Table of contents for 1461 in The Week

What happened Israel pressed on with its invasion of the Gaza Strip this week in the teeth of growing international calls for a humanitarian ceasefire. Israeli forces have encircled Gaza City and are fighting in the heart of it. Figures from Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry suggest that more than 10,000 Palestinians have been killed over the past month of Israeli bombardment. António Guterres, the UN secretary-general, told reporters that Gaza was “becoming a graveyard for children”. In London, the Metropolitan Police commissioner, Mark Rowley, came under intense pressure to ban a pro-Palestinian march through the capital on Armistice Day (see page 22). In an interview this week with the US network ABC, the Israeli premier, Benjamin Netanyahu, ruled out any ceasefire until Hamas released the 240 or so hostages it…

“Palestine holds an outsize place in the Labour psyche,” said Robert Shrimsley in the FT. In part, this is a question of “understandable immediate sympathy” for the Palestinians, but it goes beyond that: it’s a matter of “political identity”, a defining cause for left-wing activists. This explains the ferocity of the current row over Gaza in the Labour Party, and the potential pitfalls for Keir Starmer. He has set the party line: opposing demands for a full ceasefire in Gaza, on the grounds that it would only allow Hamas militants to launch future attacks, and instead calling for “humanitarian pauses”. About a third of Labour MPs have expressed views at odds with this position, including 17 frontbenchers, said Chris Mason on BBC News. This week, the MP for Bradford, Imran…

M&S, which felt obliged to apologise for posting a picture on social media that showed festive paper hats in silver, green and red burning in a grate. Social media users complained that the hats represented the burning of the Palestinian flag, and were not placated when the retailer explained that the image was from its Christmas ad, which had been shot in August. Captain Tom’s family, who lost their planning appeal, and must now demolish the large home spa they had built in their garden. The Rokeby Venus, which came under attack for a second time. Two Just Stop Oil protesters used a hammer to smash the glass on Velázquez’s painting, which is displayed in the National Gallery in London, a protest they likened to that of the suffragettes who…

Berlin Migrant crackdown: The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has announced a raft of measures to curb immigration, in the face of growing public concern over the issue and surging support for the hard-right AfD party. Agreed at a cross-party summit with the leaders of Germany’s 16 states, the measures include cuts to benefits for asylum seekers, the replacement of some cash handouts with prepaid grocery cards, faster processing of applications to allow swifter deportations, and more efforts to catch people smugglers. The federal government will also start paying states €7,500 for each asylum seeker they accommodate. Under pressure from conservatives, Scholz said that his centre-left coalition government would explore the idea of processing asylum seekers offshore. In Italy this week, PM Giorgia Meloni announced plans to send thousands of migrants…

1 Feed the Birds (Tuppence a Bag) by Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman, performed by Julie Andrews2 Days and Days by Lisa Kron and Jeanine Tesori, performed by Judy Kuhn3 Billie Jean, written and performed by Michael Jackson4 Tsismis, written and performed by Ryan Cayabyab5 Gymnopédie No. 1 by Erik Satie, performed by Philippe Entremont6 Intro: Singularity by Charlie J. Perry and RM, performed by BTS7 Baby Mine by Frank Churchill and Ned Washington, performed by Betty Noyes8* Snooze by Ryuichi Sakamoto, Yunki Min, Woo Sung Kim and Yi Jeong Jang, performed by Agust D feat. Ryuichi Sakamoto and Woosung Book: The Complete Far Side by Gary Larson Luxury: a typewriter * Choice if allowed only one record…

Since the beginning of her career, Swift has treated her fans exceptionally well. She does extensive “meet and greets” after every show: her staff pick out the particularly dedicated-looking concertgoers, who are brought to meet her. Fans are invited to her house to listen to her new albums with her. She donates money to some who are in need. Swift has been rewarded with what is arguably the world’s most loyal and numerous fan base. Several million will attend her Eras tour; in Buenos Aires, more than 200 fans have been camping outside the stadium for five months to get the best spots. She has over 500 million followers on social media. It has been estimated, not very scientifically, that there are 100 million dedicated Swifties globally. “Swift’s fanbase skews…

The cost of premature mortality in deprived areas has risen to almost £8bn a year, a new study has revealed. In 2019, avoidable deaths (such as from smoking-related cancer) in poorer areas of England cost £6.3bn in lost economic output. By 2021, that figure had risen to £7.7bn, an increase of 20%, the analysis for The Times Health Commission found. The figures do not take into account deaths related directly to Covid, nor the cost to the economy of people being off work sick for a long time, or any additional NHS costs. If this trend continues, the study warns that £60bn-£80bn could be lost to the economy over the next decade – which is enough to build 350 new hospitals. “Avoidable deaths are tragic, and represent a loss not…

Armistice Day, marking the end of the First World War, is meant to be a time of “quiet, solemn remembrance”, said Matthew Goodwin in The Sun. So a large number people in Britain have been shocked by reports that pro-Palestinian protesters plan to hold their latest demonstration in London on Armistice Day, this Saturday, near the Cenotaph. Millions of “patriotic Brits” support the right to protest over this important issue. But they look on these events with a “creeping sense” that, thanks to a toxic combination of identity politics and mass migration, their own cultural inheritance is “being rapidly undermined”. The right to protest is “not unqualified”, said Charles Moore in The Daily Telegraph. “Marches can be stopped and have been.” The Metropolitan Police urged organisers to postpone the march,…

“Before you marry a person, you should first make them use a computer with slow internet to see who they really are.”Will Ferrell, quoted in Cosmopolitan “I’m not great at advice. Can I interest you in a sarcastic comment?”A line from Friends’s Chandler Bing, in the FT “Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart.”William Butler Yeats, quoted in The Times of Israel “Even though a number of people have tried, no one has yet found a way to drink for a living.”Jean Kerr, quoted in Forbes “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”Upton Sinclair, quoted in The Sunday Times “The great art of learning is to understand but little at a time.”John Locke, quoted…

To The Times Dr Christopher Catherwood states that those who protest against Israel’s killing of Palestinian civilians are antisemitic because they did not equally protest against the killing of Arabs or Kurds in Syria. There were, in fact, British protests against Assad, but I suggest they would have been much bigger had two conditions pertained that we now see with Israel: had the British government supported Assad, and had a large strand of British public opinion acted as apologists for him. The attempt by Israel’s British friends to label this a “just war”, and their attempt to paint all those on the other side as antisemites, are themselves two of the reasons protest is required. Simon Boas, Winchester To The Daily Telegraph Camilla Tominey speaks for the majority of the…

by Homer, translated by Emily Wilson W.W. Norton 848pp £30 The Week Bookshop £23.99 (incl. p&p) “Celebrity” and “translator” are “not words that occur often in conjunction”, said Naoíse Mac Sweeney in The Washington Post. But they apply to Emily Wilson, whose acclaimed 2017 version of Homer’s The Odyssey, the first ever by a woman, brought her international renown. As a result, this new translation of The Iliad is one of the more “eagerly anticipated books of 2023”. Wilson, a classics professor at the University of Pennsylvania, has forged a Homeric style in English that has “grandeur without pomposity”, and makes the epic “a genuine page-turner”. This is “the definitive Iliad for our times”. Wilson has “very sensibly” solved the problem of Homer’s long lines by using loose iambic pentameters…

Lily Buchanan at Ramsay & Williams Scottish-born, Margate-based artist Lily Buchanan (b.1989) began her career painting uncannily photorealistic portraits, before moving on to a more expressionistic, illustrative and surrealist-tinged style that she has made completely her own. The new works in Things Behind the Sun form a narrative series that amounts to an exploration of Buchanan’s innermost thoughts about disappointment, dreams and impending motherhood, featuring a cast of harlequins, 1920s starlets in bathing caps, and strangely-dressed aviators. Her painstakingly produced, symbolist paintings and drawings, at times reminiscent of the surrealist Paul Delvaux, and even, in their deployment of cartoonish flourishes (notably the wispy, empty thought bubbles fuming from figures’ heads) Philip Guston’s work of the late 1960s and 1970s. The delicacy of the line – whether tracing the curve of…

The horrible ubiquity of balsamic A recent poll found that a quarter of all Brits regard balsamic vinegar as an “essential store cupboard ingredient”, says Julie Bindel in The Spectator. Clearly, a lot of people are very partial to the “dark, syrupy fermented grape juice” – yet when I started travelling in Italy in the 1980s, it was impressed upon me that “unless you are in the region of Emilia-Romagna in northern Italy”, you should not ask for “balsamic vinegar to dress your salad”. Today, that invaluable rule is cheerfully ignored right across the Mediterranean. You’re probably thinking: if you don’t like balsamic vinegar, for goodness sake, just don’t use it. But “if only it were that simple”. Restaurants have a tendency now to put it on practically everything, invariably…

● Natural predators can be good for getting rid of gulls or crows. Rentokil uses raptors, but these won’t attack the birds, so once they see there’s no threat they’ll return. It also has bioacoustic devices for gulls and starlings, and has developed an intelligent bird scarer for rooks and geese. ● Noise can be effective for foxes in the short term. Ultrasonic deterrents such as FoxWatch, which detect body heat and emit an ultrasonic sound, get good reviews. ● Secure fencing is the most effective way to keep rabbits and deer out, but it is costly. Galvanised steel wire needs to be buried in the ground to prevent digging, and high enough (up to 7ft) to stop deer jumping it. ● Sirens, flashing lights and streamers might work for…

Richard Roundtree 1942-2023 In the opening scenes of Shaft, the film that made his name in 1971, Richard Roundtree emerges from the New York subway, clad in a brown leather jacket, said The New York Times. With more than a little swagger, he weaves through the traffic on Times Square, and flips the middle finger at an impatient cab driver. Meanwhile, Isaac Hayes’s Oscar-winning theme song delivers a sense of what this character is about: “a sex machine to all the chicks”, “a bad mother-”, and “the cat that won’t cop out when there’s danger all about”. A virtual unknown at the time, Roundtree, who has died aged 81, had won the part after a meeting in which director Gordon Parks had pointed to a fashion advert in a magazine,…

The looming spectre of a Trump win Martin Wolf Financial Times Opinion polls suggest that a Trump victory in next year’s presidential election is “disturbingly plausible” – with “profound” implications “for the US, its allies and the global economy”, says Martin Wolf. The re-election of a politician who openly tried to subvert democracy would show that the world’s largest economy “is no longer committed to democratic norms”. It is hard to exaggerate the disheartening effect such a betrayal would have on America’s alliances, or how it will encourage “despots and their lackeys everywhere”. Then there are the implications for world trade. Trump is proposing a 10% across-the-board tariff on all imports – a new version of the infamous 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariff, which would “surely lead to retaliation”, and lay waste…

What happened The Covid Inquiry heard more evidence of Downing Street indecision over lockdown policies this week. According to diaries kept by Patrick Vallance, the government’s chief scientific adviser at the time, Boris Johnson was “all over the place” as to whether to impose a lockdown in October 2020, and Rishi Sunak used “spurious” arguments against one. Separately, Johnson’s ex-chief of staff, Edward Udny-Lister, confirmed that the PM wanted to be injected with Covid on live TV to prove the virus wasn’t dangerous, and said he’d rather “let the bodies pile high” than lock the country down in September 2020. Last week, former deputy cabinet secretary Helen MacNamara described a “toxic” culture in No. 10, and said that a lack of diversity at a senior level may have led to…

19% of adults in Great Britain say they sympathise mainly with the “Israeli side” in the current Middle East conflict. 19% say they sympathise mainly with the Palestinian side. 31% sympathise with both sides equally; 31% don’t know. YouGov/The Sunday Times Joe Biden is behind Donald Trump in five of the six most important battleground states, including Nevada, Georgia and Arizona, according to a New York Times/Siena poll. In a CBS News/YouGov poll, 48% of likely voters said they planned to vote for Biden, and 51% for Trump. A quarter of women with one child say that they would like to have more, but cannot afford to. Totaljobs/The Fawcett Society…

Charles III set out the Government’s legislative priorities in his first King’s Speech on Tuesday. Heavily trailed, the speech outlined 21 bills that ministers hope to pass before the next election. They include a bill to ban leaseholds for new houses, but not flats, in England and Wales, and another (carried over from the last Parliament) to ban no-fault evictions in England, but only once court reforms have been put in place. King Charles also unveiled plans to ensure that licences for oil and gas projects in the North Sea can be granted on an annual basis; to restrict the marketing of vapes and phase out smoking; and to increase the tariffs for serious violent crimes and force offenders to appear in the dock. A stand-alone bill will introduce a…

Chicago, Illinois Renaming birds: All North American birds named after people are to be rechristened next year. The American Ornithological Society said that it had decided to take the action to stop birds being linked to historic wrongs. (For instance, the Audubon’s shearwater is named after the ornithologist John James Audubon, who was a slave owner.) It said it was simpler to change the names of the 70-80 birds named after people, rather than trawl through scores of individual biographies in search of problematic examples. It said the birds’ new names will refer to their features, such as their habitat, or plumage, which will be more helpful to bird lovers. New York “Crypto king” guilty: Cryptocurrency entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried was found guilty of fraud and money laundering last week, and…

“One of the bleakest discoveries of the pandemic was just how many people imagined themselves to be amateur epidemiologists full of compelling insights on vaccine science. The war in Ukraine turned the epidemiologists into experts on military hardware. The war in Gaza has done the same for Middle Eastern history. There is now no tragedy so ghastly that it cannot be made the foundation stone for rickety new edifices of pompous self-assertion. In the absence of religious affiliations, our opinions have become crucial to our sense of self. A balance has gone awry: facts are more important than points of view and wise silence better than thoughtless speech. But that’s just my opinion.” James Marriott in The Times…

Look what’s ’Appening at Westminster Katy Balls The Times An insidious force is undermining Westminster, says Katy Balls. It’s a force – as the Covid Inquiry amply demonstrates – that promotes faction and discord, encourages extreme opinion and undermines the official processes essential to good government. I refer, of course, to WhatsApp. Since 2015, the messaging service has become one of the primary channels through which politics is conducted. Most departments, parliamentary groups and party caucuses now have their own WhatsApp forums, and there are yet more involving ad hoc groups of MPs. Ministers complain they have to field more than 100 messages a day. True, there’s nothing new about MPs’ gossip, but WhatsApp supercharges it in a deeply unhealthy way. Offering the illusion of encrypted privacy, it lures people…

Get angry to solve a problem We’re urged to keep calm when tussling with tricky tasks, but we might do better to get angry. That’s the conclusion of psychologists in the US who conducted a study into how our emotions affect our ability to achieve our goals. In one test, 1,000 people were shown pictures that were designed to elicit various different emotions, including anger, or none. They were then asked to solve a series of anagrams. When the puzzles were easy, all the participants did similarly well. But when it came to more complex ones, the people who were angry tended to perform best. They also spent longer on the puzzle, suggesting that anger makes us more persistent. A second part of the study was into how people’s emotions…

Silvio Berlusconi’s children have begun taking steps to evict around 20 women who have been living for years rent-free in houses owned by the late former PM. The women include former attendees of his “bunga bunga” parties, who may have been installed in the luxury properties to keep them quiet about what went on at them. Alessandra Sorcinelli, who is resisting eviction from her home on a compound near Milan, claims that Berlusconi had promised to put it in her name. “I have many recordings in which the prime minister’s great humanity emerges, and his desire to give us the houses,” she told reporters. In Nadine Dorries’s explosive new book, the former Tory minister alleges that the Conservative Party has been controlled for 20 years by a shadowy clique known…

In advance of Rishi Sunak’s AI summit at Bletchley Park, there was “much sneering about whether anyone would even turn up”, said James Heale in The Spectator. Some attacked the wisdom of inviting China; others mocked the UK’s ambition in attempting to assert global leadership on AI safety, just days after the US government had articulated its own plans to take a decisive lead on the issue. But in the event, the summit went pretty well. The guest list read like a “who’s who of the AI world”; the US vice-president, Kamala Harris, was among the politicians present; and 28 nations, including, crucially, the US and China, approved the Bletchley Declaration – a commitment to identify the risks posed by frontier (advanced) AI, and work together to mitigate them. Yet…

Last Saturday’s clash between Newcastle United and Arsenal should have been a “classic British football experience”, said Jonathan Northcroft in The Sunday Times. It was a “game of fiery intensity”, played in a “rumbustious stadium”. Yet when it was over, “the actual football” was barely discussed; instead it was VAR that dominated the conversation. The charge was led by Arsenal’s manager, Mikel Arteta, who raged that the VAR review that allowed Anthony Gordon’s 64th-minute winner for Newcastle to stand was an “absolute disgrace”. The goal had triggered an “unprecedented triple VAR check”: first to see if the ball had gone out of play in the build-up; second, to see if a Newcastle player had committed a foul in the area; and third, to see if Gordon had been offside. All…

Football In the Premier League, Liverpool drew 1-1 with Luton. Their equaliser was scored by Luis Díaz, whose father is currently being held hostage by a terror gang in Colombia. The forward’s mother had also been captured with his father, but was then released. Cricket England recorded their fifth consecutive defeat in the World Cup as they lost to Australia by 33 runs. Ruby union Exeter Chiefs are top of the Premiership after beating the Bristol Bears 29-20. Harlequins are second, after beating Newcastle Falcons 40-12.…

The litmus test of any King Lear is “whether you emerge from the theatre moist-eyed”, said Matt Wolf in The New York Times. Alas, Kenneth Branagh’s new West End production left “my cheeks dry throughout”. The staging is fluid, and Branagh (serving as both director and star) speaks the verse with his trademark clarity. But the production – which runs at a brisk two hours, without interval – feels like an accomplished rhetorical exercise, when this, of all Shakespeare’s plays, should rattle the soul. It does not “sweep us headlong into savagery or sadness”; there are too few moments that stop the heart; and the “full majesty” of Shakespeare’s “most nerve-shredding tragedy” does not have time to unfold. The cast is exclusively made up of (mostly recent) graduates of Rada,…

Until recently, I figured that the “worst reality show to take part in” would be I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!, because of “the bugs and the eating of the fish eyes”, said Emily Baker in The i Paper. But Channel 4’s new show makes Ant and Dec’s jungle purgatory “look like a spa break”. The four-part series features a handful of celebrities who are sent to serve eight days in a decommissioned prison (HMP Shrewsbury) so that they (and we) can be exposed “to the shocking realities of what it’s really like” to be banged up. The celebs in question include Sid Owen, aka Ricky from EastEnders, Neil Parish, the former Tory MP who was caught watching porn in the House of Commons, and the serving Tory…

A French antiques dealer is being sued for allegedly deceiving a couple, by selling an African mask at a 2,800,000% mark-up, says Shweta Sharma in The Independent. In 2022, an unnamed pensioner couple, who live in Eure-et-Loir near Paris, sold the rare 19th century “Ngil” mask, made by the Fang people of Gabon, to the dealer (who also wasn’t named) for €150 (£130); it had belonged to the man’s grandfather, a colonial official. It was sold six months later for €4.2m (£3.7m). The couple were astounded to read a report about the sale describing it as “rarer than a Leonardo da Vinci painting”: there are only ten to 12 Fang masks still in existence, and they inspired Picasso and Modigliani. However, representatives of Gabon’s government claimed the item had been…

After much bickering, Josh agrees to host a Halloween party with Lily. Rob asks Brian to be a sponsor at his imminent baptism, a fact not lost on Tony. Hannah suggests that Jazzer applies for her job as she can’t find a new home and is considering leaving Ambridge. But she then discovers that Stella is serious about renting her spare room. Nobody but Bruce, Miles and Alan turn up to Rob’s baptism – until Tony arrives: Alan asks him if he plans to disrupt the service. Bruce loses his temper with Rob, belittling him in front of everyone. Rob thanks Tony for coming, to a muted response. Privately, Tony admits that Bruce’s aggression has changed his mind: an unloving father is punishment enough. Miles tells Harrison that Rob is…

Birria de res is an amazing Mexican beef dish, says Dan Toombs. It can be eaten as a stew, much like chilli con carne. However, it can also be turned into the famous birria tacos – made by dipping tortillas in the sauce, topping with some of the meat, and cheese, and then folding the tortillas up and frying them in oil. The effort is certainly worth it: birria tacos are some of the best out there. Serves 8 2kg beef cheek or chuck, cut into large 10cm pieces 1½ tsp salt 6 dried guajillo peppers 6 dried ancho chillies 1 large onion, cut into about 8 pieces 8 garlic cloves 2 large tomatoes 2.5cm real cinnamon stick or 1-2 pinches of ground cinnamon 1 tsp freshly ground black pepper…

The Angel at Hetton, Yorkshire Dales National Park, has roaring fires, copper bathtubs and a Michelin-starred restaurant (half-board from £364; angelhetton.co.uk). Popular with anglers, The Peacock at Rowsley, Peak District National Park, has 15 rooms stuffed with antique furniture (b&b from £235; thepeacockatrowsley.com). The Bear, Bannau Brycheiniog National Park (formerly the Brecon Beacons), dates from the early 1400s. Table Mountain and the beautiful Usk Valley are close by (room only from £142; bearhotel.co.uk). One of Exmoor’s oldest pubs, The Ship Inn in Exmoor National Park has five rooms, roaring fires and a resident ghost (room only from £100; shipinnporlock.co.uk). Over 300 years old, the quirky Drovers Inn, Loch Lomond & the Trossachs National Park, is said to be one of the most haunted pubs in Scotland. A great base for…

An old railway around the Somme It does not have any “big sites”, but the Bay of Somme is among the loveliest corners of northern France, with its quiet old towns and “vast” landscapes of marshes, dunes, woods and cliffs. You can explore it on the Chemin de Fer de la Baie de Somme, says Lily Radziemski in The New York Times, a 19th century steam railway that runs all the way around it from Cayeux-sur-Mer to Le Crotoy, some 70 miles south of Calais. Having suffered a considerable amount of damage during the brutal Battle of the Somme in 1916, when the British Army made heavy use of the line, it was rebuilt in the 1920s and is now maintained by a nonprofit group with a few paid employees…

Phyllis “Pippa” Latour 1921-2023 On 2 May 1944, a 23-year-old agent codenamed Genevieve was parachuted into France, to gather information about German troop movements in Normandy in advance of D-Day. The men who’d preceded her in that role had been caught and executed. Her handlers, in the Special Operations Executive (SOE), hoped the Germans would be less suspicious of a young woman cycling around the countryside, selling soap to soldiers. In just a few weeks, she relayed 135 encrypted messages back to London, using codes that she concealed on a piece of silk, which she inserted into a shoelace, and used to tie her hair. Once, she was arrested by the Nazis and ordered to strip. Having removed her clothes, she undid the tie, and tossed it aside. The officers…

Elon Musk has long pledged to create an “anti-woke” ChatGPT. With impeccable timing, his artificial intelligence start-up, xAI, has just delivered, said the FT. Grok is a new chatbot, tightly integrated with X/Twitter, with which Musk hopes to take on OpenAI, Google and Meta. The tech billionaire reckons that being able to tap “real-time” X posts will give Grok “a massive advantage” over rivals relying largely on older archives – and is making the app available to X Premium+ users. Grok apparently “loves sarcasm”. Another winning trait, Musk boasts, is a willingness to “answer spicy questions that are rejected by most other AI systems”. Experts warned that it had the potential to spread harmful material.…

How are your savings doing, asked Alexa Phillips in The Daily Telegraph. A report from consumer group Which? suggests that despite regulators and MPs “repeatedly raising the alarm over meagre savings rates”, Britain’s big banks still “aren’t getting the memo”. ● The average easy-access savings rate offered by big banks increased by 1.56 percentage points to an average 1.98% between October 2022 and October 2023, even though the BoE raised the Bank Rate by 3 percentage points, to 5.25%, over the same period. This means a saver with £20,000 will earn £396 a year – compared with £1,050 had the banks “fully passed on rate rises”. ● Some big names have been paying even less than the average. Lloyds offered returns of 1.4% over the period, while Halifax and Barclays…

René Benko The Austrian real-estate former wunderkind, René Benko, used to joke that only the Pope and the British royal family could boast of a more prestigious European property portfolio than his. But after a decade of empire-building, a financial crisis is now engulfing his €23bn Signa Group, said Sam Chambers in The Sunday Times – and causing havoc across the Continent. In Hamburg, work on a €700m project to create the third-tallest tower in Germany has been halted because Signa has stopped paying the builders. In London, the “future ownership” of department store Selfridges has been “thrown into doubt” just a year after Benko moved in on the “retail icon”. A billionaire before he was 40, with the gift of the gab, Benko capitalised on low interest rates and…

The week’s best shares Bloomsbury Publishing Investors’ Chronicle Strong demand for children’s books has fuelled the Harry Potter publisher’s strongest ever half-year results. Sales growth in the digital resources arm has dipped, but profits are still set to rise 4.5%. Buy. 403p. IG Group The Times The spread-betting and trading services provider is cutting costs (including about 300 jobs) to mitigate weaker trading and a costly US and European expansion, and to meet margin targets. Pessimism “seems overdone”. Yields 6.8%. Buy. 638p. InterContinental Hotels Group The Daily Telegraph The group’s mix of mid-market and luxury brands, broad geographical spread and investment in tech confer competitive advantage. Solid finances and growth potential in China and US. Buy. £58.10. J Sainsbury The Times Sales rose 10.1% as Sainsbury’s took market share from…

THE WEEK CROSSWORD 1388 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 20 November. Send it to The Week Crossword 1388, 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 Week-branded items including a notebook, coffee mug and tote bag, as well as two Connell Guides (connellguides.com). ACROSS 9 Surgeries tender abroad to get one? (10,5) 10 As sheep are seen in outbuilding (7) 12 Don’t relax ungracefully for English poet (7) 13 Injured tiger seen here? (9) 14 Too much on one day over and over again (5) 15 Great Grandma undergoes gradual change…

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Beatles fans, with the release of the Fab Four’s final single, half a century after they broke up. Now and Then was written and recorded by John Lennon in 1977. The surviving Beatles worked on it in the 1990s, but the quality of the demo was deemed too poor to salvage – until AI came to the rescue. Although reviews were mixed, the song looked set to become the band’s 18th No. 1. Amsterdam, which seems to be succeeding in its aim to deter British tourists. With local concern growing about overtourism, officials first stopped promoting the city, then launched a “digital discouragement campaign” targeting British stag parties and the like. New figures show that visitors from the UK are now down 22% on pre-pandemic numbers.…

Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden has denied that his party sought to cover up rape allegations against a Tory MP. The Mail on Sunday had previously reported that Jake Berry, who served as Tory chairman in 2022, had sent a letter to the police, after discovering that party officials had paid for a woman to receive hospital treatment after an alleged rape, but had only taken limited further action. This failure to act, he said, may have enabled the unnamed MP to keep offending. Dowden insisted that the party had a “zero-tolerance” approach to sexual misconduct, and that he was unaware of any payments.…

Kaleb Cooper’s father figure Jeremy Clarkson’s TV series about running his own farm sent his career in a new direction – and also changed the life of Kaleb Cooper, the local agricultural contractor who acts as his sidekick. Yet when Cooper, 25, first went to work for Clarkson, long before the series started, he “slightly resented” him, he told Michael Odell in The Times – not because he was another millionaire coming in and driving up the price of land, he says, but “because he asked me to drive the tractor more slowly past his house so his cat could run around safely. I ignored that because we were so busy. And to be honest, I didn’t know who he was. I didn’t have time to watch TV.” Yet thanks…

A tourist sparked a bomb alert at a restaurant in Lisbon after confusing the Portuguese words for “pomegranate” and “grenade” while ordering a fruit juice. The 36-year-old man, a Russian speaker from Azerbaijan, reportedly typed his order in Russian into a translation app, then showed his phone to a waiter. In Russian, the words for grenade and pomegranate are almost the same; in Portuguese, they are not. The waiter called the police. Five armed officers stormed the restaurant and ordered the tourist to lie face down on the street. He was released after interrogation. A tiny shop hanging from a steep cliff face in China’s Hunan province has been dubbed the most “inconvenient convenience store” in the country. The wooden shed, which is 394 feet above ground in the Shiniuzhai…

“It’s not easy to say this”, said Nicholas Drummond in The Spectator, but Ukraine’s counteroffensive, launched five months ago with the aim of retaking swathes of lost territory, “has fizzled out”. With “autumnal weather” turning “the rolling steppe into a sea of mud”, the conflict has re-entered a phase of “static, attritional warfare”, and any fresh attempt to break through Russian lines will now have to wait until at least April. There are clear reasons for this “failure”. One is that Russia’s defensive line has proved surprisingly impenetrable, with “minefields that run nearly a mile deep in some places”; and Kyiv has neither the specialist kit needed to clear a path nor enough armoured vehicles to “attack with mass”. Another is that President Putin is committed to conquering Ukraine at…

Sam Bankman-Fried’s story is “as wacky as it is wonderful”, said Josie Cox in The Guardian. He’s the unkempt maths nerd who became a billionaire in his 20s with his FTX cryptocurrency exchange; who lived in a $35m “crypto frat house” in the Bahamas; and who surreptitiously played videogames while Vogue supremo Anna Wintour tried to talk him into sponsoring the Met Gala. Now, he has been convicted of fraud and money laundering, and could be sentenced to up to 110 years in prison. Bankman-Fried’s colourful background made his crimes seem new and idiosyncratic. But the kind of corruption he was found guilty of is, the prosecutor pointed out, “as old as time”. The speed with which the jury returned unanimous guilty verdicts makes the failure of investors to rumble…

The WTA Finals is “supposed to be the biggest showcase for women’s tennis outside of the four grand slams”, said Stuart Fraser in The Times. Held each November, the event – like its male equivalent, the ATP Finals – is a chance for the world’s eight top-ranked players to compete for one of the biggest cash prizes in tennis. But this year’s tournament, held in Cancún, Mexico, was a “shambles” from start to finish. First, there was an unaccountable delay in deciding on a venue. After a “rushed bidding process”, the WTA finally announced, on 7 September, that Cancún would play host – leaving little time to promote the event, or for players to adjust their schedules. When the players arrived in Cancún, they found that the courts hadn’t yet…

Covid: a wasted Inquiry… To The Times A unique opportunity to understand and learn from the pandemic is being wasted in a seemingly obsessive pursuit of rude WhatsApp messages, with an agenda that appears only to wish to apportion blame. Covid was new to all of us, and like most governments around the world, ours made mistakes. We now have the opportunity, with the benefit of hindsight and new evidence-based information, to assess the effectiveness or otherwise of key measures – such as lockdowns, masks, the accuracy of modelling and the use of test and trace. Viruses are constantly evolving and it is possible that we will face similar problems in the future. Surely the Inquiry should be focusing on these important questions so that real lessons can be learnt?…

by Adam Sisman Profile 208pp £16.99 The Week Bookshop £13.99 Adam Sisman’s admired biography of John le Carré, published in 2015, made it clear that certain matters were being played down under pressure from its subject. “This new book collects what le Carré wanted kept out,” said Anthony Cummins in The Observer. What he chiefly wanted kept out was the extent of his compulsive philandering. Le Carré – whose real name was David Cornwell – saw cheating on his wife with younger women as, in his own words, “almost a necessary drug for my writing”. Not for him “the second cup of coffee or sly KitKat to fire the synapses”. Instead, “pan-continental hook-ups” were what his muse required, and Sisman (see page 33) gives chapter and verse on them, identifying…

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, 1861 (Penguin £5.99). I love Dickens, and might have selected any one of three or four other novels. I first read Great Expectations when I was 15 and have read it several times since, including reading it aloud to my children. The excruciating scene when Joe Gargery visits Pip in his London lodgings still makes me wince. Dr Johnson and Mr Savage by Richard Holmes, 1993 (Harper Perennial £11.99). A lesser-known work by a master of the art of biography. Layer by layer, Holmes unpicks the story of Johnson’s friendship with the doomed poet Richard Savage. His pioneering book influenced me while writing my own Boswell’s Presumptuous Task. Middlemarch by George Eliot, 1871 (Penguin £8.99). Is it the greatest novel written in the English language?…

Programmes The Remarkable Journey of Bernard Levin A look at the career of the man who rose from childhood poverty to become one of Britain’s most influential journalists and broadcasters. Sun 12 Nov, BBC4 22:30 (55mins). Dispatches: Hunting Russia’s Lost Boys The story of the Russian women tackling a hostile bureaucracy to find out what became of their male relatives, after they were sent to fight in Ukraine. Sun 12 Nov, C4 23:00 (75mins). Walter Presents: Dignity As the Pinochet regime collapses, a Chilean prosecutor is sent to track down a German war-veteran-turned-cult-leader suspected of child abuse. Mon 13 Nov, C4 00:15 (60mins). The Playboy Bunny Murders First in a two-part series in which Marcel Theroux investigates a series of murders in 1970s London. Mon 13 Nov, ITV1 21:00 (60mins).…

Ultimate Vietnam Discover the very best of northern and southern Vietnam on this 12-day guided tour. From £999pp b&b (excl. flights). 020-8004 8886, theadventurepeople.com. Arrive 15 January. Luxury Transatlantic cruise Set sail from Southampton on a 12-night cruise to Florida, with a 3-night hotel stay in Miami. From £1,199pp full-board (incl. flights). 020-7183 0077, cruisekingdom.co.uk. Depart 23 October 2024. Six nights, three countries This bucket list-ticking journey takes you to Iceland, Niagara Falls, Canada, and the Big Apple. From £1,099pp room only (incl. flights and train). 020-3608 0135, secretescapes.com. Depart 20 January. Italian ski dream Relax at the Hotel Locanda Locatori for 7 nights after long days spent on the slopes of the Passo Tonale resort. From £613pp all-inclusive (incl. flights). 020-3993 7540, igluski.com. Depart 6 January.…