Table of contents for 1580 in The Week

Controversy of the week Defining terrorism The “dangerous fanatics” of Palestine Action have been given a “free pass” to continue promoting hatred and committing acts of violent disorder, said The Sun. Last Friday, the High Court ruled that the Government’s decision to proscribe the group as a terrorist organisation had been unlawful. Palestine Action had, the three judges accepted, carried out some acts of terrorism, said Alistair Gray in the Financial Times. But they ruled that the challenge to the ban – which was put in place last July, after activists broke into RAF Brize Norton and damaged two planes – was successful on two main legal grounds. The first was that the decision to outlaw the group amounted to “unjustified interference” with the right to freedom of expression and…

Restaurants are catering to diners on fat jabs by offering “one-bite” desserts, The Daily Telegraph reports. In London, Corenucopia offers a profiterole dessert featuring just one profiterole (though it has a mini profiterole inside it); while diners at Town can enjoy a regular-sized buttermilk pudding – or opt for a “half-pud” portion, priced at £6. Overcrowding on Mount Everest has reached such a pitch that Nepal is to bring in a law requiring those who wish to climb the mountain to have conquered a 7,000m peak before. The law follows a string of ill-fated amateur attempts at Everest in recent years, including in 2024 by a Singaporean couple who attempted to reach base camp with their four-year-old son, Atlas, who suffered from acute altitude sickness.…

Brussels Antisemitism row: Belgium’s government summoned the US ambassador this week, after he demanded that his hosts stop the “antisemitic persecution” of Jewish Belgians. Trump appointee Bill White was referring to the case of three Jewish men who were arrested in Antwerp last May on suspicion of carrying out ritual circumcisions without medical training. On social media, White said the arrests were “ridiculous”, and amounted to “harassment”. He said the mohelim (circumcisers) were doing what they’d been trained to do “for thousands of years”, and questioned why the arrests came now. Noting that ritual circumcision by medical practitioners is legal, Belgium’s foreign minister, Maxime Prévot, said that it was “insulting and unacceptable” to suggest that Belgium is antisemitic, and accused White of violating “basic diplomatic norms” by criticising local officials…

1 Rehab, written and performed by Amy Winehouse 2 Just Walkin’ in the Rain by Johnny Bragg and Robert Riley, performed by Johnnie Ray 3 Cosmic Dancer by Marc Bolan, performed by T. Rex 4 Positively 4th Street, written and performed by Bob Dylan 5* Point Blank, written and performed by Bruce Springsteen 6 Isn’t It a Pity, written and performed by George Harrison 7 A Beautiful Day by Freddie Mercury, Brian May, Roger Taylor and John Deacon, performed by Queen 8 The Gypsy’s Wife, written and performed by Leonard Cohen Book: Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse Luxury: caviar * Choice if allowed only one record…

Statistically, flying remains the safest way to travel. Globally, 12 million people board planes every day; yet over the past five years, an average of far fewer than one passenger per day has been killed. (By way of context, about 1,600 people in the UK die in car crashes per year.) That said, any aviation accident resulting in a high-speed collision with ground or sea usually has a terrible human cost. And though extremely rare, there have been at least seven other probable cases of pilot suicide on commercial flights. On Royal Air Maroc flight 630 in 1994, the captain deliberately crashed, killing 44 people. In 1997, 104 died when SilkAir flight 185 fell into water off Sumatra. Official investigations pointed to possible suicide by the pilot. In 2013, the…

Rebuilding for another conflagration Jonathan Vigliotti Los Angeles Times A year on from the worst fire in its history, Los Angeles is “racing at breakneck speed to rebuild”, says Jonathan Vigliotti. It reflects the eagerness of city and state leaders to be ready for the 2028 Summer Olympics, but “in the sprint for gold, public safety is being sidelined”. The fires were barely out before officials got to work. Planning permissions were fast-tracked; environmental reviews into new development in high-risk terrain were suspended; homes were allowed to be rebuilt closer together, “often in the same fire corridors that had just failed”. As part of his “LA Rises” initiative to support reconstruction, California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, enlisted basketball legend Magic Johnson and Dodgers chairman Mark Walter – men “versed in sports…

Statins have far fewer side effects than previously thought, a review has concluded. About eight million Britons take the cholesterol-lowering drugs to cut their risk of heart attacks and strokes, and it is estimated that millions more would benefit from them – but many are put off by the scores of reported side effects listed on the packaging, which include depression, memory loss and disturbed sleep. To find out if all these are directly linked to the drugs, a University of Oxford team examined the results of trials involving 123,940 people who’d either taken statins or a placebo. Of the 66 listed side effects analysed, 62 occurred at similar rates in both groups. This indicates that, for most people, the benefits of taking statins considerably outweigh the risks, say the…

“At the height of the madness, from which I think we are now in merciful and terminal retreat, a Scottish schoolboy announced that he identified as a wolf and was apparently indulged in this fantasy by his teachers,” said Rod Liddle in The Sunday Times. Fast forward to last week, and the Education Secretary, Bridget Phillipson, unveiled her new draft guidance for England on school pupils who are questioning their gender. Following the Supreme Court ruling last April, that under equality law the terms “sex”, “man” and “woman” referred to biological sex, it seems that we are “90% back to sanity” – in schools, at least. The new guidance makes clear that gender identity doesn’t trump sex. Boys who believe themselves to be girls cannot go in the girls’ toilets…

“Diplomacy is the art of telling people to go to hell in such a way that they ask for directions.”Attributed to Winston Churchill, quoted on UnHerd “No matter how cynical you get, it is impossible to keep up.”Lily Tomlin, quoted in the New York Post “That’s how marriage goes. It begins with sex and it finishes with Scrabble.”David Hamilton in The Daily Telegraph “Don’t let your sorrow come higher than your knees.”Swedish proverb, quoted in the Boston Herald “There is no passion like that of a functionary for his function.”Georges Clemenceau, quoted on HuffPost “Television is an invention that permits you to be entertained in your living room by people you wouldn’t have in your home.”David Frost, quoted in The Big Issue “It is hard to get rich doing something…

To The Guardian As someone diagnosed with inattentive ADHD in my late 40s, I found Gavin Francis’s article deeply frustrating. Until my diagnosis, I considered myself “functional”. What I didn’t recognise was how much of my life had been spent masking, compensating and blaming myself for difficulties I couldn’t explain. The diagnosis didn’t reduce me to a label – it gave me a framework to finally understand my own brain. Inattentive ADHD is hard to spot and often missed until later in life, which makes scepticism from friends, family – and sometimes clinicians – common. Articles such as this can reinforce that disbelief by framing rising diagnoses as largely cultural or lifestyle-driven. I agree that mental health care should be holistic, and that not all distress requires a medical label.…

“If the new Archbishop of Canterbury needs a spot of encouragement in these turbulent times,” said Clive Davis in The Times, “she might take comfort in the fact that an old-school, well-made play about a Christian intellectual can still find an audience in the West End.” Although, of course, it helps that this “elegant revival” of Shadowlands, William Nicholson’s 1989 play about C.S. Lewis and his late-flowering love for the American poet Joy Davidman, features “a star as bankable” as Hugh Bonneville. The play packs a considerable spiritual and emotional journey into two hours, said Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph. It features a slow-burn courtship, a romantic awakening, a shocking terminal illness and a crisis of faith. Yet Rachel Kavanaugh’s production gives the story “the vital, unifying aura of…

Soon after it opened in 1967, the Southbank Centre in London was voted Britain’s ugliest building by readers of the Daily Mail. Now the arts complex has been granted Grade II listed status, meaning that any attempt to alter the brutalist structure, with its concrete walkways and terraces, will face strict oversight. Heritage bodies had first applied for the complex – which incorporates the Hayward Gallery, the Purcell Room, the Queen Elizabeth Hall and a skate park – to have protected status in 1991, arguing that far from being a concrete “monstrosity”, it was in fact a fine example of postwar design, but successive ministers rejected the idea. “Brutalism has finally come of age,” said Catherine Croft of the Twentieth Century Society last week, in response to the news. She…

Programmes Dirty Business Three-part fact-based drama about two men who joined forces to take on the water companies when the fish in their local river started dying. With David Thewlis and Jason Watkins. Mon 23-Wed 25 Feb, C4 21:00 (65mins). Storyville: Rebuilding Bucha Documentary filmed over three years, focusing on five residents of the Ukrainian town as they rebuild their lives after the 2022 Russian occupation. Tue 24 Feb, BBC4 22:00 (90mins). LS Lowry: The Unheard Tapes Film exploring the life of the artist, using tapes of interviews he gave four years before his death in 1976, lip-synced by Ian McKellen. Wed 25 Feb, BBC2 21:00 (60mins). The Stolen Girl Denise Gough stars in this gripping – if a tad implausible – thriller about a child abduction that causes a social media…

Grain of Truth on the outskirts of Lincoln sells slow-fermented breads and pastries, made from organic spring wheat flour, at two-hour slots on weekends. Don’t miss the cheese twists (gotbakery.co.uk). Run by a father and son, Loaf in Crich, Derbyshire, uses different grains to make sourdough, spelt and rye breads. They also run baking workshops and serve takeaway pizza on Wednesdays (theloaf.co.uk). Acre Farm near Framlingham, Suffolk, is family-run too, with a short menu of buns, sourdough and malted loaves. Monthly bread subscription from £16 (acrefarm.org). Cosgriff and Sons in York makes “colossal” sandwiches, including kimchi and blue cheese with a coriander and peanut salsa, or braised leeks, rarebit and crispy shallots (cosgriffandsonsbakery.com). Bradbourne Bakery in Sevenoaks, Kent, has a Great Taste award for its sourdough. All of its produce is…

The Royal George Tintern, Monmouthshire Set in the heart of Tintern, this inn is a great base from which to explore the Wye Valley, says Huw Oliver in The Times. Its 20 rooms are stylish, with lots of “earthy” colours and “modern comforts” such as vast chrome radiators and Melin Tregwynt throws. Those in the old building are particularly “cosy”, but the garden rooms in an annexe are brighter. All the bathrooms have walk-in showers. Service is excellent, and there’s a café, a pizzeria and two good restaurants, one serving “pub classics”, the other, more “grown-up” dishes made largely with local ingredients. Doubles from £150; theroyalgeorge.com.…

UK and US banks: partying like it’s 2007? “Banks are finally becoming unfettered from the legacy of the 2008 financial crisis,” said Due Diligence in the FT. Their stocks are loved again; big-ticket M&A is back; US regulators are unwinding their post-crash rules; and bank CEOs are being “handsomely rewarded”. The bosses of America’s six largest lenders saw their pay hit a combined $250m last year: a 22% hike on 2024. As ever, the rewards on this side of the pond are more modest; but even so, they’re approaching “pre-crash highs”, said Kalyeena Makortoff in The Guardian. Lloyds Banking Group’s Charlie Nunn was paid £7.4m last year – a 20% rise on 2024 and the highest sum in a decade. The £6.6m doled out to NatWest boss Paul Thwaites recalled…

What Britain can learn from Poland Roger Bootle The Daily Telegraph When contemplating Britain’s “dismal” 1.3% growth rate in 2025, Keir Starmer has taken comfort in the fact we’re still growing faster than our closest continental competitors, says Roger Bootle: France, Germany and Italy didn’t even make it to 1%. Look eastwards, however, and it’s a very different picture. Poland’s recent growth burst (3.6% last year) means its economy is now larger than those of Sweden, Switzerland and Taiwan. On current form, it will soon have a higher GDP per capita than Britain. How has this occurred? Certainly not by adopting some of the left-wing policies embraced by the Starmer Government. After emerging from communism in 1989, Poland has transformed itself by adopting market principles. The result has been “rapid…

Who’s tipping what The week’s best shares Ashmore Group Citywire After a “dismal time”, shares in the specialist emerging market asset manager have rallied 50%, as the market anticipates recovery from a cyclical low. Panmure Liberum believes profits could treble. Target 350p. Buy. 264p. AstraZeneca Investors’ Chronicle A “reliable performer”, the pharma has produced “rock-solid performance” – driven by its oncology portfolio led by lung-cancer treatment Tagrisso. Sales and profits are growing thanks to excellent pipeline delivery. Buy. £140.92. Diploma Investors’ Chronicle Diploma distributes critical parts to niche markets: from custom connectors for Formula 1 cars to bespoke gaskets for wind turbines. A decentralised model is driving up margins. Exposed to structural growth areas. Buy. £54.10. Legal & General The Times The insurer’s scale, financial strength, investment expertise and brand…

This week’s winner will receive Week-branded items, as well as two Connell Guides (connellguides.com). ACROSS 7 Who would disrupt European following incredible boast? (8) 9 Open office sufficed (6) 10 Charlie to copy head 11 Return refreshed with Dave, a lover of excitement (10) 12 Pulse is fast and I start to lag (6) 14 Brave CID officer with shifting pressure finds fair place to win? (5,3) 15 Disrespectful about jolly illumination (5,8) 17 Celebrate including cool lecture (8) 19 Fish going round river’s ditch (6) 21 One’s only beginning to extend pad (10) 22 Magistrate’s bill (4) 23 These 13s will keep your brass bands safe (6) 24 Huckleberry Finn, say, right behind small chap (8) DOWN 1 Friend looking over brilliant mansion (6) 2 University lecturer, Head of…

The Munich conference What happened World leaders and military chiefs gathered last Friday for three days of speeches and talks at the Munich Security Conference. A dominant theme of the forum was the need for Europe to strengthen its defences against Russian aggression. President Macron of France and the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, both gave speeches calling for Europe to forge a new path towards sovereign deterrence and hard power. Keir Starmer echoed that message in his address, making the case for closer cooperation between Britain and the EU on military procurement, and faster rises in defence spending. The Prime Minister described Europe as a “sleeping giant”, noting that the continent’s combined economies “dwarf Russia’s, more than ten times over”. At last year’s Munich conference, the US vice-president, J.D. Vance,…

The UK’s unemployment rate rose to a near-five-year high of 5.2% in the three months to December, while wage growth cooled. Joblessness among 16- to 24-year-olds also increased to 16.1%, a level not seen for more than a decade. The news put pressure on Keir Starmer’s Government; some businesses said they had hired fewer staff because Labour had raised employer national insurance contributions, alongside other costs. Ministers were reported to be considering whether to abandon a pledge to pay 18 -to 20-year-olds a higher minimum wage (see page 40).…

“Wild” swimmers, with the announcement that 13 new spots in England could become designated swimming sites, pending a public consultation. They include Pangbourne Meadow in Berkshire, which helped to inspire The Wind in the Willows, and a stretch of the Thames at Ham and Kingston which, if approved, will become London’s first Thames bathing site. Emerald Fennell, whose film “Wuthering Heights” has raked in $82m (£65m) at the global box office, making it the world’s top opening of the year. The film divided critics, with some praising its “filthy maximalism”, and others calling it a “pink turd”. Milk purists, after the UK’s Supreme Court ruled that oat milk cannot be marketed as a milk. The court upheld a ban that had been imposed to stop the company Oatly from using…

Minneapolis, Minnesota ICE out: The Trump administration’s controversial immigration crackdown in Minnesota was drawing to a close this week. Tom Homan, Trump’s border tsar (left), said Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had pulled more than 1,000 agents out of the state by Sunday, and that only a “small” force would remain. Some 3,000 ICE agents were deployed to the area from late last year, as part of Operation Metro Surge; more than 4,000 migrants were arrested. ICE agents killed US citizens Renée Nicole Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis last month, leading to widespread condemnation. Washington DC Boat strikes: US military officials said that 11 suspected drug traffickers had been killed in strikes on smuggling boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific on Monday. It was one of the deadliest…

“It is hard to see a way back for Keir Starmer. Journalists may seem peripheral to the rhythm of what’s about to happen to him. But – and I’m sorry to share secrets from the sausage factory – so many of us have publicly committed ourselves to the proposition that Starmer is doomed, that the idea takes on its own momentum. We don’t want to be proved wrong. So we – hacks, broadcasters, commentators of all kinds – find we have a vested interest in pushing the man out. It would be conspiratorial nonsense to blame Starmer’s plight on journalists. But we are also part of the conversation – or, if you like, the contamination.” Andrew Marr in The New Statesman…

The drug that’s undermining capitalism Editorial Financial Times All the talk these days is of how AI is revolutionising the economic landscape, says the FT. But there’s another scientific breakthrough that may prove just as significant in reshaping our society: weight-loss drugs. GLP-1 drugs such as Wegovy and Mounjaro haven’t just made people thinner; they’re having a huge impact on food sales. The makers of Ben & Jerry’s ice creams are in financial trouble. The drop in demand for calorie-rich, highly processed foods has led to sugar prices halving in just two years. However, the impact of skinny jabs extends far beyond that. GLP-1s seem to work by taming the brain’s reward system: so cravings for alcohol, drugs and many other things – maybe even consumer goods – may also…

Coffee may reduce dementia risk Drinking two or three cups of tea or coffee a day seems to lower the risk of dementia, a major study has found. Researchers at Harvard University examined data on 131,821 men and women whose health had been tracked for four decades. The participants had been surveyed every few years about their diets, and had also taken tests of memory and cognitive ability. By the end of the project, some 11,000 of them had been diagnosed with dementia. The analysis of this data showed that those who’d routinely drunk two or three cups of coffee a day – or one to two cups of tea – were 15% to 20% less likely to develop dementia than those who rarely drank them. Consuming more tea or…

Cherie Blair has been married to Tony Blair for 45 years, but she still has her doubts about him as a husband. She told Channel 4 this week: “He is an amazing politician. As a husband and as a human being, that’s a different matter, but that’s really between me and him.” He was “not very romantic”, she added, and had never bought her flowers. “Now he says, ‘Well, if I bought you flowers, you’d be very suspicious,’ which is probably true.” The interior you send designer these to Nicky Haslam Annabelle was staying before at you a “romantic check villa this page in Corfu” in? in the 2000s with fellow guest Peter Mandelson, he recalled in The Spectator, when their host “blithely announced” that Saif Gaddafi, the (recently deceased)…

They have “never made anything more than an occasional ripple at the Winter Olympics”; they have won just 12 gold medals in 24 Games, and never more than one gold at any individual Winter Olympics – yet even so, Team GB began the 2026 Games in optimistic spirits, said Sean Ingle in The Guardian. “I believe that we are taking one of the most potent team of athletes that we have taken to a Winter Olympic Games,” declared Britain’s chef de mission, Eve Muirhead. “We have the capability to disrupt the norm.” For the first six days, however, the norm prevailed, said Jeremy Wilson in The Daily Telegraph. A series of “near misses, crucial mistakes and tearful finishes” meant nearly a week went by without a single medal. Then, on…

Football Liverpool progressed to the last 16 of the FA Cup with a 3-0 victory over Brighton. Newcastle also made it through, beating Aston Villa 3-1. Tennis Emma Raducanu lost to world No. 67 Antonia Ružić in three sets in the first round of the Dubai Championships. Six Nations France head the table, after beating Wales 54-12 in their second match. Ireland beat Italy 20-13. Winter Olympics Norway leads the medal board, followed by the host, Italy. Great Britain currently sits in 13th.…

During her lifetime, Gwen John’s achievements were rather overshadowed by those of her younger brother Augustus, said Jonathan Jones in The Guardian. Today, though, she is arguably Wales’s most famous artist – and, to mark the 150th anniversary of her birth in 1876, she is now the subject of this “superb, daunting” retrospective in Cardiff. It does not give us a blow by blow biography of the artist, who grew up in Haverfordwest and followed her brother to the Slade art school, before moving to France. Instead, the show plunges us straight into her “spiritual, austere existence”. We meet John in Paris, painting cats, the sparse rooms she rented “and women alone in moments of calm thought”. In a series started in the early 1910s, a young woman in a…

What happened Keir Starmer this week abandoned plans to delay local elections in England, following advice that they could be ruled unlawful by the courts. In January, ministers had announced that polls due to be held this May could be postponed until 2027, if councils wished, to free up “capacity” for a major reorganisation of local government. But the delay sparked anger from opposition parties, who complained that it would disenfranchise some 4.5 million voters; and following a legal challenge brought by Reform UK, the Government backed down on Monday. The PM’s latest major U-turn – his 14th – came as he attempted to reset his Downing Street operation following a tumultuous period of leadership speculation. Last week, Chris Wormald became the latest senior figure to leave Government, departing as…

The party leader Nigel Farage has unveiled the first four members of his front-bench team, which includes the Tory defectors Robert Jenrick and Suella Braverman. If Farage’s party wins the next election, Jenrick will be the chancellor and Braverman the education secretary. Its deputy leader Richard Tice would take on a combined business, energy and trade brief, and Zia Yusuf, current head of policy, would lead on home affairs. Reform, which Farage insists is no longer a “one-man band”, currently has only eight MPs. However, the party has been leading national polls since spring.…

Only 30% of Britons have a favourable view of the US; 64% have an unfavourable view. 20% named US foreign policy as the biggest threat to Europe; 40% cited immigration, and 31% named Russian aggression. YouGov 64% of voters have an unfavourable view of Nigel Farage – up from 61% in June 2025. 27% approve of the Reform UK leader, down from a peak of 32% last August. 69% view Keir Starmer negatively, down from 75% in January. Financial Times/YouGov Two-thirds of Britons think people no longer look good wearing the latest fashions once they pass the age of 56. One in ten think 40 is too old to be fashionable; 32% say there’s no cut-off. Age Without Limits/Opinium…

Memories of Maoism It’s 35 years since Jung Chang published Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, her bestselling memoir tracing China’s transformation from imperial rule to communism. The book, for which she has now written a long-awaited sequel, draws on her upbringing under Mao Zedong’s dictatorship, the brutality of which she still vividly recalls at 73. She was 14 when Mao embarked on his murderous, ten-year Cultural Revolution in 1966; and the purges soon put paid to her childhood innocence, she told Camilla Tominey in The Sunday Telegraph. She recalls seeing “public denunciations, beatings, and humiliation on a daily basis”; but her saddest memories relate to her father, a senior CCP official whose opposition to Mao’s policies led to his downfall and death aged 54. “He was one of the…

A retired nurse whose prosthetic leg was swept out to sea has been reunited with it, ten months after she lost it. Brenda Ogden, whose leg was amputated after a car crash six years ago, was about to set off for a swim in East Yorkshire last year when her £2,000 prosthetic was claimed by a rogue wave. It was found last week by a fossil hunter, 12 miles from where it had been lost. Ogden said she was “over the moon” to have been reunited with the limb, which needs repairing but is expected to return to full function. An Amazon delivery vehicle had to be abandoned this week after its satnav led the driver onto mudflats in the Thames Estuary. The driver was attempting to deliver a parcel…

UKRAINE Help we so badly needed yesterday Die Zeit (Hamburg) It’s about time, says Maxim Kireev. Elon Musk has long voiced public support for Ukraine, but it has taken four years of war to do what has so badly needed to be done: prevent front-line Russian forces from being able to use the Starlink terminals owned by Musk’s SpaceX. Those terminals establish a two-way connection with the Starlink satellites orbiting 550km above the Earth, and though their sale to Russia has never officially been allowed, thousands have been smuggled in via third countries. It’s by this means that Moscow has provided internet access for the hundreds of thousands of drones it uses to livestream all battlefield developments: although it does have its own satellite internet capacity, this can’t compete for…

Billionaires, these days, do like to bestow upon us their “deep and meaningful thoughts about society”, said Charlene White in The i Paper. Last week Sir Jim Ratcliffe was at it: the founder of the Ineos chemicals group and co-owner of Manchester United told Sky News that Britain had been “colonised by immigrants”, who are draining resources from the state. “You can’t have an economy with nine million people on benefits and huge levels of immigrants coming in,” he declared – adding, incorrectly, that the UK population had grown by 12 million since 2020 due to immigration (the actual figure is closer to three million). The backlash was swift, with politicians and even Manchester United condemning Ratcliffe’s remarks. Keir Starmer demanded he apologise, which he later did, saying he was…

“Deep in the rainforests of Ecuador lives one of nature’s deadliest creations,” said Shaun Lintern in The Sunday Times: “a frog about a fingernail in length which carries on its smooth skin a neurotoxin 200 times more powerful than morphine”. A single frog’s skin carries enough epibatidine, as the toxin is known, “to kill a human several times over”. The victim initially experiences numbness, then loses the ability to control their diaphragm, meaning their ability to breathe is compromised; death soon follows. It is this toxin, we now know, that killed the Russian dissident Alexei Navalny in the “Polar Wolf” Arctic prison camp two years ago. Most likely, it was made in a lab in Moscow, as the frogs aren’t native to Russia; the toxin’s molecular structure was unlocked in…

England’s rugby team headed to Edinburgh last Saturday with a sense of “confidence and momentum”, said Robert Kitson in The Guardian. Having won “12 games on the spin”, and having crushed Wales in their opening Six Nations game, “siren voices within the England camp” were whispering that a “first grand slam for a decade might even be around the corner”. But on a chastening afternoon at Murrayfield, such thoughts were revealed as “wishful thinking”, as Scotland carved out a 31-20 victory, consigning Steve Borthwick’s men to a “fifth Calcutta Cup defeat in the past six editions”. It’s true that England weren’t helped by Henry Arundell – scorer of a hat-trick against Wales – being double yellow-carded in the first half, which meant they had to spend 30 minutes with 14…

Your Life Without Me by James Meek Canongate 256pp £18.99 The Week Bookshop £16.99 James Meek’s “graceful ” new novel begins with an attempted act of terrorism, said Xan Brooks in The Guardian. Raf, a “gifted young engineer and natural born radical” from Lancashire, hatches a plan to blow up St Paul’s Cathedral – on the basis that removing this “tired prop” would somehow be “liberating ” for Britain. But the plot is foiled, and Raf is arrested – at which point the novel “doubles back” to an earlier period in his life, when he swung his “metaphorical wrecking ball” through the home of his English teacher, Mr Burman. A somewhat “Pooterish” figure, Mr Burman had invited his “star pupil” into his home, and had come to regret it, said…

High Street by Eric Ravilious and J.M. Richards, 1938 (V&A £20). I had this book as a child and always admired the illustrations by Ravilious. My parents, who were both artists, must have bought it for me. Now when I look at it, I’m amazed by the peculiar shops that perhaps seemed normal then – the knife grinder, the furrier, the saddler, the oyster bar. Emma by Jane Austen, 1815 (Penguin £7.99). When there were air raids during WWII, we would sleep on mattresses on the ground floor, in corners away from windows that could shatter. My mother would read Emma and Pride and Prejudice aloud to me, my younger brother, and often an evacuee. It was a useful distraction from a difficult situation. I love the characters and humour.…

● Be prepared. Carry a mini sewing kit, like the ones you get given in hotels, in your bag. A mini Swiss Army Knife with little scissors is also handy, as are safety pins. ● Miss Mouth’s Messy Eater Stain Treater is key. Designed for parents of toddlers, it gets rid of any food stain, even red marks on white fabric. ● For foundation marks, dab with a basic make-up remover. Don’t rub, or use on silk. For an oil stain on silk, dust with baking soda or talc; then lay a piece of paper over and iron to blot the grease onto the paper. ● Use cold water to blot protein food stains, like egg. For chewing gum, put the item in the freezer and it will just flick…

James Van Der Beek 1977-2026 As a boy, James Van Der Beek was sports mad and dreamed of playing in the Superbowl, said The Times. But aged 13, he suffered a “severe concussion” during a football match, and was advised by a doctor to quit for a year. To the surprise of the other jocks at his high school, he swapped the locker room for the glee club. He took the lead role in a school production of Grease, and at 16 he appeared off Broadway in a play by Edward Albee. Four years after that, Van Der Beek, who has died aged 48, won the role that made him famous, in the 1990s coming-of-age TV drama Dawson’s Creek. With his background, he was perfect for the part of the…

It was always likely that the family who controlled Schroders for more than two centuries would eventually decide to sell, said Bloomberg. But the £9.9bn deal with Nuveen – a Chicago asset manager – still had the power to shock. “Another of the City of London’s defining names has chosen to surrender independence rather than soldier on.” Britain’s largest independent asset manager has steadily built $1trn of assets, but was still dwarfed by global rivals and was “vulnerable”. Schroders now joins famous names such as Cazenove, S.G. Warburg and Mercury Asset Management in a trend that began following the “Big Bang” in the 1980s, and accelerated post-Brexit. “The notable remaining hold-out … is Rothschild & Co.” “What a day for the Red Squirrel Survival Trust,” said Alistair Osborne in The…

Following the money A record 1,000 taxpayers in their teens or 20s now earn at least £1m annually – a rise of 11% in the past year. This top-earning cadre pocketed more than £3bn. Although Premier League footballers, pop stars and A-list actors still top the lists, they’ve been joined by a new class of “young influencers” cashing in on “a surge in social media advertising”. Accountancy firm Lubbock Fine, which obtained the figures, reports that the amount spent on influencer marketing in the UK tripled to £917m between 2019 and 2024, and will this year exceed £1bn – “outstripping advertising spend in cinemas, radio or magazines”. Top earners Leading influencers include Kyle Thomas, 21, “a TikTok giant” whose antics with his pet meerkat Mylo have secured 34 million followers…

Richard Walker The Iceland supermarket boss, who became Lord Walker of Broxton last year, has been brought into government by the PM as the official “Cost of Living Champion” – working across Whitehall to “find new ways to make household budgets stretch further”, said The Sun. Walker, who chairs the frozen-food retailer founded by his father, is “known for campaigning on poverty and access to affordable food”: Iceland runs an interest-free micro credit scheme. Still, the unpaid appointment has irked some Labour MPs, not least on account of Walker’s previous dalliance with the Tories, said The Daily Telegraph. Asking the scion of a family worth £265m for cost-of-living advice is like “appointing a butcher to provide food to vegans”, charges one backbencher. Kathryn Ruemmler “Another giant of corporate America has…

Around 135 people are diagnosed with multiple sclerosis every week in the UK. That’s more than one person every two hours. From the moment of diagnosis, it can feel like control is whipped away from us, and just trying to predict what today will feel like can feel impossible. But when treatment and support is fragmented and unpredictable too, life becomes even more challenging. We exist to change that through trusted information and compassionate support, the training of new MS healthcare professionals, and with research rooted in real experience. Visit mstrust.org.uk for more information.…