Table of contents for 1556 in The Week

Controversy of the week Starmer’s relaunch “How many resets does it take to make a doom loop,” asked Madeline Grant in The Spectator. After a disappointing first year in office, and with Labour MPs returning from their summer break some 15 points behind Reform UK in the polls, Keir Starmer resorted to yet another Downing Street mini-reshuffle this week: he brought in a new economic adviser to No. 10 (see page 37), and appointed Darren Jones, Rachel Reeves’s deputy at the Treasury, to be the new Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister (whatever that is). “Phase two of my government starts today,” the PM declared grandly – adding, like “a sort of fanatical postman”, that his focus was now on “delivery, delivery, delivery”. It was uninspiring stuff, said The Times,…

Piotr Szczerek, a millionaire Polish businessman, after footage of him snatching a souvenir tennis cap out of young fan’s hands at the US Open went viral. The Polish player Kamil Majchrzak was handing the cap to the boy when Szczerek, who owns a paving firm, grabbed it, and stuffed it into his wife’s bag. The clip was seen a billion times online; he was soon identified and, following a fierce backlash, he issued an apology and returned the cap. Pub purists, with research showing that a large minority (28%) of younger drinkers put ice in their beer during the summer months. Most add it to lager, but some also favour iced ale.…

58% of voters believe it would be unjustified for Rachel Reeves to raise taxes in the Autumn Budget to reduce government borrowing, while 24% said it would be justified. Of Labour voters, 42% said it would be justified, compared with 11% for Conservatives, and 3% for Reform UK. 55% of all voters, and 41% of Labour voters, think Reeves should be replaced as Chancellor. YouGov/The Times 29% of Gen Z parents (those aged up to 27) have used social media to help choose their child’s school, while only 21% said they’ve used Ofsted reports. Among all parents, 88% have used Ofsted reports; only 12% have not. 12% have used AI tools such as ChatGPT. The Good Schools Guide/The Times…

Clegg in Silicon Valley When Nick Clegg accepted a job at Meta in 2018, the idea of starting over in “sunny, can-do California” was an appealing one, says Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian: the former Lib Dem leader had lost his seat, and he wasn’t happy about Brexit. When he got to Silicon Valley, however, he didn’t like everything he found. “Everyone wears the same clothes, drives the same cars, listens to the same podcasts, follows the same fads.” And you’d think that rich tech bros such as Elon Musk would reflect on their own good fortune, and be happy with their lot. Yet “far from thinking they’re lucky, they think they’re hard done by, they’re victims. I couldn’t, and still can’t, understand this deeply unattractive combination of machismo and…

The Epstein case has become an obsession for many on the Republican Right, partly because it chimes with a widely held belief: that a liberal elite is committing crimes while remaining above the law, perhaps even conspiring to abuse children. Pizzagate, a conspiracy theory that circulated around the 2016 election, held that Hillary Clinton was running a child sex-trafficking ring out of a Washington DC pizza parlour. Followers of “QAnon” believe that thousands of children are being “harvested” by elites. So Trump’s decision to close the Epstein case down, not to release files, and to dismiss it as a “hoax” was seen as a betrayal. Democrats joined the fray, accusing Trump of “hiding the Epstein list”, and hinting that he himself might be implicated. There remains very little hard proof…

The big state is back, but now it’s right-wing David A. Graham The Atlantic “The era of big government is over,” Bill Clinton declared in 1996. It might have seemed that way then, says David A. Graham, but it certainly doesn’t now. In his second term, Donald Trump has presided over “perhaps the most sweeping expansion of federal power since that of Franklin D. Roosevelt”. Just consider all the ways his administration has intervened against public and private bodies. It has sent federal troops into cities, over the objections of local governors; effectively fired a university president and sought to control what curricula universities can teach and what students they can admit; threatened to revoke the broadcast licences of TV networks it perceives as biased; and bullied law firms into…

A simple blood test has been developed that can detect ovarian cancer in its early stages. About 4,100 women die from the cancer in the UK each year, more than all other gynaecological cancers combined. Over 90% of patients develop early symptoms such as bloating and abdominal pain, but these can be mistaken for less serious conditions – and just 20% of cases are caught when they are easiest to treat. The new test, developed by diagnostics company AOA Dx, uses AI to analyse levels of proteins and fats that are released into the blood by cancer cells. In a study using 399 blood samples from women in the UK, the test was 92% accurate at detecting the cancer in general, and 88% accurate in early cases. Another study in…

Keir Starmer has often been accused of lacking core beliefs, said George Eaton in The New Statesman, but there’s no doubting his earnest commitment to human rights law. He wrote a book on the subject back in 1999, and once claimed: “There is no version of my life that does not largely revolve around me being a human rights lawyer.” Which is awkward given the current furore over irregular migration and the mounting calls for the UK to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). These calls are no longer just coming from Nigel Farage and the Tories. Two former Labour home secretaries have pitched in as well: David Blunkett says we should suspend parts of the ECHR to speed up the deportation of failed asylum seekers; Jack…

“Exhilaration is the feeling you get just after a great idea hits you, and just before you realise what’s wrong with it.”Rex Harrison, quoted in The Oldie “The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.”George Orwell, quoted in The Washington Post “I am not rich. I am a poor man with money, which is not the same thing.”Gabriel García Márquez, quoted in Forbes “We who are liberal and progressive know that the poor are our equals in every sense except that of being equal to us.”Lionel Trilling, quoted in The Knowledge “I not only use all the brains I have, but all I can borrow.”Woodrow Wilson, quoted in The Times of Israel “Even the best army is doomed to fail when it is required to perform impossible…

To The Times Pat McFadden believes we should emulate Estonia with digital identity cards, partly to make access to public services easier, and partly to help tackle illegal migration. The Estonian population is about 1.4 million, the UK population nearly 70 million. Accessing public services is not a hassle for Britons: most have been in public sector systems since birth. For those who need access later in life, a birth certificate, a driving licence or a passport works. On illegal working, McFadden writes: “France has talked about pull factors … we should deal with them.” The Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford said recently that there was less unregulated work in the UK than in France, and that “there is little evidence that the UK’s lack of an ID…

People have been having the same dreams for centuries, said Laura Cumming in The Observer. Finding oneself naked in a public space “was a common Elizabethan nightmare”. Dreams of teeth falling out; being chased; being late – these have been recorded again and again over the years, as this new exhibition on the grounds of southeast London’s Bethlem Royal Hospital shows. Some of the paintings, drawings and objects here were created by inmates at the psychiatric hospital once known as “Bedlam”; the theme of the show is dreams and visions, the hours “between sleeping and waking”. The artists include Madge Gill, a working-class autodidact from Walthamstow who “wandered the wards by night”; her “sleepless fantasies” show women drifting up and down stairs, “expressions fixed”. George Harding paints himself sleeping, smoking…

Black Beauty: His Grooms and Companions, the Autobiography of a Horse by Anna Sewell, 1877 (Wordsworth Classics £3.99). This is one that really affected me when I read it as a child. It delves into how humans treat animals – both kindly and cruelly – and really makes you think about our actions. As a child, I felt a unique bond with dogs and horses, often chatting with them as if we were having a two-way conversation. Honestly, I still believe dogs understand more than we realise. After You’d Gone by Maggie O’Farrell, 2000 (Tinder Press £10.99). I struggled to get through this one because I was in tears the whole time. Maggie’s portrayal of grief is so incredibly authentic. I still get emotional just thinking about that moment when you…

Programmes Freddie Flintoff’s Field of Dreams: Ultimate Test Three years on from transforming the lives of young cricketers in Bolton, Flintoff is back with an ambitious plan to create teams across the Northwest. Sun 7 Sep, BBC1 20:10 (60mins). The Donald Trump Show A new series that uses archive footage – cut to feel like drama – to tell the story of Trump’s second term. First up: his relationship with Elon Musk. Wed 10 Sep, C4 21:00 (60mins). The Newsreader Season three of the drama about an Australian TV newsroom. It’s 1989 and Helen and Dale are riding high. Thur 11-Fri 12 Sep, BBC2 21:00 (55mins and 50mins respectively). Vienna Philharmonic at the Proms Petroc Trelawny presents from the Royal Albert Hall as one of the world’s great orchestras performs works by…

The least demanding route to admire the “staggering views” from the top of Helvellyn, in the Lake District, is from Thirlmere, where the King’s Head, a former 17th century coaching inn, has “plush beds” in the 17 suites, and a cosy restaurant and bar (lakedistrictinns.co.uk/kings-head-inn). Start or finish the Seven Sisters trail, in the South Downs, from the Birling Gap in East Sussex. Stay nearby in the “twee charm” of the 15th century Tiger Inn, in the village of East Dean (beachyhead.org.uk). The Causeway Coast Way in Northern Ireland covers 32 miles from Ballycastle to the seaside town of Portstewart, where the family-run b&b Cul-Erg House sits near the cliffs. There’s a drying room for muddy, wet kit, and a suntrap courtyard (culerg.co.uk). The Three Peaks in the Yorkshire Dales is…

The Mayor’s Parlour Dover, Kent Originally a pilgrims’ hostel and later Dover’s town hall, the medieval Maison Dieu has recently been restored in spectacular style, says Rachel Cocker in The Times – and a self-contained apartment, the Mayor’s Parlour, is now a Landmark Trust holiday let. Its colourful interiors, by the great Victorian architect William Burges, are a “neo-gothic fever dream”, with wall stencillings, coffered ceilings, gilded dragons, and a huge round dining table. There’s a bespoke kitchen, and three bedrooms. The bathrooms are “top spec”, and there’s a WC with its original Victorian urinal and a replica “Thunderbox” lavatory. Three nights cost from £663; landmarktrust.org.uk.…

Nestlé: not so boring “We thought of him as a Nestlé lifer who would restore the company’s reputation of slightly boring predictability. How wrong we were.” That was the reaction of “shocked” analysts at RBC to the sudden departure of Laurent Freixe as CEO of the £175bn Swiss food giant, said Daniel Woolfson in The Daily Telegraph. Freixe, a Nestlé veteran of 40 years, was abruptly dismissed this week – sans severance package – over an “undisclosed romantic relationship with a subordinate”. The “frisky” Frenchman, who oversaw a 17% decline in the share price during his year in charge, joins McDonald’s former chief Steve Easterbrook and BP’s former boss Bernard Looney in “failing to keep the Milky Bar in their pocket around junior staff”, said Alistair Osborne in The Times.…

The storm coming in from France Matthew Lynn The Daily Telegraph Britain might be in fiscal trouble, but keep your eyes on Paris, says Matthew Lynn. The government is about to collapse; the budget deficit and national debt are out of control; emergency tax rises and violent protests are looming. For France, you might think, all this sounds “pretty much business as usual”. But don’t be tempted to see the country’s travails as a purely French matter. The crisis in Paris could soon trigger a “wider market meltdown” that sucks in Britain and even “crashes the global economy”. Why? Because French bank stocks have plunged as hedge funds short them: it’s the “easiest way to play the ‘France is bust’ trade”. If France’s banks now lose big on French government…

The week’s best shares Dr. Martens Shares Magazine Shares in the British bootmaker have fallen dramatically since listing in 2021. But ops, sales and profits are recovering, and it remains a “globally relevant heritage brand” that resonates strongly with consumers. Buy. 88.6p. Hikma Pharmaceuticals The Daily Telegraph After “not particularly crowd-pleasing” first-half results, shares in the pharma lack a catalyst. Yet it still expects to generate 4%-6% revenue growth with healthy, rising profits. Forward yield 3%-plus. Buy. £18.36. InterContinental Hotels Group The Daily Telegraph The Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza and Six Senses owner’s earnings per share rose 19%, boosted by a sharp rise in its profit margin. Pricey, but given solid finances and a strong new room pipeline, it’s set for further growth. Buy. £88.60. Perdoceo Education The Daily Telegraph…

THE WEEK CROSSWORD 1481 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 15 September. Send it to The Week Crossword 1481, 121-141 Westbourne Terrace, London W2 6JR, or email the completed grid/listed solutions to crossword@theweek.co.uk. By Tim Moorey (timmoorey.com) This week’s winner will receive Week-branded items, as well as two Connell Guides (connellguides.com). ACROSS 7 Strange code, strange conduct deemed correct (7) 8 Afternoon meal in the Alps? (4,3) 10 One could be fine for putting drivers in a group (4,4) 11 Bad actor allowed leading role (6) 12 Focus on small coin in box (11) 15 Press well up on getting leader sacked (4) 17 Traded wood on…

As the use of cash falls, and digital payment systems proliferate, fewer Britons than ever are even bothering with wallets. Fewer than half now carry a wallet or purse, though more than 80% still own one, according to research by the cash machine firm Link. It found that, on average, Britons keep only £20 cash in their purse or pocket; 70% usually carry a debit or credit card. The Royal Opera House often issues trigger warnings for its productions – noting for instance, that Puccini’s Tosca contains depictions of violence, sexual assault and “implied torture”. Now it has gone a stage further, by warning audiences about the sound of the curtain-up bell. They are told, it is “loud and can be startling”.…

The number of children in England receiving the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine has hit its lowest level in 15 years: just 83.7% have received both doses by aged five. Uptake of the four-in-one pre-school booster vaccine – for polio, whooping cough, tetanus and diphtheria – stands at just 81.4% among five-year-olds. None of the main childhood vaccine uptake targets were reached in the past year, and the death of a baby from whooping cough last Saturday prompted concern about the uptake of vaccines among pregnant women. From next January, children will be given a chickenpox vaccination at the same time as the MMR jab.…

Bayeux, France Tapestry turmoil: French art experts have fiercely opposed a plan to bring the Bayeux Tapestry to the British Museum next September, insisting that the nearly 1,000-year-old, 70m-long work is too fragile to transport from its home in Bayeux, Normandy. The year-long loan had been championed by President Macron, a diplomatic coup he’d announced as a joint initiative with Keir Starmer during his trip to London in July. A presidential adviser had confirmed that an “extremely precise” but confidential study had deemed it safe to transport. But two more recent studies have advised otherwise. A petition against the loan has now drawn 68,700 signatures. Rome Porn outrage: An Italian pornography site called Phica (“figa” being a slang term for the vagina), featuring fake nude photos of Italy’s prime minister,…

“On packed summer Tube journeys I’ve been struck by modern parental etiquette. As seats become available, mothers thrust their kids into them, not even expecting several children to squash into one space or for toddlers to perch on adult knees. As for telling a ten-year-old to cling to the pole and ‘let that lady sit down’, no chance. Sometimes a whole carriage of tiny princes and princesses sit in splendour as parents strap-hang. Is this the ‘gentle parenting’ I read about, which ‘centres’ the child and their feelings? Child development is about learning you are not the centre of the world. Gentle parenting arrests this process, and must be bloody exhausting.” Janice Turner in The Times…

Let’s hear it for public sector fat cats Paul Johnson The Times If Britain isn’t being run as well as it could be, is it partly because we underpay our senior public servants? You have to wonder, says Paul Johnson. Take the Office for National Statistics (ONS), now undergoing a leadership shake-up after a series of well-publicised failings. The Government is seeking a candidate to serve as chair of the Statistics Authority (UKSA), the body that oversees the ONS, for between £71,250 and £85,500 a year. True, that’s for a three-day week, but it’s still pretty low for a role providing strategic leadership to a stricken department with an annual budget of £400m. The first UKSA chair was paid £150,000 – and that was 17 years ago. Or take the…

California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, has hit on a new strategy for engaging voters and infuriating Republicans, said Zeeshan Aleem on MSNBC: mimicking Donald Trump. In recent weeks, his social media accounts have shared a stream of posts parodying the president’s grandiloquent, narcissistic style. The viral memes have included a picture of Newsom sipping from a mug labelled “Maga tears”; an AI-generated image of his face carved on Mount Rushmore; and a picture of him being prayed over by Trump’s celebrity acolytes Kid Rock, Hulk Hogan and Tucker Carlson. Newsom has been taunting Trump on X/Twitter with childish messages (“DONALD IS FINISHED – HE IS NO LONGER ‘HOT’”) and is selling merchandise too, including a red baseball cap emblazoned with “Newsom was right about everything!” It’s all rather “unseemly”, said…

Heatwaves have an ageing effect It is well known that deaths from heart attacks, strokes and other causes spike during heatwaves. Now new research suggests that repeated exposure to heatwaves also accelerates ageing. Scientists used the results of blood pressure checks, organ function assessments and other medical tests to assess the biological age of 24,922 people in Taiwan. The team then compared each person’s biological age with their actual age, to see if they were ageing more quickly than expected, and also examined temperature records from the two years before the medical tests were carried out. The research, published in Nature Climate Change, showed that the more heatwave days a person had lived through, the faster they’d aged, particularly in the case of manual workers. On average, every four days…

Prince Andrew has come under renewed scrutiny since the release of Andrew Lownie’s damning new biography Entitled. Now, Lownie has warned that he still has a wealth of unused stories about the Duke’s ex-wife. Among other things, he alleges that Sarah Ferguson cheats at Monopoly. Apparently, before the game starts, she plunders toy banknotes from a secret second set, and stashes them behind a wide belt. “I have enough such material,” said Lownie, “to fill a second volume.” Boris Johnson hasn’t enjoyed the warmest of relationships with King Charles, but when the former PM was the mayor of London, he and Camilla got on “like a house on fire”, a former aide told Valentine Low, for his new book. Johnson was particularly impressed by a story she told him, about…

When she was in opposition, Angela Rayner was a stern critic of tax avoidance, said The Daily Telegraph. She castigated Rishi Sunak for paying a low tax rate, and Jeremy Hunt for exploiting “Tory tax loopholes” to save on stamp duty. So the public was bound to take an interest if her own tax affairs appeared to be less than “scrupulously” managed. The deputy PM recently bought a flat in Hove on the south coast for £800,000. But before she did this, it seems that she removed her name from the deeds of her constituency home in Ashton-under-Lyne, where her ex-husband and children still live. Then she declared the Hove flat as her main home, meaning she paid £30,000 in stamp duty, rather than £70,000 (the rate for second homes).…

With just seven minutes left on the clock at Anfield, Sunday’s game between Liverpool and Arsenal looked to be “petering towards a stalemate”, said James Gheerbrant in The Times. On paper, there had been much to anticipate in this “meeting of defending champions and formidable challengers” – the two stand-out favourites for this year’s title. But for the most part the game had been a transitional, “chess-like” affair, marked by a surprising lack of incident. With both sides prioritising defence over attack, it had become clear that something special would be required to break the deadlock. And finally, Liverpool’s stand-in right back, Dominik Szoboszlai, “found some magic in his boots”: he whipped a majestic, 32-yard free kick past the “despairing dive” of Arsenal’s keeper, David Raya. Liverpool’s victory means Arne…

Football Former Manchester United manager Erik ten Hag has been sacked by Bayer Leverkusen after just three games in charge. Tennis Japan’s Naomi Osaka upset third seed Coco Gauff in the fourth round of the US Open. British No 1 Emma Raducanu was knocked out in round three by Elena Rybakina. Cricket Pace bowler Jamie Overton – who was expected to make England’s Ashes squad – has ruled himself out of contention for the tour. The 31-year-old says he now wants to focus on white-ball cricket.…

Paul McCartney at Gagosian John Lennon has hogged the credit for being “the arty Beatle”. Yet long before Lennon met Yoko Ono, his supposedly unadventurous bandmate Paul McCartney was exploring (and indeed contributing to) the efforts of London’s burgeoning avant-garde art scene. Indeed, as this exhibition – Rearview Mirror, Liverpool-London-Paris – demonstrates, he was a keen and competent photographer whose pictures flirted with formal experimentation from early on. The show brings together a selection of images McCartney captured in 1963 and 1964, just as the Beatles became a global phenomenon. Instead of seeing them as we know them, from the fans’ perspective, these snaps present the view from the other side: in one, a Paris policeman holds back a crowd of screaming teenagers converging on the group’s limo. Elsewhere, the…

What happened China’s Xi Jinping presided over a massive military parade in Tiananmen Square on Wednesday, flanked by Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. The event marked the 80th anniversary of Japan’s defeat in the Second World War, but Xi used it to showcase the might of modern China: the highly choreographed parade included nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles and stealth drones, while warplanes flew in formation overhead. In a speech, Xi spoke of his nation’s “unstoppable” rise, before being saluted by thousands of troops goosestepping in unison. It was the first time Xi, Putin and Kim had appeared in public together. Earlier, Xi had welcomed more than 20 Eurasian leaders, including India’s Narendra Modi, to Tianjin for a two-day meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). There, in…

The UK defence industry, after Britain won a £10bn contract to supply at least five Type 26 submarine hunting frigates to Norway, in the largest warship export deal in its history. Industry insiders said it would help support 4,000 British jobs and 400 companies. They will be built at BAE Systems’s two shipyards in Glasgow. Chloe Malle, who was named as the new head of editorial content at American Vogue. She succeeds Anna Wintour, who revealed that she was stepping back in June, but is remaining in her role as global editorial director and keeping her office. Malle, 39, the daughter of the actress Candice Bergen and the late film director Louis Malle, has worked at Vogue since 2011. Oasis, who have finally “conquered America”, according to rock’n’roll bible Rolling…

Zack Polanski won a resounding mandate in the Green party leadership election, with 85% of member votes. It was a heavy defeat for Adrian Ramsay and Ellie Chowns, two of the Greens’ four MPs, who ran on a joint ticket. Polanski is a self-styled “ecopopulist”, who wants the party’s message to be more radical. He said the Greens should aim to win at least 30 seats at the next election, and that he had a message for Labour: “We are not here to be disappointed by you, we are here to replace you.”…

Minneapolis, Minnesota School shooting: An eight-year-old boy and a ten-year-old girl were killed last week in a gun attack on a church attached to a Catholic school in Minneapolis. A further 21 people – 18 of them children – were injured. The shooter was identified as a 23-year-old former pupil, who had opened fire through a window for two minutes, using a semi-automatic rifle, a pump-action shotgun and a pistol, during a start-of-term Mass, before killing themself. Police said that had the doors of the chapel not been locked, the death toll would likely have been far higher. The shooter was named as Robin (formerly Robert) Westman, a transgender woman who left behind a suicide note and journals revealing an obsession with school shootings and containing racist rants about various…

A French woman has been fined £95 after her cat repeatedly “miaowed too loudly” on a train. The white cat, named Monet, was travelling from Vannes in Brittany to Paris with its owner, Camille, when a passenger complained and the conductor dished out the €110 fine last week. The rail operator, SNCF, said that the cat had provoked “acute tensions” with its continuous miaowing, and that its owner had been prosecuted for “troubling public order”. Authorities in Seoul have unveiled a new tool to cut crime in the South Korean capital: a 3D hologram of a police officer. Tall and smartly dressed, it appears every two minutes to warn would-be criminals at Jeo-dong Park that police will be dispatched in an emergency, and that “CCTV is installed here”. “If you…

VENEZUELA Trump saves Maduro’s bacon El País Edición América (Madrid) The US naval deployment steaming towards Venezuela is a gift to its authoritarian leader, says El País. Far from loosening socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro’s grip on power, the arrival of three US missile destroyers off the coast offers his regime “a lifeline”: Maduro has ordered a national call-up of 4.5 million militia members, and told his countrymen to prepare for “imperial aggression”. His government’s narrative is now one of “heroic resistance”. Even more disconcerting than the White House’s “belligerent tone” is the “blatant contradictions in its policies”. On the one hand, Trump accuses Maduro of being an illegitimate leader, and the head of a drug-trafficking gang, the Cártel de los Soles, and has offered a $50m reward for Maduro’s capture;…

When it launched three years ago, ChatGPT was greeted as a “souped-up” alternative to Google – or a “poetry writing parlour game”, said Kashmir Hill in The New York Times. Since then, the AI chatbot has won 700 million regular users, many of whom have come to treat it not just as a source of information, but as something far more intimate – a friend, a companion, and even a therapist. It’s too early to assess the impact of this. But psychiatrists are worried that it is already having harmful consequences; and ChatGPT has been linked to at least one suicide. The parents of Adam Raine, a 16-year-old from California, discovered after his death in April that the bot had become “his best friend”. He’d had hundreds of conversations with…

“It was the engagement photo shoot seen round the world,” said India Block in The London Standard. Last week, the world’s biggest pop star, Taylor Swift, lit up the internet when she posted a photo of boyfriend Travis Kelce on bended knee, in a garden bursting with roses, along with the caption: “Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married.” Within hours, the post had been liked by 32 million people; even President Trump, no Swiftie, was carried away by the moment – offering warm congratulations when the news broke during a cabinet meeting. For millennial and Gen Z women, this will be “the royal wedding of their lives”, said Helen Rumbelow in The Times. They have grown up with Swift, 35 – singing along as America’s pop…

Five years after its launch, the Hundred still “gets up people’s noses”, said Lawrence Booth in the Daily Mail. Traditionalists haven’t reconciled themselves to its scoring format, nor to the way it condemns county cricket to virtual irrelevance during August. When the competition follows a particularly “epic” Test series – like this summer’s contest between England and India – the purists’ distaste merely grows. Yet, even its critics were given pause for thought in June, when the sale of the eight Hundred franchises “raised £520m for English cricket”. Given how cash-strapped the domestic game has become (two years ago, the collective debt of county cricket reportedly stood at £333.6m), that’s a hugely valuable sum. The Hundred was established, in part, to provide a financial lifeline to county cricket – and…

“Every now and then, factual television will throw up a story that takes your breath away,” said Jasper Rees in The Daily Telegraph. BBC2’s The Great Art Fraud is just such a documentary. This “riveting” two-parter is about Inigo Philbrick, a “class-A grifter” who swindled art collectors out of millions before being convicted of wire fraud, and sentenced to seven years in a US jail. An art-world wunderkind, the London-born Philbrick started his career as an intern at Jay Jopling’s White Cube gallery; and by the age of 24 he was running a gallery of his own, bankrolled by Jopling. Handsome and charming, the young American negotiated deals worth millions, and adopted a jet-set lifestyle to match that of his super-rich clients. But when a crucial sale went wrong, said…

A 17th century work by the Italian painter Giuseppe Ghislandi, that was looted by the Nazis in the Second World War, briefly resurfaced last week, says Claire Moses in The New York Times – “in a living room in a coastal city in Argentina”. Dutch journalists spotted Portrait of a Lady while scrolling through an online listing for a property in Mar del Plata. “The house belonged to one of the daughters of Friedrich Kadgien, a high-ranking Nazi official.” But on Tuesday, when local prosecutors entered the house belonging to Patricia Kadgien, the painting was no longer there. Carlos Martínez, a prosecutor, is investigating her for “concealing contraband or theft in the context of genocide”, and believes the painting will “turn up”. Portrait of a Lady was stolen from a…

At the cricket, Ambridge win but Henry feels bad when he injures a female player, and says he might give up playing. Robert tells Lynda he needs more of her attention. Adam tests Pat’s patience by showing up late for work because of helping out Brian. After asking Emma about the arson attack, George enlists Brad to ask Fallon to call him; he might be able to help locate Markie. Fallon refuses his offer, but Kenton thinks it’s worth a try. At the golf club, Zainab and Chelsea have another run-in with Lawrence. A struggling Brian writes a letter begging Stella to return to Home Farm. Lynda has a plan to help Chelsea and Zainab. Emma is furious when she hears Kenton and Jolene are using George to locate Markie…

The unstoppable rise of the blueberry Before the 1990s, when supermarkets began stocking them, British people almost never encountered fresh blueberries, says Harry Wallop in The Sunday Times. Now they are ubiquitous: we eat 53,000 tonnes of them a year, and “Marks & Spencer makes more money from blueberries than from apples and pears combined”. Analysts attribute this remarkable growth mainly to the berry’s “snackability”: while other fruits require peeling or hulling, a blueberry can be popped “into your mouth like a sweet”. It also helps that they’re thought of as unusually healthy – a legacy of being heavily promoted as a “superfood” in the 2000s. Blueberries are “native only to North America”, and were first commercially grown there in the 20th century. Today, they are cultivated in many countries…

● Remember the examiner isn’t the enemy; they just need to ensure you can drive safely. Get to the test centre in good time, ideally about 15 minutes before your test. ● You can have the radio on if it helps to calm your nerves during your test, so long as it is quiet. Your instructor can sit in the back for moral support and to get feedback. ● Believe in yourself, and tell yourself you’re ready – you must be or your instructor wouldn’t have let you take it. ● Only tell the people you want or need to that you’re taking your test. Keeping it quiet will take some of the pressure off. ● Be sure to eat something beforehand to help you concentrate. Drink plenty of water,…

Stephanie Shirley 1933-2025 Dame Steve Shirley, who has died aged 91, arrived in Britain from Germany as a child refugee on the Kindertransport in 1939. “Early hardship spurred her on to success,” said The Daily Telegraph, and she founded a pioneering software company, which she sold for £150m in 1993. Motivated by her own experiences and the problems she faced in caring for her autistic only child, she set up the Shirley Foundation, which became one of the largest grant-giving organisations in Britain. “By 2003 she had succeeded in her ambition of dropping out of the Sunday Times Rich List, and had made a huge contribution to the understanding and treatment of autism.” She was born Vera Buchthal in Dortmund, Germany, in 1933, to a Jewish judge and his Christian…

There are few conversations more delicate than asking elderly parents about their finances, says Lori Campbell in The Independent. But if adult children don’t have accurate knowledge, they can end up making difficult decisions in the dark, causing needless family stress and disagreements. Here are the questions to ask – sooner not later. Do you have a record of your assets, and where is it kept? The most common estate-planning mistake is simply not knowing where everything is. Do you have a financial plan, and when was it last reviewed? People are living longer than ever: are they financially prepared? Get details of any financial adviser, solicitor or accountant. If inheritance tax is a factor, ensure records are being kept. Have you made a will, and is it up to…

Matthew Pohlson The Californian businessman Matthew Pohlson came up with the idea of Omaze when he was at a charity auction where ultra-rich Americans were bidding for prizes, including a game of basketball with Magic Johnson. The house-raffle business, focused on the UK since 2020, gives ordinary punters (and a fair few of the already wealthy) the chance to win fully furnished dream houses worth millions. But the CEO himself is not flashy at all, says Emily Hall in The Daily Telegraph. Pohlson, who calls himself a “very frugal person”, rents a “not very Omaze-style” flat a short walk away from the company’s Holborn offices. He doesn’t own a car, and keeps tabs on his monthly spending via a detailed spreadsheet. His most luxurious recent purchase? A high-end tennis racquet.…