Table of contents for 1430 in The Week

What happened Donald Trump surrendered to prosecutors on Tuesday after becoming the first former US president in history to be charged with a criminal offence. He was fingerprinted, read his rights and bailed. A grand jury in New York had voted last week to indict the 76-year-old, having decided that there was sufficient evidence to launch criminal proceedings. Trump reportedly faces multiple counts related to business fraud. The case centres on hush money Trump paid to the porn actress Stormy Daniels through his then lawyer Michael Cohen shortly before the 2016 presidential election. Cohen gave Daniels $130,000 to stop her selling her account of an alleged sexual encounter with Trump in 2006, which the former president has always denied. Trump later reimbursed Cohen, payments that were designated as legal fees.…

Controversy of the week “Crossing fingers and hoping for the best is hardly a sensible way to tackle the climate emergency,” said Bill McGuire in The Guardian. Yet that’s the strategy the Government appears to be adopting in its climate change plan Powering Up Britain – published last week in response to a High Court ruling that its existing strategy for meeting its own target for achieving net-zero emissions by 2050 wasn’t detailed enough. “More a damp squib than a rocket”, it amounts to 2,800 pages of rehashed announcements. There is no new funding for green initiatives like heat pumps or onshore wind, and no serious plan for insulating our leaky homes. Instead, it promises a “fossil fuel bonanza”, said George Monbiot in the same paper – including tax breaks…

Road safety, with warnings that plans to test a mobile phone siren could cause a spate of accidents. On 23 April, almost all mobile phones will emit a loud, ten-second blast. There will be a publicity campaign in advance of the test, but there are concerns that it could still catch people unawares. The siren will be used to alert the public to emergencies such as floods and terrorist attacks. Animal Rebellion, whose plot to disrupt the Grand National was infiltrated by a reporter and exposed. The activists had apparently been planning to invade Aintree racecourse and glue themselves together to stop the race on 15 April. Rented e-scooters, which are to be outlawed in Paris. The city was one of the first to introduce them, in 2018, but in…

Helsinki Marin ousted: Finland’s prime minister, Sanna Marin, was narrowly defeated in this week’s parliamentary elections. Her centre-left Social Democratic Party increased its share of the vote to 19.9% – up from 17.7% in 2019 – but still trailed the conservative National Coalition Party, which took 20.8%, and the eurosceptic Finns Party (20.1%). Petteri Orpo, the leader of the National Coalition Party, now faces tough coalition negotiations. Marin had successfully steered her country to Nato membership (Finland officially joined the alliance two days after the poll), but the campaign was largely dominated by domestic issues including education, immigration and Finland’s mounting debt – the budget deficit has risen to €8.1bn this year. Orpo has promised cuts to its generous welfare state. Finland applied to join Nato last May with neighbouring…

The abhorrence of the boring is at the root of a lot of bad stuff. From before the South Sea bubble, the catnip of big returns has driven us into many a financial crisis. If only we stuck to boring investments in boring companies promising modest but steady returns. But no – too boring. The older I get, the more I think the secret of happiness is the ability to embrace the boring, lay claim to the mundane and rejoice in repetition. In affairs of the heart and the wallet, in family life and the workplace, we’d enjoy more lasting success if we stopped being bored by the boring, stopped seeking what we tell ourselves is the next exciting thing. After all, everything gets boring in the end if you…

An Australian start-up has produced a large meatball made from lab-grown mammoth protein. Working with Prof Ernst Wolvetang, from the University of Queensland, a team at the cultivated meat company Vow took the DNA sequence for mammoth myoglobin, a muscle protein that gives meat its taste and aroma, and filled in the few gaps in the genetic code using African elephant DNA. This sequence was then placed in stem cells from a sheep, which replicated, producing the 20 billion or so cells needed to make the mammoth meat. “It was ridiculously easy and fast,” Wolvetang told The Guardian. “We did this in a couple of weeks.” They were not able to taste the meatball; as humans have not eaten mammoths for 4,000 years, it’s not clear how it would affect…

Keir Starmer has done much to improve Labour’s electoral prospects since he took over as leader exactly three years ago this week, said The Sunday Times. He has tackled the strain of anti-Semitism that had spread within the party, and has built a solid shadow cabinet around capable performers such as Yvette Cooper, Rachel Reeves and Wes Streeting. But there’s no denying that Labour’s consistent poll lead also owes a lot to the failings of the Tories under Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. Rishi Sunak’s recent steadying of the ship, and the likelihood of an economic recovery before the next election, puts Labour in a shakier position. For all the improvements he has made, Starmer has “struggled to set out a coherent vision beyond ending 13 years of Conservative rule”.…

And so Michael Vaughan’s ordeal is finally over, said Nick Hoult in The Daily Telegraph. “After more than two years of stress for his family and himself”, England’s former cricket captain was cleared last week of “charges that would have destroyed his reputation”. A disciplinary tribunal found that there was no firm evidence that after a Yorkshire “team huddle” in 2009, Vaughan had singled out four Asian teammates, telling them: “There’s too many of you lot, we need to have a word about that.” Vaughan was one of six former Yorkshire players accused by the English Cricket Board (ECB) of having used racist and discriminatory language. And it’s true that the other five – John Blain, Richard Pyrah, Matthew Hoggard, Tim Bresnan and Andrew Gale – all had charges against…

A useless utility To The Daily Telegraph It is 34 years since the provision of water to British citizens was privatised (“Water, water everywhere, but where did all of the money go?”). The key benefit claimed, to justify continual annual price increases, was that the industry needed to raise huge sums of capital to invest in infrastructure. It is incredible, therefore, that billions of pounds of new investment are now reportedly needed to prevent the dumping of raw sewage into Britain’s rivers, and that the cost of this will likely be passed on to consumers. At a time when further water rationing is already predicted for this summer, we should ask just what the past 34 years of privatisation has achieved, other than healthy profits for the water companies, which…

by Carmela Ciuraru HarperCollins 336pp £25 The Week Bookshop £19.99 According to Carmela Ciuraru, there’s only one thing “worse than marriage”, said Hadley Freeman in The Sunday Times. And that’s “marriage to an author”. Ciuraru’s “brisk and enjoyable book” tells the stories of five 20th century literary couples – Roald Dahl and Patricia Neal; Kingsley Amis and Elizabeth Jane Howard (pictured); Kenneth Tynan and Elaine Dundy; Radclyffe Hall and Una Troubridge; and Alberto Moravia and Elsa Morante. In the main, it presents a sadly predictable picture of “beleaguered wives” and their domineering husbands. “Gripping, horrific and sometimes even funny”, this is a very enjoyable book, said Charlotte Gordon in The Washington Post. “We hear about addictions, money and sexual proclivities, including Tynan’s obsession with spanking women.” But Ciuraru also has…

Nabokov’s Dozen by Vladimir Nabokov, 1958 (Penguin £9.99). These stories first showed me what Nabokov’s prose could do: dazzle with precise, intricate, playful language summoning character, image and luminous cascades of memory. The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, 2013 (Abacus £10.99). Theodore Decker survives a terrorist attack that kills his mother at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and, staggering through the debris, he takes with him her favourite work. Tartt says her writing takes a long time because it is like “painting a wall-size mural with an eyelash” – so intricate is the detail. I can’t think of many contemporary novels that combine such narrative grandeur, pace and beauty. Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann, 1901 (Vintage £12.99). I reread this book every ten years or so – an imperfect recall allowing me…

Programmes Burt Bacharach: A Tribute from Ronnie Scott’s Clive Myrie presents this tribute from the world-famous jazz club, featuring special arrangements of Bacharach’s most beloved songs. Sat 8 Apr, BBC2 19:45 (75mins). Tenebrae: Bach to MacMillan The choral group Tenebrae performs Bach’s motets and works by Sir James MacMillan, including a musical setting of lines by Henry Vaughan, composed for the ensemble. Sun 9 Apr, BBC4 20:00 (80mins). Pompeii: The Discovery with Dan Snow The historian investigates the discovery of the Roman archaeological site, and the scramble that ensued to uncover (and plunder) its riches. Sun 9 Apr, C5 21:00 (90mins). Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? New adaptation of Agatha Christie’s 1934 crime mystery, written and directed by Hugh Laurie. Sun 9, Mon 10 and Tue 11 Apr, ITV1 21:00…

Agadir surf & yoga break A beachfront setting, a first-rate spa and a great surf club are the calling cards at Paradis Plage Resort in Morocco. 7 nights’ b&b from £842pp (incl. flights). 020-3451 2688, tui.co.uk. Depart 22 June. Charming Corsica stay Four nights at the Best Western Hotel San Damianu, located between the sea and the mountain in the medieval city of Sartène. From £289pp b&b. 020-8175 1145, loveholidays.com. Arrive 6 July. South Africa experience Enjoy safaris, an epic stretch of coastline and local adventures during your 9-day stay, from Johannesburg to Durban. From £918pp b&b. 0808-274 5111, intrepidtravel.com. Arrive 13 May. Iceland city break Stay 3 nights at Center Hotels Plaza and take in the Northern Lights as well as a Golden Circle day-trip. From £339pp b&b (incl.…

BYD/Tesla: battle royal in China There’s been a change of gears in the cut-throat Chinese car market, said Edward White and Gloria Li in the Financial Times. For the first time this year, Chinese carmakers are “on track to sell more passenger vehicles than foreign rivals” in the world’s largest auto market. Leading the field is Warren Buffett’s favourite electric carmaker, BYD. In the first two months of the year, the Shenzhen-based group “sold more than five times the number of units than Tesla did” – hot on the heels of reporting “a more than 400% surge” in net profits to $2.4bn in 2022. Analysts reckon that Tesla’s attempt to start a price war in China has “backfired”. Chinese consumers responded by favouring cheaper, newer models by BYD, whose “vertically…

Why mini financial crises are good for us Martin Wolf Financial Times Recent events are a reminder that “banks are the Achilles heel of the market economy”, and “contagion is a permanent danger”, says Martin Wolf. The good news is that Britain’s “regulatory regime” seems to have been quite effective, but there are still some specific lessons we should take. First, the value of the ring-fencing: the fact that Silicon Valley Bank UK was “a ring-fenced subsidiary, not a branch” made it much easier for the authorities to step in and resolve the situation “quickly and independently”. A second lesson is that even the best-laid plans can go awry in a panic – as happened at Credit Suisse. Clearly, the key to avoiding bank runs is ensuring that depositors “feel…

THE WEEK CROSSWORD 1357 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 17 April. Send it to The Week Crossword 1357, 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 Ancient Peruvian line makes you livid (12) 10 Lager is out in one part of Africa (7) 11 Broadcast reduction in special delivery (3-4) 12 As before, not all understand IT totally (5) 13 Indo-roast cooking with no end of spices? (8) 15 “Male…

What happened The Government struck a deal to join an 11-member Asia-Pacific trade bloc last week, a step hailed by No. 10 as an example of Britain seizing its “post-Brexit freedoms”. The deal, secured following two years of talks, will make the UK the first nation to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) since its launch in 2018. Downing Street said that under its terms, 99% of UK goods exported to the bloc’s member states – Australia, Canada, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Singapore, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, Peru and Vietnam – would be eligible for zero tariffs. Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch described the deal as the most significant commercial agreement signed by the UK since Brexit, and a “gateway to the wider Indo-Pacific region”. Labour welcomed the…

The legendary Volkswagen Golf is to disappear from production lines owing to markets shifting to electric vehicles. VW’s CEO confirmed this week that an update to the Golf next year will be the last with a combustion engine, and said that VW would only pass on the Golf name if it developed an e-car that would “fit the genes” of the original. Launched in 1974, the Golf has since sold well over 35 million models. Councillors in Oxford have proposed selling various “inappropriate” artworks, and replacing them with works that “rebalance the lack of diversity” in the council’s collection. Among those that could go is a painting of Salome bearing the head of St John the Baptist, and a sculpture depicting a fox hunt.…

The Government has confirmed that it plans to accommodate thousands of male asylum seekers on boats as well as at disused military bases. The Home Office has said the proposed accommodation, designed to be used as an alternative to hotels, will meet “essential living needs and nothing more”. The sites being mooted include HMP Northeye in East Sussex, and RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire, the former base of the Dambusters squadron. The vessels being eyed up as migrant hostels are said to be giant barges normally used for workers on offshore construction projects. Local Tory MPs and councils are among those opposing the plans, citing their likely impact on local services.…

Fort Campbell, Kentucky Chopper crash: Nine American troops were killed last week, when two US military helicopters crashed during a night-time training exercise near a base in Kentucky. The collision, involving two UH-60 Black Hawks from the 101st airborne division, happened during practices of “multi-ship formations” and medical evacuation drills. All nine troops were wearing night-vision goggles; no injuries were reported on the ground, and the weather was good. Witnesses described the helicopters flying close together before a “fireball” lit up the night sky. Officials said that the crash marked “a heavy day for the army”, and that an inquiry into its causes was now under way. Nicknamed the “Screaming Eagles”, the 101st airborne division is described on its website as “the only air assault division of the US army”,…

Eczema linked to osteoarthritis If you suffer from eczema, or asthma, you may have a heightened risk of developing osteoarthritis, a Stanford University-led study has found. The discovery raises the possibility that the conditions have the same underlying causes – and could pave the way for treatments for osteoarthritis. Researchers examined health data submitted to insurance companies by more than 110,000 Americans with asthma or eczema, and compared it with that of 110,000 others who had similar profiles, but who did not have those conditions. Once they had accounted for differences in BMI, the researchers found that those who had eczema or asthma were 58% more likely to be diagnosed with osteoarthritis during the study period than the others, while people with both conditions were twice as likely. They acknowledge…

In the four months since ChatGPT was made available to the public, the AI-assisted chatbot has become an object of amusement and wonder, said Sue Halpern in The New Yorker. Users have found that it can write everything from verse in iambic pentameter to plot outlines for novels. It can spell the chord progression and time signature for a tune, and devise successful appeals to parking fines. And all the time, it is getting cleverer. The first model failed the US bar exam; the latest one, GPT-4, sailed through. Small wonder that while millions of ordinary users were having fun setting it ever more challenging tasks last month, Goldman Sachs analysts were quietly calculating how many jobs AI could gobble up, said Jack Kelly in Forbes. They came up with…

“Gwyneth Paltrow may have scaled back her movie work in recent years”, but her value as an entertainer remains at an all-time high, said Carola Long in the FT. Witness the frenzy caused by her recent appearance in a drab courtroom in Utah, for a civil case that pitted the actress-turned-wellness guru against a retired optometrist from Salt Lake City. Terry Sanderson claimed that Paltrow had careered into him on a ski slope in 2016, and was seeking $300,000 in damages for injuries he said he’d sustained; Paltrow said that he had skied into her, and countersued for a symbolic $1 plus costs. The jury decided in Paltrow’s favour last week, but who was at fault was one of the least interesting things about the case. Millions tuned into the…

When Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital became the new owners of Chelsea Football Club last summer, it was widely believed they’d bring an end to Roman Abramovich’s “sacking culture”, said Jacob Steinberg in The Guardian. It was a belief fostered by Boehly himself, with his talk of a “longterm” vision and desire to sign players who’d stay at the club for years. It has proved completely unfounded. This week, Chelsea dismissed Graham Potter and began the search for their third manager of the season. In truth, Chelsea’s owners had little choice but to let the former Brighton manager go, said Jason Burt in The Daily Telegraph. Despite an “extraordinary splurge of spending” in the January transfer window – the Blues committed £323m to new signings – the club has been…

To The Times I am a fully transitioned woman – all the bits and pieces you can think of have been done. Nevertheless, I would never presume to compete in female professional sports. I am a woman, but I also recognise that I went through male puberty, and I think it is a matter of decency, respect and common sense to recognise that there is a difference. Although I have zero testosterone now, my development as a young adult was with male testosterone. I am stronger than women who went through female puberty, although I have become less strong than men. I guess everybody has their cross to carry, so sit back, accept it and celebrate the fact that we are different. Alexandra Leenen, Benenden, Kent To The Times We…

by Curtis Sittenfeld Doubleday 320pp £16.99 The Week Bookshop £13.99 Curtis Sittenfeld’s enjoyable new novel is a “love letter to the prototypical romcom”, said Scaachi Koul in The New York Times. Sally Milz, a comedy sketch-writer in her late 30s, has become “embittered by her life’s many little heartbreaks”, and doubts she will ever find love. On the show she works on (which resembles Saturday Night Live), “mediocre-looking” male colleagues seem able to “date way out of their league” – while the women remain single. But when an “ageing pop icon” named Noah hosts the show one week, Sally suddenly finds her heart “aflutter”. The novel becomes an exploration of whether “someone like her” (fun and intelligent, but not especially glamorous) can “bag someone like him”. Sittenfeld’s “command of structure,…

Jann Haworth at Gazelli Art House Born in California but based in London since 1961, Jann Haworth was an instrumental figure in early British pop art, blurring the boundary between fine and decorative arts and even co-designing the sleeve for the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s album – perhaps the movement’s most emblematic work. This solo show, Out of the Rectangle, pairs recent works with a handful of pieces from the 1960s, and shows that Haworth’s energy has not dulled an iota. Mannequin Defector (2022) places textile braids and bright fabrics onto a grey seamstress’s dummy. It’s a contemporary counterpoint to her 1962 “soft sculpture” Old Lady (also here), a faintly disturbing life-sized effigy of an old woman slumped in a chair. Cardboard collages of women’s bodies continue the theme of the…

Beckford Canteen 11-12 Bartlett Street, Bath (01225-338470) The menu at this new restaurant in Bath is not one that needs to be “cogitated over” for hours, says Grace Dent in The Guardian. On the contrary, it “demands to be gobbled up”. The latest addition to the Beckford Group – which owns several popular pubs and restaurants in the west of England – it is housed in a former Georgian greenhouse and specialises in modern British classics. My friend and I “snuck in at 6.30pm” – the place was booked out – and started our meal with rye old-fashioneds accompanied by “hunks of oozy rarebit titivated with pickled onion”. “Good sardines” arrived on toast; there was “luxurious and balmlike” chestnut soup; and another starter of leek and smoked eel was topped…

● Separate your clothes into the garments you don’t wear (including the ones that you have never really worn but still think you one day might); the pieces that you regularly wear; and the ones you don’t wear often but need to keep for special occasions. ● Using vacuum-pack bags or similar, pack away seasonal or occasional wear; this will free up space so you can actually see what you own and wear more of it. ● Be decisive, and discard the items that you don’t wear, and that are not special – but before you chuck them out, consider why you don’t wear them. Perhaps it is something as simple as a broken zip? In which case, get them mended. ● Try using The Seam, an app that links…

Paul O’Grady 1955-2023 Paul O’Grady, who has died aged 67, was for many years better known as Lily Savage – a brassy “blonde bombsite” in PVC skirts and scuffed stilettos whom he had created in the gay clubs of north London, to supplement his income as a social worker. Anarchic, acerbic and vulgar, Lily Savage became a hugely popular figure on British television in the 1990s, presenting Blankety Blank and other TV shows; then in the 2000s, O’Grady became yet more beloved when he started appearing as himself. He was a warm, compassionate presence on British TV, said The i Paper, but one who retained some of Lily’s biting wit. Although he now lived on a farm in Kent, he had not forgotten his working-class roots (at Channel 4, he…

Ammar Al Khudairy “Absolutely not,” said Ammar Al Khudairy when asked last month if the Saudi National Bank would inject more capital into Credit Suisse. “Those two words precipitated the demise of one of Switzerland’s oldest banks” – and his own career, said The Sunday Telegraph. A fortnight after the panicked run on Credit Suisse, the SNB chair has been ousted, leaving a $1.2bn hole in his bank’s balance sheet. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, is reportedly “furious” about the debacle. The kingdom had hoped its investment in Credit Suisse would spur a foray into global banking; instead, it has been left with egg on its face. “We looked at the down side, we believe it is limited,” said Al Khudairy of the deal. Famous…

More than 50 years after being captured in Puget Sound, off Washington State, the oldest killer whale in captivity is to be returned to her native waters. Lolita, 56, spent decades as the star attraction at the Miami Seaquarium, where she was held in the smallest orca enclosure in the US. But following years of lobbying by animal welfare activists, the aquarium has promised to send the orca back to Puget Sound – where her mother, 95, still swims – within two years. The future of Sir Joshua Reynolds’ The Portrait of Omai has been secured thanks to a unique deal between London’s National Portrait Gallery and the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Depicting a Polynesian who sailed to Britain with Captain Cook, the c.1776 work is one of the…

England’s meadowlands, with the unveiling of a plan to create or restore meadows at 100 historic sites across England, to mark the coronation. Announcing the project, English Heritage’s head of gardens noted that 97% of meadows that were recorded in the UK in the 1930s had disappeared by the mid-1980s. Russian tennis players, after last year’s ban on them competing at Wimbledon was reversed. However, players from Russia and Belarus will have to sign neutrality agreements in order to take part. These will confirm that they are not being state funded; that they are not representing their countries; and that they will not express support for the war in Ukraine or their governments.…

Only 21% of voters think Rishi Sunak’s strategy for tackling illegal cross-Channel migration is likely to be effective in stopping the boats, down from 26% just after he announced his new legislative measures in early March. 63% think his plan is unlikely to be effective (up from 59%), including 60% of people who voted Tory at the last election. YouGov/The Times 51% of British adults say they are dissatisfied with the NHS, up from 25% in 2020. 29% are satisfied, down from 70% in 2010. NatCen/The Guardian 31% of voters think Keir Starmer has set out a clear vision for Labour; 22% say he has been a great or good leader, including 37% of Labour voters. YouGov/HuffPost…

Tracey Emin’s art school When Tracey Emin was diagnosed with cancer in 2020, she was stricken by the thought that, for all her success, she’d not been happy. “I think being an artist is quite lonely,” she told Jonathan Jones in The Guardian. “And I don’t have any children. All of these things that other people seem to acquire in life, I don’t have. And when I thought I might die, I thought ‘Fuck, what have I been doing with my life?’ And then I thought: ‘Well, if I get through this, I’m going to do something. I’m going to change things.’” Now, “halfway” to getting the all-clear, Emin (pictured) is doing just that: having long had her studio in Margate, she has just opened an art school in the…

Most of the mutual companies and building societies founded by Victorian working-class associations and enlightened Edwardian entrepreneurs became publicly traded companies in the wave of “demutualisations” in the 1990s. Along with the Co-op, John Lewis resisted the trend. JLP has retained a genteel and idealistic culture that is the product of another age. Its constitution states that each partner becomes not just an employee but a “custodian” of its “experiment in industrial democracy”, and that its wider purpose is to create a “happier world”. The company looks after its partners in paternalistic style: it has five hotels in picturesque parts of the UK for staff holidays As one of the last mutuals still standing, and an aspirational brand to boot, John Lewis became a talisman for politicians arguing that capitalism…

ITALY Making life hell for samesex couples La Repubblica (Rome) “With the stroke of a pen”, Italy’s far-right government has wiped out the rights of same-sex parents, says Claudia Brunetto. They were few enough to begin with: gay people are still denied permission to marry or adopt. However, same-sex Italian couples sometimes go abroad to have children via surrogacy, and certain cities, including Milan, had been allowing such couples to put both parents’ names on birth registrations. But two weeks ago, the Interior Ministry commanded the city to stop. It’s all of a piece with the social conservatism of the PM, Giorgia Meloni, who has railed against “the LGBTQ lobby” and “gender ideology”. But in her attack on the LGBTQ+ community, it’s children who will suffer most. Families who’ve obtained…

Carol Vorderman has been married twice, with both relationships ending in divorce. Now, at 62, the former Countdown host says that she has no need of a permanent partner – preferring to enjoy the company of five “special friends”. “I’m continuing with that system and it’s working very well,” she told The Mail on Sunday. Everyone involved is single, and she enjoys the freedom the arrangement allows her. And if one of them met someone else? That’d be fine, too. “I’m not a jealous person and I’m happy when my friends are happy, whether they’re ‘special friends’ or not.” Andrew Marr spent the first 20 years of his career working in print, “because I was sure that somebody with my looks would never get to broadcast”. Luckily, he’s never been…

“Art is theft, art is armed robbery, art is not pleasing your mother.”Janet Malcolm, quoted in The New Republic “We can’t cross a bridge until we come to it; but I always like to lay down a pontoon ahead of time.”Bernard M. Baruch, quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”F. Scott Fitzgerald, quoted in Time “I use technology in order to hate it properly.”Nam June Paik, quoted in The New Yorker “Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”Warren Buffett, quoted in Barron’s “If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.”Shirley Chisholm, quoted on…

A drama about the negotiations that led to the Good Friday Agreement – 25 years ago this month – might sound a dry affair. But Owen McCafferty’s “searing” new play is anything but that, said Jane Coyle in The Irish Times. Agreement is a “compelling political thriller with echoes of Greek drama”, in which the playwright “peels away interlocking layers of compromise, dislike and distrust to reveal a fraught, painstaking journey towards an acceptable solution to a stubbornly intractable problem”. Featuring as characters all the main players – John Hume, David Trimble, Gerry Adams, Bertie Ahern, George Mitchell, Tony Blair and Mo Mowlam – the play unfolds in a circular space, with a single round window to the sky, that becomes a “goldfish bowl of feverish political manoeuvring”. If you…

I wouldn’t blame anyone who felt they had seen more than enough cop dramas on British TV, said Anita Singh in The Daily Telegraph – but the BBC’s latest six-part thriller is a cracker. Written by Declan Lawn and Adam Patterson, who brought us The Salisbury Poisonings, Blue Lights doesn’t have “a duff line or an overcooked scene”. The drama centres on three rookie constables in Belfast negotiating their more experienced colleagues on one side, the city’s criminals on the other, and dodgy intelligence officers in between. There are shocking incidents involving sectarian and drugs violence, but it isn’t relentlessly dark or political. This cleverly observed drama has a “fresh, irreverent quality” and a wealth of well-drawn characters, agreed Carol Midgley in The Times. It doesn’t downplay the violent resistance…

“There’s a hairy wart on her cheek.” Her nostrils flare horribly. Her ears stick out, like her wrinkled bosom. It cannot be denied that The Ugly Duchess, depicted by the 16th century artist Quinten Massys (1465/66-1530), is an eyesore, says Waldemar Januszczak in The Sunday Times. “The question is: why?” A small free exhibition in the National Gallery looks again at one of its best-known faces, which was inspired by Leonardo’s grotesques and, in turn, inspired John Tenniel’s illustrations of the mad duchess in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Most surprisingly, it reveals that the duchess is part of a pair – and she is reunited with her counterpart, Portrait of an Old Man. Together they appear to be part of a satirical subversion of the traditional marriage portrait, though he…

On a day out with Helen and Lee, Tom and Natasha reveal that the twins have been offered a lucrative modelling job for an agrochemical company – they’re turning it down, to Helen’s relief. Brian moves into his new home, telling Alice he’ll be fine on his own. By way of apology, Jim invites David to the pub quiz. Later, Justin asks Jim about his new protest plan for the charging station. Natasha persuades Tom to agree to the modelling job, though it clashes with Bridge Farm’s open day; they’ll have to lie. Impressed by George’s enthusiasm for his college project, Oliver wants to offer him investment money for his birthday. George is upset when his birthday plan falls apart, and admits to Will that friends tease him about his…

With net-fresh crab, Cornish sea salt made in traditional clay pots and free-range bronze turkeys on offer, Truro Farmers’ Market fits right in alongside the area’s renowned restaurants (Wednesdays and Saturdays, 9am-4pm; trurofarmers.co.uk). There are sellers from far and wide at Edinburgh Farmers’ Market. Look out for gin from the Dark Art Distillery in Kirkcudbright, and hot smoked salmon from Arbroath Fisheries (Saturdays, 9am-2pm; edinburghfarmersmarket.co.uk) Borough Market in London is superb of course, but Venn Street Market on Clapham Common is an excellent spot for finding produce by local growers and artisans as well as street food (Saturdays, 10am-3pm; vennstreetmarket.co.uk). Traders have been coming to the site of Ashton Farmers’ and Producers’ Market in Greater Manchester since the early 1800s. It now has a new craft section (last Sunday of…

A wild Caribbean island With its “exuberantly beautiful” rainforest, towering mountains and natural hot springs, Dominica is the wildest and most rugged of all the Caribbean’s small islands, says Chris Haslam in The Sunday Times. There’s fabulous (if tough and often muddy) hiking to enjoy, especially on the Waitukubuli Trail, a 14-section, 115-mile path that crosses the island. Alternatively, take to the waves with local guide Wes Moses, who has recently launched the Waitukubuli Sea Trail, a seven-day, 40-mile kayaking adventure along the leeward coast, where the diving is also superb, with accommodation in guesthouses along the way. For a luxurious stay, check in at Secret Bay. This resort’s huge clifftop villas feel like “cloudforest-canopy” treehouses, so lush are their surroundings, and the volcanic island’s only white-sand beach lies a…

Peter Usborne 1937-2023 In 1961, Peter Usborne, who has died aged 85, co-founded the satirical magazine Private Eye, said The Daily Telegraph. A decade later, he launched a venture of his own – Usborne, the hugely successful children’s book publishing company. The secret of its success, he said, lay in seeing things from a child’s point of view, and also in looking at “the dusty corners of children’s book publishing that are neglected by people looking for the next J.K. Rowling”. Peter Usborne was born in London in 1937, and brought up in Surrey. He won a scholarship to Eton, and after national service went up to Balliol College, Oxford, where he founded a humorous magazine called Mesopotamia, with contributors including Richard Ingrams, John Wells and Willie Rushton. After graduating,…

Spring is here and, with it, thoughts of bucolic riverside pursuits. Bad news for water firms, which have been slammed for releasing sewage into England’s waterways more than 300,000 times last year and are now under threat of “unlimited fines”, said The Times. Environment Secretary Thérèse Coffey has announced plans to scrap the £250,000 cap on civil penalties, enabling the Environment Agency to impose those unlimited fines on companies “without going through the courts”. The Government plans “to ring-fence” any cash raised into a “water restoration fund” devoted to projects such as improving wildlife habitats. Firms are only permitted to spill from overflow systems “in exceptional circumstances”, so clearly they’ve been pushing their luck, said The Daily Telegraph. The worst offenders last year were London-listed United Utilities (which owns North…

House prices The latest snapshot from mortgage provider Nationwide is that UK house prices fell by “their fastest rate since 2009” in the year to March, said Kalyeena Makortoff in The Guardian – dropping 3.1% to £257,122. This marks “the seventh monthly decline in a row” taking prices 4.6% below their recent peak last August – shortly “before the housing market was rocked by Liz Truss’s disastrous mini-Budget”. Nationwide’s chief economist, Robert Gardner, reckons the squeeze on household budgets from high inflation means “it will be hard for the market to regain much momentum in the near term” – particularly as “housing affordability” remains “stretched”. Commercial property Share prices in London’s big listed property companies have been hit “as the repercussions of the banking crisis that began in California begin…