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LBP10000 Norway NOK79 Oman OMR1.75 Pakistan PKR795 Poland PLN21.70 Qatar QAR20 Singapore SGD10 South Africa SAR79.90 Sweden SEK79 Switzerland CHF10 Turkey TRY32 UAE AED20

PLUS

GENTLEMAN JACK IS BACK

BOOK-BANNING IN THE USA
THE SLOW DEMISE OF THE COMMONWEALTH
A week in the life of the world | Global edition
1 APRIL 2022 | VOL .206 No.14 | £4.50 | €6.95*

The nightmare of Mariupol

10
 Eyewitness  Up, up and away
Australia Hot air balloon enthusiasts gather at Milawa airfield for an early morning flight
last weekend. More than 3,500 people – pilots, passengers and spectators – and one
PHOTOGRAPH:
inflatable sloth travelled to King Valley in Victoria’s high country for the three-day
ANDREW CHAPMAN festival celebrating this 239-year-old mode of transport.

Guardian Weekly is an edited selection of some of the best journalism found in the Guardian and
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SPOT ILLUSTRATIONS:
MATT BLEASE
A week in the life of the world Inside
1 April 2022
Mariupol's misery,
royal ructions and the
return of a gay icon
In many ways the plight of Mariupol encapsulates the 4-9 GLOBAL REPORT
subconscious horror of Russia’s assault on Ukraine. Long Headlines from the last
since deemed unsafe by news crews, few clear details now seven days
emanate from the besieged port city – but what has done
so hints at the nightmarish plight of many thousands of 10 -18 U K R A I N E I N VA S I O N
people trapped in a ruined city without food, clean water In-depth reporting
or power. Using diary material from residents, Daniel and analysis
Boffey pieces together the story of how a city descended 10 Mariupol Citizens
from normality to nightmare in a matter of days. document destruction
Our war coverage this week contains more strong 14 Kharkiv Residents vow to
reporting from correspondents Isobel Koshiw, Emma keep city running
Graham-Harrison, Andrew Roth and Pjotr Sauer, plus 16 Strategy Where does
expert analysis from Jack Watling and Patrick Wintour. Putin’s army go from here?
Ukraine invasion Page 10  17 Russia Anti-war activists
refuse to flee
The British royal family was in the news again after a tour 18 Diplomacy Why the west
of the Caribbean that seemed to cause discomfort on all should focus on endgame
sides. While the Duke of Cambridge rightly expressed
regret about the dark legacy of slavery, his words fell short 19 -33 SPOTLIGHT
for many and again raised the question of why the British 19 Hungary Shadow of war
queen remains head of many of its once-colonised states. hangs over election
We reflect on the tour’s aftermath while, in Opinion, 22 France Pécresse’s regress
Moya Lothian-McLean outlines why she believes the 30 Technology Self-driving
Commonwealth’s days are drawing to a close. cars still have brakes on
Spotlight Page 23 ; Opinion Page 45  33 Canada Wilderness battle
merged
There aren’t too many global gay icons to have emerged 34-44 F E AT U R E S
from 19th century Britain but Anne Lister, a Yorkshireshire Long reads, interviews
ntleman
businesswoman and prolific diarist, is one. As Gentleman and essays
Jack – the dramatised tales of Lister’s life – returnss to TV, 34 Life in limbo for Afghan
its creator Sally Wainwright talks to Zoe Williams about refugees in the UK
her struggles in getting the show to screen. By Amelia Gentleman
In her own right Page 51  40 What’s behind America’s
book bans?
By Claire Armitstead
A week in the life of the world | Global edition
On the cover 45-50 OPINION
1 APRIL 2022 | VOL .206 No.14 | £4.50 | €6.95*
Masha Foya's horror at witnessing a full-scale 45  Moya Lothian-McLean
war unfold in her own country over a matter The sun is slowly setting
of weeks is captured uncompromisingly in her on the Commonwealth
illustration artwork for this week’s cover. “Every 47 Devi Sridhar
time I hear about new crimes against my people, Science’s Covid camps
a part of me disappears,” Foya writes from 48 Rana Mitter
western Ukraine, where she has been living Sino-Soviet relations
The nightmare of Mariupol 10
PLUS
BOOK-BANNING IN THE USA
THE SLOW DEMISE OF THE COMMONWEALTH since evacuating from Kyiv. “Every time I think
51-59 C U LT U R E
GENTLEMAN JACK IS BACK
it is impossible for the Russian occupiers to do
Illustration: 51 Television
more shameful acts – but then the morning
Masha Foya comes and I learn about even more disgusting Sally Wainwright on gay
things. What they did with Mariupol … I just icon Gentleman Jack
have no words, it’s just the extermination 54 Theatre
of civilians, this is unforgivable. And this An immersive experience
nightmare is happening in the 21st century. But of the siege of Troy
I still do not give up and all of us believe in our 57 Books
victory, believe in the strength of our country!” A glorious satire of
Mugabe’s Zimbabwe
60 -63 REGULARS
4

Global
2 PERU 4 CANADA

Trudeau’s minority Liberals

report enter pact with rival NDP

Prime minister Justin Trudeau has
struck a deal with a political rival
that would keep in him power
until 2025. In exchange for support
Headlines from the from the New Democratic party,
last seven days Trudeau’s Liberals have pledged
progress on pharmaceutical and
dental care programmes.
1 C U LT U R E Machu Picchu ‘wrongly
“Nobody benefits” when
named’ for over a century parliament “doesn’t work
Will Smith overshadows
Machu Picchu has been known properly”, Trudeau said, adding
Oscars with viral slap by the wrong name since its that his Liberals would look for
Coda was named this year’s best rediscovery more than a century common goals with the NDP and
picture at an Oscars ceremony ago, an academic paper says. other parties.
Copyright © 2022 overshadowed by an on-stage A Peruvian historian and a US Trudeau was elected to a third
GNM Ltd. All rights confrontation between the actors archaeologist say the Unesco term in September, but commands
reserved Will Smith and Chris Rock. world heritage site was known only a minority of seats in
The Apple TV+ drama became by its Inca inhabitants as Huayna parliament, meaning he requires
Published weekly by the first film from a streaming Picchu, the name of a peak the support of other parties to
Guardian News & service to win the award. It is overlooking the ruins. govern. Minority governments
Media Ltd,
a remake of La Famille Bélier, In their paper, published by have a relatively short lifespan,
Kings Place,
90 York Way,
focusing on the only hearing Ñawpa Pacha: Journal of Andean and live with the ever-present fear
London, N1 9GU, UK member of a deaf family and was Archaeology, Donato Amado of a looming election.
bought from Sundance in 2021 for Gonzales and Brian S Bauer say Under a confidence and supply
Printed by $25m, a record for that festival. they scoured place names on agreement, an opposition party
Walstead UK, Troy Kotsur won best 19th-century maps, information agrees to not vote to defeat
Bicester supporting actor for his role in in 17th-century documents and the government for a period of
the film, making him the second the original field notes of the time. The NDP leader, Jagmeet
Registered as a deaf actor to bring home an Oscar, US explorer Hiram Bingham – the Singh, and his party will support
newspaper at the joining his co-star Marlee Matlin modern-day discoverer of the Inca Trudeau’s Liberals on confidence
Post Office
who won for Children of a Lesser citadel – and found that not one votes such as the federal budget.
God in 1987. The award for best of the sources refers to the site as The leftwing NDP has backed the
ISSN 0958-9996
director went to Jane Campion for Machu Picchu. Liberals in key votes since 2019.
To advertise contact The Power of the Dog.
advertising. Smith slapped Rock on stage
enquiries@ after the comedian made a joke
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UK headlines p9

6 MEXICO
Violence in region behind
numbers trying to reach US
Waves of migration through
Mexico and Central America,
and the number of people who
go missing, will increase in 2022
due to high levels of violence
in the region, the International
Committee of the Red Cross said.
Immigration authorities in
Mexico detained 307,679 migrants
in 2021, a 68% increase compared
with 182,940 detentions in 2019,
according to government data.
Shelters in Mexico had been
overwhelmed last year, filled
with frustrated migrants unable
to continue their journey to
the United States, Red Cross
representative Jordi Raich said.
Many migrants got “stuck”
along Mexico’s borders, where
they faced “enormous economic
constraints”, Raich said.
8 FRANCE
Scapegoating has shades of
1930s, says Muslim cleric
A rise in anti-Islam rhetoric in
3 the French presidential election
campaign risks creating a
“spiral of hatred”, scapegoating
law-abiding Muslims in a similar
way to the discourse against Jews
in the 1930s, the rector of the Paris
4
mosque has said.
“I’m extremely worried,” said
Chems-eddine Hafiz, from Paris’s
historic Grande Mosquée. “We’re 5
in a society that is fractured and
searching for itself, a society that
is weakened and fearful after the
pandemic. The fact of looking
for a scapegoat – there have been
precedents to that: in 1930 when
the finger began to be pointed at
Jews who became ‘the problem of 10 S PA I N
a whole society’ … Today it’s no
longer Jews, it’s Muslims.”
Spotlight Page 22 

7 BRAZIL
2
Pop stars angry at move to
gag criticism of politicians
Artists and celebrities in Brazil
have voiced outrage after an
electoral judge ordered one of
the country’s biggest music
festivals to outlaw “political
demonstrations” by performers
after a legal challenge from Jair
Bolsonaro’s party.
Lawyers representing the
Liberal party made their petition
last Saturday after Brazil’s
far-right president was pilloried
at the Lollapalooza event by pop
stars and rappers, including the
British singer Marina (above).
“Fuck Bolsonaro. Fuck him.
We are sick of this energy,” Marina
said last Friday, at the start of the
three-day gathering in São Paulo.
9 CHILE
Schools close after students
strike over sexist behaviour
Student strikes have forced school
closures across Chile’s capital
amid anger over sexist and violent
behaviour only weeks after a
return to in-person classes after
two years of Covid lockdowns.
“The demand is to stop the
harassment,” said Javiera, 17, who
was one of hundreds of girls to join
protests outside Santiago Lastarria
school, after male students
were found swapping intimate
photos of female classmates on
Instagram. “We are demanding
justice for victims, and for schools
to stop protecting abusers.”
In chats, the boys allegedly
discussed gang-raping fellow
students and claimed the
notorious “wolfpack” case in
Pamplona, Spain, as “inspiration”.
No breakthrough in lorry
drivers’ strike over fuel cost
The government met transport
associations in an attempt to end
a lorry strike over high fuel prices
that has disrupted restaurant
menus and led to food shortages
in supermarkets.
The action, which began last
week, came as surging energy
costs were exacerbated by
Russian’s invasion of Ukraine.
Drivers and lorry owners
belonging to the Platform for the
Defence of Transport blocked
roads and ports, and held go-slow
protests. Transport associations
rejected the €500m ($654m) aid
package the government offered
on Monday, and the effects of the
strike were already being felt by
the food industry and consumers.

1 April 2022 The Guardian Weekly

11 ISRAEL
US seeks to calm fears over
Iran and atomic weapons
The US secretary of state, Antony
Blinken, has sought to reassure
Israel and its Gulf allies that
Iran will never acquire atomic
weapons, ahead of the possible
renewal of the nuclear deal
with Tehran.
Blinken said at a news
conference last Sunday with
Israel’s foreign minister, Yair
Lapid: “We are both committed,
both determined, that Iran will 18
never acquire a nuclear weapon.”
This came before a meeting
with four Arab foreign ministers
at an extraordinary summit
hosted by Israel’s prime minister,
Naftali Bennett. Israel’s relations
with some Arab states have
been transformed in the past 18
months, driven by fears about the
end of Iran’s economic isolation.
12 DUBAI
Court rules sheikh should
have no contact with family
The ruler of Dubai will have no
face-to-face contact with his two
children from his marriage to
Princess Haya nor any substantive
say in their upbringing, after
a long-running court battle
between the former couple and
a series of damning judgments
about his “abusive behaviour”.
Concluding proceedings that
began when Haya fled to the UK
with the children in April 2019, the
president of the family division
of the high court in England and
Wales said Sheikh Mohammed
bin Rashid al-Maktoum had
“consistently displayed coercive
and controlling behaviour”.
The Guardian Weekly 1 April 2022
13 ETHIOPIA
17
15
Tigray forces consent to call
for truce by Addis Ababa
Tigrayan rebels have agreed
to a “cessation of hostilities”,
marking a turning point in the
nearly 17-month war in northern
Ethiopia after the government’s
announcement of an indefinite
humanitarian truce a day earlier.
The rebels said they were
“committed to implementing
a cessation of hostilities effective
immediately” and urged
authorities to hasten delivery of
emergency aid into Tigray, where
hundreds of thousands of people
face starvation.
16
14 SUDAN
UN warns number of people
facing hunger could double
19
Poor harvests, economic crisis,
internal conflict and the Russian
invasion of Ukraine, which
exports grain worldwide, could
lead to the doubling of people who
are severely hungry in Sudan by
September, the UN has warned.
In a joint statement, the
World Food Programme and
the Food and Agricultural
Organization said more than
18 million people in Sudan could
face extreme hunger. It estimates
about 9 million are currently in
need of humanitarian aid.
A UN assessment found cereal
harvests in March were expected
to be a third lower than last year.

Global report
15 A FG H A N I S TA N
Outcry as Taliban bar girls
from secondary schools
The Taliban faced international
condemnation after they
announced that girls would not
be allowed to attend secondary
school, despite their previous
assurances.
“The denial of education
violates the human rights of
women and girls,” said Michelle
Bachelet, the UN human rights
high commissioner. “Beyond their
equal right to education, it leaves
them more exposed to violence,
poverty and exploitation.”
Samira Hamidi, an Amnesty
International campaigner in
Afghanistan, said: “This is a worst
nightmare come true for the
women and girls of Afghanistan,
who have had their future and all
they had hoped and worked for
ripped away from them over the
last year.”
16 SOLOMON ISLANDS
Alarm at security deal with
China for Pacific navy base
Australian officials are alarmed at
Solomon Islands’ planned security
deal with China. Defence minister
Peter Dutton said that “we would
be concerned clearly about any
military base being established”
less than 2,000km off the coast.
Solomon Islands has signed a
policing deal with China, and a
proposal for a broader security
agreement covering the military
will be considered by its cabinet.
According to a copy of the draft
security agreement circulating
on social media, it would allow
China to base navy warships in the
Pacific. The arrangements are also
likely to worry the US.
Ukraine invasion p10 
7
17 N O RT H KO R E A 19 AUSTRALIA D E AT H S
Test of powerful missile Ash Barty shocks tennis
marks end of moratorium world by retiring at the top
The country has confirmed that The tennis women’s world No 1
it tested a new, powerful type of Ash Barty stunned the sport by
intercontinental ballistic missile, announcing her retirement at 25. Madeleine
marking an end to a self-imposed “Today is difficult and filled with Albright
moratorium on long-range testing emotion for me as I announce my Diplomat and
in place since 2017 and drawing retirement from tennis,” Barty scholar of
international condemnation. wrote in a post on Instagram. international
State media said last Friday “I am so thankful for everything relations who
that leader Kim Jong-un had this sport has given me and leave served as the
directly guided the test of the feeling proud and fulfilled. first female
Hwasong-17 – a “new type” of “Thank you to everyone who US secretary
intercontinental ballistic missile has supported me along the of state under
that is North Korea’s biggest to way. I’ll always be grateful for Bill Clinton. She
date. Kim said the North would the lifelong memories that we died on 23 March,
continue to develop a “nuclear created together.” aged 84.
war deterrent” while preparing for Barty departs at the peak of her
a “confrontation” with the US. powers, as reigning Australian Taylor Hawkins
The missile reportedly flew for Open and Wimbledon champion Drummer, singer
1,090km to a maximum altitude who has held the world No 1 spot and songwriter
of 6,248km and hit a target at sea. since winning the 2019 French with the Foo
The Hwasong-17 was the largest Open. It was the Queenslander’s Fighters. He died
liquid-fuelled missile launched by second coming after she took an on 25 March,
any country from a road-mobile indefinite break in 2014. aged 50.
launcher, analysts said.
Kim ordered the test because Stephen Wilhite
of the “daily escalating military Computer
tension in and around the Korean scientist and
peninsula” and the “inevitability creator of the
of the longstanding confrontation gif image file
with the US imperialists format. He died
accompanied by the danger of on 14 March,
a nuclear war,” the state-run KCNA aged 74.
news agency said.
Martin Pope
Physical chemist
whose work led to
18 ISRAEL 20 M YA N M A R the development
of organic light-
Islamic State claims killing Military chief threatens
emitting diodes
of two police officers to destroy armed rebels (OLEDs), which
Islamic State has claimed The country’s top general vowed are used in
responsibility for an attack that to intensify action against militia digital cameras,
killed two Israeli police officers groups fighting the military-run mobile phones,
in the northern city of Hadera on government, saying the armed solar panels and
Sunday. The claim was posted on forces would “annihilate” them. televisions. He
its Telegram account. Gen Min Aung Hlaing, speaking died on 27 March,
“Two terrorists arrived at at a military parade marking aged 103.
Herbert Samuel Street in Hadera, Armed Forces Day on Sunday, also
and began shooting at a police ruled out talks with insurgents.
force there,” said police, adding The military seized power last
that members of “an Israeli year from the democratically
counter-terrorism force happened elected government of Aung San
to be in a restaurant nearby and Suu Kyi. Security forces have
they ran out and neutralised the since used lethal force to suppress
terrorists”. According to the SITE protests, resulting in the deaths
intelligence group, this is the first of more than 1,700 civilians,
time since 2017 IS has officially according to the Assistance
claimed an attack in Israel. Association for Political Prisoners.
1 April 2022 The Guardian Weekly
8 Global report
SCIENCE A N D EN V IRON M EN T
C L I M AT E C R I SI S
Forests offer climate benefits
beyond just storing carbon
The world’s forests play a far greater
and more complex role in tackling
climate crisis than previously
thought, due to their physical effects
on global and local temperatures,
according to new research. The role
of forests as carbon sponges is well
established. But comprehensive new
data suggests that forests deliver
climate benefits well beyond just
storing carbon, helping to keep air
near and far cool and moist due to
the way they physically transform
energy and water.
P OL LU TA N T S
Microplastics found in eight
out of 10 samples of blood
Microplastic pollution has been
detected in human blood for the first
time, with scientists finding the tiny
particles in almost 80% of people
tested. The discovery shows the
particles can travel around the body
and may lodge in organs.
The impact on health is as yet
unknown, but researchers are
concerned as microplastics cause
damage to human cells in the
laboratory. People were already
known to consume the tiny particles
via food and water as well as
breathing them in, and they have
been found in the faeces of babies
and adults. The scientists analysed
blood samples from 22 healthy
adults and found plastic particles
The Guardian Weekly 1 April 2022
in 17. Half the samples contained
PET plastic, which is commonly
used in drinks bottles, while a third
contained polystyrene, used for
packaging food and other products.
A quarter of the blood samples
contained polyethylene, from which
plastic carrier bags are made.
A N TA RC T IC A
Conger ice shelf collapse is
‘sign of what may be coming’
An ice shelf about the size of Rome
has completely collapsed in East
Antarctica within days of record
high temperatures, satellite data
shows. The Conger ice shelf, which
had an approximate surface area
of 1,200 sq km, collapsed around
15 March, scientists said.
East Antarctica had unusually
high temperatures last month, with
Concordia station hitting a record
temperature of -11.8C on 18 March,
more than 40C warmer than
seasonal norms.
Dr Catherine Colello Walker, an
earth and planetary scientist at Nasa
and the Woods Hole Oceanographic
Institution, said: “It won’t have huge
effects, most likely, but it’s a sign of
what might be coming.”
WELLBEING
Music makes life better, finds
review of research papers
A new analysis has confirmed that
singing, playing or listening to
music can improve wellbeing and
quality of life. A review of 26 studies
conducted across several countries
including Australia, the UK and
the US has found that music may
provide a clinically significant boost
to mental health.
Seven of the studies involved
music therapy, 10 looked at the
effect of listening to music, eight
examined singing and one studied
the effect of gospel music.
The analysis, published in the
Journal of the American Medical
Association Network Open,
confirmed “music interventions are
linked to meaningful improvements
in wellbeing”.
United Kingdom
ECONOMY
Most vulnerable left to take
brunt of cost of living crisis
Britain’s most vulnerable
households will face the biggest
squeeze on living standards on
record after Rishi Sunak targeted
better-off workers for help in
 Tropical his £9bn ($11.7bn) mini-budget
rainforests package of tax and duty cuts.
spanning Latin The chancellor responded
America, central to the highest inflation in three
Africa and decades with a 5p-a-litre cut in
south-east Asia fuel duty and a £3,000 increase
generate the in the threshold for national
most benefits insurance contributions but faced
DANIEL HERNANDEZ- criticism for failing to shield
SALAZAR/EYEPIX GROUP/
REX/SHUTTERSTOCK pensioners and those dependent
on state benefits from the impact
of a cost-of-living crisis.
Sunak cut fuel duty by 5p a litre
– taking prices back to their level
of a week ago – and said the NI
change would benefit the average
worker by about £6 a week.
The chancellor then announced
a 1p cut in income tax to 19p,
which will come into force in April
2024, the month before the next
scheduled general election.
The independent Office for
Budget Responsibility (OBR)
said the spring statement had
given back only a sixth of the tax
increases announced in Sunak’s
two years as chancellor and that
living standards would fall by
more than 2% this year – what it
said would be the steepest drop
since records began in the 1950s.
Living standards are expected
to fall sharply as wages and
state benefits fail to keep pace
with rising prices. The Office
for National Statistics said the
annual inflation rate had risen to
6.2% – its highest since 1992 – but
the OBR said it was on course to
212
hit levels not seen since the early
1980s later this year when sharply
higher energy bills bite.
The number
of “new”
freshwater
fish species
identified in
2021 – including
a blind eel and
a fish called
Wolverine that
has a hidden
weapons system

Eyewitness
 Out in force
Tens of thousands of
people gathered in central
London last Saturday to
express solidarity with the
people of Ukraine. Trafalgar
Square was transformed
into a sea of yellow and blue
as London mayor, Sadiq
Khan, who organised the
march, said Ukraine had
endured “unimaginable pain
and suffering” in the past
month. Khan, who acted
after Ukrainian president
Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s call for
support, said London stood
“shoulder to shoulder with
Ukraine in its darkest hour”.
JUSTIN TALLIS/GETTY
TRANSP ORT
Government urges P&O
Ferries to reinstate workers
Grant Shapps wrote to the chief
executive of P&O Ferries urging
him to announce a U-turn on the
decision to sack 800 workers
without notice, as unions pledged
to “ratchet up the fight” after a
weekend of protests.
The transport secretary was
expected to present a package
of legislation this week to close
loopholes and ensure ferry
companies pay their crew the UK
minimum wage. Government
officials met the rival operators
Stena Line and DFDS on Monday
to discuss the legislation.
The RMT union turned its
attention to P&O Ferries’ supply
chain, holding a protest outside
the Glasgow offices of Clyde
Marine Recruitment, which
describes itself as Europe’s leading
supplier of marine personnel, on
Monday morning.
Demonstrations took place
in Liverpool, Dover and Hull
on Saturday over P&O Ferries’
decision to replace its crew with
cheaper foreign workers.
H E R I TAG E
House owner upset at shark
sculpture’s special status
A 7.6-metre sculpture of a shark
crashing through the roof of a
house in Oxford is now a protected
landmark – but the home’s owner
is not happy about it.
Magnus Hanson-Heine loves
the installation, erected by his
father, Bill, in 1986 as an anti-war
symbol, and to protest against
planning laws. But he says
Oxford city council ignored his
father’s message last week when
it designated the structure a
heritage site that makes a “special
contribution” to the community.
“Using the planning apparatus
to preserve a historical symbol of
planning law defiance is absurd,”
Hanson-Heine told AP.
UK Spotlight p23
9
GOVERNMENT
First fines handed out over
lockdown parties at No 10
The first fines for lockdown
breaches in Downing Street were
issued this week after Scotland
Yard concluded laws had been
broken at the heart of government.
The Metropolitan police
handed out 20 fixed penalty
notices on Tuesday related to
parties and gatherings at No 10
and the Cabinet Office, with more
expected to follow.
It is two months since the force
began examining material from
a Whitehall inquiry by Sue Gray,
3,211
a senior civil servant, into alleged
breaches of Covid rules.
The Met sent questionnaires
to more than 100 members of The number of
government staff and aides, Britain’s road
including the prime minister, Boris bridges that
Johnson, and his wife, Carrie; the require repair,
head of the civil service, Simon according to
Case; and the prime minister’s research by the
former principal private secretary, RAC Foundation.
Martin Reynolds. Only a few
Police are investigating 12 hundred will be
events in 2020 and 2021, six fixed in the next
of which Johnson is said to five years owing
have attended. to a shortage
of funds
1 April 2022 The Guardian Weekly
 SPECIAL REPORT

10 UKRAINE
INVASION

Abnormal service Jack Watling Inside Russia Patrick Wintour

Life goes on in Kharkiv Russia’s next move Anti-war activists stay put What is the west’s endgame?
Page 14 / Page 16 / Page 17 / Page 18 /

‘GOD HAS LEFT

MARIUPOL’
An unfolding story of heartache, destruction and
death has been documented by residents
Daniel Boffey LVIV

A
T 3.50 ON THE COLD
MORNING OF 24 FEB-
RUARY, Iryna Prud-
kova, 50, received a
message on Telegram from her
daughter, Valeria, 24, who lives
in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv.
“Are you listening to Putin?”
Valeria’s message read. “That’s
totally fucked up. There is a
special military operation.” At
4.08am Valeria messaged again:
“Mum, Kyiv is being shelled.”
Sitting in her small flat on
the first floor of a nine-storey
apartment block in the leafy
Kirovsky residential area of
Mariupol, a port city on the
Azov Sea, whose name has now
passed into infamy, Iryna knew
what she had to do.
She had already packed a
small bag containing money,
some jewellery to trade for food
and shelter, and documents.
Her husband, Alexandr, 46,
argued that they could stay
a day or two to sort out their
affairs. “I told him, ‘We have to
leave, it is the last chance.’”
As Iryna hastily packed a
suitcase, Alexandr took their
Mercedes W212 to fill it with
petrol, joining a long line of cars.
As Alexandr waited
nervously, the night sky
suddenly lit up with a
deafening thunder, a noise
unfamiliar even in a city close
to the frontline of the eight-year
battle between Ukrainian forces
and pro-Russian separatists in
Donetsk and Luhansk.
The war had taken its grip of
Mariupol – and has yet to let go.
This is a story, based on
diary entries and interviews
with those who have survived
a trial of endurance, of a swift
and brutal destruction of a city
in which the best and worst of
humanity was on show. It is an
ongoing story of death, misery
and heartache documented
and told through tears. As
Iryna and Alexandr, along
with his parents, a niece and
her two-year-old son, drove
north from Mariupol on the
Volodarskaya motorway, Nadiia
Sukhorukova, 51, a journalist,
was asleep in her flat just over a
mile north in the city’s centre.
“Even through a dream, I
heard booms and explosions,”
she wrote in her diary. “And
then the editor, Galia, sent a
message to the group chat,
‘That’s it guys, get up!’”
AT 8.23AM, Mariupol’s
mayor addressed his city on

The Guardian Weekly 1 April 2022


television, urging everyone
to remain calm. “Due to the
current situation in the city, the
work of schools, kindergartens
and other social infrastructure
institutions, except for
hospitals and healthcare centre,
has been temporarily stopped,”
Vadym Boichenko said. “We
also open all shelters in the city.
All utilities and public transport
continue to operate.”
Within 20 minutes, seven
buildings in Mariupol’s left
bank were engulfed in fire after
Russian shelling that took a day
to put out, cutting down four
people, including a child.
More shelling followed at
3.17pm. Three hours later,
instructions on how to act
under fire were published
and the rules of a new curfew
between 10pm and 6am. An
additional train service was put
on for those wanting to leave.
Across the city, people were
frantically checking roofs
for “tags” after hearing the
Russians had marked buildings
so their jets could target them.
 An image from drone footage
of bomb-damaged buildings in
the port city of Mariupol
EYEPRESS NEWS/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK
Nadiia wrote that evening:
“In the morning my brother’s
wife was gathering my little
nephews to the sound of
gunfire. They were afraid and
tried to act up. Children sat in
the corridor on stools in jackets
and caps with huge packages
in their hands. These are their
‘emergency cases’.
“At my feet lay the kindest
dog in the world, which was
also very scared. Together they
left the huge high-rise building
for the basement of a private
house. It is safer there during
the shelling. They are afraid to
return home.”
11
BY THE NEXT CRISP MORNING,
many in Mariupol woke to find
their electricity had been cut.
By the end of the day about
40,000 were living in the dark.
Power lines on the city’s
left bank had been damaged.
Officials were adamant it was a
temporary glitch. The council
decided to take water from
a reservoir due to the main
supply having been cut. At
8.17pm, a Russian missile hit a
school. It was empty.
At 7am the next day, the
council said all would be well
and trams and buses were 
operating as normal. Four
1 April 2022 The Guardian Weekly

12
hours later, public transport
was “temporarily stopped”
for public safety. The Sartana
village, a few miles north-east of
Mariupol, was heavily shelled.
Boichenko’s tone changed.
The attacks were a “crime
against humanity”. Everything
was being done that could be
done to keep the lights and
heating on.
BY THE NEXT MORNING, the
internet was down. People on
the Viber messaging service
received anonymous messages,
most likely from Russian
hackers, informing them that
all communications would
soon be severed. Residents in
Sartana were evacuated to what
they believed was the relative
safety of Mariupol.
By noon, there were reports
of direct fire on civilians.
Bombs rained down on
apartment blocks on the
central Peremohy Avenue and
Horlivska Street. At 2.26pm that
day a fateful announcement
was made – the Donetsk
Regional Drama Theatre
was opening as a shelter. By
9.35pm the council had to deny
that Mariupol would soon be
without water. Curfew was
extended and saboteurs were
being arrested. Reports of
looting proliferated. The city
was collapsing into disorder.
‘Hero city’ in ruins Russian forces continue their grinding advance
into Mariupol with fighting proceeding slowly, block by block
Russian-controlled territory
Church of the Intercession
of the Mother of God
Seized by Russian
forces on 24 March
Maternity and
children’s hospital
Hit by Russian
airstrike on 9 March
Airport
Port of Mariupol
Largest trading port
in the Azov Sea
2 km
2 miles
Source: The Institute for the Study of War with AEI’s Critical Threats project. Note: latest data at 2130 GMT
24 March. *Areas where ISW assesses Russian forces have operated or launched attacks but do not control
The Guardian Weekly 1 April 2022
SPECIAL REPORT
UKRAINE
INVASION
Boichenko said: “Marauders
and saboteurs will be
eliminated on the spot.”
On 28 February, Nadiia
wrote: “In the house we have
no shelter, and those that are,
are very far away. We just can’t
get there. Therefore, during the
shelling, the common corridor
turns into Noah’s ark. Together
with people, a cat, two dogs,
a guinea pig – a local favourite
and an impudent hamster are
sitting out a terrible time.
“There is absolute unity in
the corridor, even among those
neighbours who could not
stand each other before.
“One hundred per cent
mutual understanding among
those who were indignant that
animals shit on the street. Now
don’t care. Our Ukrainian cats
and dogs are just perfect.”
BY 1 MARCH , the shelling was
constant, a suffocating blanket
of noise and fear. “We walked
the dog under shelling and
took a picture of my mother’s
snowdrops in the yard. Spring
came,” Nadiia wrote. But the
tension was wearing. “I want to
sleep all the time. Constantly.
As if a sleepy elephant had
moved into me. I nod, even
during terrible shelling.”
That day everyone was
ordered to turn off boilers,
refrigerators, stoves, kettles,
Russian advances*
Sartana
Mariupol
Azovstal steel plant
Badly damaged by
Russian shelling
Ukraine
Drama theatre
Bombed on
16 March
Crimea
Sea of Azov
Black Sea
‘I’m sure
I’ll die soon.
It’s a matter
of days’
air conditioners and heaters to
allow lights to remain on. The
traffic lights were switched off.
“The light is interrupted, there
is no water, no heat either,”
Nadiia wrote. “Dead silence in
Mariupol. The city seemed to
be in shambles. Raindrops are
pounding on the windowsill.”
There were 14 hours of
uninterrupted shelling on
2 March from truck-mounted
multiple rocket launchers,
mortars, howitzers and initially
single-seat, twin-engine jet
aircraft, before the Kremlin
turned to low-flying SU-24
attack jets, a supersonic, all-
weather Soviet plane.
They struck the maternity
hospital and apartments. It was,
the mayor said, the “hardest and
most brutal day”. Mariupol’s
lights would not go on again.
On 5 March, a humanitarian
corridor was seemingly agreed.
People could leave in cars. The
Russians mockingly peppered
those fleeing with artillery
shells in the Zaporizhia region,
north-west of the city. Those
hopeful of escape were told to
run back to shelter. The same
happened the next day. And
again, and again.
BY 7 MARCH, Mariupol
received that most unwelcome
of garlands, being named
a “hero city” by Ukraine’s
president, Volodymyr
Zelenskiy. No streets were
intact. Bodies littered the
ground, unburied and rotting
among the ash, glass, plastic
and metal. Blank eyes staring
Sea of back at horrified children.
Azov “One woman had her arm,
Russia
leg and head torn off,” Nadiia
wrote. “I’m sure I’ll die soon.
Kerch Strait It’s a matter of days. In this city,
everyone is constantly waiting
for death. I just wish it wasn’t
so scary.”
Families hunkered in city
basements were left to drink
water from puddles or collect
dribbles from drainpipes, and
share scraps of food rescued
from burnt-out homes. The
only salvation being volunteers
who filled barrels from a canal
with dirty water to distribute
from basement to basement.
ON 8 MARCH , a six-year-old
child died in Mariupol of
dehydration. Buried under the
rubble that killed her mother,
she was discovered too late.
The next day, the children’s
hospital was bombed.
The civilian death toll was
officially 1,207 but as if to mock
the pretence that this was
close to the dreadful truth, a
Russian pilot dropped a bomb
on the theatre, used as a shelter
by 1,300 people, and clearly
marked to those above by the
word “children” painted in
white on either side.
About 1,000 of those were
under the theatre’s stage.
Despite every effort, nothing
has been heard of them since.
Those elsewhere in the building
were able to stagger out, some
holding their limp children in
their arms. The council said on
Friday that at least 300 people
had died as a video emerged of
the carnage inside immediately
after the strike.
Mikhail Vershinin, the head
of patrol police department in
the Donetsk region, said: “We
were some 200 metres from
it, there was an airstrike and a
massive explosion, and another
large explosion … We were
going along an adjacent street
and we didn’t know the theatre
had been hit.
“One of my troops witnessed
what happened just after the
explosion. He saw people
carrying their children covered
in blood. It hit him really hard,
and he was unable to perform
his duties when he saw it. He
broke down.”
Nadiia, by now bombed out
of her home and with nephews
and nieces in a basement in

▼ A body on the street after
shelling; below left, the theatre,
with ‘children’ written in Russian
GETTY; REUTERS
▲ Toll from Mariupol theatre
airstrike put at 300 people
Authorities in Mariupol have
said as many as 300 people
were killed in a Russian
bombing of a theatre on 16
March, putting a death toll for
the first time on the deadliest
single attack since Moscow
launched its invasion of Ukraine
more than a month ago. The
figure, based on the accounts
of witnesses, came as the UN
human rights team in Ukraine
said it had reports of mass
graves in the southern port city,
including one that appeared to
hold 200 people. The death toll
in Mariupol was revealed as the
Kremlin hinted it may be scaling
back its ambitions, saying it was
close to completing the “first
phase” of its campaign.
a city centre block, could no
longer go out to walk the dog.
“I opened the entrance
door, pushed the dog out and
watched in doom as she first
ran down the stairs, trying
to find a place among the
fragments on the scorched
earth, then the big-eared one
squatted but then a close mine
squeaked disgustingly and
exploded and she ran back. We
waited a minute and started
again. I stood in the doorway
and cried.”
ON 14 MARCH , she wrote of the
bittersweet emotions as some
in the shelter risked escape.
“Next to us was a family
– an adult son and his elderly
mother. They were very calm
and reserved, they treated
our children with sweets and
cookies, they gave us butter
and lard, because they were
going to leave.
“Our children were so scared
that they hardly ate anything.
But sweets and cookies were
devoured immediately. It was a
real treasure and a little joy in a
gloomy dungeon buzzing with
explosions. They even had fun.
“For the first time since the
beginning of the war, seven-
year-old Varya asked me to tell
her about Peppa Pig and even
believed me when I promised
to buy her any doll as soon as
we left the basement. The little
one only clarified: ‘The stores
robbed everyone, how will you
buy me?” I replied that not a
single toy store was touched
and all the dolls were in place.
13
 A bombed apartment block;
below right, women and children
shelter in a hospital
REUTERS; AP
I looked at her round face,
matted hair, small nose, neck
wrapped in a scarf and thought:
‘What if I’m deceiving her?’
I kissed her cheeks and dirty
hands, and my heart skipped
a beat with pain. I wasn’t sure
we’d make it through tonight.”
Nadiia went on: “Her brother
Cyril barely spoke to us. He was
very scared when we were in
another basement in a private
house and there was a direct
hit on the roof. The roof caught
fire and everyone had to leave.
We fled to the garage under
terrible fire. Around everything
howled and exploded, and
Cyril shouted: ‘Mummy, please,
Mummy! I want to live! I don’t
want to die!’”
Ukrainian troops are
outnumbered by five to one
in Mariupol and the husk that
is left of the city has been
expected to fall any day. About
100,000 civilians remain.
BACK IN FEBRUARY, at the
start of the war, it had taken
Iryna three days to reach the
relative safety of the western
city of Lviv. She has since been
helping to organise escapes.
Some get through. Others not.
Two women escorting eight
children, aged one to eight,
went missing four days ago.
“My neighbour said God had
left Mariupol,” wrote Nadiia
on 18 March. “He was afraid of
everything he saw.” The day
after, she and her son risked
the Russian artillery to escape
for Odesa, 950km west on
the Black Sea, where Russian
warships also prowl.
“I keep telling myself that
I’m not in hell any more, but I
keep hearing planes roar, startle
at any loud sound, and pull
my head into my shoulders,”
she wrote. “I’m scared when
someone leaves. There, in
hell, not everyone who left
returned.”
DANIEL BOFFEY IS THE
GUARDIAN’S BRUSSELS
BUREAU CHIEF
1 April 2022 The Guardian Weekly
 SPECIAL REPORT

14 UKRAINE ▼ Stanislav
Manilov and
INVASION Tetiana Medveyeva

UKRAINE Hundreds are dead. The morgues
cannot cope with the daily toll
inflicted by Russia. At one city-centre
facility, dozens of bodies, wrapped in
By Isobel Koshiw and plastic bags or blankets, are stacked in
Emma Graham-Harrison KHARKIV a courtyard. Yet Kharkiv’s people are
determined that life must continue
leaving the pavement smeared with
blood. The next day the city’s main
Barabashovo market was set alight,
and four died when a shell landed out-
side a clinic.
In Ukrainian cities less ravaged by
the war, there is a cheery defiance.

T
he rubbish collectors in
Kharkiv wear flak jackets.
Several of their trucks are
peppered with shrapnel
holes from shells that landed during
their rounds. The bins they empty
are packed with the shattered,
twisted remains of homes destroyed
by explosions.
Every morning they go out to keep
Kharkiv clean. Ukraine’s second city
is perhaps the most shelled after
besieged Mariupol. Every day brings
a hail of Grad rockets, cluster bombs,
shells and missiles.
among the ruins, even if for now it
is a terrifying half-existence in the
shadow of sudden death. And that
means keeping the city clean.
“They can bomb us for as long as
they want: we will withstand it,” said
Ihor Aponchuk, a driver whose collec-
tion round takes in ghostly neighbour-
hoods of empty playgrounds and a
shelled school just shy of the front line.
A few hours after Aponchuk emp-
tied bins near the Heroes of Labour
metro station in eastern Kharkiv,
a rocket hit people queuing for aid
about 500 metres away, killing six and
In Kharkiv, death is too close and too
frequent for that. Men and women,
drawing on extraordinary reserves of
courage to go about their lives, openly
admit that the situation is terrifying.
Yet in their hundreds of thousands,
people have chosen to stay in their ‘We need
“hero city” – a title first awarded to to show
Kharkiv for its resistance to Nazi
troops in the second world war, and
people
bestowed again by the president, Volo- that the
dymyr Zelenskiy, for its courage stand- situation
ing up to Russia’s invasion.
“We need to show people that the
is under
situation is under control and every control’

KHARKIV
UNDER
FIRE
‘WE
HAVEN’T
HAD
A DAY
OFF IN A
MONTH’

 Women clear
debris from
a school damaged
by shelling
THOMAS PETER/REUTERS

The Guardian Weekly 1 April 2022


▲ Yana Ostashko day we are getting closer to victory,”
and her daughter said Oleh Synyehubov, the governor
are living of Kharkiv Oblast province.
underground Aponchuk, who has had a couple
MARCUS YAM/LA TIMES/ of near misses with Russian rockets,
REX/SHUTTERSTOCK
said Kharkiv had a reputation as a
“clean city”, and he believes keeping
it that way is vital for morale, as well
as public hygiene.
So he and more than 250 others
head out each day, risking their lives
with a matter-of-fact dedication.
“A driver came under heavy shelling
the other day, so he drove back to base
here, had a cup of tea, then went out
on another route,” said Oleksii Arti-
kulenko, a city employee seconded
to keep waste collection operating
through the war.
L
ess than 65km from the
Russian border, Kharkiv
is traditionally a Russian-
speaking town, and Moscow
apparently expected its forces to be
welcomed there. Instead, they met
heavy resistance.
Pinned into the city’s north and
east, they began targeting civilians
and the centre, inflicting damage on
everything from the zoo to the cathe-
dral and a Holocaust memorial. A mis-
sile hollowed out Kharkiv’s city hall.
Rockets punched holes in apartment
blocks and destroyed smaller homes.
“When it was clear that they weren’t
going to be able to take it, they started a
campaign of terror,” Synyehubov said.
“Kharkiv will be even more beauti-
ful, with better buildings and infra-
structure, I have no doubt. The thing
that upsets me is deaths. It is straight-
forward to restore things, but not to
restore families.”
Officials estimate that well over half
of the city’s 1.4 million population has
left. Trains carried nearly half of them
west, and many more left by car. But
that still leaves a city of hundreds of
thousands, some living underground,
who have refused to go.
Serhiy, a fireman, spent his 29th
birthday last Thursday clearing the
shattered remains of the imposing
Soviet-era city hall: 30 bodies have
been pulled from the wreckage.
By evening, he said, he would be
back on duty putting out fires: “I’ll cel-
ebrate my birthday with a cup of tea.
We haven’t had a day off in a month.
They have offered us a break but we
don’t want to take it.”
The city feels like the end of the
line for Ukraine’s war. The highway
from the industrial hub of Dnipro,
which sweeps through rich farmland,
is virtually empty. You can drive for
miles without seeing a car or lorry.
While the city is not officially under
siege, it is running low on food and
medicine. International organisations
such as the UN and the Red Cross seem
conspicuous, mostly by their absence.
“We’ve been left to ourselves here
essentially,” said Synyehubov. “We get
100 tonnes of humanitarian aid each
day, but 40 tonnes of it are clothes,
which we don’t need.” They need five
times as much food and medicine as
they are getting.
For now, the city’s more vulnerable
residents are being kept alive largely
by informal networks of volunteers.
Tetiana Medveyeva, 33, and Stanislav
Manilov, 28, went to the station on the
first day of the war, planning to head
west. “We saw so many people trying
to get on the train with their pets and
families,” Manilov said. “We decided
not to go, and to be useful here.”
They connected with some activists
they knew before the war, and began
preparing food packages for the old
and disabled who might struggle to
leave home or afford food, paid for
by private donations raised online.
They spend their mornings buying
and packing food, and the afternoons
handing it out. The scale of the need is
terrifying. When their van draws up,
people will come running to secure a
bag containing pasta and a couple of
cans of fish and meat.
A month ago, she was an administra-
tor and he worked in an architectural
design company. Now they live off
dwindling savings and, increasingly,
the food packages they prepare. They
are so used to driving around under
bombardment they don’t flinch, even
when shells land nearby. “We don’t
have a normal reaction any more,”
Medveyeva said. Observer
ISOBEL KOSHIW IS A UKRAINE-BASED
REPORTER; EMMA GRAHAM-HARRISON
IS A GUARDIAN INTERNATIONAL
CORRESPONDENT
In brief 15
Abramovich among group showing
signs of poisoning at Kyiv meeting
The billionaire Roman Abramovich
and a Ukrainian peace negotiator
suffered symptoms consistent with
poisoning, according to a source with
direct knowledge of the incident.
Abramovich ( below) was taking
part in informal peace negotiations
in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, early
in March when he began to feel ill, the
source told the Guardian. Ukrainian
MP Rustem Umerov was also part of
the negotiation, and the men later left
Ukraine for Poland, and then flew to
Istanbul, where they received medical
treatment. “Roman lost his sight for
several hours,” said the source.
Zelenskiy open to discussing the
adoption of ‘neutral status’
A new round of peace talks between
Russia and Ukraine got under way in
Turkey on Tuesday. The Ukrainian
president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy,
said Ukraine was willing to discuss
“neutral status” and suggested he
could make compromises about the
status of the eastern Donbas region.
But he said he was not willing to
discuss demilitarisation, adding that
Ukrainians would need to approve
any adoption of neutral status in
a referendum.
Video ‘shows Ukrainian soldiers
shooting Russian PoWs in legs’
Footage purporting to show the
torture of Russian prisoners of
war is being investigated by the
Ukrainian government. The film,
which has not been verified, appears
to show Ukrainian soldiers removing
three hooded Russians from a van
before shooting them in the legs.
The government in Kyiv said the
allegations were being taken “very
seriously”. Oleksiy Arestovych, an
adviser to Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said:
“We are a European army, and we
do not mock our prisoners. If this
turns out to be real, this is absolutely
unacceptable behaviour.”
1 April 2022 The Guardian Weekly
 SPECIAL REPORT

16 UKRAINE
INVASION

A N A LY S I S
RUSSI A

What happens next?

By Jack Watling Crimea, and Russian propaganda
claiming to have averted a fictional
Ukrainian genocide against ethnic

Moscow may have scaled Russians in the region.

Even these more limited aims
promise fierce fighting. Kharkiv –

back its military ambitions, close to the Russian border – has

already been subjected to heavy
bombardment, whose intensity is

but the war is far from over
▲ Russian One month after
soldiers in Vladimir Putin
Volnovakha, asserted that Ukraine
Donetsk should be liberated
ANDALOU /GETTY from the historical mistake of its
independence, the Russian defence
ministry announced that Russia’s
war aims were limited to the Donbas
region, and nearing completion.
This climbdown undoubtedly
 Graffiti in lays the groundwork for selling the
a Ukrainian operation as a success to the Russian
village depicting public despite an abysmal military
Vladimir Putin combat performance. But that does
VADIM GHIRDA/AP not mean a rapid end to the war.
Having failed in its initial attempts
to seize several Ukrainian cities, and
with its logistics in disarray, Russia
has been forced to focus on one
target at a time. Mariupol has been
the most recent main effort.
Once that port city falls, Kharkiv
is likely to be the next target,
followed by an attempt to push
north along the Dnieper River to cut
off Ukrainian forces in Donbas.
If the Russians can hold Kherson,
this would pave the way for a
Russia-initiated ceasefire, with a
link created between Donbas and
likely to increase, and Ukraine has
few options for preventing it.
On the other hand, the fight
northwards along the Dnieper
will probably be met with stiff
resistance, with continuing western
arms supplies leading to heavy
attrition among Russian armour.
The outcome of this fighting is far
from inevitable.
It would be a serious error to
expect the war to end at this point,
however, even if local ceasefires
and expanded negotiations suggest
diplomacy may prevail. This is for
three reasons. First, Putin’s view of
Kyiv – as rightfully Russian territory
– will not have changed. Just as the
Russian military continually sought

The Guardian Weekly 1 April 2022


to destabilise Ukraine and kill its
soldiers for the eight years between
the annexation of Crimea and this
year’s campaign, negotiations
will not halt Russian aggression
but merely shift its intensity and
emphasis. Second, precisely
because Russia is setting itself up
to annex more Ukrainian territory,
so it can claim victory at home;
western sanctions are not going
away. They will persist.
The third reason why Russia’s
new declared aims do not suggest
an imminent end to hostilities
is that, precisely because of the
expectations of the first two
points, Ukraine will not wish to see
a ceasefire allowing Russia to dig in
along a new “line of contact”. This
will amount to it taking the country
bite by bite.
Ultimately, Kyiv will not feel
secure until Putin is removed
from power or the Russian army is
broken, and to that end will try to
continue to kill Russian soldiers on
Ukrainian soil.
Moreover, a general collapse in
Russian forces is thought to offer
the best chance for Ukraine to retake
what was lost in 2014 and 2015.
Having pulled Russia’s hand into
a mangle, Volodymyr Zelenskiy
has no intention of letting Russia
take it out.
For Ukraine’s international
partners, these dynamics pose some
difficult questions. Those seeking
off-ramps may in fact be pressuring
Ukraine to surrender longer-term
advantages to Moscow. For Ukraine,
Russia’s curtailed objectives offer
the space for more maximalist
ambitions. The question is whether
the west shares them. Observer
DR JACK WATLING IS SENIOR RESEARCH
FELLOW FOR LAND WARFARE AT THE
ROYAL UNITED SERVICES INSTITUTE
RUSSI A
Standing
ground
Activists against
the war refuse
to flee country
By Andrew Roth and Pjotr Sauer
D
espite reaching one of the
darkest moments in more
than 40 years as a dissident
and rights activist, Oleg
Orlov says he has no plans to flee Russia.
“Even though it’s never been so bad.”
That’s saying something for Orlov,
who can recall printing homemade
anti-war posters in the late 1970s to
protest against the Russian invasion
of Afghanistan and was an observer
and negotiator during the bloody war
in Chechnya in the 1990s. He has been
arrested three times since late Febru-
ary and doesn’t rule out a prison term.
Tens of thousands of Russians
have fled the country since it invaded
Ukraine, fearing government repres-
sion and possible borders closures
similar to during the Soviet Union.
However, a devoted, diverse cadre has
stayed to protest, post online, fund-
raise and organise opposition.
Ilya Yashin, 38, a veteran political
activist and Moscow municipal dep-
uty, said: “I understand all the risks. I
understand what it could mean for me.
But it seems to me that anti-war voices
sound louder and more convincing if
the person remains in Russia.”
Yashin has continued to speak out
against the war, filming streams on his
YouTube channel that reach 1.5 mil-
lion viewers or more. He estimated
that 80% of his friends and colleagues,
many in opposition politics or journal-
ism, had left. There was no judgment
of those who had left, he said, while
he looked on those who stayed with
“great sympathy, great respect”. He
hoped his activism would show that
many Russians do not support this war.
The danger to activists like Orlov
and Yashin is real. The government
has opened nearly a dozen cases into
17
▲ Oleg Orlov at alleged “fakes” about the military,
an exhibition in which can carry a sentence of up to 15
Moscow on years, and has made more than 15,000
political repression arrests of protesters.
ALEXANDER NEMENOV/ “There are a lot of people asking
GETTY
for advice about whether to leave,”
said Pavel Chikov, the head of Agora,
a Russian human rights group based
in Kazan, Tartarstan. “I tell all of them
that if you’re thinking about leaving,
Culture war you have to leave and watch the Titanic
Ballet director from the [rescue] boat, not on board.”
In Yekaterinburg, Yevgeny Roizman
calls on artists
has been a fixture in local politics for
to take stand two decades. The former mayor and
anti-narcotics activist is a rare official
Russian artists in the regions to express openly his
and performers support of the opposition leader Alexei
must not stay Navalny. A month after calling the war
silent about the an act of “betrayal” by Russia against
war, according to Ukraine, he continues to hold open-
one of the world’s door consultations with residents.
leading ballet “I am almost 60, I lived my whole
choreographers, life in Russia, where the hell am I going
Alexei to go?” Roizman said. “My presence
Ratmansky. gives them the assurance that every-
The Russian- thing will be normal one day.”
born former Other reasons for staying are diverse.
artistic director Some worried about family, and others
of the Bolshoi that once they left they would probably
Ballet, who left never be able to come back.
a production in Lucy Shtein, a municipal deputy
Moscow after the and member of Pussy Riot, said she felt
invasion, was she could be a more activist effective
responding to the outside Russia, but that she could not
actor and ballet leave because she is awaiting sentenc-
star Mikhail ing for promoting a pro-Navalny pro-
Baryshnikov’s test. “I always wanted to stay in Russia
call not to until the very end because I knew that
punish cultural once I leave I will not be able to return
and sporting for a long time,” she said. Observer
figures for ANDREW ROTH IS A GUARDIAN
failing to stand INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT;
up to Vladimir PJOTR SAUER IS A FREELANCE
CORRESPONDENT
Putin’s regime.
1 April 2022 The Guardian Weekly
 SPECIAL REPORT
18 UKRAINE
INVASION
A N A LY S I S
DI PLOM AC Y
The Putin perplexity
Biden’s blunder may at
least force the west to
focus on an endgame
By Patrick At the end of what had
Wintour been a largely flawless
visit to Europe, during
which he focused on the
misery Vladimir Putin was imposing
on Russia, Joe Biden closed his
27-minute speech last Saturday
evening in Warsaw by conjuring
up the image of a less popular US
president – George W Bush – when
he said: “For God’s sake, this man
cannot remain in power.”
The US president has previously
called Putin a killer, a pure thug,
a war criminal and a butcher, but he
had never advocated regime change,
risking turning the war for the
defence of Ukraine to a familiar one
of US aggression.
Biden can fairly say it was
a personal expression of loathing,
but, during his election campaign,
he often said how much the words
of a US president mattered and
needed to be weighed. He would not
be a Twitter loudmouth like the man
he was to unseat, Donald Trump.
It was clear from the way White
House aides initially avoided any
comment to the media that the
final ad-libbed line had not been
expected. It was not the first time
that his off-script remarks have
required official reworking.
However An official explained: “The
president’s point was that Putin
desirable cannot be allowed to exercise power
[regime over his neighbours or the region.
change] He was not discussing Putin’s power
in Russia or regime change.”
may be, it is His remarks in their raw form
not within hardly sat well with the UK
our power government briefing on Saturday
night that sanctions could be lifted if
Richard Haass and when Putin left Ukraine.
Council Skilled at playing Washington as
on Foreign the imperialist bully, Moscow was
Relations quick to claim that Russians – not
The Guardian Weekly 1 April 2022
Rana Mitter
Russia and China: allied rivals
Page 48 (
US leaders – chose their president.
The remarks also leave the many
mediators in this crisis – Turkey,
Qatar and China – facing a harder
task in convincing Putin there is
any merit in turning back. The US
president has burned his bridges
with Russia and there is no point
in negotiation, Moscow will argue,
whether it believes this or not.
Richard Haass, the chair of the
Council on Foreign Relations, said:
“The president just expanded
US war aims, calling for regime
change. However desirable it may
be, it is not within our power to
accomplish … His remarks made
a difficult situation more difficult
and a dangerous situation more
dangerous. That is obvious. Less
obvious is how to undo the damage,
but I suggest his chief aides reach
their counterparts and make clear
that the US [is] prepared to deal with
this Russian government.”
What may be more worrying,
especially if this war becomes
prolonged, is the impact on the
bystanders in this conflict. Western
diplomacy pulled off a coup in
March when Russia was left with
only Eritrea, Belarus, North Korea
and Syria coming to its side in a vote
at the UN general assembly when
141 countries voted to condemn the
invasion. But that left 35 countries,
including powerful players such
as India and China, not willing to
condemn Russia at least through
their vote. By no means all of the 141
countries have imposed sanctions,
giving Roman Abramovich’s yachts
many ports in a storm.
Even now there is an assumption
in the US and Europe to see this
purely as Russia versus the rest, as
opposed to Russia versus the west.
There are many voices that are
▲ Joe Biden in Warsaw
at the weekend
The Guardian view
Putin is not totally frozen out
Page 49 (
instinctively reluctant to defend the
US after 9/11. They are not prepared
to see the conflict in terms of purely
good versus evil, or to forget the
past 30 years. The Saudi foreign
minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan
Al Saud, said: “It was mentioned
that Mariupol is Europe’s Aleppo.
Well, Aleppo was our Aleppo.
The engagement of the global
community – of the powers that
could be affected – now and then
was quite different.”
Hina Rabbani Khar, the former
foreign minister of Pakistan, said
the value system the west deployed
inside its border was different from
that outside its borders.
İbrahim Kalın, an experienced
adviser to the Turkish president,
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, never
mentioned Biden by name but urged
caution, saying: “Every step we
take, every move that we make in
regard to bringing an end to this war
is going to have an impact on the
future security architecture. Russia
is not going to go away as a country.
“The power of this equilibrium
that has shaped the international
order ever since the end of the cold
war over the last three decades has
everything to do with this crisis. We
have to create an environment in
which every country, from Russia,
Iran, the US, European countries,
from Turkey to Gulf countries, feel
safe enough in the international
order that they do not resort to
any kind of disruptive action.
This is an unfair, unprovoked war,
but whatever grievances Russia
has had have to be understood
– not justified, but understood.
If everybody burns bridges with
Russia, there is no one talking to
them at the end of the day.”
At least the episode may have the
salutary effect of forcing the west
to think more clearly about what its
endgame may be. A permanently
weakened Russia, humiliated while
attempting to capture Ukraine, its
lucrative European energy market
permanently thrown away by
Putin’s crazed misreading of history,
is hardly going to form a secure basis
for him to remain in power as long as
he intends. Ideally, he is defeated in
elections or is bundled out the door
by the security services. But that is
Russia’s business, not Biden’s.
PATRICK WINTOUR IS THE GUARDIAN’S
DIPLOMATIC EDITOR
 19
In-depth reporting and analysis

UNITED KINGDOM
How royal tour
of Caribbean hit
the wrong notes
Page 23 (

H U NGA RY

Putin casts a
U
ntil the Russian invasion of
Ukraine, Hungary’s general
election campaign was
Warmly received at the Kremlin ▲ Viktor Orbán
just three weeks before the invasion, delivering his
Orbán has had to condemn it, publicly annual state of

shadow over dominated by such ruling

party preoccupations as “traditional
values” and protecting children from
distance himself from a decade-long
friendship with Vladimir Putin and
join Hungary’s EU partners in imposing
the nation speech
in Budapest in
February
Orbán in “LGBT propaganda”.
Neither Russia nor Ukraine featured
punitive sanctions on Russia.
Overt hostility to refugees has been
BERNADETT SZABO/
REUTERS

high-stakes in the slogans of Viktor Orbán’s ruling

Fidesz party or the opposition parties,
which have united to dislodge him.
a defining issue of Orbán’s rule, but on
this too, he has had to fall into line with
the EU by granting visa-free admission

election But the war, the ensuing refugee

By Flora Garamvolgyi BUDAPEST
exodus and the reshaping of Europe’s
geopolitical calculations have
dramatically altered the political con-
text ahead of Hungary’s 3 April vote.
to those fleeing Russia’s bombs. More
than 200,000 Ukrainians have sought
refuge in Hungary.
The combined opposition now
Continued 
characterise Orbán as Putin’s servant
20 Spotlight
Europe
and his ties with Russia as a national
security threat. Those ties have been
Poll position so close that Orbán’s foreign minister,
Péter Szijjártó, received a Russian
Latest voting
Order of Friendship medal from
intentions
Putin’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov,
as recently as December.
Fidesz “Orbán and Putin or the west and
50% Europe – these are the stakes. A choice
Led by Viktor between the dark or the good side of
Orbán, history,” Péter Márki-Zay, the joint
comprising opposition’s prime ministerial candi-
Orbán’s national date, wrote on social media.
conservatives Fidesz remains ahead in opinion
and KDNP, the polls. According to a mid-March
right-leaning poll from Nézőpont, which is close
Christian to the ruling party, 49% of voters
Democratic would choose Fidesz against 41%
People’s party for the united opposition. However,
a later survey suggested its lead had
United narrowed to three points.
opposition After 12 years in office, Orbán is
44% counting on a counter-narrative on
Led by Péter Ukraine to blunt criticism of his Russia
Márki-Zay, policy and return him to power for a
comprising social fourth consecutive term.
democrats, Only Fidesz, he claims, can keep
Jobbik, socialists, Hungarians safe and clear of the con-
greens and flict next door. Not only is a vote for his
liberals party a vote for peace – the government
SOURCE: POLITICO.EU won’t send lethal weapons to Ukraine
POLL AGGREGATOR,
23 MARCH 2022 – but, Fidesz claims, the opposition is
on the side of war.
“The opposition has lost its mind,”
Orbán told supporters at a rally in
March. “They would walk into a cruel,
protracted and bloody war and they
want to send Hungarian troops and
The Guardian Weekly 1 April 2022
guns to the frontline. We can’t let this
happen. Not a single Hungarian can get
caught between the Ukrainian anvil
and the Russian hammer.”
Márki-Zay, a centrist conservative,
has been smeared by Fidesz political
ads, which state that he “wants to send
Hungarian troops to Ukraine”.
Election posters plastered on bill-
boards around Budapest are almost
exclusively those of Fidesz, and most
promise to “protect the peace and
security of Hungary”, although some
have been spray-painted over with the
letter Z, to remind voters of Orbán’s
close ties to Russia.
Orbán’s attempt to avoid taking
sides in the conflict is contemptible
as far as some younger voters are con-
cerned. Dániel, a 26-year-old systems
engineer in the capital, said it brought
“shame to this country that Orbán is
trying to dance between Russia and
Ukraine. The government has done
absolutely nothing for the Ukrainians.
The help that refugees get here is done
‘I never voted for Orbán, by civilians almost entirely.”
Nevertheless, Fidesz’s dominance
I’m not a fan. But I’m gives it a massive advantage in pro-
moting the “peace and security”
going to vote for him this narrative, analysts say. Fidesz and its
time. I agree with his allies have effective control of most
Hungarian media outlets, including
policies on Ukraine’ state TV. This grip on broadcast media,
along with an  online advertising
budget that dwarfs the opposition’s,
reduces other parties’ ability to cam-
▲ Supporters of ▼ A police officer paign fairly, they complain.
prime ministerial carries a sleeping Márki-Zay leads the United for Hun-
candidate Péter refugee boy as gary (Egységben Magyarországért)
Márki-Zay at a families arrive at coalition of six opposition parties
demonstration Záhony station including socialists, social democrats,
in Budapest last in Hungary, after greens, liberals and even the former
month fleeing Ukraine far-right party Jobbik.
JANOS KUMMER/ CHRISTOPHER FURLONG/ But the broad-spectrum nature
GETTY GETTY of the opposition is also its weak-
ness. Ágoston Mráz, chief executive
of Nézőpont, said the war in Ukraine
was helping the ruling party more than
those promoting a change of govern-
ment, because “people want to feel
secure in a crisis”.
András, 31, a taxi driver in Budapest,
articulated this concern. “You know,
I never voted for Orbán, I’m just not a
fan of him and Fidesz,” he said. “But I
am going to [vote for him] this time. I
agree with his policies when it comes
to Ukraine. This is not our war. We
shouldn’t get involved.”
Péter Krekó, director of the Buda-
pest-based thinktank Political Capital
Institute, argues that Orbán’s 12 years
fostering a close relationship with

Russia have undeniably backfired. The
relationship has hardly evaporated
since the invasion, with pro-govern-
ment media maintaining a seemingly
pro-Kremlin tone.
The government-controlled MTI
(Hungary’s state news agency) initially
toed the same line required by the
Kremlin of Russian media, calling the
events in Ukraine a “military opera-
tion” instead of a war.
Anna Donáth, chair of the liberal
Momentum Mozgalom party,
concedes that Orbán’s ties with Putin
may not damage him reputationally
at home.
Yet, surprises cannot be ruled out.
The Hungarian currency, the forint,
already hit by the fallout of the
pandemic, plunged to record lows
recently, and inflation has risen to a
15-year high.
For many Hungarians, the economy
is of more pressing relevance than
foreign policy. Fear of the economic
consequences of the war is behind a
massive rise in pre-election govern-
ment spending, Krekó said.
“Everything is just getting worse
and worse since Orbán is in power.
They are stealing more and more
from taxpayers’ money. I am going to
be devastated if they win again,” said
Gyula, a 67-year-old at an opposition
rally last month in Dunakeszi, a city
north of the capital.
The government has capped prices
of flour, sunflower oil, meat, sugar and
fuel. But Russia’s war on Ukraine also
now threatens one of Orbán’s big-
gest appeals to voters: cheap gas and
heating. With Hungary’s reliance on
Russia for 95% of its gas supply, Orbán
has ruled out EU sanctions on Russian
oil and gas.
Whoever prevails in the poll will
inherit a situation unprecedented in
economic and geopolitical terms.
In Miskolc, a city in north-east
Hungary, Anna, a 56-year-old teacher,
spoke for the undecideds, thought to
make up a quarter of the electorate.
She had, she said, “absolutely no idea”
who to vote for.
“I agree with some of Orbán’s
policies, and I voted for him before,
but the things he is saying now are
the complete opposite of his early
promises,” she said. “But Márki-Zay
is also not someone I would like to
lead this country. I think we don’t have
good options here.”
FLORA GARAMVOLGYI IS A JOURNALIST
BASED IN BUDAPEST
BULGARIA
Sofia, so good
PM Petkov
vows to end
corruption
By Jennifer Rankin
K 120
iril Petkov is not a typical
Bulgarian prime minister.
The 41-year-old probiotics
entrepreneur and Harvard
Business School graduate is a polit-
ical newcomer. He could not be more
different to Boyko Borissov, the burly
former bodyguard who dominated
Bulgarian politics for 12 years, until
he resigned last year after months-long
street protests against corruption.
After three general elections in
eight months, Petkov’s newly created
We Continue the Change party swept
to power at the head of a four-party
coalition, vowing to tackle Bulgaria’s
most pernicious problem: corruption.
Petkov said he wanted to eradicate
corruption. “I don’t say decreasing
corruption, I say full eradication,” he
said. “And I don’t think it’s so hard.
Bulgaria has 6.5 million people – it’s
not such a huge country – so what
looks like an insurmountable task for
a very large country, I don’t think it’s
the case for Bulgaria.”
He was speaking before police
detained Borissov and reportedly
searched his home last month after
21
the European public prosecutor’s
office announced it had opened 120
investigations into fraud involving EU
funds in the country. Officials did not
elaborate on the accusations against
Borissov, who has faced allegations
of corruption in the past.
The decision by Bulgaria’s chief
prosecutor, Ivan Geshev, to release
Borissov from custody without charge
after saying he found procedural flaws,
prompted sharp criticism from the
government.
“We are faced with just the next
sabotage on the part of the prosecution
headed by Ivan Geshev,” Petkov said.
Sitting at the EU table, Bulgaria will
be championing democratic stand-
ards, he said. “You will see Bulgaria
from now on speaking about the rule
Number of of law as a really strong proponent.”
investigations He questioned why it was Wash-
the European ington, rather than Sofia, that put
public sanctions on the oligarch, media
prosecutor’s mogul and political kingmaker
office says it Delyan Peevski, who is alleged to have
has opened into controlled Borissov from behind the
fraud involving scenes. Petkov said: “I think we should
EU funds in be raising our eyebrows why somebody
Bulgaria from 8,000km away could see more
clearly significant acts of corruption.”
Last month, the prime minister
handed Geshev a list of 19 individuals
linked to high-level corruption.
Louisa Slavkova, director of the
Sofia Platform, which promotes
democracy, describes Petkov’s deci-
sion to hand over names as unprece-
dented. “They [the government] have
the capacity to focus on the toxic
triangle between business, politics
▼ Kiril Petkov and media,” she said.
leads a four-party The war in Ukraine is a fraught issue
coalition for the coalition, as some members
BORISLAV TROSHEV/
have been historically pro-Russia,
ANADOLU /GETTY although all have condemned the
invasion.
Despite Petkov’s pro-EU creden-
tials, Slavkova contends there is still
ambiguity in the coalition’s communi-
cation about Bulgaria’s alliances.
She thinks Bulgaria is at a turning
point comparable to the late 1990s
when, after a decade of instability after
the fall of the Berlin wall, the country
chose a westward path. “It feels like a
historical moment for a country like
Bulgaria, it feels like we are at a point
when we almost have to decide anew
that we are part of Nato and the Euro-
pean Union.” Observer
JENNIFER RANKIN IS THE GUARDIAN
AND OBSERVER’S BRUSSELS
CORRESPONDENT
1 April 2022 The Guardian Weekly
22 Spotlight
Europe
A N A LY S I S
FR ANCE
Vote loser?
Pécresse’s
regress leaves
Républicains
facing oblivion
By Angelique Chrisafis PARIS
The rightwing
presidential candidate
Valérie Pécresse has
promised to rewrite the
French constitution in order to fight
crime and illegal immigration, as she
tried to boost a flagging campaign
that risks her party imploding if
she fails to reach the final round
this month.
“I want to show that I’m ready
to govern,” Pécresse said in Paris
last week, vowing to “restore
order to the streets and to the
public accounts”. Soon afterwards,
Pécresse’s team said she had Covid
and would be stepping back from
public appearances for a few days.
Polls have showed Pécresse
sinking into a damaging fifth
position. The mood is palpably tense
The Guardian Weekly 1 April 2022
in Les Républicains, the traditional
rightwing party of Jacques Chirac
and Nicolas Sarkozy, which could
break apart amid ideological in-
fighting if Pécresse does not make it
to the second round final on 24 April.
An Ipsos poll for France Info
and Le Parisien this week placed
Pécresse on 10% in the 10 April first
round, well behind the centrist
president Emmanuel Macron, on
27.5%, and the far-right Marine Le
Pen, on 18.5%, who are predicted to
make the final, though support for
the socialist Jean-Luc Mélenchon
seemed to be rising last weekend.
In Paris, Pécresse was asked
about voters preferring the far-
right to her programme, no matter
how much she hardens her stance
on immigration. She said: “My
programme is more precise than
theirs, it has all the fundamentals to
end illegal immigration.”
She said the aim now was to fight
against abstentionism and to win
over voters by arguing for her party’s
experience and budgetary rigour.
Pécresse said her changes to
the constitution would introduce
minimum prison sentences for some
crimes, quotas for immigration,
If Les Républicains
don’t get to the second
round, it will be hard
to avoid an implosion
and limit the Muslim headscarf  Valérie
in some public spaces, including Pécresse has
banning headscarves from players vowed to restore
in sporting events. No headscarves order to the
would be worn by mothers streets and the
accompanying school trips, she said. public accounts
She referred to her own clampdown VINCENT ISORE/ ZUMA /
REX/SHUTTERSTOCK
on full-body swimsuits as head of
the Île-de-France region, which
includes Paris and the surrounding
area, saying: “There will be no
burkinis in the swimming pools
of the Republic.”
Pécresse is trying to stop party
sympathisers choosing Macron,
whose programme covers similar
ground to hers on issues such as
raising the retirement age to 65.
Éric Ciotti, a party hardliner who
had run against Pécresse in Les
Républicains’ internal primary
race, declined to answer a question Five alive
on the health of his party, saying: How the rivals
“I’ll respond to that on the day of
are polling
the first round.” But he added that
the debate was “still open” in the
presidential race.
“It’s not all wrecked for the right,”
Emmanuel
Macron
Xavier Bertrand, another former rival
in the primary race, told French radio
27.5%
La République
last week, saying the last 10 days of
the campaign would be crucial.
en Marche
Olivier Rouquan, of Marine Le Pen
Paris University’s centre for
administrative and political
18.5%
Rassemblement
sciences, said: “It’s clear that if Les
Républicains don’t get to the second
National
round of the presidential election, it Jean-Luc
will be hard to avoid an implosion.” Mélenchon
He said a number of party lawmakers 15.5%
may be tempted to jump to Macron’s La France
camp in order to secure re-election Insoumise
in the June parliamentary elections.
“There will be a recomposition of the Éric Zemmour
right and some of Les Républicains 11.5%
will take part in that, but not as we Reconquête
know the party – another political
force will emerge … The party will be Valérie Pécresse
weakened if Valérie Pécresse doesn’t 10%
get to the second round.” Les Républicains
He said Pécresse’s difficulties
SOURCE: FRANCE INFO/
began with the fact that she won her LE PARISIEN. FIGURES
CORRECT AS OF 28 MARCH
party’s primary by a narrow margin
so was having to accommodate
competing party views. Added to
this, Le Pen was holding the centre
of gravity on the right in the polls.
Pécresse was also struggling to
“embody” the campaign and place
her ideas at the centre of the debate.
ANGELIQUE CHRISAFIS IS THE
GUARDIAN’S PARIS CORRESPONDENT
 Opinion p45
23

UNITED KINGDOM suddenly going to welcome William Commonwealth post-Brexit. “There

and his wife with open arms,” said are profound sensitivities around the
Velma McClymont, a writer and former legacies of colonialism and slavery and
Caribbean studies academic. the royal presence in the Caribbean,

Misjudged
“My grandparents died believing and sometimes you get the feeling
Jamaica was fully independent. Imag- that the Foreign Office doesn’t quite
ine, 60 years later and it’s still an exten- get it,” he said.

royal tour sion of the British empire.”

Followers of the trip in the UK may
have gained a different impression.
Murphy pointed to the growing
emphasis on the relationship between
colonialism and racial oppression
sows seeds The Sun newspaper gushed that “Kate
dazzles on Jamaica tour” and sug-
following the Black Lives Matter
movement, damage to the royals’

of doubt in gested the pair had “touched hearts”.

The same could not be said of cover-
age in the Jamaican media. “It wasn’t a
reputations following Meghan
Markle’s accusations of racism, and
to the British government through the

Caribbean royal failure, but I wouldn’t quite deem

it a regal success either,” said Tyrone
Windrush scandal.
Although a “quiet minority” in
Reflective royals
The Duke and
Duchess of
Reid, associate editor at the Jamaica Jamaica are supportive of the Queen Cambridge have
Gleaner. He added that local publica- as head of state, there is “a great deal insisted they
By Rachel Hall and tions had devoted considerable col- of antipathy and resentment toward are interested
Amelia Gentleman umn inches to the views of “a grow- the monarchy”, said Cynthia Barrow- only in a “better
ing number of Jamaicans demanding Giles, a professor at the University of future” for the

I
t was supposed to be a visit to the British monarch and British state West Indies. “[The visit] smacks of Commonwealth,
mark the Queen’s platinum apologise for and accept its role in the political opportunism.” not in who leads it,
jubilee – a chance to present abhorrent slave trade of years ago”. Many Commonwealth countries in at the end of their
the modern face of the British Royal experts said an enormous the Caribbean are questioning its pur- Caribbean tour.
monarchy to a region where repub- amount of planning goes into the vis- pose, especially since they received William said
lican sentiment is on the rise. But it its, often starting years in advance, led little support during the pandemic. foreign tours were
didn’t turn out that way. by government in line with diplomatic, The reparations movement has an “opportunity
After the Duke and Duchess of Cam- cultural and commercial priorities. grown considerably around the Car- to reflect” and
bridge ended their week-long tour of Philip Murphy, a professor at the ibbean. Rosalea Hamilton, one of the he and his wife
the Caribbean last weekend, they will University of London and former campaigners for Advocates Network, were committed
have reported back that it may have director of the Institute of Common- which organised slavery reparations to “serving and
accelerated moves to ditch the Queen wealth Studies, said although the pal- protests in Jamaica, said: “More supporting” the
as head of state. ace has “taken a relaxed view” about people are recognising the horror of people of the
Calls for slavery reparations and countries removing the Queen as head slavery and the atrocities that were Commonwealth,
enduring fury about the Windrush of state, “the British government has committed, and becoming aware of in a statement
scandal followed them across Belize, been less consistent about that”. Min- the impact that has on modern life.” published on the
Jamaica and the Bahamas – overshad- isters are thought to be anxious to pre- RACHEL HALL AND AMELIA GENTLEMAN couple’s Twitter
owing a trip aimed at strengthening serve the soft power benefits of the ARE GUARDIAN REPORTERS account.
the Commonwealth and discouraging
other countries from following Barba-
dos in becoming a republic.
In Belize, the couple were met with
protests from villagers over a land
dispute involving a charity of which
Prince William is a patron. In Jamaica,
the prime minister told them in an
awkward meeting that the country
would be “moving on” to become a
republic, and a government committee
in Bahamas urged the royals to issue
“a full and formal apology for their
crimes against humanity”.
From photos of them shaking hands
with Jamaican children through wire
fences, to the parade in which the pair
stood, dressed in white, in an open-top  The Duke
Land Rover, the optics of the visit have and Duchess of
been described by local campaigners Cambridge arrive
as a throwback to colonialism. at Nassau
“This was another photo oppor- CHANDAN KHANNA/
GETTY
tunity, and rather presumptuous to
assume that Jamaican people were

1 April 2022 The Guardian Weekly

24 Spotlight
Asia Pacific
‘A
NEW ZEALAND t the height of summer, we
would get maybe 4,000
people a day,” says James
Warbrick as he crosses
Hot topic
the bridge into Whakarewarewa, a
tiny Māori village pocketed between
hundreds of steaming, bubbling geo-
Māori village thermal pools – a place like no other
and one at the heart of New Zealand’s
tourism industry.
reopens for But today there are no tourists in
sight. When New Zealand shut its bor-
tourists with der two years ago as the Covid pan-
demic hit, Whakarewarewa lost 96%
of its visitors overnight. Now, as the
relief and fear country prepares to start reopening to
foreign visitors this month, its inhabit-
ants are torn between their economic
needs and trepidation at the destruc-
tive impact of tourism.
Whakarewarewa, in the North
Island town of Rotorua, is both a time
capsule and a living, evolving place
– the 27 families who live on site still
cook, bathe and live alongside the
hot springs and geysers, just as their
tīpuna (ancestors) did.
Warbrick reaches down and opens
a large wooden box on the ground.
Inside, meat is cooking slowly, heated
through by the mineral steam rising
from below ground. Behind him, warm
sulphurous mist billows up from the
By Eva Corlett WHAKAREWAREWA Parekohuru pool and shrouds the
The Guardian Weekly 1 April 2022
small houses in a white veil before
being whipped up into the air, expos-
ing the deep blue silica pools beneath.
To one side of the pool are the baths,
filled each morning, and left to cool
enough for families to take an evening
dip. To the other side is the open-air
kitchen – vegetables are boiled in the
100C mineral spring and meat steamed
in ovens that reach 200C.
Warbrick – a fourth-generation
guide – tells stories about the pools,
the houses and the families – all with
an ease that comes from growing up
watching generations of guides before
him tell the stories of his village to
more than 120,000 people a year.
The village became a tourist attrac-
tion after the 1886 Mount Tarawera
eruption, which buried the nearby
Pink and White Terraces – a series
of terraces, each with a geothermal
pool, like a stepped fountain down the
mountainside, that had been consid-
ered the “eighth wonder of the world”.
After the explosion, the people of
Whakarewarewa (Ngāti Wāhiao) took
in the displaced Tūhourangi tribe, who
had been master tour-guides at the ter-
races. Then, in 1901, the government
▲ The village of established the world’s first tourism
Whakarewarewa office, the Department of Tourist and
is home to around Health Resorts, in Rotorua – and New
55 people, who Zealand’s tourism industry was born.
bathe and cook in Visitors flocked to Whakarewarewa
its hot pools right up until the pandemic hit, when
suddenly, “like a rugby scrum col-
Photography by
lapsing”, everything went quiet, says
81-year-old Christina Gardiner, a guide
Fiona Goodall and village kuia (elder).
Up until March 2020, tourism was
New Zealand’s biggest export indus-
 ▼ The ‘living
Māori village’;
try, contributing 20% of total exports
and bringing in NZ$40.9bn ($28.5bn)
a year. According to Tourism Industry
Christina Gar-
diner and James
Aotearoa, 90% of international tour-
ism disappeared.
Warbrick In Whakarewarewa, staff had to be

laid off, stores shut down and the vil-
lage had to rely on government sup-
port grants to keep afloat.
When Gardiner and Warbrick are
asked what the first lockdown was
like for the village, the words come
quick: “eerie”, “shocking”, “there
were mixed emotions”.
“But on the upside, we became
very, very close,” Gardiner says. “It
made our kids appreciate what they’d
inherited. Before, the bath was a bath,
but all of a sudden it was a place where
they could be one with nature.”
Last month, the prime minister,
Jacinda Ardern, announced that the
long wait for tourism’s return was
nearly over. From 13 April, more than
two years after the borders shut, New
Zealand will reopen – first to Austral-
ians, then to other visa-waiver coun-
tries and finally the rest of the world.
The border reopening will be a life-
line for those regions that are tourist-
dependent. For Whakarewarewa,
while there is relief, there is also
trepidation.
If the pandemic hadn’t happened,
the tourism industry and its effects
“would still be on a fast track to
destruction”, says Mike Gibbons, the
village’s general manager. “We know
that a lot of local communities were
struggling with numbers, the impacts
of waste and insufficient facilities.”
For the village, there is a reluc-
tance to return to the previous tour-
ism framework. It has already reori-
ented its tourism model once during
the pandemic, to capture a domestic
audience. Now, it wants to refocus its
energy into a more environmentally
friendly experience. Having more
than 100,000 tourists walking through
the village every year is hard on the
whenua (land), while one guide to 70
people lacks the connection the village
wants to foster, Warbrick says.
Gibbons adds that there are two
words that come to mind when look-
ing towards tourism of the future:
manaakitanga, meaning extending
love and support to someone, and
kaitiakitanga, meaning guardianship
and protection of the environment.
He says the villagers are considering
limiting tour group sizes and would
be happy to have just 40,000 visitors
a year. “In other words, come back to
basics,” Gardiner says. “We’re like the
phoenix bird – you go down; you come
back up fighting.”
EVA CORLETT IS A JOURNALIST BASED
IN WELLINGTON
C O R O N AV I R U S
PA C I F I C I S L A N D S
Omicron
makes tracks
into virus-free
outposts
By Lagipoiva Cherelle Jackson
C
ovid outbreaks in Samoa
and Vanuatu have further
whittled down the number
of Pacific island nations that
have escaped the pandemic, as cases
surge after the first instances of com-
munity transmission in both countries.
Tuvalu, Nauru and Micronesia are
the only remaining Pacific island coun-
tries that have not recorded any cases
of the virus, according to the World
Health Organization.
Samoa recorded its first case of com-
munity transmission last month, when
an American missionary tested posi-
tive in preparation for a flight out. The
country reported another 155 cases last
Wednesday, which took the current
outbreak to 622, with experts suggest-
ing the virus had likely been spreading
before the first case was detected.
The country has closed its borders
and gone into lockdown, shutting
schools and banning public gatherings.
In Vanuatu, where the first case of
community transmission was also
reported last month, cases have spiked
with 279 reported last Wednesday
alone, which took the number since
the beginning of the year to 1,373. The
country is now at its highest alert level,
with restrictions on movement and
mandatory mask-wearing in public.
Public health expert and dean
25
Pacific at the University of Auckland,
Dr Colin Tukuitonga, said the surge
was not a surprise. “This is not unex-
pected, given the Omicron spread, but
it’s good that most Pacific islands have
been able to vaccinate people.”
Vaccination rates vary widely among
Pacific nations. Some, such as Samoa,
where 66% of the population is vacci-
nated, have relatively high coverage.
Others, such as Vanuatu and Solomon
Islands, have lower rates, at 28% and
17% respectively, according to the WHO.
The acting director general of health
in Samoa, Tagaloa Dr Robert Thomsen,
told the media that the health system
was prepared for an influx of cases.
▲ Samoa’s Although the WHO has not reg-
vaccination rate istered any Covid deaths in Samoa
is higher than or Vanuatu, the Vanuatu Daily Post
neighbouring
islands’
reported a woman in South Santo who
had underlying conditions and tested
CHIKARA YOSHIDA/GETTY
positive for Covid, died last month.
Tukuitonga, who has supported
Pacific governments in health policies,
said there were cultural dimensions
behind the outbreaks. “Communal
living and social interactions and big
families are normally good for cohe-
sion but increase risks of spread,” he
said, adding that substandard housing
and high prevalence of comorbidities
Recent surge such as diabetes are also factors.
Covid cases The recent surge in cases has caused
panic across the Pacific as outbreaks
since January
have hit small island states previously
untouched by the pandemic, and left
3,057
Kiribati
them bracing for long lockdown peri-
ods as well as putting strain on already
fragile public health systems.
First Covid Kiribati recorded its first Covid
death in death in January with the death toll
January now at 13 and the number of positive
cases at 3,057, according to the WHO.
4,000 Palau has recorded almost 4,000
cases and six deaths since the start of
Palau the year. Solomon Islands, which also
Total cases reported its first case of community
10,204 transmission in January, has the high-
est number of Covid deaths at 128, with
3,784 a case count of 10,204.
In American Samoa, 1,626 cases
Tonga were recorded as of 23 March – includ-
1,700 cases ing 847 in one week – a large number
reported for a population of just over 55,000.
in one week In Tonga, which had been Covid-
free until the virus arrived with relief
efforts after January’s volcanic erup-
tion and tsunami, cases have reached
3,784, with just over 1,700 reported in
one week last month.
LAGIPOIVA CHERELLE JACKSON
IS A REPORTER COVERING
THE PACIFIC ISLANDS
1 April 2022 The Guardian Weekly
26 Spotlight
Environment
I
’m travelling with photographer
Carlton Ward Jr through south-
western Florida. We’re following
the path of the elusive Florida
panther. Our chances to spot one are
slim: scientists estimate that only 200
of them remain in the wild in the US.
Lean and fawn-coloured, these car-
nivores once roamed across the south-
eastern US. At one point, the panther
population dwindled to an estimated
20 individuals, bottlenecked in south-
western Florida. Ward, an accom-
plished conservation photographer
and National Geographic explorer, has
captured some of the most thrilling –
and up close – images of the big cats,
in hopes of drawing attention to their
battle against extinction.
The panthers require large swathes
of contiguous habitat to hunt, mate
and raise their offspring. Climate
change and development are strain-
ing their already-fragmented habitat.
Ward, an eighth-generation
Floridian, is an advocate for the Florida
Wildlife Corridor – a plan that would
conserve and connect 7.1m hectares
so that panthers and other wildlife can
move safely within their native range.
Floridians are almost out of time
to save the last of the state’s native
U N I T E D S TAT E S
Paw patrol
Helping
Florida’s
panthers
thrive
Wildlife corridors are critical
to protecting the species as
the pressures of development
encroach on their habitat
By Megan Mayhew Bergman
Photographs Carlton Ward Jr
The Guardian Weekly 1 April 2022
habitat – only about 15% remains.
Conservation efforts have significant
bipartisan support in Florida, but are
up against housing developments.
One million people move to Florida
every three years.
To illustrate the panthers’ need for
a connected landscape, Ward brings
me to the Florida Panther National
Wildlife Refuge, which, at more than
10,000 hectares, or 100 sq km, is still
not enough to support a single pan-
ther’s home range. Female panthers
require 100-200 sq km to establish
their territory; male panthers require
more than 500 sq km.
Wildlife biologist Mark Danaher
greets us. We jump into his all-terrain
vehicle and drive past wetlands and
stands of slash pines to visit a wildlife
underpass, where Danaher kneels to
point out panther tracks in the sand.
Overhead the traffic from I-75 –
the interstate highway that crosses
the Everglades and then runs north
– is deafening. Vehicle strikes are the
leading cause of death for Florida
panthers. But overpasses and under-
passes, like those installed by the
refuge, are proving effective.
In 2012, a trail camera at the refuge
captured a Florida panther moving
three cubs. One became known as
“Broketail” for her injured tail’s dis-
tinctive crimping. In January 2022, a Big cat facts
camera captured Broketail, now 10 Pressure on
years old, using the safety of the under-
panthers
pass to move her own three cubs from
the neighbouring Picayune Strand
state forest to the heart of the refuge.
“She was born here, and now she’s
teaching her own kittens how to hunt
200
Estimated
and navigate the landscape,” Danaher number of
tells me. “It’s a testament to her intel- Florida panthers
ligence and survival skills.” left in the wild
It’s also a testament to the power of
connectivity. The underpasses work.
Audubon’s Corkscrew Swamp 15%
Sanctuary is another piece of the Portion of state’s
corridor puzzle. Corkscrew is a – and panthers’
5,200-hectare refuge with 500-year- – native habitat
old cypress trees and wetlands man- that remains
aged for wildlife. At 54 sq km, the sanc-
tuary isn’t large enough for a panther’s
home range, but female panthers are
known to raise cubs there.
“We believe in maintaining
corridors,” the sanctuary’s director,
Lisa Korte, says. “Animals shouldn’t
be dead-ended. We’re a place where
a panther can feel safe.”
While at Corkscrew, we check ▼ A Florida
Ward’s camera traps and stop to view panther and
some of the last old-growth cypress her cubs

trees, known panther watering holes,
and barbed wire fences where pan-
thers have been photographed moving
between ranches and the sanctuary.
At dusk, Ward captures drone foot-
age of traffic hurtling along I-75. After
nightfall, we stop by an old metal bridge
which lies across the Caloosahatchee
river, a feature that often restricts
the contemporary northern range
of the panther. Ward hopes that one
day a healthy breeding population of
panthers will extend northwards from
here, perhaps to the Georgia border.
Though it goes against the popu-
lar narrative about Florida politics,
conservation enjoys broad bipartisan
support in the state. Republican gover-
nors approved (and later undermined)
earlier initiatives like Florida Preserva-
tion 2000, which allotted $300m a year
for conservation purchases, and Flor-
ida Forever, a Jeb Bush initiative that
has saved more than 320,000 hectares.
T
he Florida Wildlife Corridor
Act, which Governor Ron
DeSantis signed into law in
June 2021, may be the most
progressive yet. Astoundingly, the
state senate passed the act – which
defines the boundaries of the corri-
dor – with a vote of 40-0, and the house
with a vote of 115-0. A budget of $300m
has been set aside for corridor-specific
preservation, and an additional $100m
for Florida Forever (80% of projects in
the Florida Forever initiative are inside
the corridor’s boundaries).
“The corridor is ambitious,” Ward
says, “but achievable, if lawmakers
keep investing in the conservation
easements and public land acquisi-
tions that will give landowners viable
alternatives to development.”
The project provides a blueprint for
other states to follow as part of Presi-
dent Joe Biden’s 30-by-30 conservation
plan – the goal to conserve and restore
30% of the country’s land and rivers.
Ward tells me that some of the best
conservation opportunities are in
working lands: ranches (which consti-
tute 33% of the best future opportuni-
ties for additions to the corridor), tim-
berlands (43%), former tomato fields,
orange groves, and even an enormous
active military zone known as the Avon
Park Air Force range – which contains
swathes of undeveloped habitat.
“I believe in academic conservation
targets,” Ward says. “But these high-
level goals need to be met with on-the-
ground strategies, built from local con-
sensus. That’s where wildlife corridors
come in. When approached the right
way, they can bring people together to
establish enduring bipartisan support.”
At the end of our first day in the
field, Ward and I drive into Archbold
Biological Station, a centre focused
on sharing science for land manage-
ment. Founded in 1941, Archbold lies
within the headwaters of the Ever-
glades, on top of ancient sand dunes.
Hilary Swain, the longtime director
of the Archbold Research Station, is
a hardcore hybrid of a rancher and a
scientist, who can talk about both car-
bon sequestration and fattening calves
with ease. The scientific work done at
Archbold’s ranch helps inform prac-
tices for other working lands – manag-
ing water flow, phosphorus levels and
grazing patterns.
Swain guides me through Arch-
bold’s ranch; kestrels perch on the
powerlines. Egrets and roseate spoon-
bills flush from the alligator-flecked
swamps. When ranchers preserve
native landscapes and tolerate the
presence of native species, including
megafauna like bears and panthers,
wildlife abounds.
“Many private landowners are
already good conservationists,”
Swain says, a map of the ranch across
her lap. “Ranchers have also realised
that conservation can be good for the
bottom line, in terms of easements and
27
 An underpass
allows panthers
to cross major
roads safely
▼ Buck Island
Ranch in
Highlands
County, Florida,
is managed by
Archbold Bio-
logical Station
‘We payments for environmental services
and ecological tourism.”
believe in “Most of us want to save this
corridors landscape and keep it sustainable.
… a place We’re saving the last of the last. What
happens here in central Florida is not
where a independent of what happens on the
panther Florida coastline, or the country, for
that matter.”
can feel On my last morning in Florida, Ward
safe’ insists I visit another working ranch so
that I can meet Cary Lightsey, a rancher
he admires and credits with being an
early adopter of the corridor concept.
We drive on to the farm as cowboys
prepare to round up a group of heifers
and calves. They turn their horses on
a dime and steer the cows towards the
barn, where the calves will be castrated
and dewormed, then returned to their
mothers. The mutual respect between
Ward and Lightsey is evident. “I’ve
learned a lot from him,” Lightsey says.
“Cary Lightsey is a hero to me,”
Ward tells me later. “I don’t know
another living rancher who has done
more for conservation. In addition to
protecting 90% of his family’s land in
conservation easements starting 30
 ‘Broketail’ was years ago, his leadership has helped
seen using an inspire other ranchers to do the same,
underpass to including members of my own family.”
move her cubs MEGAN MAYHEW BERGMAN IS AN
from one territory ENVIRONMENTAL AUTHOR AND
to another JOURNALIST
1 April 2022 The Guardian Weekly
28 Spotlight
Middle East
ISR AEL

No barrier
The porous
wall in the
West Bank
Palestinians are increasingly
using holes in the security
fence, while Israeli businesses
are happy to use cheap labour
By Bethan McKernan
and Quique Kierszenbaum
SHUWEIKA, WEST BANK

I
t was 6am, and the espresso ▲ A break in is more fluid. Despite the walls and Kerem Navot. He estimates there are
machine was whirring. Moham- the fence near fences, Palestinians have always hundreds of breaches in the barrier.
med set up his breakfast kiosk the Palestinian managed to enter Israel. While there is According to Etkes, the IDF may occa-
near the West Bank town of village of Attil no data, people in the West Bank have sionally dig a new trench to stop vehi-
Shuweika three weeks ago, and trade begun crossing in increasing numbers cles but has not fixed the fences.
has been good: hundreds of people over the past few years in search of “The Israeli public was sold this wall
pass by every day on their walk to work. ▼ Palestinians better-paid work. as a necessary security measure. My
Two years ago, Palestinians entering cross the broken That used to entail playing a deadly understanding is there’s been a change
this 200-metre-wide part of the “seam separating bar- cat-and-mouse game with the Israel of policy, and soldiers are now sup-
zone” between Israel’s West Bank sep- rier in the West Defence Forces (IDF) – but since the posed to turn a blind eye,” he said.
aration barrier and the 1949 armistice Bank. Moham- pandemic hit, the situation appears “Israel needs to relieve the economic
line would have been shot at. Israeli med, right, sells to have relaxed. pressure in the West Bank and it bene-
soldiers still patrol just a few metres coffee to people Dror Etkes documents illegal fits from the cheaper labour.”
away. But on a bright March morning, commuting Israeli construction in the occupied To date, only around 65% of the
a steady stream of commuters were through the gaps Palestinian territories for his NGO barrier’s planned route has been
clambering through a nearby hole
in the fencing, the majority on their
way to work in illegal construction,
cleaning and agriculture jobs in Israeli
communities.
“I’m just happy to find a good job,”
said Mohammed. “For years I made
money in more dangerous ways.” A
young man who did not want to give
his name added: “I can make $100 a
day working there. Of course I will go.”
Israel started work on the conten-
tious separation wall 20 years ago to
stem Palestinian terror attacks during
the second intifada, but the reality of
the multi-billion-dollar project today

The Guardian Weekly 1 April 2022

 29

EGYPT shortages caused by

Creating boundaries droughts in key wheat and
The separation barrier rice-producing countries
and a surge in energy
Umm al-Fahm
Khirbat
Price of bread costs led to riots in more
than 40 nations.
al-Aqaba
Zemer
Baqa
al-Gharbiya
fixed as wheat The UN Food and
Agriculture Organization
Shuweika costs soar has warned there was a
danger of severe hunger,
West Bank as the war in Ukraine
Completed By Sarah Butler threatened supplies of key
barrier staple crops.

Under
construction
Approved
Ramallah
Jerusalem
Israel
Hebron Dead
Sea
20 km
20 miles
Source: B'Tselem
completed: construction stalled long there are still dangers. In May 2020,
ago owing to internal politicking, legal soldiers ambushed workers trying
battles and international criticism. to cross near Faroun, shooting eight
The majority of the barrier built so far people in the legs. But the ease with
is inside the West Bank. In densely which people are using breaches in the
populated places, it takes the form of fence is a striking change.
an 8-metre-high concrete wall topped Until at least 2019, there were fewer
with wire and cameras. In more rural gaps, and those entering Israel had
areas, however, it is often made up to run through dangerous sections,
of military patrol roads sandwiched climbing over walls and under razor
between wire fences. wire when it was dark.
The Guardian visited five more Unemployment in the West Bank is
points along a 35km stretch of the about 25%, and the pandemic curtailed
barrier where holes had been cut in the the ability of Asian and eastern Euro-
fencing to facilitate access to a clus- pean workers to travel, so Israeli busi-
ter of majority-Arab Israeli towns and nesses’ appetite for cheaper Pales-
villages. All the gaps were big enough tinian labour has increased, despite
for adults to pass comfortably. Some the risk of fines for employers.
E
gypt has fixed
the price of
unsubsidised
bread amid a
global surge in wheat
prices since Russia’s
invasion of Ukraine.
The move comes
after war shut off access
to cheaper wheat from
the Black Sea region,
particularly affecting
exports to the Middle East
and north African region.
Egypt is the world’s
biggest wheat importer,
bringing in about 60% of
its grain from overseas.
Russia and Ukraine
accounted for 80% of
the country’s imports
last year.
The Egyptian prime
minister, Mostafa
Madbouly, set the price of
commercially sold bread
at 11.50 Egyptian pounds
($0.60) a kilo last week.
The new fi xed price for
flat, round balady bread
weighing 90g has been set
at one Egyptian pound.
Concern about supplies
of wheat had already
pushed up the price of
bread, which is a food
staple in Egypt, by as
much as a quarter is some
Ukraine alone supplied
12% of global wheat
before the war, and was
the biggest producer of
sunflower oil. About two-
thirds of the country’s
wheat exports had been
delivered before the
invasion, but the rest is
now blocked.
There are fears that
farmers will be unable
to continue with spring
planting, or take in grain
harvests in the summer, if
the fighting continues.
Wheat prices hit
record highs last month,
although they have since
fallen back slightly.
Alongside the concerns
about wheat production
and exports from Russia
and Ukraine, the price
of basic foodstuffs such
as sunflower oil has also
soared, while the price
of urea, a key nitrogen
fertiliser, has more than
tripled in thee past year,
because of thehe rising cost
of energy, a key input.
SARAH BUTLER
R IS A
SINESS
S
GUARDIAN BUSINESS
JOURNALIST

80%
people said they had permits but used Such a large flow of people still bakeries, to 1.25 Egyptian
the breaches because it was quicker poses a security challenge. Some of pounds a loaf, while flour
than queuing at official terminals. those making the crossing wondered if prices were up about
In a statement, the IDF said: “Dam- Israeli surveillance was sophisticated 15%, Attia Hamad from
aging the security fence to create enough to monitor persons of interest. the Cairo chamber of Percentage off
passageways which allow unmoni- For now, most seem happy to take commerce told Reuters. Egypt’s wheatt
tored infiltration into Israeli territory advantage of the economic opportu- Steep rises in food imports that
is a security threat and a clear violation nities the increasingly porous barrier prices have previously came from
of the law. IDF soldiers are stationed has created. caused political unrest in Russia and
across the security fence in accordance Egypt and other countries 21.
Ukraine in 2021.
BETHAN MCKERNAN IS THE GUARDIAN’S
with the situational assessment.” JERUSALEM CORRESPONDENT; QUIQUE
including Bangladesh Egypt is the
Very few people dare to cross when KIERSZENBAUM IS A PHOTOJOURNALIST and Indonesia. st
world’s biggest
they can see an IDF patrol nearby, and BASED IN JERUSALEM In 2007 and 2008, ter
wheat importer

uardian
ian
an
a
1 April 2022 The Guardiann Weekly
30 Spotlight
Science

‘I
T E C H NOL O GY The technology behind autonomous vehicles would be shocked if we do not
is proving hard to perfect, despite bold claims achieve full self-driving safer
than a human this year,” said
made by Tesla boss Elon Musk and others Tesla’s chief executive, Elon
who
Musk, in January. For anyone
might
follows Musk’s commentary, this

The problem with

By Laurie Clarke
ised
sound familiar. In 2020, he prom
, say-
autonomous cars the same year
chal-
ing: “There are no fundamental

self-driving cars lenges.” In 2019, he promised Tesl

would be able to driv e
2020 – converting into a fleet
them selv es
of 1m
lar
as
by

pre-
“robotaxis”. He has mad e simi
.
ion every year going back to 2014
dictions
2020 , Tesl a exp and ed
From late
beta trtrials of its “Full Self-Driving”
a
wa e (FSD) to about 60,000 Tesl
softwar
er who must pass a safety test
owners,
pa $12,000 for the privilege. The
and pay
omers will pilot the automated
custom
ing
driver assistance technology, help
to refinne it before a general release.
With the beta rollout, Tesla is fol-
Wit
com-
lowing the playbook of software
ies where “you get peop le to iron
panies,
nard,
out the kinks”, says Andrew May
ctor of the Arizona State Univer-
direct
y
risk innovation lab. “The difficult
sity ris
n soft ware cras hes, you
being that whe
reboot the computer. When a car
just re
h
crashes, it’s a little bit more serious.”
gy
Plac ing fled glin g tech nolo
Pla
untraine d test ers’ han ds is an
into u
-
rt dox approach for the auto
unortho
cle (AV) indu stry. Othe r
nomo ous vehi
comp panies, such as Alphabet-owned

Waymo, General
Motors-backed
Cruise and AV sta
rtup Aurora, use
safety operators to
test technology
on predetermined
routes. While the
move has bolstere
d Tesla’s popu-
list credentials wi
th fans, it has
proved reputation
ally risky; videos
documenting reckle
ss-looking FSD
behaviour have rac
ked up numerous
views online. There
’s the video of a
car in FSD mode ve
ering into oncom-
ing traffic, prompt
ing the driver to
swerve off the ro
ad. The one that
shows a car attem
pting to turn on
to train tracks and
into pedestrians.
FSD is proficient
at driving on
motorways, where
it’s “straight-
forward, literally”,
says Taylor Ogan,
a Tesla FSD owner
and chief execu-

80% 10% 10%

tive of Snow Bull
Capital. Software
updates are supp
osed to iron out
glitches. For exam
ple, the National
Highway Traffic
CH A LLENGES The percentage of self-driving More tricky These are the most Safety Adminis-
tration forced Tesla
F OR T H E C A R functions considered relatively situations for self- difficult scenarios, to prevent the
system from exec
I N D U S T RY simple by the AV industry, such as driving cars, such as covering rare and uting illegal “roll-
ing stops” (moving
driving along a certain line or on navigating round- unusual events, slowly through
a stop sign withou
a particular side of the road, and abouts and complex such as a child t ever coming to
avoiding crashing junctions chasing a ball
The Guardian Weekly 1 April 2022
 31
31

a full stop), while an “unexpected ed

braking” problem is the subject off a
current inquiry.
Maynard says the technology
engages in indisputably non-human
behaviour. For example, a lack of
regard for getting dangerously close
to pedestrians and a Tesla ploughing
into a bollard. Similar problems have
emerged with Tesla’s Autopilot soft-
ware, which has been implicated in
at least 12 accidents (with one death
and 17 injuries) owing to the cars being ng
unable to “see” parked emergency
vehicles.
But it’s not just Tesla that has
missed self-imposed autonomous
driving deadlines. Cruise, Waymo,
Toyota and Honda all said they would
launch fully self-driving cars by 2020.
Progress has been made, but not on
the scale anticipated. What happened?
“Number one is that this stuff is
harder than manufacturers realised,”
says Matthew Avery, director of
research at Thatcham Research. While
about 80% of self-driving is relatively
simple – making the car follow the line
gy
an
se
ng
ve
ft-
th ‘Safety speed limits – to partly get around this than a human. But he also believes
problem. But these maps need to be somewhat comparable metrics used
cy isn’t about constantly refreshed to keep up with by the industry, such as disengage-
working ever-changing conditions on roads and, ment data (how often a human needs
right most even then, unpredictability remains. to take control to prevent an accident),
The edge-case problem is elide the most important issues in
of the time. compounded by AV technology that AV safety.
It’s about acts “supremely confidently” when it’s “Safety isn’t about working right
wrong, says Philip Koopman, associate most of the time. Safety is all about
the rare professor of electrical and computer the rare case where it doesn’t work
case where engineering at Carnegie Mellon Univer- properly,” says Koopman.
it doesn’t sity. “It’s really bad at knowing when it “It has to work 99.999999999%
doesn’t know.” The perils are evident of the time. AV companies are still
work in analysing the Uber crash in which a working on the first few nines, with
properly’ prototype AV killed Elaine Herzberg a bunch more nines to go. For every
as she walked her bicycle across a road nine, it’s 10 times harder to achieve.”
in Arizona, in 2018. An interview with

of the road, stick to a certain side, avoid
crashing – the next 10% involves more
difficult situations such as round-
abouts and complex junctions. “The
last 10% is really difficult,” says Avery.
“That’s when you’ve got, you know, a
cow standing in the middle of the road
that doesn’t want to move.”
It’s the last 20% that the AV industry
is stuck on, especially the final 10%,
which covers the devilish problem of
“edge cases”. These are rare and unu-
sual events that occur on the road such
as a ball bouncing across the street
followed by a running child; compli-
cated roadworks that require the car
to mount the kerb to get past; a group
of protesters wielding signs. Or that
obstinate cow.
Self-driving cars rely on a
combination of basic coded rules
such as “always stop at a red light”
and machine-learning software. The
machine-learning algorithms imbibe
masses of data in order to “learn”
to drive proficiently. Because edge
cases only rarely appear in such data,
the car doesn’t learn how to respond
appropriately.
Failing a breakthrough in AI,
autonomous vehicles that function
on a par with humans probably won’t
be coming to market yet. Other AV
makers use high-definition maps –
charting the lines of roads and pave-
ments, placement of traffic signs and
the safety operator behind the wheel
at the time describes the software flip-
ping between different classifications
of Herzberg’s form – “vehicle”, “bicy-
cle”, “other” – until 0.2 seconds before
the crash.
The ultimate aim of AV makers
is to create cars that are safer than
human-driven vehicles. In the US,
there is about one death for every
160m kilometres driven by a human
(including drunk driving). Koopman
says AV makers would have to beat this
to prove their technology was safer
 TV news picture
showing a crash
involving a self-
driving Waymo
in Chandler,
Arizona; an Uber
self-driving SUV
on its side after
a collision in
Tempe, Arizona
ABC15.COM; AP
D
espite the challenges, the
AV industry is speeding
ahead. The Uber crash had
a temporarily sobering
effect; manufacturers suspended
trials  afterwards owing to nega-
tive press and Arizona’s governor
suspended Uber’s testing permit.
Uber and another ride-hailing com-
pany, Lyft, both then sold their self-
driving divisions.
But this year has marked a return
to hubris – with more than $100bn
invested in the past 10 years, the
industry can hardly afford to shirk.
Carmakers General Motors and Geely
and AV company Mobileye have
said people may be able to buy self-
driving cars as early as 2024. Cruise
and Waymo aim to launch commercial
robotaxi operations in San Francisco
this year. Aurora also plans to deploy
fully autonomous vehicles in the US
within the next two to three years.
The dearth of regulation so far
highlights the lack of global consen-
sus in this space. The question, says
Maynard, is “is the software going
to mature fast enough that it gets
to the point where it’s both trusted
and regulators give it the green light,
before something really bad happens
and pulls the rug out from the whole
enterprise?” Observer
LAURIE CLARKE IS A
TECHNOLOGY WRITER

1 April 2022 The Guardian Weekly

32 Spotlight
North America
U N I T E D S TAT E S
One historic
step closer
to supreme
court bench
for Jackson
By Gloria Oladipo
T
he confirmation hearings of
Ketanji Brown Jackson, Joe
Biden’s supreme court nom-
inee, officially wrapped up
last week after four days of extensive
questioning, heated exchanges and
other contentious moments.
Jackson, who was questioned by
Republican senators, was widely
praised for her patient demeanour
and thoughtful responses. Here are
some of the best moments.
Ketanji Brown Jackson’s family
In her opening remarks, Jackson gave
several shoutouts to her family, shar-
ing gratitude and love for their support
throughout her extensive law career.
Several members of her family
The Guardian Weekly 1 April 2022
were present for the almost 22 hours
of questioning she faced.
Her husband, Patrick Jackson, and
her two daughters, Leila and Talia,
sat in the audience as the former fed-
eral judge on the US court of appeals
for the District of Columbia circuit
fielded questions from the Senate
judiciary committee.
Of her husband of 25 years, she said:
“I have no doubt that, without him by
my side from the very beginning of this
incredible professional journey, none
of this would have been possible.”
She also spoke to her daughters.
“Girls, I know it has not been easy as
I have tried to navigate the challenges
of juggling my career and motherhood.
And I fully admit that I did not always
get the balance right. But I hope that
you have seen that with hard work,
determination, and love, it can be
done,” Jackson said.
Her parents, Johnny and Ellery
Brown, and younger brother, Ketajh
Brown, were also present.
Lisa Fairfax’s testimony
Prof Lisa Fairfax, a co-director at the
Institute for Law and Economics at the
University of Pennsylvania Carey Law
School, gave a heartfelt introduction
on the first day of the hearings.
Fairfax, who was Jackson’s room-
mate at Harvard University, shared
personal stories of their friendship,
including details of Jackson’s person-
ality that were a touching highlight.
“There’s so much more to Ketanji
beyond her brilliant mind. There’s her
‘You are my wonderful sense of humour, her gift
of storytelling, her heart of gold that
harbinger always shows up, from the first call
of hope you make for advice about your career
… I know to the first knock you hear on the door
after learning you’re diagnosed with
what it’s cancer,” said Fairfax.
taken for
you to sit in Jackson’s message to youth of colour
On the third day of the confirma-
that seat’ tion hearings, Jackson was asked
by the California senator Alex
Cory Booker
US senator
Padilla what advice she would
give to youth of colour who may be
doubting themselves.
“What would you say, Judge Jack-
son, to all those young Americans,
those most diverse generation in
our nation’s history – what do you
say to some of them who may doubt
that they can one day achieve the
same great heights that you have?”
asked Padilla.
“The young people are the future
and I want them to know that they
can do and be anything,” responded
Jackson, with emotion. “I would tell
them to persevere.”
Cory Booker’s viral speech
In a widely shared clip, Senator Cory
Booker of New Jersey praised Jack-
▼ Ketanji Brown son and her performance during the
Jackson, front, confirmation hearings, bringing the
is watched by
judge to tears as Booker declaimed
her husband, that she had well earned her supreme
Patrick, and court nomination.
daughter Leila
Booker started by calling out the
ELIZABETH FRANTZ/
problematic line of questioning of
REUTERS some GOP senators, specifically about
Jackson’s sentencing in child sexual
abuse cases. Booker pointed to a col-
umn from the right-leaning National
Review that said the Republican sen-
ator Josh Hawley’s allegations that
Jackson had been lenient as “meritless
to the point of demagoguery”.
“There is an absurdity to this that
is almost comical if it was not so
dangerous,”Booker said.
He also emphasised that Jackson
was first Black woman to be nomi-
nated for a place on the Supreme court
bench. Mentioning Black figures such
as Harriet Tubman and Constance
Baker Motley, the first Black woman
to serve as a federal judge, Booker said
to Jackson: “Today, you’re my star. You
are my harbinger of hope.
“You are worthy. You are a great
American … I know what it’s taken for
you to sit in that seat,” he said.
GLORIA OLADIPO IS A GUARDIAN US
NEWS REPORTER
 Spotlight
North America
C A NA DA
Cabin fever
YouTuber
sparks row
over rights to
wilderness
By Leyland Cecco TORONTO
A
s much of North America
was locked down during
the early days of the corona-
virus pandemic, Matty
Clarke was in a boat full of supplies,
motoring up the Yukon River. He was
searching for wild lands where he
could strike it rich.
“Getting myself a goldmine,” he
told viewers on his YouTube chan-
nel. “Everyone’s heard about all this
gold up there … Can I just show up
with all this stuff and end up having
a goldmine?”
For two years, Clarke has battled
bitter cold and relentless mosquitoes
while he set up home in Canada’s
northern hinterlands, chronicling his
survival in regular YouTube updates.
But he now finds himself squaring off
against frustrated officials trying to
evict him from his homestead.
The Yukon’s most famous poet,
Robert W Service, described the region
as “unpeopled and still”, but the ter-
ritory’s government says people can-
not head to a clearing in the forest and
build homes without permits.
Originally from Newfoundland,
Clarke operates a YouTube channel
called “Skote outdoors”, documenting
his 2020 journey up the Yukon River
to stake a mining claim and featuring a
tutorial on building a log cabin. “This is
the real dream,” he says in one video as
he speeds through a snowy landscape
on a snowmobile. “Everyone told me
it was going to be a real struggle. And
it was … But the hard times are vastly
outweighed by the good times.”
His videos often receive nearly
10,000 views – and the government
has used them and his social media
posts as their evidence against him.
The territory alleges that Clarke had
errors in his mining claim and permit –
and says that officials saw no evidence
of mining by the YouTuber. “Even if
Mr Clarke had honestly and properly
Lure of the Yukon
Gold prospectors flocked to the remote
region at the end of the 19th century
Dawson City
Yukon territory
Whitehorse
Canada
Calgary
Vancouver
1,000 km
1,000 miles US
33
staked the claim, doing so did not give
Mr Clarke authority under the [Placer
Mining Act] or any other Yukon legis-
lation to construct a cabin at the site
for his permanent residence,” said the
government in a court petition.
Clarke has said the fight is about
more than one log cabin. “I do not
‘Can I just look at myself as a trespasser but a
guardian or steward of the land,” he
show up wrote. He did not respond to a request
with all for comment.
this stuff While Clarke’s videos stress his
isolation – the second season of his
and end up show is called Alone in the Yukon – he
having a lives less than a kilometre from Simon
Tourigny and two other squatters.
goldmine?’ Tourigny, who depicts himself as
Matty Clarke someone learning the “old skills” of
Squatter backcountry living, arrived in the
region in 2016 and admits he has no
permits to occupy the land. But, like
Clarke, he has no intention of leaving.
Rather than fussing over bylaws
and building codes, Tourigny has
employed a more abstract defence,
arguing in an editorial last year that
his values were under attack.
“Which part of what we are doing is
‘unauthorised’? Our cabins or our life-
styles? They won’t say, either because
they don’t know or because the truth
cannot be admitted,” Tourigny wrote
in the Yukon News. “Are we not
allowed to exist in the forest?”
Tourigny, whom the Guardian was
unable to reach, said he and others
“simply took responsibility for our
own lives” and were “literally living
the dream of millions”.
The letter kicked off fierce debate
▲ Matty Clarke in the Yukon, with a subsequent letter
has just over calling Tourigny’s claims “whining,
3,000 subscribers snivelling, self-righteous”.
on YouTube Both Tourigny and Clarke have
SKOTE OUTDOORS built their cabins on the land of the
Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in First Nation who
have not made any public comment
on the squatters’ presence.
Neither case has been heard in court
yet, but the territorial government is
requesting Tourigny and Clarke be
required to leave the land – and not
be able to settle anywhere else in the
territory without prior authority.
Tourigny suggest ed he would
not back down. “We are waiting to
be arrested and forcibly taken to
court to be put before a judge, the
last person in a long line of people
refusing to listen to us where fines or
imprisonment await.”
LEYLAND CECCO COVERS CANADA FOR
THE GUARDIAN
1 April 2022 The Guardian Weekly
34

As war in Ukraine creates millions of new By Amelia Gentleman

refugees, many people evacuated from
Kabul last summer are still living in limbo.
For six months, we followed three families
as they adjust to life in their new home
Portraits by
MARK CHILVERS

Welcome to Britain. Now what?

‘This is England. We’re starting a new life here’ Hussein, a former British army translator, and his family are staying in a shabby hotel in London

The Guardian Weekly 1 April 2022


I
N LATE SEPTEMBER 2021, Firas, his wife and four-
month-old son have been checked in to a smart business hotel in
London. With green velvet sofas in the lobby and pink orchids at
reception, it seems designed to bathe visitors in an atmosphere of
corporate calm; in sharp contrast, Firas, 32, a former guard at the
British embassy in Kabul, exudes a jangling, nervous sense of distress.
Six weeks after a dramatic evacuation from Afghanistan, he remains so
shaken that he wakes most nights at 3am and paces the hotel corridors
in tears. “I can’t concentrate on my new life. I’m too worried about the
people I’ve left behind,” he says, bent over a table, head in his hands.
A few miles away in another part of south London, Ali, 35, who
spent eight years working as a programme and finance manager
with the UK’s Department for International Development (DfID) in
Afghanistan, is isolating inside one room of a quarantine hotel with
his wife Zohrab, his nine-year-old daughter and his two sons, aged
six and five. A Taliban death threat forced Ali to flee to London a year
before his wife and children were evacuated in August 2021, and
their recent reunion in this small room overlooking the Thames was
incredibly emotional. “My kids were jumping all over me. I was just
so relieved that they were safe,” Ali says. He found them dehydrated
and hungry, still wearing the clothes they had left home in. The room
is crowded, and the children are sleeping on the floor. They spend
their days examining their new home out of the hotel window and
finding enormous enjoyment in mimicking the unfamiliar words
their father uses when he calls reception. “They find it so funny. They
tease me, copying my voice, saying, ‘Good morning’ to each other.”
Meanwhile, in a shabby 1960s concrete hotel block in central
London, Hussein, 36, his wife Hamida, their six children, his sister-
in-law and her child are trying to make three adjacent rooms feel
homely. With his first payment of refugee subsistence money, Hussein,
a former translator for the British army in Afghanistan’s Helmand
province, has bought a few small pot plants to balance on the win-
dowsill. The children are still terrified by their recent escape. “We
waited four days outside the airport. My children saw the Taliban
firing guns. They had to be pulled to safety by US soldiers,” he says
when we meet. “I want them to feel safe now. They’re spending all
day lying on the bed, watching cartoons on television.”
Over two weeks last August, 15,000 people were airlifted from
Afghanistan after it fell to the Taliban. The rescue was often chaotic.
Desperate refugees were seen clinging on to the undercarriage of an
overcrowded plane as it prepared to take off from Kabul; a bomb had
gone off near the British evacuation headquarters, killing more than
100 people; it was clear that many people eligible for evacuation had
been left behind.
Operation Warm Welcome seemed to be an attempt to shift atten-
tion back to the positive. Almost all the Afghans were transferred to
roughly 80 hotels around the country while officials began search-
ing for permanent homes for them. “The UK has a proud history of
providing safe haven to those in need,” said the prime minister, Boris
Johnson. “I am determined that we welcome them with open arms.”
As time has worn on, though, the resettlement has proved sluggish.
While 4,000 people have been housed to date, another 12,000 remain
stranded in hotels (the figures are a bit fluid because more people were
35
evacuated throughout the autumn and early this year). As tourists
return to London, some of the hotels initially happy to accommodate
refugees have asked them to leave, so families are being uprooted
again and bussed to hotels in Leeds, Warwick and Manchester. For
the first six months of their new lives in the UK, I kept in touch with
three Afghan families to find out how welcomed they have felt, dis-
cussing their surprise at cultural differences, their struggles against
bureaucracy, homesickness and lingering trauma. As a new crisis
looms due to the war in Ukraine, Afghan refugees worry that their
urgent need for housing will be forgotten amid the surge of concern
for the newly displaced. The government is taking a cautious approach
to the new wave of refugees. Most will stay with family and friends,
and there will be no repeat of the mass hotel placements, in apparent
recognition that the Afghan policy has not been a success.
I HAD BEEN IN EMAIL CONTACT with Firas for several weeks before
we met. He had contacted the Guardian in August to share the fears
of a large number of British embassy guards whose evacuation appli-
cations had been rejected on the grounds that they were not direct
embassy employees, but subcontracted by a Canadian outsourcing
company, GardaWorld. Firas pointed out that this distinction would
not be made by the Taliban. “I am feeling insecure and hopeless. I am
waiting for death at any moment,” he emailed in the first of a series of
desperate messages. There had been an attempt to set fire to his car,
which he blamed on the Taliban. A few days later, the British embassy
was closed, he was sacked, and he began to worry about how he was
going to feed his family.
Publicity about the government’s decision not to grant sanctuary
to GardaWorld staff triggered a belated U-turn from the Foreign Office,
and a promise that embassy guards would be helped to the UK. But the
commitment came too late: the evacuation mission ended before the
staff could be flown out. Of his 120 colleagues, only Firas managed to
push himself and his family through the crowds to reach the British
evacuation processing centre. Teargas was fired, his baby got hit by
the barrel of a gun and his wife fainted; concerned soldiers pulled
them from the crush and they were granted places on a flight out.
Back in the hotel lobby, for much of the time we spend talking (with
interpretation help from another refugee), Firas stares at the floor, his
head bowed. He smiles only when his wife joins him, wheeling their
baby in a pushchair donated by a charity. They have been given warm
clothes, but have barely ventured outside; they have no money, and
are too worried about the situation in Afghanistan to feel curious. After
his departure, his family in Kabul were visited by armed men asking
where he and his brother had disappeared to; unable to answer, his
father was arrested and held by the Taliban for two days.
Firas and his wife spend most of the time sitting in their bedroom,
looking out at the hotel car park, their baby lying swaddled in a blanket
on the bed. Firas has registered with a GP and has been prescribed
tranquillisers, which he says are not helping with the night terrors.
“I’ve lived with my mother and father for 32 years, and I’ve left them
there,” he says. “I shouldn’t have left them alone.”
AFTER COMPLETING QUARANTINE, Ali and Zohrab move from their
riverside hotel and spend October in a huge, modern business hotel
on a busy central London road. To begin with, the families from
Afghanistan are mixed in with tourists, and there is daily chaos in
the breakfast canteen. Ali says he overheard startled guests asking
reception if the noisy teenagers filling the lobby were on a school trip.
Zohrab’s experience of fleeing Kabul in August was nightmarish,
and she is still distressed by memories of the violence they witnessed
as they tried to leave. The first day they made their way through the
crowds by the airport, they were turned away. “A soldier said,
‘If you don’t leave, I will fire on you.’ We left,” she says. They 
tried again the next day, and were eventually allowed through.
1 April 2022 The Guardian Weekly
36 Welcome to Britain. Now what?
Zohrab needs winter shoes, but news of the distribution of chari-
table donations seems to her to be controlled by Pashtun men, and
she wonders if there is some subtle discrimination against Hazara
families, like hers. By the time she and her husband find out that
there has been a new delivery of donations, only the most damaged
secondhand items remain. “The children cannot understand why we
never get told when toys are being handed out,” she says.
Ali, who speaks flawless English and had a high-powered job with
the Foreign Office, has started to notice chaotic aspects of the resettle-
ment programme. He is puzzled by how long it has taken officials to
register their arrival, and annoyed that as soon as this is done, officials
from a different department arrive to begin the process again.
Despite the chaos, this is a happy time for the family. On her phone,
Zohrab shows smiling pictures of the children at the zoo, outside the
House of Commons, feeding swans in Hyde Park.
BY NOVEMBER, HUSSEIN , the former British army translator, has
had no news of where he might end up living permanently, but the
council has found temporary school places for his three sons and two
older daughters, aged between 11 and five. The day before they start,
we meet in a tree-lined square near the hotel; Hussein is unflustered
by the prospect of talking to me while supervising five children, who
race each other around the pathways on donated scooters.
His wife is in the room with their one-year-old; he knows she is
finding things harder than him, without any English. She was brought
up in a conservative rural area, was not sent to school and is finding
the move to London a culture shock. She was taken aback that all the
families in the hotel are expected to eat together, with no separation
of men and women. “She noticed a woman arguing loudly in the street
with a man, and said: ‘In Afghanistan you’re the king, but here, it’s
the women who are the kings,’” Hussein says.
Many of the evacuated adults have started attending weekly
cultural acclimatisation classes run by two women from Afghanistan
who have been in London for a number of years. “We were told that
people here don’t let their children go to school alone, they have to
drop them and collect them,” Hussein says, adding that many families
in his old neighbourhood were accustomed to letting even very young
children make their own way to school. “They told us not to talk in the
street to girls. And that beating your wife or your children is a crime
in this country. Some of the people from Afghanistan didn’t know
this. I’ve said to them: this is England, we’re starting a new life here.”
T HE NATIONAL EFFORT to welcome the evacuees has been both
extraordinary and underwhelming. Amazon wishlists were set up by
councils, inviting members of the public to buy everything families
needed – from nappies to nail clippers. For the first few weeks, council
staff worked overtime making sure baby food was distributed to the
right hotel rooms. British diplomats who had worked in Afghanistan
formed WhatsApp groups to offer practical and moral support to their
former colleagues, fundraising and helping them apply for jobs. Staff
working for big hotel chains organised GP appointments and baby-
sitting for the children of unwell refugees. In most families only the
men, who had had jobs with the British, speak English. Hotel staff
became adept at using Google Translate on their phones.
Nothing could be taken for granted. Some colleges began running
cultural training sessions, explaining the rules of pedestrian crossings
and teaching people how to respond to a fire alarm.
But the response has been patchwork. Some councils worked hard
to get children into schools by October; elsewhere it took longer. There
were delays in getting people registered for benefits and issued with
the crucial biometric residence passes that allow them to start looking
for work. Everyone was wrestling with the chicken-and-egg problem
of not being able to think about work until they had improved their
English, had somewhere to live and had settled their children in
The Guardian Weekly 1 April 2022
‘Many of the people who fled
Afghanistan to the UK are still
not getting the warm welcome
that they were promised’
schools. But council-run English classes were only funded to begin
once people were settled in their permanent home, so thousands have
been abandoned in hotel rooms with nothing to occupy their time.
While everyone accepts that the evacuation was an inevitably
rushed response to a crisis, councils were furious that the Home Office
gave them little warning that families were being moved into hotels
in their area. Some were by busy roads. When a five-year-old fell to
his death from a window of a hotel in Sheffield, questions were asked
about whether the correct health and safety checks had been made.
The initial distribution of people was uneven, and 4,000 were
sent to London where there were the most big, empty hotels because
of the pandemic-induced slump in tourism. Some were housed in
stucco-fronted buildings, with marble corridors and 19th-century
oil paintings; others were sent to “cheap as chips” establishments.
One London council had just a couple of days’ warning that 2,000
people (including 900 children) would be housed in its hotels. It has
found temporary school places, while making it clear that permanent
homes will have to be found elsewhere, because of chronic housing
shortages in the capital. But the longer people remain in hotels, the
more complex it is to resettle them elsewhere. “They start to put down
roots. It’s not entirely clear what the strategy is for getting people out,”
says a senior council official responsible for resettlement.
There is rising dismay among people who work in the refugee
sector. Enver Solomon, chief executive of the Refugee Council, warns
that “many of the people who fled Afghanistan to the UK are still not
getting the warm welcome they were promised”. Nick Forbes, head of
the Local Government Association’s asylum, refugee and migration
task group, and leader of Newcastle city council, is more forthright:
Operation Warm Welcome has, he says, “turned out to be about as
welcoming as a cold bucket of sick”.
IN LAT E OCTOBER, six weeks after our first meeting, Firas and his
family have been moved to a new hotel. Approximately 200 refugees
from Afghanistan have been transferred from hotels around London
to this inconveniently placed block, 30km from the capital. It’s a 1980s
conference centre off an A-road, designed for business delegates with
cars. There are no nearby shops, bus stops or train stations.
“The Home Office didn’t say why we had to move,” Firas says, sit-
ting in the hotel restaurant, still looking shattered by the trauma of
abandoning his home and family. This hotel is much noisier, and in
the lobby there are about 15 children squashed on sofas, their heads
tilted together over shared iPads, while younger ones sit around a
low table working on colouring sheets.
“Yes, this place is a bit cheaper than the last place,” he says. “The
problem is not that this is a worse hotel. What we’re worried about
is our families stuck in Afghanistan, and when we’re going to get
permanent housing.”
Every week, a Home Office representative visits to talk to resi-
dents. “He sees every family separately, but just tells us: ‘We don’t
know how long you’ll be here. We can’t tell you if it will be weeks or
months.’ All he says is: ‘You have to wait.’” Every time he meets an
official, Firas wants to ask whether his parents will be allowed to join
him in Britain. “They usually say: ‘We can’t talk about your family in
Afghanistan.’” Current rules make it very unlikely family members
will be given permission to reunite in the UK.

‘We’re worried about our families stuck in Afghanistan’ Firas with his wife and their son at their temporary hotel accommodation in south London
There is little space to move around in Firas’s hotel room, between
the cot, double bed and pram. Every surface is covered with clothes
or nappies, tidily stacked. Firas stays up as late as possible, talking
to the other men in the lobby, to try to hold off the insomnia that hits
when he goes to bed. “If I stay in the room, I disturb my wife and son.
Sometimes I stand in the car park for an hour or two, waiting until I
think I will be able to sleep.”
AWARE THAT THE PROCESS of moving people into houses is going
slowly, Ali quickly takes matters into his own hands and informs Home
Office officials that he wants to move back to the Midlands, where
he had been based before his wife and children came to join him. A
house has been found, and they move in late October.
Ali’s years of experience working alongside Foreign Office staff
in Afghanistan have made him adept at leaping over bureaucratic
hurdles. His difficult experiences on arrival in the UK in 2020 taught
‘The Home Office official tells us
every week: “We don’t know how
long you’ll be here. We can’t tell
you if it will be weeks or months”’
37
him not to trust British officials to make things easy for refugees. When
he received a death threat related to his work for the Foreign Office,
he knew he needed to leave Kabul immediately; he said goodbye to
his wife and three children, bought a ticket, flew to Heathrow, where
he showed the UK visa in his passport (granted for a work conference)
and immediately claimed asylum. He assumed that his long service
with the British government would mean his case would be taken
seriously. Instead, he was locked up in an immigration removal centre.
“I told them I worked for DfID, I showed them the death threat, but
I was treated like a prisoner. I was held with criminals, smugglers,
people who were about to be deported. I was very frightened,” he
says. It was months before he was recognised as a refugee.
By November, the family has moved to their new home in the
Midlands. They have bought furniture from a charity shop and the
house is beginning to feel a bit like home, with shoes lined up on a
rack by the front door and plants on a table in the front room. Looking
around at the bare walls, Zohrab says she wishes she had been able to
bring even a few photographs of her family when she fled, but they
were told there would no room for luggage on the evacuation flight.
Ali has a part-time job as an adviser with the charity Refugee Action;
all three children have started school and, compared with many
other evacuees, the family has made enormous progress in settling
into their new lives. But new worries are emerging every day. After
months out of school, his nine-year-old daughter had invested
a lot of hope in the prospect of being back in a classroom, and 
was badly disappointed. “She feels like people are teasing her
1 April 2022 The Guardian Weekly
38 Welcome to Britain. Now what?
‘The most important thing is the children are OK and we are safe’ Ali, Zohrab and their three children moved to the Midlands last October
because she can’t communicate with them,” Ali says. “She said: ‘You
promised me that things would change and I would get friends here.’”
A teacher told him that his middle son has refused to eat lunch
again. “The council says there will be English classes from January,
but what’s going to happen until then? I asked my son: ‘What did you
learn today?’ He said: ‘I don’t know. I didn’t understand anything.’”
Privately, he is also worried about how Zohrab is coping. “She has no
friends here, so I’m trying to step in. I have to keep reminding her,
the most important thing is that the children are OK and we are safe.”
FOUR MONTHS AFTER the evacuation, a gloomy routine of sorts has
been established in most hotels. Babies have been born, marriages
have broken down under the strain, a few evacuees have died from
longstanding illnesses. Every morning in the lobby of an east London
hotel, an 82-year-old general sits hunched over sheets of paper, using
his military strategising skills to compile lists of children who need
English classes. Occasionally he is joined by other men, also trying to
fill their aimless days. “Everyone feels depressed and tired,” he says.
A well-known former MP in Afghanistan (who asks not to be named)
greets him politely, and pauses on the other side of the reception area
to offer advice to a group of mothers waiting for medical appoint-
ments, organised in the hotel’s business centre. In the dining room,
families queue up for slices of white bread, fruit and an unpopular,
hard-to-identify lentil dish ladled out of a steel vat. “If the govern-
ment is paying for this, why can’t they get the hotel to make Afghan
food?” the former MP asks.
The Guardian Weekly 1 April 2022
She is anxious to disabuse people of the idea that any of the hotel’s
residents are thrilled at finding themselves in the UK. “Everyone is
happy that our lives have been saved but our hearts are still in Afghani-
stan. Imagine one day you have everything in your life, and the next
day you open your eyes and you have nothing. That’s how we feel,”
she says. “No one chose to leave their homes and if it became safe
there again, most of us would go back. When I speak to people and
they say, ‘Let’s catch up’, I say, ‘Yes, let’s meet for coffee in Kabul.’
We have to keep that dream alive.”
IN EAR LY JANUARY, Firas is in touch with happy news: his brother,
Omar, a journalist who also worked for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
under the old regime, and who fled Kabul a couple of weeks before
him, has managed to make his way to Britain in a small boat with 22
other asylum seekers. But Operation Warm Welcome extends only to
people who came through the official evacuation programme. Despite
‘I was treated like a prisoner. I was
held with criminals, smugglers,
people who were about to be
deported. I was very frightened’

the fact that he has fled exactly the same threats in Afghanistan, Omar
has been plunged straight into the Home Office’s hostile environment.
On arrival he was taken immediately to an immigration centre, where
everyone’s clothes, shoes and money were put in plastic bags and locked
away. He was held in a custody centre for several days before being
transferred to a basement room in a hotel by London’s Victoria station.
While Firas is receiving universal credit payments, and has had a
meeting with the jobcentre about roles he can apply for, his brother
cannot study or work until his asylum application has been cleared.
His hotel is full of other asylum seekers – from Morocco, Afghanistan,
Iraq – and many of them have been waiting months for a decision on
their claims. “When I say I’m feeling frustrated because I’ve been
waiting for five months for a decision on my claim, they laugh and
say: ‘We’ve been here for a year,’” Omar says.
Omar is worried about the effect of new legislation being debated in
parliament, which will make it possible to sentence people who arrive
in the UK by small boats to four years in prison. “Will I be criminalised
because I came in a boat?” he asks.
NO ONE IS SAYING that allocating houses to 15,000 new arrivals is a
simple task, but refugee charities point out that these numbers should
be manageable if every local authority stepped forward to offer empty
homes to Afghan families. Germany accommodated more than one
million asylum seekers between 2015 and 2016. Refugee organisations
estimate that, at the current rate, it will be another year and a half
before everyone is moved out of hotels. Last year the British Red Cross
published research on the damaging effects of housing refugees for
protracted periods in temporary accommodation, highlighting the
negative impact on mental health. People who work with the Afghan
refugees in hotels say they become increasingly institutionalised
the longer they stay, unable to start building independent lives. As
well as being unsuitable, the cost is exorbitant: it has been revealed
that the government is spending £1.2m ($1.6m) a day on hotels for
evacuees from Afghanistan (and £4.7m a day on hotel rooms for all
asylum seekers).
Seven months on from the evacuation, no one wants to take
responsibility for the slow progress. Defensive officials mutter that
the refugees are too picky about where they will agree to live, and
say the available housing stock is not designed for larger families.
The government says it is “proud this country has provided homes
for more than 4,000 Afghan evacuees in such a short space of time”.
But the vast majority of those airlifted out are still being shunted
between hotels around the country. At the start of March, the owners
of the huge central hotel where Ali and Zohrab spent a few weeks
decided not to renew its contract with the government and 400 refu-
gees were put on buses and driven to more remote hotels around the
country. “My five-year-old daughter has been in a local primary school
here for four months. Her teacher was crying on Friday, and she cried,
too. It’s so hard for her to move again after making new friends,” a
former British embassy administrative worker says, despondent as
he packs for a new hotel in Warwickshire. He will miss the language
exam he was due to take, and will have to find a new GP, make new
friends, settle his daughter in a new school. “We don’t know if the next
place we move to will be where we end up. Everyone is wondering
when they are going to be able to start their new lives.”
Some people with good English have started working; a former
military policeman says he is delighted (after many interviews) to be
working at a fashionable pub, while another young man in the same
hotel has found work as a shop assistant.
A couple of weeks after the launch of Operation Warm Welcome,
a council official working on the resettlement programme said
success would mean having all the new arrivals accommodated,
self-sufficient and living happy, independent lives. This still seems
a distant prospect. With news that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has
39
‘We don’t know if the next place
we move to will be where we end
up. Everyone wonders when they
will be able to start their new lives’
prompted Europe’s largest refugee crisis for decades, it’s clear that
the government’s frequently repeated mantra about Britain having
a proud history of welcoming refugees needs to be backed up with
more convincing action.
AT THE END OF JANUARY, Hussein is cheerful. He has had no news
about when his family could be moved from the hotel, but is thinking
about applying for work as a translator. He has cut his hair into a
shorter English style and bought himself a smart suit. A charity has
given the family £100 of Primark vouchers and his children all have
new clothes. They are finding school interesting, coming home with
new phrases to try out on their mother. At the weekends, Hussein
enjoys visiting the British Museum with his family.
Occasionally his children cry from homesickness. “We had a big
house in Afghanistan, with a garden,” Hussein says. “They would
play outside all the time. Sometimes they’re very sad in the hotel.
They miss their toys, their grandparents, their bicycles. So I have to
explain the situation again. You saw the shooting on the way here? Our
neighbours would have killed us if we’d stayed. That’s why we came.”
He feels it is his responsibility to buoy up their mood by reminding
them of the positives. “I don’t think Afghanistan will ever be rebuilt in
my lifetime. I’ve told my children that here they can become scientists,
dancers, pilots, doctors, politicians, engineers. They will work here
and pay taxes, and pay back the support they’re getting now,” he says.
When we meet in late January, Firas shows me a new video sent by
relatives that shows armed men coming to the house where his father
has been hiding, tying his father’s hands with rope and leading him to
a truck. Firas has had no information about where he has been taken.
News about the collapse of the economy and looming famine has
intensified his fears for his family; the UN has warned that 23 million
people, more than half the population, face starvation.
He is still waiting for an update about when he and his family
will be moved from the hotel. Both he and his wife are impatient to
start studying English, but there are no classes. “No one can tell us
anything about the houses. Everyone is depressed. We feel we are
wasting our time.”
In the Midlands, Ali feels frazzled, working while his children are
at nursery. He is suppressing a sense of frustration that his skills as a
development expert are not being called on by former Foreign Office
colleagues confronted by the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan.
Zohrab has started a course of English classes, with afternoon sessions
on British law and culture, but his children are still not getting any
language support at school and continue to struggle.
His daughter had been thriving academically in Kabul, but is
increasingly withdrawing into herself. “I’m trying not to be pessi-
mistic but I can see they’re still not enjoying it. The middle one often
says, ‘I’m not going to school. I don’t like it. They’re not friendly.’ I
say: ‘I know it’s hard but you will get friends.’”
He is doing his best to motivate them. “My son wants to be a police-
man. I say the best way is to integrate, learn to speak English, be bright.
He asked me: ‘Are we going to be English?’ I said: ‘You are already
English. You have to adapt, but this is your home now.’” •
All names have been changed
AMELIA GENTLEMAN IS A GUARDIAN REPORTER AND AUTHOR
OF THE WINDRUSH BETRAYAL
1 April 2022 The Guardian Weekly
40

W
From Art Spiegelman to Margaret Atwood, HEN THE OWNERS OF A
TENNESSEE COMICS SHOP
books are disappearing from American learned that a local school
board had voted to remove
schools’ shelves. What’s behind the rise Art Spiegelman’s Holocaust
classic Maus from its cur-
in censorship? By Claire Armitstead riculum, they sprang into
action with an appeal call-

In the
ing for donations to fund free copies for schoolchildren.
Within hours, money started pouring in from all over
the world. “We had donations from Israel, the UK and
Canada as well as from the US,” says Richard Davis, co-
owner of Nirvana Comics.

bad books
Ten days later, they closed the appeal, after raising
$110,000 from 3,500 donors. “We bought up all the copies
the publisher had in its warehouse and we’re now in the
process of shipping 3,000 copies of Maus to students all
over the country, along with a study guide written by a
local schoolteacher,” says Davis.
For Spiegelman, it has meant an exponential sales boost
for a 30-year-old book – the only graphic novel to win a
Pulitzer prize, in 1992 – and a flurry of speaking engage-
ments across the country. “It just shows,” he says, “you
can’t ban books unless you’re willing to burn them and
you can’t burn them all unless you’re willing to burn the
writers and the readers too.”
That’s just as well, adds the 74-year-old cartoonist,
“because this is the most Orwellian version of society I’ve

The Guardian Weekly 1 April 2022


ever lived in. It’s not as simple as left v right. It’s a culture
war that’s totally out of control. As a first-amendment
fundamentalist, I believe in the right of anyone to read
anything, provided they are properly supported. If a kid
wants to read Mein Kampf, it’s better to do it in a library or
school environment than to discover it on Daddy’s shelves
and be traumatised.”
Unfortunately, there is an unprecedented rise in attempts
to remove books from the US’s libraries and schools. The
American Library Association (ALA) told the Guardian that
in the period from 1 September to 30 November, more than
330 unique cases were reported – more than double the
number for the whole of 2020, and nearing the total for
the previous (pre-pandemic) year.
“It’s definitely getting worse,” says Suzanne Nossel, chief
executive of the free-speech organisation PEN America,
which has led the resistance against book banning for more
than a decade. “We used to hear about a book challenge or
ban a few times a year. Now it’s every week or every day.
‘The Little House on the Prairie series has fallen
from being a national treasure to being shunned’
41
We also see proposed legislative bans, as opposed to just
school districts taking action. It is part of a concerted effort
to try to hold back the consequences of demographic and
social change by controlling the narratives available to
young people.”
Predominantly, the ALA reported, the challenges were
targeted at “the voices of the marginalised … books and
resources that mirror the lives of those who are gay, queer
or transgender, or that tell the stories of persons who are
Black, Indigenous or persons of colour”. Or, as Spiegelman
says, of his own experience: “If I was a transgender Black
great-grandchild of slaves, I’d be more likely to be banned.
This feels like a drive-by shooting.”
Maus was removed on the basis of eight swearwords –
mainly “God damn” – and nudity: a bare-breasted, suicidal
mouse representing Spiegelman’s mother, who killed her-
self when he was 20 years old. The ironic thing about
it, says the cartoonist, is that he never intended the 
book for children, but wrote it to work out his own
Illustrations by
VALENTIN
TKACH
1 April 2022 The Guardian Weekly
42 Label for feature
feelings about the parental legacy of the Holocaust. “I was a
bit offended at first when I learned that it was being used in
schools, but, after speaking to young people who had read
the books [it was originally published in two volumes], I just
had to drop my prejudice and accept they were fine with it.”
Many of the challenges centre on a moral hysteria about
the protection of children. “They’re playing woke snow-
flakery back: ‘This might upset people’,” says Margaret
Atwood in an email to me. A graphic novel version of
Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale was one of the books
removed from classroom libraries in a Texas school district
in December, along with two other dystopian graphic novel
classics: an adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery, and
Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta.
T
EXA S SENSITIVITIES ABOUT THE
HANDMAID’S TALE are not new for
Atwood, who directs me to an open
letter she wrote in 2006 to a school
authority after learning that it had
decided to remove the novel because
of sexual explicitness and offence to
Christians (a decision that was over-
turned after impassioned representations from students).
“First,” she wrote, “the remark: ‘Offensive to Christians’
amazes me. Nowhere in the book is the regime identified
as Christian. As for sexual explicitness, The Handmaid’s
Tale is a lot less interested in sex than is much of the Bible.”
The Guardian Weekly 1 April 2022
Though the current censorship drive in the US is pre-
dominantly in Republican states, it has become a tit-for-tat
controversy, with conservative commentators quick to
point out that the left has its own form in censoring classics
such as To Kill a Mockingbird or Huckleberry Finn for their
perceived racist content. “The only ones banning books
are critical race theorists,” wrote the Jewish News Syndi-
cate columnist Daniel Greenfield. “Erstwhile liberals, who
had once vocally championed Huck and Mockingbird and
shouted down any effort to keep them out of the classroom,
now just as vocally want them out and replaced with …
Ta-Nehisi Coates and Ibram X Kendi.”
Ta-Nehisi Coates’s memoir Between the World and Me,
written as a letter to his teenage son, was among more than
800 books about social justice identified for removal from
Texas schools by a state legislator last year, on the basis
that they were “liable to make students feel discomfort,
guilt, anguish or any other form of psychological distress
because of their race or sex”.
Kendi’s profile, as director of the Center for Antiracist
Research at Boston University and the author of three
influential books on the history of racism in the US (as well
as a children’s book), has made him a lightning rod in the
row over critical race theory, which – according to the Brook-
ings Institute thinktank – has become “a new bogeyman
for people unwilling to acknowledge our country’s racist
history and how it impacts the present”.
The relationship between book challenges and attempts

to control public debate is particularly obvious in this arena,
with Brookings reporting in November that nine states had
already passed legislation against the teaching of critical
race theory, with a further 20 either in the process of doing
so, or planning to.
“We do see increased resort to censoriousness on both
the left and the right,” says Nossel. “On the left, it targets
books that some people regard as racially offensive, some-
times because they originate from a different time period,
when slurs were used more widely than is acceptable now.
But it is the right that has invoked the machinery of govern-
ment – including legislative proposals in dozens of states
– to enforce these bans and prohibitions. In the hierarchy
of infringements of free speech that must be recognised as
more severe and alarming.”
It is not only in Tennessee that an alarmed progressive
public has responded by pouring money into the pushback.
In February, Markus Dohle, chief executive of the publisher
Penguin Random House, said he would personally donate
‘We don’t want cultures to erase memory, because
then they just keep doing the same thing repeatedly’
43
at least $500,000 to PEN America to kickstart a new fund
to fight book banning, while Penguin Random House itself
pledged a further $100,000.
Such high stakes might seem unthinkable in the UK,
where censorship technically ended with the abolition
of the Lord Chamberlain’s role as theatre censor in 1968.
“Banning for swearwords – as in the Maus case – is a
peculiarly US thing, as is banning books for sex, like Judy
Blume’s Forever was from some US state libraries for a
long time,” says Julia Eccleshare, the director of the Hay
children’s festival. “There are two reasons for that. One,
the US still has a very active children’s library service, so a
collective of easy-to-rouse gatekeepers. Two, the religious
right remains very powerful, so fundamentalist Bible teach-
ing is still brought into arguments.”
More recently, says Eccleshare, the US has been very
much on the “front foot in attacking anything that can be
interpreted as cultural appropriation or cultural insensi-
tivity. Most tragically, I think, Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little
House on the Prairie series has fallen from being a national
treasure to being shunned, because of the Native Americans
being described as frightening.”
I
N THE UK, SHE ADDS, “THERE ARE RARELY
THESE PUBLIC ‘BANS’, with the exception per-
haps of the Little Black Sambo books, which
were quite publicly removed from library
shelves”. Back in 2003, the author Anne Fine
tried to use her influence as children’s laure-
ate to get Melvin Burgess’s young-adult novel
Doing It junked by its publisher, on the grounds
of obscenity, but only succeeded in increasing its sales.
“Plenty of books go out of print because they are no longer
politically acceptable, and we do quietly remove books,”
says Eccleshare. “It’s usually to do with racism, because
we have changed such a lot in how we think. Enid Blyton’s
original Noddy stories vanished years ago, on account of
their obvious racism. Similarly, Tintin in the Congo is only
available now from very shady booksellers on the web.”
The reasons for book banning have fluctuated over
history, but fall roughly into three categories: religion,
obscenity and political control. In 213BC, the Chinese
emperor Qin Shi Huang buried 460 scholars alive and
burned all the books in his kingdom so he could control how
history would remember his reign (his distant successor
Xi Jinping blocked the name Winnie-the-Pooh from social
media sites after being compared to the tubby bear). The
first list of books forbidden in Christianity was issued by the
pope in the fifth century. And, in 1749, more than a century
before the Obscene Publications Act was introduced in the
UK, the writer John Cleland was charged with obscenity
for Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, a porno-
graphic moneyspinner he wrote while languishing
in a debtors’ prison. 
DH Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover had been
1 April 2022 The Guardian Weekly
44 In the bad books

Turning
available in France and Italy for more than 30 years before it a bill that the Indianapolis Star
was published in the UK in 1960, whereupon its publisher, reported would have restricted
Penguin, was prosecuted. how teachers could discuss racial
After a six-day trial at the Old Bailey, during which the
book’s defenders included the novelist EM Forster and the
tirades inequality and sexual orientation,
was defeated, amid concerted
critic Raymond Williams, the jury found Lady Chatterley’s US progressives protests led by the Indiana State
Lover to be not obscene. On the first day it was available, Teachers Association.
a month later, all 200,000 copies sold.
have success in The Indiana legislation mirrored
The Lady Chatterley case also demonstrates the inter- halting censorship rightwing efforts in other states to
national reach of censorship, with separate obscenity trials drive honest discussion of race and
in Japan, Australia, Canada, India and the US (where it was
in the classroom sexuality from classrooms. PEN
exonerated along with Fanny Hill and Henry Miller’s Tropic By Adam Gabbatt America, a non-profit organisation
of Cancer). But, it is in the political arena that book banning that works to protect freedom of
is now most toxic globally, with writers themselves under expression, said 155 bills that would
threat, in some parts of their world, along with their books. censor what teachers could say or

T
teach in classrooms were introduced
HE UK IS THE REFUGE FOR TWO NOV- THE RIGHT WING IN AMERICA has in 38 states in 2021.
ELISTS BANNED FROM THEIR HOME- spent the past 18 months waging an While the right has rallied around
LANDS, who still write in their lan- increasingly vocal war on education, classroom censorship, there is little
guages of origin. Hamid Ismailov won banning books and restricting the evidence that a majority of parents
the EBRD literature prize in 2019 with discussions teachers can have in are demanding a crackdown on
The Devils’ Dance, the first Uzbek novel classrooms, usually when it comes curriculum. In February, a CNN poll
to be translated into English. Ismailov to issues such as racism or sexuality. found that only 12% of Americans
fled Uzbekistan in 1992 because of That could be starting to change, believed parents “should have
what the authoritarian state described as his “unaccepta- however, as progressives have the most sway over which library
ble democratic tendencies” and worked for the BBC for 25 won in some states, suggesting books are on the shelves and how
years. The Devils’ Dance was smuggled into the country. a backlash against education American history is taught”.
“I’m the most widely published Uzbek, yet nobody can censorship could be on the way. Far from there being a popular
mention any of my books. Nobody can mention my name So far in 2022, the left has forced uprising against what teachers
in any article, review [or] historic piece. It’s a total ban of Republicans in Indiana to abandon are imparting to students, the
my name, of activity, of books, of existence. It’s as if I’m legislation that would have placed censorship efforts have frequently
nonexistent,” he has said. severe restrictions on what teachers been pushed by conservative
The writer Ma Jian has been in exile from mainland can say in classrooms while, in groups with ties to deep-pocketed
China since 1987, when he published a collection of short New Hampshire, liberal candidates rightwing donors.
stories based on his travels in Tibet, which was immedi- won sweeping victories against Groups such as Moms for
ately banned. Until 2008, he says, his novels were pub- conservative “anti-critical race Liberty and Parents Defending
lished in Hong Kong, but since then they have only been theory” candidates in school board Education have been instrumental
available in Taiwan. elections. Critical race theory is an in attempts to ban books, often
Such international examples offer an ominous clue as academic discipline that examines presenting themselves as small,
to where the censorship surge in the US could lead, says the ways racism operates in US “grassroots” efforts, while in reality
Nossel. “In the 20th century, the South African apartheid laws and society, but it has become they have links to prominent,
state banned 12,000 books, at one point commandeer- a catch-all buzzword on the right. wealthy Republicans.
ing a steel factory furnace in order to burn reviled texts. The progressive victories Those groups had success in
And, in the 1930s, the Nazi party railed against ‘un-German are a development that looked several states by packing school
books’, staging book burnings of Jewish, Marxist, pacifist unlikely as the right, often through boards, which have substantial say
and sexually explicit literature.” organisations with connections to over what can be taught in schools,
Legislation adopted in Hungary last year banned from wealthy Republican donors, has but there are signs of a shift.
schools all books referencing homosexuality, in the name introduced bill after bill in states In New Hampshire, Granite State
of the “protection of children”. In 2014, Russia passed a across the country. Campaigners Progress backed 30 candidates
law adding Nazi propaganda to the subjects it bans and have successfully banned books, in the elections, with 29 of those
restricts – “LGBT content, offences to traditional values, predominantly pertaining to race successful, some in traditionally
and criticisms of the state are among others,” says Nossel. or sexuality, from school districts, conservative districts.
“Booksellers were so fearful of running afoul of the broad while some states have banned Zandra Rice Hawkins, the group’s
law that they removed Spiegelman’s Maus from stores discussion of the present-day executive director, said they had
because of the swastika on the book’s cover, despite its impact of historical racism. been inundated with calls from
potent anti-fascist message.” In Indiana, education advocates organisations and school board
“This is a book about memory,” said Spiegelman at the celebrated in February after HB1134, candidates keen to replicate the
time. “We don’t want cultures to erase memory, because success. “This GOP strategy of
then they just keep doing the same thing again and again.” ‘This GOP strategy of trying to drive a wedge between
The symmetry between Russia and the US is striking. As parents and communities and their
Oscar Wilde once wrote: “The books that the world calls driving a wedge public schools is going to backfire in
immoral are books that show the world its own shame.” • between parents and a major way,” she said •
CLAIRE ARMITSTEAD IS ASSOCIATE EDITOR, CULTURE, ADAM GABBATT IS A WRITER AND
FOR THE GUARDIAN schools will backfire’ PRESENTER FOR GUARDIAN US

The Guardian Weekly 1 April 2022

 45
Comment is free, facts are sacred CP Scott 1918

RUSSIA
A love-hate
relationship
with China
Page 48 "

Slowly but surely, the sun is

MONA RCH Y

setting on the Commonwealth

Moya Lothian-McLean
CHRIS JACKSON/GETTY
!
1 April 2022 The Guardian Weekly
46 Opinion
J
ust how long has the British monarchy
been in crisis? This time – after “Megxit”,
after Prince Andrew – it was the Duke and
Duchess of Cambridge’s disastrous trip
to the Caribbean. What was supposed to
be a “charm offensive”, drumming up
enthusiasm in the year of the Queen’s
platinum jubilee, ended up looking more
like a long goodbye, with the headlines spotlighting anti-
royal protests from Belize to the Bahamas, failures to
address legacies of slavery, and the news that Jamaica is
planning to ditch the Queen as head of state.
It may well be time for the royal family to face up to
the fact that the sun is setting on the Commonwealth
realms, those final remnants of the empire that they
once embodied – and not a moment too soon.
The issue is just as hotly debated in the likes of
Australia (54% of people there would support becoming
a republic) as it is in Jamaica, but packing William
and Kate off to the Caribbean has inevitably focused
minds in that region. Though republican camps in the
Caribbean have long cited the effect of colonialism and
slavery on the present-day fortunes of their countries,
a new reckoning is afoot, against the backdrop of the
global Black Lives Matter movement. Thanks to the
attention the royals command, the disintegration of
British overseas rule is being documented in real time.
It’s no wonder the royals were gracing last weekend’s UK
front pages in damage-limitation mode, with William
offering a half-apology for a tour blighted by protests
and bad headlines.
As ever, opening their mouths only makes things
worse: in a speech given in Kingston last week,
Prince William expressed “profound sorrow” for
the transatlantic slave trade, but people were quick
to point out that he stopped short of an apology or
acknowledging the monarchy’s direct interests in
slavery. At one point in history, enslaved Black Africans
arriving in the Caribbean via the Royal African Company
were branded with the initials “DY”, marking them as
the property of the then Duke of York. Royal profiting
from slavery continued apace – the future William IV
even argued for the continuation of the trade, in the
House of Lords in 1799, a move that, according to
historian Brooke Newman, helped “delay” abolition
for a few more years.
For the royals, the trip has been a sharp lesson in how
people in the Commonwealth now perceive Britain and
its institutions. As the Jamaican dancehall artist Beenie
Man put it during an interview with ITV News: “We are
For many parts of the
world, the benefits of
sovereign British rule
are most heavily felt by
the home nation itself
The Guardian Weekly 1 April 2022
just here, controlled by the British, ruled by the British
law when you go in the court. It’s all about the Queen …
but what are they doing for Jamaica? They’re not doing
anything for us.” The Jamaican writer Ashley Rouen
Brown summed up the grounds for resentment
succinctly: Jamaicans, he wrote, are “currently the only
citizens within the Commonwealth realm that require a
visa to visit the land of their head of state”. Meanwhile,
requests for financial reparations, in recognition of the
effect centuries of plunder had on economic prospects,
have been met with egregious responses, such as
David Cameron’s 2015 offer for Britain to finance a £25m
($33m) prison to hold Jamaican “criminals” in lieu of
compensation for slavery.
In Jamaica, republicanism has been part of the
political conversation since the 1970s, and there is
cross-party support for the move. But now, debate has
been replaced by decision. It’s no coincidence that it
comes as the Queen – who “made the Commonwealth
central to her life when she became monarch” – reaches
the twilight of her reign. But nor
 Moya can it be a coincidence that this is
Lothian- all happening after several years
McLean of governmental and monarchical
presents Human misrule in London. The aftermath
Resources, a of the Windrush scandal still
podcast about leaves a bitter taste. And, albeit on
Britain’s slaving a different scale, it is worth taking
history account of some more of Beenie Man’s
words: “If Harry was coming, people
would react different,” he said. “People are going to meet
Harry.” In that sense, the royals really are the authors of
their own misfortune.
But with or without the Sussexes, there is an
air of historical inevitability to all this. So, what
happens next? Ahead of Kate and William’s visit,
the Windrush campaigner Patrick Vernon said: “If
Jamaica decided it did [want to become a republic],
there would be a domino effect on the rest of the
English-speaking Caribbean.”
His words may well be prescient. The royal couple
flew into the Bahamas, the last leg of their tour, to
be greeted by protests on the ground and opposition
from the Bahamas National Reparations Committee.
Belize has announced a constitutional review, and late
last year, leaders, including the St Vincent premier,
were urging fellow Commonwealth realms to attain
republican status. The wheels seem firmly set in motion,
with the royals’ open-backed Land Rover left spinning
in the sand. It’s a new world out there, and the royals are
only just seeming to grasp this.
This kind of reckoning with reality is long overdue,
and, who knows, it may even be a long-term positive for
Britain if it helps disabuse its political class of its globe-
trotting, Empire 2.0 fantasies. At the very least, now is
the time to admit that for many parts of the world, the
benefits of sovereign British rule are most heavily felt by
the home nation itself. Within Britain’s own borders, we
may kid ourselves that the monarchy is still a glittering
jewel in our crown. But for many people around the
world who wish to escape the long shadow of empire and
exploitation, the shine has well and truly rubbed off •

C O V I D -1 9
Why can’t some
scientists admit they
got it wrong in 2020?
Devi Sridhar
A
s Britain slowly emerges from
the pandemic, after two bruising
years, Covid camps are one of the
lasting legacies. What I mean by
Covid camps are people or groups
with particular pandemic positions
taken early on that they then
continually reinforce by selectively
sourcing information, building a base of followers who
organise around that position and defend it viciously.
It’s unsurprising: similar camps developed around
Brexit and other key issues. However, the emergence of
scientists dividing themselves into camps over Covid is
more novel. These camps include those who have always
compared Covid to seasonal flu and advocated a “let it
rip” approach; those who have argued for maximum
suppression; and those who have changed their stance
based on emerging data, including around vaccines
and variants. There are also camps for those who have
always been against masks, noting the lack of evidence
over effectiveness; those who have argued for masks
regardless of age and context; and those who analyse
their cost and benefit in different situations.
The essence of science is asking questions, forming
hypotheses for possible answers, and then revising these
based on new data. Covid has been a constantly changing
situation. One only has to look at the emergence of
variants and how policy response had to modify with a
steep rise in Delta cases – which was more severe than
SEVENTYFOUR /ALAMY the original Sars-CoV-2 – and then again with Omicron.
47
The pandemic has been like seeing something coming
through the fog, but being unsure of its contours or exact
characteristics. Humility and flexibility in responding
were two hallmarks of effective policy response. For
example, delaying infections through maximum
suppression or a zero-Covid response were optimal in a
pre-vaccine, pre-antiviral era.
“Living with Covid”, now that science has largely
defanged it, involves ensuring widespread vaccination,
as well as creating schemes such as the US government’s
“test to treat”. The latter involves Americans going
to pharmacies to get tested for Covid and, if positive,
immediately receiving antivirals, free of charge. Testing,
treatments and vaccines mean governments can find
their “exit” from the pandemic and manage Covid as
another one of many infectious diseases.
But instead of evolving their position based on new
data, some keep trying to show how they were still right
in early 2020. A case in point is Stanford professor John
Ioannidis, who, in March 2020, argued that governments
were overreacting to the threat of Covid. He mocked
t
those who worried that the “68 deaths from Covid-19
i the US as of 16 March will increase exponentially to
in
680, 6,800, 68,000, 680,000”. He
 Prof Devi estimated that the US might suffer
Sr
Sridhar is chair 10,000 deaths, and was cynical
of global public that vaccines or treatments could
health at the be developed in a timeframe short
University of enough to affect the pandemic.
Edinburgh Two years later, the US death
toll stands at 969,000, with almost
250,000 of those people under 65. In less than a year we
had developed safe and effective vaccines – and a year
after that, safe and effective antivirals. One would expect
an academic to reconsider their initial assumptions –
but instead, Ioannidis has continued to publish articles
solidifying his starting position.
Governments (and the public) have expected
scientists to be oracles who can predict the future. Social
and mainstream media have amplified extreme positions
instead of trying to find a sensible middle ground. In this
way, extreme positions have received disproportionate
exposure in comparison to the “silent majority” who
seem to understand the complexity of the situation – and
the need to rely on expertise grounded in data.
I have respect and admiration for scientists who have
admitted what they got wrong, and also understand
that each stage of the pandemic has required a different
response, based on the latest data, tools and analysis.
“Experts” and influential people stuck in these Covid
camps continue to influence the narrative. In some
ways, this keeps us reliving arguments from early in the
pandemic at the very time we should be focused on the
best evidence and policies to help us “exit” the pandemic
safely. This should involve the equitable distribution of
vaccines and therapeutics around the globe, protecting
those vulnerable to severe disease and rapid-response
public health plans based around surveillance. In these
moments it’s important to remember the two principles
of humility and flexibility in response – and how these
don’t fit easily with the new world of media •
1 April 2022 The Guardian Weekly
48 Opinion
DI PLOM AC Y
Moscow and Beijing:
a history of respect
and resentment
Rana Mitter
T
roops gathered on the border.
The supreme leader decided it was
time to invade, to teach the other
side a lesson. Shortly afterwards,
troops breached the internationally
recognised border and clashed with
local forces. Not Ukraine 2022, but
Vietnam 1979. In January of that year,
the Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping told the US president,
Jimmy Carter, that he wanted to “spank the butt” of his
neighbours. For a month, Chinese and Vietnamese forces
clashed, leading to a death toll of tens of thousands.
Chinese troops withdrew in March 1979, when,
unlike Vladimir Putin, Deng sensibly decided to declare
The Guardian Weekly 1 April 2022
a victory and head home. Since then, there has been
no unambiguous breach of an international border by
Chinese troops.
China’s brief invasion of Vietnam isn’t much talked
about today during the Ukraine crisis. None of the
western actors wants to bring it up when they are trying
to pressure China over its general fixation on the sanctity
of national sovereignty. And Moscow won’t mention
it, because it brings back an awkward memory for their
friends in Beijing: China’s 1979 venture wasn’t really
about Vietnam, but about Russia.
Sino-Soviet relations had become poisonous ever
since the split between the two communist superpowers
in 1960. Vietnam, with Soviet backing, invaded and
occupied Cambodia in 1978, ousting the Khmer Rouge.
In the bizarre cold war politics of the time, both the US
and China supported Pol Pot’s genocidal regime because
its Vietnamese enemy was supported by Moscow.
At the Beijing Winter Olympics, on 4 February, Xi
Jinping and Putin declared a “friendship without limits”.
Shortly afterwards, Russia invaded Ukraine; most
analysts believe Beijing had some idea that Russia would
attempt to seize further Ukrainian territory but almost
certainly did not realise there would be a full invasion.
China is genuinely concerned about the Russian
destruction of Ukraine’s sovereignty, although it will
Illustration Dominic McKenzie
 Founded 1821 Independently owned by the Scott Trust 49

not say so in public, calling instead for vaguely defined

humanitarian gestures and censoring pro-Ukraine
sentiments on Chinese social media. But Beijing seems
Putin may look isolated,
to see little benefit in being a mediator in the conflict.
China’s primary motivations in seeking peace
between Russia and Ukraine are pragmatic. Ukraine is
but important players
an important, though not crucial, source of grain for
China and having to find new suppliers of cheap cereals
in a hurry for its middle-class population could fuel
are hedging their bets

W
inflation. There are pluses for China in a settlement that hen Vladimir other African nations joined
leaves Putin in charge but weaker and still sanctioned. Putin recognised it in abstaining in the first
China could become the sole major market for Russia’s Donetsk and general assembly vote thanks
wheat and fossil fuels, obtainable at bargain prices, Luhansk as to growing economic ties,
although traditional allies of Russia such as India have independent republics, days as well as a long-established
not taken nearly such a hard line against Moscow as the before his invasion of Ukraine, position of non-alignment and
west and might also provide markets. one of the most powerful the Soviet Union’s support for
Russia is also still China’s preferred partner to denunciations came from liberation movements.
create semi-formal military groupings (rather than Kenya’s UN envoy. Martin The war has triggered, not
Nato-style binding alliances) against the west. Beijing Kimani cited his country’s caused, a dramatic new phase
has repeatedly suggested the Shanghai Cooperation history as he warned against in the long-term reshaping of
Organisation should be used to mediate in Ukraine; the irredentism and expansionism. our world. Trumpism has done
SCO is a would-be Nato dominated by China and Russia, “We must complete our more than China’s growing
with India and central Asian states as members. recovery from the embers of might to accelerate perceptions
However, the Russia-China relationship is not just dead empires in a way that of US decline. Selective
about power politics pure and simple. Somewhere in the does not plunge us back into compassion and double
pragmatic relationship of the present day lies muscle new forms of domination and standards have increased
memory of a more emotional link between China and oppression,” he said. suspicion and rancour. Another
Russia, not just the Soviet Union but On two general assembly illegal war – Iraq – looms
 Rana Mitter a longer tradition of Russian literature resolutions – the first largest. Many also note the
is the author of and culture that shaped the modern denouncing the invasion, the contrast between the welcome
China’s Good Chinese revolution. second blaming Russia for outpouring of concern for
War: How The heyday of that influence was creating a humanitarian crisis – Ukrainian refugees in Europe
World War II Is in the 1940s, when Soviet ideology 140 or more nations approved. and widespread indifference
Shaping a New and the lure of Soviet technology also Only four voted with Russia to or hostility to those fleeing
Nationalism influenced Chinese visions of Moscow oppose them: a rogues’ gallery other wars.
as the future, and in the 1950s, when of Belarus, Eritrea, Syria and Russia’s use of cluster
the country was isolated from the US. North Korea. Yet widespread munitions is rightly
From the 1960s to the end of the cold war, the love condemnation, along with condemned, but Mr Biden has
turned to hatred, as ideological disputes brought the two the west’s unexpected unity, yet to reverse his predecessor’s
countries close to war over border islands on the Ussuri should not be mistaken for decision to axe a ban on their
River in 1969, prompting Chinese enthusiasm for the Russian isolation. Having use. Kenya’s criticism of
opening to the US that took place just over 50 years ago. boasted of a relationship with Russia’s aggression came with
In recent decades, the relationship has become “no limits”, China is seeking to an addendum: a condemnation
warmer, as Moscow and Beijing realise it gives them both portray itself in a more nuanced of “the trend in the last
cover against the encroachment of the west. light and avoid economic and few decades of powerful
Yet the post-cold war trajectory of Putin’s Russia and political damage – but is not, in states, including members
Xi’s China is not the same. China has seen its economy reality, distancing itself from of this security council,
and global influence soar, while Russia’s spending power Russia. Beijing is not alone. breaching international law
and life expectancy have shrunk. In some areas, such as Few of the most populous with little regard”.
central Asia, cooperation masks mutual distrust. Russian nations, and only a few leading Mr Putin’s position reflects
residents of Siberia have become increasingly resentful players outside the west, have not only his willingness
of Chinese investment in their region. China has assailed Mr Putin. to aid unsavoury regimes,
created one of the most powerful civilian and military Russia’s influence in and and his malign interference
economies, yet Russia’s elites still look to the west, dealings with the Middle East around the world, but also
many considering China rich but “uncultured” (a much have expanded substantially the sins and failures of the
stronger insult in Russian than English). since its decisive role in the US and the west. To address
China feels a little superior because Russia has never Syrian war, leaving many these is not a hopelessly
come up with a Huawei; Russia is a touch contemptuous countries hedging their bets. idealistic endeavour, but
because China has never produced a Dostoevsky. In South Africa initially called one of necessary realism, if
that ambivalence lies a shared history of respect and for the withdrawal of Russian we are to forge the alliances
resentment. This still seems to flavour the relationship troops, but then blamed Nato needed against cruel acts
between Xi and Putin • Observer expansion for the war. Sixteen of aggression •

1 April 2022 The Guardian Weekly

50 Opinion
Letters

WRITE Can preconceptions cloud
TO US facts over Putin’s actions?
The article rebutting
Russian attempts to
justify the war (Ukraine
Letters for invasion, 18 March) does
publication not separate truth from
weekly.letters@ fiction, as you claim.
theguardian.com Mark Rice-Oxley
—
writes that “no one in
Please include a
their wildest dreams can
full postal address
and a reference
imagine the west attacking
to the article. Russia”. What, not even
We may edit letters. Vladimir Putin with his
Submission and background? He saw 14
publication of all east European states join
letters is subject Nato with encouragement
to our terms and from the west and in April
conditions, see: 2008, President George W
THEGUARDIAN.COM/
LET TERS-TERMS
Bush indicated that there
would be an open door
for Ukraine and Georgia
Editorial
to join as well. How
Editor: Graham
Snowdon could Putin see Nato as a
Guardian Weekly, defensive alliance with
Kings Place, American missiles sited
90 York Way, next to Russia’s border?
London N1 9GU, A truly independent
UK review of the causes of
the war would try to see
To contact the the last 30 years through
editor directly: Putin’s eyes and recognise
editorial.feedback
that preconceptions are as
@theguardian.com
important as facts.
Corrections Graham Davey
Our policy is to Bristol, England, UK
correct significant
errors as soon as • It is evident that there
possible. Please is immense kindness
write to guardian. shown by people towards
readers@ Ukrainian refugees.
theguardian.com No one is questioning
or the readers’
whether they are
editor, Kings Place,
economic refugees or
90 York Way,
London N1 9GU,
whether they really need
UK to leave their towns or
land. No one wonders
how they can afford their
mobile phone accounts
or their warm colourful
clothes – some of which
clearly resemble what is
in our own wardrobes.
They are human beings
escaping war. They are
humans in need, like any
one of us could be.
Why have not Syrian
refugees or those from
Afghanistan or Iraq – many
made homeless by our
own governments’ actions
– been afforded the same
welcome?
Byron Comninos
Sydney, New South Wales,
Australia
• If Putin’s last
economic lifeline is his
petrochemical sales to
Europe (11 March) then
the rest of Opec could
surely help by increasing
production. Saudi Arabia,
in particular, is abiding
by an agreement with
Russia to limit production.
How much are they
profiting from Ukraine’s
misery? The US seems to
be scrambling to resume
Iranian and Venezuelan
supply; what about Saudi?
SW Davey
Torrens, ACT, Australia
• In reading Nick Cohen’s
piece about the difficulty
of Ukrainian refugees
trying to get into the UK
and Oliver Bullough’s
analysis of how easy it
was for oligarchs to find
homes, influence and
a good life in Britain, I
thought that was as bad as
it got (18 March).
Then I read Boris
Johnson, that posturing,
puffed up, privileged
buffoon, announce
that the fight for life of
Ukraine and its people is
equivalent to the free vote
on Brexit. What a pathetic,
stupid thing to say, even
to the Tory faithful. And
even by his own bottom-
of-the-barrel standards.
At the time of Brexit,
I decided not to renew
my British passport and
I am glad. The British
government is rotten to its
core and there is unlikely
to be any relief soon.
David Townsend
Wellington, New Zealand
• Could English Premier
League football teams
change their away kit for
the rest of the season to
a yellow and blue strip,
thereby showing their
support and that of their
millions of fans in the UK
and worldwide for the
people of Ukraine?
Andy Stuart
Rye, England, UK
Bleak outlook for the
Barrier Reef’s prospects
The article Concern
over heatwaves at both
Earth’s poles (Science and
environment, 25 March)
reports temperatures
40C above normal in
Antarctica and 30C above
normal in the Arctic.
The article Widespread
bleaching found on Great
Barrier Reef reports the
sixth mass bleaching event
over large sections of the
reef since 1998, the most
recent being in 2016, 2017
and 2020. The reef cannot
cope with much more of
this. Australians, and the
world, should be alarmed
– and ashamed.
Douglas Mackenzie
Canberra, ACT, Australia
Send P&O a message by
sailing with its rivals
No doubt P&O Ferries
factored the potential
costs of unfair dismissal
into its decision to fire
staff without notice (UK
reports, 25 March). The
best way to approach it is
with a full-scale consumer
boycott. I, for one, will be
using its competitors until
it reinstates the staff who
have been sacked.
Dave Pollard
Leicester, England, UK
Now Downing Street can
justifiably hold a party
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe
has been released
(Spotlight, 25 March). At
last, a legitimate reason
for a Downing Street party.
Toby Wood
Peterborough, England, UK
COR R ECTIONS
A book review (25 March)
said Abraham Lincoln
was “shot in the head by
one of the actors, who …
climbed into his box and
pulled out a pistol”. John
Wilkes Booth was not part
of the cast, and he entered
through the box’s door.

A WEEK
IN VENN
DI AGR A MS
Edith Pritchett

The Guardian Weekly 1 April 2022

 51
Film, music, art, books & more

THEATRE
Troy story
The return of
Punchdrunk
Page 54 

As Gentleman Jack returns

for a new season, the show’s
creator reflects on how its
‘uncompromisingly gay’
hero became a global icon

In her own right

 Cane and able Suranne Jones as Anne Lister, star of Gentleman Jack
AIMEE SPINKS/BBC/LOOKOUT POINT/HBO
1 April 2022 The Guardian Weekly
52 Culture
Television
W
INTERVIEW
By Zoe Williams
HEN IT FIRST AIRED IN 2019,
▲ Northern light Gentleman Jack seemed like quite a departure for Sally
Director and Wainwright. Previously, the director and screenwriter had
writer Sally been everything period drama wasn’t: she started her career
Wainwright on Coronation Street, found her voice with lottery-winners
SARAH LEE comedy At Home With the Braithwaites, went on to write
septuagenarian romcom Last Tango in Halifax, and then
created the globally lauded crime drama Happy Valley. And,
more to the point, historical drama really isn’t her thing.
“There has been this slavish adaptation of things like
Jane Austen, which I just find irrelevant,” Wainwright says,
ahead of a screening of the new series of Gentleman Jack.
“They seem to be obsessed with, ‘Can you find a man?
Are you pretty enough to find a rich man?’ As if that’s all
women care about. It leaves me cold.” But Anne Lister of
Shibden Hall near Halifax – the inspiration for Gentleman
Jack – does not leave her cold. This early 19th-century
diarist and sometime colliery-owner was known as the
first modern lesbian: her notional wedding to Ann Walker
in a York church was arguably Britain’s first gay marriage. “I
didn’t want it to be another dressing-up-box drama,” says
Wainwright. “I wanted to create that feeling that we are
following her around, that she’s always slightly ahead of us.”
The way I Clearly, she succeeded. So marked was her drama’s
write has impact that the BBC isn’t just bringing it back, it’s also
making a documentary about the “Gentleman Jack effect”.
such a Wainwright has had letters from women all over the world,
northern who’d never heard of Lister and now “she’s become the
most important thing in their lives”. One woman had
sensibility. been housebound with agoraphobia – but after watching
It’s a it, gathered the courage to walk to the shop for the first time
slightly dry in years. “That really touched me,” says Wainwright. “My
mum was agoraphobic, so I know what it’s like.”
delivery of One American woman has launched an Anne Lister
humour festival in Halifax. It started as a weekend and has now
The Guardian Weekly 1 April 2022
ballooned into a fortnight. York University has named a
college after her, while Halifax has put up a statue. The
thing viewers liked, Wainwright thinks, “is that her story
was so life-affirming, uplifting and clever. She didn’t die
at the end – she got her big romantic reconciliation. That’s
what gay women responded to. I mean, she will die even-
tually.” Wainwright still feels bad about killing off Kate in
Last Tango in Halifax. “I got slated for that – apparently, all
lesbians die in telly, which I just didn’t know.”
Part of Lister’s appeal, says Wainwright, is that she is “an
atypical historical character”. She was intelligent, single-
minded and “uncompromisingly gay – it was a huge part
of who she was, a huge part of how courageous she was,
living that life not just at that time, but in Halifax, where
you still can’t really be gay. I probably shouldn’t say that.
Halifax is great.”
This sideswipe may stem back to Wainwright’s own
formative years in West Yorkshire. She wasn’t the biggest
fan of the area when she was growing up there in the 1970s
and 80s. “All I wanted to do was leave,” she says. “I felt that
if you were different in any way, you just couldn’t survive.”
But so many of her dramas now circle back to it. “It always
makes me laugh when my dramas get described as ‘gritty’
just because they’re northern.”
Wainwright had long wanted to turn Lister’s life story
into TV. She grew up in Sowerby Bridge, 15km from Shibden
Hall. As a child, she’d visited many times, fascinated by
Lister’s portrait. She left a comprehensive diary, over five
million words across 29 volumes. “I knew she was gay and
that she was eccentric, but it was impossible to find out
anything else. She was like Halifax’s dirty secret.”
When the diaries were first transcribed in the 1960s, the
council vetoed their publication. When Wainwright pitched
a drama about Lister in 2002, even then the world wasn’t
ready, though Wainwright puts that partly down to her own
box office heft at the time. “I’d just done the Braithwaites,
which was very popular, but I’d yet to ascend to the point
where I could do whatever I wanted. That only happened
after Happy Valley.”
The power and popularity of Happy Valley – the story of
one policewoman battling crime in the Calder Valley while
still dealing with the suicide of her daughter eight years
earlier – was partly down to the serendipitous casting of
Sarah Lancashire, who “just gets it”, says Wainwright. “I
don’t know if it’s to do with being a northerner. The way I
write just has such a northern sensibility. It’s a slightly dry
delivery of humour – you don’t have to be laughing your
head off to deliver funny lines. Sarah often says to directors,
‘It won’t be funny if you do it like that.’” Wainwright wrote
the third season during lockdown. “In my mind,” she says,
“it was always a trilogy, so that will be the last.”
Her other main lockdown activity was gardening, she
says, having separated from her husband at the start of the
pandemic. “We’d been married 29 years, so I think that’s
quite good, actually. We’d come to the end. I think it was the
right thing to do.” I remark that she looks very glamorous
these days and she laughs for a really long time.
Having waited nearly two decades for Gentleman Jack
to get the green light, Wainwright ended up being glad
of the delay. It meant the drama came to life in an age of
massive budgets (it’s a co-production between the BBC and
HBO) and, more importantly, gave her the perfect lead in
Suranne Jones. “I wouldn’t have got the right person to play
Anne Lister back then.” Jones is eerily perfect: charismatic,

intense, almost superhuman in her piercing energy. Wain-
wright brackets her with Lancashire: brilliant, naturally
funny and of course northern.
When we meet her anew in the second season, Lister
seems more assured, her ambitions on a bigger canvas. She
brooks objection more impatiently than ever, as she tries to
fix the conundrums of how to join in law the estates of two
lesbians, while wondering why footmen are all so gormless.
This was informed by a close, fascinated reading of Lister’s
diaries. “By her mid-40s, she seemed to have developed
this carapace of how to deal with the world. Which you can
understand. You get to a point where you don’t give a fuck.”
Wainwright directed the first season of Gentleman Jack
but not this new one, as she was tied up with writing Happy
Valley. Which does she prefer, writing or directing? “I’m
quite reclusive, and a bit autistic, not very good with other
people. So that fits with being a writer. But when I direct,
it’s the only time that I’m good at communicating with
people. It really makes me feel alive. And 98% of writing
is pulling teeth. It’s really hard work, whereas directing is
hard work but fun.”
Ironically, she says, the pandemic cured her of
something: being a workaholic. “Before, if I wasn’t work-
ing, I tended to panic. If I had nothing on at the weekend,
I’d just go and sit and my desk. But during Covid, I got to
thinking, ‘This is quite nice, not doing anything.’” I take this
with a pinch of salt, since Wainwright has been remarkably
productive during this apparently fallow spell, finishing
53
not just Happy Valley but The Ballad of Renegade Nell, an
eight-part drama for Disney+. Set in Tottenham, London,
in 1704, it’s about a highwaywoman just back from fighting 98% of
in the Battle of Blenheim, who goes on the run after being
accused of murder. “It’s set in the reign of Queen Anne,” writing is
says Wainwright, “which is very exciting, because of course like pulling
she paid for Blenheim Palace to be built.” Of course, I nod.
That is definitely a thing we all know.
teeth, it’s
Renegade Nell started life as a play, years ago. Wainwright really
was writing something for her amateur dramatics group and hard work,
wanted to set it around her local area in the Cotswolds. This
strikes me as a rather eccentric hobby: spending your free
whereas
time doing exactly what you do as your day job, except not directing
getting paid. But maybe it makes Wainwright the ultimate is fun
artist, never thinking about the splash a show will make,
what it will mean for her career, whether it’ll be in a tiny
village hall – or go global.
“Really, all I’m ever thinking is, ‘Will people stay with
this, line by line?’” Still, didn’t her am dram team ever think
it at all odd? “I don’t think they really noticed what I did for
a job,” she says. “The plays I did were quite good. I think
they noticed that the plays were good.” Then she smiles as
if to say: “What? I’m not going to pretend I’m not good.”
And nor should she • ▼ Jack’s back
Season two of Gentleman Jack is on BBC iPlayer from 9 Suranne Jones
April in the UK, and on other streaming services worldwide as Anne Lister
ZOE WILLIAMS IS A GUARDIAN FEATURES WRITER AIMEE SPINKS/BBC/
AND COLUMNIST LOOKOUT POINT/HBO/PA
1 April 2022 The Guardian Weekly
54 Culture
Theatre
Groundbreaking company
Punchdrunk are back in a
vast new London home with
The Burnt City, a timely
reimagining of the siege of
Troy and the horrors of war
A house
on fire
By Charlotte Higgins
The Guardian Weekly 1 April 2022
P
unchdrunk, the company that has for
20 years enthralled theatregoers by
exploding traditional dramatic form
and setting performers and audiences
loose into the same vast, detailed, labyrinthine
spaces, is taking on what might be the biggest,
most fundamental story of them all – and one,
alas, with terrible resonance in this particular
moment. It is the siege of Troy: the subject of
Homer’s Iliad, the focus of many Greek tragedies
and, in many ways, the literary war that has, over
millennia, served as a proxy for thinking about
other, more recent conflicts.
The Burnt City will be the company’s fi rst
show on a large scale in the UK since 2013, when
it turned an old sorting office near Paddington
station in London into a flyblown old Hollywood
for The Drowned Man, a version of Büchner’s
Woyzeck. The company has, after two decades
of fi nding different spaces in which to make
work, acquired a permanent building of its own
in Woolwich. “After being nomadic for all this
time, we just missed London,” says Felix Bar-
rett, Punchdrunk’s artistic director. The cavern-
ous space, once part of the Royal Arsenal, is at
9,300 sq m big enough for even this company’s
wild ambition.
Not that Punchdrunk hasn’t been busy. Its
trademark shows – in which the audience,
wearing masks, are at liberty to follow their own
instincts through the performance space – have
become sensations elsewhere. At the moment
the company has two productions of Sleep
No More, a version of Macbeth, running con-
currently in New York and Shanghai. Barrett has
also dipped into TV with The Third Day, a drama
starring Jude Law and Naomie Harris.
The commercially produced Sleep No More
in New York has been both hugely popular (it
has been running for a decade, give or take the
pandemic) and, to some, a disappointment, with
its add-on champagne tickets, bars and pricey
restaurants. In the wake of #MeToo, there were
also disturbing allegations by performers and
ex-performers of sexual harassment by audi-
ence members. I’m assured that the company
has instituted improved safety measures.
The last Punchdrunk show I saw was It Felt
Like a Kiss in Manchester in 2009, as part of the
city’s international festival, and it ended with
me being terrified into a panicked sprint by a
barely glimpsed performer apparently wielding
a chainsaw. Afterwards, I found it hard to shake
the feeling that the audience had been treated
rather cheaply, even though I’d been excited by
their early work, such as Faust in 2006 and The
Masque of the Red Death a year later.
Curiosity about Punchdrunk’s immersive
approach to Greek tragedy is enough to tempt
me back. Certainly, the immense space is shaping
 55

up to be thrilling, as becomes clear when its

designers – longtime Punchdrunk collaborators
Livi Vaughan and Bea Minns – show me around
the set-in-progress. The huge warehouse is
divided into two zones: Greece and Troy. To
enter this world, the audience passes through
a kind of liminal zone that reminds me a bit of
the 2019 Troy exhibition at the British Museum.
It will contain objects resembling, for instance,
Attic black-figure vases. “If people look carefully,
they will see scenes represented on them that
happen in the show later on,” says Vaughan –
such as the killing of Agamemnon’s daughter,
Iphigenia, sacrificed to ensure a fair wind for the
Greek troops to Troy.

A
s visitors pass through the exhibit,
something will happen – a ritual of a
sort – and the audience will be whirled
into a different world. Turn one way
and you’ll be in Mycenae, the city of Agamem-
non and Clytemnestra. The feel for this city
is, as Vaughan says, “stark and epic and big”,
with a classicising style that’s overlaid with the
aesthetic of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. Everywhere
is brimming with details that might wash over
you or might not, depending on what you pick up
or know already. For example, there’s a metallic
panel that depicts, if you have the eyes to see it,
an eagle killing a pregnant hare, which is a portent
described in the opening chorus of Agamemnon.
Then Vaughan and Minns walk me through  Blown away ▲ Feeling blue
to Troy, where the feeling is instantly different. A scene from Another scene
This part of the show, says Minns, is “much more Punchdrunk’s taken from The
bustling. There’s an atmosphere of decadence, The Burnt City Burnt City
of parties, of Weimar.” The level of detail is again
almost bewildering. Later, Barrett tells me about ▼ Dynamic duo  Big ideas
the Japanese lanterns, for instance, that they’ve Punchdrunk’s Punchdrunk’s
had made up – a nod to Yoshiwara, the nightclub Maxine Doyle and new home in
in Lang’s Metropolis – with Linear B script written Felix Barrett London
on them, but in the calligraphic style used for
kanji. Finding someone who could render a text
into the writing system of Mycenaean Crete was a
task for their classical adviser, Emma Cole – who
got the director of the scholarly institution the
British School at Athens on the job. Barrett tells me. It was back in 2010 that he and
Vaughan and Minns take me up into a series Doyle first thought about doing a version of the
of rooms which I identify as spaces meant for Trojan war story. But “we lost the building”, he
denizens of the Underworld’s prison of Tartarus: says, “and we ended up doing The Drowned
mythical characters such as Salmoneus, a king Man instead”. Doyle takes me back to basics to
who insisted on being worshipped like a god and describe their approach to their chosen plays.
imitated Zeus’s thunderbolts; or Ascalaphus, the “We take all of the characters of those texts, and
guardian of Hades’ orchard, turned into a screech the plot lines and the narrative beats. And we
owl by the goddess Demeter after he revealed create something that’s almost like a set of film-
that Persephone, her daughter, had eaten a single script treatments for each character scene. Then
pomegranate seed in the Underworld and was we layer those stories on top of each other. We
thus doomed to spend part of every year in that adhere very closely to the text, but we use it as a
shadowy realm. Neither of these characters are in stimulus or a starting point to create an abstract
Aeschylus’s Agamemnon or Euripides’ Hecuba, language of dance and movement, and prop and
the core texts used by Barrett and choreographer gesture and action, and we take away the spoken
JULIAN ABRAMS

and co-director Maxine Doyle; the layering-in word. And we focus much more on the sort of
of the realm of Hades is yet another palimpsest emotional and subtexts of pieces.”
in what promises to be a dense and rich story. In so doing, they also draw on lots of other

The show has been a long time in the making, texts and research, which is also where Cole –

1 April 2022 The Guardian Weekly

56 Culture
Theatre
The city has a classicising
style that’s overlaid
with the aesthetic of
Fritz Lang’s Metropolis
a specialist in classical drama at Bristol University
– comes in. “One of the dancers asked me if I
could give them any texts that feature Apollo
and Artemis together,” Cole tells me, “because
they wanted to look at the language of those
two characters [and] how they engage with one
another.” She gave them references from The
Iliad and The Odyssey, and also told them about
a tragedy about Niobe, whose children are killed
by the arrow-wielding divine siblings.
All along, says Barrett, Punchdrunk’s project
has been about trying to hoick theatre out of the
age-old formula in which “you go through the
motions, you get the tickets, and only a small
sliver of your brain is being used”. Their approach
is “adrenaline-fuelled, the audience’s synapses
are firing, they’re sensorily aware and having to
[decide] who they follow, or where they go, or
what to avoid”.
When The Burnt City opens, there will be a
whole new generation of British theatregoers
who haven’t seen the company’s large-scale work
before; and older audience members, starved of
experiences by Covid, who will doubtless be keen
to give them another go. It will be intriguing to see
whether the company can produce the frisson of
freshness and excitement it did at the beginning
of the century: whether the work still produces
that feeling that Barrett lives for, that “the audi-
ence owns their show, and they’re alive in it”.
The Burnt City is at 1 Cartridge Place, London,
until 28 August
CHARLOTTE HIGGINS IS THE GUARDIAN’S CHIEF
CULTURE WRITER
▼ Curtain call
The Masque Of
The Red Death
TRISTRAM KENTON
The Guardian Weekly 1 April 2022
Reviews
FILM
The Worst Person in
the World
Dir: Joachim Trier
★★★★★
You generally sit down to a movie by
Norwegian director Joachim Trier
with the armrests in a white-knuckle
grip. He’s discomfited his audiences,
jolted them, shocked them. If you
had told me that his new film would
be a tender relationship comedy that
would have me covertly choking up,
I wouldn’t have believed you.
But that’s what’s happened. Trier
has taken on a difficult genre, the
romantic drama, and combined
it with another tricky style – the
coming-of-ager – to craft something
gloriously sweet and beguiling.
It’s a kind of non-Rake’s Progress
embarked on by twentysomething
heroine Julie. Renate Reinsve is the
newcomer taking on this role and
she takes off like a rocket, deserving
star status for her sensitive and
sympathetic performance.
Where does that title come from?
Surely it can’t apply to Julie. We
don’t for a moment think of her as
anything other than vulnerable,
flawed and human.
Julie starts out hilariously unsure
about what she wants to do with
her life. She begins a relationship
with a gorgeous guy and then leaves
him for the fascinating Aksel. As
her 20s progress, she finds Aksel
is becoming famous while she is
working in a bookshop. Things come
to a crunch when she has an intense
encounter with Eivind (Herbert
Nordrum) who also works in a shop.
Has she, heartsinkingly, found her
level in life?
This film is gentle and funny,
in ways that are conventional but
also real. It’s the kind of film we’ve
seen done so badly that it’s an
unexpected treat to see it done well.
A star is born. Peter Bradshaw
Podcast of the week American Hostage
Jon Hamm is a soundbite-spouting radio host in this scripted
podcast based on a true story. It’s 1977 and Fred Heckman (Hamm)
is feeling disillusioned when a huge story breaks. He gets on the
phone with the man holding a hostage at gunpoint. Can Fred keep
his cool for an interview to end the standoff ? Hannah Verdier
MUSIC
Fred Again
Albert Hall, Manchester
★★★★☆
If there’s a universal language of pop
right now, then Fred Again speaks
it fluently, translating ideas into
worldwide smash hits for artists
such as Ed Sheeran and Charli XCX.
Stepping out from the backroom,
the south Londoner, born Fred
Gibson, is opening a tour built
around last year’s Actual Life parts
1 and 2, two sample-heavy albums
recorded at the encouragement of
mentor Brian Eno.
Gibson is a low-key and smiling
presence surrounded by synths,
keyboards and drum pads. The
communication comes from a
screen behind him – videos captured
seemingly from his phone, short
bursts of text message. The set is
described as “a sort of diary from
April to December 2020”. Digital
intimacy coupled with broad-brush
sentimentality is in keeping with
Gibson’s production style.
The beats may be polite, but on
tracks like Kahan (Last Year), the
blend of wintry piano and soulful,
Auto-Tuned vocal samples are
highly affecting. Future historians
curious about pop’s response to the
pandemic could do worse than look
here. Fergal Kinney
Touring Europe and the US in April
 Culture
Books
FICTION
Stalking horse
Set in the aftermath of
Mugabe’s fall, NoViolet
Bulawayo’s second
novel is a spellbinding
satire of corruption
and social media mores
By Sarah Ladipo Manyika
▲ Bad education
Students demand
the withdrawal of
Grace Mugabe’s
doctorate in 2017
AFP/GETTY
57
of Jidada’s government ministers reflecting the
breadth and depth of corruption: “The Minister
of the Revolution, the Minister of Corruption,
the Minister of Order, the Minister of Things, the
Minister of Nothing, the Minister of Propaganda,
the Minister of Homophobic Affairs, the Minister
of Disinformation, the Minister of Looting.”
There is much that is familiar from Zimbabwe’s
post-coup history, from the popular slogans
meaning the opposite of what is stated – “Open
for business” and “New dispensation” – down to
characters and events. Marvellous the donkey, “Dr
Sweet Mother” with her “Gucci heels”, represents
the former first lady of Zimbabwe, Grace Ntombi-
zodwa Mugabe, who was awarded her PhD after
just three months – or, as the novel has it, “before
you could say diss, for dissertation”. Also familiar
is the misogynistic scapegoating of the first lady
as the reason for the Old Horse losing his marbles.
But one doesn’t have to know Zimbabwe to
relish this novel. As with all good satire, the
specific speaks to the universal; and many of
N
ine years ago, NoViolet Bulawayo these specifics are instantly recognisable – a
published her debut novel We Need video recording anguished cries of “I can’t
New Names. This coming-of-age tale, breathe”; the sham commitment to “free, fair
which grew from her Caine prize- and credible elections”; the calls to “make
winning short story Hitting Budapest, features Jidada great again”. Similarly, the heart-breaking
10-year-old Darling and friends struggling to descriptions of genocide, corrupt rulers and their
survive in a Zimbabwean shantytown. They do cronies, and a traumatised nation living in fear,
so with extraordinary resilience and humour; a will chime with people all over the world. Glory
thread that runs powerfully through her second is in good company with Nobel laureate Wole
novel, Glory. Soyinka’s 2021 biting critique of Nigerian society,
We Need New Names was widely acclaimed Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People
as a powerful story of displacement written in on Earth. Perhaps we are seeing the beginning of a
distinctive and poetic prose, and made Bulawayo new wave of political satire from African writers.
the first Black African woman to be shortlisted Glory is also a fresh and modern take on our
for the Booker prize. The language in Glory is just relationship to the virtual world and to the novel
as spellbinding, with added stylistic dexterity. form itself. In Jidada there are two countries:
Inspired by George Orwell’s Animal Farm, “the Country Country that was the real physical
Glory is set in the animal kingdom of Jidada. space in which Jidadans walked and lived and
After a 40-year rule, the “Old Horse” is ousted queued and suffered and got pained, and then
in a coup, along with his much-despised wife, there was the Other Country, where Jidadans
a donkey named Marvellous. At first there is logged on and roared and raged and vented”. This
great rejoicing and hope for change under a new Other Country is captured not only in hilarious
ruling horse, Tuvius Delight Shasha (the former hashtagging and tweets, but with soundbites
vice-president turned rival of Old Horse). Hope, from animals weighing in on current events. This
however, quickly vanishes and into the period social media-saturated narrative, interwoven
of post-coup despair steps a young goat named with the oral storytelling techniques of idiomatic
Destiny, who returns from exile to a land where speech and call and response, makes Bulawayo
greed, corruption and false prophets are rampant. feel like a pioneer.
Elements of this story will sound familiar. In a Bulawayo doesn’t hold back in speaking truth
note to the reader, Bulawayo explains to power. She holds up a mirror both
that she attempted to write about Zim- to contemporary Zimbabwe and the
babwe’s November 2017 coup and the world at large. Her fearless and inno-
fall of Robert Mugabe in nonfiction, but vative chronicling of politically repres-
found a better form in political satire. sive times calls to mind other great
As with We Need New Names, storytellers, such as Herta Müller, Elif
Bulawayo leans into exaggeration and Shafak and Zimbabwean compatriot
irony to tell hard truths. Glory is jam- BOOK OF Yvonne Vera. Glory, with a flicker of
packed with comedy and farce, pok- THE WEEK hope at its end, is allegory, satire and
ing fun at an autocratic regime, while Glory fairytale rolled into one mighty punch.
illustrating the absurdity and surreal By NoViolet SARAH LADIPO MANYIKA IS AN
nature of a police state. Here, for Bulawayo AUTHOR AND FOUNDING BOOKS
example, is an extravagant, ironic list EDITOR FOR OZY.COM
1 April 2022 The Guardian Weekly
58 Culture
Books

M
H I ST ORY atthew Green first heard about the history of the capital, takes his reader on
Dunwich, the drowned medieval a tour of eight communities that fell victim to
city off the Suffolk coast, in 2016 forces of nature, changes in economic circum-
during a period of instability and stances or deliberate destruction, as in Capel
Recovered lives “emotional turmoil” in his life, when his father Celyn, Wales – drowned beneath a reservoir – and
died and his wife left him. “I was determined to Stanford, Norfolk – requisitioned by the military
Driven by loss, one man discover how our country has come to be shaped as a training area.
by absences,” writes Green, “just as my life had He begins at windswept Skara Brae, Orkney,
sets out to rediscover come to be defined by what was no longer there.” a 5,000-year-old settlement that emerged from
the ghost towns and Dunwich, once a major port of 5,000 people and beneath the sand after a terrible storm in 1850.
the capital city of Saxon East Anglia, fell victim This neolithic Pompeii is “one of the oldest
abandoned settlements to coastal erosion. Of its seven parish churches, built structures anywhere on the planet”, more
that once shaped All Saints was the last to succumb. Its
tower collapsed into the sea, together
ancient than Stonehenge or the pyra-
mids of Egypt. It has provided archae-
Britain’s landscape with the cliff on which it was built, in ologists with a key to unlocking the
1922, “amid a waterfall of dead men’s mysteries of how our ancestors lived
By PD Smith bones on to the beach below”. at the dawn of civilisation.
But as Green says, and his book The first houses were built around
splendidly demonstrates, “what has 3200BC, when the village was a mile
▼ Lone stones
disappeared beneath sea can rebuild Shadowlands: A from the sea; now it is on the shoreline.
Greyfriars Priory
itself in the mind”. Since the 13th Journey Through The idea of successive generations liv-
in Dunwich
ANNA DEREWACZ
century, when the Suffolk coastline Lost Britain ing in the same homes, cheek-by-jowl
-CZUPRYNSKA/ALAMY by Dunwich began to be seriously By Matthew Green with their neighbours, was “positively
gnawed by the waves, thousands of revolutionary” in these islands. Occu-
settlements have disappeared from our maps. pied for many centuries by about a hundred
It is the untold story of these lost communities – people, Skara Brae was “a tiny beehive of activ-
“Britain’s shadow topography” – that has become ity bored into the earth, a commune”. Mystery
Green’s obsession. He disinters their rich history surrounds why its people left. Perhaps an apoca-
and reimagines the lives of those who walked lyptic storm in 2500BC buried the settlement in
their streets, revealing “tales of human persever- a tsunami of sand. They could have succumbed
ance, obsession, resistance and reconciliation”. to pillaging invaders or disease. Or, as the climate
By doing so, he makes tangible the tragedy of their became colder, perhaps people moved to greener
loss and the threat we all face from the climate pastures. No one knows.
crisis on these storm-tossed islands. Green’s journey leads him onwards to the site
More than 4,000 villages in Britain are at of the lost medieval settlement of Trellech in
risk of catastrophic flooding in the next two Monmouthshire. In 2005, an amateur archaeolo-
decades: “Britain has some of the fastest dis- gist, Stuart Wilson (a “Welsh Indiana Jones”),
appearing cliffs in Europe.” Parts of London gambled a small fortune buying a field beneath
could be under water by the end of this century. which he believed lay what had been the largest
By then, large areas of Britain might be “more city in Wales. It has since become, Green says,
shadow than land”. “one of the longest-running and most democratic
Green, a historian and author specialising in digs in British history”. Wilson believes Trellech

E
FICTION gon Schiele’s images of women are ter. Through her eyes we discover the glamour
challenging and varied. Some are elu- of Secession Vienna, a city “forging a path of
sive, quaint or decorative, but many progress and change into this new, promising,
are sexual, powerful, provocative. unblemished century”. In the second section,
The female gaze They raise unsettling questions of voyeurism Gerti recounts Schiele’s childhood. Schiele’s
and exploitation. Who were these women and father was a provincial stationmaster, a strict
An exploration of what role did they play in Schiele’s life and his and conventional man who clung to his status
art? These are questions Sophie Haydock sets out even as syphilis destroyed his mind. By contrast,
Egon Schiele’s life and to answer in her ambitious and intriguing debut the young Schiele is shown as a rebel, at odds
the artistic world of novel. She focuses on four women: with his family and the world.
Gerti, Schiele’s possessive and pro- The novel moves on to Walburga,
Secession Vienna seen tective sister; Walburga Neuzil, who whom Schiele meets through Gustav
through the eyes of was his model and lover; and sisters Klimt. When Schiele is arrested for
Adele and Edith Harms, who live on allegedly showing indecent images to
four of his muses the same street as Schiele and watch children and “kidnapping” a 14-year-
him from their window. old girl, Walburga stands by him. Yet
By Alice Jolly The book is divided into four The Flames he abandons her to marry Edith.
sections and begins with Adele, deter- By Sophie As a feminist reworking of Schiele’s
mined to avoid “the petty existence” Haydock story, and as an exercise in redress-
she ascribes to her mother and sis- ing historical injustice, this novel is

The Guardian Weekly 1 April 2022

 59

was the same physical size as London in the 13th BOOKS OF THE MONTH
century. Professional archaeologists are not so The best releases for young readers
sure, however, turning up their noses at some-
one they regard as a “roguish amateur bypassing
the rigours of academia”. Green explores both By Imogen Russell Williams graphic novel about Eana; Wren, her witch
sides of the argument, delving into the history sentient robot brothers twin sister, has been raised
of this important community and its meteoric Alex and Freddy Sharma to usurp Rose’s throne.
rise as a centre for iron working, in particular the features sibling squabbles, What will happen when
production of weapons for the English ruler of struggles at school, battles the sisters change places?
the region, Richard de Clare: “from the anvils of with attention-hungry With its alternating voices
Trellech came swords to plunge into the hearts rivals Team Robotix, and and infectiously playful
of enemies”. the return of the sinister enjoyment of fantasy
Wharram Percy in the Yorkshire Wolds is one Wolfram, a half-destroyed tropes, this YA novel
of Europe’s most famous deserted villages. Estab- robot bent on revenge. is pure indulgence – a
lished in around AD850 and occupied for about A standout series, full minibreak in book form.
600 years, all that remains of it now is a ruined Mum, Me and the of sumptuous artwork
church and a field of bumpy grass bounded by Mulberry Tree and nuanced, thought-
a ditch. Beneath the grass are the remains of at By Tanya Rosie provoking storytelling.
least 40 peasant homes. As Green walks around and Chuck Groenink
it, he feels “a compulsive desire to explore their With its lulling, looping Dread Wood
domestic world, to be there as the people woke rhymes and softly muted By Jennifer Killick
to bury a relative, sprang from a straw mattress palette, this adorable It’s bad enough that
on a saint’s bacchanal, or faced the monotony of picture-book account of Gustav, Hallie, Naira
tilling the fields”. The village persisted despite a mother-daughter trip to and Angelo have earned
Scottish raids and the Black Death of 1348, which gather mulberries evokes themselves a Saturday
wiped out 40% of England’s population. But, the sweet immediacy of detention. But when When Our
ultimately, it succumbed to sheep. The inhabit- small childhood rituals. their teacher disappears, Worlds Collided
ants were evicted in the 15th century to allow the caretaker turns By Danielle Jawando
the landowner to create enclosed pasture fields John Agard’s creepy and they discover When three teenagers
for grazing. Windrush Child something hideous living from different
Henry James visited Dunwich at the turn of the By John Agard underground, the four of backgrounds witness a
last century, soaking up the “desolate, exquisite” and Sophie Bass them must join forces if stabbing at a Manchester
atmosphere, and observed with typical acuity Debut illustrator Bass’s they hope to make it out of shopping centre, their
that “there is a presence in what is missing, there intricate, colourful, school alive. For 8+. shared trauma draws them
is history in there being so little”. As Green’s book arresting pictures bring into unlikely friendship. A
so eloquently shows, people are drawn to these out all the resonances of powerful, stirring, acutely
places because they are poignant reminders of Agard’s spare text in this observed coming-of-
the transitory nature of our own much-loved story of a child, a ship, a age story that examines
homes and communities. As Green writes: “In journey, and a new life systemic racism in all its
the lost village, we see the gently falling sand of enriched by the loves and forms, ideal for teen fans
the hourglass, or the turning of the earth.” memories of the old. of Angie Thomas.
PD SMITH IS AN AUTHOR AND CRITIC
Nour’s Secret Library At the End of Everything
By Wafa’ Tarnowska, By Marieke Nijkamp
a glorious success. Haydock ensures that these illustrated by Vali Mintzi Beyond Belief No one hopes for much
women emerge from behind Schiele’s gaze, and Nour and her cousin, By Alex Woolf, illustrated at the Hope Juvenile
also uses them to illuminate a period of seismic Amir, love detective by Jasmine Floyd Treatment Centre – but
change. The climax has a contemporary resonance stories and secret societies The most mind-boggling when the guards fail to
that Haydock cannot have anticipated. This is the – until war comes to areas of science – and show up one day, the
era of the Spanish flu, and the casual way Vienna Damascus and forces mainstays of science teenage inmates discover
stumbles into that disaster is horribly familiar. them into hiding. But a fiction – are investigated just how little they’re
Perhaps the only problem is that Schiele treasure trove of rescued in this gripping nonfiction valued. As plague sweeps
remains strangely shadowy. It is possible her books gives them a new book for 7 or 8+. It the outside world, the
novel might have been stronger if she had grap- shared secret, sweetening explores the ethical and Hope kids must band
pled more fully with the moral complexities. the fearful monotony of practical considerations together if any of them
Overall, this is an impressive and highly life in an occupied city. of invisibility, cloning, are to have a chance of
enjoyable debut. The worlds Haydock writes A beautifully told and time travel, immortality survival. A poignant
about feel solid and fully inhabited. Haydock has illustrated story of hope and more. pandemic story for 14+,
created an expansive novel of the gaze and the and community for For 5+. shining a bright light
image that also explains how these four muses Twin Crowns on the incarcerated
inspired and challenged Schiele, while negotiat- Mega Robo Bros By Katherine Webber and forgotten.
ing roles for themselves in a society where they Robot Revenge and Catherine Doyle IMOGEN RUSSELL WILLIAMS
were celebrated but powerless. By Neill Cameron Elegant, pampered Rose IS A CHILDREN’S BOOK
ALICE JOLLY IS A NOVELIST AND PLAYWRIGHT For 7+, Cameron’s third has been raised to rule CRITIC

1 April 2022 The Guardian Weekly

60 Lifestyle
ASK
Annalisa Barbieri
I’m happy with
my partner, but
why won’t he
divorce his wife?
I’m in a relationship with a man
who is separated from his wife but
not divorced. He left her five years
ago and says their marriage had
been over long before that, but he
decided to stay until his children
left home. We are both in our 50s
and his children are now young
adults. I was divorced in my 40s and
have no children.
We live separately. We’ve had a
very happy relationship for several
years, but there has always been the
elephant in the room of his marriage
and the block it presents to our
planning a future together.
He has made some moves
towards a divorce – contacting a
solicitor and gathering information
about his finances – but as far
as I know, has done nothing
beyond that.
It’s difficult for me to
understand: my own divorce was
done, start to finish, in six months.
Of course his circumstances are
more complicated, but his children
are now independent. He seems
unable to face the emotional
STEPHEN COLLINS
The Guardian Weekly 1 April 2022
and financial consequences –
particularly as his wife has never
worked much, which was a source
of conflict. I know this will be hard
but procrastination will make
it worse as they both get closer
to retirement age, with fewer
opportunities for him to rebuild
his finances.
I feel that I’ve tried everything
and have run out of options. I hate
the prospect of losing what has
been the best relationship of my
life, and of both of us being alone.
But I can’t play second fiddle to
his wife, legally if in no other way,
indefinitely. Do I have to walk away?
Y
ou don’t have to walk away
from “the best relationship
in your life” without a
great deal of thought. But
it’s important to be honest with
yourself: what is it you want and
what are you afraid of? And how
likely are those things to happen/
what can you do about them.
Sometimes in relationships the
obvious problems – the “headlines”
– are red herrings, and even if they
are removed, the niggling feeling
that things aren’t right remains.
So is him not getting divorced
(which, don’t get me wrong, is a
biggie!) a symptom of something
else about him – his inability to put
you first, perhaps – that you don’t
like, or does it stand alone? I wonder
what he, too, is afraid of?
I hear from divorce lawyers that
it’s often men who separate but
don’t get divorced, and it may be
for myriad reasons – among them
a sense of shame, which may come
from childhood experiences. Maybe
your partner promised never to
“leave” his wife and, as long as he
doesn’t sign those papers, in a way
he won’t. He may fear abandoning
her financially. It does sound, from
what you say, that this is a sticking
point. Or he could just be lazy;
divorce can be a lot of paperwork.
The situation may suit his ex, too.
I spoke to solicitor Gary Rycroft
from Joseph A Jones & Co. He
pointed out that from 6 April the
law on divorce will change, with the
abolition of the need for blame to be
apportioned to one party. Could this
be a catalyst for your partner?
If that doesn’t work, Rycroft
suggested your partner and his ex
could “tidy up” the legal side of
their marriage by getting a “deed of
separation”. This can be “bespoke”
so they can put in it what they feel
comfortable with. So they could say
neither will make any claims against
the other at this time, or they could
start to outline a division of assets. I
wonder if this might be a good dress
rehearsal for him.
Consider going to couples
Maybe counselling, too (psychotherapy.org.
your uk; cosrt.org.uk; bacp.co.uk). Some
interesting things may come out
partner with the safety net of a third person,
promised which may propel you both forward.
never to If you would like advice on a family
‘leave’ matter, please email ask.annalisa@
theguardian.com. See gu.com/letters-
his wife terms for terms and conditions
 T H E H A P P Y E AT E R 611
6
By Jay Rayner

T H E W E E K LY R E C I P E
By Ravneet Gill

№ 162
Rhubarb fool
with ginger
biscuits
Prep 30 min Method
Steep 1 hr In a bowl, steep the hibiscus flowers
in 20ml hot water and set aside. Put
Chill 4 hr+ the rhubarb into a roasting pan, add

Air-scribbling cheques will soon be Cook

Serves
30 min
8-10
the sugar, hibiscus flowers and their
water, mix and set aside for an hour.

a thing of the past, like melba toast • VEG ETARIAN

Heat the oven to 180C (160C fan)/
gas 4, bake the rhubarb mix for 14-18
minutes, until tender but holding its
shape. Remove and leave to cool.

S
ome boys are taught by
their fathers how to skim
stones or bowl cricket balls.
Mine taught me a far more
important life skill: how to politely
summon the bill in a restaurant from
a distance. A hand raised. An eye
caught across the dining room. The
flourish of an invisible pen, writing a
cheque in the air. Job done.
Or at least it was once an
important skill. Recently, I raised my
hand and scribbled in the air at the
delightful twentysomething who
had been serving us. And I realised
what a ludicrous gesture this now
was. Sure, they understood, but God
knows how. It’s likely they’ve never
written a cheque. We have not yet
come up with an internationally
recognised gesture for putting your
pin number into a card reader,
or holding your phone against it.
But the cheque-scribbling thing is
definitely out of date. This makes
me sad. It felt suave.
The restaurant business loves
retro. When the ineffably cool
Maison François opened in St
James’s in London in 2020, diners
swooned over its dessert trolley
as if the 1970s was a neglected
decade deserving of love. When the
great Otto’s opened in 2011, it was
celebrated for having a duck press
and using it like it was 1922.
Still, there are some things in
the restaurant world that can never
be rescued from obsolescence. We
do not mourn all of them. I am old
ILLUSTRATION: SARAH TANAT-JONES
enough to recall starters of a glass
of orange juice or a fruit cocktail,
served in a stainless-steel coupe,
topped with a maraschino cherry.
Farewell.
There are others, however,
which, while occasionally still
available, risk becoming as rare as a
sober night in Downing Street. For
example, chicken in a basket. I used
to love chicken in a basket when I
was a kid. It was your dinner. Served
in a basket. How cool was that? I
haven’t seen it on a menu in years.
Quietly, I regret the passing of
cutlet frills, those tiny hats that used
to top the bones of lamb cutlets.
Fish knives are pointless, but I did
love seeing them. Ditto melba toast.
Of course, these things do
sometimes continue, take Oslo
Court in London’s St John’s Wood,
where it is forever 1974 and they
serve a killer duck à l’orange. But
that’s the point: they have retreated.
I fear for the noble art of the
napkin fold: the water lily, the
bishop’s mitre or the dying swan.
Now it appears to live on mostly in
Indian restaurants. Eventually, even
they’ll get bored of all that folding.
That’s the thing with getting
older. It’s not just people that
ditions too.
predecease you. It’s traditions
eques must
I know writing air cheques
go the way of all things. But I don’t
have to be happy about it. Observer
JAY RAYNER IS THE OBSERVER’S
RVER’S
RESTAURANT CRITIC AND A FEATURE
WRITER
Ingredients In a medium saucepan, heat the
For the rhubarb milk and 150ml double cream with
360g rhubarb, leaves half of the sugar and vanilla.
discarded, roots In a bowl, whisk the egg and egg
trimmed and stems
yolks. In a second bowl, combine the
cut into 4-5cm pieces
90g caster sugar
rest of the sugar and cornflour, then
2 hibiscus flowers whisk this into the egg mixture.
When the milk is steaming, pour
For the custard it on to the egg mix, whisking, then
350ml milk pour this into the pan and whisk
300ml double over a medium heat until the custard
cream, plus 300ml bubbles and thickens. Take off the
extra, lightly heat and whisk in 150ml cream, until
whipped, to finish
smooth. Pour into a heatproof bowl
80g caster sugar
1 vanilla pod, split,
and put a piece of greaseproof paper
or 1 tsp vanilla bean on top to stop a skin forming. Leave
paste to cool to room temperature, then
1 egg, plus 2 egg refrigerate for four hours.
yolks To make the biscuits, combine the
40g cornflour dry ingredients in a large bowl. Add
the butter and rub in until it’s the
For the ginger consistency of breadcrumbs. Add
biscuits (makes 20)
the syrup, knead to form a dough,
150g plain flour
50g light brown
then wrap and rest in the fridge for
sugar two hours.
1 tsp ground ginger Line a baking tray with
¼ tsp ground greaseproof paper. Roll out the
cinnamon biscuit dough to 4mm thick, then,
¼ tsp bicarbonate using an 8cm biscuit cutter, cut out
of soda 20 rounds and put on the lined tray.
A pinch of salt Bake in the same 180C/gas 4 oven for
110g unsalted
15-17 minutes, until golden brown,
butter, cubed
40g golden syrup
then remove and leave to cool.
Gently beat the cold custard in a
la g bowl and fold in the whipped
large
dou
double cream. Strain the rhubarb
from the light syrup, reserving a few
pie
pieces to decorate, and stir through
the custard mixture. Serve with a
few pieces of rhubarb on top, finish
wi
with a drizzle of syrup and with the
b is
biscuits on the side for dipping.

1 April 2022 The Guardian Weekly

62 Diversions

QUIZ 8 Used to record E MOJ I SPE A K COU N T RY DI A RY

Thomas Eaton archaeological finds, what Killian Fox SA N DY
is the PAS? Bedfordshire
What links:

L
1 What did The Times put 9 Haven Brow, Brass Point, Guess the Christian saint from the ifted out of a plastic tub,
emoji symbols
on its front page for the etc; daughters of Atlas and the wasp factory is spread
first time in 1966? Pleione; postcode N15? 1 out, floor by dismantled
2 What spread is celebrated 10 Bay; chestnut; grey; floor, over the dining room
by a sculpture in Burton pinto; sorrel? table. The smell of damp cardboard
upon Trent? 11 O’Shea Jackson and Tracy 2 has evaporated, replaced by a
3 In what city is the New Marrow; William Perry; mustiness, and what look like dried
Bridge actually the oldest? Steve Austin? mushrooms sprout from the top of
4 What footballing duopoly 12 Siena (Duccio); Ghent 3 each egg tray layer. I expect all of the
was last broken in 1985? (Van Eyck); Isenheim wasps to be gone. They are not.
5 How was Indian activist (Grünewald)? About a month ago, I stood on top
Phoolan Devi described in a 13 Butterwort; round- 4 of a ladder under the eaves in front
film title? leaved sundew; cobra lily; of our sparrow nest box. A queen
6 Calf lymph was a Attenborough’s pitcher? wasp had moved in the previous
vaccination against which 14 Bonaire; Sint Eustatius; 5 summer after the birds failed, and
disease? Saba? such was her demand for space that
7 Which battle did William 15 Austin Butler; Kurt an extension spilled out of the nest
III defeat his predecessor, Russell; Jonathan Rhys hole, the entire face encrusted with
uncle and father-in-law at? Meyers; Michael Shannon? papier-mache cells.
5 St Peter I brushed them off, lifted the lid,
PUZZLES then reached up and clawed out
3 St Francis of Assisi. 4 St George.
b) ruler turning back clock Emoji 1 St Patrick. 2 St Joan of Arc.
Chris Maslanka c) sand bear PLANE, PLANET. each tier of cells, feeling each pop
d) dinosaur of Cretaceous free as it broke from its anchoring
2 Dropouts OBTAINED. 3 Tree world
Maslanka 1 Wordpool d), c).
Netherlands. 15 Played Elvis on film/TV. pedicels, the columns by which
1 Wordpool 2 Dropouts 14 Islands that make up the Caribbean
location (artist). 13 Carnivorous plants.
each layer hung from the one above.
Find the correct definition: Replace each asterisk with 12 Celebrated altarpieces: original I dropped those slabs from a great
JOBBERY a letter to make a word: the Refrigerator; wrestler Stone Cold. height, and collected them up.
How does chew, spit and paste
Cube and Ice-T; American footballer
a) jowled *B*A*N*D coats. 11 Chilly nicknames: rappers Ice
b) rickety area of Tottenham. 10 Colours of horse create such precision? The queen
c) clumsy 3 Tree world must work like a potter; the walls of
cliffs in Sussex; Pleiades in Greek myth;
Antiquities Scheme. 9 Seven Sisters:
d) conduct of public Which two words differ and Ireland, VII of Scotland). 8 Portable her hexagonal cells show alternating
business for private profit only in the letters shown: 7 The Boyne, 1690 (James II of England
Aberdeen). 5 Bandit Queen. 6 Smallpox.
shades of light brown, as if she had
BALISAUR ***** (tree) built them one coil, one mouthful,
 On the website Notes and Queries theguardian.com/notes-and-queries

and Rangers as Scottish champions (by

a) stupid person in charge
doing great damage
CHESS
Leonard Barden
China’s world No 3 Ding
Liren could make an
unlikely late bid for a
place in the Candidates
tournament that will
decide Magnus Carlsen’s
next challenger.
Ding’s chances seemed
to have vanished when
visa problems prevented
him competing in the
current Grand Prix series
in Berlin, which will
qualify two winners for
the Candidates at Madrid
in June, but a possible
lifeline has appeared due
to Fide’s six-month ban on
Sergey Karjakin.
Fide regulations state
*****T (world) 2 Marmite. 3 Paris (Pont Neuf). 4 Celtic at a time. A potter with an inbuilt
ruler, for the difference in diameter
Answers Quiz 1 News stories.
© CMM2022
between each hexagon is never as
that a replacement will be arranged match to qualify much as half a millimetre. I estimate
the highest rated eligible him for a Grand Prix start. that about 700 workers made it from
player on the May 2022 Then last Thursday a egg to adult from this one level.
rating list who has played tweet appeared: “Chinese Other levels show mixed results.
30 rated games in the Chess Association will One has dozens of cells containing a
previous 12 months. Due start a series of qualifying tiny bead, each the head of a larval
to pandemic and visa tournaments at end of this grub, still attached to a shrivelled
issues, Ding has played month for the 19th Asian body. Most trays have failures of
four of the required 30, Games. All top players metamorphosis.
and those were in a hastily are required to play, Strangest of all are a few burst
including Ding Liren [plus membranes with just a head poking
3808 Anton Demochenko v Vladimir
Fedoseev, Riga 2021. Black to move seven named others] …” out, antennae poised. The birth
and win. The Games are to be held of winged adults, readying for the
in Hangzhou, China, in maiden flight that never happened.
8
September. Derek Niemann
7 The current live ratings
6 show Ding on 2799 Fide
5 points. He is 11 ahead of
4 Levon Aronian and 23
ahead of Richard Rapport,
3
the favourites to qualify.
2 3 Kh3 g4+ 4 Kh4 gxf3+ wins.
1 Qh7+! 3 Nh4 Qxh4+ and wins) Qf4+
a b c d e f g h
3808 1...Ne2+! 2 Qxe2 (if 2 Kh2

The Guardian Weekly 1 April 2022

Like Puzzles? Try the new Guardian Puzzles app. Download from the App Store or Google Play
Read more: theguardian.com/puzzles-app 63

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Quick crossword
No 16,184
8 9 1 2 3 4

10 11 6 7

8 9

12 13 14 15
 All solutions published next week

10 11 12

16 17 18 19 20

13 14 15

21 22 23

16 17 18

24 25

19

26 27

The Weekly cryptic By Brummie Across 7 Sulky behaviour (9)

5 Mountebank (9) 12 Strong and active (8)
No 28,711 8 Seabird (4) 14 Cumbersome (informal) (6)
9 Pass from one person to 15 Old unreliable car (6)
another (8) 17 Frozen precipitation (4)
Across 7 Record large number used chlorine (9)
10 Foolhardiness (6)
1 Queen, involved in lousy oil transaction, 13 Popular musical instrument, extremely
11 God-fearing (6)
makes a speech (9) tactile, but untouched? (9)
13 North European sea (6)
6 See 26 14 Organised hen do in smart European port (9)
15 Kind of puzzle (6)
8 One stands to the right of East Ender’s 17 Two daughters interrupting irritating type,
16 Spiral of hair plastered on
impoverished plant (8) who poses a problem (7)
the forehead (4,4) Solution No 16,178
9 See 10 18 Window art over northern entrances to
10,9 Street band, Troy, casually accepting His Science and Oceanography Museum (7)
18 Blue (4) A D D I S A B A B A
19 Day of Atonement (3,6) S R O E A I
Eminence’s explanation of everything? (6,6) 20 See 4
P E R P L E X B O G U S
11 Old-fashioned you, having S&M! (8) 22 Is out of low value coins for pasta (5) E O T U Y S U
23 Fall out! Engage in battle! (5) Down
12 Restless type of fellow one would become (6) L E WD L A M B C H O P
15 Space mission souvenir display behind tip (8) 1 Relax (informal) (5,3) L S L O O E
16 Company actor’s top covered by plain item of 2 Bubbly (6) C U C K O O D O C T O R
clothing (8) 3 Unfounded story (6) H H M Z M G
19 Spotted drugs of different colours (6) 4 Male singer with a deep voice E S O T E R I C A G A R
(4) C W R R S R A
21 Sentimentality effected with each brainwave K U D O S C H A MO I S
(4,4) 6 Kind of mathematical
E E O R I S
equation (9)
22 Chatter about Dicky’s outcome (3-3) P R E T E N S I O N
24 End the French tax levied by French king! (6)
25 Accordingly, protecting against a grand
Solution No 28,705
capital city (8)
26,6 Cut Channel’s source for blubber? (4,4)
Sudoku
27 Old player determined to get a ham regional S H A R P E R K I N G C U P Medium
accent (9) T L A E N E H I Fill in the grid so
R E A C T C O O P E R A T E that every row,
A S I C C D N C every column
Down W A K E S W E E K S T S A R and every 3x3
1 Parade prop (5)
S A S O B O U box contains the
2 Not so acceptable, being next to good
E Q U I V A L E N T S numbers 1 to 9.
novelist (7)
E U R N E U S T
3 Not standing as a politician, many would Last week’s solution
M A N N I N G T R E E
assume? (5)
P C E U R S C
4,20 Scientific attempt to formulate
fundamental rules of squash – mutiny, PC O R A L C L A S S I F I E R
involved! (7,7) R P H A E B L O
5 Appearing later: coyote, initially tamed, I M P L A N T E D B L I S S
crossed with setter (3,2,4) U E L E U O C S
6 One getting ready item of furniture (7) M O D U L U S M O N T A G E

1 April 2022 The Guardian Weekly *