Table of contents for 1509 in The Week

What happened Israel expanded its military campaign in Lebanon this week, launching a new wave of intensive air strikes at Hezbollah targets, and sending a fourth army division into the south of the country. It brought the total number of Israeli troops inside Lebanon to an estimated 15,000. The Israel Defence Forces announced that a strike on Beirut had killed Hezbollah’s HQ commander Suhail Hussein Husseini, and that a strike on the city last week had killed Hashem Safieddine, who was widely seen as heir apparent to the assassinated Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. On Monday, as Israel marked the anniversary of the 7 October attack (see page 18), both Hezbollah and Hamas fired volleys of rockets into Israel. In a rare public speech in Tehran last week, Iran’s supreme leader,…

“When the adviser becomes the story, it’s only a matter of time before they are forced out,” said Dan Hodges in The Mail on Sunday. And, late last week, Sue Gray, Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, went the way of Alastair Campbell, Dominic Cummings and Andy Coulson. Gray was given a new job as “envoy for the regions and nations”, but this fig-leaf fooled no one: she’d been “sacked”, and replaced by Morgan McSweeney, Starmer’s chief political adviser. About time, too. “The senior civil servant who had overseen the Partygate investigation was meant to be his Sherpa, a consummate Whitehall insider who would ease his path into power. Instead she proceeded to sow the path with dynamite and blow it up.” From the off, Gray was accused of trying to…

The Alpine economy, with the closure of the Alpe du Grand Serre ski resort, in France’s Isère region. The area has experienced shortages of snow in recent winters, which have caused a sharp fall in visitor numbers. With its losses accumulating, the local council said it could no longer afford to run the mountain lifts, or to complete a project to turn it into a year-round destination. Line judges, who are being abolished at Wimbledon after 147 years, to make way for an electronic calling system. The technology – which is already established at other grand slams – was tested during the Championship this year, and will be in use on all courts at next year’s tournament.…

Dublin Russian recruit: An Irish MP, yet to be named but still in parliament, has spent time working for Moscow, according to a Sunday Times report. The MP’s task was to undermine Anglo-Irish relations during the Brexit talks. Codenamed Cobalt, he was recruited by Russian diplomat Sergey Prokopiev, after being lured into a “honey trap” with an attractive Russian female. (Prokopiev was later expelled from Dublin as a spy.) Cobalt had apparently offered to connect the Russians with loyalist paramilitaries in Northern Ireland, who were threatening violence over plans to create a customs border in the Irish Sea. Ireland’s security services reportedly knew of the plot but Cobalt has not been charged, as he passed no information to Moscow. This attempt to undermine UK/EU relations is being seen as part…

“I only recently learnt, on a trip to Barcelona, that a large part of the money for Antoni Gaudí’s glorious buildings came from slavery in Cuba, in which Catalan traders were engaged as late as the 1880s. His greatest patron, Eusebi Güell, owed much of his wealth to slave-based fortunes. Does this mean that the great architect’s work is fatally tainted? It does not. But it’s never wrong to know the truth, however difficult. There’s a lesson for anyone who might want to emulate Gaudí. Works like his come not only from singular genius, but also from surplus capital of often dark origins. To adapt Balzac, behind many great buildings lies a great crime.” Rowan Moore in The Observer…

Something’s wrong with us – but what? Tom Calver The Sunday Times We’re a pessimistic lot, says Tom Calver. According to Ipsos, about 60% of us think Britain is “on the wrong track”. Then again, the same percentage felt that a decade ago. What’s interesting, though, is how our views of what ails us have altered over the half-century Ipsos has been tracking them. In 1979, 65% of us felt that one of the biggest problems was trade unions: today, only 1% feel that. In 1982, 82% thought unemployment was one of the big ones; just 5% think that today. But it’s not only what we worry about that’s changed: it’s how we worry. Until a decade ago, issues such as unemployment or the NHS would top the poll for…

It’s fine to be a “weekend warrior” Some people find time to exercise every day; others have to cram all their exercise into a day or two over the weekend. And the good news for these “weekend warriors” is that their approach is no less beneficial for the health, a study involving 90,000 people has found. The participants, who had an average age of 62, wore a fitness tracker for a week to gauge their exercise patterns. They were then divided into three groups: regular exercisers (who did at least 150 minutes of physical activity spread across the week), weekend warriors (who did the same amount, but in one or two days), and the relatively inactive (who exercised for less than 150 minutes). Analysis of their health outcomes over the…

This country is on the brink of profound change, said Catherine Pepinster in The Daily Telegraph – “a change to how we view life and death”. Next week, legislation on assisted dying will be tabled in the Commons by the Labour MP Kim Leadbeater (who topped the ballot to introduce a private members’ bill). And it has every chance of passing. The law ought to pass, said The Independent, but it must include strong safeguards against abuse. It should specify that at least two doctors agree that the patient’s medical condition is terminal, and that all reasonable treatment options have been exhausted. And, given the potential financial issues at stake, there must be legal checks that the patient hasn’t come under undue pressure from family members. But the principle that…

There was a time when football was all about being “big, tall, fast”, said Matthew Syed in The Times. The emphasis, as I well recall from my youthful playing days, was always on “whacking the ball up the pitch to a big striker”. I lost count of the number of players written off as “not quick enough” or “too small”. But around the turn of the century, the game underwent a change. From being all about “long balls, outsized players and shots from outside the box”, it began to adopt “subtler ideals”. At a children’s training session these days, you’ll see far greater emphasis on other qualities: control, “intricacy of perception”, and the “imagination to create space where it doesn’t exist”. This shift came to my mind this week, said…

by Alan Hollinghurst Picador 496pp £22 The Week bookshop £17.99 Alan Hollinghurst’s novels tend to appear at “spacious intervals of six or seven years”, said Alexandra Harris in The Guardian. His latest – his first since The Sparsholt Affair (2017) – is a “compellingly fresh” bildungsroman, narrated by a gay, half-Burmese actor named Dave Win, who is looking back on his life from late middle age. We first glimpse Win as a 13-year-old, visiting the posh family that has funded his scholarship to a public school in Berkshire. Next, we meet him aged 14 on summer holiday in Devon, mesmerised by the “parade of known and unknown men”. Subsequent episodes recount undergraduate days in Oxford, early “theatrical triumphs” in London, a passionate relationship with another actor named Hector, who “leaves…

Channel 4 News’s International Editor chooses her favourite books of poetry. She will present her book I Brought the War with Me (Chatto £16.99) at the London Literature Festival on 26 October (southbankcentre.co.uk) Selected Poems by James Fenton, 2006 (available used). I always carry a book of poetry on my travels, and this is the most battered one. As a former foreign correspondent, Fenton has had experiences similar to my own, but poetry provides a more allusive, emotional language than journalism. Wind, in which he evokes the mass movement of people as the wind in a field of corn, is one of the poems in my new memoir-cum-anthology that I like the best. The Iraqi Nights by Dunya Mikhail, 2014 (New Directions £12.99). This Iraqi poet conveys the pity of…

Programmes Hauntings Docuseries about famous hauntings. In 1977 police are called to a house in Enfield to investigate strange happenings, in a case that remains unexplained. Sun 13 Oct, BBC2 22:20 and 23:05 (45 and 50mins respectively). Mr Loverman New drama starring Lennie James, based on Bernardine Evaristo’s 2013 novel. Barry attempts to leave his wife for his best friend and lover. Mon 14 Oct, BBC1 21:00 and 21:30 (30mins each). Life and Death in Gaza Four Palestinians document their lives in Gaza over the past year, as they endure evacuations, family separations, death – and birth. Tue 15 Oct, BBC2 21:00 (90mins). A House Through Time: Two Cities at War David Olusoga traces the lives of residents in two apartment blocks – one in London and one in Berlin…

Kris Kristofferson 1936-2024 A hard-drinking singer-songwriter with an outlaw spirit, Kris Kristofferson transformed the country music scene in the 1970s by bringing lyrical sophistication, and a “rarely heard candour and depth”, to the genre, said The Irish Times. His songs were “steeped in a neo-romantic sensibility”, and explored “freedom and commitment, alienation and desire, darkness and light”. He recorded them all himself; but his vocals were raspy, and many were bigger hits when covered by other artists – from Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley and Gladys Knight to the Grateful Dead and Michael Bublé. Notably, he wrote Me and Bobby McGee, with its resonant refrain “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose/Nothin’, don’t mean nothin’ hon if it ain’t free”, which became a posthumous No. 1 hit for…

Dovid Efune A little over a decade ago, Dovid Efune was juggling his editorship of the New Yorkbased Algemeiner Journal with handling publicity for Israel’s first world boxing champion, Yuri Foreman, said Mark Sweney and Jane Croft in The Guardian. Now he’s “hoping to deliver the knockout bid” for control of the Telegraph Media Group. Efune, who owns The New York Sun, has become the leading contender, having reportedly outbid rivals. But his “fighting talk” on the Middle East has “sparked alarm among staff about the editorial influence and impartiality of their potential new owner”. Efune observed on X/Twitter last week that Israel would “decapitate” Iran’s leadership. “I’d expect the Ayatollah himself would be in the crosshairs.” Manchester-born Efune, 39, would certainly be “a much more outspoken – and potentially…

THE WEEK CROSSWORD 1435 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 21 October. Send it to The Week Crossword 1435, 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 Huge negative result in fuel (8) 5 Consents to remake of Grease (6) 10 Seaman favoured case of rare explosive (9) 11 Some clamoured for an affair (5) 12 Back cheerful Lydia to show a happy situation (5) 13 Cut and paste dining aid (9) 14…

More than a third of 35- to 54-year-olds now have a tattoo, according to research by The Guardian – the same proportion as 16- to 35-year-olds, and almost double that of 55- to 75-year-olds. Often, middle-aged people get tattoos to mark later-life milestones – 50th birthdays, retirement and so on; and they are twice as likely to think it’s acceptable to display them at work as older people. There have long been unsubstantiated claims that children are being allowed to be wolves, cats and other animals in UK schools. Now, Aberdeen Council has confirmed that “one or more” of its primary pupils have been recognised as having “species dysphoria”. However, it said that “no arrangements” have so far been made for them.…

Russia’s intelligence agency has been on a mission to create “sustained mayhem on British and European streets”, the head of MI5 warned this week. In an update on the security threats facing the UK, Ken McCallum said that agents of the GRU had committed “arson, sabotage and more dangerous actions” with “increasing recklessness” since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Since 2022, MI5 and the police have also responded to 20 potentially lethal plots backed by Iran. But although 25% of MI5’s counterterrorism operations involve right-wing extremists, with a surprisingly large number of young people involved, the trend that concerns him most, he said, is the “worsening threat” from al-Qa’eda and Islamic State.…

Butler, Pennsylvania Rally return: Donald Trump returned last week to Butler, Pennsylvania – the town in which he narrowly avoided being shot dead in July. Addressing a large crowd, he said his return to the scene showed that “our spirit” was unbroken. Much of the rest of his speech covered familiar ground – but the appearance of Elon Musk (pictured) by his side was a first. In his speech, the X/Twitter owner gave Trump his enthusiastic backing, and said that if he didn’t win on 5 November, that election could be America’s “last”. It later emerged that Musk’s pro-Trump PAC is offering people $47 for every registered swing state voter they get to sign a petition supporting the constitutional rights to free speech and to bear arms. The payments, widely…

BRUSSELS How the eurocrats lost their bottle Euronews (Brussels) Ten football pitches every minute. That’s the rate at which “climate-critical” forests were felled last year, says Luciana Téllez Chávez – mostly to clear space for “commercial-scale agriculture”. The need for tough action to curb this cycle of destruction is all too clear, and until recently, Brussels seemed to be on the case: under new rules that were due to come into force from next January, it was set to impose requirements on firms to ensure that commodities they trade – be they cattle, soy, coffee or timber – have been produced in conditions that respect environmental laws. The initiative, long overdue, had won support from soy-producing nations such as Argentina and Paraguay. Yet Brussels has all of a sudden delayed…

Years ago, the canteen at the National Theatre was run by two women called Rose and Nellie, says Lucy Mangan in The Guardian. Rose was ebullient and chatty and did most of the serving; Nellie was skinny and careworn, and lugged pots and pans in the background. One day, Maggie Smith was in the queue with a friend, who spent some time observing the two women, before leaning over and whispering: “Isn’t Rose marvellous!” “Yes,” agreed Smith. “But Nellie’s the part.” The former Tory chancellor Nadhim Zahawi (left, in 2004) has claimed that, before he went into politics, he was a football hooligan. “I was part of Liverpool’s firm and would go out looking for fights,” he told the Henley Literary Festival. On X/Twitter, one user commented: “There’s a lot…

“Being slightly paranoid is like being slightly pregnant – it tends to get worse.”Molly Ivins, quoted in The New York Times “Know your circle of competence, and stick within it. The size of that circle is not very important; knowing its boundaries, however, is vital.”Warren Buffett, quoted in the Harvard Business Review “The trouble with facts is that there are so many of them.”Samuel McChord Crothers, quoted in The i Paper “Seize opportunity by the beard, for it is bald behind.”Bulgarian proverb, ibid. “In times of joy, all of us wished we possessed a tail we could wag.”W.H. Auden, quoted in The Knowledge “I do not object to people looking at their watches when I am speaking. But I strongly object when they start shaking them to make certain they…

To The Guardian As an employee of Bet365 and resident of Stoke-on-Trent, I was naturally attracted to your article “How Denise Coates became Britain’s richest woman”. The success of the company presents an ethical quandary: do the taxes, the charity, the healthy salaries and employee benefits balance out the massive harm that gambling causes? Bet365 offers yearly pay rises, bonuses and so on. In a city such as Stoke, this is a virtual goldmine. But as employees, are we benefitting from the exploitation and suffering of those vulnerable to addiction? Are gambling addicts paying our wages? Stoke has few employment opportunities apart from retail and warehouse work for most of its residents. Bet365 then, to an extent, has a captive workforce. The cynical part of me wonders if Coates is…

by Natalie Whittle Faber & Faber 256pp £18.99 The Week bookshop £14.99 Natalie Whittle may well be Britain’s “foremost crisp fanatic”, said Thomas Blaikie in Literary Review. A former food and drink editor at the Financial Times, she believes that “crisps have a mystical power”, and an unrivalled ability to “live in the memory”. Certainly, there are few crisps she has not tried. Now, Whittle has put her obsession to use by penning this “ode” to her favourite subject. Although Crunch is in one sense a crisp addict’s memoir, it also offers a “straightforward history”. Whittle delves into the murky 19th century origins of crisps (no one really knows where they came from), the advent of mass production in the early 20th century, and their subsequent spread around the globe.…

Tiffanie Delune at Gallery 1957 Tiffanie Delune’s visual world is a wild and exciting proposition, her canvases mad, psychedelic spirals of colour and form that combine an unconventional blend of processes – oils, spray paints, applied fabrics and even glitter. Delune (b.1988) creates paintings that seem to sing from the gallery walls. Inspired by a recent visit to the Democratic Republic of Congo, where she has family roots, she has themed this latest body of work, The Geography of Feelings, around images of medical plants she documented in the country, many of which have symbolic value in local folklore. The result is a grouping of paintings that could be mistaken for the kind of “automatic drawings” produced by 19th century spiritualists, rhyming the forms of Congolese flora with weird washes…

Little Dumpling King 50 Piccadilly, Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent (01782-286113) There’s not much to thank Covid for, says Jay Rayner in The Observer. But it did at least give us Little Dumpling King. This self-styled “Asian-influenced small plates” restaurant in Stoke-on-Trent, which “emerged out of various lockdown projects”, is a place that beats you into “happy submission with plate after plate of huge, banging flavours”. Everything about it is loud, from the incessant music (a mix of heavy metal and “2000s indie”) to the posters proclaiming things such as “We hate the f**king government”. But “behind the bravado and the noise”, there’s an impressive attention to detail. Plump steamed pork dumplings are “full of depth and meatiness”, and are served with lashings of homemade crispy chilli oil. Slices of salmon crudo come…

Gently push a reusable straw through the tip of strawberries to hull them cleanly. Fold a piece of kitchen foil over at least four times and cut through it several times to sharpen blunt scissors. Strip herb leaves through coarse holes on the side of a box grater to remove stems. Push boiled or baked potatoes through a cooling rack to mash them and remove their skins. To shell a boiled egg, put it in a jam jar one-third full of cold water. Firmly close the lid and shake vigorously for 30 seconds. If sugar goes clumpy, add a piece of soft white bread to the pack for a few hours. If you need to add a tablespoon of syrup, or honey, to a recipe, reduce mess by pressing the…

The CBI “We believe in the importance of hope, vision and laying out a path to prosperity,” said the resurrected employers’ group, reminding the Chancellor of the 3Cs – confidence, competitiveness, certainty. Reforms wanted: fix business rates, planning, the apprenticeship levy. Desired carrots: net-zero tax incentives for firms. The IPPR The left-leaning think-tank with close links to No.10 wants to change borrowing rules to boost public spending, particularly in road, rail and healthcare – which is vital to reverse “a low growth trap, mainly caused by three decades of ultra-low investment”, said economist Carsten Jung. Private equity/non-doms Declaring she wouldn’t be “ideological” about taxing the wealthy, Rachel Reeves is looking for a “compromise” between closing “loopholes” and “driving investors out of Britain”, said the FT. Private equity bosses – whose…

The week’s best shares Alphabet The Daily Telegraph Tougher regulators may force the Google owner to end its “cosy” deal with Apple. Still, it’s a “major force” in cloud computing, with impressive products and services to keep revenues and profits growing strongly. Buy. $167.06. BAE Systems The Daily Telegraph The aerospace and defence firm is performing “extremely well” – strong demand has lifted sales and profits by 13%. Solid finances underpin potential M&A activity, with an improving operating outlook. Buy. £12.99. CVS Group The Times The “giant” of the UK vet industry has expanded to include laboratories, out-of-hours surgeries and crematoria. Shares have been hit by a CMA probe and cyberattack, but prospects remain strong. Buy. £11.20. eEnergy Group Investors’ Chronicle This energy-efficient services provider helps organisations achieve net zero…

Parkrun, which celebrated its 20th anniversary. On 2 October 2004, 13 runners took part in a free-timed 5km run in Bushy Park in southwest London. Now, about 200,000 people take part in the charity’s runs at 900 locations across the UK each Saturday; and other runs are held all over the world, from Eswatini to Australia, Sweden and Singapore. Cooks, with reports that the price of olive oil is likely to halve over the next few months, owing to a predicted bumper harvest in southern Europe. Last year’s was one of the worst in years. Geoffrey Hinton, 76, the British-Canadian scientist sometimes known as the “godfather of AI”, who won the Nobel Prize in physics, with his American colleague John Hopfield, 91. The award cited their pioneering work on machine…

Labour’s poll lead has fallen to just one point. 29% of Britons say they’d vote for the party in a general election; 28% would vote Conservative; 19% for Reform. 11% for the Lib Dems and 7% Greens. More in Common/Daily Mail Of people who voted Tory in July, 36% say their sympathies lie mainly with Israel; and 8% with the Palestinians. Among Labour voters, 44% sympathise mainly with the Palestinians, and 10% with Israel. Among Lib Dems, 32% are for the Palestinians, and 13% for Israel. 23% of Tory voters think Israel’s actions have been proportionate, compared with 8% of Labour ones. Overall, the public found the pager attack on Hezbollah unacceptable, by a margin of 54% to 29%. YouGov/The Times…

Everett’s two homes Rupert Everett and his husband have a flat in London, but they spend most of their time in Wiltshire, says Deborah Ross in The Times, in the Queen Anne house where the actor grew up. They occupy one bit of it, and his 90-year-old mother, who has dementia, lives in the other. The arrangement makes sense: he can keep an eye on her, and they meet for lunch every day. Besides, they’ve always been close. When he was growing up, he was scared of his father, an Army major, and the other men in the family. “They were so Empire-ish and frosty and withering. I hated all the butch things.” He loved “being in the kitchen with the women, licking the icing and that kind of stuff”.…

Harris first stepped into the public eye in 1994, when Clint Eastwood spilt champagne on her at the 60th birthday party of Willie Brown, then the speaker of the California State Assembly, whom Harris was dating at the time. San Francisco Chronicle gossip columnist Herb Caen described Harris, then a 30-year-old deputy district attorney, as “something new in Willie’s love life. She’s a woman, not a girl.” They split after two years. In 2013, she met Doug Emhoff, an LA-based entertainment lawyer, now her husband. They were set up on a blind date by a mutual friend. “It felt like we had known each other for ever,” Emhoff remembered, but Harris warned him that she was a busy woman. “I didn’t want it to end,” he said. “And so the…

Trump’s $100k branded watch: a new low Steve Benen MSNBC Commemorative coins, bibles, gold trainers – Donald Trump has exploited all sorts of merchandising opportunities during his presidential run, says Steve Benen. But his latest offer breaks new ground. Fans can now buy a limited-edition “Fight Fight Fight” timepiece starting at $499, or go deluxe with a diamond-encrusted “Trump Victory Tourbillon” for $100,000. Each watch will apparently include a personalised “Thank You” from Trump; purchases can be made in cryptocurrency. The opportunities for corruption provided by this offer are endless. A hypothetical wealthy donor who wanted to give Trump a $100,000 donation – far above the $3,300 limit for such individual, direct gifts – could now just buy a watch. Trump could then write a comparable cheque in support of…

Many large supermarkets invite their customers to return soft plastics (carrier bags, salad bags etc.) to larger stores for recycling – as most local authorities do not have the facilities to do this. But a new investigation has indicated that up to 70% of the soft plastic returned to Tesco and Sainsbury’s is burnt. Campaigners placed trackers in 40 bundles of plastic in 2023 and 2024. In 17 of the cases, the trackers revealed the bundles’ end destination. Five were recycling plants, most of them in Turkey. (Most of the plastic collected for recycling in the UK is exported.) The rest of the plastic was turned into fuel pellets or incinerated to produce energy. The supermarkets say that the plastic is often dirty and cannot be recycled; and that it…

Despite the fact that it was born in British waters – off the Isle of Wight, from Cowes, in 1851 – the America’s Cup has “famously” never been won by Britain, said Tom Cary in The Daily Telegraph. The world’s most prestigious sailing competition – and the oldest international trophy in sport – is held every three to four years, and consists of a series of races between the “defender” (i.e. the previous winner) and a “challenger” crew. Britain has sailed in the contest 17 times, without once being victorious. And it last did so 60 years ago, in 1964, when it lost 4-0 to a team from the New York Yacht Club. But now, Britain has a fresh opportunity to bring the “Auld Mug” home. The 37th America’s Cup,…

Tennis America’s Coco Gauff won the China Open, beating Karolína Muchová of the Czech Republic 6-1, 6-3 in the final. Cricket On the third day of England’s first Test against Pakistan, Joe Root overtook Alastair Cook to become England’s highest Test run-scorer of all time. Rugby union England’s women’s team beat New Zealand 49-31 in the WXV 1. They will now face Canada in a trophy decider. Football Liverpool remain top of the Premier League after beating Crystal Palace 1-0.…

There is probably only one sung-through musical that could fill the Glasgow Hydro for one night, said Allan Radcliffe in The Times, let alone sell out the 12,000-capacity venue for four in a row. And that musical is Les Misérables, which in its new, super-sized incarnation is in the UK as part of a global arena tour taking in some 15 countries. Generating “an atmosphere somewhere between a rock concert and a football match”, the show is truly spectacular, with thrilling lighting design, “seamless” choreography, a full-sized orchestra “floating serenely above the stage”, and vast screens broadcasting the performers’ faces. Yet for all the bombast, the evening is “at its most hypnotic in its virtuoso moments”, such as the “showstopping rendition of Bring Him Home” by Alfie Boe, as Jean…

Ever since veteran presenter Phillip Schofield was axed from ITV’s This Morning 18 months ago, after it emerged that he’d had an affair with a much younger male colleague, TV executives had been plagued by a burning question, said Camilla Long in The Sunday Times: “How to get this peerless, twig-like, moaning silver narcissist back on our televisions?” The answer, it turns out, was to send him alone to a desert island off the coast of Madagascar, armed with a camera, where he could “slag off as many people as possible” while subsisting on boiled limpets and “bitter mangoes” for Channel 5’s survival show, Cast Away. Schofield didn’t actually name any names on his “penitence-and-publicity tour”, said Carol Midgley in The Times, but when he laid into the people who’d…

On a walk, Ben has a run-in with Zainab, Azra’s daughter. Ben thinks he’s spotted an Asian hornet; as he and David try to identify it, Zainab gets stung. Checking on Zainab later, Ben gets chatting to Azra about nursing. Pat visits Alice to explain why she wrote George a character reference; furious Lillian appears and calls Pat a hypocrite. Tracy attacks George when he calls to see Brad, but Brad steps in. George tells Brad how ashamed he is and asks Brad to keep his video business going while he’s inside. As Emma and Susan work in the dairy, someone throws an egg; Susan tells Pat that she saw Poppy throw it. When Will confronts Poppy, she confesses she’s devastated at the prospect of losing George. At The Bull,…

Serves 4 2 x 400g tins chickpeas, drained and patted dry 350g cherry tomatoes 2 peppers, cut into 2cm chunks 200g halloumi, cut into 1cm cubes 3 garlic cloves, unpeeled 2½ tsp ground cumin 1½ tsp ground coriander 1 tsp chilli powder 4 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil 2 aubergines, halved 3 tbsp tahini 180ml kefir 2 tsp sumac 20g coriander, roughly chopped 4 spring onions, thinly sliced 3 tbsp pomegranate seeds juice of lime salt and black pepper Preheat the oven to 200°C/180°C fan/400°F/gas 6 and line two large baking trays with baking parchment. Put the chickpeas, tomatoes, peppers, halloumi and garlic cloves on one tray with three-quarters each of the cumin, ground coriander and chilli powder. Season with salt and pepper and drizzle with 3 tablespoons of the olive…

Dalkeith Country Park, just outside Edinburgh, covers 1,000 acres. There are trails through its ancient woodland and along the River Esk, and it contains an “epic” adventure playground (dalkeithcountrypark.co.uk). Millennium Country Park, in Marston Moretaine, Bedfordshire, has 550 acres of woodland, grassland and wetland (marstonvale.org). The 40-acre Craig-y-Nos Country Park, in Pen-y-cae, Powys, has Victorian landscaped gardens with lakes, meadows, ancient Scots pines – plus a castle (craigynoscastle.com). There’s a mile-long dog-friendly beach, which was used by troops en route to D-Day, at Lepe Country Park, in Southampton, as well as wildflower meadows and an adventure-play area (visit-hampshire.co.uk). Ham Hill Country Park, in Stoke-sub-Hamdon, Somerset, is centred around an Iron Age hillfort, and is a haven for wildlife (visitsouthsomerset.com). SOURCE: THE STANDARD…

Son Vell Menorca The opening of a Hauser & Wirth gallery has brought an “arty boho crowd” to Menorca, and with it, a new wave of boutique hotels, says Gemma Bowes in The Times. Occupying a gorgeous 18th century mansion in the southwest of the island, Son Vell is among the most “beguiling”. Terracotta tile floors lend it a homely air, but the interiors are glamorous too, with “expensive-feeling everything”, and “amazing” showers in the 33 rooms. Food is “all light deliciousness”, the gardens are ”luscious”, and the nearest swimming cove lies half-a-mile down a farm track, good for cycling. Doubles from £385 b&b; vestigecollection.com.…

British Airways: bedraggled flag carrier BA had a “difficult” summer, said Philip Georgiadis and Clara Murray in the FT. That was the message from senior management to staff last week; it claimed that the problems were mainly because of disruption caused by air traffic control restrictions. But the problems go further back than that: analysis shows that, since Covid, “customers have suffered a doubling of flight cancellations and delays” to and from BA’s Heathrow hub. The airline, which claims the issue isn’t peculiar to BA, cites plenty of reasons beyond its control: from “unpredictable weather” to “increasingly congested airspace”, said Ian Taylor in Travel Weekly. That may not wash with some of its more trenchant critics on Tripadvisor. From a financial perspective, BA’s parent, IAG (which also owns Iberia, Vueling…

It’s too late for cold feet in China Shuli Ren Bloomberg The most powerful Chinese stock rally in a decade “rose out of desperation”, but could “dissipate just as quickly if met with nothing but empty words”, says Shuli Ren. There are already signs of disenchantment setting in. A high-profile Chinese government briefing this week – which investors hoped would offer more “concrete details” of the promised “barrage of stimulus measures” – was notably thin on substance, casting doubt on whether this is indeed Beijing’s “‘whatever-it-takes’ moment”. The rally has partially unwound, but for the time being, investors are still giving President Xi the benefit of the doubt, if only for fear of missing out: past experience suggests that “the surest way to make money from Chinese equities” is when…