Table of contents for 1507 in The Week

Controversy of the week One of the most “damning” aspects of the Mohamed Al Fayed scandal is that it is “so unsurprising”, said Gordon Rayner in The Daily Telegraph. Al Fayed, we can now be very sure, was “a serial sexual abuser”. Last week, in the BBC documentary Al Fayed: Predator at Harrods, more than 20 women accused him of abuse; five of them made accusations of rape. Since it aired, around 100 other women have come forward. The sad thing is that his crimes have been known about for decades. It was an “open secret” that the Egyptian-born businessman would prey on young, attractive staff at Harrods. Al Fayed would reassign young women to his private office, then send them off for gynaecological examinations by private doctors – who…

Fleet Street, with the demise of London’s Evening Standard as a daily print newspaper. The Standard now exists online, and as a weekly print title. Editor-in-chief Dylan Jones said the new London Standard would be an “end-of-the-week treat” for commuters. Shiptonthorpe, a village in East Yorkshire, with news that its residents have been subjected to a two-year campaign of poison pen letters, described as “personal, obscene and targeted”. One woman said she had had four letters, calling her a “cow” and accusing her of using sexual favours to become a ward councillor.…

Merishausen, Switzerland Suicide pod: A 64-year-old American woman is believed to have become the first person to have died in a “suicide capsule”. According to local reports, the pod had been set up in a forest near the Swiss town of Merishausen. According to its makers, the person climbs inside the pod, then presses a button to release nitrogen into the sealed chamber. The woman is said to have lost consciousness in two minutes and to have died in five. Police arrived soon after and made several arrests. In Switzerland, assisted dying is legal but it is tightly regulated, and the creators of the Sarco pod had been warned not to use it. Paris Minority government: France’s new prime minister, Michel Barnier, agreed the line-up of his government last Saturday,…

1 Disco 2000 by Jarvis Cocker, Nick Banks, Steve Mackey, Russell Senior, Candida Doyle and Mark Webber, performed by Pulp 2 Chattanooga Choo Choo by Mack Gordon and Harry Warren, performed by Glenn Miller and his Orchestra 3 Up In Arms by Pat Smear, Nate Mendel and Dave Grohl, performed by Foo Fighters 4 Syncopes, written and performed by Gabriel Yared 5 Your Disco Needs You by Kylie Minogue, Guy Chambers and Robbie Williams, performed by Kylie Minogue 6* Where Are We Now?, written and performed by David Bowie 7 If You Came To See Me Cry (from Tammy Faye: The Musical) by Elton John and Jake Shears, performed by Katie Brayben 8 Going to a Town, written and performed by Rufus Wainwright Book: A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking Luxury: a keg of single malt Scotch…

Hezbollah effectively controls most of Lebanon’s Shiamajority areas, in southern Beirut, southern Lebanon, and the eastern Bekaa Valley. It has many of the features of a nation state: a leader, a ruling council, a parliamentary assembly, an army, a welfare state. It also has its own TV and radio stations, and even its own boy scout movement, the Mahdi Scouts, in which boys can learn to swim, build campfires and tie knots – but are also indoctrinated from an early age. New recruits to its military wing, referred to as the Islamic Resistance, must absorb the principles of the Iranian Islamic revolution. “The religious lessons are first,” explained an experienced military trainer. “Religion first, before you even see a gun.” Hezbollah takes part in Lebanon’s complex democratic system – in…

Drug-resistant superbugs will kill 39 million people over the next 25 years, a major study has found. The analysis of data from 204 countries and territories revealed that an estimated 1.14 million people died of drug-resistant infections in 2021 – a number that is forecast to rise to 1.91 million a year by 2050. The Global Research on Antimicrobial Resistance Project found that, while deaths among children under five have halved since 1990, owing to improvements in vaccination rates and hygiene, the number of over-70s who have been killed by superbugs has risen 80%, and is expected to keep rising as populations age. And among all adults over 25, there has been a rise. “These findings highlight that antimicrobial resistance has been a significant global health threat for decades and…

“One of the characteristics of the left-wing mind,” said Stephen Glover in the Daily Mail, “is the desire to impose Utopian fantasy on human reality.” Witness the Government’s naive plan to enshrine working from home as a statutory right in its forthcoming Employment Rights Bill. Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds claimed last week that encouraging flexible working would boost productivity, fuel economic growth and make staff more loyal to their employers. That’s a nice idea, but there’s no evidence to back it up. The UK already tops the WFH league in Europe, with 44% of us working remotely at least part of the time in 2023, and this hasn’t done much for our productivity. Many companies have come to the view that WFH is bad for business. Amazon has just announced…

“To err is human – and to blame it on a computer is even more so.”Robert Orben, quoted in The i Paper “Man has to suffer. When he has no real afflictions, he invents some.”José Marti, ibid. “Better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.”John Stuart Mill, quoted in The Atlantic “Behind every successful man stands a surprised mother-in-law.”Hubert Humphrey, quoted in The Knowledge “There are two kinds of coaches, them that’s fired and them that’s gonna be fired.”Football coach Bum Phillips, quoted in the Houston Chronicle “When life gives you lemons, squirt someone in the eye.”Cathy Guisewite, quoted on Goodreads “Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything.”Joseph Stalin, quoted in The Pajaronian “I love being married. It’s so great to find that one…

To The Times Given that Sue Gray is a former director-general of propriety and ethics in the Cabinet Office, one would have expected her to have advised the senior members of the Government against accepting gifts in return for access to 10 Downing Street. The naivety and poor judgement displayed in this matter do not bode well for the complex and nuanced decisions continually required of Cabinet ministers and officials. This contrasts sharply with the occasion when we sent a case of wine to Rishi Sunak, then chancellor, to thank him for taking the time to research and answer a question about duty on English wine production. A handwritten note of thanks arrived within days; months later we discovered that the gift had been immediately handed over to the government…

by Bella Mackie Borough Press 384pp £20 The Week Bookshop £15.99 When the “impossibly rich” financier Anthony Wistern is found “skewered on a huge metal spike” in the grounds of his Cotswolds manor, suspicion falls on his close relations, said Alison Flood in The Observer. Was the murderer one of his four “grasping children”? Or his icy wife, Olivia? Bella Mackie’s second novel (following her bestselling debut How to Kill Your Family) is another “dark, funny story about a very dysfunctional family”. Every character is “dreadful” – apart from the “rather sweet” true-crime podcaster who becomes involved in the investigation – but in a “pleasurably awful way”. The influence of Succession is perhaps a little too obvious, said Jenny Colgan in The Guardian: there’s even a sycophantic “would-be Wambsgans”. And…

Olu Ogunnaike at Rose Easton Londoner Olu Ogunnaike (b.1986) is an artist preoccupied by wood, approaching it as a means of exploring questions of identity and history; trees, for him, are repositories for memories of place – and his work has a strong flavour of the literary genre we used to call “psychogeography”. This new show, “Is the soil right?”, sees him working with charcoal, exploiting it as a ghostly trace of his favoured material. It consists of eight large charcoal prints on mirrored steel, based on iPhone photos taken by the artist himself – of a crowd emerging from an underpass, an empty pub, of a Weegee-like stairwell, all rendered in eerily grainy detail. The reflective surfaces throw back the autumnal leaves of the trees beyond the gallery windows…

Tharavadu 7-8 Mill Hill, Leeds (0113-244 0500) “It’s easy to roll your eyes” at the lengthy descriptions accompanying the items on the menu at this Keralan restaurant, says Jay Rayner in The Guardian. “Experience the bold and flavourful taste of Kerala’s iconic street food with our signature beef dish,” one begins, before carrying on for another four lines. But perhaps this is “my problem”, not the restaurant’s, because what the verbosity in fact signals is a warm determination to “show us a good time”. And that, Tharavadu certainly does, with cooking that’s a “cheery marriage of layered flavours, bold aromatics” and fiery heat tempered by the generous use of coconut. Our meal begins with the sort of platter of snacks and pickles that one might normally pick at absent-mindedly. This…

SOURCE: EVENING STANDARD…

Norman Spencer 1914-2024 Believed to be the secondoldest man in the UK, Norman Spencer, who has died aged 110, was one of the last people alive to have worked in Britain’s wartime film industry. A production manager, producer and writer, he was known in particular for his collaborations with David Lean, on films including Blithe Spirit, Great Expectations and Lawrence of Arabia. This brought him into the orbit of some of the biggest stars of the era – including Katharine Hepburn (in 1955’s Summertime). She was, he said, a “damn good performer, but a terrible nuisance on a film… Even on the days when she wasn’t called, she’d be on set at half-pastseven in the morning saying, ‘Now, how do you put the film in the camera?’” Raised in Billericay,…

Travellers are “curating” their plastic trays at airport security and uploading photos of them onto TikTok to show off their taste and jetset lifestyle. Some are artfully pared down – containing, say, just a pair of designer sunglasses, a purse and a passport – whereas others are more elaborate, with highbrow books, upmarket cosmetics and fashionable shoes. Researchers have been granted public funding for a £200,000 study into the environmental impact of Star Wars. The Open University study, which is being supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, will examine the carbon footprint of props and costumes used in the films, from lightsabers to a dress worn by the character Queen Amidala.…

Nurses in England have rejected the Government’s offer of a 5.5% pay rise. A record 145,000 members of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) took part in the ballot, and two-thirds of them voted against the offer. The RCN has drawn a contrast between the 5.5% deal offered to its members and the 22.3% pay rise that junior doctors are to receive over two years. It has demanded “urgent action” to improve nurses’ working conditions, but said it had no imminent plans to ballot members for strike action. Separately, train drivers in England, Scotland and Wales voted overwhelmingly to accept an offer from the Department for Transport, which amounts to a pay rise of almost 15% over three years.…

Chicago Abuse allegations: Hundreds of people who passed through juvenile detention facilities in Illinois between 1996 and 2021 have joined in lawsuits in which they detail a litany of sexual and physical abuse against young inmates. The latest suits to be filed involve 272 plaintiffs of both sexes, who say they were raped, assaulted and beaten by guards, teachers, nurses and chaplains at ten institutions. They bring to 667 the number of plaintiffs to have come forward since May. One of the suits accuses the state of having “overwhelmingly failed to investigate complaints, report abusive staff, and protect youth inmates”. The victims were as young as 11 years old. Similar suits have been filed in states including New York, California and Pennsylvania, but lawyers say that Illinois stands out for…

“Westminster Magistrates’ Court was last week invited by a consultant psychiatrist to consider that Huw Edwards suffered ‘cognitive dissonance’ because of ‘the particular cultural milieu of South Wales’, his childhood home, and low self-esteem caused by ‘not getting into Oxford and going to Cardiff instead’. It is, I imagine (I never dared attempt it), very sad not to get into Oxford, and possibly, though again I do not know, unpleasant to go to Cardiff instead. But 99.9999999% of the human race has to put up with not being at Oxford. The experience need not lead even Welshmen to procure ‘child pornography’.” Charles Moore in The Spectator…

Our nation is ever-more divided Will Hutton The Observer Remember “levelling up”? It’s five years since the Tories launched their famous mission to reduce regional inequalities in the UK, says Will Hutton. Alas, the policy never amounted to much more than a slogan. A new report by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) says things have actually got worse. Since 2019, the gap in living standards between London and the Northwest, the Northeast and the Midlands has “close to doubled or worse”. Productivity levels are rising in the capital, but they’re stagnating or falling elsewhere. A lack of affordable housing, failing schools and limited public transport is leaving ever-more people in “left-behind Britain” marooned, unable to find or get to work. The metrics on life expectancy and…

“The classic example of chutzpah,” said Jamelle Bouie in The New York Times, “is that of the child who murders his parents and then pleads for mercy as an orphan.” The 2024 presidential election has given us a new version: the candidate who merrily stokes hatred and division, then turns around to condemn his opponents’ harsh language. Following the second assassination attempt on Donald Trump, his running mate J.D. Vance took a break from spreading inflammatory lies about Haitian migrants eating pets to make a cynical plea for reasonable discourse. “Look,” he declared, “we can disagree with one another, we can debate one another, but we cannot tell the American people that one candidate is a fascist and, if he’s elected, it is going to be the end of American…

Immunotherapy is working Just 15 years ago, the prognosis for those diagnosed with advanced melanoma was grim: only one in 20 would live for five years, and many would have no more than six to nine months. But since then, new immunotherapy drugs have transformed the way the disease is treated – and patients who receive them in the right combination can live for at least ten years, new research shows. The phase 3 trial explored the potential of giving ipilimumab and nivolumab to 945 patients whose skin cancer was spreading. Known as checkpoint inhibitors, these drugs work by taking the brakes off the immune system, allowing it to attack cancer cells. Ten years on, more than half of those given the two therapies were still alive, the European Society…

As a former tabloid journalist herself, Anne Robinson knows how quickly nonsense can spread around Fleet Street. In an interview in The Oldie, she recalls being rung up by the Daily Mail showbiz editor to ask her if it was true that she had cancer. “Not as far as I know,” she replied. The reporter insisted that they had it on “good authority” that she did – but finally confessed that the story was based on her having failed to turn up to Jeremy Clarkson’s birthday party. “I’m just going to get my medical dictionary to see if that is one of the signs,” Robinson told the hack. When Claire Rayner died in 2010, it was reported that she’d wanted her last words to be: “Tell David Cameron that if…

It has long been feared for its ruthless ingenuity, said Ed Cumming in The Daily Telegraph, but Mossad amazed even experts in covert operations with the audacity of its attack on Hezbollah last week. Across Lebanon last Tuesday, thousands of pagers used by the Shia militant group’s members exploded. Some 3,000 people were wounded. Many lost their eyesight: the pagers had beeped a few seconds before they detonated, so many users were holding them up to their faces. Numerous people had fingers or hands blown off; others, who’d had the devices in their pockets, suffered severe leg injuries. Twelve people were killed. Hours later, walkie-talkies started exploding, causing at least 20 more deaths. Experts said that the devices had been packed with military-grade explosives. And though Israel did not claim…

Daniel Dubois may be a man of few words, but he refers to himself as the “king-slayer”, said Rick Broadbent in The Times. And last Saturday, those words proved apt, as the 27-year-old recorded a stunning victory at Wembley over two-time world heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua. The “record-breaking” crowd of 96,000 who had gathered at Wembley for this all-English affair began the night “firmly behind” the 34-year-old Joshua. Yet from the first bell, Dubois tore into his opponent, “flooring him multiple times” before landing a knock-out blow in the fifth. Joshua has suffered bruising defeats before, notably the two to Oleksandr Usyk, but never such a “raw and brutal humbling” as this. He had hoped that victory here, which would have earned him the IBF world title, would pave the…

Subbuteo England lost to eventual champions Italy in the quarter-finals of the World Cup – held in the game’s birthplace, Tunbridge Wells. Football Arsenal were denied victory over Manchester City in the Premier League by John Stones, who scored in the 98th minute to level the score at 2-2. Tennis Carlos Alcaraz snatched the Laver Cup for Team Europe by beating Taylor Fritz of Team World in straight sets. Cricket England lost their second one-day international against Australia by 68 runs.…

Running time: 2hrs 45mins Having premiered in Paris in 1953, Samuel Beckett’s masterpiece was first performed in English in London in 1955 – and was promptly named “Most Controversial Play” at the inaugural Evening Standard Theatre Awards. This famously “challenging” piece has been variously delighting and bewildering audiences ever since, said Nick Curtis in the Evening Standard. It’s an undramatic drama in which two tramps, Vladimir and Estragon, “battle against the meaningless of life, waiting in a blasted landscape for a man they don’t know, who never comes”: “nothing happens, twice”, wrote the critic Vivian Mercier in 1956. But in this first-rate production – featuring superb performances from Ben Whishaw and Lucian Msamati – the play nevertheless emerges as a gripping drama of great wit, absurdity and tragicomedy. “Godot isn’t…

Look up at the latest sculpture on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square, “and you’ll see ranks of human faces floating in the sky”, said Jonathan Jones in The Guardian, Mil Veces un Instante (A Thousand Times in an Instant), by the Mexican artist Teresa Margolles, is a memorial to her friend Karla, a transgender woman who was murdered in Juárez in 2015. It was inspired by a “gruesome” Aztec masterpiece, a tower encrusted with human skulls: Margolles has cast inside-out face masks from 726 trans and non-binary people, to make this haunting “sepulchre of the human face”. It looks a bit rickety, said Alastair Sooke in The Daily Telegraph, and it’s designed to disintegrate in the British weather, which seems a particularly dismal prospect. Most importantly, I wonder why…

Emma and Will talk about their harrowing police interviews and the impact on Keira and Poppy if they’re sent to prison. Learning of the cover-up, a furious Adam refuses to work with Will at Bridge Farm. The staffing crisis continues as Emma calls in sick, unable to face Fallon. Tom suggests a meeting at The Tearoom to sort things out; Emma and Fallon speak honestly but agree there’s no solution, so Emma quits. Meanwhile, an angry Eddie attacks Susan for turning on George. Overwhelmed at The Tearoom, Fallon tells Jolene about her pitch for the charging station café. There’s more strain at Bridge Farm, and Pat sends Susan home when she admits things are getting to her. Later, Susan tells Pat about the fight with Eddie; Emma cries in Susan’s…

Feet have more sweat glands per inch than anywhere else on the body. Socks and shoes trap sweat, allowing bacteria to breed. Wash your feet daily and dry them thoroughly, including between your toes. Choose socks made of natural fibres, such as cotton or bamboo, which help the skin breathe and wick away moisture. If your socks get damp, put on a fresh pair. Do not wear the same pair of shoes every day. Shoes need 24-48 hours to dry out before wearing again, to reduce bacterial build-up. If you do need to wear the same shoes, invest in moisture-absorbing insoles to help them dry out overnight, or put the silica gel packets from new electrical items in the shoes, inside an old pair of tights. Treat athlete’s foot with…

Tito Jackson 1953-2024 Tito Jackson, who has died aged 70, was a founding member of the Jackson 5. Along with his brothers Marlon, Jackie, Jermaine and Michael, he became a teen idol in 1969-1970 when the youthful singing group dominated the charts; but Michael had early on emerged as the real star of the band, said The Guardian – and would soon pursue a solo career that eclipsed it. Being so over-shadowed was hard, Tito confessed. “One of my favourite basketball players, Charles Barkley, said, ‘If Tito wasn’t in the Jackson 5, would we miss him?’ That hit me in the heart. It crushed me.” Toriano Jackson was born in Gary, Indiana, in 1953, one of ten children. His mother Katherine played the piano and the clarinet, his father, Joe,…

Jumbo cut Fed chair Jerome Powell played down his decision to make an “aggressive” 0.5% interest rate cut “in the final sprint” of the presidential election race, said Rebecca Picciotto on CNBC. The two parties had other ideas. While Democrats took the cut as “a victory lap” for Biden’s economic agenda, the Trump camp suggested the move was “politically motivated” – and indicated “the economy is very bad”. Yet confidence is rising and “has helped VP Harris a bit”, noted a CBS poll this week. She now has “the slightest of edges across battleground states”, and is up four points nationally over Trump. Voternomics A Harris victory would be “better for bonds” and “worse for stocks”, according to a survey of Bloomberg Terminal subscribers. “Half of survey participants plan to…

Anthony Watson Trouble at the fintech “unicorn” Bank of London risks drawing Labour into a new financial imbroglio, said The Times. The startup, launched by party donor Anthony Watson in 2021, was trumpeted as only the second new UK clearing bank “for more than 250 years”. It had a star-studded board, including Labour peer Lord Mandelson. Yet this month it emerged that the bank had narrowly escaped closure after being slapped with a winding-up order from the taxman. Bank of London blamed an “administrative” delay, but has been scrambling to raise cash and is now being pursued in the High Court for £1.5m over alleged debts. Watson has resigned. A former Nike executive, turned Barclays banker and crypto entrepreneur, Watson, 47, was not a typical banker, said the FT. He…

A previously unknown piece of music by Mozart has been found by researchers in the archives of a music library in Leipzig. The 12-minute, seven-movement piece, which dates from the mid- to late-1760s, was composed for a string trio when Mozart was probably in his teens. The manuscript was not written by Mozart himself, but is thought to be a copy made in around 1780. It received its debut in Leipzig last weekend, where one Mozart fan described it as “beautiful”. A 27-year-old camel has been given a pair of custom-made shoes to help it walk again. Timujin, who is one of a number of camels kept by the Earl and Countess of Chichester at their home in Wiltshire, suffered stretched tendons and swollen joints in his front legs that…

Jimmy Carter, who was preparing to celebrate his 100th birthday. Though America’s oldest living president doesn’t actually become a centenarian until 1 October, festivities were held in Atlanta – his home state’s capital – this week. Carter has been in hospice care in his hometown of Plains since February 2023. Teachers, with reports that the Government wants to make it easier for them to work from home. Currently, teachers have free periods scattered through the week in which to do marking and other admin. The idea is that, instead, the frees would be issued in a block. This could enable teachers to work at home for one day in ten – a perk that ministers hope would boost retention rates. Phillip Schofield, who is making his TV comeback, 16 months…

24% of people in Wales support full independence, while 61% oppose it. But 40% want the Welsh parliament, the Senedd, to be given more powers than it currently has; 37% oppose the idea. YouGov/Wales Online 60% of voters believe that Labour will lose the next election, while just over half do not expect Keir Starmer to be PM by then, according to a poll by More in Common. One in six of those who voted Labour in July’s general election now regret having done so, and 53% of voters believe that Starmer is doing a bad job, according to YouGov. But Labour is still the first choice among voters 65 and over, according to Techne UK: 19% support Labour, 14% the Conservatives and 12% Reform UK.…

David Mitchell on comedy As a child, the comedian David Mitchell would watch the Pink Panther films with his grandfather and pick them apart to identify what, precisely, made Peter Sellers’s Inspector Clouseau so funny, says Ben Dowell in The Times. Comedy is an art that is not well enough appreciated, he says. It’s not that people don’t enjoy it. “I think in many ways, comedies are the happiest times people have watching television. But, equally, when a comedy goes for something a bit emotional instead of a joke, that’s the bit that always gets the praise.” For instance, in Blackadder Goes Forth, set in the First World War, it’s the scene in which the characters go over the top that’s celebrated. It is frustrating, he says, that these moments…

A British pensioner whose bland sandwiches gained him unexpected fame in China has died. Keith Brown, a retired engineer known on Chinese social media as “Old Dry Keith”, became a hit when his Chinese wife Zhang Jian began to post videos of him assembling the ham and cheese sandwiches he liked to eat. Chinese observers were grimly fascinated by his dry, boring sandwiches, and his gentle, stoic manner – and he built up a cult following. “We go from questioning the dry old man, to understanding the dry old man, to becoming the dry old man,” observed one cultural commentator. “The old man is us, and his dry lunch is our dry life.” An unusually large penguin chick has become a star attraction at an aquarium in Melbourne. Pesto, who…

SOUTH KOREA Deepfake porn is everywhere in our society Nikkei Asia (Tokyo) South Korea is experiencing an epidemic of deepfake pornography, says Haeryun Kang. Last month, a “massive” number of men were found to be using the messaging app Telegram to share AI-generated fake porn images of women that they knew. From offices to universities to middle school, “nobody was safe”. The numbers are staggering. One group for male soldiers has around 1,000 members, sharing doctored images of their female comrades. In another, with around 220,000 members, users pay cryptocurrency to have images doctored, for instance enlarging breast size. It’s only the latest in a series of digital sex scandals in the country, such as the use of spycams to film women in toilets. Why do Korean men exhibit this…

“A week is a long time in politics,” said Katy Balls in The Spectator. At the start of last week, Keir Starmer was still sending out ministers to defend his decision to accept donations of clothing for both himself and his wife Victoria from Waheed Alli, the Labour peer. David Lammy, the Foreign Secretary, argued that these gifts had made them fit to represent Britain on the world stage. Jonathan Reynolds, the Business Secretary, said it was just part of the job. Meanwhile, details of more and more freebies emerged. Starmer had received more than £100,000 in gifts and hospitality since 2019, more than any other serving MP. Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, had accepted clothing worth £7,500. Angela Rayner, the Deputy PM, had received clothing worth £3,550, and a stay…

Back in their glory days, Tupperware containers “were so glamorous that Elizabeth Taylor, the biggest movie star on the planet, hosted one of their signature sales parties on her yacht”, said The Times. Invented by Earl Tupper in the 1940s, the colourful plastic containers with airtight seals had conquered America by the early 1950s. When Tupperware hit the UK in 1961, the British were “similarly smitten” – including, famously, Queen Elizabeth, who used them to store her breakfast cereals. But now, alas, the plastic dream has faded. After years of falling sales, Tupperware has filed for bankruptcy protection, declaring debts of $1.2bn. The party, it seems, will soon be over. Earl Tupper was working at DuPont chemicals when he realised that polyethylene slag, a waste product of the oil-refining process,…

When Lando Norris secured pole position at last weekend’s Singapore Grand Prix, many of his fans would have been worried, said Sam Johnston on Sky Sports. They knew that in the five times the British driver had started a Grand Prix in pole, not once had he finished the first lap in the lead. His two previous race wins, in Miami and the Netherlands, had come after starting further back on the grid. But at the Marina Bay Street Circuit, the 24-year-old made a “superb getaway to pull comfortably clear on the approach to the first corner”. And he never looked back, leading for the entire the race and finishing nearly 21 seconds clear of Max Verstappen. With this win, Norris continues to heap pressure on Verstappen, said Molly Hudson…

No new phase for Israel… To The Daily Telegraph The “new” phase in the Middle East war is new only for those who have not been bombarded by missiles from Iran’s proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah, for the past 11 months. As far as residents in the north of Israel are concerned, with more than 60,000 evacuated from their homes for nearly a year, this is a continuation of a conflict started and sustained by Hezbollah, which has been targeting Israeli civilians. Whoever was responsible for the exploding devices belonging to members of Hezbollah has done something long overdue. Dealing with terrorists appropriately does not prolong war; it encourages peace. Roisy Nevies, London …or the Palestinians To the Financial Times Neri Zilber’s piece “Far-right minister accused of politicising Israeli police” eloquently…

by Sam Leith Oneworld 592pp £30 The Week Bookshop £23.99 (incl. p&p) Children’s books are an especially resonant branch of literature, said Patricia Craig in The Irish Times. For many people, the memory of their childhood reading continues to have an “overpowering magic” decades later. In this “monumental and invigorating” book, Sam Leith – the literary editor of The Spectator – surveys the canon of children’s literature, from the folk and fairy tales that marked its origins all the way to Harry Potter. There have been similar undertakings before – notably Humphrey Carpenter’s Secret Gardens (1985) – but none on the scale of The Haunted Wood. Leith is the “best kind of guide”, said Melanie McDonagh in the Evening Standard. “He is fair-minded but terrifically opinionated; good on secondary sources…

Now 83, the Irish-born artist Michael Craig-Martin has waited a long time for this “career-spanning retrospective” at the Royal Academy, said Nancy Durrant in the Evening Standard. Craig-Martin is probably best known as the “beloved tutor” to Damien Hirst and other Young British Artists in the 1980s – a role that has sometimes eclipsed his own not inconsiderable achievements. In the late 1960s and early 1970s he became renowned as a conceptual artist, making headlines with “thought-provoking” works. Yet soon Craig-Martin changed tack and returned in the late 1970s to painting and drawing – creating recognisable images of everyday objects, from cassettes to shoes to smartphones and polystyrene cups, rendered unmistakably his own on account of the “vivid”, candy-coloured palette he uses. Although “underpinned by serious conceptual ideas” relating to…

The Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse, 1938 (Arrow £9.99). Although, it could be nearly any one of a dozen of his works. Unlike, say, Dorothy Parker, Wodehouse is not a one-liner type. It’s an overall spirit of ridiculousness that becomes addictively optimistic – or “bracing”, as he might say. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, 1951 (Penguin £9.99). This is the first book I remember really loving. It felt like meeting two friends at once – the author, and Holden Caulfield. I loved them both. I even got a baseball mitt (not easy to source in Ipswich) and wrote poetry on it – The Fly by Blake, since you ask – which further endeared me to all. I tried to find a red hunting hat like…

Programmes Apples Never Fall The family drama based on Liane Moriarty’s bestseller about a missing matriarch (Annette Bening) continues. Sat 28 Sep, BBC1 21:15 (55mins; all episodes available on iPlayer). State of Rage Unflinching documentary looking at life in the West Bank from the perspectives of Palestinians and Jewish settlers. Sun 29 Sep, C4 22:00 (55mins). In My Own Words: Jilly Cooper The 87-year-old Dame and queen of the bonkbuster reflects candidly on her life and work. Mon 30 Sep, BBC1 22:40 (45mins). Storyville: War Game Documentary following officials from various US administrations as they take part in an unscripted role-play exercise, in which they must respond to a coup in the wake of a contested election. Tue 1 Oct, BBC4 22:00 (95mins). The Search for Nicola Bulley Police, journalists…

Flea markets in Paris can be expensive, so instead try Les Puces du Canal in the suburbs of Lyon, which has a good mix of affordable antiques and 20th century pieces (from 7am, Thur-Sun; pucesducanal.com). The oldest flea market in Amsterdam, Waterlooplein is great for hand-painted furniture and heavy brown wood. There are about 300 unique stalls, plus food trucks (9:30am-6pm, Mon-Sat; waterlooplein.amsterdam). Art dealers flock to the Arezzo Antiques Fair, the largest antiques fair in Italy, where you can pick up old paintings for a song. It has a mass of rococo pieces, too (9am-8pm, first Sunday of the month, and 9am-7pm, preceding Saturday; fieraantiquaria.org). The town of Consell, in Mallorca, hosts the island’s largest flea market every Sunday. The Consell Flea Market has lots of folksy items, plus…

Trebah Lodge Cornwall A subtropical “wonderland” in a “sublime” coastal setting, Trebah is one of Cornwall’s best-loved gardens. This month, its Edwardian gatehouse has been opened as a holiday cottage with a “perk”, says Joanne O’Connor in The Guardian – after-hours access to the 26-acre garden and the private pebble cove at its foot (perfect for swimming). The cottage is “gorgeous”, with two en-suite bedrooms with iron bedsteads and panelled walls, two “cosy” lounges with antique cabinets “full of natural history books”, and a big kitchen. Nearby lie other lovely gardens (Glendurgan, Penjerrick) and the creeks and coves of the Helford River. From £815 a week; cornishholidaycottages.com.…

Commerzbank/UniCredit: euro banking row The former head of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, recently warned that the euro economy faces an “existential challenge”. So it’s not the ideal time for a full-scale row between two of the bloc’s biggest hitters – Germany and Italy – over the future of the German lender Commerzbank. It began earlier this month when the punchy Italian bank UniCredit took a 9% stake in Commerzbank, “catching German authorities offguard” with its “most ambitious attempt yet at a pan-European bank merger”, said Reuters. When UniCredit’s CEO, veteran dealmaker Andrea Orcel, raised the stake to 21% this week via a derivatives trade, the gloves came off in Berlin, said Geoffrey Smith on Politico. Chancellor Olaf Scholz denounced the Italians’ “unfriendly attack”, while Commerzbank warned that the…

Fighting the Fed is a losing battle Marcus Ashworth Bloomberg The message of the Fed’s half-point interest rate cut last week is unequivocal, says Marcus Ashworth: rates need to be lowered significantly to protect the US labour market and economy. It’s “forward guidance even an ageing journalist like me can comprehend”. If there is such a thing as “first-mover advantage”, the European Central Bank and Bank of England have already lost it. Both cut rates before the Fed, but are now “dithering”. This is a dangerous game: “the institutional wait-and-see mindset risks repeating the mistake of 2021”, taking too long to send definitive signals. The ECB and BoE are “treading water for no discernible purpose”. The euro area is expected to grow by 0.7% this year, but only because southern…

Who’s tipping what The week’s best shares AstraZeneca The Times Shares have fallen after a lungcancer drug disappointment. Yet the pharma giant “helps millions” in oncology, biopharma and rare disease areas, while AI has the potential to shrink R&D costs. Buy. £118.56. Cordiant Digital Infrastructure The Daily Telegraph This trust has a portfolio of transmission towers, data centres etc. Unfairly weighed down by a rival’s woes: profits are up thanks to investments in eastern Europe. Yields 5%. Buy. 81.4p. Lantheus Holdings The Daily Telegraph This US firm develops radiopharmaceuticals to treat cancer and has “harnessed the power” of AI in its precision diagnostics software. The balance sheet is in “rude health”, with sales expected to “roar ahead”. Buy. $110.05. National Grid The Daily Telegraph The grid’s focus on electric (rather…

THE WEEK CROSSWORD 1433 Two Connell Guides and three Week-branded items will be given to the sender of the first correct solution to the crossword and the clue of the week opened on Monday 7 October. Send it to The Week Crossword 1433, 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 1 Dull short time in Egyptian port (5) 4 Cleaner hiding decoration is potty (7) 8 See comedies sadly losing a little money (7) 9 Clean boxing is for prize money (5) 10 Hear Clive working with French singer (9) 12 Modern woman has one recurrent belief…