A global The ruling The teenager

superstar at that has divided who broke out

the age of 20 America of Auschwitz
PEOPLE P10 CONTROVERSY P6 LAST WORD P48

THE WEEK
2 JULY 2022 | ISSUE 1390 THE BEST OF THE BRITISH AND INTERNATIONAL MEDIA

Game over?
A double defeat for the PM
Page 4

ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT EVERYTHING THAT MATTERS theweek.co.uk

4 NEWS The main stories…
What happened
A double defeat
Boris Johnson’s leadership came under further
pressure last week after the Tories suffered
a double-whammy of bruising by-election
defeats. Labour won back the “red wall” seat
of Wakefield with a 12.7 percentage point
swing; and in Tiverton and Honiton, the Liberal
Democrats successfully overturned a 24,000-
plus Tory majority, the biggest by-election
reversal in numerical terms in British political
history. Hours after the results, Oliver Dowden
resigned as Tory party chairman, pointedly
declaring in a letter to the Prime Minister that
“we cannot carry on with business as usual” and
that “somebody must take responsibility”. Two
former Conservative leaders – William Hague
and Michael Howard – said Cabinet ministers The PM: beyond hope?
should put pressure on Johnson to resign.
The PM insisted that questions over his premiership were
settled by the recent vote of confidence, and said voters were
sick of hearing about the party’s internal wranglings. Every
government, he said, is “buffeted” by bad by-election results.
He claimed he was looking forward to winning another two
elections and extending his premiership into the mid 2030s.
What happened
The Russian advance
Russia was accused of war crimes this week,
after launching a missile strike on a busy
shopping centre in the central Ukrainian
city of Kremenchuk. At least 20 people were
killed in Monday’s strike; dozens more were
injured or missing. Russian forces finally
seized full control of the key eastern city of
Severodonetsk on Friday; over the weekend
they launched fresh strikes on Kyiv.
Meeting in Bavaria, G7 leaders condemned
the Kremenchuk attack as “abominable”. The
leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy,
Japan, the UK and the US promised to extend Destruction in Kremenchuk
their financial, military and humanitarian
support to Ukraine “for as long as it takes”.
Nato leaders later met in Madrid, where it was announced
that Turkey had dropped its opposition to Sweden and
Finland joining the alliance (see page 7). Jens Stoltenberg,
Nato’s chief, told the summit that high energy costs caused
by sanctions were a price worth paying for “freedom”.
It wasn’t all bad A new national monument
in honour of the Windrush
Great Ormond Street Hospital generation was unveiled at
has received a £50m donation London’s Waterloo station last
from a couple whose nephew week. Created by the artist Basil
had life-saving treatment there. Watson, who is originally from
When Joe Gulliford was four Jamaica, it portrays a man, a
days old, he was rushed to the woman and a child dressed in
hospital with a rare birth defect their Sunday best, standing hand
that had left him with a twisted in hand on a pile of suitcases.
bowel. Eleven years on, Joe is a Members of the Windrush
tennis fanatic and doing well at generation and the Duke and
school. His uncle, John Grayken, Duchess of Cambridge gathered
a financier, and aunt Eilene for the unveiling, while the Queen
Davidson, a theatre producer, sent a message, thanking the
said they’d been “amazed” by “Windrush pioneers and their
the care he’d received, and had descendants” for the “profound contribution they have made to
wanted to give something back. the United Kingdom over the decades”.
THE WEEK 2 July 2022
What the editorials said
The by-elections illustrated some “uncomfortable truths” for
the Tories, said The Observer. They made clear that Johnson
has gone from being a vote winner to a vote
loser; and that the issue of Brexit no longer
buys much loyalty. Voters in Wakefield and
in Tiverton and Honiton backed Brexit, but
that didn’t stop a significant number of them
throwing their support behind Labour and
Lib Dem candidates. More and more people,
it seems, are willing to use tactical voting to
unseat Conservative MPs (see page 21).
Voters aren’t rushing to embrace a
“compelling” Labour or Lib Dem alternative,
said The Daily Telegraph. The Tories’ problem
is simply that their erstwhile backers are either
lodging a protest vote or not bothering to
turn out. Some party leaders have sought to
attribute this to lingering resentment about the
Partygate scandal, but the real cause is a wider loss of faith in
the Government. The Conservatives have strayed from “the
foundation principles of small government and low taxes” that
underpinned their reputation for competence. The Tories need
to regain a sense of purpose and direction, said the Daily Mail.
More discipline would help, too. The endless plotting by rebels
risks handing victory to the Tories’ opponents.
What the editorials said
Putin’s latest atrocities seem to have given the West “a
renewed sense of purpose”, said The Times. As G7 leaders met
in Germany, Russia was “bombing civilians”.
In response, Washington confirmed that it
would send Kyiv more much-needed air defence
missiles, and the UK, US, Canada and Japan
agreed to block Russian gold imports, closing
off a “sanctions-busting” loophole for its
oligarchs. Nato, too, is waking up, said the FT:
the alliance’s members were expected this week
to back plans to expand its “rapid reaction
force”, which is largely based in Eastern
Europe, from 40,000 to 300,000 troops.
Clearly, world leaders are starting to grasp “the
magnitude of the threat from the Kremlin”.
Yet the West still has much to do if it’s going to
hurt Putin in the short term, said The Guardian.
There must be a “swift delivery” of the air defence systems
that Ukraine’s President Zelensky has requested. And the G7
should also take advantage of an “emerging consensus” in
favour of a global cap on the price of Russian oil and gas – a
move which would make a big dent in the Kremlin’s coffers.
Locals on the Isle of Skye came
to the rescue of an American
couple who thought they would
have to cancel their dream
wedding when all their luggage
got lost en route. Amanda
and Paul Riesel had endured
numerous delays while
travelling the 4,000 miles from
Florida; discovering that they
had no clothes to wear for their
nuptials seemed the last straw.
But their wedding photographer
put out an appeal on local social
media, and within a few hours,
Amanda had a choice of eight
dresses in her size, and Paul had
been lent a full kilt set.
COVER CARTOON: HOWARD MCWILLIAM
 …and how they were covered NEWS 5
What the commentators said What next?
There are moments in politics when the best course is to “lick your wounds, get a good night’s Under the Tories’ current
sleep, then stagger on”, said Matthew Parris in The Times. For the Tories, “this is not one of rules, the PM can’t face
them”. If they don’t get rid of Boris Johnson, “all is lost”. Antipathy towards him is leading another confidence vote for
voters everywhere to become disenchanted with the party. London is already gone; the North, a year, but rebels are hoping
home counties and the West Country are turning. Even if Johnson were capable of changing, it to seize control of the 1922
wouldn’t help now. The public has made up its mind about him. If the Tory party is to survive, Committee of backbench
“the men in suits” must visit No. 10 and tell him the game is up. MPs so they can amend that
rule and mount an earlier
Oliver Dowden’s resignation was “more ominous” for the PM than the by-election defeats, challenge. The 18 members of
said John Rentoul on The Independent. He was one of the first to come out in favour of him the body are due for election
becoming party leader, but he now clearly regards him as beyond hope. “Johnson’s reputation before Parliament breaks up
has probably passed the point where almost anybody else as leader would be a better option on 21 July. The veteran rebel
for the Tories.” Under new management, the party would still face the problem of how to hold Steve Baker is among those
together a coalition of Labour-leaning voters in the North and “Lib Dem waverers” in the South, expected to stand.
said Robert Colvile in The Sunday Times. Johnson loyalists have a point when they claim that
the PM is the only person who can keep the party in one piece. “Half our critics within the As many as six Tory MPs
party want radical Lord Frost-style austerity,” says one. “The other half, like Jeremy Hunt, are considering defecting to
want money poured into the NHS. If Boris went, we’d descend into an irreconcilable mess.” Labour, reports The Sunday
Times. They won’t have long
The last thing the Tories should do, said Patrick O’Flynn in The Spectator, is rush into a messy to make up their minds.
coup that ends with a “rookie and unknown replacement PM” being dropped in at “the deep Labour is currently choosing
end of an acute living standards crunch” to face a resurgent opposition. Instead, they should let its candidates for the next
the PM get on with governing until next May’s local elections. If those polls are a disaster, he election in many crucial
can be removed then, having “soaked up much of the inevitable unpopularity that comes with marginals, with many more
falling living standards”. In the meantime, those with leadership ambitions should be encouraged selection processes set to
to set out their own vision for the country as part of the Tories’ “long-term succession planning”. begin by the end of the year.

What the commentators said What next?

Russia’s war is taking an ominous turn, said David Patrikarakos in the Daily Mail. The fall of Defence Secretary Ben
Severodonetsk gives it near-total control of the Luhansk province; it is bombarding civilians Wallace has reportedly
hundreds of miles from the Donbas; and Ukrainian battalions are suffering unsustainable losses. written to the Prime
Yet Europe still drags its heels: Germany promised seven howitzers in early May, but they only Minister to call for the
arrived last week. Such delays could prove disastrous for the West, and let Putin “triumph by defence budget to be lifted
dint of our inertia”. It isn’t just on the battlefield that things are going badly, said Fraser Nelson to 2.5% of GDP by 2028,
in The Daily Telegraph. “The economic war may be about to turn”, too. Soaring oil and gas up from the 2.1% of GDP
prices, and willing buyers in the form of China and India, have put Russia on course to make it is projected to spend this
£260bn selling energy this year, up 35% on last year. Putin has also started cutting gas supplies year. But at this week’s
to Europe, in a warning ahead of winter. “It’s not hard” to imagine Russia, with its huge cash Nato summit, Johnson
reserves and military might, eventually winning this war. dodged questions on
whether he supported
Putin’s forces still face challenges, said Joe Inwood on BBC News. They suffered heavy losses in increasing defence spending,
Severodonetsk. And their next target, nearby Lysychansk, is an even tougher prospect, thanks to The Guardian reports.
the Siversky-Donets river – a “natural barrier” to a Russian advance – and its hilltop position. If
Russia takes it, however, Kyiv will face pressure to cede territory in a peace deal. We Ukrainians Britain has announced new
know where deals with Putin lead, said Svitlana Morenets in The Spectator – 78% of us oppose sanctions on Putin’s inner
making concessions to get one. No, our problem isn’t resolve; it’s weapons. “Just 10% of the circle. Putin’s cousin, Anna
arms Ukraine has asked for have been delivered” and we’re badly outgunned. “Only Ukrainians Tsivileva, is among those on
have the right to decide when to negotiate and what concessions to make,” said Jonathan the list, as is Russia’s second
Powell in The Guardian. In the meantime, the West should start thinking about a settlement richest man, Vladimir
that reflects both Kyiv’s priorities and the reality that “there will only be a lasting peace if we do Potanin. Both will face asset
not leave Russia nursing a grievance, isolated, and waiting for the next opportunity to invade”. freezes and travel bans.

THE WEEK
Editor-in-chief: Caroline Law
Glastonbury made a triumphant return last week from its three- Editor: Theo Tait

year pandemic hiatus. Wonderful for the 200,000 people who Deputy editor: Harry Nicolle
Consultant editor: Jenny McCartney
headed to Somerset to attend the five-day music festival; but nice, City editor: Jane Lewis Assistant editors: Robin de Peyer,
Leaf Arbuthnot Contributing editors: Simon Wilson,
too, for the rest of us, who got to enjoy that rarest of things – a cheerful news story. At a time when Rob McLuhan, Catherine Heaney, Xandie Nutting,
Digby Warde-Aldam, Tom Yarwood, William Skidelsky
the papers are full of reports about war, political infighting, strikes, recession and resurgent Covid, it Editorial: Anoushka Petit, Tigger Ridgwell, Aine O’Connor,
Amrita Gill Picture editor: Annabelle Whitestone
made a welcome change to read about joyful crowds and to look at photos of revellers in daft outfits. Art director: Nathalie Fowler Senior sub-editor: Simmy
Richman Production editor: Alanna O’Connell
As Caitlin Moran pointed out in The Times, Glastonbury has always been about more than just the Editorial chairman and co-founder: Jeremy O’Grady
music. Part of its appeal is the sense it’s helping to create – in that dread phrase – a “better world”. Production Manager: Maaya Mistry
Marketing Director (Current Affairs): Lucy Davis
The festival is a temporary city with a population the size of York, with an inventive, can-do spirit that Account Director/Inserts: Abdul Ahad
Classified: Henry Haselock Account Directors: Aimee Farrow,
too often seems lacking outside its realm. In 2019, for instance, the organisers took action against Steven Tapp, Amy McBride
Advertising Director – Current Affairs: Kate Colgan
plastic waste by stopping the sale of single-use water bottles and providing points where people Managing Director, The Week: Richard Campbell

could fill reusable ones. This year, they further cut waste by selling crisps in biodegradable packets. Senior VP Women’s, Homes and News: Sophie Wybrew-Bond

In the real world, meanwhile, the UK is still getting through 7.7 billion plastic bottles a year. Last week Future PLC, 121-
141 Westbourne
it was reported that a “wet wipe island” the size of two tennis courts had formed in the Thames; and Terrace, London
W2 6JR
that the Government was belatedly “considering” a ban on wet wipes containing plastic. We may
Editorial office:
laugh at some of the utopianism on show at Glastonbury, but it provides 020-3890 3787

a valuable yearly corrective against the forces of cynicism and inertia. Harry Nicolle editorialadmin@
theweek.co.uk

Subscriptions: 0330-333 9494; subscriptions@theweek.co.uk © Future PLC 2022. All rights reserved. The Week is a registered
trademark. Neither the whole of this publication nor any part of it may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in
any form or by any means without the written permission of the publishers 2 July 2022 THE WEEK
6 NEWS Politics
Controversy of the week Referendum ruling

The fall of Roe v. Wade Scotland’s First Minister

Nicola Sturgeon has
revealed that she is seeking a
“The bodily autonomy of women is under deadly assault,” said ruling from the UK Supreme
Katie Edwards on The Independent. “Think that’s hyperbole? Court on the legality of
Think again.” Last Friday, in “a sucker punch” to women’s her plan to hold a second
“reproductive freedom”, the US supreme court overruled its independence referendum
landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, which established a next year. Her preferred
date for the “consultative”
woman’s constitutional right to seek an abortion. Individual
poll is 19 October 2023, she
states now have the power “to allow, ban or restrict” abortion, said. If the court rules that
effectively criminalising it across swathes of the US. That won’t IndyRef2 cannot go ahead
stop it from happening, of course: some women will travel; without permission from
others will have life-threatening illegal procedures. The news Westminster, in the form of
was a salutary reminder that women’s rights can be “ripped a Section 30 order, Sturgeon
away” in an instant. Change will come fast, said The said that her party, the SNP,
Economist. Thirteen states introduced “trigger laws” to ban or would fight the next general
restrict abortion as soon as Roe v. Wade was overturned. Some election on the single issue
Protesters outside the White House
of independence, turning it
– including Tennessee, Kentucky and Louisiana – permit no
into a “de facto referendum”.
exceptions even in cases of rape or incest. A dozen more states are now expected to bring in anti-
abortion laws, meaning that 36 million women may lose the right to end an unwanted pregnancy.
Barristers go on strike
Criminal barristers in
This decision has caused “anger all over the world”, said Freddy Gray in The Spectator. But let’s keep England and Wales went on
it in perspective: Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organisation hasn’t banned abortion, as many strike for two days this week
seem to think. The six conservative judges who backed the change, against the three liberals who in a long-running dispute
dissented, have simply returned the issue to “the people’s elected representatives” in each state. In over legal aid funding. The
Mississippi, for example, most abortions will now be illegal after 15 weeks, a threshold “roughly in Government has proposed a
line” with much of Europe. Roe was always a poorly argued ruling, as many legal scholars on both 15% hike in legal aid fees, but
sides agree. Abortion rights activists have long “exalted” the autonomy of women over the existence the Criminal Bar Association
(CBA), which represents
of “the unborn child”, said Henry Olsen in The Washington Post. Reconciling the two is very
2,400 barristers, has said the
difficult. Such decisions, though, are “at the heart of what democratic self-government is about”. rise isn’t enough, especially
as it seems it would not
This is not a democratic outcome, said The New York Times. A clear majority of Americans believe apply to backlogged cases. It
that women, not lawmakers, should have the legal right to decide whether to end a pregnancy. estimates criminal barristers
“Without full control over their bodies, women will lose their ability to function as equal members have, on average, suffered a
of American society.” Many will now be compelled to carry unwanted pregnancies to term. Too real-terms cut in earnings of
many women have taken the gains of feminism for granted, said Janice Turner in The Times. As a 28% since 2006. Barristers in
young woman in the 1980s, I saw contraception as my right, along with “safe abortion” if it failed. their first two years of
practice earn a median net
The “women’s libbers” who had battled for these things seemed drearily earnest to me, just as many
income of just £18,800pa
young women today reject older feminists and their concerns. Yet the fall of Roe makes it clear that after expenses. The strikes
we need to return to the “basic, thankless feminism” of lawsuits, lobbying and fundraising, by which are due to increase by one
women through history have slowly “heaved” themselves “towards progress”. day a week until mid-July.

Good week for:

Spirit of the age
John Lewis shoppers could
soon be rounding off their
browse through bed linen
and haberdashery with a
spot of facial enhancement,
as the retailer prepares to
offer Botox at six of its
stores. John Lewis said it
was responding to
“increasing awareness and
demand”, and that injections
would be reserved for
customers aged 25 or older.
Amazon’s virtual assistant,
Alexa, may soon be able to
speak to us in the voices of
our dead relatives, the
company has revealed. The
tool – which was unveiled at
a conference last week, but
is still in development –
uses recordings of under a
minute to clone voices. In a
promotional video, a boy
asks his late grandmother to
finish The Wizard of Oz –
and her “voice” begins
reading the story.
Sir Paul McCartney, after around 120,000 people gathered to Poll watch
watch his set at Glastonbury – making it one of the largest crowds 24% of UK adults think that
ever at the festival. The ex-Beatle, who’d turned 80 a few days Labour has been too
earlier, performed on the Pyramid stage for almost three hours. supportive of the rail strikes.
Extravagance, with claims that Boris Johnson and his wife 13% feel it has been too
opposed. Over half (52%)
Carrie planned to erect a £150,000 treehouse, complete with
say rail workers should be
bulletproof glass, in the grounds of Chequers. According to allowed to strike; 36%
sources quoted by The Times, the couple came up with the idea in believe they shouldn’t.
the autumn of 2020, when their son Wilf was a few months old, The Observer/Opinium
and hoped Tory donor Lord Brownlow would help pay for it. But
the scheme was dropped after police raised security concerns. 59% of UK adults
disapprove of Boris
Johnson’s performance on
Bad week for: the economy; and 54% think
Rupert Murdoch and Jerry Hall, with reports that they are to that the PM should resign.
divorce after six years of marriage. The reason for the alleged rift The Daily Telegraph/Redfield
is unclear; however, it is rumoured that Murdoch, 91, disapproved and Wilton Strategies
of Hall’s smoking, and that he ended the union by text message.
Sheffield Hallam University, which was criticised for scrapping 17% of adults in the UK
don’t believe that climate
its English literature degree. As part of a government crackdown
change is mainly caused by
on “low value” courses, universities could face penalties if fewer human activities. 72% do
than 60% of their graduates are not in professional jobs, or study­ think it is mainly “man-
ing for further degrees, within 15 months; however, Sheffield made”. Of those aged 55 and
Hallam implied that the move had more to do with falling demand. over, 60% think it’s not too
Robinsons Barley Water, after its 86-year sponsorship of late to do something about
Wimbledon came to an end. Reportedly, the deal broke down climate change, compared
to 34% of 18- 34-year-olds.
because the brand’s owner, Britvic, wanted the right to promote
BBC/KCL
other drinks such as Gatorade, Pepsi Max and Fruit Shoot.

THE WEEK 2 July 2022

 Europe at a glance
Milan, Italy
Drought hits fountains: The mayor of
Milan, Giuseppe Sala, ordered that the
city’s public fountains be switched off
last week, in an attempt to save water as
northern Italy continued to endure one
of its longest droughts. Only drinking
fountains and those containing fish and
plants were exempt, he said. To conserve
energy, and avoid power cuts, residents
and businesses were also told not to set
their air conditioning units below 26°C.
Earlier in the week, a state of emergency
had been declared in the entire Lombardy
region – of which Milan is the capital. In
neighbouring Emilia-Romagna, the mayor
of the small town of Castenaso ordered
that hairdressers stop the practice of
double shampooing their customers’ hair,
arguing that it wasted “thousands” of litres
of water each day. Last month, farmers
warned that the falling water levels in the
Po River threatened food production in
Italy’s agricultural heartlands.
Paris
Minister accused:
A junior minister
in France’s new
government is
under investi­
gation for rape,
it emerged last
week. Three
women have
made allegations
against Chrysoula
Zacharopoulou,
46, the minister for development, linked to
her work as a gynae­cologist. They claim
that she carried out internal examinations
without consent. She is the second member
of President Macron’s government to face
sexual assault allegations. Damien Abad,
the social cohesion minister, has been
accused of attempted rape. Both have
denied the charges.
Madrid
Nato breakthrough: Turkey agreed this
week to lift its veto on Finland and Sweden
joining Nato, ending an impasse that had
threatened to complicate the Nato leaders’
summit in Madrid. The Nordic countries
had both applied to join Nato in May,
spurred on by the Russian invasion of
Ukraine, but Ankara had said it would
block the move. It accused them both of
harbouring members of the separatist
militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party, the
PKK, which Turkey views as a terrorist
organisation. This week, however, the three
countries declared that they had signed a
trilateral memorandum, in which they
© GENERAL PROSECUTOR’S OFFICE
stressed their commitment to supporting
each other against threats to their national
security. Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg
hailed it as a “historic decision”, while
Turkey said it had “got what it wanted”,
including “full cooperation... in the fight
against” the rebel groups.
Catch up with daily news at theweek.co.uk
Berlin
Abortion law scrapped: German MPs have
voted to scrap a Nazi-era law that made it
illegal for doctors to provide women with
information about abortions. Section 219a
of the German Criminal Code, which dates
back to 1933, stated that doctors who
publicly “offer, announce [or] advertise”
abortion services could face up to two
years’ imprisonment or a fine. It meant
that doctors could provide terminations,
in the limited circumstances in which they
are permitted in Germany, but risked
prosecution if they told women anything
about the procedure. Justice Minister
Marco Buschmann described the law
as“absurd and unjust”. Abortion is
technically illegal in Germany, but women
and doctors do not face penalties if the
abortion is carried out within the first 12
weeks of pregnancy, following mandatory
counselling; if the pregnancy is the
result of rape; or if it poses a risk to
the woman’s health.
Athens
Acropolis surveillance: Greek authorities
have installed 150 CCTV cameras at the
Acropolis, in response to public outrage
about the shooting of a gay sex scene at
the site. The 36-minute film, Xeparthenon
– a play on words, meaning “deflowering”
in Greek – reportedly shows two men
in face coverings having sex at the
Érechthéion, a small temple in the
Acropolis complex, in full view of passing
tourists. The anonymous filmmakers have
described the film, which was made in
December and then released online, as
a “political act”. But Ioannis
Mavrikopoulos, the head guard at the
Acropolis, condemned it as a “lewd act”
that “marked the most disgraceful affront
to the sanctity of the site”. Once in place,
the cameras will monitor activities at the
Acropolis, which is visited by 10,000
people a day, supplementing the work
of the site’s 100 security guards.
NEWS 7
Oslo
Terrorist attack: Oslo’s Pride march was
cancelled last Saturday following a deadly
shooting near a number of city centre bars,
including one that describes itself as the
capital’s “largest gay and lesbian venue”.
Two people were killed in the attack, in the
early hours of Saturday morning, and 21
more were injured. Police described it as
an act of terrorism; a 42-year-old man – a
Norwegian citizen of Iranian origin – has
since been charged with murder and
terrorism offences. He was interviewed by
intelligence services in May, but was not
deemed to pose a threat. The city’s annual
Pride parade, which had been due to take
place that day, was cancelled on police
advice. However, thousands gathered
outside Oslo’s city hall on Monday.
Kyiv
First rape charge:
A Russian soldier
suspected of
committing a
notorious rape
in a village near
Kyiv in March
has gone on
trial in absentia.
Mikhail
Romanov,
32, who was
identified from pictures on social media,
is accused of breaking into a home in
Brovarsky with another soldier. Having
shot her husband dead, the pair repeatedly
raped their 33-year-old victim, while her
four-year-old son hid nearby. Romanov
is the first Russian soldier to be tried for
rape, but investigators say, given the scale
of the atrocities committed by Russian
troops, dozens more cases could follow.
2 July 2022 THE WEEK
8 NEWS The world at a glance
Dawson City, Canada
Baby mammoth: Gold miners
have found the remarkably well
preserved remains of a baby
woolly mammoth that had been
mummified in the permafrost of
the Yukon region. The body,
thought to be of a female, dates
from some 30,000 years ago.
Palaeontologist Grant Zazula,
who works in the area,
described it as “one of the most incredible mummified Ice Age
animals ever discovered”. He said that the mammoth, which was
about a month old when it died, had probably wandered a few
steps away from its mother and got stuck in the mud.
New York
Maxwell sentenced: Ghislaine Maxwell has been jailed for 20
years for recruiting and trafficking teenage girls for the late Jeffrey
Epstein. As she is 60, it could be an effective life term; however, it
is less than the 30 to 55 years that prosecutors had pushed for.
Maxwell showed no emotion as the judge passed sentencing for
her “heinous and predatory” crimes. Earlier, however, she’d
addressed her victims, saying she was sorry for their pain; that she
hoped that her “harsh and unusual incarceration” brought them
“closure”; and that meeting Epstein was her “biggest regret”. In
one of several impact statements, Virginia Giuffre wrote that
Maxwell had “opened the door to hell” for her and other Epstein
victims. Four women had testified at the trial; one of them said
she had been 14 when Epstein had started to abuse her, and that
Maxwell had sometimes participated in the abuse.

Washington DC
Gun reforms: President Biden has signed into law the
first major package of gun controls to be passed by
Congress in nearly 30 years. The legislation expands
background checks for under-21s, boosts funding
for school security and mental health programmes,
and provides incentives for states to bring in “red flag laws”,
which would make it easier to remove guns from individuals who
may pose a danger to themselves or others. However, a ban on
assault rifles, one of the key goals of gun control campaigners, is
yet to pass; and in a further setback, the supreme court ruled last
week that a 108-year-old New York law restricting people’s right
to carry concealed weapons in public was unconstitutional,
paving the way for other such laws to be overturned.

Los Angeles, California

Cosby ruling: A civil jury has found
that the comedian Bill Cosby sexually
assaulted a 16-year-old girl in Los
Angeles in 1975. Judy Huth, now 64,
had told the court that, after a chance
meeting, Cosby had invited her to the
Playboy Mansion, where he’d forced
her to perform a sex act on him. The
jury awarded her $500,000 in damages.
Cosby, 84, was sentenced to three to ten
years in 2018 for drugging and molesting
another woman, but his conviction was later overturned on a
tech­nicality. He insists he is innocent of all charges.

San Antonio, Texas

Truck horror: Forty-six people – believed to be migrants mainly
from Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala – were found dead this
week in a lorry on the outskirts of the Texas city of San Antonio.
Sixteen more were rushed to hospital with heatstroke, where four
more of them have reportedly died. Temperatures in the area, 150
miles from the Mexican border, reached 40°C this week, but no
air conditioning or water was found in the trailer, which had been
left on a quiet back road. Texas’s Republican governor was quick
to blame President Biden’s border policies for the fatalities. “These
deaths are on Biden,” tweeted Greg Abbott. “They show the
deadly consequences of his refusal to enforce the law.” Biden said
the tragedy underscored the need to go after people smugglers.

Washington DC
Explosive testimony: Donald Trump knew that some of his
supporters were heavily armed when they arrived at the rally that
preceded the Capitol riots on 6 January 2021, it was alleged this
week. According to an ex-Trump aide, the president was “f***ing
furious” about the effect that security screening was having on the
size of the crowd that had gathered to watch him speak. “I don’t
care if they have weapons,” he allegedly exclaimed. “They’re not
here to hurt me. Let my people in.” The former aide, Cassidy
Hutchinson, also told the 6 January committee that Trump had
been so enraged by his attorney general Bill Barr’s public assertion
that the election had not been “stolen” that he’d thrown his lunch
against a wall, leaving ketchup dripping down the paintwork.
Quito
Cost of living crisis: At least eight
people have died during a fortnight
of civil unrest in Ecuador. The protests, led by indigenous
groups, have been in reaction to a sharp spike in the price of food
and fuel that campaigners say has affected rural and indigenous
communities disproportionately. There have been mass
demonstrations in Quito, and roadblocks have been set up across
the country, leading to transport chaos, and warnings that oil
production might have to be halted. This week, Guillermo Lasso,
the country’s right-wing president, cut fuel duties, and officials
began talks with the protest leaders. MPs said they were working
to schedule a no-confidence vote in his leadership.

THE WEEK 2 July 2022

 The world at a glance
Melilla
Migrant deaths: At least 23 people were
killed last week when a huge crowd of
migrants tried to cross into Melilla, one
of Spain’s two enclaves in North Africa.
Around 2,000 took part in the attempt,
leading to violent clashes with Moroccan
security forces. According to local officials,
some of the dead were crushed in a
stampede; others fell to their deaths while
trying to climb over the six-metre-high
fence that surrounds the city. This week,
it was reported that 65 men, mostly from
Sudan, were facing charges including
starting fires and attacking security forces.
Rights groups, meanwhile, have accused
the security guards of using excessive force.
Video clips have emerged of them striking
men who were already lying injured on the
ground; and the African Union has
demanded an investigation.
East London,
South Africa
Mystery deaths:
Police in the river
port city of East
London are
struggling to find an
explanation for the deaths of 22 people
at one of the town’s crowded nightclubs.
The bodies were found in the early hours
of the morning strewn across tables and
chairs without any visible signs of injury.
Sugges­tions that they had been poisoned
have not been confirmed. All of the victims
were teenagers – some as young as 13:
many were celebrating the end of their
winter school exams. “They die(d) as
they danced,” one witness told a local
news website. The owners of the popular
Enyobeni Tavern in the township of
Scenery Park will now face prosecution for
breaching licensing conditions by illegally
serving children under the age of 18.
Kigali
New members: The West African
nations of Gabon and Togo joined the
Commonwealth last week, on the final day
of the association’s leadership summit in
Rwanda. The French-speaking countries
are the Commonwealth’s first new
members since Rwanda joined in 2009.
Togo’s foreign minister, Robert Dussey,
said membership would enable his country
to forge closer links with the English-
speaking world, and widen its export
markets. Analysts have suggested that both
countries may also be keen to reduce the
influence of France, their former colonial
power. The admission of Gabon, however,
has raised questions about how its poor
human rights record can be squared with
the Commonwealth’s traditional values.
The oil-rich nation has been run by the
same family for more than 50 years.
Naypyidaw
Back to jail:
Myanmar’s
demo­cratically
elected leader,
Aung San Suu
Kyi, who was
toppled in a
military coup last
year, has been
moved from
house arrest to
solitary confine­
ment in a prison in the capital, Naypyidaw.
The 77-year-old winner of the Nobel Peace
Prize is awaiting trial for some 20 offences,
many involving charges of corruption,
which carry a total jail term of nearly 190
years. Before leading her party to victory
in 2015, in Myanmar’s first openly
contested election for 25 years, Aung San
Suu Kyi had already spent 15 years in
detention at the hands of the military.
NEWS 9
New Delhi
“Tribal” for
president: India’s
ruling party, the
BJP, has selected
a woman from a
“scheduled tribe”
as its nominee for
president. And she
is almost bound
to secure the
largely ceremonial
post as it is MPs
who vote for it. Droupadi Murmu, 64,
would be the country’s first “tribal”
president. India’s constitution makes
specific provision for positive treatment of
people from its 705 scheduled tribes (8.6%
of the population), and scheduled castes or
Dalit (16.6%), both groups being seen as
among India’s most disadvantaged groups.
Tokyo
Power shortages:
Residents of Tokyo were
asked to limit their use of
air conditioning this week,
as a record heatwave put
intense pressure on the
grid. The government also
urged people to switch off
lights whenever possible,
to avoid power cuts.
Many parts of Japan have
experienced their hottest
June temperatures since
records began in 1875; in
the capital, temperatures
have risen to about 35°C,
but with humidity at
44%, it has felt hotter;
and there are fears the
hot weather will
continue
into July.
Melbourne, Australia
Swastika ban: A spike in far-right
extremism and anti-Semitism has
prompted the Australian state of Victoria
to outlaw the display of the swastika in
public. Under a new law, anyone who
deliberately exhibits the Nazi symbol could
face a fine of up to A$22,000 (£12,300) or
a maximum prison sentence of 12 months.
Victoria is the first Australian state to
introduce such legislation, but three others
are proposing similar laws. According to
a study by Tel Aviv University, Australia
experienced an unprecedented 88 anti-
Semitic incidents in a single month last year.
2 July 2022 THE WEEK
10 NEWS
I was stalked by Tony Blair
As lead singer of Pulp, Jarvis
Cocker was at the vanguard of
the “Cool Britannia” era, says
Carola Long in the FT. But
while it was “an exciting time”,
he doesn’t look back on it all
that fondly. He objects to the
“Britpop” tag because of its
“connotations of nationalism”;
and he didn’t much care for the
way politicians tried to get a
sprinkling of the pop fairy dust.
“Tony Blair really tried to pick
his way in with the scene,” he
recalls. “He turned up at the
Brit Awards and kept going on
about how he could play guitar
and stuff. And he just seemed
a bit opportunistic.” In 1996,
Cocker decided to spend
Christmas in New York “to get
away from all the hullabaloo.
I was supposed to be
completely under the radar. But
one day I got a call in the hotel
room and there’s this woman
saying something like, ‘Hello,
it’s Imogen from New Labour.
Just wanted to know if we can
count on your support.’ And it
really solidified my mistrust.
You’re stalking me, basically.”
Hanks on Philadelphia
Tom Hanks won an Oscar
for his role in the 1993 film
Philadelphia, in which he
played a gay lawyer with Aids
who is fired by his firm, says
David Marchese in The New
York Times. At the time, he
was praised for his courage:
some had predicted that the
film would ruin his career.
But now, could a straight man
even play a part like that?
“No,” says Hanks, “and rightly
so. The whole point of
People
Philadelphia was don’t be
afraid. One of the reasons
people weren’t afraid of that
movie is that I was playing
a gay man. We’re beyond that
now, and I don’t think people
would accept the inauthenticity
of a straight guy playing a gay
guy. It’s not a crime, it’s not
boohoo, that someone would
say we are going to demand
more of a movie in the
modern realm of authenticity.
Do I sound like I’m preaching?
I don’t mean to.”
Tom Watson’s weight loss
Tom Watson is something of a
weight-loss guru, says Boudicca
Fox-Leonard in The Daily
Telegraph. Labour’s former
deputy leader lost eight stone
in two years after being
diagnosed with type 2 diabetes
in 2017, and has written two
books on the subject. Yet there
is no happy ending for the food
addict: he reckons he will never
be free of the urge to eat more Billie Eilish is only 20, but she is already one of the most famous
than he should. “I had to laugh people in the world, says Megan Agnew in The Sunday Times.
when Boris talked about The youngest solo artist to have headlined Glastonbury, and the
home-workers eating slivers youngest writer of a James Bond theme, she has 103 million
of cheese from the fridge,” he Instagram followers and 11 billion views on YouTube. Yet as a child,
says, “because in ‘Lockdown growing up in LA, she suffered from such “crippling, life-changing
Three’ I did have a setback that separation anxiety” that she couldn’t even sleep in her own room.
involved a lot of mail-order “I couldn’t be away from my parents. I was worried about what
cheese and the fridge.” He would happen to them, I was worried about what would happen to
thinks of it, though, as a bit me, I was worried about being forgotten.” Terrified of the dark, she
like Sisyphus pushing a boulder shared her parents’ bed until she was 11 (which was also the age
up a hill. “You can either be she was diagnosed with Tourette’s). Fame came suddenly, when
overcome by that or you can she was 17, and at first it was overwhelming: she was scared to
find a way of pushing the leave the house, and wore outlandish clothes to ease her imposter
boulder and enjoying it. And syndrome. ”I was trying to convince myself that I deserved it
that’s all mindset; taking because I didn’t think I did. I needed to look a certain way so that
pleasure in small things. If I get all of it made sense.” She feels more at ease with her fame now;
a walk in before breakfast, I tell but she still hates being alone; still spends a lot of time with her
myself, ‘What a great start to parents; and still has a tricky relationship with her (constantly
the day.’ Rather than: ‘I can’t scrutinised) body. “I kind of think of my body as my friend. My ugly
believe I have to do all this.’” friend!” she says. “It’s complicated. But what are you gonna do?”

Castaway of the week Viewpoint:

This week’s edition of Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs featured
Farewell
the singer, songwriter and U2 frontman Bono Holidays, now and then Colin Blakemore,
“Perhaps the airport chaos will make neuroscientist, died 27
1 Show Me the Way, written and performed by Peter Frampton
us reconsider the nature of holidays. June, aged 78.
2* Every Grain of Sand, written and performed by Bob Dylan
When I was small, holidays meant rising Baroness Greengross,
3 Abide With Me by Henry Francis Lyte, William Henry Monk, Lars at dawn, pausing for hard-boiled eggs
Halapi and Ulf Schagerstrom, performed by Emeli Sandé and campaigning head of
the Fron Male Voice Choir
in a lay-by in Uckfield, before fetching Age Concern, died 23
up in the West Country for a fortnight June, aged 86.
4 Dead in the Water (live at RTÉ 2FM Studios, Dublin) by Noel
Gallagher, performed by Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds of strenuous avocet-viewing. I was nine Deborah James,
5 Ice Cream Sundae by Elijah Hewson, Josh Jenkinson, Robert
before I crossed the Channel, and I’ve charity campaigner,
Keating and Ryan McMahon, performed by Inhaler never quite got over the glamour of died 28 June, aged 40.
6 Agolo by Angélique Kidjo and Jean Hébrail, performed by Abroad. The genie of low-cost air travel
Leslie Munden, naval
Angélique Kidjo cannot be put back in the bottle. But electrician who
7 La Traviata, Prelude to Act 1 by Giuseppe Verdi, performed by the the current conditions of mass tourism, survived nearly 100
Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, conducted by James Levine demanding the resilience of a 19th wartime convoys, died
8 Someone Somewhere (In Summertime) by Charlie Burchill, Derek century explorer with none of the 12 June, aged 104.
Forbes, Jim Kerr and Michael MacNeil, performed by Simple Minds pristine novelty, makes me think almost Frank John Williams,
wistfully of the prelapsarian innocence actor best known for
Book: Ulysses by James Joyce of those hard-boiled eggs, consumed Dad’s Army, died
by the Sussex roadside.” 26 June, aged 90.
Luxury: A Spanish guitar * Choice if allowed only one record
Jane Shilling in The Daily Telegraph

THE WEEK 2 July 2022

 Briefing NEWS 13

Rwanda: a safe haven?

The Government plans to send asylum seekers to Rwanda, which it describes as “one of the safest nations on Earth”

Who runs Rwanda? African average. Its streets are safe and
Paul Kagame has been Rwanda’s clean; people pay their taxes; corruption
president since 2000. He is a figure who is minimal; its civil service is efficient and
“divides opinion like no other in Africa’s meritocratic. Elsewhere, donors’ cash has
recent history”, says the FT. A small, been siphoned off by corrupt officials, but
mountainous, landlocked country in Rwanda has used it well. It has a health­
central Africa, Rwanda is the second care system which is one of the best in
most densely populated nation on the Africa. Its Covid-19 vaccine rollout was
continent – home to 13 million people in exemplary: over 60% of its population
an area slightly larger than Wales. Violent has been inoculated. These undoubted
power struggles between the country’s achievements have made Kagame much
two main ethnic groups, the Tutsi and admired. Tony Blair, for instance, called
the Hutu, have marked its history. In the him a “visionary leader”. His detractors,
pre-colonial period, the Tutsis, a cattle- though, tell a very different story.
owning pastoralist group who made up
around 15% of the population, ruled Why is he criticised?
over the majority Hutus; they continued There may have been little violence inside
to dominate under German imperial rule Rwanda since the genocide, but Kagame
(from 1897 to 1916) and Belgian control Kagame and Johnson: a £120m deal
launched a war against neighbouring
(from 1916 until independence in 1962). Democratic Republic of Congo – which
was harbouring Hutu refugees – that was so destructive that some
How did Kagame become president? call it Africa’s First World War. And Rwanda today is, according
He fought his way to power, ending Rwanda’s genocide in the to many critics, one of the most oppressive nations in Africa.
process. Kagame was born to a Tutsi family in 1957, just before Political opposition is not tolerated. Elections are rigged; official
the Rwandan Revolution ended centuries of Tutsi dominance; his statistics are manipulated. The free press is muzzled, and
family fled to Uganda amid anti-Tutsi pogroms. As a teenager, he Rwandan journalists have frequently gone missing, or died in
joined a Ugandan rebel group led by Yoweri Museveni, which mysterious circumstances. The media landscape is “one of the
would eventually take control of the nation. Kagame, along with poorest in Africa”, says Reporters Without Borders. Every cluster
other exiled Tutsi soldiers, formed the Rwandan Patriotic Front of ten households is monitored by a government agent. “Arbitrary
(RPF), who invaded Rwanda to overthrow its Hutu rulers. In April detention, ill-treatment, and torture in official and unofficial
1994, during a ceasefire, a plane carrying the Rwandan president, detention facilities is commonplace, and fair trial standards are
Juvénal Habyarimana, was shot down. In the aftermath of the routinely flouted,” according to Human Rights Watch. Kagame
assassination, Hutu extremists began a genocide of horrifying has proved ruthless in tackling opponents, even former comrades.
speed and brutality. In a period of 100 days, around 800,000
Tutsis, and moderate Hutus suspected of sympathising with the What happens to his opponents?
RPF, were slaughtered, wiping out 10% of Rwanda’s population. Insiders who fall out with the regime have a tendency to meet
grisly ends: in 2014, the former intelligence chief Patrick Karegeya
How did Kagame help to end the genocide? was found strangled in a hotel in South Africa (“You cannot
Leading a force of 10-14,000 RPF soldiers, Kagame retook the betray Rwanda and get away with it,” Kagame remarked). At
capital, Kigali. Hutus fled en masse: two million went to Burundi, least 15 opposition figures have been killed in recent years. Paul
the Democratic Republic of Congo and Tanzania. The RPF Rusesabagina, the man who saved the lives of more than 1,000
government installed a Hutu, Pasteur Bizimungu, as president in people in the genocide, and inspired the film Hotel Rwanda, was
a conciliatory move. The real power, though, lay with Kagame, jailed on terrorism charges last year, having criticised Kagame.
who was initially vice-president and
defence minister, but who assumed The asylum plan Will refugees be safe there?
the presidency six years later, in 2000, The UK-Rwanda Migration and Economic Rwanda already hosts around
after Bizimungu’s resignation. Three Development Partnership was launched in April with a 140,000 refugees, and the UN has
years after that, Rwanda held its first £120m payment to the Rwandan government. Under praised Rwanda for adopting
direct presidential election: Kagame the five-year pilot scheme, any adult (except for “progressive” policies to “support
won his first seven-year term, claiming Rwandan citizens) who comes to the UK “illegally” refugee self-reliance”; some of its six
to have taken more than 90% of the – by boat or in the back of a lorry, say – could be existing camps boast driving schools
considered for relocation. Those who are removed and language classes. But asylum
vote. He was re-elected in 2010, and
would be put on a one-way flight to Rwanda, 4,000
again in 2017 (after securing a miles away, where they would be given
seekers’ safety can hardly be
constitutional amendment that allows accommodation and permitted to apply for asylum guaranteed, argues Human Rights
him to rule until 2034). His long rule in the African country – a process that usually takes Watch, given the country’s “shocking
has won many admirers abroad. around three months, during which time Rwanda says human rights record”. In 2018, 12
they’d be able to move freely around the country. Congolese refugees were shot dead by
Why is he admired? Initially the policy will focus on single men. If their police while protesting against cuts
Kagame inherited a failed state that applications are successful, they will be able to stay to food rations. Michela Wrong, a
had been torn apart by genocide. there with up to five years’ access to education and former FT journalist who has written
He restored stability; a network of support; they will then be offered the chance of extensively on Rwanda, says that
traditional gacaca community courts renewing their claim in the country. If unsuccessful, Kagame is “very good at identifying
was set up, which brought justice and they will be deported to a “third safe country”. For the issues that keep Western leaders
each individual asylum seeker, British taxpayers will
a measure of reconciliation. Today, awake at night and presenting them
pay between £20,000 and £30,000. Internal Home
Rwanda is one of Africa’s most fast- Office modelling suggests fewer than 200 will be sent with a solution which seems to be
developing nations. In the 15 years this year. Yet, with legal challenges to the policy effective and cut-price”. But whether
to 2019, it posted annual economic ongoing, even that figure is uncertain at the moment. the asylum plan will truly protect the
growth of almost 8%, double the vulnerable is quite another question.

2 July 2022 THE WEEK

14 NEWS Best articles: Britain
“A gas station masquerading as a country.” That’s how the late
senator John McCain once dismissed Russia. It summed up the IT MUST BE TRUE…
Fossil power West’s post-Cold War view that Russia’s dependence on fossil fuel
exports doomed it to increasing irrelevance in a brave new world
I read it in the tabloids

makes Russia of technological innovation and borderless trade. But the Ukraine
invasion has delivered a jolting reminder of the importance of
Erika LaBrie, an American
competitive archer, describes

a great power material resources and geography, says Helen Thompson. Russia
became a 20th century power largely thanks to its acquisition of
herself as an “objectum
sexual” – someone who is
attracted to objects. In 2007,
Helen Thompson “oil-rich Baku from Persia and what became the Black Sea oil port she “married” the Eiffel Tower
of Batumi from the Ottomans”. It remains a 21st century power and briefly changed her
The New Statesman because the Soviets “pursued energy extraction in Siberia and built surname to Eiffel. Now, in
a transport infrastructure connecting those oil and gas fields to a new documentary, LaBrie,
central Europe”. Vladimir Putin has always been keenly aware of 50, reveals that her affections
have turned towards a fence.
the leverage this gives him. Europe has pulled its punches for fear She is filmed explaining her
of losing access to Russian gas, but now that Russia exports so attraction to it. “He’s perfect,”
many resources eastwards to China and India, even the most she says. “I mean... These
punishing Western sanctions would have limited impact. Whatever angles? Fabulous.” She says
price Russia eventually pays for its failure to diversify its economy, that ”fences are such
the reality is that, right now, it’s “winning the resource war”. dangerous objects for me
because they are so perfect
So long, paper train tickets. The rail industry apparently plans to in their geometry”, adding
scrap them and have all passengers use e-tickets, stored on an app roguishly: “I would like to get

The old are on their smartphone. Far more convenient, right? Well, it is if you
have a smartphone, says Michael Deacon. But what of those who
to know this fence better.”

all at sea in a don’t? According to the charity Age UK, 70% of the over-75s
don’t possess one. So if tickets exist only on an app, these people
digital world won’t be able to take a train. More and more services are going
“digital-only”, despite the problems this causes for many older
Michael Deacon customers. When pubs first opened after lockdown, you needed
a smartphone or other internet-linked device to get a drink. You
The Daily Telegraph still do if you want to fix a “remote appointment” with a GP. And
most car parks and parking spaces now demand you pay via an
app. No smartphone, no way of leaving the car. Slowly but surely,
the elderly are being “frozen out of the modern world” by people
who either don’t realise they’re doing this or, worse, don’t care.

Mick Lynch, leader of the RMT, has won praise for his nifty TV
performances, says Iain Martin. But at heart he’s still a dinosaur.
Hey, dinosaurs His demands on behalf of his union members – no redundancies
plus higher pay – are a recipe for low productivity, whereas what
Japanese men are snapping
up a new style of underwear:
– make way the railways, and every other sector, need in order to grow more
efficient is less human intervention. We need driverless trains – like
lacy boxer shorts designed to
“glamorise the male part”.
for the robots the ones in Hamburg – not more expensive train drivers. In short,
we need more robots. Yet in this, we’re way behind competitors.
The Lace Boxer, which
comes in seven colours, has
proved a hit since going on
Iain Martin A new report shows that, in 2020, of the new robots installed
sale in Isetan, a department
across the world, 71% were deployed in Asia: China alone
store in Tokyo, where three
The Times installed 168,400. Yet even in Europe, Germany was able to install
months’ stock sold out in ten
ten times as many (22,300) as Britain, Italy four times and France
days. Wacoal, which created
twice as many. And while there are signs we’re making progress
the garment, says the style
– Ocado bringing robots to its warehouses to speed up deliveries;
provides “glamorous front
Thorn Lighting in County Durham using fully automated forklift
comfort”, and is “designed
trucks – there’s still fierce resistance from both unions and voters.
to comfortably wrap around
But we must press on. To grow richer and to get the kind of public
the male part”. Wacoal
services we need, we have to embrace “the rise of the machines”.
admits it has been surprised
by the product’s popularity.
British industry has few world-beaters, but there’s one “inno­vative,
fast-growing industry in which the UK is the undisputed global Two Swiss brothers have
Why the leader”, says Ruth Sunderland. I refer, sad to say, to fraud. It’s the
most common crime in the country: we are daily subjected to a
created a “zero-star hotel”
where the rooms have no
scammers love “deluge” of it “through our letter boxes, phones and computers’’.
The cost is huge: last year we lost almost £3bn to the scammers,
walls, ceiling or doors – and
guests sleep on a double bed
this country the equivalent of £36.02 per head – more than double the per
capita loss in the US (£14.25) and far more than in Canada
on a platform next to a petrol
station. The Riklin brothers,
Ruth Sunderland (£6.29) and Australia (£7.11). Why are we so vulner­able? Because who are conceptual artists,
say that guests are invited to
our anti-fraud regime is so useless: a “cat’s cradle” of more than
“half sleep”, but are mainly
The Daily Mail 20 police and other official bodies, it’s “a recipe for confusion encouraged to spend the
and buck-passing”. Last year, only one in 1,000 reports of fraud night reflecting on the world.
resulted in a charge. Time to get real. We need a single body, “Sleep is not the point,” said
overseen by a dedicated fraud minister, to run an anti-fraud Frank Riklin. “Staying here is
campaign. We need a dramatic boost to the quota of fraud a statement about the need
specialists in the police. Banks and tech giants such as Facebook for urgent changes in
must be forced to face up to their responsibilities and reimburse society.” They charge 325
customers who get ripped off. Let’s take the fight to the fraudsters. Swiss francs (£280) per room.

THE WEEK 2 July 2022

 Best of the American columnists NEWS 15

A sunshine state of mind: the mass exodus to Florida

Year-round warm weather. Beaches.
Low taxes. A rich Hispanic and Latino
culture. It’s easy to see the appeal of
Florida, said Jonathan Levin on
Bloomberg. Yet while Americans have
long enjoyed taking holidays in the
Sunshine State and retiring there, not
that many working-age people have
ever chosen to up sticks and move
there – until now. Thanks to the rise
of remote working, a large number
of Americans have chosen to settle
in Florida over recent years. The census
estimates that between July 2020 and
July 2021 alone, it saw a net gain of Downtown Miami: “Wall Street South”
221,000 residents. Tech firms are
pouring in, and a growing cluster of finance companies around
Miami and West Palm Beach has been dubbed “Wall Street
South”. It’s an exciting time for a state that has long struggled
to establish an economic identity outside of trade and tourism.
So Florida is the new New York, eh? What rot, said Steve
Cuozzo in the New York Post. “Chattering-class media slobs”
are gushing over the state after a few junkets to “overhyped
food and art festivals”, but the picture they paint bears little
resemblance to “real life in the land of palm trees, manatees and objection is often applied to the Sunbelt – and, especially, to
badly mixed mojitos”. The reality is an alligator-infested state
beset by hurricanes and floods, where
the humid summers are – according
to friends who live there – “like living
inside a wet sock”, and where the
dominant cultural icon is Mickey
Mouse. The truth is that “Florida
sucks”. All the New Yorkers settling
there will be back in five years.
Speaking as a Brooklyn native who
has made the move, I wouldn’t bet on
that, said Karol Markowicz in the US
Spectator. I’ve encountered no pangs
of regrets among my fellow migrants.
It’s not just the weather and the
plentiful school places; it’s the
freedom from overly bossy politicians, and the sense of local
pride. Whereas New York is holding on to “a heyday long since
past”, Florida feels open and forward-looking. I’ve lived in the
state for five years now, said Charles C.W. Cooke in the New
York Post, and I certainly have no plans to return to New York.
It’s worth remembering that America’s tastemakers were once
“baffled” by people choosing to relocate to California. Why,
they wondered, would anyone want to go all the way out
there? “Eventually, it became obvious why. In 2022, the same
Florida.” Stand by for history to repeat itself.

Mike Pence is the hero of the hour, says Jack Shafer. Amid the congressional hearings into the
6 January storming of the Capitol, a slew of politicians and pundits have been hailing the former
Mike Pence vice-president as a “saviour of democracy” for defying Donald Trump that day by officially
validating the election result. Is all this praise deserved? Hardly. Yes, Pence did his duty by counting
the hero? the electoral votes, as every vice-president before him has done. And yes, he showed some courage by
insisting on completing this ceremonial role, when the Secret Service wanted to whisk him away from
Hardly the mob to safety. But this plucky act followed years in which Pence slavishly deferred to Trump and
passed up countless opportunities to challenge him. In the wake of the election, Pence searched for
Jack Shafer ways to satisfy Trump’s order to invalidate it, according to Bob Woodward and Robert Costa’s book
Peril. To that end, he asked a predecessor, Dan Quayle, if there was any way to pause certification.
Politico “Mike, you have no flexibility on this. None. Zero. Forget it. Put it away,” Quayle reportedly told
him. Even today, Pence is still shielding Trump by declining the 6 Jan committee’s invitation to testify,
for fear of damaging his own leadership hopes. This man is no hero. “Please cancel the parade.”

It’s time for some blunt speaking, says Mark Leibovich. President Biden “should not run for re-
election in 2024. He is too old.” He may not be the doddering, dementia-ridden caricature that critics
Admit it: depict him as, but there’s no denying that he looks and sounds older and more “tentative” than he
did two years ago. Spinal arthritis causes him to walk with a stiff gait, and he frequently mangles
Biden’s too old sentences and loses his train of thought, while aides “look visibly nervous”. He will be 80 in
November, and 86 at the end of a hypothetical second term. Saddled with approval ratings of about
to run again 40% amid high inflation and soaring gas prices, Biden is coming to represent “the tired and hobbled
state of his agenda and the Democratic Party”. The main rationale for Biden to run again in 2024
Mark Leibovich – as he has repeatedly promised to – is that the Democrats have no obvious alternative candidates.
“Vice-President Kamala Harris has not exactly asserted herself as the clamoured-for heir apparent.”
The Atlantic But were Biden to announce that he would be stepping aside after one term, it would generate a
much-needed debate in his party about its best way forward, and help new leaders emerge. It would
also give him more freedom, and earn him some goodwill. “Everyone loves an elder statesman.”

Is anything out of bounds in today’s Republican Party? A good test of that, says Henry Olsen, will
be how it responds to the ghastly campaign ad recently put out by a contender for the GOP senate
RINO-hunting nomination in Missouri. “I’m Eric Greitens, Navy Seal, and today we’re going RINO hunting,” the
former Missouri governor declares in the video; RINO is a contemptuous term for those who are
with a vile “Republicans in name only”. He then joins a group of armed, camouflage-clad men as they pile into
a house throwing what look like stun grenades. “Join the MAGA crew,” declares Greitens. “Get a
Republican RINO-hunting permit. There’s no bagging limit, no tagging limit, and it doesn’t expire until we save
our country.” Even in the best of times, this would be a “disgusting, tasteless ad”. But in today’s
Henry Olsen partisan climate, in the wake of terrible mass shootings, it’s “positively vile”. Greitens clearly has no
shame. He was forced to resign as governor in 2018 after being accused of blackmailing his mistress
The Washington Post with nude photos. His ex-wife says he abused her and his children (he denies all the allegations). It
was the phrase “Have you no sense of decency?” that finally did for the anti-communist crusader
Joseph McCarthy. “That’s what Republicans from Trump on down need to tell Greitens now.”

2 July 2022 THE WEEK

16 NEWS Best articles: International
Jupiter humbled: Macron loses his majority
Emmanuel Macron appears
“stunned” by his sudden fall
from grace, said David Revault
d’Allonnes in Le Journal du
Dimanche (Paris). In April, he
convincingly beat his rival Marine
Le Pen to become the first French
president to win a second term this
century. Yet now, just two months
later, he has been humiliated by
voters who last week denied him
a majority in France’s National
Assembly. After a muted campaign,
Macron’s rebranded “Ensemble”
party was left 44 seats short of the
majority he enjoyed in his first Macron: “stuck between the radical left and extreme right” “a victory for parliamentary
term. His vote share was badly
dented by a Left-Green alliance, the “New Ecological and Social Balmer in Die Tageszeitung (Berlin). The unhealthy
People’s Union” (Nupes) formed by far-left firebrand Jean-Luc
Mélenchon, which won 131 seats to establish itself as the main
opposition bloc. It was also squeezed by Le Pen’s far-right
National Rally (RN) party, which won 89 seats, its best result
ever; while the conservative Republicans won 61 seats. The
results leave France in a political crisis: Macron, who gained
power by siphoning off votes from the traditional left and right,
finds himself “stuck between the radical left and extreme right”.
Macron is scrambling to solve the “puzzle” of how to govern
effectively, said Olivier Bost in RTL (Paris). Having consulted
rival party leaders, he has ruled out a government of national
unity. The Republicans would be Ensemble’s most natural
coalition partners, but they’ve shown little appetite for a formal
pact; the Nupes and RN would be hard, or impossible, to work
with. That leaves the possibility of Macron leading a minority
government and seeking support on a bill-by-bill basis. Such
“instability” could be disastrous, said Le Monde (Paris). The
climate, healthcare, education, the cost of living, pension reform including his labour market reforms and his largely competent
– these are all areas that demand urgent attention. But with
Macron’s opponents ready to hold him to ransom on nearly
every issue, the risk of “political deadlock” is all too real.
“And yet,” said Philippe Rioux in La Dépêche (Toulouse),
“what if this new Assembly was an opportunity?” True,
French parties are unused to
coalition-building. But minority
governments and deals between
parties are the norm elsewhere in
Europe: no party has an absolute
majority in 21 out of 27 EU
member states, and many of those
function well enough. In France,
new laws will benefit from the
extra scrutiny they’ll receive
from the opposition parties on
whose support they may depend;
and the Assembly will better reflect
France’s fragmented political
landscape. These results were
democracy”, agreed Rudolf
concentration of power in the Élysée, a source of resentment
among voters who feel disconnected from decision-makers, will
be diluted. And the Assembly will no longer “limit itself to
waving through” bills and acting as “a rubber stamp club”.
It isn’t just at home that Macron has been weakened, said
Michaela Wiegel in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung; his
standing on “the European stage” will be damaged by these
results, too. True, the president still retains extensive powers
over foreign and defence policy. But Paris may well become
more inward-looking than usual, and even more focused on
fighting for its own national interests in the EU. “The full scale
of repercussions following the defeat has yet to fully unfold,”
said Clea Caulcutt on Politico.eu (Brussels). The future of
Élisabeth Borne, a technocrat whom Macron appointed prime
minister in May, is already in doubt. And Mélenchon’s left-wing
allies plan to table a no-confidence vote as early as July – a vote
Macron could well lose. The president has had some successes,
handling of Covid-19. But these results are a damning rebuke to
the president’s “top-down” leadership style, which has earned
him a reputation for “arrogance”. When Macron first came
to power in 2017, he said that France needed a Jupiter-like
president: remote and dignified, like the king of the Roman gods.
Five years on, it seems that “Jupiter has fallen out of orbit”.

Farewell, then, to the Jumbo Floating Restaurant. Ever since it was opened in 1976 by the casino
HONG KONG tycoon Stanley Ho Hung-sun, this fixture of Hong Kong life has delighted visitors to the city, says
The sad Kate Whitehead. Admittedly, “the food wasn’t phenomenal”, but it was “bold, brash and demanded
attention”. Built in the style of an imperial palace, it was the world’s largest floating eatery. Everyone
demise of a from the Queen to Tom Cruise flocked to the “flamboyant” venue in the Aberdeen Harbour, drawn
by its “neon lights and gold trim”, and the ferry ride to reach it. It featured in several films; it went
floating icon up in flames in one “epic scene” of the TV version of James Clavell’s Noble House. But it had been
“haemorrhaging cash” in the pandemic, and last week its owners towed it away, intending to take it
South China Morning Post to a Cambodian shipyard. En route, it seems to have capsized in the South China Sea. (“Quelle
(Hong Kong) surprise... You have to wonder about the insurance payout.”) Most locals only went to the Jumbo
once, to check it out, but they still mourn its loss. “It was part of the landscape, a cultural icon.”

Is anti-Semitism acceptable in Germany today? That, say Jörg Häntzschel and Catrin Lorch, was the
GERMANY question raised at the contemporary art fair Documenta, a prestigious event held in the city of Kassel.
Anti-Semitic Quite remarkably, as part of the taxpayer-funded exhibition, People’s Justice, a 60ft banner by Taring
Padi, a collective of Indonesian artists, was hung in the city centre. This sprawling, cartoonish work
propaganda depicted Jews, Goebbels-style, as “pigs and monsters”. There were Israeli soldiers in riot gear, with
pigs’ heads. It featured a classic “caricature of a Jew”, with sidelocks, a cigar, vampire-like teeth –
at the art fair and a black hat bearing SS insignia. The artists tried to excuse the work, saying it wasn’t anti-Semitic,
but was “culturally specific to our own experiences” of Indonesia’s Suharto dictatorship. “As if
Süddeutsche Zeitung hatred of Jews is culture-specific, as if it were only dreadful to belittle Jews in Germany.” They even
(Munich) bemoaned the backlash as a sign of “the impossibility of dialogue at this moment” – as if anti-Semitic
tropes could ever be conducive to dialogue. The work was covered with drapes after the first
complaints were made. It was finally taken down, after the culture minister Claudia Roth intervened,
four days later. But the hours it was on display for were dark ones indeed.

THE WEEK 2 July 2022

18 NEWS
What the scientists are saying…
A balance test for longer life
Balancing on one leg may seem an inane
exercise, but a major new study has
suggested that the ability to do so, for
more than ten seconds, is an overlooked
marker of health, and should be integrated
into routine health screenings for older
people. For the study, 1,702 Brazilians
aged 51 to 75 were asked to do a balance
test, and then they had their health
monitored for a decade. Once the
researchers had accounted for age, sex and
underlying health conditions, they found
that the participants who had not been
able to balance on one leg for ten seconds
were 84% more likely to die of any cause
over the ten-year period than the others.
Nearly one in six of the poor balancers
died, compared with one in 22 of the
rest; they also had higher rates of heart
disease and high blood pressure. The
study did not look into why poor
balance might be associated with poor
health outcomes, but it is not the first to
find the association: previous research has
shown a link between poor balance and
elevated risk of dementia and stroke.
Bee-eaters are a worrying sign
The arrival in Norfolk of a group of
brightly coloured European bee-eaters
has delighted bird watchers, but
conservationists have warned that it is a
“worrying sign” of climate change. The
starling-sized birds, which have red backs,
blue bellies and yellow throats, are usually
found in southern Europe and northern
Africa. But several have now been
observed making nesting burrows in a
sand quarry near the Norfolk village of
Trimingham. Although the birds did not
breed in the UK between 1956 and 2001,
this is the sixth known nesting attempt in
Britain this century. “While an incredible
Health & Science
Bee-eaters: incredible but “worrying”
sight, we mustn’t forget that the arrival of
these birds to our shores is due to changes
to our climate and subsequent pressures
on wildlife both here and across the
globe,” said Mark Thomas of the RSPB.
“Pushed northwards by climate change,
these exotic birds will probably become
established summer visitors in the future.”
New “light” therapy for cancer
An international team of scientists has
developed an innovative “light-activated”
therapy for treating aggressive brain
cancer. The “photoimmunotherapy” works
by forcing microscopic cancer cells to glow
in the dark, making it possible for surgeons
to see and remove more of them. Similar
“guided” techniques are already in use,
but as well as the fluorescent dye, the
new therapy includes a cancer-targeting
compound to boost the body’s immune
response. In a trial in mice with brain
cancer, it dramatically improved the
visibility of cancer cells during surgery,
then triggered a response which wiped
out residual cells; this should make the
cancer less likely to recur.
Coffee makes you spend more
Shoppers who drink a cup of coffee before
hitting the aisles are more likely to make
impulse purchases, a study has found.
Researchers from the University of South
Florida set up espresso machines outside
stores in France and Spain, and offered
more than 300 shoppers a free drink.
About half had a coffee containing 100mg
of caffeine, while the rest had decaf coffee
or water. Those who had a hit of caffeine
spent about 50% more money and bought
nearly 30% more items than those who
had drunk decaf coffee or water. “Caffeine,
as a powerful stimulant, releases dopamine
in the brain, which excites the mind and
the body,” said lead author Prof Dipayan
Biswas. “This leads to a higher energetic
state, which in turn enhances impulsivity
and decreases self-control.”
The price of an ideal life
Most people in Britain don’t think they’d
need to be richer than Croesus to live their
dream life, a study has indicated. Most
of us reckon £8m would do it. For the
research, 7,860 people from 33 countries
were asked to picture their “absolutely
ideal life”, and to specify the amount they
thought they’d have to win to afford it. In
the UK, 62% thought £8m or less would
be adequate, and five times as many chose
£800,000 (27%) than opted for £800m
million (14%). Only 14% grabbed the
largest sum (£100bn), more than in China
(8%) but fewer than in the US (32%) and
Indonesia, which came top with 39%. The
findings, said the team, challenge the idea
that humans have “unlimited wants”.

An Anglo-Saxon cemetery for the rich NHS breast cancer drug

The discovery of a huge Anglo-Saxon burial Thousands of women in England who
ground in Buckinghamshire has shed rare have breast cancer could benefit from
light on the lives of the elite in that period. a pill that has been approved by the
NHS’s treatments watchdog, the
In total, 141 bodies were found, dating from National Institute for Health and Care
the fifth and sixth centuries, three-quarters Excellence (Nice). Trials of the drug,
of which were buried with high-quality named abemaciclib, have shown that
grave goods – ranging from brooches and people who take it while receiving
spears to ear-wax removers, toothpicks, hormone therapy have a more than
tweezers, and a tube that may have been 30% improved chance of their cancer
used for eyeliner. There were also two glass not returning, compared with those
beakers, possibly imported from France, who have hormone therapy alone.
that could have been used to drink wine, The pill works by targeting and
inhibiting proteins in cancer cells that
and an ornate bowl that might have been an cause the cancer to grow. It’s taken
heirloom from the Roman era. “Ordinarily Part of a bounty of “luxury grave goods” twice a day, and is recommended for
we find graves and we are stunned if we find people with hormone receptor positive,
one example of luxury grave goods,” said Rachel Wood, who led the research, in an HER2-negative, node-positive early
area that was excavated in advance of the HS2 rail line being built through it. “This breast cancer at high risk of recurrence,
is the opposite. With this site you can see wealth and displays of power everywhere.” post-surgery. A packet of 56 pills
The dead included men, women and children; one of them was a young man of 17 normally costs £2,950, but Eli Lilly,
to 24, whose collarbone had been stained blue by the brooch that had been resting the manufacturer, has agreed to sell
against it for well over 1,000 years; he appeared to have been stabbed to death. the drug to NHS England for an
undisclosed discount.

THE WEEK 2 July 2022

20 NEWS
Pick of the week’s
Gossip
The broadcaster Gyles
Brandreth’s first job was
singing in the choir at Holy
Trinity Brompton church in
London, where funerals
were far better remunerated
than weddings. “We
choirboys would kneel
down and through our
fingers we would survey the
congregation and agree on
who was the oldest-looking
member,” he wrote in
The Daily Telegraph. “And
we would pray to God to kill
them.” God had a tendency
to answer these prayers,
he added. “I loved the fact
that God was on the side
of the entrepreneur.”
The Queen gave an assured
performance opposite
Paddington Bear in a sketch
to mark the jubilee last
month. And if the ex-French
president François Hollande
is to be believed, she’d have
liked to have done more of
that kind of thing. “I would
have loved to have been an
actress,” she reportedly told
him at a dinner in 2014. “But
in a way, you are one,” he
replied. “Yes,” the Queen
conceded. “But it’s always
playing the same role.”
Vladimir Nabokov had clear
views about his fellow
writers. Now, these have
been compiled into a “hot or
not” list that has gone viral.
It reveals that he deemed
John Milton to be “a genius”,
but T.S. Eliot “not quite first-
rate”. War and Peace was,
for his money, “a little too
long” and written “for the
young”; D.H. Lawrence was
“execrable”; Camus was
“puffed up”; Sartre was
“even more awful than
Camus”; and Dostoyevsky
was “a cheap
sensationalist”. He had
no time for Freud, either:
“loathe him”, he wrote.
THE WEEK 2 July 2022
Talking points
Pay demands: a summer of discontent
This “summer of discontent”
is starting to get silly, said
Richard Littlejohn in the Daily
Mail. The railways are already
in chaos; British Airways staff
are threatening walkouts
during the school holidays,
over a 10% pay cut introduced
during the pandemic; doctors
are calling for a 30% pay rise
over five years; teaching
unions have threatened to
ballot their members in
support of “inflation-plus”
pay rises; and this week, even
barristers got in on the action,
downing wigs in demand of a
hike in legal aid payments. At
Barristers are “downing wigs”
this rate, the whole country
will be on strike before long.
We may well be facing a wave of industrial
action, said The Independent, which will add
to the general sense of “malaise” gripping the
country. But don’t put it down to a “sudden
outbreak of Marxism”; what we have here is
more a matter of supply and demand. There
are currently more vacancies than there are
jobseekers; and in “a tight labour market”,
people are less likely to accept below-inflation
pay rises. Private sector bosses are already giving
in to the pressure, said The Sunday Times.
Average pay growth there has been 8% over
the past year. By contrast, public sector pay is up
1.5%. It’s unrealistic for unions to seek parity
with the private sector, not least because public
The new Bill of Rights: eroding liberties?
The European Court of Human Rights has
“arrogated to itself” much more power than it
was originally meant to have, said The Daily
Telegraph. It was designed to interpret the
European Convention on Human Rights
(ECHR), introduced in 1953 to ensure that the
horrors of Nazism were never repeated. But it
has gone “far beyond” its remit, creating its own
laws, above the heads of elected governments.
It has, for instance, overruled the UK
Government’s decision not to give prisoners the
vote, and more recently blocked the deportation
of asylum seekers to Rwanda. Now Dominic
Raab, the Justice Secretary, has proposed a new
UK Bill of Rights, designed to inject “more
common sense” into the legal system. It will
replace the Human Rights Act passed by Tony
Blair in 1998, which first incorporated the
ECHR directly into UK law. Raab’s bill makes
clear that the “ultimate arbiter” of law in this
country is the UK Supreme Court, said The
Times. The bill does need careful scrutiny. But
it’s a sensible “compromise” that wisely stops
short of leaving the ECHR altogether.
No it isn’t sensible, said The Guardian. This
is “a retrograde step”, an “erosion of liberty”
pursued as part of a long-standing Tory
“vendetta” against the Human Rights Act. Raab
invokes common sense, but that’s a question “of
sector workers tend to enjoy
more generous pensions; but
ministers may struggle to keep
pay rises in the 2-3% range
they’d envisaged. All the more
reason not to accede to RMT
boss Mick Lynch, said
Gerald Warner on Reaction.
Rail workers are better paid
than most; if these relative
“fat cats” get the 7% they
want, it will open a floodgate
of demand from teachers and
nurses who’ve had real-terms
pay cuts in the past decade.
There has been a lot of
misleading talk about rail
workers’ pay, said Hannah
Fearn on The Independent. People point to train
drivers on £60K a year; but it’s not drivers who
are on strike. The RMT doesn’t represent them;
it represents skilled workers such as engineers
and also low-paid cleaners and others who have
not had a raise for three years. It suits ministers
to depict the railworkers as greedy and selfish,
said Kenan Malik in The Observer, and their
union leaders as overmighty barons. In fact, the
right to strike has been heavily curtailed in the
past 40 years, and corporations now have far
“more leverage than unions could ever muster”.
The withdrawal of labour is about the only
means workers have “of restoring a modicum
of balance in a highly unequal relationship”. In
other words, for people at the bottom, unions
represent their best hope of “levelling up”.
cultural norms, not universal rights”, and this
bill deliberately weakens the latter. While it may
not actually pull us out of the European Court
of Human Rights, it dilutes the protections the
ECHR provides for the vulnerable. It introduces
additional hurdles for human rights cases, and
makes it easier to deport foreign-born criminals,
by chipping away at their right to family life
under the Convention. Also chilling is the
“authoritarian” and “unprecedented” way the
Government is rushing this through, said Merris
Amos on The Conversation. This is a “wholesale
revision” of our constitution. Usually, such a step
would require extensive consultation. Yet Raab
introduced a “previously unpublished 44-page
constitutional bill” to Parliament, and then held
the second reading debate the very next day.
Despite its grandiose title, this is no Bill of
Rights, said David Allen Green in Prospect.
Instead, it is designed to limit the effectiveness of
rights that already exist: its hazy provisions try
to make it more difficult to assert them. But the
crucial point is that the ECHR will still remain
part of domestic law. So anyone who feels that
the bill is “reducing or removing” Convention
rights will still be able to petition the European
Court. Paradoxically, it might mean more cases
ending up in Strasbourg. Raab’s Bill of Rights is
a waste of time, but it’s not a catastrophe.
 Talking points NEWS 21

Polio: is the old scourge returning? Wit &

Gordon Richardson was only
three when he was paralysed by
polio. “At first I could only use
(most cases are asymptomatic).
We only know about the virus’s
presence because of Britain’s
Wisdom
my right eyelid,” he told Eleanor effective system of waste-water “The ordinary is the proper
Hayward in The Times. analysis. And this disease should domain of the artist, the
“Gradually the feeling returned be easy enough to control. We extraordinary may be safely
to my head, shoulders and arms.” have a vaccine which is 99-100% left to journalists.”
But his legs “never worked effective, and about 85% of James Joyce, quoted in
again”, and he has no memory Britons have had it; this will The Sunday Times
of being able to walk. At his prevent it from spreading. “I have never been able to
boarding school in Yorkshire, find out precisely what
he’d drag himself upstairs to his There are two types of polio, feminism is; I only know
dormitory using only his arms.“I said Tom Chivers in The i Paper. that people call me a
was the first pupil in a wheelchair There’s the “wild” type, which has feminist whenever I express
to attend the school. Sometimes been eradicated in all but a few sentiments that differentiate
the other boys would help by areas such as the borders of me from a doormat.”
picking me up and carrying me Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Rebecca West, quoted
around. But mostly I just got on kind found in London’s waste on Slate
with life.” Richardson had caught water is the second form, a
the disease in 1956, towards the A polio patient in the 1950s “vaccine-derived poliovirus”. This “A reputation once broken
end of a wave of epidemics that comes from the type of vaccine may possibly be repaired,
swept western Europe in the 20th century. At its that uses a live, but weakened virus, which is but the world will always
peak in the mid-1940s, polio caused paralysis in administered orally on a pill or sugar lump. keep their eyes on the spot
7,000 people, largely children, each year in Sometimes the weakened strain is able to where the crack was.”
Britain; many were kept alive using iron lungs. reproduce itself in vaccinated people, and to Bishop Joseph Hall, quoted
It spread mostly via contaminated water in cities. spread to others; it can become as dangerous as in The Times
So last week’s news that the polio virus had been the wild type. The oral vaccine has not been used
“Love that stammers, that
detected in sewage from north and east London in Britain since 2004; we now use an injected,
stutters, is apt to be the love
has understandably caused concern. deactivated virus instead. But the oral vaccine
that loves best.”
is still used in many parts of the world, because
Gabriela Mistral, quoted
“Covid-19 variants, monkeypox and now polio: it’s cheap and easy to administer. “The likeliest
on The Browser
you might wonder what else will be thrown at explanation” for the polio in our waste water is
us in 2022,” said Devi Sridhar in The Guardian. that it came from someone who was given the “I have found some
But though polio’s return must be taken vaccine as a child abroad. This discovery is a of the best reasons I ever
seriously, there’s no need to panic. No one has salutary reminder that “polio is still out there had for remaining at the
come forward suffering from its symptoms – it is damaged but not defeated”. bottom simply by looking
at the men at the top.”
Frank Moore Colby, quoted
Tactical voting: a threat to the Tories in the Los Angeles Times

A Liberal Democrat canvasser were too opposed to Jeremy “An adventure is only
found himself in a quandary last Corbyn. But tactical voting is an inconvenience
week as he made a final push “back with a vengeance”, and rightly considered.”
before the by-election in Tiverton it could transform the electoral G.K. Chesterton, quoted
and Honiton, said Toby Helm arithmetic. I’m not so sure, said in Forbes
and Michael Savage in The Peter Hitchens in The Mail on “An appeaser is one who
Observer. Every vote was crucial, Sunday. Voters often lend feeds a crocodile, hoping it
yet the house in front of him had support to other parties in will eat him last.”
a huge Labour poster in front of by-elections, but they tend Winston Churchill, Ibid.
it. Was it even worth knocking? “to troop back to their tribal
He decided to give it a go – and banners” at general elections. “Everything’s already
was delighted to find that been said, but since nobody
although the homeowner had It’s true that by-election voting was listening, we have to
intended to vote Labour, she had Ed Davey on the campaign trail patterns are never replicated start again.”
decided to switch to the Lib exactly in national polls, said André Gide, quoted in
Dems. She was just one of many Labour Philip Collins in The New Statesman. Some of The Washington Post
supporters who made that choice, helping the the Tories’ worst by-election losses (Christchurch
Lib Dems win the Tory stronghold. In Wakefield, in 1993, for example, or Corby in 2012) Statistics of the week
Lib Dem voters returned the favour, and helped reverted to being Tory seats at the subsequent In 1997, the average age of
Labour’s candidate to victory. These voters had general election. But if the “unspoken pact” Glastonbury headliners was
worked out for themselves how to punish the between Labour and the Lib Dems holds at all 26; in 2019, it was 49. This
Tories. “No pacts, no deals: just common sense.” when the country next goes to the polls, “which year, it fell slightly to 45.
If this tactical voting catches on at the next it surely will, then the Tories are going to come The Guardian
election, the Conservatives will be in trouble. second in a lot of places”. Almost all the seats More than half the Covid
being targeted by Labour and the Lib Dems are vaccines pledged by G7
We haven’t witnessed much of this sort of held by the Conservatives, which makes them countries to poorer ones have
thing for the past decade, said Peter Kellner particularly vulnerable to tactical voting. Add in still not been delivered; the
in The Guardian. Labour voters were loath to the fact that “there are a lot of people who really UK has delivered only 39% of
the 100 million jabs it pledged.
lend any support to a party that had gone into do want Boris Johnson out”, and it doesn’t
Oxfam/The Independent
coalition with the Tories, while Lib Dem voters augur well for the Tories.

2 July 2022 THE WEEK

22 NEWS
Cricket: another spectacular win for England
England’s fourth innings run chase in the
third Test against New Zealand this week
was never going to finish with a “dribbled
single into the leg side”, said Mike Atherton
in The Times. That just “wouldn’t have
been fitting” for the new approach initiated
by England’s new head coach, New
Zealander Brendon McCullum, and its
new captain, Ben Stokes. Instead, England
sealed their 3-0 series victory with Jonny
Bairstow belting the gentle off-spin of
Michael Bracewell over long on and into
Headingley’s Football Stand for six. Set a
not insubstantial 296 for victory, England
had knocked off the runs for the loss of
three wickets, in a mere 54.2 overs.
Bairstow, in particular, had seemed a man
“in a rush”: joining Joe Root at the crease
in the first over of the fifth morning,
following Ollie Pope’s dismissal for 82, he Jack Leach: a complete transformation
“hurried the match to its conclusion in a
blizzard of boundaries”. In the process, he struck 50 runs off
30 deliveries – missing by two balls Ian Botham’s record for
England’s fastest Test half-century. It was a display that
encapsulated England’s relentlessly aggressive approach
throughout the series, which has seen them three times chase
down totals of more than 250. “New Zealand must have felt like
they had been hit by an unstoppable tidal wave.”
Since being appointed England captain at the start of the summer,
Ben Stokes has “revolutionised” how his team plays Test cricket,
said Nick Hoult in The Daily Telegraph. No previous England
captain has “stamped a mark” so quickly. What’s especially
remarkable is that this transformation has been achieved without
any big changes in personnel: by and large, this is the “same
group of players who crumbled under the merest hint of pressure
in the West Indies in March” – and who had managed just one
win in their previous 17 Tests. What Stokes and McCullum have
done so effectively is transform the mindset of their players.
Both are “clear communicators” who speak “in words every
player understands”. They have issued their team with clear
instructions: batsmen must be positive, and “look to score”
at every opportunity; bowlers must “bowl attacking lengths”,
and not worry too much about conceding runs. As a result, for
Sport
the first time in years, this is an England Test
team with “a distinct identity”.
Also crucial to the success of the new regime
has been its philosophy of fully backing
players, said Tim Wigmore in the same
paper. In Australia last winter, batsmen
were shown videos of their dismissals. The
Stokes way, by contrast, is “to focus on
what players can do”, not dwell on their
past failures. And this has had a galvanising
effect on team members. Pope, promoted
to number three, has for the first time
looked like a Test batsman. Bairstow, given
licence to follow his attacking instincts, has
smashed two match-winning centuries.
However, no England cricketer has
undergone more of a transformation than
left-arm spinner Jack Leach. Having been
in and out of the side for years – and rarely
selected at home – Leach all of a sudden
found himself being endorsed by Stokes as a “bowler who could
help win England Test matches in all climes”. And he fully repaid
the confidence of his captain: at Headingley, he took five wickets
in each innings – becoming just the fifth England spinner in the
past 45 years to take ten wickets in a home Test.
It was in many ways apt that the day after England completed
their series win, Eoin Morgan – England’s white-ball captain
for the past seven years – announced his retirement from
international cricket, said Paul Newman in the Daily Mail. For
what England are doing under Stokes is “bringing the same
dynamic, high-octane approach to Test cricket that Morgan
pioneered in the white-ball game”. The two revolutions even
started in similar circumstances: Morgan’s began in 2015, after
“the desperate low” of that year’s World Cup, and fully got into
its groove during that summer’s one-day series against New
Zealand, which England won 3-2. Adopting an “ultra-positive”
style in the “three-dimensional game that is Test cricket” is
certainly no easy feat – and England, who at times rode their
luck against New Zealand, must expect some “bumps in the
road”. One thing, however, is undeniable: “something seismic
and significant has begun in this series”. Watching England over
the coming months is going to be a lot of fun.

Wimbledon: the need to be colourful Upcoming sporting highlights

Overly pernickety. That criticism has
often been directed at Wimbledon’s
strict all-white dress code over the
years, says Fiona Tomas in The Daily
Telegraph. But now the code has been
exposed to a new line of attack: given
the inevitability that some women will
have to play while menstruating, several
female players, in the run-up to this
year’s Championships, have complained
that “whites” are simply impractical.
Monica Puig, the 2016 Rio Olympics
gold medallist, recalled the “mental
stress” she went through before her
last Wimbledon, all the time “praying
not to have [her] period during those
two weeks”. “The white clothes are a
nightmare if you are on your period,”
agreed Rebecca Marino of Canada.
Now that a subject that has “long
been a taboo” is finally being aired, it’s
surely time for the All-England club to
relax its dress code, said Owen Slot in
The Times. Yet, as recently as 2014, the
Serena Williams: gently flouting the rule
Championships have actually gone “the
other way”, tightening the code to head
off a trend for colourful underwear. It’s a
foolish reaction. Numerous surveys have
shown that there is a problem keeping
girls in sport, and that anxiety around
periods plays a big role in their decision
to drop out. Wimbledon should “get on
the front foot and grasp the issue”.
The Tour de France begins on 1 July in
Denmark, where the first three stages will
be held. Tadej Pogacar, the 23-year-old
Slovenian, who has won the last two editions
of the race, is the overwhelming favourite.
England’s rugby team play three Tests in
Australia, with the first on 2 July.
The Women’s Euro 2022 will take place in
England from 6-31 July. Sarina Wiegman’s
England team have been on impressive
form in their warm-up games: they beat
defending champions Holland 5-1.
In golf, the 150th Open Championship takes
place at St Andrews from 10-17 July.
The 2022 World Athletics Championships
will be held in Oregon, USA, from 15-24 July.
England’s cricketers have a packed
schedule in the coming weeks, with their
series-concluding Test against India
(delayed from last summer) at the start
of July, followed by a three-match Test
series against South Africa in late August
and September.

THE WEEK 2 July 2022


Pick of the week’s correspondence
Barristers must choose...
To The Times
I wonder what advice the
learned Lord Chief Justice
(salary £267,509 per annum)
feels able to give those young
barristers doing solely criminal
work and on the edge of
penury. Give up the Bar? Stay
at the Bar but give up criminal
work? Or carry on doing solely
criminal work but join the
queue at your local food bank?
Malcolm Bishop QC, 3 Hare
Court, London
...but rules are rules
To The Times
It is ironic that a letter from so
many QCs would demand
special pleading (24 June). The
Lord Chief Justice cannot take
a side in the Bar’s dispute with
the Government but must
continue to enforce rules
neutrally and without fear or
favour. If barristers fail to keep
the obligation they gave to
attend court on a certain day,
the Lord Chief Justice cannot
ignore this without implicitly
endorsing the strike and
compromising his neutrality.
The direction that judges
should sanction barristers who
break rules is thus a judicial
and wise course of action.
That criminal QCs read this
as “intimidation” is absurd.
Barristers may have good
reason to strike, but they cannot
expect no consequences if they
choose to break the rules.
Elijah Granet, The City Law
School, London
Featherbedding is rife...
To The Daily Telegraph
Oliver Gill’s report on archaic
practices supported by the rail
unions took my mind back 60
years. As a student, I had found
holiday employment as a relief
porter at Stobhill Hospital,
Glasgow. On my second day,
the department maid asked me
to put a new head on her floor
mop. I was about to set to
work when the storeman
(who was also the union shop
steward) said sharply: “You
can’t do that – that’s a joiner’s
job!” I thought he was joking.
He insisted upon the maid
submitting a requisition to the
works department. This was
done, and just three days later
a joiner appeared and the mop
was duly restored to service.
This introduction to restrictive
practices left a 17-year-old lad
● Letters have been edited
LETTERS 25
Exchange of the week live in a particular place. The
economy is not a museum.
Pathways to peace in Ukraine Those communities grew up
in the first place only because
To The Daily Telegraph they were economically viable.
The Rt Rev Nick Baines, Bishop of Leeds, is reported to Paul Green, Croydon
advocate a trading of Ukrainian land for peace with Russia.
We’ve been here before; it was called appeasement. It led to Let the teachers decide
a world war because it did not work. To The Guardian
Nick Reilly, Esher, Surrey In the 1980s, I worked in
the history department at
To The Daily Telegraph Abbeydale Grange School in
Does Germany want Ukraine to lose? Promises of military Sheffield, where the teaching
support have been backed up by little action. In fact, more of black history began with
effort seems to be going into blocking the flow of arms to the Arawaks and Caribs, using
Ukraine. Is Chancellor Olaf Scholz afraid of Vladimir textbooks published in the
Putin? Or is he anticipating partition and sees no profit Caribbean, so that West Indian
in prolonging the inevitable? history was not viewed wholly
Nicholas Woodeson, London in the context of slavers and
enslaved. We rounded off with
To The Guardian a section on Gary Byrd’s paean
Jonathan Powell is absolutely right to point out that a lasting to black pride, The Crown.
peace cannot be achieved in Ukraine if Russia feels humiliated, We could do this because the
as Germany did after the First World War. Ukraine, by curriculum was in our hands.
definition, cannot defeat Russia – therefore, however Much of that stopped with the
unpalatable it may be, it will have to make some territorial introduction of the national
concessions, probably in the pro-Russian areas that were de curriculum. Schools will
facto Russian territory before the invasion. develop the relationship to
But this choice is not Ukraine’s alone. The US-led Western history that David Olusoga
powers have pumped defensive weapons into the country to seeks when teachers are once
hurt Russia and slow its advance. These will not change the again entrusted with autonomy.
outcome, only delay it, and the more pain that is inflicted on Jeremy Waxman, Canterbury
Russia, the more it will press a hard bargain for peace. If the
West really wants to see peace in Ukraine, it must press Cronyism is corrosive
Volodymyr Zelensky to negotiate and agree concessions, To The Times
with the lever of stopping military supplies. We are driving I read with interest Clare
the agenda by prolonging the conflict, and it is within our Foges’s piece on the long-term
power to bring it to an end, if we want to. toxic effects of Jeremy Corbyn
Des Senior, Aylesbeare, Devon and, potentially, Boris Johnson
on their parties. Perhaps of
with a lifetime’s distaste for look at further efficiencies equal, if not more, concern
trade unionism. when politicians have reformed should be the impact of such
John Holm Gray, Goring-on- the numbers in the House of leaders on their respective
Thames, Oxfordshire Lords and the MP boundary parliamentary contingents.
changes – both initiatives that The selection of “believers”, on
...both on the railways... have been around for many occasion people with few ideas
To The Times years and could save some beyond loyalty to the leader,
It is astonishing that more than money for the public purse. has hardly been healthy for the
20 years after the Hatfield rail Colin Rodden, Olney, Bucks calibre of MPs. Without mass
crash, in which four people deselections, this could take
were killed and more than To be beside the seaside decades to address.
70 injured, that now, when To The Times Anand Menon, professor of
the use of sensors on trains can The economy directs resources European politics and foreign
detect track defects, the RMT to where they are most valued. affairs, King’s College London
should still insist on manual Our seaside villages have
inspections. For maintenance value to those who wish to
men to walk the line is resort to them for holidays.
inefficient and dangerous. Tourism employs local
Ronald Thwaites QC, Esher, people; if there were
Surrey some other form of viable
economic activity, it would
...and in the Lords be employing people on
To the Financial Times sufficient wages for them
I am concerned that this to afford those houses
Government is seeking to look themselves.
back rather than forward, Government can
suggesting we need to reduce manipulate the economy
civil service numbers by some only so far. It is a
“Surely no one can afford
90,000 posts back to 2016 fundamental error to to do both?!”
numbers. Perhaps civil service believe that “communities”
unions should say that we can have an enduring right to © PRIVATE EYE
2 July 2022 THE WEEK
 ARTS
Review of reviews: Books
Book of the week
The Case Against
the Sexual Revolution
by Louise Perry
Polity Press 200pp £14.99
The Week Bookshop £11.99
Is sexual freedom really as liberating as
it sounds? That, said Gaby Hinsliff in
The New Statesman, is the question
posed by Louise Perry’s new book,
“which tips a brisk bucket of cold
water over what’s sometimes called Hugh Hefner: made millions from sexual liberation
‘sex-positive’ feminism, or the idea that
anything goes between two consenting adults and that desire
should not be policed”. Unfortunately, Perry argues, this form
of liberation has chiefly liberated men. She compares the sexual
revolution “to an unfettered capitalist free market, creating an
explosion of opportunities for some” – largely for men seeking
commitment-free, sometimes aggressive sex – but condemning
the rest to “exploitation and insecurity”. Plenty of books have
denounced “pornified” culture, but the “full-throated boldness” of the gigantic internet porn industry. Most feminist tracts are fact-
this one sets it apart. Some of Perry’s views are “uncompromisingly free and choked with jargon, said Rachel Cooke in The Observer,
retro”: she recommends waiting for a few months before having
sex, only getting drunk in the company of trusted friends, and
embracing the security of marriage. “You don’t have to agree
with her entire world-view to find it thought-provoking.”
27
Perry has been compared to Mary
Whitehouse, but she is “no prude”, said
Suzanne Moore in The Daily Telegraph,
In her younger days she saw nothing
wrong with porn and bondage. What
changed her mind was working in a
rape crisis centre and discovering the
reality of sexual violence. Her most
radical argument is that rape is
hardwired into some males, for
evolutionary advantage, and that porn,
booze and dating apps have created the
perfect environment for it. “Perry’s
answers are not mine”, but this “clear-
sighted” book asks the right questions.
Perry’s “crisply readable” polemic
presents the world as a scary place
where casual sex is fraught with risks, said Susie Goldsbrough in
The Times. But her advice that women should avoid it seems both
unfair and impractical: a large proportion of rapes are domestic;
one in two rape victims are or were in a relationship with their
attacker. Even so, her account of the risks of porn culture is very
persuasive: the rise of “rough sex” defences in murder cases is
alarming, and the book makes a cast-iron link between that and
so it’s extraordinary to find one that not only presents radical
ideas but is well-researched and crystal clear. Provocative, urgent
and brave, The Case Against the Sexual Revolution “may turn out
to be one of the most important feminist books of its time.”

An Immense World
by Ed Yong
Bodley Head 464pp £20
The Week Bookshop £15.99
“We may feel like we are the masters of our planet,
having mapped every inch of its landmass and
stared into the guts of an atom,” said Killian Fox in
The Observer. But when it comes to understanding
what it’s like to be another animal – say, a bird
navigating by the Earth’s magnetic field – we “barely
know where to start”. This “magnificent” book
about animal perception reveals a world more
wondrously strange than we could have guessed: it’s
full of “little astonishments, beautifully rendered”. We learn that scallops have
up to 200 eyes on the edge of their shells, that crickets have ears on their knees,
and that most animals can see in ultraviolet colours. Ed Yong, a Pulitzer-winning
British science writer who works in America, “succeeds brilliantly in shedding
light on these alien worlds”.
Our human senses are tuned to detect only a fraction of our surroundings,
said Jackie Higgins in The Daily Telegraph. It’s hard enough to understand, for
instance, what it’s like to have a dog’s powerful sense of smell. It’s harder still
when it comes to senses we do not share: sharks, for instance, sensing their prey’s
electrical energy. Yong recreates the world in its “bewildering immensity” as he
takes us on an “encyclopaedic, rigorously researched” journey. Some non-human
senses are outlandish and even scary, said James McConnachie in The Sunday
Times. Catfish have taste buds all over their body; if you licked one, Yong notes,
“you’d taste each other”. Rattlesnakes can detect thermal radiation given off by
other creatures. Yong makes “heroic” efforts to try to understand how any of
this might feel: for the snakes, he suggests, infrared could be integrated with
vision, as if it were another colour. His delightful book prompts “a radical
rethink about the limits of what we know – what the world is, even”.
To order these titles or any other book in print, visit
theweekbookshop.co.uk or speak to a bookseller on 020-3176 3835
Opening times: Monday to Saturday 9am-5.30pm and Sunday 10am-4pm
Novel of the week
The Seaplane on Final Approach
by Rebecca Rukeyser
Granta 288pp £12.99
The Week Bookshop £9.99
Set in the Alaskan wilderness, Rebecca
Rukeyser’s “wistful and sardonic” first novel
is part adventure story, part coming-of-age tale,
said The Irish Times. Seventeen-year-old Mira is
working for the summer at a guest house run by
a married couple, Stu and Maureen, alongside
two other girls and a troubled chef. Much of her
time is spent fantasising sexually about a boy
she met the year before. Rukeyser’s descriptive
prose is assured and elegant, and the story
becomes increasingly tense, as Stu’s predatory
behaviour towards the girls becomes apparent.
Mira’s adolescent yearning is well captured in
this quirky, wry debut, said Siobhan Murphy in
The Times. Rukeyser provides a “deftly juggled”
mixture of merciless judgement and gentle
compassion for her characters’ failings. There’s
also plenty of comedy, said Cal Revely-Calder in
The Sunday Telegraph, though the story becomes
more “mature and melancholy” as it progresses.
The Seaplane on Final Approach is about how
“desire ruins everything”. And when the finale
arrives, it is “catastrophic” – but it also provides
“lengthy, gruesome fun”.

2 July 2022 THE WEEK

28 ARTS Drama & Music
Theatre: The Southbury Child
Bridge Theatre, London SE1 (0333-320 0052). Until 27 August Running time: 2hrs 30mins ★★★★
“Blissfully funny and ineffably disenchanted yet dogged wife,
touching”, Stephen Beresford’s and Sarah Twomey as the
new play about an Anglican bereaved mum. At times, the
vicar wrangling with his writing becomes too “cluttered”,
“mutinous” flock would have as if you are “watching a soap
“worked wonders” with opera at warp speed”. But the
audiences had it reached the whole adds up to a “rare and
stage when it was supposed to, heartfelt” portrait of post-
in 2020. Now, after two years Christian Britain; it is one of
of “biblical upset”, it feels those plays that “keeps you
almost “heaven-sent”, said talking well into the night”.
Dominic Cavendish in The Daily
Telegraph. Alex Jennings plays Alas, the piece has a fatal flaw:
David, a vicar in Dartmouth the central dilemma just isn’t
who has dug in his heels over entirely credible, said Ryan
a request from a grieving family Gilbey in The Guardian.
to decorate his church with Alex Jennings excels in a play that is “heaven-sent” Jennings is “delightfully witty
Disney balloons for their little and urbane” as David, and
girl’s funeral. His apparently “snobby callousness” enrages you just can’t quite believe that this equable man would be so
locals, leading to a stand-off “so tightly enwoven with competing intransigent in the face of devastating grief. Agreed, said Patrick
principles and conflicting emotions”, it creates “an almost Ibsenite Marmion in the Daily Mail. This is a good play, but with “fewer
intensity”. Yet the play’s wry tone, and its “dexterous” mix of gags” and tighter plotting, it could have been even better.
light and dark, “puts you more immediately in mind of Alan
Bennett”. It’s beautifully acted and profound, and has a “tear- The week’s other opening
stirringly cathartic” ending: it’s “my play of the year so far”. Tom, Dick & Harry New Vic Theatre, Newcastle-under-Lyme until
9 July, then Alexandra Palace, London N22, 26 July-28 August
The piece is deftly directed by Nicholas Hytner, and three-time Writer/director Theresa Heskins and an all-male cast weave
Olivier winner Jennings is “majestic” as David, who turns out to sight gags, clowning and songs into the “darkness and danger”
be a more complex and flawed figure than he first appears, said of the PoW story that inspired The Great Escape. The result is
Clive Davis in The Times. Indeed, there are first-rate performances “spectacularly imaginative” and entertaining (Observer).
from the entire cast, including Phoebe Nicholls as David’s

Albums of the week: three new releases

Jessie Buckley Regina Spektor: John Ireland:
and Bernard Home, Before Orchestral Works
Butler: For All and After Chandos
Our Days that Warners £12
Tear the Heart £12
EMI
£11

Drawing on multiple folk traditions, this
collaboration between the Irish actress
Jessie Buckley and the former Suede
guitarist Bernard Butler is simply
“mesmerising”, said Damien Morris in The
Observer. Buckley’s great strength as an
actress is that, “however preposterous
her character or dialogue, she locates
something true and compelling and makes
you believe it”. That same “rich, animating
intelligence” suffuses this collection. She
can be “puckish, yearning, impossibly
weary” and intimate, all in the space of one
song; and Butler’s “light, confident touch”
is the perfect foil for her “magical voice”.
As well as folk, this delightful record
leans into classical music, blues and rock,
said Siobhán Kane in The Irish Times.
A highlight is the track The Eagle & The
Dove, which seems to “dance on a kind of
musical tension, with Buckley’s impressive
vocal sweeping and soaring, interrogating
darkly lit corners, and Butler’s playing at
once complex and understated”. It is a
“magical and mysterious” album, with
“lovely moments” throughout.
Stars reflect the overall quality of reviews and our own independent assessment (5 stars=don’t miss; 1 star=don’t bother)
Born in Russia and raised in the US, Regina
Spektor made her name alongside the
Strokes and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs as part of
New York’s “fertile early Noughties garage-
rock scene”, said Will Hodgkinson in The
Times. But really this “most unique” of
New York songwriters “belonged to the
city’s florid traditions from decades
previously: the piano-led complexities of
Laura Nyro; the jazz romanticism of Billie
Holiday”. It is that sensibility that she brings
to the fore on this terrific album, her eighth;
it shows the full force of her playful but
sophisticated songwriting imagination.
Spektor’s music is “intimate enough to
feel like a friend speaking directly to you”,
but so robust that she is able to share
stages with bands such as the Strokes
and Kings of Leon, said Ali Shutler on NME.
This is her “most expansive, funny and
heartbreaking album” to date. It includes
some of the “haunted folk songs” for which
she is best known, but she pushes into
“vibrant, previously unexplored territory”
– with moments of urgent funk, emo-pop
and flamboyant surrealism. It’s great.
The conductor John Wilson is known for
thrilling Proms audiences with his concerts
of Hollywood and Broadway scores, said
Geoff Brown in The Times. These days,
though, the “dynamic maestro” is mostly
found “powering through colourful classical
repertoire” with his new Sinfonia of London.
The work of John Ireland, one of the more
introverted and impressionistic of British
20th century composers, seems an odd
match for Wilson’s energetic approach. But
it works a treat, with Wilson “punching out
the climaxes, keeping rhythms sharp and
breezy, and avoiding any hint of a droop”.
This is “lovely music, superbly played with
plenty of poetry and fire”.
It’s a great disc, agreed Ken Walton in The
Scotsman. Like a classic film score, Ireland’s
1946 Overture Satyricon “wallows in lyrical
sweetness”, yet offers “robust sophistication
– Elgar heading towards Vaughan Williams”.
There is “luscious originality” in A
Downland Suite. The symphonic rhapsody
Mai-Dun is “spirited and adventurous”.
And A London Overture opens like a
“demonised” version of Elgar’s Cockaigne.

THE WEEK 2 July 2022

 Film ARTS 29
Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis biopic isn’t “as much of a trip” as his 2001 musical Moulin Rouge!, but “it’s
never less than stimulating” to look at, said Brian Viner in the Daily Mail – “a spectacle as much as
a story”, with plenty of the director’s flourishes, including tricksy editing, split screen and slow-mo.
Austin Butler assumes the title role, while Tom Hanks, in a fat suit and acres of prosthetic jowl, is
scarcely recognisable as Colonel Tom Parker, Presley’s overbearing manager. The film covers most of
Presley’s life, from his rise to fame in the mid 1950s to his death in 1977: we see him recording those
early songs in Memphis; making movies; enlisting in the US army; meeting his future wife Priscilla
(Olivia DeJonge); and finally, overweight and unhappy during his lengthy Vegas residency. The
story will be familiar to many, but the film offers “a lively reminder” of an extraordinary life.
Elvis The trouble is, it’s less a film about Elvis than a “159-minute trailer for a film called Elvis”, said
2hrs 39mins (12A) Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian. It feels like a “relentless, frantically flashy montage”,
simultaneously “epic and negligible” with “no variation of pace”. The film has nothing profound to
Baz Luhrmann’s say about Presley’s character or music; it “retrofits” him with liberal sensitivities, skirts over the less
savoury aspects of his life, and barely hints at the “failure and suffering”. Even in the “Fat Elvis”
spectacular but
years, we only ever see “a decorous hint of flab”, and there’s no sight of the “yucky burger binges
shallow biopic or the adult diapers”. The film is oddly shallow, agreed Deborah Ross in The Spectator. Butler is a
★★★ “charismatic” Elvis, but “we never get to look into his soul”; he’s just a “simple fella who wants to
sing the music he loves”. Still, the film does “fizz along”, and though it’s very long, it’s never dull.

The Sea Beast was one of the last features to be completed by Netflix’s animation branch before it
was “dramatically scaled back” as a result of falling subscriber numbers, said Robbie Collin in The
Daily Telegraph. “Thank goodness it got out before the cuts bit.” Our heroine is Maisie (voiced by
the British actress Zaris-Angel Hator), a plucky orphan who stows away on a ship in order to join
the hunt for the sea monsters that may have killed her parents. When Maisie ends up befriending a
monster, however, she starts to doubt her “long-held heroes-versus-monsters worldview”. The film
wears its influences on its sleeve: its “Godzilla-sized” beasts, for instance, could be straight out of
How to Train Your Dragon; but for “sheer energy and invention, it more than holds its own, and
boasts action scenes whose wit, vibrancy and gracefulness make Lightyear look low on batteries”.
The Sea Beast I liked it enormously, said Leslie Felperin in The Guardian. Directed by Chris Williams, a Disney
1hr 55mins (PG) veteran who co-directed Big Hero 6 (2014), the film achieves the perfect balance “between rollicking
action scenes, the inevitable didactic anti-hunting message about respecting other species’ right to
Enjoyable Netflix exist and family-friendly humour”. It’s a pity the monsters look “oddly bland”, but the animation
is mostly “visually sumptuous”, and the story will surely delight “fans of girl-positive cartooning”.
maritime animation
Leaving aside “a few slightly pantomime-voice performances”, I found it rousing and “immensely
★★★★ enjoyable”, said Wendy Ide in The Observer. The fictional maritime kingdom has been realised
“with an almost tactile level of detail”; the film will be briefly in cinemas before being streamed on
Netflix, and it’s worth seeking it out “on a monster-size screen” if you can.

Until now, Ethan Hawke has “conspicuously avoided ‘traditional’ villain roles”, said Kevin Maher
in The Times. But if his “riveting” performance here is anything to go by, he could enjoy “a long and
profitable twilight career playing screen baddies”. In this often “exquisitely tense” horror film, he
plays “the Grabber” – a masked psychopath who is sowing terror in 1970s suburban Denver by
snatching children off the street. When 13-year-old Finney (Mason Thames) falls into his clutches,
however, he is able to use the black phone of the film’s title to communicate with the Grabber’s
previous victims (now dead), who are keen to help him escape. Using atrocities committed by a serial
killer “to drive what is essentially an exciting escape adventure” sounds unbearably tasteless, but the
film just about gets away with it, thanks mainly to its “fearless” junior cast.
The Black Phone The film is not as terrifying as it sounds, said Jeannette Catsoulis in The New York Times. An
1hr 42mins (15) adaptation of a short story by Joe Hill (Stephen King’s son), it has a “nostalgic mood” and an
almost contemplative tone. It’s perhaps best to judge it less as a horror movie with a “low
Ethan Hawke plays a goosebump count” than as “a celebration of youthful resilience”. I’m afraid I found the film
masked child killer “impossible to enjoy” as either of those things, said Matthew Bond in The Mail on Sunday. It depicts
a horribly bleak world, in which fathers abuse their sons, and children bully and attack each other.
★★★ “If the child-on-child violence doesn’t get you, then the adult-on-child variety will”. As for the plot’s
“leap into the paranormal”, it struck me as both predictable and unconvincing.

Man vs. Bee: Rowan Atkinson’s glossy new Netflix show is no Mr. Bean
We haven’t seen much of Rowan Atkinson since
2018, when his third Johnny English film failed
to set the box office alight. Now, though, he is
back, said Camilla Long in The Sunday Times,
starring in a glossy new comedy for Netflix. To
judge by the number of “adverts, gala screenings,
special previews and exclusive glossy interviews
the man has undertaken for this curious little
show”, the streaming platform is “thrilled to have
him”. Whether Man vs. Bee will live up to the
hype, however, is far from clear.
Atkinson plays Trevor, an accident-prone house-
sitter tasked with the upkeep of a mansion “that,
for maximum audience reach, could be anywhere
from Surrey to Kazakhstan”. Just as he’s settling in
to the job, a CGI bee turns up, unleashing chaos.
The “stuff plus idiot” formula
Over the next hour and a half – spread over nine
episodes – every “painting, book and piece of
furniture” is trashed, which might be jolly to watch
if the show were funny; alas, it isn’t. It is perfectly
enjoyable, said Anita Singh in The Daily Telegraph.
But it lacks “the genius of Mr. Bean”. The set
pieces are almost too slick, and the series feels as
though it has been “precision-tooled to deliver a
satisfying customer experience.”
Well, I loved it, said Stuart Jeffries in
The Guardian. Yes, the bee is “woefully
undercharacterised” (why does it torment Trevor?);
and various high-end brands get rather too much
screentime. But Atkinson knows that the best
comedy isn’t “tragedy plus time, but stuff plus
idiot” – and here he is at his comic best.

2 July 2022 THE WEEK

30 ARTS Art
Exhibition of the week Summer Exhibition 2022
Royal Academy of Arts, London W1 (020-7300 8090, royalacademy.org.uk). Until 21 August
This is “a catastrophic your own likeness back at
exhibition”, said Jonathan you. Elsewhere, an entire
Jones in The Guardian. The wall is “devoted to scenes
254th iteration of the of fire, flood and tempest”.
Royal Academy’s Summer Grayson Perry has curated
Exhibition is a parade of one room, covering its walls
“aimless mulch” so dull that it in “acid lemon” paint, and
verges on the “soporific”. It is every inch of space with art.
a “waste of paper and paint There are also some striking
and pottery and bronze”. As works by artists largely
ever, the vast summer show, unknown to the public.
which features 1,462 works Katherine Perrins provides
this year, mixes art by a delightful “little painting
household names (including, of a loaded dishwasher”,
on this occasion, Tracey Emin, while Nicola Hicks
Richard Long and Anselm confronts us with a “sculpture
Kiefer) with the efforts of the of a bear as it pounces on its
public, and almost everything hapless ringmaster”.
in it is for sale. Coordinated
by the Turner Prize-nominated “Not everything is terrible,”
artist Alison Wilding, the conceded Alastair Sooke
2022 show takes “climate” in The Daily Telegraph.
as its theme. While one Highlights include John
might imagine that this might Gerrard’s “forbidding” digital
provide an excitingly broad simulation of a flagpole
and urgent frame of reference marking an “exhausted”
for the artists involved, it Grayson Perry’s “acid-lemon” hued room Texan oil field, which
doesn’t. The result is a belches out “pennants of
platitudinous slog with a “too-obvious message”. The participants horrible black smoke”. This is one memorable work among
have almost universally responded to the climate emergency with several in a section curated by the young Royal Academician
art of the most banal kind. “Climate Kitsch” is the prevailing tone. Conrad Shawcross. Elsewhere, Rosebud (1962), a “futuristic
This is a display of “all the ways in which art can be bad”. fibreglass” sculpture – “a mischievous pink cone with a
suggestive opening” – by the late artist Phillip King is “a classic”
The show certainly goes “from the sublime to the ridiculous”, said of its kind. Yet for a subject as momentous as climate change, it
Rachel Campbell-Johnston in The Times. But “those who delight all seems weirdly “genteel”. “Only the Royal Academy could take
in the extraordinary mish-mash of the world’s largest open a subject as urgent and consequential as the climate emergency,
submission exhibition” will find “plenty to relish”. The climate and produce something this comfortable, as conventional as
theme subverts the usual expectations. “Forget soft rolling valleys a village fête.” The show also feels endless, as it stretches across
and flowery spring vases.” Images of pollution are everywhere, 13 rooms. And most of the “mediocre art” here says nothing
“perhaps most strikingly” in the sometime YBA Gavin Turk’s remotely new or original about the environment or climate
sculpture Looking Glass: a glass case filled with “a mess of burnt change. The Summer Exhibition’s “cosiness” is deeply
tyres and abandoned carpets, ditched supermarket trolleys, ingrained. And ultimately: “Solemnity can’t be mustered
mangled wiring and assorted bits of old plastic”, which reflects from something so fundamentally festive and unserious.”

News from the art world

Picasso’s “how to draw” books Revamping the National Gallery
An “extraordinary collection” of sketchbooks and The National Gallery has unveiled plans for
origami sculptures created by Pablo Picasso to a “radical revamp”, says David Sanderson
teach his eldest daughter to draw has gone on in The Times. For its bicentenary in 2024,
display, says Dalya Alberge in The Observer. the museum will rehang its collection for
The trove was unearthed by the artist’s the first time in its 200-year history, choosing
granddaughter, Diana, when searching for family thematic juxtapositions over chronological
material in storage. The books are filled with order. The idea is to present famous works in a
depictions of “animals, birds, clowns, acrobats, new light, reflecting a trend seen at other major
horses and doves”; Picasso sketched a “fox European galleries, such as Madrid’s Reina
longing for grapes” and made “exquisite origami Sofía museum. Masterpieces from different
sculptures of birds”. The items were created for eras will be displayed together in “illuminating”
Maya Widmaier-Ruiz-Picasso, now 86, who on ways: for instance, Caravaggio’s The Supper at
some pages attempted to imitate her father, Emmaus (1601) with Joseph Wright of Derby’s
and even graded his work; she gives one circus An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump (1768),
scene an approving “ten”. “It was a very moving which both use chiaroscuro effects; or Seurat’s
moment,” Diana said of the find. “Not only Bathers at Ansières (1884) with Piero della
because you’re talking about one of the greatest Francesca’s 15th century painting The Baptism
artists but also because it made it very human.” of Christ. Also marking the gallery’s birthday
© THE NATIONAL GALLERY

Picasso had been taught to draw by his father, celebrations will be a major van Gogh
so it was “natural” for him to do the same with Francesca’s The Baptism of Christ exhibition, and a plan to loan some of its
his own daughter. The sketchbooks are being “national treasures” to 12 as-yet-unconfirmed
exhibited as part of an exhibition at the Musée Picasso in Paris. museums across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

THE WEEK 2 July 2022

 The List ARTS 31
Best books… Chris Patten Television
The peer and former Conservative Party chairman chooses his favourite Programmes
books. His new book, The Hong Kong Diaries (Allen Lane £30), describes Freedom: Fifty Years of
his experiences as the last governor of Hong Kong Pride Feature documentary
marking 50 years of LGBT+
Life and Fate by Vasily Paris to the Moon by Adam The World of Yesterday by activism and looking at the
movement’s origins. With
Grossman, translated by Gopnik, 2000 (Quercus Stefan Zweig, 1942 (Pushkin contributions from Sir Ian
Robert Chandler, 1980 £12.99). Gopnik, a New Press £12.99). The great McKellen, Peter Tatchell and
(Vintage £10.99). This is one Yorker magazine writer, has Jewish-Viennese intellectual Holly Johnson. Sat 2 Jul, C4
of the greatest novels of the written superbly in recent describes European civilisation 20:00 (90mins).
20th century. In this brilliant years about liberal values, but in the early years of the 20th
translation, it can be compared this early work is one of my century, and recounts fearfully Inspector Montalbano
with Tolstoy, with touches of favourite books about Paris, the early assaults on the values The latest instalment of the
Chekhov. A huge Russian and indeed France. Sharply of an open society by fascism. Italian detective series sees
contribution to European funny and full of the insights The day after he sent it to his Montalbano investigate the
death of a charismatic amateur
civilisation despite the efforts of a clever, decent man. publisher, he and his wife both dramatics director. Sat 2 Jul,
of Soviet leaders to suppress it. committed suicide. He thought BBC4 21:00 (120mins).
Complete Poems by C.P. that night had descended on
On Warne by Gideon Haigh, Cavafy, translated by Daniel Europe – even before the Mick Jagger: My Life as
2012 (Simon & Schuster Mendelsohn, 2012 (William Wannsee Conference plotted a Rolling Stone In the first
£9.99). The finest Collins £25). Along with W.H. the murder of six million Jews. of four programmes – each
contemporary writer on Auden, this Alexandrian poet featuring a different Stone –
cricket on the greatest ever is my favourite and certainly Oleander, Jacaranda by Jagger talks about his 60-year
spin bowler. Two of Australia’s the best poet of public affairs. Penelope Lively, 1994 (Penguin career in rock ’n’ roll. Sat 2 Jul,
BBC2 21:30 (60mins).
finest contributors to With Cavafy we await the £9.99). A charming memoir by
contemporary culture, of which barbarians, though whether one of my favourite English Storyville: On the Morning
red-ball cricket is such a key they are a solution to our novelists, largely about her You Wake (to the End of
part. No argument there, OK? problems is questionable. childhood in wartime Egypt. the World) Documentary
Titles in print are available from The Week Bookshop on 020-3176 3835. For out-of-print books visit biblio.co.uk recalling a morning in January
2018, when Hawaiians were
The Week’s guide to what’s worth seeing told that they had just minutes
to shelter from an inbound
nuclear strike. Tue 5 Jul, BBC4
Showing now 22:00 (35mins).
American artist Theaster Gates is the first non-
architect to design the Serpentine Pavilion. The Boys from the Blackstuff
cylindrical space has a “pragmatic beauty” and Forty years since its first
will host events including a performance by the broadcast, a chance to see
choir of the London Oratory (Daily Telegraph). Alan Bleasdale’s Thatcher-era
drama about five friends on
Until 16 October, Serpentine Galleries, London
the dole in recession-hit
W2 (serpentinegalleries.org). Britain. Wed 6 Jul, BBC2 22:05,
23:00 and 00:00 (60mins each).
The Ledbury Poetry Festival, the UK’s
biggest celebration of all things verse, opens Films
this weekend with poetry workshops, open-mic Rocketman (2019) Authorised
musical biopic of Elton John,
sessions and readings by Michael Rosen, John with Taron Egerton as the
Hegley and others. Until 12 July, various venues, Noma Dumezweni in A Doll’s House, Part 2 volatile star. Sat 2 July, C4
Ledbury, Herefordshire (ledburypoetry.org.uk). 21:30 (140mins).
Watercolours draws on the Ashmolean’s
Lucas Hnath’s A Doll’s House, Part 2 is an own archive and explores the group’s Oxford Dunkirk (2017) Epic wartime
“audacious sequel” to Ibsen’s masterpiece, set connections. 15 July-27 November, Ashmolean drama about the retreating
15 years after its heroine walked out on her Museum, Oxford (ashmolean.org). Allied forces who became
marriage and family. “Essential viewing” (Daily trapped in northern France,
and the extraordinary
Telegraph). Until 6 August, Donmar Warehouse, Robin Icke’s The Doctor – a gripping operation to rescue them. Sun
London WC1 (donmarwarehouse.com). reimagining of Arthur Schnitzler’s 1912 3 July, BBC2 21:00 (100mins).
play Professor Bernhardi, featuring an acclaimed
Book now performance by Juliet Stevenson – goes to the
Returning after its limited, sell-out run last West End. 29 September-11 December, Duke of New to subscription TV
year, Pre-Raphaelites: Drawings and York’s Theatre, London W2 (atgtickets.com).
Atlanta Donald Glover’s
eccentric comedy-drama
The Archers: what happened last week returns after a four-year break;
At the B&B, Lynda confronts Adil, accusing him of destroying the community. Chris opens up to rapper Paper Boi is now on
Usha about the pressures of the court hearing – she tells him Amy’s met someone new. After Steph tour in Europe. On Disney+.
cleans the kitchen as thanks for letting her stay, Beth sees a new side of her sister. As Chris and
Alice bicker in the playground about arrangements for Martha, she falls and injures her head. At Only Murders in the
A&E, the doctor confirms she’s OK, but after overhearing Chris and Alice argue bitterly, she says
Building Hailed by The
she’s making a referral to social services. Neil advises Chris to tell everything to his solicitor, which
stresses Chris further. Adil continues his charm offensive on Lynda to no avail. Kirsty gives him a Guardian as an “underrated
tour of the rewilding site and they hit it off. Chris and Alice both have their interviews with Sam the gem” of 2021, the comedy
© STUART SIMPSON

social worker, and separately praise each other’s parenting. Adil buys breakfast for Kirsty. When whodunnit set in New York is
Alice comes to collect Martha from Chris, she tells him she’s cancelled the care hearing and they back for a second series. Steve
agree to no more fighting. They only hope the social worker sees that they’re good parents. Martin stars. On Disney+.

2 July 2022 THE WEEK

32 Best properties
Grade II properties for £500,000 or less

Staffordshire: Merchants House, Edingale. Dating back to the 1600s and retaining a wealth of original
features, this charming detached cottage is surrounded by beautiful countryside and is just a short stroll from
the banks of the River Mease. 3 beds, family bath, kitchen/dining room, recep, snug, knot garden with topiary,
potting shed, parking. £500,000; Fine & Country (0121-272 6900).

Peterborough:
Corner Cottage, Etton.
Dating back to the 16th
century, this delightful
thatched cottage has been
painstakingly renovated
and modernised. Main
suite, 1 further bed, open-
plan kitchen/living room,
art studio/annexe, garden.
£450,000; Woodford &
Co (01832-274732).

Devon: North Street,

Dolton, Winkleigh. A
charming cottage
with beamed ceilings, an
inglenook fireplace and a
snug. 4 beds, family bath,
kitchen, 2 receps, gardens,
parking. £450,000; Fine
& Country (01805-
624334).

Kent: Wolfe Cottages, Westerham. A picturesque terraced cottage situated in the heart of this
small town, just a short distance from Sevenoaks. Character features include exposed beams and
brickwork and a brick fireplace with a wood-burning stove. 2 beds, family bath, kitchen, recep,
courtyard garden. £350,000; Savills (01732-789706).

THE WEEK 2 July 2022

on the market 33

Dorset: Elwell Street, Weymouth. This charming

stone and thatched cottage comes with many period
features, including exposed beams and a stone
inglenook fireplace. 3 beds, family bath, kitchen,
2 receps, landscaped garden. £475,000; Symonds &
Sampson (01305-251154).

Kent: Mystole House, Mystole, Canterbury.

A characterful apartment in an impressive Georgian
mansion surrounded by apple orchards and lush
countryside. 3 beds, family bath, shower room,
kitchen, 2 receps, roof terrace, parking. £500,000;
Fine & Country (01227-479317).

Berkshire: High Street, Eton. Conveniently situated in the heart of this historic
town between the River Thames and Eton College. 3 beds, family bath, kitchen,
dining room, study, recep, walled garden. £500,000; Hamptons (01753-415265).

Northamptonshire: Brockhall, Dorset: Church Hill, South Perrott,

Northampton. This Jacobean hall has been
restored and converted into seven flats. Main
suite, 1 further bed, family bath, kitchen,
2 receps, gardens, parking. £485,000; Carter
Jonas (01604-321370).
Beaminster. A lovely thatched cottage in a
charming village setting overlooking the
church. 3 beds, family bath, kitchen/dining
room, recep, mature garden. £365,000;
Symonds & Sampson (01308-863100).

2 July 2022 THE WEEK


The UK’s new “best restaurant”
For the first time in more than a decade,
a restaurant outside of England has been
named the best in the UK. Ynyshir, just
inland from the seaside resort of Aberdyfi
in mid-Wales, scooped the top spot at this
month’s Estrella Damm awards. I was
lucky enough to eat there over Christmas,
says Damian Whitworth in The Times.
Gareth Ward, its chef-proprietor, is a
“great tattooed bear of a northeasterner”
with an “infectious bark of a laugh”. The
no-choice menu, which changes weekly,
consists of about 30 courses, and costs
£350. The food is Asian-influenced, meat-
focused, and mostly cooked over fire:
this is not a place for vegetarians; in fact,
this uncompromising restaurant says
that it doesn’t “cater for any dietary
requirements”. Dinner starts at 5.15pm,
there are only 24 covers a night, and diners
eat to a techno soundtrack: usually there’s
a DJ in. Ynyshir also has “comfortable,
hygge-ish rooms”. “We just do what we
do, instead of trying to please everybody,”
Ward says. He certainly seems to be
pleasing quite a few people: the restaurant
is “mostly booked up until the autumn”.
London restaurants noisiest in Europe
London’s restaurants are the noisiest in
Europe, and second noisiest in the world,
after those in San Francisco, a survey
has found. According to the SoundPrint
app – which you can use to search for
LEISURE
Food & Drink
What the experts say
Ynyshir: a “no choice” 30-course menu
restaurants by sound level – half of
London’s restaurants have decibel levels
above 76 dBA, defined as safe for hearing
but difficult for conversation. And in peak
times, many of them reach 80 dBA – the
level at which noise is considered unsafe.
The worst offender was Shackfuyu in
Soho, which was found to have a decibel
level of 94 dBA; at Hawksmoor Seven
Dials it was 85 dBA. SoundPrint was
created by New Yorker Gregory Scott,
who suffers from hearing loss, after he
“often found it impossible to hear women
he went on dates with”, says Katie
Gibbons in The Times. This led to the idea
of a “crowdsourced database”, collating
35
sound recordings from restaurants across
the world. According to Scott, several
factors are making restaurants noisier,
including the fashion for stripped hard
surfaces and open-plan kitchens, and
owners trying to pack more diners in.
Of course, music is another contributor –
and it’s not just the music itself. Owing
to a phenomenon known as the Lombard
effect, where noise breeds noise, “even
limited background music can lead to
shouting as guests raise their voice over
one another to be heard”.
Tips for barbecued veg
If you’re doing a barbecue, don’t just focus
on the meat, said Olivia Potts in The
Spectator: “barbecued veg is a joy”. Few
vegetables aren’t improved by being “given
a flash on a hot barbecue” – even unlikely
candidates like quartered iceberg lettuce,
pea pods and green beans. You can “grill
leeks or bundles of spring onions over
direct heat” (keep cooking until they’re
“floppy and charred”), or throw on cobs
of corn brushing them with butter when
they’re cooked and brown in some areas. If
you’re cooking meat “low ’n’ slow”, sling
a couple of whole aubergines on the grill
too, a little nearer to the heat. When
they’re ready, you can make a wonderful
baba ghanoush by scooping out the
melting flesh and combining it with a
tablespoon of tahini, a crushed clove of
garlic, some lemon juice and olive oil.

Recipe of the week: tomato and chipotle chilli soup

Adding tomatoes to this bean soup brings a velvety, fruity acidity to the creamy weight of the black beans,
says Claire Thomson. My serving suggestion creates a bit of extra work, but in my mind it is absolutely worth it. The dollop
of hot sauce is a particularly good addition.

Serves 4
4 tbsp olive oil 2 onions, finely chopped 2 celery sticks, finely diced ½ tsp salt 7 garlic cloves, finely chopped 2 tbsp chipotle
paste (or 1 tsp smoked paprika and chilli powder or flakes), to taste 2 tbsp tomato purée 400g tomatoes, peeled (or 400g can of plum
tomatoes ) 3 bay leaves, scrunched 1 x 400g can of black beans, drained and rinsed 800ml chicken stock or water, plus extra if needed
salt and freshly ground black pepper
To serve:
1 avocado, peeled, stoned and diced 100g sour cream 100g feta cheese, crumbled ½ small bunch of coriander, roughly chopped
80g corn tortilla chips, crushed 1-2 habanero or jalapeño chillies, thinly sliced hot sauce of choice 1 lime, cut into wedges

• Heat the oil in a saucepan over a moderate heat.
Add the onions, celery and salt and cook for about
10-12 minutes, until the onions are soft and just
beginning to brown. Add the garlic and cook for
2 minutes more, to soften.
• Add the chipotle paste or spices, the tomato
purée, tomatoes and bay leaves and cook for 10-15
minutes, until rich and thick.
• Add the beans and stock and bring the liquid to
a boil. You can add a splash more stock if you think
it needs it, depending on how thick you’d like the
© CHRIS FYNES
soup to be when you come to serve it. Check the
seasoning, adding salt and pepper as necessary.
• Remove the soup from the heat. I like to partially
blend the soup at this point – about one-third
blended is ideal. Remove the bay leaves, then use
a stick blender in the pan or remove a portion and
blend that before adding it back to the pan.
• Serve the warm soup in bowls and top each
bowl with chopped avocado, sour cream, feta,
coriander, corn chips and chillies, and with hot
sauce and lime wedges for helping yourselves to.

Taken from Tomato by Claire Thomson, published by Quadrille at £22, photography by Sam Folan. To buy from The Week Bookshop for
£17.99, call 020-3176 3835 or visit theweekbookshop.co.uk.

2 July 2022 THE WEEK

36 LEISURE Consumer
New cars: what the critics say
Auto Express
As it approaches its 25th
birthday, the Ford Focus
has been treated to a mid-
life update involving subtle
changes to the styling, a
huge boost to the in-car
tech and a new power
train line-up. It remains
fun and engaging to drive,
Ford Focus with sharp steering, keen
Price: from £23,500 handling and plenty of
grip. It’s a little firmer over
bumps than some of its
rivals, and it can be a bit
noisy at higher speeds, but
overall it still impresses.
The Daily Telegraph
There are a bewildering 33
models in the Focus range,
including an economical
1.5-litre diesel, three petrol
options all with 1.0-litre
engines, a 123bhp non-
hybrid and a 153bhp
model both available in
manual and automatic
iterations. Most versions
now have the cheaper
twist-beam rear suspension
that feels less mobile, but
the Focus remains just as
exciting as other cars in its
class, if not more so.
Top Gear
All but the base-spec Trend
trim get a giant 13.2in
infotainment system for
navigation, media and
phone connectivity. It is
responsive and has good
graphics, though some
might miss having proper
buttons for climate
controls; these are now on
the bottom of the screen.
The front seats aren’t the
most comfortable, but the
rear is impressively roomy,
and with the seats up the
boot is a useful 375 litres.

The best… sewing machines

Husqvarna Opal 650 This intuitive, hi-tech
Cool Maker computerised machine has a graphic screen
Sew and Style with touch-buttons. It evaluates the fabric and
An introductory automatically selects the stitch style, width
machine for young and length to ensure optimum results (£800;
children, it uses a sewingmachines.co.uk).
no-thread system
to join fabric
together and comes Brother Innov-is F420 With 140 built-in stitches
with five pre-cut and a range of extra functions, the Brother can
projects to try (£20; take on almost any project. It has an automatic
argos.co.uk). needle-threader and a handy knee lift for hands-
free sewing (£699; thesewingstudio.co.uk).

John Lewis JL111

Singer Wildflower Print
Heavy Duty Ideal for hobby
4423 A true workhorse, Singer’s machine sewing with light-

SOURCE: THE INDEPENDENT

has an impressive motor and extra-high and medium-weight
sewing speed of 1,100 stitches per fabric, this sturdy
minute. It can tackle a variety of fabrics machine has 14
from lightweight silk to heavy denim, and stitches to choose
includes a selection of different presser from and simple
feet and tools (£300; singeroutlet.co.uk). dials (£135; johnlewis.com).

Tips of the week…
how to treat blisters
● Make sure your feet are dry to prevent
blisters. If you’ve got sweaty feet, use an
antiperspirant on them. Cotton socks are
best for wicking away moisture.
● Wear-in new shoes, and wear socks that
fit, as wrinkling causes friction which can
cause blisters. Hikers should double-layer
socks to help reduce rubbing.
● Don’t pop a blister. Use felt rings or island
dressings instead to surround the blister –
these are more effective than covering with
a plaster – and apply antiseptic cream.
● If the blister has popped, wash it in warm
salty water then apply antiseptic. Specialist
plasters known as a hydrocolloid dressing
are widely available, but it is best to let it
heal on its own to prevent infection.
● If you have any signs of infection, such as
worsening redness, more pain or discharge,
consult a doctor or podiatrist.
● If you get repeated blisters in the same
area, talk to a podiatrist as there might be
another cause, such as foot posture.
SOURCE: THE TIMES
And for those who
have everything…
Simply place five slightly melted blocks of
ice into this machine made by the British
brand Smart, and it will shave it into a
refreshing snow cone which you can then
flavour with syrup or fruit juice.
£65; selfridges.com
SOURCE: FINANCIAL TIMES
Where to find… the best
treehouse stays in the UK
Pen Y Bryn Treehouse is a quirky pod in the
Powys hills, with a dramatic wooden spiral
staircase. Sleeps 2 adults and 3 children,
from £127 a night; canopyandstars.co.uk.
Built in an ancient oak tree in the North
Devon Biosphere Reserve, Treetops
Treehouse has a copper bathtub, a wood
burner and a deck overlooking the fishing
lake. Sleeps 2 adults and 2 children, from
£260 a night; foxandhoundshotel.co.uk.
The Lodge Treehouse is in an Area of
Outstanding Natural Beauty in the Kent
Downs, and has a log burner and an open-
air bathtub on the gallery. Sleeps 2, from
£190 a night; thelodgetreehouse.co.uk.
Lost Meadow Treepod is a spherical
bedroom suspended between trees on the
edge of Bodmin Moor, Cornwall. Sleeps 2,
from £105 a night; canopyandstars.co.uk.
The fairytale Fernie Castle Treehouse in
Fife is set in 17 acres of woodland, with
stained-glass windows and a swing. Sleeps
2, from £375 a night; ferniecastle.co.uk.
SOURCE: LONDON EVENING STANDARD

THE WEEK 2 July 2022

 Travel
This week’s dream: the timeless charm of Lower Silesia
With its forested hills, its castles and
“Swiss-style” villas, and its medieval
towns, Lower Silesia feels like a fairytale
corner of old Germany “hiding in plain
sight” in the heart of modern Europe,
says Magdalena Miecznicka in the FT.
Its quaint charm and quiet beauty are
the result of a complex history. Largely
German and Austrian since the late
Middle Ages, it was incorporated into
Prussia in 1742, then ceded to Poland
in 1945. Decades of relative poverty
and neglect followed – which helped
preserve its old buildings and wild
places. Lately, arty types from Warsaw
and Berlin have moved in or snapped
up second homes here, but it is still little The beautiful old regional capital of Wrocław
visited, and more enchanting for that.
Arriving here from the dull plains around Warsaw is like
entering a different world. First comes the beautiful old regional
capital, Wrocław, and then south of the River Oder, the landscape
starts to crumple and settlement becomes sparse. Your first stop
might be Sokołowsko – or Görbersdorf, as it used to be known –
LEISURE 37
a village of “rare beauty” where
tall early Modernist villas are
overshadowed by the neo-Gothic
towers of a 19th century tuberculosis
sanatorium, the first in Europe. The
film director Krzysztof Kieslowski
grew up here, and his archive is
housed in Villa Rosa, now a boutique
hotel and a meeting place for artists.
From there, it’s an easy hop across
the Czech border to Adršpach – a
municipality famed for its turquoise
lake and thousands of spectacular
natural sandstone spires; from there
you can travel back into Poland, to the
mountain spa town of Miedzygórze,
where there are several Arts and Crafts
guest houses, including the pleasant
Villa Titina. Nearby is Kłodzko, a “stunning” medieval hilltown;
you might visit the 16th century Sarny Castle, now a hotel that
hosts concerts and literary events; and Osówka, where you can
see the remains of Project Riese, a vast tunnel network
constructed by the Nazis, its intended purpose lost to history.

Hotel of the week Getting the flavour of…

The Retreat at Elcot Park
Berkshire
Set in the Georgian house that
was home to Percy Bysshe
Shelley’s mother and sisters after
the poet had drowned in Italy,
The Retreat is part of a “post-
Babington House” wave of boldly
designed but “more accessible
and family-friendly” country
house hotels, says Rick Jordan
in Condé Nast Traveller. Rooms
are “period drama without the
creak”, with antique furniture
and “a swag bag of stripes, block
prints and florals”. The main
restaurant serves “flavoursome
comfort food of the truffle chip
variety”. There’s also a second,
pan-Asian restaurant, an outdoor
swimming pool and a spa.
Doubles from £150 b&b;
retreatelcotpark.com.
Rewilding in the Apennines
Exodus Travels’ six-day Rewilding the
Apennines adventure offers visitors a deep
dive into the ecology of central Italy’s great
mountains, says Andrew Purvis in The Daily
Telegraph. With naturalists as your guides,
you might spot wolves, golden eagles and
rare Marsican brown bears in the national
parks of Majella and Abruzzo, and there
are visits to one of the five “coexistence
corridors” between them, where efforts are
being made to encourage wildlife migration
while minimising conflict with humans.
Accommodation is at the “characterful”
Albergo Villino Quintiliani in Pescasseroli,
and the trip ends with an ascent through one
of Europe’s oldest beech forests to the “cosy,
charming” Terraegna mountain refuge, for a
slap-up meal with “superb” local wines at
6,234ft. The trip costs from £2,349pp
including flights (exodus.co.uk).
Portugal’s magical castles
Of Portugal’s many great castles and fortified
towns, none are more “magical” than those
in Beira Alta, an “otherworldly”, little-visited
region of “sun-bleached” plains in the
country’s far northeast, says Paulo
Anunciação in the Guardian. Trancoso is
where the young King Dinis married Isabel
of Aragon in 1282; today, it is a “sleepy”
tangle of picturesque squares and narrow
lanes set within mighty 13th century walls.
And Marialva, which was all but abandoned
in the 18th and 19th centuries, is “hauntingly
beautiful” too. For a “truly off-the-beaten-
track” trip, explore the area in a motorcycle
sidecar with Gusto Motorbikes and Sidecar
Adventures (from s200 a day). And stay at
Casa no Castanheiro, a “striking” new cabin
with astonishing views of the Marofa
mountains, or at Casas do Côro in Marialva
or at Casa do Castelo in Sernancelhe.
A remote cottage on Eilean Shona
There are nine cottages on Eilean Shona,
the island in the Western Highlands that is
owned by Vanessa Branson, sister of Sir
Richard. But only one, South Shore, comes
with a “not for the faint-hearted” warning
on its webpage, says Jeremy Lazell in The
Sunday Times. A 45-minute walk or a boat
trip away from the island’s main house, this
one-bedroom croft has no electricity, Wi-Fi
or mobile-phone signal. In fact, it is “pure
Victorian cottage”, with gas lamps, magenta
tongue-and-groove walls, faded Persian rugs
and a stove you’ll need to tend if you want
a warm bath. Some might not like the idea
of such primitivism, but it is “unbelievably
good for the soul”. Bring lots to read, and
prepare for plenty of kayaking, walking
and swimming in nearby Shoe Bay, with its
“blindingly white” beach and fine views of
Eigg and Rum. Seven nights cost from
£1,200 for two (eileanshona.com).

Last-minute offers from top travel companies

All-inclusive Jamaica Fourteen nights at sea Seven nights of luxury Room-only stay in Kent
Enjoy a relaxing beach holiday Discover hidden Nordic The Domes of Corfu resort is Spend 2 nights in a Pinewood
with a 7-night stay at the Riu treasures with stops in Helsinki set on Glyfada beach; seven pod, with entrance to Port
Negril, in a double room with and Tallinn on this “interactive nights cost from £699pp half- Lympne Hotel & Reserve and
garden view and terrace. From circus cruise”, from £685pp board, including Bristol flights. Howletts Wildlife Park, from
£1,303pp, Birmingham flights full-board. 020-3514 3133, 020-3368 3117, inspiredluxury £199pp. 01303-234112,
included. 020-3451 2688, tui. iglucruise.com. Depart 23 July, escapes.com. Depart 12 aspinallfoundation.org. Arrive
co.uk. Depart 20 July. from Tilbury. October. 14 September.
Covid-19: please check government websites for testing and quarantine requirements, and the rules surrounding children (gov.uk).

2 July 2022 THE WEEK

TWK1390.travel.indd 37 29/06/2022 15:22

 38 Obituaries
High street retailer who helped liberate Belsen
In peacetime, Bernard
Bernard Levy Levy would not have been
1926-2022 regarded as soldier material,
said the Jewish News. At just
seven stone and standing 5ft 3½in, he was 18,
severely asthmatic, and had “only one good
eye”. But it was April 1944; the Armed Forces
could not afford to be choosy; and a few weeks
after D Day, Levy found himself heading across
the Channel with the Royal Army Service
Corps. Having landed at Arromanches-les-
Bains, his unit pushed through France and
Belgium into northern Germany, and a year
later, they arrived, war-weary, at Bergen-Belsen.
The concentration camp had been liberated a
few days earlier; typhoid was rampant; most of
its 60,000 surviving inmates were only clinging
to life; and all around, thousands of bodies lay
unburied. So horrific were the scenes that
greeted them, some of the British troops were
physically sick; Levy, who was given the task Levy: insisted he wasn’t a hero
of “sorting the living from the dead”, was so
traumatised, it would be 70 years before he was able to talk about past a British Union of Fascists building bearing “a huge poster of
it. “It’s strangled me for all these years,” he told the Holocaust
Educational Trust in 2015. “I was a soldier... Really, my view
of a liberator wasn’t what I was: I was a kid, 19 years of age.”
Yet in the 18 months he worked on the relief operation, there
were positives of sorts, said The Times. As well as the deaths,
he witnessed a kind of rebirth, as Belsen’s inmates – many of
whom stayed there for months after the War ended – began to
recover. “He talked about people coming back from the dead,
that people looked like skeletons, but he saw them gradually
come back to life,” recalled his daughter Judith. Survivors
started organising cultural activities; a school opened; babies
were born; and for a period after the War, there were around
20 weddings a day at Belsen. Levy, who is believed to have
Actor who became a legend of the French new wave
Jean-Louis Trintignant, who has
Jean-Louis
died aged 91, was a legend of
Trintignant
20th century French cinema.
1930-2022
An actor of “understated
magnetism”, said The Washington Post, he shot
to fame in 1956 when he appeared in Roger
Vadim’s And God Created Woman – the film,
set in St Tropez, that propelled Brigitte Bardot
to overnight stardom. Trintignant didn’t have the
roguish charm of Jean-Paul Belmondo, nor the
prettiness of Alain Delon, but there was a sense
of something lurking under his ordinary, rather
blank good looks; and to the viewing public,
that was borne out when he had a passionate
off-screen affair with Bardot that ended both
their marriages. Such was the furore, Trintignant Trintignant: joined the army
entered military service to get away from it.
Jean-Louis Trintignant was born in Piolenc, in southeastern
France, in 1930, the son of a wealthy industrialist. As a child, his
ambition was to become a racing driver, like two of his uncles.
Later, he thought to become a theatre director. He started acting
to help him overcome his shyness, but he was soon winning
professional roles, which led to And God Created Woman.
His career then went on hold, while he served with the army in
Algiers. He hated his time there so much, he came home a wreck.
But in 1959, Vadim magnanimously handed him a lifeline, by
casting him in his new wave updating of Les Liaisons dangereuses, he won a best actor César for his role in the drama Amour. He is
said The Guardian. For the next few years, Trintignant was rarely
THE WEEK 2 July 2022
TWK1390.obituaries.indd 38
been the camp’s last surviving British-Jewish
liberator, was invited to many of them.
After being demobilised in 1947, Levy returned
to his home town of Hull, to work at his
father’s menswear store. Legend has it that one
day it received in error a delivery of over-sized
men’s suits. Instead of sending them back, Levy
advertised them in the Daily Express. They sold
out so fast, he ordered more. As a result of this,
he started a company selling large-sized clothes
via mail order which, in the 1970s, became the
High and Mighty chain. At its height, it had 40
stores in Britain and beyond, though most of its
business was still done by post. “Fat men don’t
like turning up for fittings,” he explained. “So
their wives send us the measurements and ask
us to reply by plain envelope.”
Bernard Levy was born in Hull to parents
of Lithuanian descent, and educated at Hull
Grammar School. His walk to school took him
a hooked-nose Jewish banker”. In the late 1930s, boys from his
school went on a cycling holiday to Germany, and “came back
with swastikas on their bicycles and spat on me and my brother
as we were walking home”. After the War, he married his wife
Doreen, who survives him with their two daughters. She helped
him run High and Mighty; and it remained a family business until
its sale in 2009. Six years later, aged 88, Levy returned to the site
of Belsen, to “say goodbye”. In a moving interview, he said that
he’d not been a hero, just “a boy doing a job”; and he worried
that he could have done it better – that he could have shown
more humanity, as he moved and disinfected the bodies of the
living and the dead. “Did I feel tremendous compassion for them?
I don’t know if I did or not. And did I feel enough compassion;
and was there anything else I could have done?”
off the screen. He won international recognition
when he starred in 1966’s Un Homme et une
Femme. He followed it up with roles in acclaimed
films including Éric Rohmer’s Ma Nuit Chez
Maud, and Bernardo Bertolucci’s The
Conformist. He turned down Bertolucci’s Last
Tango in Paris, because he hated nudity and
was embarrassed by sex scenes. He also turned
down a role in Apocalypse Now, said The Daily
Telegraph; by then he had bought a medieval
house in Uzès, in southern France, and preferred
to stay there, riding his motorbike and collecting
mushrooms in the forest. He did sometimes
re-emerge, however. Stanley Kubrick, for instance,
persuaded him to dub Jack Nicholson’s role in
The Shining (in France, his line “Coucou chérie!”
is as well known as Nicholson’s “Here’s
Johnny!”); he also accepted a role in Krzysztof Kieslowski’s
“masterpiece” Three Colours Red (1994).
By then, he’d already experienced one tragedy: the cot death in
1969 of one of his two daughters with his second wife, Nadine
Marquand. In 2003, he suffered another, when their other
daughter, the actress Marie Trintignant, was beaten to death by
her rock musician boyfriend, in a case that made global headlines.
“It completely destroyed me,” he said later. After that, he poured
© JEWISH NEWS
himself into his work, and enjoyed a late-life success in 2013, when
survived by his third wife, Marianne Hoepfner, and by his son.
29/06/2022 15:23
 CITY 41
Companies in the news
...and how they were assessed
Wise: foolish furore
First the good news. After a torrid year for
shareholders, Wise plc – the London-listed
money transfer company that aims to shake
up traditional banks – expects revenues to
grow by 30-35% this year on the back of Seven days in the
continued international growth. The bad
news, said Alistair Osborne in The Times,
Square Mile
is that “karma” appears to be catching up The leader of the Bank for International
with the outfit’s billionaire boss, Kristo Settlements, Agustín Carstens, warned
Käärmann. The Estonian money wiz faces that the global economy had reached
a regulatory investigation, and a possible a “tipping point” at which runaway
City ban, after defaulting on a £720,495 inflation risked becoming embedded.
tax bill last year. It seems “he just couldn’t “If it does, the costs of bringing it back
be bothered to deal with HMRC”, which outed him as a “deliberate tax defaulter” in under control will be higher.” KPMG
warned that the UK economy is slowing
September, and issued a £365,651 fine. A spokesman declared at the time that Käärmann sharply. It expects growth to contract to
would be devoting “more time to keeping his personal admin in order”. But that hasn’t 3.2% this year, from 7.1% in 2021, before
stopped either investors, or the bloodhounds at the Financial Conduct Authority, from slumping to 0.7% in 2023. The Open
demanding a fuller explanation. “On the evidence so far, a potential ban looks alarmist.” University’s annual Business Barometer
Still, the risk for investors is that this inquiry drags on. They’ve already taken quite a reported that more than three-quarters
punishing, said The Daily Telegraph. When Wise floated, hailed as an antidote to the of UK companies are suffering a decline
Deliveroo flop and a poster child for London fintech, it was valued at £9bn. But the in trading, or stalled growth, due to the
recent tech rout has seen the valuation shrivel to just £3.82bn. Taxing times, indeed. intensifying skills shortage.
Boris Johnson suggested Britain’s
Arm: Boris vs. Masa energy markets should be overhauled
The great arm-wrestling match for the future of Cambridge’s world-beating chip designer to ease surging prices and fuel poverty.
France’s top three energy suppliers –
is getting gnarly, said Leo Lewis in the FT. On one side of the table sits the PM, who is
Engie, EDF and TotalEnergies – appealed
leading the Government’s “turbocharged” campaign to ensure that “the crown jewel of to French households and businesses to
British tech” floats in London. On the other is the current owner, Masayoshi “Masa” limit fuel consumption, or prepare for
Son of SoftBank, who favours a Nasdaq listing. Back in February, Son was very clear rationing of electricity and gas.
about his preference for the tech-centric New York exchange. But his position has shifted Walgreen Boots Alliance, the owner
slightly. London is apparently still in the game, thanks to “the latest carrot efforts of of Boots, shelved plans to sell Britain’s
suasion” and “faintly sinister stick strategies”: it has reportedly threatened to use the biggest high street chemist, citing an
new National Security and Investment Act to compel it to list in the UK. “The fight to “unexpected and dramatic change”
host Arm’s listing is definitely worth pursuing,” said Nils Pratley in The Guardian. “At in market conditions. Camelot lost its
£40bn-plus, it would do more for the UK’s credentials as a tech-friendly place than a legal battle to block the National Lottery
thousand limp IPOs.” But forcing it is a non-starter. “It’s one hell of a stretch to say the licence handover to Allwyn. Heathrow
UK’s national security would be imperilled” by a New York float. One “best of both Airport warned passengers to expect
chaos for years after the Civil Aviation
worlds” option might be a primary London listing, plus US-listed depositary receipts.
Authority bowed to airline pressure to
Either way, the only way to persuade SoftBank to list Arm in London is “on merit”. cut landing fees. The Unite union is
consulting staff at the Bank of England
Revlon: meme makeover about securing “a decent pay rise”.
In Revlon’s 1980s heyday, supermodels Cindy Crawford and Claudia Schiffer promised Halifax prompted a Twitter storm by
women that the beauty giant’s luscious red lipsticks would make them “unforgettable”, announcing its employees will be able to
said Leila Abboud in the FT. Sadly, assailed by “a flood of independent brands” and include pronouns on their name badges.
weighed down by debt, the 90-year-old US cosmetics group went under in mid-June. Few Critics accused it of “virtue-signalling”.
were prepared for what happened next, said Reuters. Investors usually give bankrupt
companies the cold shoulder. But little more than a week after going bankrupt, Revlon’s
share price had “soared by more than 300%” – pushed up by hordes of retail investors in
a mini rerun of the “meme stock” frenzy of January 2021. They seem to be hoping it will Plan B
follow the car rental company Hertz, which went bust in 2020, but later rewarded brave Since the supreme court overturned Roe
investors when an investment group offered $6bn for it. There are other forces at play, v. Wade, many US women “have been
said Motley Fool. Punters are exploiting the fact that Revlon is one of America’s most rushing to stock up on emergency
contraceptive pills”, said DealBook in The
heavily “shorted” stocks. By pushing up the price, they hope to force the shorters “to
New York Times. Some pharmacies in
close their position” – so increasing short-term demand for shares and sending the price short supply are now limiting purchases.
still higher. Revlon’s best hope is that a solid buyer will emerge; Reliance of India is The demand uptick could mean “huge
reportedly rootling through its make-up bag. In the meantime, “expect wild swings”. profits” for the “all-male teams of
investors” at Kelso and Juggernaut – the
Harland & Wolff: titanic tax row two private equity firms behind the best-
The Belfast shipbuilder Harland & Wolff famously built the Titanic, said Oliver Gill in known morning-after pill, Plan B. But
The Sunday Telegraph. But its latest revival, courtesy of the UK’s burgeoning offshore they could also find themselves “in the
wind sector and the Government’s £4bn investment in shipyards, has been under threat – middle of the abortion rights fight”. Plan
B works mainly by stopping the release
from the taxman. Last week, HMRC served the company with “a winding-up petition”
of an egg. But its label says “it may also
relating to one of its subsidiaries over an allegedly unpaid £92,275 tax bill, which, if left prevent a fertilised embryo from
unresolved, risks forcing the whole company into bankruptcy. Harland & Wolff insists it attaching to the uterus”. In some states,
is blameless, and points the finger at “an administrative error” at HMRC, which it now that distinction now matters.
says is “resolved”. HMRC’s gnomic response? “We support customers with tax debts.”

2 July 2022 THE WEEK

42 CITY Talking points
Issue of the week: Russia’s default?
What impact will debt default, and a possible oil price cap, have on the Putin regime?
For months, Russia has found paths
around “ever tougher Western sanctions
that shut down payment routes to
overseas creditors”, said Bloomberg. It
has finally run out of road. Last Sunday,
the grace period on about $100m of
eurobond interest payments, due on 27
May, expired – pushing the country into
official default. This has only happened
twice before: under the Bolsheviks in
1918, and during the financial chaos
of the Yeltsin era in 1998. The default
is therefore “historic”. It is also highly
unusual, since Russia is both willing and
financially able to make the payments,
but is effectively prevented from doing so
by the US Treasury. The country’s finance Siluanov and Putin: a “farce”
minister, Anton Siluanov, has dismissed
the situation as a “farce”. But, even if “mostly symbolic for
now”, the default is still “a grim marker in the country’s rapid
transformation into an economic, financial and political outcast”.
The more pressing point for Vladimir Putin’s opponents, said Lex
in the FT, is that “Moscow has so far circumvented the West’s
efforts to drain its coffers”. Russia earned nearly $100bn from oil
and gas exports during the first 100 days of the war with Ukraine
– largely thanks to Europe’s continued reliance on Russian gas,
and its ability to find new buyers for its oil in India and China.
The solution proposed at this week’s G7 meeting is “a price cap
for Russian oil sales”, which theoretically
would be a win-win for the West, since it
would keep Russian oil flowing into the
world economy, while reducing “the
country’s ability to pay for its war in
Ukraine”. In practice, though, the
difficulties inherent in tracking the
“provenance” of fuel exports would
make any cap “devilishly hard” to
enforce. Meanwhile, a retaliatory cut-off
in natural gas supplies to Europe would
cause havoc. All the more so, said The
Economist, since “the threat of gas
rationing” is already “looming” in the
EU’s economic powerhouse, Germany.
Emboldened by the recovery of the
rouble, and strong oil and gas revenues,
Putin has claimed that sanctions are “a double-edged sword” that
will prove more painful for the West than for Russia, said Ben
Marlow in The Daily Telegraph. But even this supposedly
“symbolic” debt default could deal “a heavy blow” to his plans.
“A regime that thrives off propaganda” will be desperate to avoid
any scenario that adds to the impression that Russia “has been
weakened by sanctions”. The default could also have wider
ramifications, since it could affect the country’s debt ratings for
years – making it difficult to access financing and more costly to
borrow, even when hostilities end. Ultimately, “Moscow could
effectively be shut out of the global financial system for years”.

Making money: what the experts think Summer reading part II

● Soothingly boring
The gold price hit a
year high of $2,080
per ounce in March,
“shortly after you
know who invaded
you know where”,
said Dominic Frisby
in MoneyWeek. Since
then, it appears to
have disappointed:
“meandering around
A fine investment?
the $1,820 mark”,
which is about its “one-year average”. In
fact, given the strength of the US dollar,
gold has performed rather well – certainly
compared with many currencies. More
importantly, at a time when stocks,
bonds and cryptos have all seen big falls,
it remains reassuringly “dull”. Gold, in
short, is “doing what it’s supposed to do
– preserving its value and your capital”.
● Golden slumbers
The dollar will head lower if other
countries start to follow the US Fed’s lead
and “tighten” by raising interest rates to
head off inflation. If it does, “then gold
will make a move”, said Frisby. Analysts
at Goldman Sachs reckon this is a likely
scenario and “have just put a $2,500 year-
end target on gold”. It would be nice if
that happened, but it’s by no means
certain. US monetary policy remains more
hawkish than elsewhere, and it’s still “the
first port of call for capital in a panic”.
That will not, though,
deter me from hanging
on to gold. “It’s the one
part of my portfolio
that isn’t keeping me
awake at night.”
● Fine minerals
Jewellery and art
have long “captivated”
investors, and delivered
decent returns for them,
said Shivani Vora in
The New York Times. But interest in
“fine minerals” – beautiful, rare and
scientifically valuable mineral specimens
– is also catching on. Christie’s now has
two online auctions “dedicated to fossils,
meteorites and fine minerals”. And the
Masterpiece art fair in London, which
opened this week, is also featuring
minerals for the first time, with “60
of these rare objects” on display, courtesy
of New York’s Fine Minerals International,
which sells, buys and mines rare minerals
including topaz, quartz, calcite and
tourmaline. One reason for the upsurge
of interest, said founder Daniel Trinchillo,
is that other collectible categories are now
so “saturated”. The price point of entry
is also “reasonable”. Although the finest
examples can sell for millions, you can
build an “entry-level” collection “for a
few thousand dollars”. Before buying
anything, do some homework. Mindat.org
is a good place to start.
The Missing Cryptoqueen by Jamie
Bartlett (WH Allen £16.99). OneCoin
was meant to be “the people’s crypto­
currency”, says The Sunday Telegraph. It
turned out to be one of the biggest cash
scams in history, run by “Cryptoqueen”
Ruja Ignatova (aka “Dr Ruja”), who is
still on the run. “An astonishing read,
plunging you into a toxic world of insta-
wealth, betrayal and ruthless ambition.”
The Worm in the Apple by Christopher
Tugendhat (Haus Publishing £20). How
did the largely pro-European Tory party
turn so Eurosceptic? Lord Tugendhat,
a former EU commissioner, delves into
the history, says The Economist. “He
pins much of the blame on leaders from
Harold Macmillan to Edward Heath”,
who never came clean that membership
“entailed a loss of sovereignty”.
Black Gold: The History of How Coal
Made Britain by Jeremy Paxman
(William Collins £10.99). A very lively
account of the crucial, often forgotten,
role played by the black stuff in shaping
our society, says Dominic Sandbrook in
The Sunday Times. “Deserves the
widest possible readership.”
Freezing Order: A True Story of Russian
Money Laundering, Murder and
Surviving Vladimir Putin’s Wrath by
Bill Browder (Simon & Schuster £20).
A deserved bestseller by the US fund
manager who spent years trying “to get
the West to take the threat from Putin’s
Russia seriously”, says the FT.

THE WEEK 2 July 2022

 Commentators CITY 45
The Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey was slammed by
ministers in May when he warned that surging food prices could City profiles
Millions are be “apocalyptic” for the world’s poor. But the “distress” is already
palpable here in the UK, says Andrew Atkinson. A new survey by
Sam Bankman-Fried

being plunged the Joseph Rowntree Foundation paints “a bleak picture of life for
the bottom 40% of the income spectrum”. About seven million
The 30-year-old founder of
the FTX exchange, one of
the most youthful crypto-
into crisis households – “equivalent to every family in the north of England”
– went without essentials such as heating, toiletries or showers,
billionaires, is now playing
a pivotal role in the “crypto-
Andrew Atkinson or didn’t have enough money for food, in May. Some two million winter,” said the FT. Sam
households are now in hock to high-interest “loan shark or Bankman-Fried has emerged
Bloomberg doorstep lenders”. The hardship is so acute that the Chancellor’s as “a lender of last resort”
£15bn support package “doesn’t even touch the sides”. Fresh food to an industry now suffering
its own “credit crisis”. In
prices rose 6% in the year to June, according to the British Retail the past fortnight, he has
Consortium, while energy bills will jump again in October. “extended loans worth
With the squeeze now “threatening to push the economy into hundreds of millions of
recession”, the Government is under mounting pressure to offer dollars to troubled blockchain
more than “temporary relief”. As the report concludes, the UK outfits including BlockFi and
cannot continue lurching “from emergency to emergency”. crypto-lender Voyager” – to
“steady” them and “boost
When it comes to funding, “Britain is a good place to be a confidence in the system”,
budding entrepreneur”, says The Economist: one out of every preventing more dominoes
from falling. Bankman-Fried’s
Why UK seven dollars the world invests in the earliest-stage “pre-seed”
firms is invested here. But there the largesse ends. The big
influence extends far beyond
digital assets, said The Verge.
tiddlers rarely stumbling block that prevents our promising tiddlers from
becoming “titans” is that “as British firms grow, the capital they
He was reported this week to
be mulling a buyout of the
become titans need dries up”. By the time these companies are trying to raise
tens of millions of dollars (rather than a few hundreds of
stock-trading and investment
app Robinhood, which has
Editorial thousands), their share of global venture capital funding has lost some 75% of its value
“halved”. What might bridge the gap? Since London’s “once- since floating last year.
The Economist mighty stock market has drifted into insignificance”, the obvious
answer is to tap the wealth that we have in spades – pension Changpeng Zhao
assets. It is senseless that these are “stuck in low-yielding bonds”
when they could be driving business growth. The time has come
to reform pension and accounting rules, and to merge “the
plethora of tiny pension funds” so they can be invested at scale.
“Britain has assets seeking returns, firms hungry for capital and
a financial centre that can bring them together. It can do better.”

If you haven’t got tickets for Wimbledon this year, gaming giant
Roblox is offering an alternative, says Katie Prescott. Log on to
The metaverse “WimbleWorld”, and you can compete on a virtual Centre
Court and “even meet British tennis legend” Sir Andy Murray.
land grab is The initiative is the latest attempt to transform real life experience
into the online, 3D world of the “metaverse” – which, according
under way to McKinsey, is “shaping up to be the biggest new growth
opportunity for several industries”. But only, perhaps, if everyone
Katie Prescott plays ball. The idea is that the metaverse should be seamless, with The founder of Binance –
no single provider dominating. Last week, a “Metaverse Standards the world’s largest crypto
The Times Forum” was launched to set ground rules and “promote exchange – admits that a
phrase he often overuses is:
collaboration”. Founding members include Meta, Microsoft, Epic “Who is responsible for this?
Games and Sony. But there were some glaring omissions – such as Who?” Having seen much of
Google, Apple, Roblox and Decentraland. “In the metaverse land his multibillion-dollar fortune
grab”, it seems, “the pioneers aren’t all working together.” As with evaporate, one imagines that
former tech waves, some are aiming to keep users in their own CZ (“See-Zee”), as he is
“walled garden”. Brave new world, same old problem. known, has been asking
the question often recently.
The “anti-work” movement, which began during the pandemic, Changpeng Zhao, 45, was
seems to be “turning mainstream”, says Lucy Burton. On Reddit, born in China and raised in
Canada. He was introduced
The rise of the membership of a group hailing “unemployment for all, not just
the rich” exploded in 2020; it now has more than two million
to bitcoin at a poker game in
2013 and founded Binance
“anti-work” subscribers. On TikTok, the newly resigned post celebratory
videos of themselves in so-called “Quit-Toks”. Clearly, it’s still
four years later, said The
Observer. Since then,
movement “fashionable to quit the rat race”. Indeed, as Goldman Sachs
observed last year, the anti-work trend is a serious “long-run risk”
Binance has repeatedly
been in the cross hairs of
Lucy Burton to workforce participation. One can understand why “people in regulators. A recent Reuters
thankless, low-paid and sometimes dangerous jobs are finally report alleged it had served
The Daily Telegraph pushing back”, even while questioning how they can afford it. But as a conduit for laundering
$2.35bn in illicit funds.
turning against work “as a concept” obviously makes no sense, “When it’s all over, Zhao
unless you’re rich and have a “Rolodex” of sustaining interests. could wind up under criminal
A world without work is usually miserable, “with no hope of any indictment,” said Bloomberg.
social mobility”, or the stability, friendships and sense of purpose “Or he could be the richest
that stem from a career. Giving work the power to dominate your man in the world.”
life is one thing; shunning it altogether is quite another.

2 July 2022 THE WEEK

 Shares CITY 47

Who’s tipping what

The week’s best shares Directors’ dealings
Bloomsbury Publishing Newmont Mining Triple Point Social Asos
Investors’ Chronicle The Daily Telegraph Housing Reit 2,500
Fears that reading might fall The gold miner expects to reap The Daily Telegraph
out of fashion are unfounded rewards from the industry’s This investment trust’s 2,250
– sales at the Harry Potter first fully autonomous, electric, properties are leased to housing 2,000
publisher are up 24% and zero-carbon mining system. associations for vulnerable
profits up 40%. Now Well-run, with extraction costs adults. Income is secure thanks 1,750
expanding its lucrative set to fall amid a predicted gold to inflation-linked rents backed 1,500
academic and professional price hike. Buy. $65.17. by the state. Regulatory
scrutiny worries are priced in. 1,250
resources arm. Buy. 390p. 3 directors
Procter & Gamble Yields 6.3%. Buy. 86.5p. buy 93,392
1,000
Gresham House The Sunday Telegraph
The Sunday Times The “very high-quality” US Volex Jan Feb Mar Apr May June
The UK’s largest global consumer goods firm, whose The Times

SOURCE: INVESTORS’ CHRONICLE

forestry asset manager is
focused on sustainability and
heavily involved in battery
storage, onshore wind and
solar power. Assets under
management have jumped
65% to $6.5bn. Buy. 830p.
brands include Fairy and
Head & Shoulders, has a
record of delivering stable,
growing returns. Gaining
market share and well
placed to overcome inflation.
Buy. $143.73.
A profit warning sent shares
Run by Nat Rothschild, Volex in the online fashion giant
makes power cables for tumbling. Three board
computers, data centres and members have restored
electric vehicles. Aims to a degree of confidence,
double revenues while snapping up £783,172-worth,
maintaining 9-10% margins. with Jørgen Lindemann
buying £490,000-worth.
Plenty of potential. Buy. 235p.

…and some to hold, avoid or sell Form guide

CareTech
Investors’ Chronicle
Increased staffing costs have
hit the children’s residential
care home provider’s bottom
line. Takeover talks for two
offers at 750p are stalling,
and if the founders take it
private there will be no divi.
Sell. 680p.
Shares tipped 12 weeks ago
Micro Focus International Tekmar Group
The Times The Daily Telegraph Best tip
The software specialist helps Tekmar supplies protection Smiths Group
The Mail on Sunday
businesses benefit from IT systems for undersea cables
down 0.63% to £14.26
investment and emerging tech. and pipes – a market with
Still suffering from its HP plenty of potential. But Worst tip
takeover in 2017, now hit precarious finances have Dechra Pharmaceuticals
by customers postponing prompted it to put itself up The Sunday Times
contracts. The divi has been for sale. Shares could fall down 14.73% to £34.86
cut. Sell. 357.5p. further. Sell. 8.25p.

Cineworld Group Naked Wines Telecom Plus Market view

The Times
The embattled cinema
operator may have to raise
“substantial liquidity” or sell
off parts of its US arm if it
loses its Cineplex damages
award appeal. HSBC has
reduced its price target from
40p to 24p. Hold. 21.25p.
The Times
The online wine retailer has
flagged a possible 2022-2023
loss and a breach in its £60m
asset-backed lending facility.
UK sales are up 10%, but US
sales shrank 3% after growing
20% only two years ago.
Avoid. 287.4p.
Investors’ Chronicle “We do not believe the
The multi-utility services stock market has bottomed,
provider has seen robust and we see further
growth as cash-strapped downside ahead. Investors
customers are drawn to its should be holding elevated
tariffs. Well set to deal with levels of cash.”
regulatory change, and aims to George Ball, of Sanders
Morris Harris. Quoted
double customer numbers and on Bloomberg
treble profits. Hold. £18.07.

Market summary
Key numbers
Key numbers for investors
investors Best and worst performing
Best performing shares
shares Following the Footsie
28 Jun 2022 Week before Change (%) WEEK’S CHANGE, FTSE 100 STOCKS 7,700

FTSE 100 7323.41 7152.05 2.40% RISES Price % change

FTSE All-share UK 4035.24 3943.98 2.31% Hikma Pharmaceuticals 1677.50 +13.19 7,600

Dow Jones 31237.81 30385.75 2.80% JD Sports Fashion 117.70 +10.21

Dechra Pharmaceuticals 3486.00 +9.76 7,500
NASDAQ 11298.11 11095.05 1.83%
BAE Systems 826.60 +8.48
Nikkei 225 27049.47 26246.31 3.06%
Hang Seng 22418.97 21559.59 3.99% London Stock Exchange 7748.00 +8.12 7,400

Gold 1826.30 1836.50 –0.56%

7,300
Brent Crude Oil 117.20 114.69 2.19% FALLS
DIVIDEND YIELD (FTSE 100) 3.84% 3.91% Antofagasta 1219.00 –8.31
UK 10-year gilts yield 2.46 2.65 Anglo American 3156.50 –6.45 7,200

US 10-year Treasuries 3.20 3.29 Glencore 460.25 –4.63

UK ECONOMIC DATA Aveva Group 2379.00 –4.38 7,100

Latest CPI (yoy) 9.1% (May) 9.0% (Apr) Rolls-Royce Holdings 87.14 –4.06
7,000
Latest RPI (yoy) 11.7% (May) 11.1% (Apr)
Halifax house price (yoy) 10.5% (May) FTSE 250 RISER & FALLER
10.8% (Apr) Chrysalis Investments 122.80 +15.00 Jan Feb Mar Apr May June

£1 STERLING: $1.217 s1.158 ¥165.778 Bitcoin $20,032 Micro Focus Int 304.30 –14.90 6-month movement in the FTSE 100 index
Source: Datastream/FT (not adjusted for dividends). Prices on 28 Jun

2 July 2022 THE WEEK

48 The last word

Escape from Auschwitz: how two

prisoners warned the world
In April 1944, two young Jewish men managed to slip out of Auschwitz. They went on to draw up the first detailed report
of the horror taking place inside the Nazi death camp. In a new book, Jonathan Freedland tells their extraordinary story

Escape was lunacy, escape inhuman.” If anyone

was death. To attempt it was asked where they were
suicide. That much had been being taken, the answer
taught to Walter Rosenberg came back: “For
within a week of his arrival disinfection.” The scene
in Auschwitz, aged 17, in of the crime itself was
July 1942. One afternoon, also disguised. The
he and thousands of others doomed believed they
had been forced to watch had been brought to
a hanging, performed with a bucolic spot, a
full ceremony. The stars of farmhouse alongside
the show were announced two wooden huts for
as two prisoners who had undressing. By
tried and failed to escape. crematoria IV and
Walter and the others had V, there were flower
to watch as the men were beds. Once there, the
brought out, and a noose deception did not let
was placed around their up. These were the
necks. Afterwards, the Jews’ final minutes,
inmates were kept there but the Nazis
for a full hour, forbidden encouraged them
to even look away. The Hungarian Jews arriving at Birkenau station in June 1944 to believe in a future
corpses had notices pinned they did not have.
to their chests, written as if the words were spoken by the dead “What is your trade? A shoemaker?” the officer would ask.
themselves: “Because we tried to escape...” “We need them urgently, report to me immediately after!”

Walter understood that the Nazis wanted him and every other As the victims followed the order to strip off their clothes, the
prisoner to conclude that escape was futile. But he drew a SS would tell them that they were about to bathe, that after
different lesson. The danger came not from trying to escape, but they would be given “coffee and something to eat”. They were
from trying and failing. From that day on, he was determined to reminded to tie shoes into pairs: “Afterwards you won’t have to
try – and to succeed. Before long, he had made himself a student waste time finding the other shoe.” In fact, the SS knew that the
of escapology, taking lessons from some of Auschwitz’s most shoes would only be of use for German families back home if they
hardened inmates, and forging came in pairs. When the Jews
ties with the camp’s underground were finally pushed inside the
resistance, acquiring the “Auschwitz rested on a great and devastating gas chamber, the trickery did
know-how to attempt what act of deception. The Nazis lied to their victims not end there. The sign on the
no Jew had done before. His doors read, “To the baths”. In
yearning to break out was rooted at every step of their journey to destruction” crematorium II, the ceiling was
in more than a desire to save his dotted with fake showerheads.
own skin; it was much larger than that. For he had come to know
something essential about Auschwitz: that the crime unfolding Walter and his fellow slaves were not to breathe a word to anyone
before him rested on a great and devastating act of deception. getting off the trains. He had seen what would happen if that rule
were broken. One night a transport came from Czechoslovakia.
Most Jews were sent on arrival at Auschwitz to the gas chambers, A well-dressed mother, holding the hands of her two small
but some, like Walter, were held as slave workers. For nearly two children, said to a German officer: “Thank God we’re here.” She
years, he remained a prisoner, and saw almost every aspect of believed that the nation of Goethe and Kant would at last bring
the slaughterhouse in action. For ten months, he worked on the a measure of sanity to proceedings. That proved too much for one
Judenrampe, the railway platform where trains pulled in bringing of Walter’s young comrades who, as he ran past her, hissed words
Jews from all over Europe. His job was unloading each transport meant both to scold and warn: “You’ll soon be dead.”
and, as he did it, he detected a pattern. The Nazis lied to their
victims at every step of their journey towards destruction. The The woman looked not so much scared as affronted by this
people had boarded the trucks believing they were being taken to intrusion from a ghoulish man in pyjama stripes, his breath foul,
new lives: “resettlement in the east”, the Nazis called it. The Jews his head shaved, a prisoner who was surely some kind of criminal.
held on to their belongings as they thought they were building a She approached a German officer as if she were the aggrieved
home that would need pots and pans, and toys for their children. patron of a Prague department store, demanding to see the
manager. “Officer, one of the gangsters has told me that I and
The lying carried on the instant the SS men unlocked the wagons. my children are to be killed,” she complained, in perfect German.
If they were in a hurry, they would be brutal. But if there was The SS man gave her his most benign smile and said: “My dear
time, they might lay on a different show. They would pretend lady, we are civilised people. Which gangster said this to you?”
that the dreadful journey had been some aberration, a mistake She pointed him out, and the officer quietly noted down the
that was about to be rectified. “Good God,” they might say, prisoner’s number. Afterwards, the officer had him shot.
“in what state did those horrible Slovaks transport you? This is Walter was among those who carried his corpse back to the

THE WEEK 2 July 2022

 The last word 49
camp. At about the same time, the woman was next. To Fred and Walter, those words
gassed, along with her two children. sounded like the sweetest music. It was the
SS’s admission of defeat. The men pressed
Working on the Judenrampe for ten long their palms against the roof, trying to give the
months, whether carrying corpses or suitcases, bottom board a push. But it would not move.
Walter gradually understood why the Nazis Had they sealed themselves into their own
were so bent on keeping their victims ignorant tomb? They had assumed that, if you could pile
of their fate, even to the last. They needed a plank on, you could take it off. But lifting
their killing machine to run smoothly. Given boards is easy from above. Not so from below,
the time pressure the SS were often under, when the weight of the entire stack is pressing
with transport continually arriving, there down. Shoving in tandem, they managed to
was no room for delay caused by panic or, lift one of the bottom planks no more than an
worse, rebellion. The Nazis had devised a inch. But it was enough to give them purchase.
method that would operate like a well-run Now they could get hold of it, just enough to
slaughterhouse rather than a shooting party. shove it sideways. “Thank God for those
The sight of it nearly broke Walter. But just Germans,” Fred whispered to Walter. “If they
at the point when he might have come hadn’t moved those planks, we’d have been
apart, he was filled instead with a hot and trapped.” Exhausted from the exertion and the
unstoppable urge: he had to act. Somebody confinement, the men took in the night sky. It
had to sound the warning that Auschwitz was clear; the Moon was shining.
meant death. Around the time he turned 18, Rosenberg: determined to escape
Walter concluded that person should be him... They needed to get going, but first they put
the boards back. Part of it was a determination to leave no clue,
On 7 April 1944, after weeks of obsessive preparation, the but part of it was the hope that the hole might serve as an escape
moment had finally come. It was time to escape. Other prisoners hatch for someone else. Fred and Walter were on their way to
were at the designated spot. Wordlessly, they gave the nod: do it becoming the first Jews to engineer their own escape from
now. Walter and his fellow inmate Fred Wetzler did not hesitate. Auschwitz. They did not want to be the last. They headed towards
They climbed onto a woodpile covering a hole that had been the birch wood that gave Birkenau its name, advancing on their
prepared by other would-be escapees, and dropped inside. stomachs, commando style. They did not get up until they had
A second later, their comrades moved the planks above their reached the trees. The perimeter fence was not like the ones they
heads. One of them whispered: “Bon voyage.” Then all was had known from the inner camp. It did not have lights attached to
dark and silent. Walter pulled out some tobacco that had been each post; the wire was not electrified. Working from the bottom,
soaked in petrol and dried, and began to wedge it into the cracks they lifted the wire. That made them an opening big enough to
between the boards, hoping the crawl through.
scent would repel dogs, as he’d
been told. If it worked, Walter “Fred and Walter froze as they heard two Now they were on the other side
and Fred should be able to Germans above. ‘They must be in the camp,’ of the fence, and stayed close to
stay in their bunker for it, moving in a near-complete
exactly as long as they needed:
said one. ‘How about that pile of wood?’” circuit. Before long, they passed
three days and three nights. the inner camp, the lights that
marked its perimeter warm and glowing. If you did not know
Time crawled. It was too risky to talk. At one point, Walter felt better, the sight could almost look cosy, given the barren bleakness
Fred, who at 25 was six years older than him – both of them from all around. Except they did know better. For they could also see
the same Slovak town – squeeze his hand. At 6pm that Friday the chimneys of the crematoria, pumping out their greenish-blue,
night came the siren. The noise was appalling, but every inmate oil-refinery flames and their thick smoke of death. The pair took
welcomed it: it meant that at least one of their number had been a last look, as clear as they had ever been that they never wanted
found missing, possibly escaped. Fred and Walter knew what to see this place again.
the siren would bring. The pounding of close on 2,000 pairs of
jackboots, the senior men swearing and barking orders, their 200 They kept on, walking as stealthily as they could, their limbs still
dogs slavering as they rooted out any sign of quivering human stiff, slowed down by the marshy terrain. At about 2am, crossing
life. The search would not let up for three days. Fred and Walter open moorland, they reached a signpost with a warning to those
could be precise about that because the Nazis had a protocol coming in the opposite direction: “Attention! This is Auschwitz
from which they never deviated. If an inmate went missing, the Concentration Camp. Anyone found on these lands will be
SS kept up the outer ring of armed sentry posts for 72 hours as shot without warning!” It had taken them far too long, but
they searched. After that, they concluded that the escapee had got they had at last reached the end of the vast “zone of interest”
away: from then on, it was the Gestapo’s responsibility to scour that enveloped the camp. For a moment at least, they could
the wider region. If a prisoner could hide in the outer area during congratulate themselves. On 10 April 1944 they had each
those three days and nights after the alarm had been sounded, achieved what no Jew had done before: they had broken out of
then he would emerge into an outer camp that was unguarded. Auschwitz. And now they would embark on their true mission:
to warn the world of the horrors within.
Somehow the hours dragged their way through Saturday to reach
Sunday. Then Fred and Walter froze as they heard two Germans After escaping, Walter and Fred trekked across the mountains,
nearby. “They must be still in the camp,” said one. “How about marshlands and rivers of Nazi-occupied Poland, without a map
that pile of wood?” The Germans started to dismantle the pile or compass, to reach Slovakia. There, they wrote a 32-page report,
board by board. Walter grabbed his knife. But there was a the first detailed account of the slaughter at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
commotion far off, the voices distant and excited. Fred and Walter It would reach Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt and the
could hear the men just above them pause. A second passed. Then pope. While in hiding, Walter adopted an alias – Rudolf Vrba –
another. Finally, one of them said: “They’ve got them! C’mon...” a name he would keep until his death in Vancouver in 2006.
And, down below, Fred and Walter heard the Germans leave.
This is an edited extract from The Escape Artist: The Man who
Sunday night passed into Monday. At 6.30pm, Walter and Fred Broke out of Auschwitz to Warn the World by Jonathan Freedland
finally heard the order to take down the grosse Postenkette, the (John Murray Press £20). A longer version of this article appeared
outer chain of sentry posts, shouted from one watchtower to the in The Guardian © 2022 Guardian News & Media Limited

2 July 2022 THE WEEK

 Crossword 51
THE WEEK CROSSWORD 1318 This week’s winner will receive an
An Ettinger shoe horn and two Connell Guides will be given to the sender of the first Ettinger (ettinger.co.uk) Bridle Hide
correct solution to the crossword and the clue of the week opened on Monday 11 July. Send travel shoehorn in black, which retails
it to The Week Crossword 1318, 121-141 Westbourne Terrace, London W2 6JR, or email the at £75, and two Connell Guides
completed grid or listed solutions to crossword@theweek.co.uk. Tim Moorey (timmoorey.com) (connellguides.com).

ACROSS
6 Fearing bar opening in Berkshire
town (7)
7 In company of some wandering
nomad returning (5)
9 Game line taken by new edition
of Echo (4)
10 Bum not working, stopped
again (10)
11 Capital veg (8)
13 Remedy when one’s dog
tired! (6)
15 State of confusion in parts
of The Week? Only what one’s
heard (4)
17 Reversible figures (5)
18 One cracking very good female
singer (4)
19 Charlatan regrets work
returned (6)
20 Fruit for concubines (8)
23 King and I sets make fantastic
musical (4,2,4)
26 Active ladies chat in Mumbai
perhaps (4)
27 Tin boxes anger alluring lady (5)
28 Transparency from one
gallery (7)
DOWN
1 Fuss manufacturer’s understood,
so to speak (4,1,5)
2 Sort of mole on Frenchman (6)
3 City flag raised? Not
completely (4)
4 Vocally criticises private
accommodation? (8)
5 Refuse right away to go to
bed (4)
6 Come back to mind about
vicious dog (5)
8 Ultimately Ronald Reagan
messed up here (7)
12 Disputes with supermarket
ending in consensus (5)
14 Leaders in business head out
to lunch (3,7)
16 What could make Angie so
upset? (7)
17 Pepper good in eastern hash (8)
21 Songs in guide for an
audience (6)
22 Started with a tea perhaps (5)
24 In Amritsar it’s a common
habit (4)
25 Rising prince not entirely
open (4)

Name
Address
Clue of the week: What could make killer become kinder (6,2,5) Tel no
The Sunday Times, David Maclean
Clue of the week answer:

Solution to Crossword 1316

ACROSS: 1 Full of beans 9 Air-drop 10 Lash out 11 Animal 14 Static
15 Tedious 16 Done 17 Anti 18 Crusade 19 Ears 21 Edit 23 Medical
25 Stupor 26 Lovage 29 Niagara 30 Tonneau 31 Best sellers
DOWN: 1 Foreign 2 Lariat 3 Oops 4 Bald 5 Assets 6 Shorten
7 Salad dressing 8 Stick-in-the-mud 12 Learner 13 Airship 14 Sundial
20 Rhubarb 22 Dealers 23 Morass 24 Lounge 27 Rays 28 Et al
Clue of the week: Dearie me! I’m so disorganised – reminders
needed! (5,7) Solution: AIDES MEMOIRE (anagram)
The winner of 1316 is Rod Machin from Newcastle

The Week is available from RNIB Newsagent for the benefit of blind and
partially sighted readers. 0303-123 9999, rnib.org.uk/newsagent

Sudoku 860 (medium)

Fill in all the squares so that

each row, column and each
of the 3x3 squares contains
all the digits from 1 to 9
Solution to
Solution to Sudoku
Sudoku 859
228

  Charity of the week

Established in 2018, the Food Foundation intends to change
food policy and business practice to ensure everyone across
the UK can afford and access a healthy and sustainable diet.
We know how important diet is to set children on a path of
good health essential for their development and well-being. However, far too P1390
many children don’t get the diets they need. Evidence shows young people in
the UK are eating too much saturated fat, sugars and salt and too little fibre,
fruit and veg. And conditions such as diabetes and obesity are increasingly
affecting children – diseases normally associated with adult life. Additionally,
healthier foods are often not affordable for families on low incomes, and
households with children are at higher risk of food insecurity than the general
population. Visit foodfoundation.org.uk for more information. For binders to hold 26 copies of The Week: modernbookbinders.com, £9.50

.
Registered as a newspaper with the Royal Mail. Printed by Wyndeham Bicester. Distributed by Marketforce (UK) Ltd.
Subscriptions: subscriptions@theweek.co.uk. 2 July 2022 THE WEEK
9027