Table of contents for V. 1291 in The Week

What happened The looming wave As parts of Europe suffered a resurgence of Covid-19 infections, a study from UCL concluded this week that the UK risks a big second wave in winter if it reopens schools without improving its test-and-trace system. The warning came days after Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer in England, declared that the country was “at the outer edge” of what was possible in terms of easing restrictions. If further rules were lifted, he said, others might have to be tightened to compensate. Boris Johnson talked last Friday of the need to “squeeze that brake pedal”, following a spike in cases that has led to lockdown restrictions being reimposed on parts of the North of England, including Greater Manchester. Some measures that had been due to…

Keith Weed, who was appointed the new president of the Royal Horticultural Society. He attributed it to nominative determinism. “My dad was a Weed but my mother was a Hedges,” he said. Inevitably, they gave birth “to the president of the RHS”. Gandhi, who is set to become the first non-white person to feature on British currency. The Royal Mint is working on a coin that will celebrate his campaign against British rule in India. Square eyes, with the news that the average Briton spends six hours 25 minutes watching television and online video every day – approximately 40% of their waking hours. Glenda Jackson, who won the Bafta Award for best actress, nearly half a century after her last nomination. The 84-year-old was recognised for her performance in Elizabeth…

An unnamed Conservative MP and former minister was arrested last weekend on suspicion of rape. The arrest came in response to a complaint from a former parliamentary aide, who alleges that four incidents of sexual assault between July 2019 and January 2020 left her so traumatised she had to go to hospital. The MP, a man in his 50s, was later released on bail. The Conservative Party’s decision not to suspend him or remove the whip caused outrage among victims’ charities and Labour MPs, who called it “shocking”.…

Karavasta Lagoon, Albania Crab invader: Fishermen who catch sea bass, red mullets and eels in the Adriatic waters off Albania say that stocks have dwindled to an all-time low, due to a foreign invader encouraged by warming seas. The blue crab, native to the western Atlantic and known for its pretty shell, has become so prevalent in the region over the past ten years – ripping nets and damaging seagrass beds that serve as nurseries for local fish – that local fishermen are struggling to make a living. There is little local demand for its meat, which is considered a delicacy elsewhere. “This year we are seeing the crab everywhere, on the coast, offshore, but also in inland waters, rivers and lagoons,” said fisherman Stilian Kisha. “The damage is enormous.”…

1 Beautiful War, written and performed by Kings of Leon 2 The Wind, written and performed by Cat Stevens 3 Fake Plastic Trees, written and performed by Radiohead 4 Even After All, written and performed by Finley Quaye 5* I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) by The Proclaimers, performed by Ash Cutler and Rachael Hawnt 6 Last Goodbye, written and performed by Jeff Buckley 7 6 Words by Jermaine Scott and Varren Wade, performed by Wretch 32 8 This Life by Ezra Koenig, Makonnen Sheran and Mark Ronson, performed by Vampire Weekend Book: 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez Luxury: a guitar * Choice if allowed only one record…

Shannon Airport, on Ireland’s west coast, was once a vital stop for planes refuelling during transatlantic crossings; it established the world’s first duty-free shop in 1947. But by the 1960s, passenger jets were able to make it across the pond without a break – leaving Shannon facing a bleak future. Its solution was to create what is believed to be the world’s first modern special economic zone: the idea being to “pull the planes out of the sky” by offering tax incentives and tariff reductions, to entice manufacturers there. It was a huge success, helping Shannon attract companies from abroad and creating a large number of jobs. It also served as an unlikely blueprint for China’s quest for growth. Shenzhen, China’s first special economic zone, opened in 1980, followed by…

HUNGARY Another blow to Hungary’s free press Der Standard (Vienna) For years, the news website Index has served as a beacon of free speech and trusted information in Hungary, says Balazs Csekö. While other independent media outlets were purchased by oligarchs with links to Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s nationalist Fidesz party in the past decade, Index stayed fiercely independent. Now, it too has fallen. In March, the company that controls its advertising was bought by an Orbán ally and, last month, its editor-in-chief was fired after warning that editorial integrity was at risk. When board members refused to reinstate him, some 70 of Index’s journalists responded by quitting. The site’s credibility went with them – and its loss will be keenly felt. “Professional and objective”, Index stood up for the…

Assembly work has begun in southern France on the world’s largest nuclear fusion reactor, says The Guardian. The H20bn (£18.2bn) Iter project, in planning since 1975, is the biggest engineering endeavour ever undertaken: the giant reactor will weigh 23,000 tonnes. It will include 3,000 tonnes of superconducting magnets and 200km of superconducting cables. Nuclear fusion, which occurs when hydrogen atoms fuse together, releases vast amounts of energy – far more than nuclear fission – and promises unlimited clean power. But the atoms must be heated to temperatures of 150 million °C (or ten times hotter than the core of the Sun), and safely achieving such temperatures is a challenge. The Iter project is scheduled to start generating super-hot plasma in 2025, but it will not produce energy that can be…

Things have got to a pretty pass when we need legislation enabling university staff “to question and test received wisdom within the law”, said Celia Walden in The Daily Telegraph. It’s like “telling a baker he is free to bake bread without fear of reprisals”. Yet that was one of the proposals of a depressing report published this week by Policy Exchange highlighting the threat to free speech on campuses. From a survey of 820 academics, the think tank claims that nearly a third – 32% – of those with right-wing views had stopped openly airing opinions in either their teachings or their research, compared with 15% of those self-defined as “very left”. Policy Exchange also suggests that while 86% of the academics would be comfortable sitting next to a…

“The first half of our lives is ruined by our parents; the second half by our children.” Lawyer Clarence Darrow, quoted in Reader’s Digest “Joy is the feeling of one’s powers increasing.” Nietzsche, quoted in The Observer “No mockery in this world ever sounds to me so hollow as that of being told to cultivate happiness. What does such advice mean? Happiness is not a potato.” Charlotte Brontë, quoted in The Sunday Times “Freedom is not a state; it is an act. It is not some enchanted garden perched high on a distant plateau where we can finally sit down and rest. Freedom is the continuous action we all must take.” Civil Rights leader John Lewis, quoted in Essence “Technology is a way of organising the universe so that man…

“It will be remembered, fondly, as a tennis experiment that delivered more than anyone expected,” said Kevin Mitchell in The Guardian. Over seven days in the midst of a pandemic, the “best available British players” took part, “for the fun of it”, in a televised team event organised by Jamie Murray. The “Battle of the Brits”, which concluded last Sunday, may not have counted for money or rankings points, but it was a valuable opportunity for “old hands” to test their form, and for young players to gain “fresh recognition”. Among those who bolstered their credentials were 21-year-old Jodie Burrage, who recorded a shock victory over world No. 14 Johanna Konta, and “19-year-old Anton Matusevich (ATP-ranked 564), whose broad shoulders delivered a lot of heavyweight forehands”. Of better-known players, the…

The crime movie is a genre that has produced some of the greatest thrills in the history of cinema. Here are some of the best examples from the past five years: Can You Ever Forgive Me? Melissa McCarthy is fabulously abrasive as Lee Israel in this biopic about the boozy, misanthropic, cat-loving writer who revived her flagging finances in 1990s New York by fabricating and flogging letters from famous writers of the past. No less mesmerising is Richard E. Grant as her raddled drinking buddy, Jack Hock. Sicario Emily Blunt plays an idealistic FBI agent whose principles are sorely tested in the brutal war on drugs along the border between the US and Mexico. The violence is gruelling, but the blurring of moral lines is thought-provoking, and director Denis Villeneuve…

At the outbreak of the Second World War, the pioneering Russian sculptor Naum Gabo moved to the Cornish fishing port of St Ives, said Rachel Spence in the FT – joining a flourishing artistic community there that included Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth. So it is “fitting” that the first major exhibition in the UK devoted to Gabo’s work in over 30 years should take place here. He was part of “a vibrant generation of Russian creatives who called themselves Constructivists”. They believed that there should be “no boundaries between disciplines, and that materials should be modern and mass-produced”. Gabo’s thrillingly futuristic sculptures, which drew as much on industrial design as they did art history, were a visual testament to this vision. As Stalin’s regime became ever more repressive, the…

Tips of the week... camping for non-campers ● For adults, it’s always nice to have a tent you can stand up in; if you’re new to camping, a bit of extra space will make life a lot more pleasant. A porch is useful for storing muddy boots and other things. ● People often wake up very early in a tent because the light streams in. Some tents now have walls made of blackout material. ● Get solar lighting, and a power bank for charging your devices. The two can often be found in one gadget, such as a HUBi 10k. A head torch is handy, as is a tarpaulin, whether the kids use it to make a den or you use it to create dry space on wet ground. ●…

UK banks: troubled times Caught as it is in an escalating cold war between China and the US, HSBC has its own peculiar set of troubles. Even so, this week’s results were a shocker, said Callum Jones in The Times. News that the pre-tax profits of Britain’s largest bank had fallen by 65% (from $12.4bn to $4.3bn) in the first half of the year – a far greater hit than markets had expected – “sent its shares to their lowest level in more than a decade”. HSBC makes the bulk of its profits in Asia, said Alex Brummer in the Daily Mail. But a similar tale of woe is playing out at Lloyds Bank, which is heavily focused on Britain. Lloyds is one of the biggest players in the…

Controversy of the week The house of cronies “Perhaps it could have been worse,” said Martin Fletcher in the New Statesman. Boris Johnson could have elevated the Tory stalwart Chris “Failing” Grayling to the House of Lords “for his many disservices” to the British people. But even without that, this was a “shocking” honours list, one of the worst in recent memory. The “sheer cronyism” at work here will only further discredit an already “tarnished” Lords, said The Guardian. Among Johnson’s nominees for a peerage were: newspaper owner Evgeny Lebedev, whose London Evening Standard has been consistently helpful; billionaire businessman Michael Spencer, who has given £5m to the Tories; his own brother Jo, a former Conservative MP; and cricketer Ian Botham, apparently because he championed Brexit in 2016. There were,…

Chideock, a village in coastal Dorset, which was found to have the worst air pollution in England. Friends of the Earth monitored 1,360 sites and found that it was the worst for toxic NO2 fumes. It sits on the A35, and in summer, 20,000 vehicles pass every day. A Sheffield man, whose plan for a romantic marriage proposal ended in disaster. He lit hundreds of tealight candles before picking up his girlfriend for the “big moment”. When the couple returned they found his flat in flames. Fortunately, no one was injured and, according to the fire service, “she still said yes”. Poetry, after schools were given the green light to drop it from the GCSE syllabus for the first time, in the 2021 exams, due to the pandemic (though there…

47% of British adults say they always maintain social distancing when spending time with family and friends. For those aged 70 and over, the proportion is 70%. Overall, 31% say they often follow measures, 13% sometimes do, and 8% rarely or never do. 84% of Britons who went out in the week to 26 July wore face coverings at some point, up from 61% two weeks earlier. ONS/The Guardian 85% of Tory party members think Boris Johnson is doing well as Prime Minister, and 89% think he should remain as party leader. 76% say he should lead the Tories into the next election. If he did not, Rishi Sunak is well in the lead to replace him. In a head-to-head against his nearest rival, Dominic Raab, Sunak wins by 75%…

Washington DC Dangerous new phase: There were tentative hopes this week that the second wave of Covid-19 cases in the US, which began climbing in mid-June, might have peaked. The rolling average of new daily infections started to trend downwards from last week’s high of almost 70,000 a day. However, Deborah Birx, a senior member of the White House’s Covid task force, warned that the coronavirus crisis was entering a new and more dangerous phase, in which infections were now “extraordinarily widespread” across the US, instead of clustering in a few states and big cities. The US had more than 1.9 million new infections in July, nearly 40% of the 4.9 million cases nationwide since the pandemic began. In response, President Trump tweeted that Birx’s assessment was “pathetic”. He insisted:…

“The Rhodes Must Fall campaign has reached new heights in north London, with a call to rename Rhodes Avenue Primary School in Muswell Hill, despite it being (a) named not after a man but a street and (b) that street being named not after Cecil, but an entirely different Rhodes. This one was a local landowner born 91 years before his great-nephew, whom he almost certainly didn’t meet. But that doesn’t bother the campaigners, who insist that ‘when most people hear the name Rhodes, they think about Cecil Rhodes’. Very true, very true. When I hear the name Martin Luther King, I think of his advocation of the slaughter of Jews. Oh no, wait, that was Martin Luther. Meh, same name though.” Giles Coren in The Times…

Women could be the losers of the lockdown Mary Dejevsky The Independent More family time, no costly commute, quieter streets – it’s no surprise that many Britons are reluctant to return to the office, says Mary Dejevsky. Once summer ends, though, people will likely start drifting back. And my fear is that most of them are going to be men. Both surveys and anecdotal evidence suggests that many households reverted to stereotypical gender roles during the lockdown, with working women performing the lion’s share of homeschooling, shopping and cleaning. This may explain why, in the world of academic research, men’s productivity reportedly rose, while that of women fell. We must guard against this trend in future. As workplaces shrink in size in response to the fact that more people can…

Facial recognition for birds Scientists have developed an AI tool capable of doing something humans can’t: recognising individual birds. To help them keep track of birds during field observations, biologists usually attach tags to their legs. This method, however, has its flaws: tagging the birds is time-consuming, and when they are in their nests, the tags often aren’t visible. While studying the cooperative nest-building of sociable weaver birds in South Africa, PhD student André Ferreira began to wonder if machine learning could be a solution. He and some colleagues built a programme similar to the kind of facial recognition software used by Facebook, then fed it hundreds of tagged images of various birds. They found that once the machine had “learned” the bird, it could recognise it with an accuracy…

The Government is plotting a “revolution” in England’s planning laws, said Will Hurst in The Architects’ Journal. This week, Robert Jenrick, the Housing Secretary, announced that he would tear up the “outdated” rules which he says have held back development and kept young people off the property ladder. Instead, in what he called a “once in a generation reform”, Jenrick proposed a “simpler, faster” new system which will make it easier to convert derelict buildings and empty shops into affordable housing. Ministers plan to pass legislation forcing local authorities to designate land in one of three categories: “growth”, “renewal” or “protection”. In the first, permission to build new homes, hospitals, schools, shops and offices will be granted “automatically”; in the second, “permission in principle” will be granted, though officials will…

Any “connoisseur of political assassinations” would have to “admit it was neatly done”, said Andrew Tickell in The National. Jackson Carlaw, the leader of the Scottish Conservatives, resigned suddenly last Thursday. But many felt that he had been pushed none too gently towards the exit, just six months after he was elected leader – “unsentimentally tumbled into a taxi, bag and baggage”, by the men in the grey suits. In his resignation speech, Carlaw even publicly confessed to his shortcomings – as at a 1930s Moscow show trial. He admitted that he was “not, in the present circumstances, the person best placed” to lead the Scottish Conservatives, and to put the case for the Union in the lead-up to the vital Holyrood elections in May 2021. The party, he said,…

For the first 49 laps of Sunday’s Grand Prix at Silverstone, it looked like it would be “business as usual”, said Giles Richards in The Guardian. Having occupied the first two positions on the grid, Lewis Hamilton and his Mercedes teammate Valtteri Bottas opened up a “comfortable lead” over the field. It was yet further proof – if proof were needed – of the utter dominance of Formula One by the “well-oiled Mercedes machine”. But then, with two laps remaining, the complexion of the race abruptly changed. First, Bottas’s front left tyre delaminated – a structural collapse due to wear – forcing the Finn into the pit. (He finished 11th.) Minutes later, “lightning struck twice”: one-third of the way into his final lap – and with a 31-second lead over…

Hands-on GPs To The Times The Health Secretary wants a shift towards more telephone and video consultations, and suggests that all consultations should be done this way unless there is a compelling clinical reason to be seen in person. I find this extremely disturbing. I have seen two cases of “concealed pregnancy” in my career as a GP. This is where a woman presents late in pregnancy with seemingly no idea she is pregnant, or in deep psychological denial. In both cases, the history gave no clue as the women had not realised they had missed periods and the symptom was mild intermittent abdominal pain and indigestion. Baggy clothes concealed the eight-month baby bump until she hopped up on the examination couch. I was then able to feel the head,…

The End in Trafalgar Square Months late because of the pandemic, the 13th contemporary art commission for the vacant fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square was unveiled last Thursday, said Naomi Rea on ArtNet News. Over nine metres tall, Heather Phillipson’s The End depicts “a towering pile of whipped cream topped with a great red cherry”. A huge fly crawls on the cream, while a drone on the cherry sends a live CCTV feed to a dedicated website. Although playful, it has a dystopian edge: the cream, “piled high and on the verge of collapse, is a gesture towards the excesses of globalised society”; the drone “is a comment on institutionalised surveillance”. The fourth plinth project “was a great idea when it started”, said Rachel Campbell-Johnston in The Times. Over the…

Harrison is transforming Woodbine Cottage into a “holiday at home” destination as a surprise for Fallon. Although she’s tired after her day at work, Fallon is impressed by all the effort he’s gone to. Their romantic break is cut short when Harrison’s brother unexpectedly drops off his toddler Daisy for a few days’ babysitting. Clearing out the attic, Tony finds John’s old train set and decides he’ll give it to Johnny for his birthday. Johnny’s heart is set on a car – he’s saved money but decides to try his luck on £50 of scratch cards. He wishes Tony would give him cash rather than his dad’s train set – there’s no room for it at 1 The Green. Joy felt a bit isolated during lockdown and is still worried…

Campania & Jones 23 Ezra Street, London E2 (020-7613 0015) This “deliciously photogenic” Italian in Hackney, housed in a former dairy, has long been one of my favourite restaurants, says Marina O’Loughlin in The Sunday Times. I love the “hand-knitted quality” of the place, and chef Paolo De Martino’s “proper Italian food with, as the name suggests, a Campanian slant”. Heading there for my first post-lockdown restaurant meal, I was pleased to find it “as lovely as ever” – despite one or two almost comical restrictions, including having to ask staff if you can get up to use the loo. The menu here has always been short – removing the need for “Covidinduced” adaptations – and almost every dish delivered “exactly the thrill” I wanted it to. There was “oozy,…

Allsix V100 volleyball Beach volleyball is a great way to get everyone moving, and you don’t have to be good to enjoy it. Designed for beginners, this ball is relatively light and should be easy for children to grip (£6; decathlon.co.uk). Sunnylife underwater camera Aimed at children aged eight and over, this colourful camera can be used both under and above water. It has a secure waterproof casing and takes 35mm film, which is not included (£18; scandiborn. co.uk). OceanBound Tide Pool Set Great for making shapes in the sand, this colourful plastic set contains shells, a jellyfish, squid and starfish. They come in a neat basket, and everything is made from 100% recycled plastic (£25; kidly.co.uk). Quut Alto sandcastle builder This clever, three-part set makes it easy for children…

The gold price broke a new record, rising above $2,000 for the first time, as investors hunted down havens amid rising Covid-19 cases. Sweden, which avoided a lockdown, reported that its economy shrank 8.6% in the April-to-June period – the largest quarterly fall for 40 years, but better than other EU nations that took stricter measures. On Wall Street, the Nasdaq index hit another all-time high, fuelled by buoyant quarterly earnings reported by US tech giants. Argentina reached a last-minute deal with creditors on $65bn of debt, thereby avoiding another default. In Britain, job losses on the high street continued to mount. Retail chain DW Sports collapsed with the loss of 1,700 jobs, Hays Travel is to cut 900 jobs, WHSmith said it may have to axe 1,500 jobs and…

● Golden heights Let’s hear it for gold, said LaToya Harding in The Daily Telegraph. After a “record-breaking” run, the price of the yellow metal has breached the $2,000-an-ounce level “for the first time ever”, as the combination of a falling dollar, low interest rates and a drop in bond yields sent investors worried about Covid-19 scurrying for protection. Will the price rise still further? You betcha, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch, which now expects gold, which has rocketed by around 33% this year, to hit $3,000 by early 2022, alongside significant gains in other precious and industrial metals. The industry bellwether, copper, is up by 6% this year, while silver is up by 37%, said David Campbell on Citywire. Seasoned gold watchers point out that, adjusted for…

The “rabbit hole” of negative rates Russell Lynch The Daily Telegraph When the former European Central Bank president Mario Draghi cut the ECB deposit rate further into negative territory last September, the German tabloid Bild dressed him up as “Count Draghila” and accused him of sucking German savers dry. There is a lesson there for the Bank of England as it contemplates stimulating the economy by taking interest rates (currently languishing at 0.1%) into negative territory, says Russell Lynch. The policy is fraught with what-ifs. There’s the issue of “how low can you go” before savers simply remove their cash from banks. And the evidence of whether negative rates actually work is “mixed”. But one of the best reasons for avoiding this rabbit hole is simply that “talking about it…

Dog thefts rose by 65% between 23 March and 1 June compared with the same period last year, thanks to surging demand and prices, the not-for-profit organisation DogLost has said. In the past two months, 40 dogs have been taken in Cambridgeshire, Suffolk and Norfolk alone. A petition calling for pet theft to be made a specific offence has reached 76,900 signatures. Parishioners at a Grade II-listed church in Dorset have been protesting a decision to replace its Victorian pews with chairs in order to save obese brides and grooms from the “embarrassment” of having to squeeze down the 3ft 8in aisle. Authorities at St Andrew’s Church in Okeford Fitzpaine have said the pews are ill-suited to the “human form of today”.…

The Health Secretary Matt Hancock faced a backlash from medical groups this week after he laid out plans for all GP appointments to be conducted remotely, unless there is a “compelling clinical reason not to”. In a speech to the Royal College of Physicians (RCP), Hancock said there had been a “hugely positive” response to virtual appointments during the coronavirus pandemic – and that it was patronising to claim that older patients could not handle the technology. However, the chair of the RCP said that ”a predominantly remote service wouldn’t be in anybody’s best interests”.…

Edinburgh Making the grade: Schoolchildren in Scotland became the first in the UK to receive their exam results this week – based on pupils’ previous grades, coursework assessment and teachers’ judgement, after the pandemic forced the cancellation of public exams. Around 138,000 students found out their grades in National 5s, Highers and Advanced Highers on Tuesday. Overall, pass rates rose – A-C grade rates in National 5s, equivalent to GCSEs, rose by 2.9%. However, 133,000 individual grades – about a quarter of the total number – were moderated down from predicted grades by exam boards. Scottish teaching unions raised concerns over the transparency of the moderation process. According to Labour education spokesperson Iain Gray, this “shroud of secrecy” is likely to lead to a record number of appeals from pupils…

Patrick Stewart’s refuge Sir Patrick Stewart exudes calm confidence on screen; but for him, acting was originally a refuge from self-loathing. Now 80, he was brought up in a one-up, one-down terraced house in Yorkshire. For his first five years, his father was away, fighting the War. Money was short but his mother smothered him with love, and made a happy home. But when his father came back, that changed. “He was a stranger to us,” he told Kirsty Lang in The Sunday Times. “He’d drink at the weekends, get angry and hit my mother. I would put my body between them to protect her.” Then, at secondary school, he joined a drama club. “The first moment that I walked onto the school stage I felt safe – it was…

A council worker who accidentally played pornography in a staff meeting has been sacked – after a tribunal rejected his “implausible story” that the noises were, in fact, made by a goose. Staff broke into awkward laughter when David West, an electrician for Redditch Borough Council, played footage of a woman making loud “sexual moans” for about 30 seconds during a meeting with 100 colleagues. When bosses confronted him, West insisted the since-deleted video, sent on WhatsApp, had shown a “goose honking”. Colleagues disputed his story. “I know the sound of a goose,” said one, “and it wasn’t [that].” An employment tribunal rejected his claim for unfair dismissal. YouTube has witnessed a new viral phenomenon, described by one keen user as: “A random guy doing absolutely nothing for two hours.”…

SOMALIA The shock-waves of a corona hajj Foreign Policy (Washington DC) In normal times, Muslims from around the world would have been flocking to Mecca this week as part of the annual hajj pilgrimage, says Ahmed Khalif. Not this year. As a result of the coronavirus pandemic, attendance was limited to only 1,000 people. It must be strange for the Saudis to see their airports and hotels so quiet during this religious season, but the “economic shockwaves” from the minimalist hajj have been felt well beyond their country. One of the worst-affected places is Somalia. To feed the 2.5 million pilgrims who take part in a typical hajj, Saudi Arabia imports more than three million animals, which also includes livestock for sacrifice. Many of these come from Somalia, which typically…

Almost a quarter of the UK’s 47 native mammals are now at risk of imminent extinction, according to a new report. In total, 11 mammals are on the country’s first official Red List of endangered species – compiled according to internationally agreed rules. The wildcat and the greater mouse-eared bat are classified as critically endangered. The beaver, red squirrel, water vole and grey long-eared bat are endangered, while the hedgehog, hazel dormouse, Orkney vole, serotine bat and barbastelle bat are classed as vulnerable. Although each species is facing particular pressures, the team behind the report say that a common theme is that for wild mammals to flourish, we need to leave more connected areas of wild landscape for them to live in. “While we bemoan the demise of wildlife in…

The erotic Roman extravaganza Caligula featured the likes of Helen Mirren, John Gielgud and Peter O’Toole alongside adult stars, who shot sex scenes that were spliced in later. The film was an all-round disaster; but it was fun to make, recalls Malcolm McDowell, who played the mad emperor. He shared a villa with Gielgud, who would loudly lament the state of his finances. “I’d say, ‘Well you’ve got a huge house, John.’ He’d say: ‘Oh yes, but I can’t sell that.’ ‘Well OK, but don’t you have a chauffeur-driven Rolls?’ ‘But – how do you think I’m going to get into London?’ ‘How about the train?’ ‘Oh, but I couldn’t do that. The train indeed!’ And I’d say: ‘Well, that’s why you’re having to do movies like this one, John.’”…

There was “an outpouring of nostalgia” last Thursday at the news that part of our national heritage had gone, said Michael Hogan in The Daily Telegraph. A famous British artist hadn’t died, nor had a historic building collapsed. “No, this was the announcement that after 47 years and one billion copies, the Argos catalogue was going online-only.” “So farewell then, Laminated Book of Dreams,” lamented Bill Bailey on Twitter. At its height, Argos’s brochure, issued every January and July, was Europe’s most widely printed publication; only the Bible eclipsed it in terms of ubiquity. For millions of children, the Argos catalogue was “a portal to a fantasy world”: imagine having a Sinclair ZX Spectrum computer, a Bush colour TV, a Toshiba ghetto blaster, a Space Hopper, a Swingball! In some…

The 139th FA Cup Final – and the first to unfold without fans – was “never going to be a cagey affair”, said Jonathan Northcroft in The Sunday Times. It was played on a “snooker-table surface” between two teams more comfortable going forward than staying back. And it proved to be a “seesawing”, “wonderfully entertaining” contest, graced by a magical winning chip from Arsenal’s Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, to follow his penalty equaliser in the first half. Before the match, the stakes felt higher for the Gunners, said David Hytner in The Observer: while Chelsea had already secured a Champions League berth, Arsenal needed a victory just to compete in Europe. With his 28th and 29th goals of the season, Aubameyang gave them a place in the Europa Cup. Once again, he…

To The Daily Telegraph I read with interest Emily Strasser’s article about her grandfather’s involvement in making the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. My family were living in the Far East when Japan entered the War. The Japanese set up more than 300 concentration camps for white women and children around the Dutch East Indies – and, although we were a mixed-race family, my mother, myself and my two siblings were incarcerated on Java for almost four years. We shared a three-bedroom bungalow with 100 other women and children. We were starved, beaten, hit with bayonets, tortured and forced to stand and bow to the emperor for hours in the sun. There was almost no food, water or medication. Many did not survive. My father was taken to work as a…

Ian Bostridge and Antonio Pappano: Beethoven – Songs and Folksongs Warner £13 This disc of Beethoven’s lieder and folksongs, with tenor Ian Bostridge and the “ever-flexible pianist” Antonio Pappano, is notably wide-ranging, said Fiona Maddocks in The Observer. An die ferne Geliebte – six songs written to a distant beloved, and reckoned to be the first song cycle ever written – is nicely rendered here. The settings of Goethe texts include the half-crazed The Song of the Flea from Faust, and the heartfelt Sehnsucht (Longing). Bostridge and Pappano “handle both the wriggly wit of the first and the barely suppressed anguish of the second with customary grace”. Lieder specialist Bostridge has a 30-year career behind him, yet sounds “distinctive and youthful” in Beethoven’s setting of the Matthisson love poem Adelaide,…

Condensing Vikram Seth’s vast, glorious novel of 1950s India into a six-part television drama was never going to be easy, but the BBC has done a fine job of A Suitable Boy, said Anita Singh in The Daily Telegraph. The choice of screenwriter – a white Welshman, Andrew Davies – was controversial, but Seth wanted him, and besides, the whole cast is Indian (a BBC first) as is the director, Mira Nair. The heroine Lata, played with “great charm” by Tanya Maniktala, is a Hindu girl who risks her mother’s wrath when she falls in love with a Muslim boy. It is “deeply romantic”, and visually “gorgeous”. “This was Pride and Prejudice, south Asian-style,” said Camilla Long in The Sunday Times, with all its “nonstop crapping on” about marriage and…

The broadcaster and historian chooses his favourite books. His latest book – co-authored with his wife, journalist Ann MacMillan – is The Treasures of World History (Welbeck £30), the story of civilisation told through 50 documents East West Street by Philippe Sands, 2016 (Weidenfeld & Nicolson £9.99). An international lawyer’s account of his quest for the real story of what happened to his family in Nazi-occupied Poland. It is an arresting read throughout and what makes it so powerful is that it’s all true. Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman, 1960 (Vintage £10.99). This novel, translated from the Russian, brings alive the story of Stalingrad as forcefully in fiction as Antony Beevor did in his horrifying true account. An epic on the titanic scale of War and Peace, it paints…

The August Bank Holiday sees the return of Greenwich + Docklands International Festival with a full programme of free outdoor theatre and spectacles. Some of the work will respond directly to recent events, such as Luke Jerram’s evocative Covid installation In Memoriam (28-31 August) featuring bedsheets. Performances include The Weavers of Woolwich (28 August), with prose-poetry by Booker Prizewinner Bernardine Evaristo, and Flemish theatre company de Roovers’s site-specific production Blue Remembered Hills (8-12 September). Runs 28 August-12 September (festival.org/GDIF).…

On its celebrated tours of the English countryside, Giffords Circus is accompanied by its 60-seater travelling restaurant, which puts on a three-course dinner for the final performance each evening. This delicious lamb recipe is taken from its recently published cookbook, co-written by the circus’s late co-founder, Nell Gifford (pictured), and head chef Ols Halas. Serves 2 2-3 heads of black cabbage (cavolo nero) 2 garlic cloves, peeled 1 small bunch of parsley, leaves picked 6-7 mint leaves 3 anchovies, roughly chopped 1 tbsp Dijon mustard 2 tbsp capers squeeze of lemon juice 2 x 200g lamb rumps, skin removed and fat scored sea salt and black pepper • Take the cavolo nero and strip the leaves away from the stalks. Throw the stripped leaves into a saucepan of salted boiling…

The pioneering designer who helped create Ziggy Stardust Kansai Yamamoto 1944-2020 Kansai Yamamoto, who has died aged 76, was a hugely influential fashion designer, and the first Japanese designer to hold a show in London. Though his wildly colourful, almost sculptural garments had legions of admirers, he is perhaps best known for the outfits that he produced for, and in collaboration with, David Bowie. Central to the musician’s Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane periods, these included Bowie’s famous “Tokyo Pop” bodysuit with its billowing legs and red kabuki boots. It was Yamamoto’s favourite design, and a standout of the David Bowie Is exhibition, which toured the world for five years after opening at the V&A in 2013. Yamamoto had first clapped eyes on Bowie in 1973. A friend had telephoned…

The last time BP slashed its dividend was a decade ago, when it was fighting to survive the Deepwater Horizon environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, said The Economist. This week, CEO Bernard Looney picked up the axe again – halving the oil giant’s second-quarter shareholder payouts, from 10.5 cents a share to 5.25 cents, because of “industry-wide losses caused by the Covid-19 pandemic”. The move is a major blow to FTSE 100 income investors. BP was one of the index’s “dividend holdouts”, having resisted trimming its payout at its first-quarter results, when rival Shell bit the bullet, said Cat Rutter Pooley in the Financial Times. And it seems that “the dividend will stay stuck at the new level in quarters to come”. Rather than ramping it up again…

Self-help is now an $11bn industry, says Chris Taylor on MashableUK. But, ultimately, every guide can be boiled down to 11 simple rules: 1. Take one small step. Your daily habits aren’t just important, they are the key to improvement. 2. Change your mental maps. If you believe it, you can achieve it – so long as you plan properly too. 3. Struggle is good. Scary is good. Learn to expect – and even welcome – the worst, instead of fearing it. 4. Instant judgement is bad. Particularly when making snap assessments of other people. 5. Remember the end of your life. A call to action, carpe diem etc. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos calls it “regret minimisation”. 6. Be playful. Cultivating your quirks is the key to creativity. Life is too…

Jim Chanos A titan of the $3.2trn hedge-fund industry, Jim Chanos has been cast as the “Darth Vader of Wall Street” and the “Catastrophe Capitalist”, said the FT. Two decades ago, he made a fortune predicting the demise of Enron – and he clearly hasn’t lost his touch. “If you’re a fundamental short seller, the Wirecard story was a classic,” he observes, after scooping $100m betting against the imploded German payments company. Chanos predicts plenty more opportunities ahead. This is a “golden age for fraud” in which “corporate wrongdoers” have been allowed to flourish, he says, citing a raft of factors – from the ten-year bull market and Silicon Valley’s “fake it till you make it” culture to lax regulatory oversight and the arrival of Trumpian “post-truth in politics”. It’s…