Table of contents for 1414 in The Week

What happened As talks to avert strike action by railway workers and nurses broke down this week, ministers were preparing to enlist the help of the Armed Forces to ease disruption to public services. Some 750 military personnel will be drafted in to replace ambulance workers, who are due to hold their first strike day next week in England and Wales. A further 600 will be deployed to check passports at airports, where Border Force staff are due to begin a series of eight walkouts starting on 23 December and lasting until the 31st. Passengers at Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow and Cardiff were warned to expect delays. The head of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), Pat Cullen, accused Health Secretary Steve Barclay of “belligerence”, for refusing to discuss…

The Government’s decision to approve the first new deep coalmine in Britain in 30 years “reveals an unpleasant truth”, said The Observer. “It demonstrates, with brutal clarity, that No. 10 has no credible green agenda and does not understand or care about the climatic peril our world is facing.” The Woodhouse colliery, near Whitehaven in Cumbria, is projected to produce nearly three million tonnes of coking coal (used in steelmaking, not electricity generation) per year. Over its 30-year lifespan, this will generate some 250 million tonnes of CO2. Yet in the teeth of fierce objections from environmental campaigners and others, and following years of planning disputes, Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove waved it through last week. This “seriously tarnishes the UK’s reputation as a global leader and opens us up…

Authors, with news that the median self-employed income for a full-time author has fallen to just £7,000 per annum – down from £12,330 in 2006. The Authors’ Licensing And Collecting Society survey also revealed that men earn 41% more than women, up from 33% in 2016, and that white authors earn more than twice as much as minority ethnic ones (though the sample size for the latter group was relatively small). Sam Bankman-Fried, the former boss of the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX, who was arrested in the Bahamas. The US had earlier filed charges against the 30-year-old. James Cameron, after his $250m sequel to 2009’s Avatar received decidedly mixed reviews. Although some loved The Way of Water, The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw described it as a movie of “epic tweeness” that…

Paris Republicans swing right: An archconservative known for his anti-immigrant views has been elected leader of Les Républicains, suggesting that the party is making a decisive shift to the right. Les Républicains (and its predecessors) governed France for much of its postwar history, but was last in power under Nicolas Sarkozy, over a decade ago, and it is now squeezed between Emmanuel Macron’s centrist alliance and the far-right National Rally. In April’s presidential election, its candidate scored just 4% of the votes. Observers say the choice of Éric Ciotti – a eurosceptic MP who once called for France to have its own Guantánamo Bay – suggests its days as a centre-right Gaullist party are over. The 57-year-old was selected in a ballot of 62,000 members. He has vowed to keep…

1 Symphony No. 5 in C-Sharp Minor: II by Gustav Mahler, performed by the Berlin Philharmoniker, conducted by Claudio Abbado 2 Bésame Mucho by Consuelo Velázquez, performed by Trio Los Panchos 3* Tannhäuser: Pilgrims’ Chorus by Richard Wagner, performed by the New Symphony Orchestra of London and Norman Luboff Choir, conducted by Leopold Stokowski 4 Go Tell the Women by Warren Ellis, Martyn Casey, James Sclavunos and Nick Cave, performed by Grinderman 5 Proof by John Harold Arnold Bramwell, performed by I Am Kloot 6 Blow the Wind Southerly, arranged by Gerald Moore, performed by Kathleen Ferrier 7 The Little Weaver Bird, written and performed by Molly Drake 8 Li’l Darlin’ by Neil Hefti, performed by the Count Basie Orchestra Book: Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit Luxury: time (as…

Nowhere is the world’s population forecast to grow faster in the coming decades than in Africa. The continent is currently home to 1.4 billion people; but by the middle of this century, demographers think that figure will have almost doubled. And by 2100, the UN projects that Africa’s population will have climbed to 3.9 billion people – or about 40% of all humanity. A vast number of these people will inhabit a 600-mile stretch of West African coastline between Lagos in Nigeria and Abidjan in the Ivory Coast, says Howard W. French in The Guardian. Already densely populated, this area (which also encompasses the southern coasts of Ghana, Togo and Benin) is forecast to become a “megalopolis”: a large and sprawling group of urban centres, which will dwarf those found…

Why is the GOP shooting itself in the foot? Meridith McGraw Politico Republicans have learnt a painful lesson from their disappointing showing in the midterm elections, says Meridith McGraw. It has brought home to them just how many votes they’ve lost, not just as a result of Donald Trump’s choice of candidates, but also of his demonising of early and absentee voting. By portraying these methods as irretrievably corrupt, the former president has discouraged many supporters from using them, putting his party at an electoral disadvantage. “If Democrats are getting ballots in for a month, we can’t be expected to get it all done in one day,” complained a party official recently. Republican leaders have now embarked on a drive to counter the conspiracy theories and get the GOP rank-and-file…

The Chief Medical Officer for England is to lead a new drive to bring down levels of air pollution. Unveiling his report, Sir Chris Whitty said that although our air is becoming cleaner, thanks in part to drivers switching to cleaner fuels, ammonia emissions from agriculture remain stubbornly high. He also said that more needs to be done to address indoor air pollution – from gas cooking, open fires and wood-burning stoves, cleaning products and plastics that release microfibres. Ventilation, he said, can do much to address this, but when the weather is cold, and people are concerned about their heating bills – and reducing their carbon emissions – they can’t be expected to open windows. He also noted that higher energy bills could lead to more people burning wet…

What we saw in China last week was “not so much a shift in gear as a screeching hand-brake turn”, said Ian Williams in The Spectator. Shaken by protests involving everyone from factory workers to the urban elite, Xi Jinping’s government abruptly announced an end to most of the country’s draconian Covid restrictions. Having spent three years “instilling fear” of the virus in the population, and suppressing its spread via “brutal lockdowns”, compulsory mass testing, enforced quarantines and intrusive surveillance, the authorities have suddenly changed their line: it is now time to start living with the virus. Even the phrase “zero-Covid” has been dropped from state media. But in Beijing’s anxiety to change course at full throttle, it risks replacing its “hysteric alarmism” over Covid-19 with a disastrous complacency. For…

And so it’s happened once again, said Jason Burt in The Daily Telegraph: England have gone out of a major tournament after a crucial missed penalty. Yet for all that France’s 2-1 victory last Saturday inspired feelings of “déjà vu”, there was also a sense that this time round, England’s exit from the World Cup was very different. Gareth Southgate’s side “were not outplayed” in their quarter-final, and “they did not retreat”. They went head to head with the best team in the world, and narrowly lost a match they arguably “should have won”. For parts of the game, they were the better team – and France also benefitted from some questionable refereeing. None of this, of course, will console England’s devastated players – especially not Harry Kane, who missed…

Athletic Kenya’s two-time Olympic 800m champion David Rudisha survived a plane crash in southeast Kenya. Five other people were in the plane, but all escaped with minor injuries. Snooker Yan Bingtao, the winner of the Masters title last year, has been suspended from the World Snooker Tour after an investigation into match-fixing. Football Argentina beat Croatia 3-0 to go through to the World Cup final. Cricket Australia beat West Indies in the second Test to retain the Frank Worrell Trophy 2-0.…

Super-Infinite by Katherine Rundell Faber 352pp £16.99 The Week bookshop £13.99 Katherine Rundell is a prizewinning children’s author, a fellow of All Souls, Oxford, and an expert in metaphysical poetry. In this much-praised biography of John Donne, she tracks Donne’s transformation from his days as a libidinous young rake and love poet to his later career as a dean of St Paul’s, fulminating against the pleasures of the flesh. The change, Rundell suggests, was less odd than it appears: she links it to Donne’s lifelong love of paradox, which made it easy for him to slip between roles. The response to Rundell’s book was overwhelmingly positive – with reviewers singling out the originality of her Donne-inflected prose. Praise: “Exceptional… Manages, with scant biographical materials, to make the man almost live…

Small is Beautiful at Flowers Gallery Small is Beautiful, the seasonal exhibition held at Flowers Gallery most years since 1974, is the private gallery world’s answer to the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition. For each iteration, contemporary artists – from amateurs to establishment figures – are invited to contribute small works in any conceivable medium for a show that crowds the gallery walls with diminutive pieces. Quality can often vary wildly, but this 40th edition is an instance of the format at its best. Featuring well over 100 works, it is the usual mix of sculpture, photography, painting, drawing and conceptual pieces. There are duds, of course, but hits easily outnumber misses. Highlights include a gorgeous oil on paper landscape of a Norwegian fjord by Movana Chen; a typically absurdist Glen…

Cooking Jeremy Lee 4th Estate £30 (£23.99) The food world has been waiting a long time for Jeremy Lee – the much-loved head chef of Quo Vadis – to “go into print”, said Tim Hayward in the FT. “And it was worth the wait.” Cooking is a stunning collection of recipes designed for the home cook, written in Lee’s inimitable “voice and style”. What a generous, exuberant work, said Rachel Roddy in The Guardian. There are recipes for stews, soups, salads and puds; look out for a “dish of potato, butter and cabbage called Rumbledethumps”. The Italian Pantry Theo Randall Quadrille £26 (£20.99) Although he is English himself, the former River Café head chef Theo Randall cooks some of the best Italian food I’ve ever eaten, said Diana Henry. Inspired…

Swiss urban 4-star retreat Spend 3 nights at The Passage, in the heart of downtown Basel and close to attractions and interesting dining options. From £237pp b&b (excluding flights). 020-3027 7900, agoda.com. Arrive 5 January. Idyllic Saint Lucia The 4-star adult-only SoCo House sits on a picturesque peninsula, close to Rodney Bay. 5 nights cost from £1,473pp all-inclusive. 0344-493 0787, britishairways.com. Arrive 25 February. Stylish beach house Nestled in sought-after St Ives and set near the beach, Porthmeor Sands offers a 7-night stay from £284pp self-catering (party of 6). 0330-113 7005, simplyseaviews.co.uk. Arrive 23 December. Luxurious stay in Seville Four nights at the Vincci La Rábida, located between the opera house and the bull ring, cost from £528pp b&b (including Manchester flights). 01234-230440, loveholidays.com. Depart 25 March. Covid-19: please check…

Sarah, Duchess of York Never one to ignore a trend, even if arriving late to it, Sarah, Duchess of York’s latest money-spinning wheeze is “non-fungible tokens”, said The Times. The former royal is teaming up with the Nifty Gateway platform to market her own digital art. It’s the latest in “a long line of eclectic ventures” undertaken since her 1996 divorce, including forays into children’s books and romance novels. When she lost £3.2m following the collapse of her lifestyle company Hartmoor ten years ago, Prince Andrew helped her avoid bankruptcy – but it has often been a close-run thing. “You’ve got to admire her energy and creativity,” said one acquaintance. But will the NFT venture solve the duchess’s money problems? Given the current bloodbath in crypto land, it looks a…

THE WEEK CROSSWORD 1342 An Ettinger pass holder and two Connell Guides will be given to the sender of the first correct solution to the crossword and the clue of the week opened on Monday 2 January. Send it to The Week Crossword 1342, 121-141 Westbourne Terrace, London W2 6JR, or email the completed grid/listed solutions to crossword@theweek.co.uk. Tim Moorey (timmoorey.com) This week’s winner will receive an Ettinger (ettinger.co.uk) travel pass holder in assorted colours, which retails at £115, and two Connell Guides (connellguides.com). ACROSS 1 Literary device of T. S. Eliot in new edition (7) 5 Old actress in last appearance cut short? (7) 9 Time to question the leadership of Steve Jobs (5) 10 Typically too old to cover new area (2,7) 11 Character from abroad in pilot’s…

What happened England’s footballers returned home from Qatar this week, after their World Cup campaign ended with a narrow 2-1 defeat to France at the quarter-final stage. In a tightly contested match at the Al Bayt Stadium near Doha on Saturday night, England had come close to forcing extra time against the reigning world champions, with captain Harry Kane missing an 84th-minute penalty which would have levelled the scores at 2-2. Gareth Southgate said it had been his team’s best performance against a major nation in his six years as England manager. “But we’ve fallen short,” he admitted. Southgate was this week considering his future, saying that he felt “conflicted” over whether to stay in his post, having found “large parts of the last 18 months difficult”. With a semi-final…

Cambridge Dictionary has updated its definition of “woman” to include anyone who “identifies as female though they may have been said to have a different sex at birth”. It gives the examples, “She was the first trans woman elected to a national office”, and “Mary is a woman who was assigned male at birth.” It has similarly updated its definition of the word “man”. The University of Brighton has advised staff not to refer to the “Christmas” break, but to call it “the winter closure period” instead. According to a nine-page “inclusive language guidance” document sent to lecturers, “Christmas” is “Christian-centric”. Staff were also advised not to ask “What is your Christian name?” but to use “given” or “first” name instead.…

Fewer patients are being treated by the NHS than before the pandemic, despite having more funding and more staff, a report has found. Produced by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the report warns that Covid may have dealt a “lasting blow” to the service. It found that although there were 8% more nurses, 9% more consultants and 15% more junior doctors in the third quarter of this year than in 2019, there were 14% fewer outpatient appointments and 11% fewer elective admissions. The authors say there may be many reasons for this, including a rising number of people needing complex care, doctors working less overtime, and “bottlenecks” created by the crisis in social care.…

“Colchester has been revealed to be Britain’s most miserable town in the annual ONS survey of happiness. Well, it may be true that nothing much has happened there since the Romans left. But then I looked at the next four places classed as miserable – Redditch, Norwich, Tunbridge Wells, Lambeth – and noticed there is nothing that links them. Not average age, income, scenery, facilities or lack of. Nor does anything link our happiest places: Torridge, Pendle and Lichfield. And none of the miserable towns were terribly miserable last year. I suspect there is a simple reason for this: the list is bollocks. Doesn’t the ONS have anything more useful to do?” Rod Liddle in The Sunday Times…

Time for you to vanish, my lords and ladies Andrew Rawnsley The Observer “No one would invent it, but it kind of works.” That’s the line you always hear from apologists for the House of Lords, says Andrew Rawnsley. Complacent nonsense. The Lords “doesn’t work and must be fixed”. If the chaotic premierships of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss proved anything, it’s that the upper house provides no adequate check on rubbish laws and unconstitutional behaviour. Another common excuse for inaction is that Lords reform is a “boring” topic people don’t care about. Not so: polls show voters are “very troubled by the decayed state of their institutions”. With reason: it’s embarrassing that while the US relies on 100 senators, Britain has an upper chamber of some 800 members, some…

Why city robins are so aggressive Although beloved for their charming appearance and sweet song, robins are highly territorial and fiercely competitive: faced with an uninvited guest in their territory, the little birds will adapt their calls to warn off the intruder, bare their red chest feathers, and even go on the attack, says The Guardian. Previous research has shown that urban robins are more aggressive than rural ones – and now a study has suggested that noise pollution could be behind that. To test the theory, researchers in Turkey placed a model of a robin in robin territory in two locations – one in an urban park near busy roads in Istanbul, and another in a quiet wooded area. They found that when they broadcast traffic noise from a…

Something happened on 30 November that “could rank among the seminal moments in modern technology”, said The Times. It sounds unremarkable enough: OpenAI, a San Francisco company, released a chatbot. But it was a long way from the average customer service bot, or even from Siri and Alexa. ChatGPT is the most sophisticated chatbot yet, and it has left observers “slack-jawed at its capabilities”. Imagine a piece of artificial intelligence (AI) that has instantaneous access to the sum of human knowledge, and can synthesise it into language. It can write essays, articles, scripts, contracts, computer code, jokes, poems and marketing pitches. It can compose a reasonable haiku on the Great Fire of London, or design a respectable syllabus for an MBA course. It is “paradise for the cheating student”. “Essays…

Get real about Russia… To The Independent After reading Mary Dejevsky, who writes that “There will be no peace in Europe until Russia feels safe”, it all seems to come down to a red line. Simply put: Russia laid down a red line to the West, Nato repeatedly crossed it, and hence Russia had no choice but to invade Ukraine. While this over-simplified narrative may have some basis in fact, it cannot serve as a justification for war unless the red line itself can be justified. It certainly does not have a legal basis. Nor could one use it to craft an ethical argument based on the tortuous principles of a “just war”. So the justification is simply based on what I understand is known as a “realist” view of…

“Sleeping Beauty and vampires.” That unlikely pairing, said Lyndsey Winship in The Guardian, is the crux of Matthew Bourne’s “irresistible” dance-theatre production, which premiered in 2012 and which has now been revived at Sadler’s Wells, in advance of a lengthy UK tour. Set to Tchaikovsky’s music, but with choreography that progresses from the conventionally balletic to more contemporary idioms, this gleefully over-the-top show packs in many of Bourne’s favourite things: a “fairy-tale twist, period details, farce and comedy of manners, visual humour”, and wittily extravagant designs courtesy of long-time collaborator Lez Brotherston. In this reworking of the traditional ballet, Princess Aurora has already met her beloved, the royal gamekeeper Leo, when she falls into her 100-year sleep. “So how to keep him alive for a century and keep their love…

The sculptor Veronica Ryan has won this year’s Turner Prize. At 66, Ryan became the prize’s oldest winner. She was born on Montserrat in the Caribbean before moving to the UK as a toddler, and her art uses the fruits, seeds and even volcanic ash from her home island. For her Windrush memorial – part of the body of work for which she won the prize – Ryan placed giant sculptures of Caribbean fruits on a street in Hackney, east London. Her career has been “an incredible struggle” at times, she said last week. “There were 20 years, almost, when no one was paying attention to my work.” Ryan’s sculptures are “meditative and poetic”, said Jonathan Jones in The Guardian. Their meanings mature over time, rather than “hitting you in…

Leonard calls in on Ben at Brookfield. Ben admits that he felt suicidal after Vince shouted at him, but asks Leonard not to tell his parents. Joy invites Mick over for a chat. He arrives with a bunch of flowers and apologises for saying “I love you” so quickly. Joy says that she finds it hard to believe that anyone could love her. Mick tells her that he’s happy to go at her pace. Leonard confides in Pip that Ben considered ending his life. Pip agrees that her parents need to be told. Kirsty complains that fallen branches are causing havoc with their festive trail on the rewilding site. Eddie suggests Ed could tidy it up. Later, he proposes to Ed that they sell the wood. Ed says Emma wouldn’t…

● Nice lighting can make all the difference. Invest in warm bulbs, nice shades and attractive lamps (try houseof.com). ● Make café-style curtains for kitchens and bathrooms using retractable rods (see dunelm.com, also good for curtains) and hemming web, if you can’t sew. Buy affordable made-to-measure blackout blinds (blinds-2go.co.uk) for children’s rooms. ● If you’re not staying long, think about portability. Lightweight metal lockers, rugs, wall art – all these are easily shifted. ● If your landlord won’t let you paint the walls, buy tester pots and paint small areas such as picture rails or door frames that will be easy to repaint when you leave. ● Picture hooks leave nasty marks. Frame pictures behind lightweight PVC and hang them with command strips. ● Always get your landlord’s permission in…

George “Johnny” Johnson 1921-2022 On a moonlit night in May 1943, 19 crews of No. 617 Squadron – under the command of 24-year-old Guy Gibson – embarked on what has gone down in history as the most audacious raid of the Second World War. Codenamed Operation Chastise, its mission was to destroy major dams in the Ruhr valley in western Germany, releasing billions of gallons of water that would cause devastation in the enemy’s industrial heartland. To attack these targets, the engineer Barnes Wallis had developed a bomb that could bounce on water. Released spinning from a specially adapted plane, the “Upkeep” bomb would skip over German torpedo nets in the reservoirs, then detonate underwater at the base of the dams, like a depth charge, said The Times. But owing…

Another chapter in “the spectacular rise and fall of Sam Bankman-Fried”, founder of the failed crypto exchange FTX, said DealBook in The New York Times: he was arrested in the Bahamas on Monday. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan are seeking extradition on multiple charges, including defrauding investors and money laundering. “The arrest took many by surprise.” Lawyers said the government may have “moved faster than expected” to avoid “muddying the waters” following Bankman-Fried’s recent “media tour”. Still, the loquacious entrepreneur hasn’t always helped his own cause. “Like I, like, kind of vaguely knew, kind of, sort of maybe, um, on a qualitative level what was going on,” he told listeners on the Unusual Whales podcast, just before his arrest. “[He] built a house of cards on a foundation of deception while…

Premium Bonds Just in time for Christmas, National Savings & Investments has increased its Premium Bonds prize pot to £300m – “the highest level in 15 years”, said Grace Gausden in The Independent. In a boost for more than 22 million savers, the prize fundrates are also rising: from 2.2%, to 3% from January. “The odds of winning stay the same,” at 24,000 to 1. “But there will be more than three times as many prizes worth £100,000, £50,000, £25,000, £10,000 and £5,000 available.” Games Old-school board games such as Monopoly have been giving children crash courses in finance for generations, said The Times Money Mentor. Try an update. The Cashflow board game encourages you “to play your way out of a nine-to-five lifestyle, by acquiring property, stocks, businesses and…

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Dave, a stray cat from Doha, who is coming home, even if football isn’t. The moggie was adopted as an unofficial mascot by the England squad, and players promised to bring him back to the UK if they won the trophy. They didn’t win, but two hours after the team left their hotel for the airport, Dave was photographed en route to a vet to start his four months’ quarantine. King Charles, as the first coin featuring his portrait entered circulation. The 50-pence piece features his portrait, created by sculptor Martin Jennings, facing left; the late Queen’s faces right.…

14% of British adults say that owing to what they’ve “seen and heard” about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s Netflix series, they have a more negative view of the couple. 34% said they had a negative view already, and that it has not changed. 4% say they now have a more positive view of the couple. 11% said they had a positive view already and it has not changed. YouGov Only 35% of UK adults say they would like to live to be 100. Men are keener on the idea than women (43% to 28%). Ipsos/FT 17% of adults who voted Conservative in 2019 say they plan to vote for Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party in the next election. YouGov/The Times…

The warping effect of fame Billie Piper has been famous since she was 15, first as a singer, and later as an actress, says Rebecca Nicholson in The Guardian. Now, at 40, she loves what she does, but not its impact. “Fame is awful,” she says. “It’s gross. It’s such a dark thing. And it will change your everyday experience of life in a way that is depressing, frankly, in my experience of it. When I imagine some of my happiest, and my freest times, most of them are pre-fame.” Being famous not only changes the individual – Piper says it has made her more guarded, and her children say she behaves differently when she’s “in that world” – it also changes the people you meet. “If you’re treated well,…

A company in St Petersburg is offering customers the opportunity to experience their own funeral, without the drawback of being dead. The “full immersion” service, which costs £44,000, includes a religious ceremony with music and candles and a will-writing session, after which the customer is buried in a coffin for an hour, then “re-awoken”. “The purpose is not morbid,” Yekaterina Preobrazhenskaya told reporters. “It is a true symbol of fighting for yourself and your own happy future.” A man from North Ayrshire claims to have found Jesus in a packet of Revels. Myles Campbell, 38, said he was tucking into the chocolates in front of a film, when he felt one that seemed “kind of funny”, and checked the bag. “It just looked like a wee baby Jesus. It stopped…

“A nobleman, soldiers and a judge” hatch a plan with right-wing extremists to storm the Bundestag and overthrow the German government: you’d think it was the plot of “a bad film”, said Alisha Mendgen on RND (Hanover). Yet absurd as its sounds, that is precisely the scenario that authorities fear could have come to pass were it not for a dramatic intervention by German police. In a series of dawn raids last week, 3,000 police and special forces officers arrested 25 suspected extremists across Germany, Austria and Italy. Those targeted, prosecutors told us, “aimed to overthrow the existing state system” using violent means, and replace it with a new state they hoped would be backed by Russia. The plotters – allegedly led by Heinrich XIII Prinz Reuss, the scion of…

When a debut author named Chelsea Banning vented on Twitter about only two people turning up to her book signing, a host of bestselling writers were quick to empathise. “At my first Salem’s Lot signing, I had one customer,” tweeted Stephen King. “A fat kid who said, ‘Hey bud, do you know where there’s some Nazi books?’” The Pachinko author Min Jin Lee recalled a reading that was attended only by her “husband’s cousin”; David Nicholls was sympathetic, too. “The one where the bookshop staff kindly pretended to be customers so I wouldn’t feel too bad, that stays with me,” he tweeted. Kathy Burke has had a difficult few years, but she admits that one thing this year really cheered her up: Will Smith’s slap at the Oscars. She was,…

“The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.”Chemist Linus Pauling, quoted on Chegg.com “If the path before you is clear, you’re probably on somebody else’s path.”Joseph Campbell, quoted in The Atlantic “Before you judge a man, walk a mile in his shoes. After that, who cares? He’s a mile away and you’ve got his shoes.”Billy Connolly, quoted in The Scotsman “Sculpture is something you bump into when you back up to look at a painting.”Ad Reinhardt, quoted in Sussex World “He who wishes to be rich in a day will be hanged in a year.”Leonardo da Vinci, quoted in Forbes “Ratlike cunning, a plausible manner and a little literary ability.”Nicholas Tomalin’s description of the qualities required to be a journalist, quoted in the FT…

To The Times Four words in your leading article sum up a simple, affordable answer to the nursing shortage: “return to practical training”. And why not? It worked well for many years. Student nurses used to be an integral part of the ward team, earning a salary and learning lessons that cannot be taught in the classroom. I was one of those nurses. Some classroom lessons were held (theory is also important), but most of the work was done on the wards, caring for patients in real situations and learning on the job. You cannot teach students how to resuscitate a patient, to know just by the look of someone that a crisis is imminent, even how to make someone comfortable in bed, without experience. Even now, in retirement, I…

The Black Sea by Neal Ascherson, 1995 (Vintage £10.99). Subtitled Coasts and Conquests: From Pericles to Putin, this is a fascinating and lively description of that region’s cultural and political histories. Nomadic and imperial forces collide, new nations are formed and Stalin declares that the Crimea has since time immemorial been Russian, executing academics who had declared otherwise. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight translated by Simon Armitage, 2009 (Faber £10.99). Armitage comes up with this fresh, funny, sexy and exciting version of the ancient tale. Embracing the alliterative gymnastics of the original, it’s a completely engaging alternative to Middle English. A Tale of Two Cities Charles Dickens, 1859 (Penguin £5.99). The pulse races hard throughout this tale of honour and self-sacrifice. I love the mild-mannered hero, Jarvis Lorry. Despite…

Programmes Vardy v Rooney: A Courtroom Drama Michael Sheen, Natalia Tena and Chanel Creswell star in this two-part dramatisation of the Wagatha Christie trial. Wed 21 & Thur 22 Dec, C4 21:00 (60mins each). Motherland: Last Christmas The festive season proves particularly testing for the gang in this one-off special of the acerbic comedy. Fri 23 Dec, BBC1 21:30 (35mins). A Ghost Story for Christmas: Count Magnus Mark Gatiss adapts M.R. James’s chilling tale about a mysterious Swedish aristocrat. With Jason Watkins and MyAnna Buring. Fri 23 Dec, BBC2 22:00 (30mins). The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse Animated film of Charlie Mackesy’s book about kindness and courage, voiced by Idris Elba, Tom Hollander and Gabriel Byrne. Sat 24 Dec, BBC1 16:55 (30mins). Films Knives Out (2019) Daniel…

Manchester‘s festive market has festoon lighting, live music, a wide range of food stalls, a Nordic tipi bar, covered eating areas and a windmill with a glühwein bar. Until 22 Dec; visitmanchester.com. There’s a focus on arts and crafts at Cardiff‘s traditional market, which has been running for 30 years. There’s also a Light Maze beside St John’s Gardens. Until 23 Dec; cardiffchristmasmarket.com. Inspired by traditional German Christmas markets, and set around the cathedral, Winchester‘s has a steel band, a rock choir and stalls selling handcrafted gifts. Until 22 Dec; christmas.winchester-cathedral.org.uk. York’s St Nicholas Fair has a Winter Hütte – Andrew Pern’s restaurant in a traditional Swiss chalet – as well as stalls selling ceramics, art and jewellery. Until 23 Dec; visityork.org/christmas. London’s Southbank Centre has street food, pop-up bars,…

A poet’s house in New England Many visitors to Amherst, Massachusetts know the “myth” of the 19th century poet Emily Dickinson – that she was “odd”, a “reclusive” spinster who was obsessed with death. But the house where she spent much of her life there (now the Emily Dickinson Museum) could scarcely be less austere, says Jennifer Schuessler in The New York Times. For a recent refurbishment, researchers drew on clues from family letters, and analysed paint chips, in an effort to bring the interiors back to their 1850s “glory”, with hand-painted mouldings and carpets “exploding with quasi-psychedelic flowers”. There are facsimiles of Emily’s “radically experimental” poems throughout, as well as props from the 2019 TV series Dickinson. And the room where she cared for her mother after her stroke…

London Stock Exchange/Microsoft: cloud data deal “In the latest incursion by Big Tech into the operation of global markets”, Microsoft is to buy a £1.5bn stake in the London Stock Exchange Group, said the Financial Times. It will take a seat on its board, as part of “a ten-year strategic partnership”: the plan is to shift the LSEG’s data and analytics to the cloud, just as Amazon has already done with Nasdaq, and Google with Chicago’s CME exchange. Bully for LSEG boss David Schwimmer, said Alex Brummer in the Daily Mail. He has given London “the potential to become a truly global trading and data powerhouse”, trouncing its parochial continental rival, Euronext. “There’s plenty of logic” in Schwimmer’s plan, which builds upon his 2019 acquisition of data specialist Refinitiv, agreed…

Why Britain struggles to build anything Emma Duncan The Times News that the Government is lifting the ban on onshore windfarms is “encouraging for those who despair of its generally wimpish attitude to Nimbys”, says Emma Duncan. But, by itself, the decision will achieve nothing – because the system for approving any “big kit” is “gummed up”. The 2008 Planning Act, which followed the eight-year approval fiasco of Heathrow Terminal 5, eased the process by allowing “nationally significant infrastructure projects” to bypass local authorities. But over time the system seized up. The pro-growth campaign group Britain Remade estimates that “the average number of planning documents for an infrastructure application tripled in the eight years to 2020”. There are two culprits. First, the proliferation of green regulations; secondly, politicians. The Government…