Table of contents for 1451 in The Week

Back in 2020, Ittai Gradel, a Danish antiquities dealer, contacted the British Museum to warn that precious artefacts from its collection were going missing. Over the years, he had bought many valuable relics – Greek and Roman gems and coins, Egyptian rings – from a seller on eBay, at bargain prices, said David Jones and Tim Stewart in the Daily Mail. But he’d become suspicious after discovering that some of the items had appeared in the British Museum’s catalogue, and that the seller’s Twitter and bank accounts were registered to Peter Higgs, a curator at the Museum. Yet Gradel’s warning was ignored, so in February 2021 he presented the Museum with a “sensational dossier” detailing his suspicions. He expected immediate action; but again, he was fobbed off. Gradel complained to…

Sir John Eliot Gardiner, the world-renowned British conductor, who was forced to apologise for allegedly punching a member of his own choir. Gardiner, 80, had apparently been incensed by William Thomas, 29, exiting the stage from the wrong side during a performance of Berlioz’s The Trojans in southeast France. He said he had “no excuses” for his behaviour; but it has been suggested that his temper had frayed in the intense 37°C heat. The Idol, HBO’s widely panned drama starring Lily-Rose Depp and Canadian singer The Weeknd, which was cancelled after a single season. “Skin-crawling… nasty, brutish… and way, way worse than you’d have anticipated” was the not untypical verdict of Rolling Stone’s reviewer. Burger King, which is being sued in the US over the size of its Whoppers. According…

Paris Sarkozy trial: The former French president Nicolas Sarkozy is to stand trial in 2025 over allegations that he accepted illegal financing from the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi for his successful 2007 presidential bid. In a 557-page report, investigating magistrates accuse Sarkozy of taking at least €5m from Gaddafi in return for help in improving his standing within the international community, from which he had been ostracised for his suspected involvement in terrorism. Sarkozy faces a maximum of ten years in prison if found guilty on charges including embezzlement, participating in a criminal enterprise and illegal campaign financing. Twelve of his colleagues – including two former interior ministers – will be tried alongside him. The centre-right politician, 68, has faced a litany of legal problems since his single term…

“NPC stands for non-player character, the characters in computer games that the player doesn’t control: the ghosts in Pac-Man, the bystanders you run down in Grand Theft Auto. In internet slang, an NPC is a nobody, someone who parrots arguments in a pre-programmed manner. It’s a popular term of abuse with right-wing trolls. But is it so bad being an NPC? As the philosopher Sacha Golob once put it to me: ‘It is really hard to be an individual. Most of us aren’t really individuals. With most people, the things they like, the goals they have, the positions they take are of a type. It’s why everyone’s Instagram posts look the same.’ We’re all NPCs. Maybe it’s best simply to admit it.” Richard Godwin in The Oldie…

We need to be smarter about saving energy Edward Lucas The Times Britain is fighting the climate crisis with one hand tied behind its back, says Edward Lucas. There’s endless talk about how to cut emissions, precious little about the equally crucial issue of energy efficiency. The state should be doing all it can to facilitate smarter consumption: but instead there’s obstruction and inaction. This is a country with the “oldest and leakiest” housing stock in Europe, but fat chance you’ll be able to install energy-efficient windows, solar panels or heat pumps if you live in a conservation area: petty planning laws will see to that. Meanwhile, the managers of our public sector buildings happily fritter energy away: windows are kept open in winter because radiators are turned up so…

The first book about the Maui wildfires hit Amazon just two days after the disaster struck, said Kevin Hurler on Gizmodo. The 86-page self-published volume, Fire and Fury, briefly jumped to No. 1 in Amazon’s “environmental science” category. Problem is, “evidence that the book was simply churned out by a machine is overwhelming”. It’s credited to a mysterious “Dr. Miles Stones”, who found time to write two other books in the course of a week. Amazon quickly removed the title, but not fast enough to keep it from inciting conspiracy theories from readers who believed the speed of its publication proved the Maui fire was “pre-planned”. Searches on Amazon are increasingly turning up such mediocre AI-generated titles, said Scott Rosenberg on Axios. It’s hard for readers to sift through titles…

Rory Stewart has in the past said that he found Liz Truss a “traumatising” boss when he worked for her at Defra, and it seems that she wasn’t exactly empathetic. In 2015, Stewart’s father had a heart attack at his home in Perthshire, and died in his son’s arms. When Stewart, then a junior minister, went back to work on the Monday, Truss asked about his weekend. “I explained that my father had died,” he recalls in his new memoir, Politics On the Edge. “She paused for a moment, nodded and asked when the 25-year environment plan would be ready.” The 81-year-old actress Sarah Miles attributes her youthful looks to her longheld habit of drinking her own urine. “It’s awfully cheap,” she told Talking Pictures TV. “It’s a different beer…

Normally, when MPs opt to step down, they send a letter of resignation to Downing Street. Nadine Dorries, the ex-culture minister, chose to publish hers in The Mail on Sunday. It meant that her constituents initially had to pay to find out why she was quitting. But it was surely “worth the money”, said Tim Stanley in The Daily Telegraph. Addressed to the PM, the letter runs to nearly 1,800 words, and contains some real gems, including this triumph of passive aggression: “I am grateful for your personal phone call on the morning you appointed your Cabinet in October, even if I declined to take the call.” As for the rest, it is a list of Dorries’ career highs – and a seething denunciation of Rishi Sunak, said the Daily…

The humiliation at Twickenham on Saturday must surely rank as the England rugby union team’s “worst-ever” defeat, said Daniel Schofield in The Sunday Telegraph. Lining up in front of a depleted crowd, Steve Borthwick’s side had hoped to put a disrupted World Cup build-up behind them in their warm-up tie against Fiji, a team they’d never failed to beat by less than double digits. And indeed they started “somewhat brightly”, with winger Jonny May scoring “the first try by an English back in more than six hours of play”. Then the rain came, somehow “washing away any ambition” and causing England to revert to their “gutless and ineffective kicking game”. It didn’t work. Fiji “dominated the breakdown” and their backs were “a different class”, right-winger Selestino Ravutaumada in particular. “Slicing…

Boxing Oleksandr Usyk of Ukraine won a nine-round knockout victory over Britain’s Daniel Dubois to retain the unified WBO, IBF and WBA heavyweight belts. Formula 1 Max Verstappen won the Dutch Grand Prix to equal the all-time record of nine victories in a row. His 11th win of the season, it extended his championship lead to 138 points. Football Liverpool came from behind to beat Newcastle Utd 2-1 at St James’ Park in the Premier League. Arsenal and Fulham drew 2-2; Man City beat Sheffield Utd 2-1; Spurs beat Bournemouth 2-0.…

Although I don’t cook myself, said Rachel Cunliffe in The New Statesman, I find listening to those who really know their way around a kitchen to be “deeply soothing” – the “more exotic the food and immersive the sounds of chopping and sizzling, the better”. So it’s no surprise that I find Sharing Plate “to be the perfect wind-down podcast”. Unusually, the guests here are not “gourmet chefs or celebrity restaurateurs, but ordinary people in kitchens around the country”. All are refugees, who have fled war zones and civil conflict to make a new life in the UK, and they introduce host Lara Bishop to dishes, recipes and memories that connect them to their homelands and histories. Sharing Plate is a “travelogue for gourmands”: we hear of aloo bhazzi, the…

A “dazzling” Dutch masterpiece that has always been held in private collections has gone on public display for the first time in its history, says Harriet Sherwood in The Guardian. Banquet Still Life by Jan Davidsz de Heem, regarded as the pre-eminent still-life painter of the Dutch Golden Age, will be on show at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge for the next two years. Painted in the early 1640s, it depicts platters of exotic fruits, a large half-eaten pie, shellfish, Chinese porcelain, a lute and flutes, marble pillars and fine cloths, all conveying great wealth. The painting “is rare within his body of work because of its monumental size”; it measures more than two metres wide. It was recently sold privately (for a price estimated at around £6m), but the…

Pip says sorry to Stella and they agree to move on. A reformed Toby is back in Ambridge for a week. Helen learns that George helped Henry arrange the meeting with Rob. Furious, she storms into the Tearoom and shouts at George; he responds with insults, filming her outburst. The next day Emma defends George’s behaviour, but Susan warns her to stop turning a blind eye. Tom discovers that George has put the video online and tells him to forget working at Bridge Farm. Emma forces George to delete the video; she and Will confront him about his attitude to women and watching toxic influencers. Eventually, George agrees to apologise to Helen, but she tells him to leave. Natasha urges Tom to take George back, but he says it’s Helen’s…

I love how versatile chicken wings are, says Poppy O’Toole. A different sauce or flavour topping, and you’ve got a different dish each time. And they make perfect sense in an air fryer, because it’s efficient, there’s no mess, and the results are just how you’d want your wings to turn out. Flavoursome and succulent, this recipe comes with my three favourite ways to eat chicken wings. Serves: as many as you have wings for 100g-200g plain flour (depending on how many wings you have) 1 tsp smoked paprika 1 tsp garlic powder 1 tsp ground coriander 1 tsp cayenne pepper 2 tsp salt 6-10 chicken wings per person, segmented, tips removed vegetable oil, for spraying • Heat your air fryer to 190°C. Mix together the flour and all the…

One of the UK’s oldest amusement parks, Dreamland, in Margate, Kent, has a 1920s wooden, driver-operated roller-coaster, plus the new Rock’n’Roller, which dips and dives at 35mph (from £3 a ride; dreamland.co.uk). The Forbidden Corner, in Leyburn, North Yorkshire, is an eccentric four-acre labyrinth of tunnels, mazes and towers (from £14.50, under-4s free; theforbiddencorner.co.uk). Dingles Fairground Museum, in Milford, Devon, has eight interactive rides among the exhibits, including a 1930s Moonrocket, a ghost train and dodgems, plus a fun plate-smashing stall (from £10; dinglesfhc.co.uk). Gulliver’s Land in Milton Keynes has rides for toddlers, plus a drop-tower for older children and themed areas like the JCB zone (£21; gulliverslandresort.co.uk). BeWILDerwood in Norfolk and Cheshire is a winner for children under 12, with treehouses and jungle bridges, zip wires and extreme slides,…

A heavenly view of the Hebrides There can be few more wonderful spots from which to contemplate the Inner Hebrides than the village of Portnacroish, says Antonia Quirke in The Sunday Times – and now there’s a great new place to stay on the hillside just above it. An “uncluttered” studio made of glass and cedar, Stormhouse South commands “breathtaking” views down Loch Linnhe to Castle Stalker (the island fortress seen at the end of Monty Python and the Holy Grail), and the isles of Lismore and Mull beyond. It feels “very remote”, but lies within easy reach of Oban and Fort William, and still closer to some decent eateries, including The Old Inn in Appin and The Pierhouse Hotel in Port Appin. Lismore – an “utterly lovely” island with…

Nicholas Hitchon 1957-2023 Nicholas Hitchon, who has died aged 65, once said that he’d like to be remembered as an expert in his field of nuclear fusion, said The Times – but he suspected that he’d always be best known as the farmer’s son from the Yorkshire Dales who appeared in the groundbreaking TV series Seven Up!. The first film was made for the World in Action strand in 1964. The 14 children interviewed for it, from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds, were supposed to be seven (to test the Jesuit maxim “Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man”). Nicholas, first seen striding down a lane in boots, and later warning that, “I don’t answer those kinds of questions,” when asked if…

In the latest retreat from its botched foray into consumer banking, Goldman Sachs has just unloaded “another business acquired under CEO David Solomon”, said Hugh Son on CNBC. The sale of the bank’s “personal finance management unit”, for an undisclosed sum, will apparently “result in a gain”. But it’s unlikely to improve morale at the once-great Wall Street institution, where reports of civil war and mutiny have been gathering pace all summer as key executives head for the exits. Solomon, who took over five years ago, has taken quite a roasting, said Robert Armstrong and Ethan Wu on FT.com. A recent “quite brutal” piece in New York Magazine questioned whether he is “too big a jerk to run Goldman Sachs” – citing internal complaints ranging from pay and strategy, to…

Arkady Volozh Should there be an “offramp” for oligarchs who turn against Putin? Arkady Volozh, the co-founder of Yandex (Russia’s equivalent of Google) is about to find out, says Gillian Tett in the FT. He has broken ranks to condemn Vladimir Putin’s war as “barbaric”. No other Russian businessman has condemned the war in such strong terms. Ukrainians might understandably dismiss this as too little too late. After all, Volozh, who has lived in Israel since 2014, was sanctioned by the EU for “materially or financially” supporting the Kremlin via his search engine. His volte-face – ahead of an appeal for sanctions to be removed – might be self-serving, but it “throws down the gauntlet” to the West. “If the EU removes sanctions from Volozh, it will signal to other…

THE WEEK CROSSWORD 1378 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 11 September. Send it to The Week Crossword 1378, 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 Fetching and quietly taking back (13) 8 Father admitting one great difficulty (5) 9 Nancy’s way of announcing resignation (4,2,3) 11 One-liner right away about a big beast (7) 12 Orange, a southeastern city in France (7) 13 Some deliveries on time not disguised…

What happened Donald Trump was released on $200,000 bail last week after surrendering himself for processing at Fulton County Jail in Atlanta, Georgia. It followed his indictment by a grand jury on charges of running a criminal racket to overturn the state’s 2020 election. The 77-year-old was fingerprinted and had his photo taken – the first-ever mug shot of a former president. He was given the inmate number P01135809 and recorded as a white male with “blonde or strawberry” hair, a height of 6ft 3in and weight of 215lb. Trump wasted no time in exploiting the mugshot for fundraising purposes. He posted the image on social media with the caption: “ELECTION INTERFERENCE. NEVER SURRENDER!”; his campaign put it on T-shirts and other merchandise, calling it “a symbol of America’s defiance…

Italians have been urged to boycott a gym in Turin until urinals designed to look like a woman’s open mouth are removed from the men’s toilets. The row erupted when a photo of the urinals was posted online by a local celebrity. McFit, the fitness chain that runs the gym, was initially defiant: it said that any male patrons who objected should “feel free to urinate in the women’s bathroom”. But it soon apologised, explaining that inclusivity and gender equality were “keystones” of its philosophy. The Wine Society is now selling four of its most popular wines in flat bottles made of recycled plastic. It says the bottles, which are 87% lighter than normal glass bottles and can be more tightly packaged, will cut its carbon footprint.…

Around 2,000 flights to and from British airports were cancelled or severely delayed this week, owing to a failure of air traffic control systems. The trouble began on Monday, when National Air Traffic Services (Nats), which controls UK air space, experienced outages in its main and back-up systems. Flight schedules that are normally uploaded automatically had to be entered manually instead, forcing Nats to drastically reduce traffic flow. The bulk of the cancellations were on the bank holiday – one of the busiest flying days of the year – but services were still disrupted on Wednesday. Thousands of people were stranded at airports; some were told that they might not get home until next week.…

Lahaina, Hawaii Power firm sued: Hawaii’s main electricity company is facing a raft of lawsuits over the fire that devastated the town of Lahaina last month, killing at least 115 people. Hawaiian Electric stands accused of negligence for failing to shut off power, despite the exceptionally dry conditions and high winds – conditions in which power lines are often de-energised. Officials have yet to establish what caused the fires, but dozens of power poles were brought down by the winds, and some of their allegedly bare wires may have ignited the dry grass. Hawaiian Electric is also accused of negligently failing to maintain its old wooden poles and other infrastructure. The firm insists it had shut off power before the worst fires began. Milwaukee, Wisconsin Republican debate: Eight Republican presidential…

A luxury Italian hotel has apologised for using a bikini-clad employee as the centrepiece for a dessert buffet. Voi Colonna Village in Sardinia convinced a female staff member to be drenched in chocolate and lie on a table alongside a selection of cakes and pastries. When a holidaymaker complained about the display because his 14-year-old daughter said it was “disgusting”, he was reportedly told by staff that the employee was simply a “chocolate statue”. The hotel has now said it deeply regrets the incident. A mysterious “wolf man”, who has been spotted in the Harz mountains of central Germany in recent years, has been photographed for the first time. The pictures of the man, who appears to be naked and holding a spear, were taken by two hikers last week.…

CHINA Making it hard for the West to come East Caijing (Beijing) Why aren’t foreign tourists coming to China any more? Domestic travel has rebounded since Covid restrictions were lifted in January, but foreign travel has headed in the opposite direction: the number of foreign visitors to our big cities is almost 90% lower than it was pre-pandemic. Partly, that’s owing to China’s deteriorating global reputation, says Wang Jingyi. But the key problem is accessibility. We sing the praises of our world-class tourist attractions in ad campaigns, then make it hard for people to get here to enjoy them. One hurdle is the cost of flights, which has shot up since the Ukraine War led to the closing of Russian airspace. Another is the hassle of getting a visa: for…

It was a moment of national triumph, said Rosa Silverman in The Daily Telegraph, and it should have been a moment of national delight. Instead, Spain’s victory over England in the World Cup final has been overshadowed by a bitter row over the kiss planted on Jenni Hermoso, the Spanish striker, by Luis Rubiales, the president of the country’s football association. Rubiales had grabbed her head at the medal ceremony and kissed her hard on the mouth. Hermoso complained afterwards that she “did not like it”, and the incident sparked uproar. The acting PM Pedro Sánchez said it was “unacceptable”; the minister of equality, Irene Montero, called it an “act of sexual violence”. After apologising half-heartedly, Rubiales went on the offensive, claiming to be the victim of a witch-hunt led…

There was a moment in Sunday’s “compelling” women’s 800m final, the closing race of the World Athletics Championships in Budapest, when a gap appeared in front of Keely Hodgkinson that “almost looked like an invitation”, said Matt Lawton in The Times. It opened up 70 metres from the finish, when the USA’s Athing Mu moved wide to try to stall her Kenyan rival, Mary Moraa. That presented the “brilliant” 21-year-old from Wigan with a chance to pass the American, who in the past two years has beaten her to both world and Olympic gold. In the end, though, Hodgkinson couldn’t quite pass Moraa herself, who used her raw speed to close out victory – leaving Hodgkinson to settle for a third global championship silver medal in as many seasons. It…

Low-grade examiners To The Times It is extraordinary how little attention is paid to the processes of marking GCSE and A-level examinations, given the weight placed on these qualifications and their impact on the life chances of young people. Any English teacher will tell you how wrong the marks are for their class this year. [But] to request a re-mark requires about £40 per paper, information, and confidence: another set of barriers for the disadvantaged. Private schools re-mark habitually, with huge numbers of grades going up upon review. Why doesn’t the Department for Education do something useful and sort the mess out? These examination boards have charitable status, make a huge profit and, in my view, are not fit for purpose. Octavia Ward, English teacher, London The price of genius…

by Catherine Taylor Weidenfeld & Nicolson 256pp £16.99 The Week bookshop £13.99 This vivid memoir of growing up in Sheffield in the 1970s and 1980s is full of “poetry and wit”, said Holly Williams in The Sunday Telegraph. It takes its name from the unrest that gripped the city in the mid-1800s when trade unionists resorted to violent protest, and Catherine Taylor “nimbly” interweaves the personal with the political throughout, chronicling era-defining events such as the miners’ strike alongside her own coming of age. Her adolescence is overshadowed by her father leaving home and by the lurking threat of the Yorkshire Ripper, who was finally arrested close to her school. But it isn’t all gloom: she’s amusing about her adolescent posing, and celebrates the “jubilance and bravery” of the Greenham…

The First Woman by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, 2020 (Oneworld £8.99). A feminist coming-of-age story about Kirabo, a young girl growing up in a small village in Uganda in a strong, eccentric family. The whereabouts of her mother is a mystery, and Kirabo’s quest to find her is part personal journey, part metaphor for how Uganda was searching for its soul during the era of Idi Amin – a perfect balance of the personal and political. The End of the Affair by Graham Greene, 1951 (Vintage £9.99). I don’t share Greene’s religious convictions, but this is a perfect gem of a novel that really showed me the way in terms of creating an unreliable, not necessarily all that sympathetic, first-person narrator, one who really engages the reader – and narrates from…

Programmes Murder Trial: The Disappearance of Renee and Andrew MacRae The conclusion of a gripping two-part documentary about a notorious unsolved case in Scotland: 46 years after the disappearance of a young woman and her three-year-old son, the jury’s verdict is in. Part one available on iPlayer. Mon 4 Sep, BBC2 21:00 (60mins). Ukraine: Holocaust Ground Zero Historians and Holocaust survivors contribute to this powerful account of the Nazi invasion of Ukraine, which led to some of the earliest mass murders of Jews in WWII. Rare footage documents the Soviet war crimes trials that followed. Mon 4 Sep, C4 22:00 (55mins). Storyville: Blue Box Israeli filmmaker Michal Weits discovers a darker side to the story of her great-grandfather, who expropriated lands from Arabs before and after the foundation of Israel.…

“Okavango & beyond” trip Travel from Zimbabwe to South Africa via Botswana over 9 days on this refreshing adventure. From £1,696pp b&b (excl. flights). 0808-274 5111, intrepidtravel.com. Arrive 15 October. Boutique Santorini suite Spend five nights on top of the world at the aptly named CSky Hotel on the ancient volcanic island. From £829pp b&b (incl. flights). 020-3608 0135, secretescapes.com. Depart 15 October. Balkan cultural landscapes Discover the cultural highlights of Bosnia and Herzegovina during an 8-day, tailor-made tour. From £1,570pp b&b (incl. flights). 0117-453 2263, regent-holidays.co.uk. Depart October. Turkey in eight days A comprehensive tour with highlights including Ankara, gastronomic hotspot Istanbul, and Cappadocia. From £599pp b&b (incl. flights). 020-3733 1881, exoticca.com. Depart 2 October.…

VinFast: wheels coming off Shortly after the loss-making Vietnamese electric carmaker VinFast made its blistering debut on Nasdaq in mid-August, one analyst noted that its progress was likely to be “a coin toss” for investors. So it has proved. Shares in the carmaker, still 99% controlled by Vietnam’s richest man, Pham Nhat Vuong, motored so strongly for a fortnight that investors “quadrupled their money”, said Mary Whitfill Roeloffs in Forbes. VinFast became the third-most valuable automaker on the planet behind Tesla and Toyota – even though it could boast just a fraction of their sales, and only “broke ground on its first American factory in North Carolina” in July. By this week, the company’s $200bn market capitalisation had surged past those of Goldman Sachs and Disney, said John Cheng on…

“A purposeful start” can do wonders for productivity and well-being, says Grace Lordan in the Financial Times. Here are some pointers: When to rise The most hardcore, such as former Pepsi boss Indra Nooyi and Apple’s Tim Cook, are fans of the 4am rise. Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg prefers to sleep in until 8am. The sweet spot may be JPMorgan boss Jamie Dimon’s 5am schedule, which offers “ample time” to set yourself up for the day before anyone can interfere with your mood. What to do Dimon reads “voraciously”, while Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey used to favour “a morning ice bath”. The key is to make your early hours’ routine “robotic”, so as to save on decision-making. Apple’s Cook reads emails first thing, but this could induce grumpiness. Ditto “digesting the…

The week’s best shares Balfour Beatty The Mail on Sunday Although hit by soft US demand, the builder’s support services ops and infrastructure assets should insulate against a housing downturn. Set to make £30m from interest income on its huge cash pile. The market is selling it short. Buy. 320p. Cake Box The Sunday Times Shares in the egg-free cakemaker, which has 212 UK branches, have been volatile. But easing inflation, new stores, greater brand awareness and tight cost control should drive growth and fuel profits. Buy. 157p. Empiric Student Property Investors’ Chronicle The “first-class” student accommodation landlord is benefiting from short supply amid record-high admissions, especially from China and India. A change of stance on international students is merely “hypothetical”. Buy. 88.6p. Gattaca Investors’ Chronicle The specialist Stem recruiter’s…

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Sarah Moulds, the primary school teacher who lost her job after being filmed kicking and slapping a horse, who was cleared of animal cruelty. At her trial in Lincoln, Moulds said that she had been trying to “briefly shock” the child’s pony after it had dashed off down a road; a vet confirmed that the horse, Bruce Almighty, showed no sign of having been physically injured by her actions. Meghan Markle, with news that the legal drama that she acted in for eight years in the 2010s has become a major hit on Netflix. Suits was only moderately popular during its original run.…

37% of adults who intend to vote Conservative at the next election say that if the Government had additional money, it should be spent on public services; 33% would want the Government to take the opportunity to cut taxes; and 24% would like the funds to be used to reduce government debt. YouGov/The Times 65% of UK adults aged 16 to 75 believe it should be legal to help a patient aged 18 and over to end their life, if certain conditions are met. 17% believe it shouldn’t be. Ipsos/The Guardian 34% of adults in Great Britain arrive two hours before a flight; 15% arrive two-and-a-half hours before; 22% allow three hours. 9% give it 90 minutes; and 3% leave just one hour. YouGov/Daily Mail…

Not everyone accepts the claim that hip hop was born in 1973. Rapping, rhythmic talking over music, has been around for much longer than 50 years: it has been traced to the “toasting” of Jamaican dancehall MCs; to the patter of R&B radio DJs; to the traditional African-American rhetorical sparring known as “the dozens”; to jazz scatting, talking blues, even to West African poetic chants. There are other plausible origin stories. For instance, in the late 1960s, The Last Poets, a group linked to the Black Power movement, performed taut spoken-word poems that aimed to raise black consciousness, to the beat of a congo drum: they laid the ground for more political strands of hip hop. Their contemporary, the late jazz poet Gil Scott-Heron, did something similar, earning a reputation…

A hard turn to the right for country music David Cantwell Time “Country music is having a moment this summer,” says David Cantwell. Last month, for the first time in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, the top three slots were all filled by country songs. And a previously unknown country singer, Oliver Anthony, made an unprecedented leap straight to No. 1 two weeks ago with his viral hit Rich Men North of Richmond. As a country fan, I’d love to celebrate these successes, but they’ve tapped into a troubling vein of right-wing resentment. Although Anthony’s song is partly an old-fashioned lament about how hard it is to pay the bills, a familiar theme of country music, it switches to a “punching-down” tone when it rails against what Anthony…

When a British economist coined the “Bric” acronym 22 years ago, he was referring to investment opportunities in Brazil, Russia, India and China, said Tim Cocks on Reuters. Little did he know that these countries would co-opt the term and form a new grouping that would “seek to challenge Western dominance in global affairs”. The bloc – which was joined in 2010 by South Africa – agreed at a summit last week to take on six new members, said James Kynge in the FT: Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. This enlargement will make the Brics group a force to be reckoned with. It will now account for 47% of the world’s population and 37% of its GDP, calculated by purchasing power parity (the G7…

“I used to be a narcissist, but look at me now!”John Tothill at The Edinburgh Fringe, quoted in The Daily Telegraph “He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how.”Viktor Frankl, quoted in The Atlantic “What the world needs is more geniuses with humility; there are so few of us left.”Oscar Levant, quoted on Ricochet “Corporation: an ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.”Ambrose Bierce, quoted in Forbes “Never before has the future so rapidly become the past.”Arnold Glasow, quoted in The San Francisco Chronicle “As soon as I get the idea I understand someone, I feel it is a good corrective to remind myself I probably don’t.”Hilary Mantel, quoted in Literary Hub “If you see ten troubles coming down the road, you…

To The Guardian The backlash [in the village of Llanelli, Carmarthenshire] against refugees described by Aditya Chakrabortty appears to be widespread. In our neighbouring village of Kegworth, the arrival of a large number of mainly Afghan refugees has been met with local hostility, leading to protests, the spread of misinformation and the closure of the village Facebook page due to the vitriol posted. The feelings of those who are sympathetic to their plight are usually given little space next to the protests and other actions by extreme right-wing groups, who use the issue to gain support. Dr Michael Symonds, Sutton Bonington, Nottinghamshire To The Guardian The idea that disagreement in Llanelli with the Government’s policy for housing immigrants at Stradey Park Hotel is rooted in some fascist surge locally, as…

Callum Eaton at Carl Kostyál So uncannily lifelike are the photorealist still lifes of Goldsmiths-trained artist Callum Eaton (b.1997) that a visitor to one of his early shows apparently tried to withdraw cash from a painting of an ATM point. Eaton was sufficiently amused by the experience that he makes a reference to it in the title of his current exhibition: Look but don’t touch. The pictures here include nearly full-scale representations of, variously: a drinks vending machine; a phone kiosk; laundrette washing machines (onto one of which Eaton even squeezes his own reflection); and an ageing office block lift. If there’s a common theme here, it is the soon-to-be-redundant technology that surrounds us, and the overall effect is one of weird, pre-emptive nostalgia. Metal surfaces and multicoloured consumer products…

The closure of a Mayfair icon One of Britain’s most celebrated restaurants, Le Gavroche, is to close its doors in January, said Hayden Vernon in The Guardian. Michel Roux Jr, its chef-proprietor since 1991, said he was shutting the two-Michelin-star Mayfair establishment “to make time for a better work/life balance”. When Le Gavroche was opened in 1967 – by the “pioneering brothers” Albert Roux (father of the current proprietor) and Michel Roux Sr – there was no “sophisticated dining scene” in the capital. The restaurant “became a trailblazer for London gastronomy”, earning its first Michelin star in 1974, and in 1982 becoming the “first restaurant in Britain to obtain three stars”. While Le Gavroche continues to be a financial success, the strain of running it has taken its toll on…

● Mastic (Pistacia lentiscus) is a tough, aromatic, red-fruited evergreen bush. With olive-green foliage it is a good foil for bright flowers like verbascum (burncoose.co.uk). ● The compact Pink rockrose (Cistus x skanbergii) has early, pale rose blooms and silver leaves. Easy to maintain, it will flower again if you prune it back (bethchatto.co.uk). ● Giant fennel (Ferula tingitana “Cedric Morris”) is named after the artist-plantsman who grew them in Suffolk. These hardy, glossy-leafed self-seeding biennials are easy to grow, forming mounds of feathery foliage (shop.greatdixter.co.uk). ● Unlike its infamous cousin, Blue rock bindweed (Convolvulus sabatius) gently trails rather than smothers. Good ground cover, with blue flowers (rhsplants.co.uk). ● Cupid’s dart (Catananche caerulea) is a hardy, long-flowering perennial with purple daisy-like flowers. Easy to grow in gardens with good drainage,…

Yevgeny Prigozhin 1961-2023 Yevgeny Prigozhin died in an aircraft crash last Wednesday, “marking the violent end of a savage career that took him from selling hot dogs on the streets of St Petersburg to the corridors of power under Vladimir Putin”, said Miles Johnson in the FT. The mercenary boss became one of the most visible faces of Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine. “His rise mirrored the modern history of his country, from the decline of the Soviet Union, through the gangster capitalism of the 1990s, to the reassertion of the supremacy of the state under Putin.” Prigozhin was born in Leningrad, now St Petersburg, in 1961 to a hospital worker mother and engineer father, who died when he was nine. As a boy, Prigozhin showed promise as a cross-country…

A looming conflict of interest Toby Helm and Amrit Dhillon The Observer When Rishi Sunak and his wife, Akshata Murthy, arrive in New Delhi later this month for the G20 summit, it will be a kind of “homecoming for the first Asian couple ever to occupy No. 10”, say Toby Helm and Amrit Dhillon. There will be photo ops and “chances to strike deals” galore; the ground is being laid for a post-Brexit trade accord between the world’s fifth-biggest economy (India) and the sixth, which is set to include reduced tariffs on UK exports ranging from Scotch whisky to cars. But the PM must tread carefully. A quid pro quo for preferential access to Indian markets is likely to mean more visas for IT professionals working for Indian tech companies…