feels able to speak frankly about his experience as a gay man in the Church of England. It has been crushing, he told Caitlin Moran in The Times, and he is angry. “Having to put up with the indignity [of] having your relationship – and indeed your identity – denigrated, and to be assigned, if at all, a kind of grudging, second-degree place in the household of the Church, is difficult,” he says. “I took it – David and I took it – because it was necessary for the job, and now I…

When a Taiwanese restaurant chain offered free, all-you-can-eat sushi to people with Chinese word for salmon, “gui yu”, in their name last year, it unleashed a phenomenon dubbed “salmon chaos”. Some 300 people changed their names to the likes of “Salmon Dream” and “Dancing Salmon” to exploit the two-day promotion. Now, some are struggling to change their names back, due to a law that bans people from changing their name more than three times. Taiwan’s parliament has debated the issue. Not everyone is sympathetic. “Be responsible for your own life, Salmons!” declared one social media user. A councillor in Wales is so fed up of people thinking he is Banksy that he has resigned. William Gannon, who serves in Pembroke Dock, was rumoured to be the elusive street artist after…

He may be 99 years old, said Tom Nichols in The Atlantic, but Henry Kissinger “still has it in him to issue a foreign-policy take that infuriates a lot of people”. In a virtual appearance at the Davos World Economic Forum last week, the US statesman who tried to negotiate an end to the Vietnam War offered his advice to the Ukrainian government. It was time, he said, that Kyiv “showed wisdom” in its brave battle with Russia, and started to think about trading territory for peace. He advocated a settlement based on the “status quo ante” – in which Moscow ceded recent gains, but secured formal ownership of the territory in Crimea and the Donbas that it seized in 2014. Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky was unimpressed. “You get the…

When it arrived on Netflix last week, Ricky Gervais’s new stand-up special “prompted instant outrage”, said Michael Deacon in The Daily Telegraph. That wasn’t surprising, because it contains a lot of near-the-knuckle material about sensitive subjects: Aids, dead babies, paedophilia, religion. “Yet his critics have barely mentioned those.” Instead, their fury was roused by a single, brief section about trans people and trans activists. “I love the new women,” Gervais declares in it. “The new ones we’ve been seeing lately. The ones with beards and cocks.” He then goes on to imagine a conversation between a hardline trans activist and a woman who is nervous about someone with a penis entering the ladies’ loos. “What if he rapes me?” she asks. To which the enraged activist screams: “What if she…

Liverpool’s 1-0 defeat by Real Madrid in the Champions League final was a bitter pill for the club’s fans to swallow, said Henry Winter in The Times. But for thousands who made the journey to Paris, the worst part of the evening occurred before the match, when they were “effectively kettled” by French police. Thanks to woefully inadequate, “leaderless stewarding”, thousands of fans with tickets were trapped in an underpass outside the Stade de France, while others were “rammed up” against the concourse fence. In these testing circumstances, the behaviour of the vast majority of supporters was impeccably restrained, said Derek Lawrenson in the Daily Mail. But that didn’t stop the waiting crowds being tear-gassed by riot police, and hundreds weren’t admitted into the ground until after the match had…

To The Times The Gray report still has the power to shock. Much of what happened – the parties, drunken behaviour, rudeness to cleaning staff – would have been unacceptable at any time, much less during lockdown. Those senior civil servants involved must acknowledge their share of the blame. It is important to say, though, that most civil servants will feel equally angry and dismayed, if not more so. Their reputation has been damaged through no fault of their own and they too deserve an apology. To those who ask why there haven’t been consequences for those involved, the answer is clear: how could they be held to account when the person whom the buck ultimately stops with hasn’t been? Lord Kerslake, head of the civil service 2012-14 To The…

Vladimir by Julia May Jonas Picador 256pp £14.99 The Week Bookshop £11.99 At first glance, this debut novel seems to be yet another post-#MeToo book “dissecting sexual trauma and queasy power dynamics”, said Laura Hackett in The Sunday Times. At a US liberal arts college, John, a senior English professor, finds himself accused of sexual impropriety by “seven students with whom he has had affairs”. But rather than adopt their perspective, the novel is narrated by John’s wife – who is anything but sympathetic towards them. She laments the fact that young women today seem to have “lost all agency”, and admits to having “enjoyed the space” that her husband’s infidelities provided. With its bracing take on sexual politics, Vladimir is an “astonishing debut”. In its second half, the novel…

45 Years on Cork Street at Browse & Darby Mayfair’s Cork Street cuts a sorry figure these days. What was once the centre of the British art world, lined with dealerships, now counts only a handful of galleries, many of which are housed within charmless new developments. One of the few which hasn’t budged, however, is Browse & Darby, specialists in 19th and 20th century British and French art. This show is a trawl back through the greatest hits of its near-half-century on the street, taking in artists from Degas to Anne Redpath to Lucian Freud, via Walter Sickert (whose Rue de la Boucherie, Dieppe is a highlight), Gaudier-Brzeska, and a healthy dose of postwar British abstraction. Not everything will please all comers, but several works stand out far above…

Amalfi Coast culinary tour Explore Capri and Positano, enjoy a cooking lesson and dine in the O’Schizzariello restaurant. 7 nights from £989pp all-inclusive with flights. 01392-683168, voyage-prive.co.uk. Depart 13 June. Grasmere glamping Enjoy 3 nights in a micro-lodge pod on Broadrayne Farm, with a licensed bistro on-site, from £210pp (based on two sharing). 01539-435055, grasmereglamping.co.uk. Arrive 2 September. Turkey’s Lycian coast Spend 5 nights at the Cook’s Club Adakoy resort, with its own private beach and within reach of bazaars and bars, from £767pp b&b (including Cardiff flights). 020-3451 2688, tui.co.uk. Depart 6 July. Five nights in Nusa Dua Stay at the luxurious Samabe Bali Suites and Villas, boasting a private beach, from £1,854pp b&b (including Birmingham flights). 020-8972 8951, emiratesholidays.com. Depart 7 September. Covid-19: please check government websites for…

BT/Newport Wafer Fab: not for sale? The Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng is “in for a busy few weeks”, said Ben Wright on Telegraph.co.uk. As well as launching an investigation into the French telecoms group Altice’s tilt at BT, he has also ordered “a detailed security review” into the planned takeover of the UK’s “biggest microchip plant”, Newport Wafer Fab, by the Chinese-controlled group Nexperia – “in the clearest sign yet that the deal might be blocked”. The obvious question, said Nils Pratley in The Guardian, is “what took so long?” The National Security and Investment Act has been on the statute books since January, just waiting for a suitable case. Now Kwarteng “has found two possibilities in two days – and both have been on open display for months”. In…