Table of contents for 1523 in The Week

What happened Reeves under pressure Rachel Reeves pledged on Tuesday to go “further and faster” to boost economic growth, as she came under pressure over her handling of the public finances. The Chancellor’s Commons statement followed a week of turbulence in the bond market that pushed the UK’s borrowing costs to a 27-year high. The Tories accused Keir Starmer of lacking confidence in Reeves after he declined, at a press conference, to say whether she would still be in her post at the next election. No. 10 later insisted that she would. Government borrowing costs have risen worldwide owing to concerns about stubbornly high inflation, which have led investors to seek a higher rate of return on bonds. The rise has particularly affected the UK, where the value of the…

“What will it take before Keir Starmer finally gets it?” said Dan Hodges in the Daily Mail. This week, several Labour MPs broke ranks with the PM and called for a national inquiry into the abuse committed by grooming gangs. Unlike Starmer, they can see that “the case for an inquiry is unanswerable”. First, there’s the sheer scale of the abuse: over a thousand young girls were subjected to rape and torture “on an industrial scale”. There have been local inquiries, and one “sprawling” national child sex abuse inquiry chaired by Alexis Jay – covering everything from the Catholic Church to foster children sent to Australia – but there has not been one full public inquiry to resolve this national scandal. Serious questions remain over what really happened in towns…

Nicola Sturgeon, who announced that she and her husband Peter Murrell are to divorce, having been separated “to all intents and purposes” for some time. Murrell, who was formerly the chief executive of the SNP, was charged with embezzlement last year, as part of a long-running investigation into the party’s finances. Sturgeon (who, like Murrell, denies wrongdoing) has been questioned by police over the matter, but hasn’t faced any charges. Peterborough Cathedral, after its dean warned that it is running so short of funds that it might have to become a “part-time” church to save money. The Very Reverend Christopher Dalliston blamed a combination of falling donations, soaring heating bills and rising staff costs, exacerbated by the forthcoming hike in national insurance, for the parlous state of its finances.…

Paris Website arrest: The founder of the website that Dominique Pelicot made use of to recruit men to rape his wife has been arrested in France. Isaac Steidl, 44, created Coco. fr in 2003 to enable people to arrange amorous encounters; but the site quickly attracted paedophiles, sex offenders and drug dealers, and was eventually shut down by French authorities in June. Last week, Steidl was summoned from his home in Bulgaria for questioning by Paris detectives over claims that the website had been implicated in 23,051 crimes, involving 480 victims. Among them is Gisèle Pelicot, whose ex-husband, over the course of a decade, used a Coco chatroom called “à son insu” (without their knowledge) to invite dozens of men to their home to sexually abuse his wife, having first…

1 Pony Time by Don Covay and John Berry, performed by Chubby Checker 2* Gracias a la vida, written and performed by Violeta Parra 3 Tusen Tankar, traditional, performed by Triakel 4 Part 1 (from Music in Twelve Parts) by Philip Glass, performed by the Philip Glass Ensemble 5 Flibberty Jib, written and performed by Ken Nordine 6 Doin’ the Things That We Want To, written and performed by Lou Reed 7 Washington, D.C. by Stephin Merritt, performed by The Magnetic Fields 8 Is Chicago, Is Not Chicago by Mark Degli Antoni, Mike Doughty, Sebastian Steinberg and Yuval Gabay, performed by Soul Coughing Book: Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov Luxury: my dog’s collar and tag * Choice if allowed only one record…

Baroness Casey, a former civil servant and Whitehall “trouble shooter”, has been charged with leading the new commission. Its remit is to “rebuild the adult social care system to meet the current and future needs of the population”. An interim report will be delivered in 2026; this will identify the main problems with the current system. The final report, which will cover funding, is not expected until 2028. The response from the sector was fairly uniform. The attempt to break the cycle of failure, and reach a cross party consensus, was welcomed. But the plan to report by 2028 was, said the King’s Fund health think-tank, “far too long to wait for people who need social care. The issues and the potential solutions to this are clear and do not…

Biden should pardon the Capitol rioters Timothy William Waters Politico In the last remaining days of Joe Biden’s term, Democrats have proposed a flurry of presidential pardons for lawmakers and others who might be vindictively targeted by the incoming administration, says Timothy William Waters. There’s another group, though, to which Biden should consider extending some last-minute clemency: the 6 January insurrectionists. Such a move might seem “morally repellent”, but it could have a healing effect on a fractured country. True, Donald Trump would no doubt claim vindication if Biden took this step, saying it proved that the rioters who stormed the Capitol on that day did no wrong. But “pardons don’t mean there was no crime. In fact, it’s the opposite.” They’re about forgiving sins. There are 944 people convicted…

Seventeen hospital trusts in England have declared critical incidents since the New Year, as rising flu cases and the cold weather continue to put intense pressure on the NHS. More than 5,400 patients a day were in hospital in England with flu last week, on average; 3.5 times more than in the same week last year. The Welsh Ambulance Service also declared a critical incident last week, while Scottish health officials described the levels of lab-confirmed flu as “extraordinary”. With bed occupancy in England running at 95%, the Whittington Hospital in London has been advertising for nurses to manage “corridor” care. This week, the Lib Dems warned that “corridor care” has been normalised in many hospitals: research shows that 518,000 patients had to wait for more than 12 hours in…

“A return to ‘operation kowtow’.” That was Iain Duncan Smith’s contemptuous verdict on the Chancellor’s visit to Beijing last week, said David Maddox in The Independent. The former Tory leader was not alone in deploring the first high-level economic meeting between Britain and China since 2019. Chris Patten, the former governor of Hong Kong, called it “delusional”. You can see their point, said Matthew Henderson in The Daily Telegraph. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is no friend of the UK. It is bankrolling Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, targeting us with influence and disinformation campaigns, stealing our intellectual property and applying coercive pressure on emigré communities inside Britain. Yet despite the regime’s clear bad faith, Rachel Reeves is cosying up to it, justifying her trip to China on the basis…

“If I had known I was going to live this long I would have taken better care of myself.”  Attrib. Eubie Blake, quoted in The i Paper “You can pretend to be serious; you can’t pretend to be witty.” Sacha Guitry, quoted in The Stage “A language is a dialect that has an army and navy.” Max Weinreich, quoted in The Guardian “Ninety per cent of the art of living consists of getting on with people you can’t stand.” Samuel Goldwyn, quoted in The New Yorker “One can be bored until boredom becomes a mystical experience.’’ Logan Pearsall Smith, quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle “Posterity is as likely to be wrong as anybody else.” Heywood Broun, quoted in the London Review of Books “As small tyrants are always found…

Camp can be a “treacherous element”, said Clive Davis in The Times. Too often, it’s just “tired nudges and winks coated in a sheen of all-purpose irony”. And for the first ten minutes of this “demented jukebox musical” – a spoof retelling of Titanic that raids the back catalogue of the Canadian singer Celine Dion – I felt sure we were heading into this blind alley. “Everybody loves seamen!” shouted one character, prompting me to sink further into my seat. But then, remarkably, I was won over as the action gathered tempo and the jokes came thick and fast, like “Airplane! with a musical theatre twist”. You might think this “outrageous production” (already a hit off-Broadway) is mainly for “Celine nuts, Titanic boffins, hen nights and drag parties”, said Patrick…

On the morning of 7 July 2005, London commuters opened their papers to good news: the capital had been announced as the host of the 2012 Olympics, said Hollie Richardson in The Guardian. Then, at 8:49am, the first of four bombs exploded on the city’s tubes and buses; collectively, they killed 52 people and injured more than 700. This four-part BBC2 documentary tells the “terrifying story of what happened that day”, drawing on the testimonies of survivors, footage from the time, and forensic evidence. The series features interviews with several high-level figures, including Tony Blair and Eliza Manningham-Buller, then head of MI5, said Sean O’Neill in The Times. “But it is the people on the ground, and on the Underground” – the bereaved, the witnesses, the police who risked their…

Bradford is gearing up for its year as the UK’s City of Culture, says Kate Wyver in The Guardian. It began last weekend with Rise, “an enormous outdoor spectacle” featuring live music, poetry, aerial acrobatics and magic. Steven Frayne, the magician formerly known as Dynamo and a Bradford native, is helping organise the programme and calls it the city’s “equivalent of an Olympic opening ceremony”. Mike Kenny’s Olivier award-winning adaptation of The Railway Children will be performed on the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway line, “where the film of the classic novel was shot”. Art and sculpture “will pop up under expansive skies across Penistone Hill Country Park”. There will be a drawing project supported by Bradfordborn David Hockney, a collaboration between choreographer Akram Khan and Dance United Yorkshire, and…

When The Bull’s chef announces he’s going on a cruise, Tracy offers to cover. After hurriedly agreeing, Jolene realises her error when Fallon also volunteers. Talking to Khalil, David learns of Kirsty’s plan for an illegal beaver release; later, he angrily reads the riot act to Justin and Kirsty. Ruth and David suggest that Leonard moves into Brookfield, but Jill says no. Leonard gets news that an old friend has died. Tracy lets Fallon have the chef job. Brad tells Lily he’s struggling at uni and wants to drop out; Tracy encourages him to stick with it. On a domestic disturbance call with his boss Norris, Harrison gets emotional. Attending his friend’s funeral, Leonard admits he’s afraid of being alone; he talks to his son, who encourages him to move…

Chapel Market Kitchen 2 Chapel Market, London N1 (020-3621 2023) The Israeli chef Maoz Alonim is best known for Basta, his restaurant in Tel Aviv, which is in the city’s Carmel Market. When he expanded to London, he decided to try to “replicate the original”, says Charlotte Ivers in The Sunday Times – hence this place’s location on the “slightly ratty Islington backstreet” of Chapel Market. But while the restaurant’s exterior has been “artfully distressed”, making it look as if it’s been here for years, inside it’s “modern yet cosy”. The menu, based on sharing plates, promises a “sweeping tour of the Med: calamari to taramasalata, labneh to ibérico ham”. Everything on it “looks worth ordering” – and the dishes, when they arrive, do not disappoint. Ingredients are high quality,…

● Check the wording. A “waterproof” coat shouldn’t let in rain or snow, whereas a “water-repellent” one will withstand a shower but will get saturated in heavy rain. Expect to spend upwards of about £150 for a good general-use waterproof coat. ● Make sure it has waterproof zips and taped seams, or a flap for the main zip. ● Consider what you need the coat for: one with a high Hydrostatic Head (waterproof) rating may be less breathable. About 10,000mm is likely to be fine for casual use. ● You should be able to fit a warm midlayer under your coat without hindering mobility. Check length (some are cropped short), the size and adjustability of the hood (a gaping hood is far from ideal in wind) and how the cuffs…

David Lodge 1935-2025 With his friend Malcolm Bradbury, David Lodge, who has died aged 89, “more or less invented the modern‘campus novel’”, said The Daily Telegraph. Lodge once described Bradbury as his “literary twin”: both grammar school boys who hadn’t been to Oxbridge, they met as young academics at Birmingham University in the 1960s. Bradbury then moved to the University of East Anglia, where he produced The History Man, set on the steel and glass campus of the University of Watermouth, while Lodge stayed in Birmingham, and wrote his bestselling “campus trilogy” set at a red-brick university in the Midlands. In these funny but seriously clever books, he ruminated on themes including academia, Catholic doctrine and sex. Two of them – Small World and Nice Work – were nominated for…

A global bond tantrum made in America Michael Mackenzie and Ye Xie Bloomberg Britain’s bond market troubles should be viewed in the wider context, say Michael Mackenzie and Ye Xie. There has been a “relentless rise” in borrowing costs around the world – led by the biggest market and global bellwether, America. Yields on US debt are surging: the rate on ten-year notes is now “within sight of the 5% barrier last breached briefly in 2023, and otherwise not seen since the global financial crisis nearly two decades ago”. With similar spikes playing out internationally, we face “a wrenching and worrisome” start to 2025, as tensions in the $28trn US market spill out. It’s a global “bond tantrum”. Some view the shift, while painful, as “a natural realignment” after years…

The week’s best shares Atalaya Mining Investors’ Chronicle Copper demand is set to rise just as this miner hikes output – the existing mine offers good growth options while it awaits approval on another in Spain. Investing in solar power and a new processing plant. Buy. 359p. C&C Group The Daily Telegraph The cider maker and drinks distributor has been “well and truly tested by rotten British weather”. Yet there’s“lots of scope for self-help” under new management, and plans for cash returns from buybacks and dividends. Buy. 149.4p. Chemring Group The Daily Telegraph Shares in the defence firm slumped after margins fell, due to weather-induced disrupted production and delays. Still, it aims to double revenues in six years as elevated political risk boosts defence spending. Buy. 333p. Next The Times…

THE WEEK CROSSWORD 1448 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 27 January. Send it to The Week Crossword 1448, 121-141 Westbourne Terrace, London W2 6JR, or email the completed grid/listed solutions to crossword@theweek.co.uk. Welcome, Paul McKenna, who will be compiling our even-numbered puzzles. This week’s winner will receive Weekbranded items, as well as two Connell Guides (connellguides.com). ACROSS 1 Endlessly pay for certain riches (8) 5 Model senior officer — Mainwaring’s lead in Dad’s Army? (6) 9 Game is crazy following hooter (8) 10 Perhaps Obelix mostly devours drink and cake (6) 11 Fresh in Southampton water? (8) 12 Bachelor endures wild parties (6) 14 Cut best…

Nearly a quarter of Gen Z adults admit that they could not change a light bulb, according to a survey by Halfords. One in five don’t know what a spanner is, and one in ten say they would call in a professional to hang a picture. More than a quarter would get a car cleaned rather than do it themselves. A pot of hard-boiled eggs has overtaken crisps to become the UK’s favourite meal deal snack from Tesco. The supermarket said that, for the past three years, its most popular meal deal has been a sausage, bacon and egg sandwich, McCoy’s flame-grilled steak crisps and a 500ml bottle of Coca-Cola. Now, shoppers prefer a chicken club sandwich and an “egg protein pot”. However, Coke is still their preferred drink.…

The Government has unveiled a 50-point plan to “mainline [artificial intelligence] into the veins” of the UK, and so turn the country into an AI “world leader”. Written by the tech investor Matt Clifford, the plan includes the creation of “growth zones” around the UK, where infrastructure such as data centres will be built. Public data sets, including anonymised NHS data, will be made available to help AI businesses grow; and a new supercomputer will be built as part of a drive to increase the UK’s state owned computing capacity 20-fold by 2030 (see page 36). Prison drones warning So many drones are being used to smuggle drugs and knives into jails in England and Wales, it represents a threat to national security, the chief inspector of prisons has warned.…

“I went into a Le Creuset shop the other day. When I discovered all their products are now branded in large letters, in the manner of expensive luggage and clothes, I walked straight out again. An evolutionary biologist tells me branded goods are Homo sapiens’ version of the peacock’s tail: a form of display to show they’ve got loadsamoney to waste. That may be so, but peacocks are pretty stupid and so is that kind of behaviour. If I buy a heavy-bottomed casserole dish, it’s because I want it to distribute heat evenly, not to tell my friends that I’m the sort of sap who pays over the odds for a pan because it has a well-known name on it.” Emma Duncan in The Times…

Our politicians are all talk and no trousers Bagehot The Economist “Process is a worthy means to an end. The trouble is its tendency to become the end.” Thus wrote Tony Blair in his book On Leadership – and, looking at British politics today, who could argue, asks Bagehot. The reaction of our leaders to every tricky issue is to call for more discussion. Labour promised to grasp the nettle of social care reform – then unveiled a commission that is set to deliver its final report in 2028. A final decision on whether to proceed with the Lower Thames Crossing had, after endless deliberation, been due in the autumn; but ministers put it off again, launching yet another consultation. Meanwhile the Tories, having taken no steps to enact the…

Silicon Valley billionaires are busy finding ways to “kiss Donald Trump’s ass”, said Nikki McCann Ramirez in Rolling Stone. Amazon boss Jeff Bezos is donating $1m to the president-elect’s inauguration fund; Apple CEO Tim Cook and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman have made similar donations; Elon Musk has styled himself “first buddy”. And now Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg is sucking up to the man who not long ago called him “Zuckerschmuck” and said that he should be jailed if he “interfered” in the election. After flying to Mar-a-Lago to dine with Trump and placing one of his cronies, Dana White, on Meta’s board of directors, Zuckerberg has announced plans to dial back content moderation on Facebook and Instagram. Meta will stop using third-party fact-checkers, and will instead, like X/Twitter, rely on…

Roman air was polluted by lead The Romans came into so much contact with lead – via everything from their paints to their coins, water pipes and drinking vessels – that historians have long speculated that lead poisoning could have hastened the fall of their empire. Now, a study has shown that there were also high levels of lead in the air they breathed – enough, in fact, to have to affected brain development. Romans’ mining of lead and their smelting of lead ore to obtain silver would have released vast amounts of iron into the atmosphere. To gauge the scale of this, a team in the US analysed residues trapped in ice that formed between 500BC and AD600. Their findings indicate that levels of the neurotoxin in the air…

In the colonial era, British authority sometimes got lost in translation, says Rory Stewart on The Rest Is Politics podcast. After an attack in the 1950s by insurgents during the Malayan Emergency, the British High Commissioner, Gerald Templer, turned up at a village and delivered a warning to the guerillas via a translator. “You are a bunch of bastards,” he told them. “But let me tell you: I can be a bastard too.” The translator conveyed this as: “None of your parents were married when you were born. But don’t worry – mine weren’t either.” Simon Rattle’s hair, which frames the conductor’s face Botticelli angel-style, has made him recognisable far beyond the confines of music, says Fiona Maddocks in The Observer. But his parents were anxious that his unruly locks…

“In football, when a chairman expresses ‘full confidence’ in the manager, it usually means he’s headed for the exit door,” said the Daily Mail. In politics, likewise. On Monday, Keir Starmer gave his full support to Tulip Siddiq, then economic secretary to the Treasury. On Tuesday, she resigned, on the grounds that her presence “was likely to be a distraction from the work of the Government”. And yes, having the minister in charge of tackling financial corruption under investigation for alleged corruption was certainly a bit of a distraction. Siddiq’s aunt, Sheikh Hasina, was prime minister of Bangladesh until last year, when she was removed by a popular uprising. Her government has been accused of both human rights abuses and embezzlement on a vast scale. And it recently emerged that…

Last April, the FA overturned 154 years of tradition and announced that it was scrapping FA Cup replays, said Matt Barlow in the Daily Mail. The rationale behind the decision – one made “without proper consultation” – was that replays “cluttered up the fixture list”. It “didn’t take long” for this year’s FA Cup to reveal the decision for what it was: a move made for the benefit of the richest clubs, and “a betrayal of the lower reaches of English football”. Last Sunday, non-league Tamworth – who compete in the fifth tier of the football pyramid – entertained Tottenham in the third round. After 90 minutes, the score was 0-0: had the match taken place last season, Tamworth would have been “rewarded” with a hugely lucrative replay at Tottenham…

by Oliver Sacks (edited by Kate Edgar) Picador 752pp £30 The Week Bookshop £26.99 (incl. p&p) The neurologist Oliver Sacks – who died, aged 82, in 2015 – “was a compulsive letter-writer”, said Lynn Barber in The Daily Telegraph. From 1985, the year his international bestseller The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat appeared, “he received about 5,000 letters a year and tried to reply to all of them”. Sacks (pictured) made carbon copies of the letters he wrote – the files ran to 200,000 pages – and these have now been whittled down to 700 pages by his long-time editor Kate Edgar. While he is sometimes given to “extravagance and self-pity”, the letters also show the “extraordinary breadth” of his scholarship and his “genius for describing people”.…

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon, 1776 (Penguin £12.99), was published two-and-a-half centuries ago. Never out of print since, it is one of the great classics of historical writing: urbane, witty, and still not entirely displaced by modern scholarship. Don’t forget the footnotes – it’s where the jokes are. I remember the thrill of reading, in my teens, Johan Huizinga’s The Waning of the Middle Ages, 1919 (Must Have £9.95). This is a beautiful and poetic reconstruction of life in Western Europe six centuries ago, with all its pleasures and sorrows, its fears and rituals, and its deep pessimism about the future of mankind, a reminder of things we have lost and things that never change. Something of the same atmosphere, but…

Programmes Mysteries of Stonehenge The first in a three-part series about archaeological sites and phenomena, this feature-length documentary delves into the mythology and history of the ancient stones. Sun 19 Jan, C4 18:00 (105mins). Out There Martin Clunes stars in a six-part drama about county lines drug dealing. A widowed farmer is concerned when his son reconnects with an old friend. Sun 19-Mon 20 Jan, ITV1 21:00 (60mins each). Panorama: Should We Still Be Working from Home? Investigation into the growing divide between employers who want staff back in the office, and workers reluctant to return. Mon 20 Jan, BBC1 20:00 (30mins). Pompeii: The New Dig The latest findings from the biggest dig in a generation at the site: new discoveries reveal more about daily life in the city on the eve…

A soufflé may seem like a work of culinary alchemy, but it’s really very easy to get right, says Tom Parker Bowles. You just have to make sure everyone is ready to eat when it emerges from the oven, as a soufflé is a dish that waits for no one. This one was often served as a light supper for the late Queen, and is a favourite of King Charles too. Serves 4 as a starter 250g undyed smoked haddock 300ml full-fat milk 150ml single cream 50g unsalted butter, plus extra for greasing 50g plain flour 100g parmesan, freshly grated 1 tsp dry English mustard powder 2 egg yolks, plus 8 egg whites salt and freshly ground black pepper You will need: 20cm soufflé dish or ovenproof dish with a capacity of 2…

PitPat is one of the only GPS dog trackers available without a subscription. Just 6cm wide and 30g, it is 100% waterproof and can be charged wirelessly (£159; pitpat.com). Garmin’s rugged Alpha T 20 K Dog Collar uses GPS and radio frequency to track dogs for up to six miles, using a compatible handheld device, sold separately. Batterylife is 68 hours (£300; garmin.com). Using an Apple AirTag for dog tracking is not ideal, as the Bluetooth doesn’t offer accurate real-time updates, and relies on nearby Apple devices, but many urban dog-owners swear by them (£28; amazon.co.uk). For Android users, the Chipolo ONE is an easy-to-use Bluetooth tracker. But, like the AirTag, it wasn’t designed for pets, and has a limited range up to 60m (£22; chipolo.net). Fetchtag is not a tracker, but a…

The Brando Tetiaroa, Society Islands Marlon Brando bought the Polynesian atoll of Tetiaroa while filming Mutiny on the Bounty in 1960, and it became his “beloved hideaway”. The resort he built later fell into disuse, but it was relaunched ten years ago, and is still as heavenly as ever, says Megan Spurrell in Condé Nast Traveller. There are two restaurants, a spa and 35 beachfront villas, each with its own plunge pool. Guests can cycle to open-air temples, snorkel on the reef, and kayak past bird-nesting sites, before returning for mai tais at Bob’s Bar, which also serves some of Brando’s favourite treats, including coconut ice cream with chocolate sauce. Doubles from £2,679 allinclusive; thebrando.com.…

PageGroup/Robert Walters: vanishing vacancies Britain’s big recruiters often style themselves as the canaries of the economy – among the first to signal trouble ahead. If so, the news from PageGroup is troubling, said Jessica Newman in The Times. Shares in the white-collar recruitment group have tumbled again after another profit warning, shining an unwelcome spotlight on Britain’s “dramatically” cooling labour market, in the wake of the Chancellor’s tax-raising Budget. “Vacancies fell in December at the fastest pace since August 2020”, according to the KPMG-REC recruitment survey. And there’s not much sign of a pick-up, said the FT. Toby Fowlston, boss of recruiter Robert Walters, which is also feeling the pinch, reports “muted client and candidate confidence”. Perhaps most troubling for the Government, said Matt Oliver in The Daily Telegraph, is…

The House of Lords has warned that UK science companies are being pushed abroad because of government indifference and an “investment valley of death”, said Tim Wallace in The Daily Telegraph. Conveniently, a test case has just presented itself. Ministers have been urged to intervene to see off Saba Capital, an aggressive US hedge fund, which is gunning for Herald Investment Trust and six other London-based trusts, said Patrick Hosking in The Times. Saba’s founder, Boaz Weinstein, dubs them the “miserable seven”, citing poor recent performance. In Herald’s case, he proposes sacking the directors and long-time fund manager, Katie Potts. Herald, which backs about 300 techdriven businesses, counters that Potts has nurtured some of Britain’s biggest tech stories, and has “made shareholders 28 times their money” since launching in 1994.…

Hussain Sajwani The Emirati billionaire sometimes dubbed “The Donald of Dubai” has big plans to make his mark in Magaland, said the FT. Fresh from joining the Trumps for a New Year’s Eve celebration at Mar-a-Lago, he announced a $20bn investment in US data centres. It was a departure for the “softly spoken” Hussain Sajwani, whose company Damac, Dubai’s biggest residential developer, has built “swaths of the Middle East’s glitziest commercial hub” – including its “first Trump-branded golf course”. As a Shia Muslim, whose first venture was a fast-food outlet, Sajwani, 72, is “an outsider” among the old Dubai business families. “A hard-charging risk taker”, he insists critics are uncomfortable with his role as a disruptor. “People will tell you ‘Hussain Sajwani… He is a difficult man.’ Which successful man…

The Princess of Wales, who revealed that her cancer is in remission. On a return visit to the Royal Marsden Hospital in London, where she was treated, she thanked staff and sought to reassure other cancer patients, telling them that though the treatment is “tough”, there is “light at the end of that tunnel”. Italian cultural traditions, after a pizzeria in Norfolk said it was charging £100 for its Hawaiian pizzas, to deter customers from ordering the “tropical menace”. The idea of putting pineapple on pizzas has long appalled some foodies. “It’s so repellent, were I to think of it, I might not survive,” actor Stanley Tucci once said. Job shares, with news that Gabby Logan, Kelly Cates and Mark Chapman are replacing Gary Lineker as host of Match of…

50% of British adults believe that Elon Musk is a threat to British democracy. The billionaire has a net favourability rating of - 35. Nigel Farage’s sits at - 18, Kemi Badenoch’s at - 13 and Keir Starmer’s at - 34. More in Common 21% of Britons aged 18 to 45 think the best political system is one with a strong leader and no elections, compared with 8% of over-55s. FGS Global Radar/Guardian Support for Reform UK is now lagging just one percentage point behind Labour. Asked which party they’d vote for if an election were held tomorrow, 26% of adults in Great Britain said Labour, 25% said Reform, 22% said Conservative and 14% chose the Lib Dems. YouGov/Sky News…

A divorce lawyer’s advice Sandra Davis is one of Britain’s most eminent divorce lawyers: a partner at the London firm Mishcon de Reya, whose list of former clients reads like a volume of Who’s Who, says Eleanor Mills in The Daily Telegraph. But don’t expect her to tell you anything about the famous divorces she has been involved with. “I’m often invited to dinner parties where I am expected to share about Princess Diana, in particular, in a way that I would find grotesque,” she says. “Would I tell anyone your secrets if I was acting for you? People think they are entitled to a piece of Diana.” She will, however, offer broad advice, gleaned from her 40 years of working in this field. And it is this: “If you…

A couple from North Yorkshire have defended their decision to name their baby son Lucifer. Jess Bell and Stefan Wake say they chose the name after enjoying the Netflix fantasy series Lucifer. “The name is lovely and it actually means ‘light bringer’, which is exactly what he has done for our lives,” Bell said. “We are just normal, loving parents and certainly have no interest in associating our son with the devil.” A “crazy” Claudia Winkleman cake has gone viral on social media. The cake, which was made by amateur baker Keith Scovell, uses white Tic Tacs for teeth and thick black icing to represent The Traitors’ presenter’s distinctive fringe. Scovell has explained that he is drawn to cakes that have “auras” to them. A 43-year-old man is earning a…

Since the new year, he has single-handedly forced the issue of grooming gangs back onto the agenda, and made it clear that he has the British PM firmly in his sights. But who exactly is Elon Musk – and why is he so obsessed with the UK, asked Hugh Tomlinson in The Times. Some say the tycoon is motivated by ideology: an anti-woke, “free speech evangelist”, he thinks Keir Starmer is leading a Leftist government that threatens Western civilisation. People who work with the billionaire paint a different picture: of a volatile, high-IQ egotist “with few friends” and “a maniacal quest for power”; others describe him as an avid and highly skilled videogamer who derives life lessons from such games – in which you “slay demons” (or topple PMs) to…

What with the world’s richest man launching “a tweet-based coup to get rid of him”, and his Chancellor facing mounting calls for her resignation, it’s been a torrid start to the year for Keir Starmer, said Tom Peck in The Times. But last week, the gods threw the PM a lifeline: an “actual legal letter” from Liz Truss’s lawyers warning him that she will sue him for libel if he keeps accusing her of having “crashed the economy” during her brief premiership. When the outlook is dicey and your critics are circling, what more could you hope for than “arguably Truss’s most unhinged intervention yet”, to remind voters how much worse things could be? In the “cease and desist” letter – which runs to six pages – Truss’s lawyers argue…

To The Guardian We should beware of using compulsory education to expose children of colour to racial slurs because racism lessens, weakens, degrades and befouls all of us. The summer riots showed this. A sound reason for removing books such as Of Mice and Men from curriculums is that some schools are unable to teach them properly. Appropriate teaching involves careful contextualisation, effective mentoring and ongoing vigilance against harmful effects. I studied Of Mice and Men in the early 1990s. We had to read the text aloud, there was no forewarning and students were offered no option but to read out the slurs. Afterwards, the teacher held me back to explain that he expected me to be “mature” about the whole business. That was the only time it was ever…

Lies and Sorcery by Elsa Morante (trans. Jenny McPhee) Penguin Classics 800pp £18.99 The Week Bookshop £16.99 Elsa Morante was the first woman to win Italy’s equivalent of the Booker (for her 1957 novel Arturo’s Island), and has been cited by Elena Ferrante as a “major influence”, said Catherine Taylor in The Daily Telegraph. Yet in Britain, her work has never had much recognition. Now her 1948 debut Lies and Sorcery – a “magnificent three-generation family saga” – is set to “receive its due”, with this “artful” translation by Jenny McPhee. It is narrated by Elisa, a “singularly eccentric” young woman who tells us, across its 800 pages, the “staggering and absorbing” history of her grandmother, Cesira, her mother, Anna, and of her own, pain-filled childhood in the household of…

Jean-Marie Le Pen 1928-2025 Jean-Marie Le Pen, who has died aged 96, was a major figure in French public life, and a founder of the far-right National Front. A sometimes violent rabblerouser who claimed, like other extremists, to be merely saying the things that “others think but dare not put into words”, he insisted that “the races are unequal”, and that anyone with Aids was “a kind of leper”, said The New York Times. He referred to the Nazi gas chambers as just “a detail” in the history of the War; and described the Nazi occupation of France – when 76,000 Jews were deported to death camps – as “not especially inhumane”. Latterly, he’d embraced the “great replacement theory”, which holds that a conspiracy is under way to replace Europe’s…