Table of contents for 1397 in The Week

What happened Keir Starmer unveiled a £29bn proposal this week to tackle soaring energy bills. The Labour leader’s plan would freeze the energy price cap until April – a move he said would save the average household £1,000 this winter. The annual average combined gas and electricity bill is currently £1,971, but analysts have predicted that scheduled reviews of the price cap could push fuel bills to more than £3,500 in October, and more than £4,200 in January. Labour says it would pay for its freeze by backdating the windfall tax on energy firms, and scrapping the £400 energy rebate already announced by the Government. The party also argues that the freeze would reduce inflation, thereby saving £7bn in debt interest payments. The Institute for Fiscal Studies contested the latter…

The US had two main aims when it invaded Afghanistan in 2001, said Fareed Zakaria in The Washington Post. It wanted to leave behind a nation that would pose no threat to American security, and one which could sustain itself and its people. A year after Kabul fell to the Taliban, the “picture is bleak” on both counts. The US expended vast amounts of “energy, effort, blood and treasure” in Afghanistan. It sustained the deaths of 3,592 US and allied troops, along with 66,000 Afghan soldiers, and spent $837bn fighting the war; it also spent $145bn rebuilding the country. Why did this yield so little? Its strategy was often “incoherent”: the US government “pumped billions of dollars” into the Afghan economy while trying to contain corruption; it theoretically opposed warlords…

John Lewis, which is to retire its 97-year-old price pledge to be “never knowingly undersold”. The department store will not accept new claims for refunds under the guarantee from 22 August. Instead, the chain promises – rather vaguely – to be “always knowingly committed to outstanding value”. English literature, which has fallen out of the top ten A levels for the first time in decades. Provisional figures suggest that it will be the 12th most taken A level this summer. Less than ten years ago it was in top place, a position taken in recent years by maths. The Scottish government, which was blasted for hiring a man as the UK’s first ever “period dignity officer”. Jason Grant, a former personal trainer, will earn up to £36,126 for promoting access…

41% of British voters believe that the process whereby Tory Party members alone select the next prime minister is “undemocratic”. 38% feel it is democratic. Savanta ComRes/The Independent A quarter of sponsors taking part in the UK’s Homes for Ukraine refugee scheme do not want to continue the arrangement beyond the required minimum of six months. Six in ten say that they’re happy to host their guests for longer. Eight in ten say that they’ve given them food; 45% have given them financial support. 18% say that their guests haven’t arrived yet. ONS 54% of British adults believe straws have one hole. 42% think they have two. YouGov…

Neil Parish on pornography Neil Parish will forever be known as the MP who lost his seat after being seen watching porn in the Commons, says Camilla Long in The Sunday Times. The farmer-turned-politician’s excuse was that he’d been browsing online for information about agricultural equipment. “I genuinely was looking at tractors,” he says from his home – a farmhouse where the walls are adorned with signs asking things like, “Is it wine o’clock yet?” Trouble was, when he was typing the tractor’s name into Google, he saw another option on the drop-down menu: a porn site. “And I went into it.” It was, he acknowledges, “absolutely stupid and I shouldn’t have done it”. Yet by his own admission, he was hardly a novice when it comes to porn. “I…

An Indian lawyer has won a 22-year legal fight with a rail operator that had overcharged him by 20 rupees (21p). The dispute began in 1999, when Tungnath Chaturvedi was charged 90 rupees instead of 70 for a ticket at Mathura station in Uttar Pradesh. He complained, but didn’t receive a refund – so he went to court. Now, after 100 hearings, a court has finally ruled in his favour, ordering Indian Railways to refund him and pay a 15,000 rupee (£156) fine. “It’s not the money that matters,” Chaturvedi said after his triumph. “This was always a fight for justice and a fight against corruption, so it was worth it.” An intoxicated brown bear was rescued in Turkey, after apparently gobbling up excessive amounts of what locals dub “mad…

FRANCE Why we were right to try to save the whale Le Point (Paris) They were at it again last week, the “left-wing moralists”, says Christine Clerc. Why did the French authorities go to so much trouble and expense to rescue a dying beluga whale, they wanted to know. Miles from its Arctic home, the 13ft male had got stuck in a lock on the River Seine in Normandy and 24 divers were deployed to coax it into a net, by which time its condition had deteriorated so much it had to be put down. The effort to save it took six hours. Wouldn’t the money have been better spent on hiring more firefighters to tackle forest fires raging in the southwest? Or on saving migrants from drowning in the…

It’s ridiculous, said Rod Liddle in The Sun. We live in one of the wettest countries in Europe, yet much of southern England is facing “water rationing”, with a drought officially declared last week and hosepipe bans widely in force. “Sure, it’s been dry recently. But we should still have more than enough water to cope.” The real problem is that the water companies allow three billion litres of water to leak away every day. If they can’t do better, we should renationalise them. Indeed we should, said The Guardian. Since privatisation in 1989, shareholders have been paid £72bn in dividends and executives have been richly rewarded. Consumers, meanwhile, have seen price rises of 40%. Yet the required investment, in fixing leaks and building reservoirs, has not been made. Many…

“I suppose it was inevitable that cancel culture would eventually catch up with Jerry Sadowitz,” said Tom Slater in The Spectator. Today, things that aren’t very offensive or controversial are often described as such. “But Sadowitz is the real deal.” The Glaswegian comic-cum-magician “is the most genuinely offensive act you will ever see. His onstage persona is a fireball of hatred, racism, sexism, homophobia and depravity, served up with improbably brilliant magic tricks.” On Saturday, Sadowitz’s second Edinburgh Fringe show at the Pleasance, one of the festival’s biggest venues, was cancelled. Staff members and punters had reportedly complained because Sadowitz used racial slurs (he used the word P**i in relation to Rishi Sunak) and flashed his penis – “both of which he’s been doing on stage for years”. There was…

So far this season, the majority of headlines have focused on “Manchester United’s fall from grace, and the spectacular arrival of Erling Haaland” at Manchester City, said Martin Samuel in the Daily Mail. But last Sunday, the Premier League served up a useful reminder that fans have plenty of other thrills to marvel at. Chelsea versus Tottenham at Stamford Bridge was a contest of such “brilliant” football – and such “high-octane chaos” both on and off the pitch – that it “kickstarted the season in earnest”. This London derby had pretty much everything, agreed Henry Winter in The Times: “tactical fouling, thunderous goals, hair-pulling, a late equaliser”. It finished at 2-2, with Harry Kane snatching a point for Tottenham with a header six minutes into added time. That result will…

To The Times Your leading article of 13 August was right to highlight the shameful anniversary of the West’s abandonment of the Afghan people to the Taliban on 15 August last year, but wrong to say that “there can be no question of resuming developmental aid while the Taliban continues to disregard human rights”. At the height of the Second World War the Allies negotiated with the Nazi occupiers of the Netherlands to airdrop food supplies to avert famine; even so, more than 200,000 Dutch people died. Afghanistan, on top of all the other miseries it has faced, is now in the grip of the worst drought in 27 years. Whatever our travails with this summer’s drought, a third of our people do not face the prospect of famine this…

by Mohsin Hamid Hamish Hamilton 192pp £12.99 The Week Bookshop £9.99 Mohsin Hamid’s fifth novel begins with a transformation, said Alex Preston in The Observer: Anders wakes up one morning to find his skin has changed from white to black. This metamorphosis is not explained; instead, the focus is on its impact on the people around Anders. When he goes out, he feels “vaguely menaced”; his boss tells him he’d have killed himself had it happened to him. But then Anders finds that similar transformations are taking place across the US, until eventually there is “just one white man left”. Written in “incantatory” sentences, The Last White Man is a “strange, beautiful allegorical tale”. Mysterious transformations can be “fertile terrain” for fiction, said Houman Barekat in The Times: one thinks,…

The Week reviews an exhibition in a private gallery Michal Worke at Goodman Gallery The female figures in these paintings by the Ethiopia-born, Tel Aviv-based artist Michal Worke exude a sense of calm and purpose. Even when they are dozing on the kitchen floor, they inhabit the pictorial space as confidently as any Velázquez Pope or Holbein monarch. Depicted in domestic settings we might all recognise from our own lives – you can sometimes even recognise particular items of Ikea furniture – and rendered in a deceptively naive style, these figures emit a personality that carries far beyond the canvases to which they are confined. The balcony-view landscapes and apparently prosaic still lifes of workaday ephemera featured in this exhibition, entitled Inner Views, are almost as impressive. Worke (b.1982) is…

Highlights of Albania Experience Albania’s must-see sites on this week-long smallgroup tour, from £1,145pp. London flights, transfers and some meals included. 0117-453 2263, regent-holidays.co.uk Depart 9 September. Puerto Rico resort A 6-night stay at La Concha Renaissance San Juan Resort, near Condado Beach, costs from £1,410pp room-only, including Birmingham flights. 020-7660 8892, opodo.co.uk. Depart 4 October. Christmas in the Fjords Spend 6 festive days in the heart of Norway’s beautifully scenic fjordland, from £1,512pp half-board, including Glasgow flights. 0333-060 5765, newmarketholidays.co.uk. Depart 22 December. New York boutique hotel Stay 7 nights at the 4-star Row NYC hotel, in the centre of Broadway, from £1,025pp room-only, including Manchester flights. 01234-230440, loveholidays.com Depart 9 November. Covid-19: please check government websites for testing and quarantine requirements, and the rules surrounding children (gov.uk).…

BHP/Aramco: dirty energy profits “The world’s biggest miner by market value” just got a little bit bigger, said Rhiannon Hoyle in The Wall Street Journal. BHP, the now fully-Australian giant, saw its annual profits nearly triple in the past year to $30.90bn. The results included an exceptional gain of $7.1bn from the sale of BHP’s petroleum division to Woodside Energy, but also reflected the return of Old King Coal. BHP benefitted royally as buyers sought alternative supplies following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. So did shareholders, who received a $16.5bn dividend for the year. BHP warned this could be a last hurrah “if central bank action risks slowdown in developed economies”; the leap in shares shows investors don’t really believe it. Still, BHP’s riches look almost paltry compared with the vast…

Why the doctor won’t see you now Therese Raphael Bloomberg Britain’s “prized and troubled” National Health Service now has a backlog of 6.7 million patients waiting to have operations or other treatments, says Therese Raphael. “The backlogs aren’t new”: even before the pandemic, the queue stood at 4.43 million. But the situation has certainly worsened. “More people are dying because they can’t get timely care.” For the country as a whole it’s a case of “the doctor won’t see you now”. The 1.5% increase in national insurance “was billed as funding for social care, but its immediate purpose has been trying to make a dent in the NHS waitlist”, and the Tory leadership candidate Liz Truss wants to reverse the hike anyhow. It is time to accept “that throwing ever…

The week’s best shares Aviva The Times “Rising interest rates are a boon for insurers”, but Aviva is also generating capital: higher annuity volumes, cost-cutting and sturdy underwriting boosted first-half profits by 14%. A good dividend yield, with “the sniff of more special returns”. Buy. 472p. Barratt Developments The Daily Telegraph Shares are down 35% this year on downbeat assumptions about the housing market – an opportunity for long-term investors. Barratt is cushioned in a downturn by £1.3bn in cash. Buy. 486.9p. Coats Investors’ Chronicle The purchase of German shoe parts maker Rhenoflex complements that of Texon International – creating an opportunity to build a leader in fragmented athleisure and sports footwear markets. Coats expects compounded growth of 8% a year. Buy. 66.5p. IBM The Daily Telegraph IBM reinvented itself…

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Families visiting a Thomas the Tank Engine attraction in Hampshire have been asked to refrain from naming the Fat Controller, to avoid causing offence. “We were talking about the Fat Controller when a staff member stepped in,” a father told The Sun. “In no uncertain terms we were told no one could use such a slur.” Visitors were urged to use his full name instead, Sir Topham Hatt. In the future, lawyers may have microchips implanted in their brains, as per a report published by the Law Society. Such chips could allow lawyers to charge “billable units of attention” rather than billable hours. Kion Ahadi, the Society’s director of strategy, acknowledged that such measures would raise “complex ethical and legal issues”.…

The UK became the first country in the world to authorise a Covid-19 vaccine tailored to the Omicron variant, this week. The bivalent vaccine, made by Moderna, targets both the original strain of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and the Omicron variant (BA.1) that emerged last winter. It will be offered as part of the autumn booster programme that kicks off next month. Around 26 million people in the UK will be eligible for another jab, including over-50s, frontline health and care workers, younger people with chronic conditions, and those over five who share a house with a person with a weakened immune system.…

Berlin Cheap trains: Germans are calling for a radical train fare scheme to be extended after a summer of cheap travel. In June, the SPD-led coalition government introduced a rail pass offering unlimited travel for only €9 per month, in order to ease the cost of living and reduce car journeys across the nation. In the first month alone, 31 million people benefitted from the pass, with rail journeys increasing by 42% on pre-pandemic levels. The popular policy was originally proposed by the Green Party, which has now suggested a followup scheme with regional passes costing €29, and national passes €49. A Green transport spokesman expressed hopes that the scheme would “pave the way for a lasting shift from cars to buses and trains”. However, the finance minister, Christian Lindner,…

“In the past 100 years, the University of Cambridge has produced only one British prime minister, Stanley Baldwin, who left office back in 1937. Since then, Oxford has produced no fewer than 11 PMs. Next month, either Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak will make it 12. We think of our politics as being dominated by Oxbridge types. Yet it’s actually just Oxford types. Why? I think the explanation is simple. While Oxford is strong in humanities and PPE, Cambridge is celebrated for its mathematicians and scientists, people who deal in facts and reasoning and evidence. Such people are hopelessly ill-equipped to succeed in the fraudulent world of modern politics.” Michael Deacon in The Daily Telegraph…

The bull that changed our world Andy Kessler The Wall Street Journal Will we ever again witness a bull market to rival the one that began exactly 40 years ago last week? It was “a heck of a run”, says Andy Kessler. Although there were some big falls along the way – the 1987 crash, the dot-com implosion, the 9/11 drop, the 2008 financial crisis – the “super bull”, in effect, lasted until this year, sustained by the long, steady decline in interest rates, before inflation finally killed it off. On 12 August 1982, the Dow Jones Industrial Average bottomed at 776.91; it peaked on 4 January 2022, at 36,800 – that is a 47-fold rise, equivalent to an annual rate of 9.6%. The bull market made a lot of…

In a breakthrough that could sharply accelerate drug development, the AI company DeepMind has deciphered the structure of almost every protein known to science. Proteins are the building-blocks of life, and their function is determined by their 3D structure. If scientists can unravel their structure, they can see how the protein works and how to alter its behaviour. Until recently, “unfolding” proteins was time-consuming and expensive, and scientists had identified the shapes of only a tiny fraction of the 200 million or so proteins that have been catalogued. But two years ago, DeepMind, owned by Google’s owner Alphabet, announced that its AlphaFold program could predict the shapes using an algorithm. Now, it has described the shapes of nearly all the catalogued proteins, and is making them freely available to researchers…

There is a “last days of the Roman empire” feel to Britain this summer, said Martin Fletcher in The New Statesman. Everywhere you look, there are signs of dysfunction, decline and ineffectual leadership. The economy is shrinking; energy bills are soaring; our reservoirs are low; the NHS is “close to meltdown”; the court system is struggling with a backlog; the police are failing to tackle crime effectively. Railway staff, dockers, postal workers, teachers and doctors are all holding strikes, or threatening to do so. “It takes months to get anything as simple as a passport or driving test.” Care homes and nurseries are closing for lack of staff; fruit is rotting in the fields for lack of pickers. Our politicians, meanwhile, are squabbling among themselves, seeking to shift the blame…

“Nothing inspires forgiveness quite like revenge.” Scott Adams, quoted in New York Magazine “Just because nobody complains doesn’t mean all parachutes are perfect.”Benny Hill, quoted on The Browser “It’s very hard to find someone who’s successful and dislikes what they do. Except if they’re a lawyer.”Malcolm Gladwell, quoted in Elle “One of the mixed blessings of being 20 and 21 and even 23, is the conviction that nothing like this, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, has ever happened to anyone before.”Joan Didion, quoted in The Guardian “It is always a risk to speak to the press: they are likely to report what you say.”Hubert Humphrey, quoted on Politico “There comes a time in every woman’s life when the only thing that helps is a glass of champagne.”Bette Davis, quoted…

Football Manchester United hit the bottom of the Premier League, after being beaten by Brentford 4-0. Promoted Nottingham Forest had their first top-flight victory in 23 years, beating West Ham 1-0. Tennis Pablo Carreño-Busta of Spain won his first Masters 1000 singles title, with a 3-6, 6-3, 6-3 victory over Hubert Hurkacz of Poland in the final of the Montreal Masters. Cricket Will Jacks of Oval Invincibles hit the highest ever score in the Hundred, against Southern Brave: 108 from 48 balls.…

Lynda twists Adil’s arm into being a palm-reader at the fete. Tracy tells Jazzer she’s still being bullied at the factory by boss Gemma, and hasn’t been invited to work drinks at The Bull. Chelsea convinces her to go anyway and try to talk to Gemma. Pat tells Tony she spoke to Peggy about the stained-glass window, and Peggy made peace with her. Natasha tells Pat that Caitlin had to leave suddenly – her dad is bipolar and has entered a manic phase. When Tracy is snubbed at The Bull, Chelsea is furious and deliberately scrapes Gemma’s car. When Harrison makes informal enquiries, Chelsea denies everything. When a work opportunity comes up for an overwhelmed Natasha, Pat offers to step in. Joy volunteers to help too, and they bond when…

In Chinese cuisine, fish and shellfish are enjoyed “on the bone”, with crispy skin – and even shells – intact, says Suzie Lee. My mother used to make this lipsmacking dish with king prawns from the market, and now my kids love it, too. Sweet and spicy king prawns Serves 4 500g raw king prawns 2 tbsp vegetable oil 15g piece of fresh ginger root, sliced 3 garlic cloves, crushed 1 tsp dried chilli flakes, or chilli oil 4 tbsp tomato ketchup 2 tsp sugar 2 tbsp rice wine vinegar 2 tbsp Shaoxing wine 4 large spring onions, cut into chunks • Clean the prawns and make a shallow incision down their backs to remove the digestive tract. • Heat the vegetable oil in a wok or large frying pan…

• Don’t worry about your lawn going brown: it will bounce back. Bald patches can be repaired with new seed in late September, and they’ll be fine by spring. • Young trees will need water: make a trough around the base of the trunk and give the tree a good soak weekly. Remove vegetation and weeds from close to young trees, as they will compete for water. • After flowering, cut back and deadhead plants: they may flower again after rain. Some flowering plants such as helianthus and phlox may wilt at midday, but will enjoy hot, dry conditions. Others, such as dahlias and fuchsias, may need water. • Stand pots in saucers to collect water, which can be reabsorbed, and group them to form a humid area to limit…

Raymond Briggs 1934-2022 In Raymond Briggs’s 1973 strip-illustration book Father Christmas, the titular character is a grumpy old sod who does not seem to relish his onerous annual duties. “Bloomin’ Christmas,” he announces, as he wakes up on 24 December, before leaving his modest but cosy home to feed his reindeer and hump gifts onto a sleigh. It reflected some of Briggs’s own personality. A shy man who concealed his kindness behind a curmudgeonly facade, Briggs said he hated Christmas. And yet, he became indelibly associated with it – partly because of Father Christmas, but mainly because of the extraordinary success of his wordless tale The Snowman, and the animated film of it, with Peter Auty’s Walking in the Air theme. It has become a staple of festive TV. Yet…

Plain speaking, as a recording emerged of Liz Truss saying that British workers needed “more graft”, and suggesting that they lacked the “skill and application” of foreign rivals. “If you go to China it’s quite different, I can assure you,” said Britain’s likely next prime minister, in a recording made while she was chief secretary to the Treasury, and recently leaked to The Guardian. British wineries, which could one day beat Burgundy at producing world-class reds. A study in the wine journal OENO One has found that, owing to climate change, parts of southern England will soon be ideal for growing pinot noir grapes.…

More than 4,000 victims of the contaminated blood scandal will receive an interim compensation payment of £100,000 each, the Government announced this week. The money will go to those who have been infected and to bereaved partners in England by the end of October. Tens of thousands of NHS patients were infected with HIV or hepatitis C by contaminated blood products imported from the US in the 1970s and 1980s. This is the first time compensation has been awarded, and follows years of campaigning.…

Washington DC Assassination plot: A member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard has been charged by the US with plotting to kill John Bolton, formerly one of Donald Trump’s most senior foreign policy aides. Officials said Shahram Poursafi, 45, was “most likely” seeking revenge for the American strike that killed Qassem Soleimani, the powerful commander of Iran’s elite al-Quds force, in 2020. Bolton served Trump as his national security adviser from 2018 to 2019, and was seen as a leading hawk on Middle Eastern affairs, as well as an advocate of regime change in Iran. According to prosecutors, Poursafi, who is still at large outside the US, attempted to pay an unidentified individual $300,000 to carry out the murder in Washington or Maryland. He is also said to have offered $1m…

Why our wetlands must be restored Tony Juniper The Guardian First drought, then floods. Britain experiences harsh water extremes nowadays, says Tony Juniper, and it will only get worse with climate change. We must build our resilience. Fortunately, there’s a good way of doing that: restoring wetlands. The UK has lost 90% of these areas over the past 100 years, which has been disastrous for both wildlife and our ability to regulate water flow. There are plans afoot to redress this situation – by improving peatlands and creating 100,000 hectares of new wetlands – and the sooner they’re enacted, the better. By holding more water on the land, fens, peat bogs and marshes can help keep rivers flowing when rain is scarce, and conversely help prevent flooding after downpours. Wetlands…

Salt substitutes cut stroke risk Replacing salt with a low-sodium alternative lowers blood pressure – and the risk of early death from all causes, a study has concluded. Researchers in China analysed 21 clinical trials involving nearly 32,000 people; a focus on five of them revealed that adults who used salt substitutes had a 13% lower risk of death from cardiovascular disease, and an 11% lower risk of heart attack, stroke or any cause of death. Across all of the studies, swapping sodium for potassium was found to lead to a significant reduction in blood pressure. Systolic pressure, the force at which the heart pushes blood out, fell by 4.61mm Hg on average; and diastolic pressure, the force exerted by the heart between beats, fell by 1.61mm Hg. The findings…

In his new memoir, A.N. Wilson admits that he saw no indication that Nigella Lawson was destined to become a “gastronomic genius” when they were close in the late 1970s. Lawson, he notes, “never ate anything except mashed potato and never mentioned the subject of food”. Wilson explains that he “formed an embarrassing crush on her. Nigella was kind about this, and we used to spend hours, sitting in Bertorelli’s in Charlotte Street, staring at one another while she prodded at a plate of mashed potatoes.” Liz Truss was accused of inflaming tensions with the SNP when she called Nicola Sturgeon an “attentionseeker”. Sturgeon took her revenge last week, revealing that, when they met at the Glasgow climate conference, “the main thing” Truss wanted to know “was how she could…

It’s clear that “something has gone seriously awry” with British policing, said The Times. Barely a week passes without some “new scandal”. The Metropolitan Police and five other forces are currently in “special measures”. Now a report by Andy Cooke, HM Inspector of Constabulary, has found that only 6.6% of robberies and 4.2% of thefts in England and Wales result in charges. Cooke reveals that, in seven out of ten such cases, “basic errors” are made. Police are frequently failing to gather CCTV evidence or to advise victims on how to preserve a crime scene. In many cases, they don’t even visit burgled homes, or keep victims informed about cases. When it comes to other forms of crime, the situation is even worse: only 1.3% of rapes lead to charges;…

Not “retirement”, but “evolution”: that’s how Serena Williams characterised her decision to step away from tennis – probably after the US Open, which begins at the end of this month. “I’m here to tell you that I’m evolving away from tennis, toward other things that are important to me,” wrote the 40-year-old in American Vogue. Williams won’t find it hard to occupy her time, said Charlotte Lytton in The Times: away from tennis, she is already a “mogul”, with her own clothing line and a fast-expanding venture capital business; she mixes in “the highest echelons of the celebrity elite”, counting Beyoncé and Meghan Markle among her friends. Nonetheless, in her article she was keen to stress that she is quitting tennis only because of the difficulty of combining it with…

Raising a stink To The Guardian Anglian Water keeps discharging raw sewage into the River Colne upstream of Wivenhoe. I know this because I often see and smell it. Apparently, this is not illegal. Meanwhile, the chief executive has received £1.3m in pay, including a £337,651 bonus for keeping shareholders satisfied. I pay Anglian Water to properly dispose of my faeces, but it doesn’t. If I chose to withhold payment for the part of my water bill that relates to sewage disposal, and instead defecate into a bucket and chuck it in the river, am I breaking the law? Legal opinion gratefully received. Dr Jon Scales, Wivenhoe, Essex In defence of water firms To The Times I’m finding the recent vilification of water companies and their executives by politicians and…

by Kit de Waal Tinder Press 304pp £16.99 The Week Bookshop £13.99 Kit de Waal – the acclaimed author of the Costa Prize-shortlisted My Name is Leon – has described her life as “very middle class”, said Christina Patterson in The Sunday Times. She used to be married to a QC. Yet as this “extraordinary memoir” makes clear, her childhood was anything but that. The second of five children, de Waal (pictured) grew up in a mixed-race family in Birmingham in the 1960s and 1970s: her father, Arthur, was a bus driver from St Kitts; while Sheila, her mother, was the child of Irish immigrants who became a Jehovah’s Witness. Their marriage, as depicted by de Waal, was deeply unhappy: while Arthur spent much of his time sullenly watching TV,…

The Palm-Wine Drinkard by Amos Tutuola, 1952 (Faber £8.99). I bought my edition in Khartoum in 1969, attracted by the title but then put off by its seemingly rough-edged voice. I should have been less feeble. Tutuola’s haywire and highly fermented odyssey, in which the wine-soaked Yoruba “hero” heads off into Dead Town in search of his tapster, is both ferocious and magical. The Warden by Anthony Trollope, 1855 (Vintage £5.99). Trollope? Not for me, I’d always thought. But then I picked this up and couldn’t put it down. Who’d have thought the story of an ecclesiastical spat in the nowhere town of Barchester in the 1850s could be so relevant, so liberal, or so fiercely gentle? The Soul of Kindness by Elizabeth Taylor, 1964 (Virago £9.99). A waspish though…

Programmes State of Happiness Return of the Norwegian drama about goings-on in a small coastal town in the 1960s, where an oil company has arrived; season one is available on iPlayer. Sat 20 Aug, BBC4 21:00 and 21:45 (45mins each). The Real Phoenix Nights Part of the We Are England series, this documentary follows a family-run workingmen’s club in Clacton as it tries to modernise. Mon 22 Aug, BBC1 20:30 (30mins). Lion: The Rise and Fall of the Marsh Pride Conservationists, vets and guides reveal the impact of changing world on the lions of the Marsh Pride, on the Maasai Mara Reserve. Tue 23 Aug, BBC2 21:00 (90mins). The Pyrenees with Michael Portillo In episode one of this new series, the former politician visits the Basque region, which plays a…

There are two main rules for drinking in a heatwave, says David Williams in The Observer. One is that the alcohol level should be relatively low; the other is that “bubbles”, even if it’s just a slight “tingle of spritz”, are a must for a heatwave. The traditional northern Portuguese wine vinho verde combines both qualities: try the Co-op’s Vale dos Pombos Vinho Verde 2021 (£6; 9.5% abv), which has a “just-perceptible prickle of CO?, and a pleasingly green apple sour-tang to go with its fruit-salad flavours”. The Italians, of course, are “absolute masters of the light and the fizzy”. There is prosecco, of course, but “every bit as good” in a heatwave is the “darkly bubbling” sparkling red wine Lambrusco. Try Nivola Lambrusco, Emilia-Romagna, Italy NV (£14.99; Majestic, or…

Horniman Museum & Gardens This family-friendly museum in Forest Hill, London, covers anthropology, music, natural history and taxidermy. Admission is free and there’s also an aquarium (from £3) and large gardens with a butterfly house (from £6.50) (open daily; horniman.ac.uk). The National Roman Legion Museum in Caerleon, near Newport, houses Britain’s most complete Roman amphitheatre, plus sections of an old bath house and a Roman garden (free admission, open daily; museum.wales/roman). The Weald & Downland Living Museum is a sprawling 40-acre time-warp in the South Downs National Park, with over 50 vernacular buildings dating from AD 950 to the 1900s, plus historic gardens and trails (from £9, open daily; wealddown.co.uk). Manchester’s People’s History Museum focuses on the political history of British workers over the past 200 years (free admission, open…

A wild Croatian peninsula Spanning the great bay of Mali Ston in Croatia, the new Pelješac Bridge – a spectacular 1.5-mile-long, £467m structure – has cut hours off the drive from Split to Dubrovnik. What was a five-hour “marathon” can now be completed in half that time. Even more enticingly, the bridge had made it easier to get to the Pelješac Peninsula, says Tristan Rutherford in The Sunday Times – a 40-mile long “finger” of forested hills and spectacular cliff-edged beaches that has barely changed in the past 20 years, unlike nearby islands such as Korcula and Hvar. Everyone here has “a side hustle” – you’ll be offered fresh eggs, mountain honey, fishing trips – and there are wineries (such as Mikulic and Putnikovic) and decent restaurants (try Mimbelli in…

Olivia Newton-John 1948-2022 Olivia Newton-John, who has died aged 73, sold more than a hundred million records and sang some of the biggest pop hits of the 1970s and 80s. One of them, Physical, spent ten weeks at No. 1 on the US Billboard charts in 1981, and won a Grammy for its video, said The Times. But in the public imagination she will always be Sandy, the “chaste teenage prom queen” in the 1950s-set film musical Grease. Newton-John was 28 when she was put forward for the role of Sandy Olsson, the goody-goody, new girl at the local high school, who falls for John Travolta’s leather-clad bad boy Danny Zuko – and in the final scenes, swaps her demure frock and neatly tied-back hair for skin-tight black Spandex pants…

Recession may be looming, but this is actually “a golden time” to capitalise on stock markets, “which are always looking forward”, said Matthew Lynn in The Sunday Telegraph. The bear market in Nasdaq stocks has reversed and a “new bull market” may have already begun. What will it look like? Here are some likely “mega trends”: Military technology (or “miltech” as it will probably become known in venture capital circles) The war in Ukraine looks like it may turn into a lengthy stalemate; a Cold War in the Pacific has arguably begun. Defence spending is rising and “there will be space for companies with new weapons systems”. Logistics This sector hasn’t been exciting for a long time, but redesigning supply chains is going to be big business. “Every major manufacturer…

Alan Joyce It hasn’t been the easiest of times to be in charge of an airline. But at least the Qantas boss, Alan Joyce, gets his name in the lexicon for posterity, said the FT. “To be ‘Joyced’ has crept into the Australian vernacular to describe being severely inconvenienced at an airport by flight cancellations or luggage going astray.” The public backlash against the “flying kangaroo” and its long-standing chief, who ruthlessly cut jobs during the pandemic, has been harsh. But Joyce, who grew up in a working-class suburb of Dublin and began his career at Aer Lingus, has “a fighting spirit”. Qantas last week “took the unusual step” of “asking senior managers to fill 100 ground-handler jobs for three months while it tries to recruit more people”. Sir Ralph…

THE WEEK CROSSWORD 1325 An Ettinger shoe horn 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 29 August. Send it to The Week Crossword 1325, 121-141 Westbourne Terrace, London W2 6JR, or email the completed grid or listed solutions to crossword@theweek.co.uk. Tim Moorey (timmoorey.com) This week’s winner will receive an Ettinger (ettinger.co.uk) Bridle Hide travel shoehorn in black, which retails at £75, and two Connell Guides (connellguides.com). ACROSS 7 Herb, a comic character (5) 8 Helpful person, Old Nick embraces French husband (9) 10 Sun: Goodman returns on pop juries (6) 11 Times are changing in parts of the Middle East (8) 12 A vintage bubbly for pilot (8) 13 Middle…