Table of contents for 1471 in The Week

What happened America and the UK launched a barrage of air strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen last Thursday night in retaliation for weeks of attacks by the militia group (see page 11) on shipping in the Red Sea. The strikes hit radar stations, weapon depots and missile and drone launch sites, killing at least five people and injuring six more. US officials claimed that the attacks had destroyed or degraded about a quarter of the Houthis’ offensive capability. Among the nations that voiced support for the strikes were Germany, Denmark and Bahrain; France, Italy and Spain did not sign a statement backing them. US forces launched some smaller bombing raids over the following days, and announced they had seized a shipment of Iranian missiles bound for Yemen. The intervention…

The UN’s definition of genocide is simple, said The Guardian: “a crime committed with the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, in whole or in part”. Proving in court that a genocide is happening, however, is anything but. Last week, South Africa brought just such a case – alleging that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians – to the International Court of Justice in The Hague. South Africa’s opening petition was compelling, said Rob Howse in the LA Times. Israel’s military operations since 7 October have resulted in a vast number of civilian casualties: of the 24,000 killed, according to Palestinian sources, 70% are women and children. More than 1.9 million Gazans have been internally displaced, and supplies of food and water profoundly disrupted. South…

Rail passengers, who were warned to expect disruption to services for nine days from 29 January, owing to rolling walkouts by drivers who are members of Aslef. Thousands of trains are likely to be cancelled each day if the strikes go ahead. Monika Rahel Ring, an Austrian teacher who lost her job at an elementary school when her employers discovered that she moonlighted as a sex coach. Online, where the 47-year-old called herself the “Orgasm Pope”, she promised to show over-45s how to have an “explosive sex life”. School bosses said her side hustle was “incompatible” with her job as a state-employed teacher. City lawyers, after the “Magic Circle” firm Slaughter and May threatened to name and shame employees who continue to defy a corporate edict to return to the…

Potsdam, Germany Far-right plans: The revelation that senior politicians of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party attended a secret conference of the far-right to discuss the repatriation of “foreigners” has caused uproar across Germany. According to investigative news site Correctiv, the conference – held at a hotel near Potsdam in November – was attended by 22 far-right figures, including Martin Sellner, leader of Austria’s Identitarian movement. Sellner is said to have presented a plan, reminiscent of the 1940 Nazi plan to deport four million Jews to Madagascar, to relocate up to two million people – “non-assimilated” German citizens as well as asylum seekers – to a “model” state in North Africa. The AfD, which polls show 22% of Germans would now vote for, has been trying to soften its hard-right…

1* Requiem in D minor, Op. 48: VI. Libera me by Gabriel Fauré, performed by Stephen Varcoe, The Cambridge Singers and members of the City of London Sinfonia (cond. John Rutter)2 Morgh-e Sahar by Mohammad-Taqi Bahar and Morteza Neidavoud, performed by Homayoun Shajarian and Dastan Ensemble3 Ride on Time by Daniele Davoli, Mirko Limoni, Valerio Semplici and Dan Hartman, performed by Black Box4 Miniatures for Piano Trio – Set 2: No. 4, Romance by Frank Bridge, performed by Alexander Chaushian and Ashley Wass5 Variations on Bahram’s Melody by Bahram Dehqani-Tafti, performed by Gabriel Francis-Dehqani with Fiona Sweeney, Kryštof Kohout and Will Harmer6 Take Me to Church by John Reynolds, Graham Kearns and Sinéad O’Connor, performed by Sinéad O’Connor7 Sovereign Light Café, written and performed by Keane8 Mahi by Mahan Mirarab,…

The al-Houthis are a family of prominent Islamic scholars who claim direct descent from the Prophet Mohammed. Hussein al-Houthi, born in 1959, studied in Sudan – where he was exposed to radical Islamism in the form of the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qa’eda – and lived in Iran, where he was greatly influenced by Ayatollah Khomeini. He was also radicalised by the US and UK invasion of Iraq in 2003. Before his death, al-Houthi came up “with his own concoction of Islamist ideology”, says Prof Bernard Haykel, of Princeton. His sermons are collected in a 2,000-page book which has become, rather like Mao’s “red book”, a reference text for the movement. It is rambling and idiosyncratic, rejecting mainstream Shia Islam and reverting to an imagined, primitive form of Zaidi Islam. He…

New York City is no place for flâneurs Shaan Sachdev The New York Times New York City has changed, says Shaan Sachdev. I’ve always loved wandering its streets, losing myself in the crowds and my own thoughts. But in the past few years, such contemplative strolls have become impossible. Crossing the road now involves running a gauntlet between aggressive, ever-larger vehicles. The pavements, meanwhile, are menaced by electric delivery bikes and scooters. The author and long-term Manhattan resident Fran Lebowitz recently remarked that she was amazed “that every day tens of thousands of people aren’t slaughtered on the streets”. The physical peril is bad enough, but the “ambient anxiety” also exacts an emotional toll. Friedrich Nietzsche – who like Schopenhauer and Kant before him, took daily strolls to unravel his…

A flooded quarry in the Forest of Dean is being turned into a test site for the “international space station of the seas”, reports The Times. An ocean technology company called Deep is investing £100m in the old Dayhouse Quarry, as part of its efforts to develop an underwater research station where marine scientists will be able to live and work at depths of up to 200 metres for weeks at a time. Currently, scientists can only access such depths for a few hours, and must keep bringing their samples to the surface. The 80-metre-deep quarry, which was formerly used as a diving centre owing to the clarity of its limestone-filtered water, will also be used to test submersibles, and will have an area where students can be trained as…

“Amid so much grim news, something to celebrate,” said Ian Birrell in The i Paper. The “biggest election year” in history, during which more than half the world’s population is set to go to the polls, has kicked off with a thumping win for democratic values, freedom and the rule of law. Last weekend, Taiwan held its presidential elections. The campaign had been marked by bullying and disinformation from Beijing, which stepped up military activity around the self-governing island it claims as its own, and cast the contest as “a choice between war and peace”. But the winner was the current vice-president, Lai Ching-te (aka William Lai) of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), a candidate Beijing branded a dangerous anti-China “trouble-maker”, because his party has long insisted on Taiwanese…

John Peter Rhys Williams – who died this month aged 74 – was not only one of the greats of Welsh rugby, but a “revolutionary” figure within the sport, said Paul Rees in The Guardian. When he began his career in the late 1960s, rugby union was “stuck in a defensive rut”: kicking the ball was even more common than today, and full-backs were regarded as little more than “the last line of defence”. Williams’s emergence coincided with a rule change that “banned kicking directly into touch from outside a player’s 22”. Designed to encourage teams to retain possession, the law gave full-backs licence to venture further up the field, into try-scoring positions. Williams was the first player to fully capitalise on this development. When he made his debut for…

Blame for the lousy IT… To The Times I spent 30 years working with large-scale IT systems. To an IT professional, the faults in the Post Office’s Horizon system indicate utter incompetence. Imagine a sub-postmaster registering a cash receipt. The Horizon system was reportedly prone to “freezing”, and in such circumstances users tend to hit “Enter” several times. A well-designed system will record only a single transaction. Horizon would duplicate the transaction as many times as the key was hit – adding cash to the branch’s account that couldn’t later be reconciled. That is what you might call Mickey Mouse design – but it gets worse. One absolute rule in any financial system is that you should never be able to erase transactions. Any corrections should be made with a…

by Will Hermes Viking 560pp £25 The Week Bookshop £19.99 Lou Reed, the lead vocalist of the Velvet Underground, who died in 2013, already has a longish shelf of biographies. This one is the first to make use of his personal archive, “and it shows”, said David Keenan in Literary Review. “It feels more like a coolly researched biography than one written by a passionate fan.” What’s more, Will Hermes tries to repackage the “violently aggressive, drug-huffing”, gender-bending, “sexually unhinged” rock star to make him acceptable to the modern world: Reed and his circle were “nonbinary”, Hermes informs us; he suggests that Reed was a troubled person who tried to become “someone good” (as he wrote in one of his best-loved songs, Perfect Day), not the sociopath that his behaviour…

“Empires wax and wane; states cleave asunder and coalesce; but teenagers being horrid little twerps is eternal,” said Robbie Collin in The Daily Telegraph. Twenty years ago, Mean Girls “pinned down a new millennial strain of adolescent narcissism and pettiness”, and became one of the “definitive high-school comedies of the age”. A stage musical version opened on Broadway in 2017; now we have a screen version of that. Thankfully, it’s a “scream”: the songs are a delight; the cast are “excellent”; and the 2004 classic’s best gags have been left “reverently intact”. Although the dialogue from the first Mean Girls has been given a smart update, the story is virtually a beat-for-beat remake, said Kyle Smith in The Wall Street Journal. So we have the “ultra-feminine, socially exclusive” clique of…

Giovanni Anselmo, who died in December at the age of 89, was a key member of the “arte povera” movement – a group of Italian artists who, in the 1960s and 1970s, used simple, everyday objects in their work. Anselmo was best known for sculptures that use stone, metal and vegetable matter to make “visible the invisible forces that govern the universe”, said Rosalind McKever in Apollo magazine. Large slabs of granite, hung high, would demonstrate the power of gravity while apparently defying it. Untitled (Sculpture That Eats), from 1968, “famously sandwiches a humble lettuce precariously between a standing block of granite and a smaller block, secured by a wire”. The lettuces had to be regularly replaced; if they dried or rotted, the block would fall. Anselmo’s epiphany as an…

Helen is furious to discover that Miles has bought the land at Rob’s request for Jack to inherit, leaving Henry with nothing. At the vet, Alastair tells the nurses that they’ve been ordered to start upselling products; Denise refuses – she’s not a salesperson. Oliver invites Brad to apply for a job at Grey Gables; with other Lower Loxley staff leaving, Lily asks Mia to keep an ear out. Witnessing the frostiness between Denise and Alastair, Lilian solves the issue by suggesting they run puppy parties. Henry confides in a teacher about the situation at home. After a comment from Oliver, Lily asks about a work placement at Grey Gables. There’s an awkward moment at Denise’s dance fit class, as Alastair and her husband both show up; Alastair won’t come…

Serves 2 4 shallots, finely diced 5 garlic cloves 1 lime, zested and quartered 2cm piece of ginger root, peeled 1 long red (Thai) chilli, destemmed, plus optional extra slivers to serve 1 long green (Thai) chilli, destemmed 1½ tbsp garam masala 1 tbsp medium curry powder 3 tbsp vegetable oil 1 tbsp ground coriander 1 cinnamon stick (about 10cm long) 1 x 400g tin of full-fat coconut milk 1 large potato (I like Maris Piper), peeled and cut into 2cm pieces 1 cauliflower, florets separated 2 tbsp smooth peanut butter 100g coriander, finely chopped To serve: boiled jasmine rice • Put the shallots, garlic, lime zest, ginger, both chillies, garam masala, curry powder, oil, ground coriander and a sprinkle of salt into a food processor and blitz until it’s completely smooth.…

Stay at one of the charming turreted luxury lodges on the edge of Northern Ireland’s Lough Erne, at Enniskillen. The resort has a golf course, restaurants, a Thai spa, indoor infinity pool, plus excellent spa treatments (from £164/night; lougherneresort.com). Book a wooden lodge on the banks of Blyth Rise Lake, in Laxfield, Suffolk. Ideal for couples (no children or dogs), there are outdoor firepits, and spa treatments can be had in the privacy of your lodge (three nights from £595; blythrisestays.co.uk). The Boat House, in Belford, Northumberland, overlooks one of two private lakes on the Middleton Hall Estate. A great choice for a romantic break, it sleeps two (three nights from £595; exploremiddletonhall.co.uk). PortNellan, a private Highland estate, has a range of lodges set amid the lochs and peaks of…

A surfers’ idyll in the Philippines There are plans for an international airport in Siargao, and for “blocky” hotels. But for now, this island in the southeastern Philippines is a low-key surfers’ paradise, says Chris Schalkx in Condé Nast Traveller, with beautiful beaches, fabulous reef breaks and a main town of “scrappy board shops and hammock-strung hostels”. The smartest place to stay is Nay Palad Hideaway, which offers “pure toes-in-the-sand relaxation”, with its “frangipani-scented gardens”, menuless restaurant and hidden yoga pavilions. They can arrange for you to go on a boat trip to an idyllic swimming or diving spot on a neighbouring island – or you might take a tour of Siargao’s interior with Lokal Lab, a Siargao-based NGO whose projects include a “bamboo-clad” Tropical Academy, and a “showcase farm”.…

Annie Nightingale 1940-2024 Annie Nightingale, who has died aged 83, interviewed Sean Connery in a Wimpy Bar in Brighton before the release of the first Bond film. But journalism proved not to be her vocation, said The Daily Telegraph. She moved into TV, hosting a pop show, and in 1970 she became the first female DJ on BBC Radio 1. In that role, she met some of the biggest stars of the era, from The Beatles (who became close friends) to Jimi Hendrix (“charming”), Mick Jagger (“very shrewd”), Marc Bolan (“hilarious”) and Jim Morrison (“a bit of an arse”); and she championed the music of a host of up-and-coming stars, including David Bowie. Meanwhile, her appearance morphed from unthreatening girl next door to “rock chick”, with bleached hair and outsized…

Until last week, when Fujitsu – one of “Tokyo’s corporate icons” – suddenly became “UK public enemy No. 1”, most Japanese people had never heard of its decades-long involvement with the British Post Office, said Gearoid Reidy in The Business Times (Singapore). But they do understand the concept of shame. As details emerged of the lives wrecked by the company’s “dodgy software”, even lifestyle magazines, such as Tokyo Weekender, began questioning: “How did Fujitsu get it so wrong?” Stock market sentiment may also be turning. After making steady gains over the past year, shares stumbled this week. For years, “Fujitsu tried to distance itself from the storm” over its Horizon software, leaving the handling to its UK subsidiary – formed when the Japanese group acquired the former British computing giant…

Barclaycard reports that three out of ten adults are planning to resell unwanted Christmas presents online this year, says Lucy Alderson in The Times. Here are some tips – and caveats: Choosing a marketplace You can sell clothes and some homeware on Depop and Vinted. But Facebook Marketplace and Gumtree are often used for bigger items such as kitchen appliances and furniture, “because you can arrange for the buyer to collect from your home”. For unwanted electronics and more specialist rare items, eBay remains a good option. Fees and protections These vary considerably. While Facebook Marketplace, Vinted and Gumtree enable you to sell without paying a penny, Depop takes 10% of the total transaction sum, and eBay 12.8%. Make sure you’ve checked a platform’s buyer/seller policy so you know the…

Bill Ackman Since rising to prominence by shorting the US mortgage market before the 2008 crash, the founder of New York hedge fund Pershing Square has acquired a reputation “a fearsome boardroom brawler”, said The Economist. Bill Ackman, 57, has sterling credentials as a financier. But is he strong enough to withstand America’s “culture wars”? The billionaire finds himself at the centre of an academic row, as well as a legal battle, with the news site Business Insider and its publisher Axel Springer. Late last year Ackman, a major Harvard University donor, launched a campaign to force its president, Claudine Gay, out of office – after she failed, in his view, to protect Jewish students from antisemitic attacks. But what eventually forced Gay’s resignation in January was proof of plagiarism…

The week’s best shares Games Workshop Group Investors’ Chronicle Slow trading and the CFO’s resignation have pushed down shares, but profitability is improving at the wargame miniatures maker. Also benefitting from a promising deal with Amazon Studios to develop Warhammer 40,000 for films and TV. Buy. £96.64. Melrose Industries The Times Shares in the GKN Aerospace owner have had a good run since Covid. Annual revenues are expected to rise by more than a third to £3.9bn, with profit margins climbing to 20%. Buy. 581p. Renault The Daily Telegraph In spite of a “rocky past”, the French carmaker has recalibrated its Nissan alliance and is poised to exploit opportunities in hybrid, EVs and software. Risky, but four new car launches should boost sales. Buy. €34.51. Smith & Nephew The Times…

With two vintage Ferraris on the gravel drive of his five-bedroomed mansion in Denham, in Buckinghamshire, a second home in Dubai, and a yacht which he had just sold for a million pounds, Lee Hannigan had all the markings of a successful life. He was in his mid-40s, masquerading as a legitimate businessman, but his secret EncroChat phone told a different story. He was a money launderer for drug gangs, hiding in plain sight and protected, so he believed, by the unbreakable encryption on his phone. He was not alone. There was his near neighbour Harry Hicks-Samuels, still in his 20s, whose friends and associates thought was a respectable watch dealer. In fact, he was a major cocaine importer and a key player in an organised crime group (OCG). Lee…

THE WEEK CROSSWORD 1397 Two Connell Guides and three Week-branded items will be given to the sender of the first correct solution to the crossword and the clue of the week opened on Monday 29 January. Send it to The Week Crossword 1397, 121-141 Westbourne Terrace, London W2 6JR, or email the completed grid/listed solutions to crossword@theweek.co.uk. Tim Moorey (timmoorey.com) This week’s winner will receive Week-branded items including a notebook, coffee mug and tote bag, as well as two Connell Guides (connellguides.com). ACROSS 1 Poor golfer cries out catching lake (6) 5 Tread on toes by chance or otherwise (8) 9 Guilty party concerned with guard at home (8) 10 Difficulty with a page coming back for infidels (6) 11 Occasion that damaged Victoria? (5,7) 13 It’s bread from the…

What happened Donald Trump won a landslide victory in this week’s Iowa caucuses – the first contest in the Republican primary race – confirming his status as the clear favourite to secure the GOP’s presidential nomination. He took 51% of the vote in Iowa, which was held as the midwestern state was hit by blizzards and temperatures as low as -25°C. Ron DeSantis won a closely watched battle for second place, with 21%; Nikki Haley came third, on 19%. Vivek Ramaswamy dropped his bid for the nomination after winning just 8% and threw his support behind Trump. The former president – whose win was the most emphatic in the history of Iowa’s GOP caucuses – struck a conciliatory tone in his victory address, calling for unity and praising his rivals…

An agricultural college in Yorkshire has been forced to apologise for launching “meat-free Mondays” and “well-being Wednesdays” at its on-site café, to promote “Veganuary”. On Facebook, Bishop Burton College – which runs courses in everything from animal management to abattoirs – said the café would be serving only plant-based food for two days each week in January, because vegan food contributes to “good mental health as well as sustainability”. Students accused it of undermining the farming community. Ice from Greenland’s glaciers is being shipped to the United Arab Emirates for use at high-end cocktail bars. The firm behind the venture says glacier ice has no bubbles and melts more slowly than regular ice.…

The Conservatives are facing their worst electoral defeat since 1997, according to a poll published this week. Based on a survey of 14,110 adults, the poll predicts that the Tories will be left with just 169 seats, while Labour sweeps to power with 385. Conducted by YouGov, it was commissioned by a group of Tory donors, raising speculation that its release had been timed to put pressure on Rishi Sunak ahead of the third reading of his Safety of Rwanda Bill. On Tuesday, 60 Tory MPs backed rebel amendments aimed at making the bill tougher. Among them were Lee Anderson (pictured) and Brendan Clarke-Smith, who both resigned as Tory deputy chairs. The vote on the bill itself was due on Wednesday evening. As The Week went to press, it was…

Ottawa Visa clampdown: Canada is considering capping the number of visas issued to international students in an effort to ease its housing crisis. The number of foreign students in Canada has almost trebled in a decade, as PM Justin Trudeau (left) has used immigration as a means of boosting the economy. Nearly a million students were admitted last year alone. But with the cost of renting a home up 22% in two years, and the crisis harming the government’s poll ratings, Immigration Minister Marc Miller has pledged to reform the “out of control” system – though many universities rely on the fees the students pay. Pasadena, California Looted art: A US court has ruled that a museum in Madrid can keep a painting by Camille Pissarro that was stolen by…

“Our granddaughter, who is five, recently discovered the joys of the wireless. To her, it is magic, because when you switch it on, a conversation or piece of music is already playing which you have not selected. Until now, she had not heard anything broadcast that she or her parents had not chosen. She is entranced by what she thinks is a sort of eavesdropping. I think she has accidentally identified why I have never felt totally at ease with a multi-channel world in which you pre-select what you hear. Choosing for yourself can be limiting, and knowing what you are going to hear can be boring. I half-prefer the days when you just pressed the knob and took what came.” Charles Moore in The Spectator…

Something rotten in the state of Britain Matthew Syed The Sunday Times When members of the honours committee descend on Alan Bates to offer him a knighthood, I hope he tells them “to shove it”, says Matthew Syed. The former sub-postmaster clearly deserves recognition for his campaign on behalf of victims, but for officialdom to confer its blessing on him in this way would be jarring. For if there’s one thing the Post Office scandal proves, it’s the rottenness of our whole system of patronage and privilege. The ministers, the quango managers, the corporate executives – the sort of people routinely granted most of the gongs – just two have been interviewed under caution by the police; they live under a different set of rules than the ones “ordinary people”…

Bottled water teems with plastic Nanoplastics have been found floating in the air that we breathe; and they are also in the water that we drink. Now, researchers at Columbia University have used double lasers to get a sense of just how many there are in a litre of bottled water. Looking at five samples of three common brands, they estimate that the average bottle contains fully 240,000 fragments of plastic. The vast majority are nanoplastics, meaning that they measure less than a micron – a millionth of a metre – in diameter. A human hair is about 83 microns wide. Much of the plastic seemed to have come from the bottles themselves, and from a type of nylon use in the filtration process. “It is not totally unexpected to…

“Think of Calvin Klein and you’ll likely picture the label’s ubiquitous black and white adverts featuring beautiful models in various states of undress,” said Alexandria Dale in Cosmopolitan. But after decades of “pushing the boundaries”, one of its ads has now been officially banned. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has concluded, in response to public complaints, that a campaign featuring the musician FKA twigs, which was first released last April, presents her as a “stereotypical sexual object” – and so is “irresponsible and likely to cause serious offence”. This seems like a blatant case of double standards, said Clara Strunck in Harper’s Bazaar. It’s certainly a “sexy advert”: the poster has the singer “draped in nothing but a denim shirt, half falling off one side of her body”. But it’s…

To The New Statesman Jeanette Winterson suggests that many people hold Britain principally responsible for global warming because Britain industrialised first. It’s only fair to point out that if Britain is to blame for the negative effects of the Industrial Revolution, it’s entitled to take credit for the good things. Global health, wealth, longevity, scientific capabilities, living standards and mortality rates are all, on average, better than they were before it. It’s unfashionable to say so but, on the whole, Britain has had a hugely positive impact. Mark Bale, Oxford To The New Statesman Jeanette Winterson says the UK’s climate commitments “in the view of many… should be far greater than those of other nations”. They are: of the almost 200 countries in the world, around 40 – including the…

by Cathy Sweeney Weidenfeld & Nicolson 224pp £18.99 The Week Bookshop £14.99 This “blistering” first novel by an acclaimed Irish short-story writer anatomises “a marriage that has outrun its course”, said Lucy Popescu in The Observer. The unnamed narrator doesn’t know she’s walking out for good when she leaves her comfortable house in a Dublin suburb one Tuesday morning, not saying goodbye to her sleeping husband and teenaged children. But, as she makes her way, by train and ferry, to Fishguard in Wales, we’re filled in on her “prolonged unravelling” in writing of masterly economy and restraint. Sweeney’s spare, precise prose “gives the book a cinematic quality”, said Chloë Ashby in The Spectator. Every moment in it is “observed in slow motion and high definition”. It turns out that the…

With the new year only a few weeks old, “the first must-see film of 2024” has arrived, said Matthew Bond in The Mail on Sunday. “You may come out of Poor Things thinking it’s just way too weird, that it’s a tad too long, but my goodness you’ll want to have seen it.” Set in an “art-deco-meets-steampunk London”, and directed by the Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos (The Favourite), it stars Emma Stone as Bella, a young woman who tries to take her own life while she is pregnant. A celebrated surgeon, Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe), then revives her by transplanting her baby’s brain into her head, leaving her with the body of a woman but a toddler’s mentality. As Bella’s mind matures, she discovers sex (or “furious jumping”, as she…

Few figures in our culture are regarded with as much reverence as Geoffrey Chaucer, said Francesca Peacock in The Daily Telegraph. The author of The Canterbury Tales is remembered “as a fundamentally English and patriotic author”, whose decision to write in his own vernacular firmly established him as “the father of English literature”. Yet as this “superb” exhibition at Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries attests, Chaucer (c.1340-1400) was an unconventional figure in his own day, who “has not always been on a canonical pedestal”. And while we might assume that his original words have been consistently preserved as sacrosanct, they have in fact been endlessly modified to suit “whichever reader had it in their hands at the time”. The show brings together “reams” of manuscript history, along with exhibits that testify to…

Emma by Jane Austen, 1815 (Vintage £7.99). The one in which the heroine marries her brother-in-law. Emma is an outlier among Austen’s novels because it’s not based on the seducer plot, in which the heroine needs to figure out that the dashing young man courting her is in fact a cad. Instead, Emma herself is the seducer – clever, witty, beautiful – and what she has to learn is kindness. Dubliners by James Joyce, 1914 (Penguin £8.99). Short stories written by Joyce between 1904 and 1907, after he had left his native city for Italy. The final story, The Dead, is part folk tale, part social satire, as Joyce looks beyond the politics, culture and everyday life of Edwardian Dublin to an Ireland ravaged by poverty and famine. Troubles by…

Programmes Wilderness with Simon Reeve In a new series, Reeve travels to some of the world’s most remote landscapes, starting with a journey through the forests of the Congo. Sun 21 Jan, BBC2 21:00 (60mins). Walter Presents: A French Case French crime drama based on an infamous 1980s unsolved murder. When a young child is found drowned, suspicion falls on his family. Sun 21 Jan, C4 23:30 (65mins). Pep Guardiola: Chasing Perfection Documentary looking at the Manchester City manager’s rise to the top of the game, and the methods he used to get there. Wed 24 Jan, BBC1 22:40 (60mins). Murder Trial: The Killing of Dr Brenda Page Two-part investigation into one of Scotland’s most notorious murder cases, as the victim’s ex-husband goes on trial nearly 50 years after her…

Spain & Portugal cruise Embark on a 14-night adventure this spring, with stops in Lisbon, Lanzarote and Funchal. From £1,044pp full-board. 0808-239 5689, cruise118.com. Depart 2 March, from Southampton. All-inclusive in Cape Verde A 7-night escape to the island of Boa Vista with a stay at the sprawling Hotel Riu Touareg, just steps from powder-soft white sands. From £816pp (incl. flights). 020-3451 2688, tui.co.uk. Depart 29 April. Seven-night Gozo getaway Slip away to the sleepy Maltese island & stay at the Grand Hotel, overlooking the fishing town of Mgarr Harbour. From £311pp b&b (incl. flights). 01234-230440, loveholidays.com. Depart 26 February. Clifftop spa hotel Enjoy an ocean-view spa and afternoon tea when you stay 2 nights at the Bedruthan Hotel & Spa in Cornwall. From £125pp b&b. 020-3564 3000, travelzoo.com. Valid…

M&S: Marks & Lewis? Thousands of M&S staff are “set to benefit from bumper payouts” as the high-street stalwart toasts its “best-ever Christmas”, said Isabella Fish and Martin Strydom in The Times. Some 9,200 employees, mostly customer service assistants, who put a typical £150 a month into the 2020 share saving scheme, are poised to gain over £10,000 when it pays out on 1 February, following an 80% rise in shares this year. It crowns a remarkable turnaround that even trickled down to M&S’s troubled grocery partnership with Ocado. “Try as we might to find a cloud to go with the silver lining, it refuses to materialise,” said Oliver Shah in The Sunday Times. In a tough market, food sales (up 9.9%), and clothing and homeware (up 4.8%), are proof…

Why US CEOs fear the return of Trump Editorial The Economist It’s hardly surprising that American CEOs rail against the anti-business rhetoric of Joe Biden’s administration, says The Economist. But many “quietly profess” to be even more terrified by the prospect of a second Trump term – fearing that a revived president, surrounded this time by “true believers”, could “shake up the economic framework on which America has prospered for generations”. No amount of tax cuts or short-term market gains would compensate for the chaos he is liable to unleash, especially in trade. Uncertainty about his geopolitical agenda would “haunt multinationals”, and “any sense that he is weakening the rule of law and the sanctity of contracts and treaties would ripple around the world”. Still, most business leaders are lying…

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A Scottish designer experienced a massive surge in sales after Taylor Swift was photographed wearing one of her dresses. Jade Robertson, co-founder of the Perth-based company Little Lies, says she’d had “no idea” that Swift had bought the £58 mini-dress until she woke up to news that the singer had worn it out to dinner in New York with the actresses Blake Lively and Zoë Kravitz. The dress immediately sold out, but Robertson has vowed to restock, at the same price. A bear that was left traumatised by the Russian shelling of its zoo in Ukraine has been given a new home in West Lothian. Yampil, a 12-year-old Asiatic black bear, was named after the village in which he was found by Ukrainian soldiers in July 2022. Out of the…

1990s nostalgia, with the relaunch of the hit teatime television show Gladiators, in which members of the public compete in physical challenges against athletes and bodybuilders in shimmering spandex. The first episode of the show, on BBC1, attracted more than six million viewers. Elton John, who won his first Emmy, for a Disney+ concert film, and thus became an Egot – recipient of an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony. There have only been 19 Egots. John Gielgud became Britain’s first in 1991, when he won an Emmy, aged 87, for his role in the TV drama series A Summer’s Lease.…

Scores of girls in Rochdale were “left at the mercy” of grooming gangs for several years because Greater Manchester Police and the local council failed in their duty to protect them, a report has found. Covering child sexual exploitation in the area from 2004 to 2013, it found “substantial evidence” that 74 children had been sexually exploited by men of Pakistani and Afghan heritage, and that only three of the children had been “appropriately protected”. In one case of poor practice, the police took a 13-year-old’s aborted foetus for DNA testing, put it in a freezer and forgot about it. The report, commissioned by Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham, also identifies 96 men who may pose an ongoing risk to children, and notes that they form ”only a proportion” of…

A victim of the Post Office The sub-postmasters are finally getting justice, but for some of them, it has come too late. Patricia Kerrigan retired from her job at BT in the 1990s, and moved from Manchester to a village in Cumbria. She and her husband John bought a cottage, and to keep busy she turned its annexe into a sub-post office, which she opened twice a week. To their friends, it must have seemed a dream life; then in 2000, the Post Office accused Patricia of having siphoned off £44,000. It was “ridiculous”, said her daughter Sharon in The Independent: her post office was tiny; it didn’t make that kind of money. Devastated, Patricia fought for a while to clear her name, then John had a stroke, possibly brought…

Who are the Houthis? Officially known as Ansar Allah (“supporters of Allah”), they are a fundamentalist militant group that originated among Yemen’s Houthi tribe. The Houthis are Zaidis, a branch of Shia Islam, whose imams ruled northern Yemen for much of its history – until 1962, when they were removed by an Arab-nationalist army coup. Today, Zaidis make up roughly 35% of Yemen’s population, concentrated in the rugged northwestern areas, particularly Saada province. In the 1990s, Hussein al-Houthi, a charismatic Zaidi cleric and politician inspired by the Iranian revolution, formed a religious and political movement to protest against Yemen’s long-standing ruler, president Ali Abdullah Saleh. In 2004, Saleh responded by ordering the army into Saada. During the ensuing small war, al-Houthi was killed by government forces. He is now seen…

An auction in March will offer Marilyn Monroe fans the chance to buy a crypt close to hers in a mausoleum in Los Angeles. The crypt, which can hold a “full body or ashes”, is expected to fetch up to $400,000, and is located one row up and four spaces to the left of Monroe’s, at Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park & Mortuary. The crypt is close to Hugh Hefner’s, which is right next to Monroe’s; Natalie Wood, Jack Lemmon, Roy Orbison and Dean Martin are nearby. “This is a rare opportunity to spend your eternity in the company of Marilyn Monroe and Hugh Hefner,” said the seller, who has chosen to remain anonymous. An Airbnb in London is charging tourists up to £68 a night to stay in…

AUSTRALIA Stop waving the flag for cancel culture The Sydney Morning Herald Australian politics took a strange turn last week, says The Sydney Morning Herald. Aussies have long celebrated “Australia Day” on 26 January, the anniversary of the first British ships landing here in 1788. Yet the build-up to this year’s holiday has been overshadowed by a row over Woolworths’ decision to stop stocking Australia Day merchandise. The supermarket chain says the move is down to a lack of demand; but that logic, sound enough though it is, hasn’t stopped opposition leader Peter Dutton, of the centre-right Liberal Party, calling for a “boycott” of the shop, which he says has fallen victim to a “woke agenda”. How odd. Dutton was once a harsh critic of “cancel culture”, and letting private…

Playing a dead body on stage can get boring, the actor Simon Williams recently recalled; so sometimes thespians devise ways of passing the time. He remembers one play in which an actor, who was an avid Arsenal fan, resorted to “slipping an earphone under his wig so he could listen to a crucial game. When his team scored in extra time, the corpse punched the air, crying ‘Yes!’” Princess Anne has never been considered one of the royal family’s fashion mavens; and yet she has now been credited as the inspiration for a new collection by the fashion house Fendi. Silvia Venturini Fendi described the Princess Royal as the “most chic woman in the world”, and said that she’d fallen “in love” with her style when she saw Anne in…

“Half at least of all morality is negative and consists in keeping out of mischief.”Aldous Huxley, quoted in The Sunday Telegraph “The desire to get married – which, I regret to say, I believe is basic and primal in women – is followed almost immediately by an equally basic and primal urge, which is to be single again.”Nora Ephron, quoted in The Observer “The beginning of wisdom is the ability to call things by their right names.”Confucius, quoted in the New York Post “The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.”H.L. Mencken, quoted in The Knowledge “Life is little more than a loan shark: it exacts a high rate of interest for the few pleasures it concedes.”Luigi Pirandello, quoted on Scribd “It’s not…

Tennis Andy Murray crashed out of the first round of the Australian Open. Emma Raducanu won her first Grand Slam match since an eight-month layoff after surgery. Snooker Ronnie O’Sullivan won a record-extending eighth Masters title, beating Ali Carter 10-7. Motor sport The Spanish motorcycle rider Carles Falcón has died after crashing at the Dakar Rally in Saudi Arabia. Football England women’s team coach Sarina Wiegman has extended her contract to 2027. José Mourinho was sacked by Roma.…

To rewatch Disney’s The Little Mermaid as an adult “is to be struck by how jam-packed the film is with queer-coded tropes”, said Nick Ferris in The Daily Telegraph – from the “muscle-bound bodies of the mermen” to the “diva-esque” underwater witch Ursula. At the time, all this may have escaped the attention of many viewers, but now the creators of Unfortunate – subtitled The Untold Story of Ursula the Sea Witch – have zeroed in on it. Drawing on the drag show tradition, this musical retells the story through Ursula’s eyes and for an adult audience. The result is a “hugely funny, fresh and engaging production”, with lavish costumes, extravagant song-and-dance numbers and visual effects. With some judicious cuts, and some of the jokes toned down, I could see…

“In this extremely silly vigilante revenge movie”, Jason Statham plays a beekeeper in two senses, said Wendy Ide in The Observer. He tends to hives and sells honey, but he is also a “Beekeeper” – a member of “an elite clandestine organisation that enforces a unique brand of justice in instances where conventional law enforcement has failed”. In the “bad guy corner, Josh Hutcherson is a billionaire brat whose company dupes pensioners out of their savings, while Jeremy Irons is a security expert whose main job is to deliver chunks of exposition”. But it’s Statham’s film – “a brisk, slick, ultra-violent action onslaught that yet again demonstrates his ability to redeem just about any old tosh”. Statham brings “buckets of classic-era magnetism” to his films, said Kevin Maher in The…

Starting out with an air fryer If you got an air fryer for Christmas, and haven’t used one before, it’s worth taking time to get to know your machine, says Anna Berrill in The Guardian. While air fryers can be transformative for a home cook, they can be surprisingly frustrating to begin with. As they’re not all “created equal”, it really is a good idea to read the manual. Take time to test out cooking times, because some models are more ferocious than others. Don’t assume (as many do) that your air fryer doesn’t need pre-heating: in this respect, it’s like a conventional oven. As for dishes to try out first, Poppy O’Toole, author of The Actually Delicious Air Fryer Cookbook, recommends a whole roast chicken. It isn’t too hard,…

● There is evidence that what you eat while pregnant influences the baby’s tastes as well as its development, so there is another reason to follow a healthy, varied diet. ● Avoid any foods that have a risk of food poisoning, such as unpasteurised cheese, unwashed salad, shellfish and raw fish (sushi is out, but smoked salmon is generally considered safe). ● Eggs with a “Red Lion” stamp should now be free from salmonella. However, some experts still advise cooking eggs through to eliminate any risk. ● Oily fish such as mackerel are beneficial, but only two portions a week because they can contain harmful pollutants. Don’t eat shark, swordfish or marlin at all. ● You don’t need to eat for two: official advice is that only in the last…

Franz Beckenbauer 1945-2024 Arguably the greatest defender football has ever seen, Franz Beckenbauer, who has died aged 78, is perhaps best known in this country as the man ordered to mark Bobby Charlton in the 1966 World Cup final. He didn’t, of course, succeed in stopping England’s victory then, but he captained West Germany’s World Cup-winning team in 1974, and as manager led it to another victory in 1990, a vital moment for the country as it headed towards reunification. A legend at Bayern Munich, the side for which he played for most of his career, he was credited with redefining the role of the modern “libero”, said Goal.com. As a sweeper, he “didn’t just clean up after others, he served as a deep-lying playmaker, while regularly stepping into his…