Table of contents for 1486 in The Week

What happened Humza Yousaf announced his resignation as First Minister of Scotland on Monday, paving the way for the SNP’s second leadership contest in less than 14 months. He will remain in office until his successor is chosen. His departure was precipitated by his decision last Thursday to tear up a power-sharing deal with the SNP’s junior coalition partner, the Scottish Greens. The Greens had been threatening to withdraw from the deal themselves, owing to his ditching of Scotland’s net-zero target; but without their support, he was then left facing likely defeat in two no-confidence motions tabled by Scotland’s Labour and Conservative parties. Yousaf said he’d been unwilling to cut a deal with the one MSP from Alex Salmond’s Alba Party in order to secure his position. The early frontrunner…

I can’t imagine that anyone, other than a few right-wingers ideologically “wedded” to privatisation, will object to Labour’s proposal to renationalise the railways, said Simon Kelner in The i Paper. The plan, announced by shadow transport secretary Louise Haigh last week, is to resume control of existing train-operating franchises as they run out, so that within five years nearly all lines are publicly run. This will save something like £2bn, by ending profit payouts and the duplication of resources between the various companies running different lines. The whole network will then “come under the aegis of a single body called Great British Railways, a good old-fashioned name” that conjures up images of steam engines and trips to the seaside. I know it’s only a “superficial difference”, but how much better…

Peter Kay, whose show at the new Co-op Live indoor arena in Manchester was postponed for a second time, because the 23,500-capacity venue is still not ready for a full-scale event. Having been originally slated to perform at its opening weekend, on 23-24 April, the comedian will now appear in late May. Reader’s Digest, which closed in the UK, after 86 years. The magazine, once ubiquitous in GPs’ waiting rooms, sold a million copies a month in the 1990s, but sales had been falling for years.…

Paris Assault trial: Gérard Depardieu will stand trial later this year for allegedly sexually assaulting two female crew members on a film set in Paris in 2021, prosecutors announced this week. One of the actor’s accusers, a set designer, claims that he “brutally” grabbed her, held her between his legs and groped her. Details of the second allegation have yet to emerge. In recent years, more than a dozen women have accused Depardieu, 75, of assault or harassment, but this will be the first time a case against him has been brought to trial. Depardieu insists he is innocent, and was recently described by President Macron as the target of a “manhunt”. Palermo, Italy Mob ceremony: Italians have reacted angrily to the news that a powerful mob boss was able…

“So, let’s see if I have the King’s recent honours list straight: Kate is now a Royal Companion of the Order of the Companions of Honour, usually awarded for those who have excelled in the arts, science or medicine. Camilla is now Grand Master of the Order of the British Empire for, presumably, demonstrating some kind of grand mastery over an empire that doesn’t exist any more. The Duchess of Gloucester, whoever that is, has been made a Royal Lady of the Order of the Garter, an order of chivalry dating back to 1348. Her chivalry must be off the charts. Perhaps the King just dashed the list off. He is, after all, an admiral, a field marshal and an air chief marshal. So he does have quite a lot…

The “ghost” party haunting British politics Bagehot The Economist Can a political party succeed if it doesn’t actually exist? Sure it can, says Bagehot. Just look at Reform UK. The party may have an address and be registered with the Electoral Commission, but it’s a curious void. Despite its high profile in polls and focus groups, it doesn’t have any voters – or at any rate not enough to make a difference at the ballot box. Reform has never come close to winning a by-election. It’s also short of credible candidates. Some of those it has found are loons (one compared eating meat to cannibalism); another candidate, who was removed for “inactivity”, was later found to be dead. The party doesn’t even have a proper leader. On paper, it’s Richard…

When Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, the then-wife of the Canadian PM, appeared on the Duchess of Sussex’s Archetypes podcast in 2022, Meghan referred to her as a “dear friend” and recalled a day they’d spent together at the Trudeau family home. “We swam, we drank wine, we splashed in the water. This was the other version of us. Both with wild curly hair and swimsuits and loose linen and huge belly laughs. Big cuddles with our little ones and quiet whispers of girl talk on the terrace, giddy, like absolute schoolgirls.” Trudeau was rather less loquacious, however, when asked about the Duchess by The Sunday Times last week. “I know her,” was all she said. At a lunch with lobby journalists last week, James Cleverly joked that it was owing to…

It was a “brutal” defeat for the cause of women’s rights, and for the #MeToo movement, said Moira Donegan in The Guardian. Last Thursday, the 2020 conviction of Harvey Weinstein for rape and sexual assault was overturned by the New York Court of Appeals. The Hollywood producer’s trial had been a “symbolic milestone”: after accusations were made against him in 2017, more than 100 women came forward to accuse Weinstein of sexual harassment, assault and rape. Their stories sparked the global #MeToo reckoning and led, eventually, to his conviction. The new ruling doesn’t mean that Weinstein will walk free; he was also convicted of rape in California in 2022 and was sentenced to 16 years in jail. But it does seem like a shocking reversal, an indication that the gains…

This can’t be how anybody wanted the story to end, said Simon Burnton in The Observer. When Jürgen Klopp announced in January that he would be leaving Liverpool at the end of the season, his side were in the running for four separate trophies and there was “talk of a glorious, title-winning send off”. But in the past month, that dream has unravelled, and “the issue now is not trophies but atrophy”. Dumped out of the FA Cup and the Europa League (by Manchester United and Atalanta respectively), Liverpool have also lost their winning knack in the Premier League: recent defeats to Everton and Crystal Palace, and draws against West Ham and Manchester United, have ended Klopp’s hopes of a second league title. The Liverpool players suddenly look tired and…

Football Chelsea Women were defeated 2-1 on aggregate by Barcelona in the semi-finals of the Champions League. Racing Shishkin, one of the most successful and popular steeplechasers of recent years, has died after fracturing his hind leg at a stable in Berkshire. Cricket After a 12-month injury lay-off, Jofra Archer was recalled to the England squad for the T20 Men’s World Cup, which is being co-hosted by the West Indies and the US this summer. England will face Scotland in their first match, on 4 June.…

by Hampton Sides Michael Joseph 432pp £25 The Week bookshop £19.99 In July 1776, Captain James Cook set off from Plymouth on what was to be his third and final voyage. Its main aim was to locate the Northwest Passage – the elusive sea route connecting the Pacific and Atlantic oceans – but it also had a secondary objective, which was to repatriate a Polynesian man named Mai, whom Cook had picked up on his previous expedition and brought back to England. In this “thrilling and superbly crafted book”, the US historian Hampton Sides narrates the story of the voyage, said Andrew Graybill in The Wall Street Journal. All went “smoothly enough” at first: after stopping off in New Zealand (which he’d visited twice before), Cook repatriated Mai to Tahiti…

If you didn’t grow up in Scotland, said Simon Thompson on What’s on Stage, you may well not be fully aware of the cultural significance of, and popular affection for, Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s 1932 novel Sunset Song, the first in his A Scots Quair trilogy. Set on the brink of the First World War in rural Mearns, it tells the story of Chris Guthrie, the clever, spirited daughter of a pious but brutal farmer. It’s a gripping, harrowing tale, but what really endears it to the Scots is Gibbon’s descriptions of the landscape and natural world – an aspect that is brilliantly conveyed in writer Morna Young’s “triumph” of a new stage adaptation. The design, by Emma Bailey, literally puts the land at its centre: the action plays out on…

The seven-part drama Baby Reindeer has been a hit for Netflix, drawing both critical acclaim and more than 13 million viewers, said Emma Jacobs in the FT. At its heart is “a visceral, complex tale of stalking and sexual violence”, loosely based on the real-life experiences of 34-year-old Scottish comedian Richard Gadd, its star and creator. The story “begins with a small act of kindness”, when Donny (Gadd) – an aspiring stand-up comic working in a London pub – sneaks Martha (Jessica Gunning) a free cup of tea. Over the next few months, she carpet-bombs Donny with “love”, sending him 41,000 emails and sitting for hours outside his home. The drama has a more nuanced take on stalking than, say, Fatal Attraction; and it is punctuated throughout with “dark humour”.…

The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith, 1955 (Vintage £9.99). I’ve read the Ripliad dozens of times and I still haven’t solved the central mystery: how does Highsmith pull it off? How does she make us root for a fraudulent sociopath and multi-murderer? Is it because everyone feels like they’re faking it at least some of the time? The Garden of the Finzi-Continis by Giorgio Bassani, 1962 (Penguin £9.99). This extraordinary novel looks back at the lives of the Jewish community in Ferrara in the years leading up to the Second World War. The narrator, a version of Bassani himself, makes it clear that none of his characters will survive. Their tennis matches and flirtations take on a doomed quality, as the city’s walls begin to close around them. The…

Programmes Spacey Unmasked Two-part investigation into the rise and fall of the actor Kevin Spacey, who was acquitted of sexual offences against four men in a trial last year. Mon 6 May, Channel 4 21:00 (75mins). Salman Rushdie: Through a Glass Darkly The author talks to Alan Yentob about the attack that cost him his eye, and nearly his life. Rushdie’s wife, the writer Rachel Eliza Griffiths, also contributes. Tue 7 May, BBC2 21:00 (60mins). Secrets & Spies: A Nuclear Game First of a three-part documentary series about the Cold War, featuring interviews with former KGB, MI5 and MI6 officers, some of whom have never spoken publicly before. Wed 8 May, BBC2 21:00 (60mins). Films Sense and Sensibility (1995) Ang Lee’s likeable adaptation of the Jane Austen novel, starring Emma…

Lord Field of Birkenhead 1942-2024 Frank Field was a long-serving Labour MP and antipoverty campaigner whose robust views on the welfare state – which he said risked creating a benefits-dependent underclass – chimed more with Tories than with members of his own party, said The Times. An “unbiddable maverick”, he was too outspoken to succeed in ministerial roles, and he didn’t court friends at Westminster; yet he was held in great respect there. Principled, proud and ascetic, he dedicated most of his adult life to serving the people of Birkenhead – a constituency “ravaged by unemployment and other social problems” following the collapse of its shipbuilding industry; and he wrote dozens of pamphlets and books on welfare policy. A devout Anglican, “he lived alone, never married and had no partner.…

Mad, bad and dangerous to the City Marcus Ashworth Bloomberg In an unusual broadside against the UK’s top financial regulator, the Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, has warned the Financial Conduct Authority against its plan to “name and shame” companies under investigation. Good for him, says Marcus Ashworth. This plan is “mad, bad and dangerous to the City”. It has rightly prompted a storm of protest, “uniting opposition from the entire financial sector”. The FCA argues that “being more transparent” will “enhance public confidence by showing we are on the case”. Not all new cases will be revealed up front, the regulator says – it will decide when publicity serves the public interest. That’s the sort of arbitrary “lottery” that will only succeed in deterring firms from starting businesses or expanding in…

The week’s best shares Allianz Technology Trust The Times This trust aims to identify growth trends and disruptive tech innovations: holdings include Nvidia, Microsoft and Meta. The “highly experienced team” justifies “not particularly cheap” fees. Trades at a 13% discount. Buy. 343p. Associated British Foods Investors’ Chronicle Primark’s price increases, easing supply chain, store expansion programme and a new click-and-collect service are driving growth at the diversified group. Profits in its grocery unit are also up. The divi is rising. Buy. £27.44. Intertek Group The Daily Telegraph Sales and profits are rising at this testing, assurance and inspection services provider as it expands into “profitable and fast growing sectors”. Sound finances give scope for acquisitions, and margins are set to improve. Buy. £49.90. Lancashire Holdings Limited The Mail on Sunday…

On 20 April 1999, Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, drove to Columbine High School in the suburbs of Denver and opened fire, killing 12 of their fellow pupils and one teacher. Twenty-four others were injured. The massacre unfolded on a fine spring day. Harris and Klebold arrived at the school in separate cars at approximately 11:10am. When Harris saw a friend he had fallen out with, he told him: “I like you now. Get out of here. Go home.” He and Klebold went to the school cafeteria, where they left two duffle bags, each containing a home-made propane bomb. They then went outside to wait for the bombs to go off. When the bombs failed to detonate, they began shooting at pupils outside the school entrance, then moved…

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What happened Ireland’s justice minister complained that migrants from the UK had started crossing the border into the Republic in order to avoid being deported to Rwanda. Helen McEntee claimed that 80% of recent asylum seekers had come from Northern Ireland; days later, the new Taoiseach, Simon Harris, said his government would be introducing a law to override an Irish court ruling that the UK is unsafe for asylum seekers owing to the Rwanda plan, with a view to sending migrants back. However, Downing Street insists that it has “no legal obligation” to accept them. The Home Office said this week that it has begun detaining the first migrants identified for deportation to Rwanda, and confirmed that the first one-way flights would leave within nine to 11 weeks. However, it…

Gen-Zers are ditching their smartphones for new “dumbphones” that are less likely to suck up their time and data, The Observer reports. Heineken and the fashion brand Bodega have created a limited-edition model called the “Boring Phone”, which takes only low-quality photos and doesn’t feature social media or email apps – though it does have the game Snake. Touts have long been a scourge of the music industry; now they’re moving to fine dining (see page 41). According to The Times, online “scalpers” are using bots to buy up reservations at top London restaurants, which they then sell on for eye-watering prices. Among the most-traded restaurants is Gymkhana, where a reservation for a table for two can cost up to £256.…

Inspections of plant and animal products coming to the UK from the EU began this week, as part of a second phase of post-Brexit border controls (see page 39). The new rules, which mirror checks that were introduced by the EU when the UK left the single market in 2021, require lorries arriving from the continent to be held at ports for inspection. Low-risk products, such as processed foods, don’t require checks; but high-risk imports such as live animals and eggs must be physically checked; and many products deemed medium-risk, such as wild-caught fish, are subject to spot checks. Whether a lorry is checked or not, importers must pay a “common user charge” of up to £145 per consignment. Some smaller firms have warned that this will wipe out their…

Vancouver, Canada Drugs backtrack: In a partial reversal of a controversial three-year pilot scheme launched less than 18 months ago, the use of hard drugs in public places is being recriminalised in British Columbia. Last January, BC became Canada’s first province to allow people to carry up to 2.5g of heroin, fentanyl, methamphetamine or cocaine without fear of arrest or of having their drugs seized – except around airports or schools. The scheme was aimed at reducing overdose deaths, but led to the open use of drugs in places such as playgrounds and hospitals, which caused considerable disquiet. Now, under rules unveiled last week, police will once again have the power to ask drug users to leave all public areas, including parks and beaches, and to seize drugs and arrest…

Why is the policy back in the news? Early this year, a biography by the Tory peer Lord Ashcroft of Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, accused her of failing to pay a capital gains tax bill when she sold her former council house in Stockport 2015. (Rayner claims that she was not liable because the house was her principal private residence.) However, a secondary charge levelled by Ashcroft was of “hypocrisy”: like many on the Left, Rayner is a critic of right-to-buy legislation, one of Margaret Thatcher’s signature policies. Yet she herself benefitted from it, receiving a considerable discount when she bought the house in 2007, later making a £48,500 profit on the sale. Did Thatcher invent the right to buy? While it’s now strongly associated with Thatcherism, some social…

A cat that sneaked into a box that was sent back to Amazon has been found in California, hundreds of miles from its home in Utah. Galena, six, jumped into the box at home, alongside several pairs of boots that her owners had decided they didn’t want. She was discovered six days later by a surprised warehouse worker and taken to a vet, where her microchip was scanned. Though dehydrated and hungry, she was in relatively good health; one of the box’s seams had come open, allowing air to circulate. A display of nude, knitted Morris dancers in a café window in Somerset has been partially covered up after being branded “inappropriate”. The five dolls – including a vicar, a policeman and a Rastafarian – were arranged around a tiny…

CHINA The dopes at the anti-doping agency Deutschlandfunk (Berlin) Three months to go until the Paris Olympics and the world of sport has been hit by another doping scandal, says Matthias Friebe. Last week, a joint investigation by The New York Times and German broadcaster ARD revealed that 23 Chinese swimmers had been allowed to compete at the 2021 Tokyo Games even though they’d tested positive for the banned heart drug Trimetazidine. Some went on to win medals. To explain away the positive tests, China’s sporting authorities offered up a crude theory about “contaminated food”, a claim that should have sent alarm bells ringing at the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada). Wada’s sole task “is to keep global sport as clean as possible”; yet instead of admitting its errors, it responded…

There may still be “some sports fans who cannot get their heads round women playing rugby at all”, said Stephen Jones in The Sunday Times. On the evidence of England’s clash with France on Saturday – which decided the outcome of this year’s Six Nations – they “deserve to be silenced for good”. For this was an “astonishing encounter”, one with some brutal tackling and “all the bite and thunder that you could possibly imagine”. England, who began the match as favourites, were far the stronger side to begin with, and scored five tries in the first half to take a 35-14 lead. Yet after the break, France were “absolutely magical”: despite losing Assia Khalfaoui, who was sent off for a high tackle in the 44th minute, they attacked England…

by Agnes Arnold-Forster Picador 272pp £22 The Week bookshop £17.99 Nostalgia, according to some graffiti spotted at Middlesex Polytechnic in 1974, “isn’t what it used to be”. It’s a sentiment with which Agnes Arnold-Forster likely agrees, said Felipe Fernández-Armesto in The Daily Telegraph. In her “delightful” study, she traces some “startling transmogrifications” in how the concept has been “used and abused”. For the Swiss physician who coined the term in 1688, “nostalgia” was a disease – “a homesickness so intense that it could kill maidservants and mercenaries”. In the 19th century, nostalgia came to mean “longings induced by regrets”, and more recently it has become the subject of fierce political debate: seen by progressives as “self-indulgence on the part of romantic reactionaries”, and by conservatives as a “delusion that blinds…

Don’t coddle Generation Z: if they are still living at home, get them to do their laundry, cook and pay rent, or save up for a deposit. Tell them not to worry if they don’t feel they’re hitting key milestones, or know what they want from life. Lots of people their age don’t. But things will fall into place. Advise them not to wait for the perfect job, but to get the best job available, work out what they like and don’t like, and use that to decide their next career move. Ideally, they’ll go into an office. Friends are key to happiness, but social media use leaves younger adults less confident about forging real-life connections. Encourage them to go out, and make sure you aren’t standing in for friends.…

Terry Anderson 1947-2024 In 1985, the American journalist Terry Anderson was living in Beirut, working as the bureau chief for the Associated Press, said The Daily Telegraph. The security situation had been deteriorating, and there had been a spate of kidnappings of Westerners. But Anderson, a former US marine who had served in Vietnam, kept going about his daily life as normal – and on 16 March, as he travelled home from a game of tennis, gunmen bundled him into a car. “That’s what got me kidnapped,” he admitted later. “Arrogance.” He would spend nearly seven years as a captive of Islamist militants linked to Hezbollah, who indicated that they were seeking vengeance for the use of American weapons in Israeli strikes on Lebanon. In his memoir, Anderson said that…

Fifteen years ago, 75% of Britain’s electricity was generated by gas- and coal-powered plants; so far this year, the figure has been 26%, and last month, for an hour at lunchtime on 15 April, the proportion fell to a record low, of just 2.4%, according to the National Grid. The new analysis also found that the average fossil-fuel share had dropped to a record daily low of 6.4%, on 5 April. Until 2022, the daily average had never been below 10%. A 76-year-old from Windsor has become the oldest Briton to complete the notoriously challenging Marathon des Sables. Harry Hunter, a former Household Cavalry officer, ran the six-day, 155-mile race through the sand dunes and rocky mountains of the Sahara to raise money for his local hospice. He had to…

Titanic memorabilia, after a gold pocket watch owned by its richest passenger sold at auction for a record-breaking £1.2m. John Jacob Astor, 47, was last seen smoking a cigarette on the bridge of the liner, having helped his wife into a lifeboat. His body was retrieved seven days later, along with his watch. The previous record amount for an artefact from the Titanic was the £1.1m paid for a violin that was played as the ship went down. Keegan Payne, a 19-year-old from a struggling Aboriginal family in Australia’s Northern Territory, who caught a “million-dollar fish”. Payne was on a trip with his sister when he landed the tagged barramundi, and so won the prize (worth £520,000) that had been set nine years earlier, in an effort to draw visitors…

A poll of US adults has found that the ideal average length of a film is 92 minutes. Only 15% of adults feel that films over two hours are acceptable, and only 2% are happy with a film longer than two-and-a-half hours. Talker Research/Guardian 37% of British adults strongly support the nationalisation of train companies; 32% tend to support it. 2% strongly oppose it; 7% tend to oppose it. The rest don’t know. YouGov/The i Paper In a survey of teachers and pupils, just 39% of pupils said they’d felt safe at school every day of the previous week. 69% of senior school staff said their school had been safe every day. Department for Education…

A second go at high school In 1992, Shann Jones, then a 26-year-old reporter, took off her wedding ring, decked herself out in teenage fashions, and “enrolled” in a high school in California, says Charlotte McDonald-Gibson in The Times – an episode that inspired the 1999 film Never Been Kissed. Her mission was to gather material for an article on school underfunding; but having hated school herself, she was also interested to see how she’d fare at a second attempt, with the experience of an adult. Would she be more confident, more popular, more in control? The answer was no. “You walk in, and the smell of a high school brings it all back…” she says, “all the insecurities, every neurosis, it was all there. I hadn’t outgrown a single…

Before 1979, the rent that council tenants paid went into maintaining and building council houses. The right to buy disrupted this, and Margaret Thatcher’s government also targeted the housing budget, where three-quarters of the cuts in her first term were made. In the long term, this looks very much like a false economy, since rent subsidies in the form of housing benefit – previously an obscure welfare top-up – quickly became the second-biggest item in the Department for Work and Pensions’s budget. The current spend for the UK on housing benefit is more than £20bn a year, and around a third of this goes to private landlords. The more social housing relies on the private sector, the less housing benefit goes back into the system. Many councils have ended up…

Good riddance to presidential debates Marcela García The Boston Globe America’s major TV networks and cable news organisations issued a joint plea the other day for the two main contenders to commit to televised presidential debates. “There is simply no substitute,” they say, “for the candidates debating with each other, and before the American people, their visions for the future of our nation.” Donald Trump is also pushing for it, but Joe Biden has thus far remained non-committal. I, for one, hope the president ignores these self-interested demands, says Marcela García. Why should Biden gift Trump another platform to “spew misinformation or conspiracy theories to a large audience”? Did no one learn anything from the pair’s 2020 debates, where Trump ranted at Biden, prompting the latter to retort, “Will you…

For decades, the broad trend in smoking rates has been downwards; but one sub-set of the population is now bucking that trend. According to an analysis of data on 200,000 English adults, the proportion of middle-class women under 45 who smoke rose from 12% in 2013 to 15% last year. By contrast, the proportion of less-advantaged younger women who smoke declined in that period, from 29% to 22%. Among men, middle-class men, smoking rates remained stable. Women were deemed more advantaged if they lived in households where the highest earners were in professional, managerial or clerical jobs. The survey also found an increase in the use of cheaper, hand-rolled cigarettes, up from 42% to 54%. This was most pronounced among younger women: 61% rolled their own by 2023, up from…

In the years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the affluent liberal democracies treated themselves to “a holiday from history”, said Andrew Rawnsley in The Observer. In the absence of a major military threat, the West started turning its “Cold War swords into ploughshares”. In the 1980s, UK spending on defence accounted for 4%-6% of GDP. Today, it stands at 2.3%. The bulk of this “peace dividend” has gone into higher spending on pensions and healthcare. “I hope you enjoyed it while it lasted.” Today, from Ukraine to the Middle East to Taiwan, the world is more dangerous than it has been for decades. There is a distinct “1937 feel” in the air. Yet Britain’s Army is smaller than at any time since the Napoleonic wars; our Navy is…

“Rock’n’roll may not solve your problems, but it does let you dance all over them.”Pete Townshend, quoted in Far Out magazine “Regret is an appalling waste of energy; you can’t build on it; it’s only good for wallowing in.”Katherine Mansfield, quoted in The Knowledge “The Tory party is an absolute monarchy moderated by regicide.”William Hague, quoted in The Spectator “Get at least eight hours of beauty sleep, nine if you’re ugly.”Betty White, quoted on Fox News “Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your hearth or burn down your house, you can never tell.”Joan Crawford, quoted on Hitched.com “No one is more fake than someone who claims to be authentic.”Bagehot in The Economist “The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller,…

To The Times Gerard Baker hits the nail on the head when he writes that “as US campuses show, today’s antisemitism comes not from torch-wielding thugs but college-educated middle classes”. The students are not protesting as hundreds of thousands of people die in Sudan. They did not protest when 500,000 were killed in Syria. They’re not protesting as 400,000 die in Yemen. Neither did students protest when well over 400,000 people were killed after 9/11 in Iraq. Only when Israel is involved – in self-defence – do students get so animated. Yes, these protests may be led by jihadists, but jihadists are anti-Christian as much as they are anti-Jewish. It is their ability to mobilise the ordinary left-wing middle-class intellectuals that is the real giveaway that the story is about…

by David Nicholls Sceptre 368pp £20 The Week bookshop £15.99 Over his hugely successful writing career, David Nicholls has specialised in exploring “so-called ordinary life – and so-called ordinary love – with humanity and humour”, said Erica Wagner in the FT. His sixth novel is no exception: set over a week-long walking holiday in the north of England, it tells the story of a burgeoning affair between Marnie, a 38-year-old copy editor from London, and Michael, a 42-year-old geography teacher from York. The pair are part of a group assembled by Marnie’s old friend, Cleo, a teacher at Michael’s school, said Alex Preston in The Observer. Also present is the “absurdly attractive” Conrad – to whom Marnie is initially drawn – and “Cleo’s taciturn teenage son Anthony”. But when these…

A statue that splits opinion A statue commemorating the late Queen Elizabeth – the first commissioned since her death in 2022 – has been unveiled in Oakham in Rutland, said Gareth Harris in The Art Newspaper. And it’s fair to say that it has divided opinion. The memorial, depicting the late monarch as a young woman surrounded by her corgis, was made by the sculptor Hywel Brân Pratley. It was well received locally. The local MP Alicia Kearns called it “an incredible statue of our beloved Queen”; the sculptor Aidan Harte said it was “really rather regal”. But some critics were less impressed. Pratley “has turned the late Queen into a ghastly chimaera”, said Ben Lawrence in The Daily Telegraph, “sporting a girlish dress that makes her look like a…

Alistair and Denise agree that they’d like to try to go back to being “normal” with each other. At the cricket, Ed tells Harrison he’s only just realised what a dangerous business tree surgery is. Laura offers to buy Alistair a drink; when he declines, she gives him her number anyway. Harry visits Alice to tell her he’s stopped drinking and intends to go to rehab, and they end up in bed together. Alice regrets it – it could jeopardise both their recoveries. Harrison gives Henry a cricket training session, which he enjoys, to Helen’s pleasure. Ed admits to Fallon that he’s worried the tree surgery business could go badly wrong. Eve and Alice have a heart-to-heart in which Eve apologises for treating Alice so badly. Lilian congratulates Alice on…

The 99-room Gainsborough Bath Spa has a mosaic-tiled 35°C pool, fed by the city’s mineral-rich thermal waters. There are two smaller soaking pools, an ice alcove, saunas, a steam room and relaxation terrace (from £285/night; thegainsboroughbathspa.co.uk). The Scarlet in Newquay has a natural, reed-filtered outdoor pool, with views out to Mawgan Porth Beach on the Cornish coast. This 37-room adults-only hotel also has a clifftop sauna, steam room and log-fired hot tubs (from £235/night; scarlethotel.co.uk). At 182 metres above the ground, the infinity Sky Pool at Shangri-La The Shard is the highest in western Europe, and has incredible views. Book an hourly slot before you check in as capacity is limited (from £808/night; shangri-la.com). There are fine views of Derwentwater Lake and the Catbells mountains from the outdoor hydrotherapy pool…

Hacienda de San Rafael Andalucia, Spain An 18th century farmhouse in the “agricultural heartland” of Andalucia, Hacienda de San Rafael opened as a family-run hotel in 1992, says Pamela Goodman in Condé Nast Traveller. “Aristocratic and grand” is the impression you might get as you approach, but guests are greeted “like long-lost friends”. Among the 20 rooms are three thatched casitas and a pool villa, and there are three other pools in the gorgeous gardens. It’s so lovely that “the temptation is to stay put”, but Seville and Jerez are nearby, and there are activities on offer, including riding and sherry tasting. Doubles from about £450; haciendadesanrafael.com.…

Alphabet/Microsoft/Meta: AI cowboys Goldman Sachs’s chief US equity strategist, David Kostin, likes to remind investors that at the end of the movie The Magnificent Seven, four of the seven are dead. So how are things panning out for their Big Tech namesakes? Life in the saddle at Google’s parent, Alphabet, is looking sweet, said Dan Milmo in The Guardian. Last week, it “joined a trio” of US-listed behemoths (Microsoft, Apple and Nvidia) with valuations above $2trn as investors cheered better-than-expected results from Google and YouTube, and “strong figures” from its AI-boosted cloud business. News that Alphabet will pay its first ever dividend was the apple in the nosebag. The promise of AI is also seeing galloping growth at Microsoft – fuelling a 17% revenue rise to $62bn in the first…

The competition watchdog recently launched a probe into veterinary businesses over concerns they may be “ripping off customers”, say Johanna Noble and Ali Hussain in The Sunday Times. Insurers may be part of the equation. Howling hikes The average cost of pet insurance rose by 13% over the past year, according to pricing consultancy Pearson Ham Group. For animals over six years old, it jumped 26%. Average annual cover for dogs is put at £372 – often much higher for larger breeds, or those with “hereditary conditions”. Exclusions Meanwhile, the list of complaints about pet insurance has risen. The exclusion of existing conditions along with unclear policies and high renewal prices were the most common reasons. Horses for courses A bewildering array of choices ranges from lifetime policies to those…

Jonas Frey In 2021, a broke Nevada-based software engineer couldn’t get a reservation to renew his driving licence, so he configured an online marketplace for people “to buy and sell reservations”, said The New Yorker. Three years on, Frey has become an enfant terrible of the New York and London restaurant scenes. Wondering why you can’t get a reservation at the hottest tables in town? Blame entrepreneurs such as Frey. His booking platform, Appointment Trader, buys up bookings en masse, before selling them on at vast profit. Favoured targets in London include Gymkhana, Zuma and Core by Clare Smyth in Notting Hill. Frey reckons it is “a very cool thing” for both restaurateurs and punters. Assuming, of course, you’re happy to spend a couple of hundred quid “before you’ve had…

THE WEEK CROSSWORD 1412 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 13 May. Send it to The Week Crossword 1412, 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 8 Red-faced graduate in a cast (7) 10 “Look closely” I shout aloud (7) 11 Little devil causing damage? Not half (3) 12 Doctor wept as nurse wanting a change of job (8,3) 13 Flower girl working for Charlton FC? (4,2,3,6) 16 Moira upset person from Wellington?…